A Season of Angels Page 0,67

that comforted her.

"Mom?" Timmy asked, picking up the receiver. Gloria continued talking, apparently not realizing anything was amiss. "Grandma says she needs to talk to you," her son said.

Jody shook her head. "No. No, I can't, not now."

"Tell your grandmother your mother will call her back later," Glen instructed. He encircled her shoulders and led her back to the living room. Gently he lowered her onto the sofa cushions. "What happened?"

Speaking was beyond her. Tears filled her eyes and spilled like burning acid against her cheeks, scalding her skin.

"Are you all right, Mom?" Timmy asked, racing to her side. "Grandma said she didn't mean to upset you. She told me to tell you to call her the minute you're feeling better."

"Did she say anything to you?" Jody demanded, gripping her son by the shoulders and making a careful study of his features. It was important that Gloria not say anything to Timmy. If her mother-in-law had made the outlandish claim to her son, Jody didn't know if she'd find it in her heart to forgive her.

"Say what?" Timmy wanted to know.

"I think your mother could do with a cold glass of water," Glen interrupted. "Would you get it for her?"

"Sure." Eager to help, Timmy hurried into the kitchen.

Glen's hands clasped Jody's. "What did Jeff's mother say to you?"

Speaking the words aloud was difficult. "She . . . claims Jeff's alive."

Glen released a troubled sigh. "Is there any chance it's true?"

Jody shook her head. "None. His body was positively identified by dental records. The same thing happened the first Christmas after we buried him. Gloria insisted Jeff wasn't dead. We argued and our relationship has been strained ever since. She's never understood that I had to divorce Jeff in order to sell the property, especially when she insisted she would continue to support Timmy and me, but I couldn't do that. I couldn't financially drain her or my own parents."

Glen sat next to her and gently patted her hand. "She sounds like a lonely old woman."

"I know. It shouldn't upset me when she does these things, but it does. I thought . . . I hoped she was making progress. I know she's trying, but it's hard for her. Jeff was her only child and she loved him very much."

"Here, Mom." Timmy vaulted into the room with a glass of water. The liquid sloshed over the rim as he presented it to her. "Is she all right?" Timmy asked Glen.

He nodded. "I think so."

"Grandma Potter's real nice," Timmy explained, "but she's a little weird sometimes. She visits old ladies who talk to the dead people and it doesn't have to be Halloween."

Jody, drinking the water, almost choked at Timmy's comment about Halloween. Leave it to a kid to put everything into the proper perspective.

"Your grandmother badly misses your father," Glen explained, kneeling down so his eyes were level with the nine-year-old. "And when you love someone so very much it eases the pain to pretend they're still with you."

"Grandma's been missing him a long time," Timmy said solemnly, then looked to Jody. "My mom has too. Until you came along all she ever thought about was my dad and her garden."

"How do you feel about that?" Glen asked.

"It bothered me a little because I'd like to have a dad who's alive and who can teach me the things a kid needs to know. I was kind of hoping you'd like me and my mom enough to stick around a while."

"I like you both a whole lot," Glen assured him.

"Enough to last through baseball season?"

Glen laughed and hugged the boy. "I'm sure I'll be around at least that long. Of course it's up to your mother if she wants to continue dating me."

"She does," Timmy said enthusiastically, "don't you, Mom?"

Jody knew she shouldn't allow her conversation with Jeff's mother to upset her, but it had. There'd been similar discussions over the years.

Jody remembered vividly every detail of every long-ago conversation. One had ruined her Christmas, but she refused to allow it to happen a second time. She'd met a good, kind man and she wasn't going to allow her ex-mother-in-law's grief to interfere in celebration of the holidays.

If that was the case, Jody reasoned, why couldn't she sleep? The house was dark and quiet, and she wandered from room to room, unable to quiet that deep inner part of herself.

The pain, she realized, was as fresh now as it had been when she'd been forced to accept that Jeff was dead.

Her father