In her rented room in Manhattan, big enough only for a single bed and a small dresser, Nicole Anderson from Kalamazoo stood at the window and looked out at the city. She couldn't stop thinking about the teenage girl from the doctor's waiting room that morning, with the dark, thoughtful eyes under strong, slanted brows. Although Nicole knew it was foolish—her fertility treatments might not even work and she'd barely heard the girl say one word—she'd found herself hoping that someday she'd have a daughter just like her. She had no idea why. The girl was beautiful in an unfussy way, but it wasn't her appearance; Nicole didn't care what any of her God-willing future children looked like. So what was it about the girl that had struck her so deeply?
It wasn't until weeks later, when Nicole and the other believers stood outside the girl's house, that Nicole would realize her thoughts hadn't been foolish at all.
"God told me who she was that very first time I saw her," she'd explain to people from then on, as she described the waiting room encounter.
Despite how everything turned out, she thought about it often—a touchstone in the story of her life.
