A Season of Angels Page 0,48

dinner invitation and Timmy believes if he becomes friends with Glen that he'll dishonor the memory of his father."

Goodness felt sorry for her friend. They should have realized nothing is ever as easy as it seems, but then Shirley had been so smug about her assignment.

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," Shirley admitted. "Glen's patient, but I wonder just how long he'll continue to invite Jody if she shows no signs of wanting to go out with him. Until the package arrived from his grandmother, Timmy was working with me, and we all know what an advantage it is to have a child on our side."

"How long is it until Christmas?" Earth time always served to confuse Goodness.

"Three weeks," Shirley mumbled, her wings sagging with discouragement.

"You've got plenty of time, just be patient and do what you can," Mercy suggested. "You'll find a way, I know you will."

Goodness didn't have any better ideas herself. Her own lack of success with answering Monica's prayer request was getting downright depressing. The preacher's daughter claimed she wanted a husband, yet she ignored the attention of the man most suitable. Instead she was flirting with disaster secretly meeting a private eye with an attitude problem.

"I'm doing worse than ever," Mercy admitted grudgingly as if this were something new the others hadn't figured out yet. "Shirley had a great idea. She felt, and I'm in complete agreement, that if Leah could sample joy, then she might find the steps leading to serenity."

"What's the problem?"

"Everything," Mercy admitted, telling them about the scene in the hospital with the birthing class earlier that day. "I haven't figured out how to help her. Leah's more miserable now than when I first arrived."

"I thought you told me she seemed more accepting."

Mercy folded her arms. "Perhaps. It's difficult for me to tell. She's been overly burdened lately with work, the holidays, and the guilt of knowing how badly she's hurt her husband with her demands for a child. If anything, her grip on her pain has tightened - she holds it close to her heart so that it suffocates her happiness."

"Poor Leah," Shirley whispered, then turned her attention toward Goodness. "What about you? Are matters any better with Monica Fischer?"

"I'm growing more and more concerned about Monica," Goodness said, sharing her own disappointment. "She hasn't given Michael the time of day and he's such a dear young man."

"You sound as if you're attracted to him yourself."

"I am. Well, who wouldn't be? He's dedicated and caring and a prince of a guy, not that Monica's noticed."

"What about the private eye?"

Goodness tossed her hands into the air. "She continues to meet him on the sly. My guess is she's more attracted to him than ever."

"What about him?"

Goodness cringed. "The more I know about Chet Costello the less impressed I am. He's lived hard and loved hard and it shows."

"What does he want from Monica?"

Goodness didn't have the answer to that any more than she did the other questions. "As far as I can guess, she's everything he isn't. He doesn't share her faith, her interests, her values, yet he's attracted to those qualities. He carries the misery of his past with him, and as far as I can see he hasn't cared about anything or anyone for the last four or five years, himself included."

"You know, there might be hope for him yet," Shirley said. "Monica must think so too, otherwise she wouldn't continue seeing him."

"How can you suggest such a thing?" Goodness demanded. To her way of thinking, any relationship between the two was doomed from the start. If anyone was capable of teaching Monica the lessons she needed to know, it would be Michael, not Chet.

"I don't have any suggestions for you," Mercy told her. "I'm having enough trouble dealing with my own problems with Leah. I'm sorry I can't be of more help."

"Don't fret," Goodness said as a means of encouragement to her friends.

"We've got three weeks yet," Shirley reminded them. "There's no need to panic. Anything can happen in that time, anything at all."

"Right," Mercy said, eyeing the aircraft carrier Carl Vinjon. Goodness recognized that gleam in her friend's eye. It spelled trouble. She had to be honest, she found the radar system downright attractive. And feeling as disgruntled as she did with humans and romance, Goodness didn't think she should be held responsible for what might happen.

"You're both right," Shirley agreed, glancing toward the submarines. "Anything's possible."

Crews from all three Seattle television stations were at the