A Season of Angels Page 0,26

declined, and that was the end of it."

"How'd you manage to live?"

"It wasn't easy because I wasn't working at the time. Within a few months my finances were a nightmare. My parents helped me out as much as they could, but I didn't want to live off their generosity. I couldn't. Jeff had disappeared, but because there wasn't a body I couldn't collect his insurance or any of the other benefits that would normally be available to a widow. Somehow I managed to hold on for nine months, with the help of my family and a few good friends. Eventually I was forced into filing for a divorce in order to sell some property. That gave me income to return to school and live on until I could get a job."

"They never found a body?"

Jody looked out the window, the night was inky and thick, and her heart felt more so. "Yes, eventually they did, but it took nearly three years."

"My God, what happened?"

A tingling sensation roved up and down her spine even now, after all this time. "I . . . received word from the German police that they'd found a body caught in the cable beneath a bridge. They believed it was Jeff. They needed me to provide dental X rays and claim the body."

"It must have come as a terrible shock."

Jody managed a nod. "It was. As best the authorities could figure, Jeff was mugged, beaten, and knocked into the river and left for dead. The body was so badly decomposed that there wasn't any real way of telling us much more than that. The news came at a bad time. Timmy had the chicken pox and I don't think I could have borne returning to Germany. Those weeks in Berlin three years earlier had been the most painful of my life. I thought to ask Jeff's mother to go, but she was always a bit eccentric and after Jeff's death she became more so."

"How do you mean?"

"She continually insisted Jeff was alive and was furious with me when I divorced him. Our relationship was strained afterwards. She claimed she'd talked to spirits in a seance, and Jeff had sent a message to her. He wanted Gloria to tell me how terribly disappointed he was in me because I'd divorced him. I didn't talk to her much after that."

"She insisted he was alive and that she'd been able to talk to him in a seance? It sounds like she had a rough time of it."

"She has. I don't know that she'll ever fully recover." Then again, Jody didn't know if she would either. "My father, bless his heart, volunteered to make the trip. The dental X rays matched and that's the end of it. That was nearly five years ago now. Jeff's been gone a total of eight years."

"I'm sorry, Jody, I really am. Jeff must have loved you and Timmy very much."

"I know he did. I get angry with myself that I doubted him even for that little bit."

"Anyone would have." Glen took their empty cups and deposited them in the garbage. He slipped into the seat and seemed unnaturally quiet. "I don't pretend to understand the grief you experienced, but I was in a relationship that lasted for three years. Breaking it off was one of the most emotionally difficult times of my life."

"Would you think I was prying if I asked you what went wrong?"

His mouth moved into a half smile. "Not at all. You were frank with me and deserve the same consideration. I loved Maryann and wanted to marry her, but she's a successful attorney and, well, I'll simplify it by explaining that her career is more important to her than marriage. Somehow or another we got involved in a game of ultimatums. I wanted a wife and children. Maryann claimed she wasn't ready for either. In the end she suggested a compromise. She thought it was a good idea for us to move in together. I wasn't willing to fall into that trap, and that was more or less the end of it."

"You still love her, don't you?"

Glen lowered his gaze. "I think it's very much like you and Jeff, I don't think I'll ever stop loving her. It's been several months now and nothing's going to change. I've accepted that and apparently so has she. We still bump into each other in court occasionally, and it's awkward, but there's nothing left for either of us to say."

"Then it doesn't bother