When Grace Brought Us Together.

Chapter 1 A Place to Begin Hannah Bennett arrived at Grace Fellowship carrying a cake she had promised to bake before she remembered that her grandmother's oven heated unevenly. One side stood higher than the other. She had turned that side toward herself all the way across the parking lot. At the fellowship hall door, a man holding a toolbox stepped aside. "Do you need a hand?" "Only if you can keep the building level. This cake has difficulties." He glanced at the plate, then opened the door wider. "I think it will survive the journey." Inside, her grandmother waved from a table covered with donated coats. Hannah set down the cake and discovered a streak of frosting on her sleeve. "You must be Hannah," the man said. "I'm Caleb Walker. Your grandmother told me you were coming." Of course she had. Evelyn Bennett could turn a request for a church bulletin into a conversation about her granddaughter. "Did she also tell you I'm perfectly capable of meeting people without assistance?" "Not in those words." His smile was quiet enough that she smiled back. Hannah had returned to town six weeks earlier after the school where she worked eliminated her office position. She was thirty, temporarily living in her childhood bedroom, and tired of answering questions with the word temporarily. Caleb pointed toward the coat tables. "Mrs. Bennett says we're sorting sizes. Apparently my qualifications are height and a willingness to lift boxes." They worked until the hall grew warm. Hannah discovered that Caleb remembered children's names, asked before moving anyone's belongings, and said little about himself unless someone asked. She asked whether the toolbox belonged to him. "I repair furniture. Some building maintenance too. The pantry shelves needed attention." "And did you fix them?" "I made a list. Fixing things without looking first usually creates more work." Hannah thought of the cheerful plans people had suggested for her life since she came home. Perhaps a list was not a bad beginning. At lunch, Caleb took a piece of the crooked cake. "Honest verdict?" she asked. He tasted it carefully. "I'd come back for another piece." For the first time that week, Hannah laughed without feeling she ought to explain why