Mrs. Miracle Page 0,44

with one shoe? He closed his eyes, wishing he were better at handling this sort of situation. He wanted to help but feared he was grossly inadequate.

Once they were home, he placed Sharon's bag in the spare bedroom and took the two heaping dinner plates out of the oven. He set them on the table and sat across from her. He might as well have served Sharon mowed lawn for all the interest she showed in it.

"How's Jerry?" he ventured.

Her gaze narrowed, and tears moistened her eyes. "Fine, I suspect, just fine."

"He's in California?" No telling where Jerry was, with Sharon here.

"Yes." She looked away.

"Is there a problem with you two?" he asked next, gently exploring with questions the way a physician carefully examines a painful wound.

Sharon was saved from answering when the phone rang loudly and unexpectedly. Seth answered it with a certain reluctance.

"Hello."

"Is Sharon there?" his father-in-law asked without any preliminaries.

"Jerry?"

Sharon's eyes rounded. "Don't tell him I'm here."

"I want to talk to my wife," Jerry demanded, loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the room.

Seth's mother-in-law squared her shoulders and glared across the room, her pain-filled eyes as sharp as the polished edge of a sword. "You can tell Jerry Palmer that as of twelve-thirty this afternoon, I ceased being his wife."

Seth didn't want to be trapped as a go-between in this situation. "Perhaps it would be better if you talked to him yourself."

"No," she said with conviction. "I don't ever plan to talk to that man again. Maggie's welcome to him."

"Maggie!" Jerry exploded on the other end of the line. "What the hell is she talking about?"

Chapter 17

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

- Mrs. Miracle

Reba lay on the carpet next to the fireplace, her head propped against a decorator pillow, her legs bent and crossed and the phone cradled against her ear. Christmas music played softly in the background.

"I wish I'd been able to see you tonight," Seth said, his voice low and seductive.

"I wish you could have, too." She knew he was worried about his mother-in-law. "How's Sharon?"

"Not good." The unexpected arrival appeared to mystify him. "Jerry phoned, and the two got into a shouting match with me holding the phone. As best I can make out, Sharon saw him with another woman."

Reba bit into her lower lip, remembering the time she'd walked in and discovered her fiance and her sister together. The shock, the horror, and the pain of betrayal by two people she loved had overwhelmed her until it was all she could do to remember to breathe.

"Jerry would never cheat on Sharon," Seth said confidently. "I'd bet my life on it. He's just not the type."

"Is Sharon the kind of woman who'd jump to conclusions?"

"No," Seth admitted, and she heard the reluctance in his voice. "There's got to be an explanation, but all she does is blast out at Jerry. The poor guy can barely get a word in edgewise."

"She has a right to be angry." Reba was all too familiar with the anger that followed the shock of such a discovery. She'd carried hers around with her for four long years. It burned as brightly now as it had the day she'd stumbled upon John and Vicki in bed together.

At first, when she'd been numb with shock, John had tried to reason with her, explain it all away with the sweetest of lies. Vicki's eyes had said it all. They'd been filled with horror and regret, but it was too late. Much too late for apologies or forgiveness.

"Of course she has a right to be angry, but she isn't even giving Jerry a chance to explain himself. It's like she wants to believe he'd purposely hurt her."

"Perhaps he already has." Reba's hand tightened around the telephone receiver. Eventually she'd need to tell Seth about her strained relationship with her family. In the years since her broken engagement she hadn't related the story often, but she felt Seth had a right to know this painful part of her past. She cared about him, wanted with all of her heart for this relationship to work. Wanted it enough to bare her soul. The irony of it was that she could tell him only over the phone. She needed the separation, the protection of distance, in order to relate the details of what had shaped the last few years of her life.

"Do you remember what I said about me avoiding my family?"

He