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off balance. “Well, what is it then?”
    “I want to become immersed in the local community. Live with the Chinese, learn from them as much as teach them. This does not fit with most mission organizations’ traditional strategy.”
    Again she managed to shock her parents. Her mother said, “You never told us you had even applied to a mission group.”
    “I didn’t want to get your hopes up. They didn’t want me, and I had no interest in talking to them further.”
    “So you’re going over with that liberal do-gooder group.”
    She had to tighten down then, just let the ire rise and then fade away. Her father’s back was to her, as it often was when he shot off one of his broadsides against any program the Democrats had initiated. But her mother saw the effort Jenny was making. And she approved with a tiny nod.
    It gave Jenny the strength to reply calmly, “They have offered me a job teaching English lit and language at the local university.”
    “My daughter the professor,” her mother murmured.
    “It’s a two-year posting,” she went on. “I thought it was what I wanted. But last week I was offered another job.”
    That brought her father around. “In China?”
    “No, Pop. In New York. That’s why I was up there. The publishers have an opening for a junior editor. I have to go up for one more interview, but the woman who will be my boss has assured me the job is mine if I want it.”
    While still in graduate school, Jenny had begun working for one of the largest publishing houses in America. She had started as a freelance reader, wading through the slush pile of manuscripts that flooded in every day. She had gradually risen up to become an outside line editor, and finally she had been brought up to New York and offered a chance to handle a couple of manuscripts that she had brought in herself. One of them was currently on the
New York Times
nonfiction bestseller list. As Jenny explained this, she realized it was the first time she had ever mentioned the
Times
and not sent her father’s blood pressure through the roof.
    They were silent for a moment; then her mother asked, “Which job do you want, dear?”
    “Both of them. That’s the problem.”
    Her father said, “The New York house certainly won’t wait two years for you to start work.”
    “No. And if I go to New York, I’m afraid I’ll get caught up in the profession and the city and never leave.”
    “It can happen.” Her father’s gaze was keen, but his voice lacked the normal combative edge. “Sometimes you have to accept that you can’t have it all.”
    “I guess that’s right. Thank you.” She looked back and forth between them.
    He cocked his head. “Have you actually just agreed with me?”
    And like that, it was done. The impossible task she had known awaited her, the instant she had heard God’s voice. The change she knew the Lord wanted her to make. The unattainable quest. Make peace with the greatest source of conflict in her life. Her father.
    Jenny embraced her mother, and then her father. She felt a surge of the same triumphant power rise up inside her as she gripped him. Jenny was amazed at how easy it was to speak the words, “I love you, Pop.”

4
     
    “Having a form of godliness, but denying its power …”
     
    NEW YORK CITY
     
    T rent followed Barry Mundrose through the adjoining doors leading to his private office. The inner sanctum was larger than the bullpen housing Trent’s entire media advertising group. He watched Barry Mundrose cross the Persian carpet and sink into the chair behind his desk. Trent could see no hint of a limp—which was remarkable. Trent’s research had uncovered something Barry Mundrose normally kept well hidden. The man had been born with a serious spinal distortion, and had spent his first twelve years encased in a steel-framed corset running from hips to shoulders.
    Mundrose waved him into a chair. “Take a seat. What do they call you?”
    “Trent, sir.” He watched as