Glory, Glory

New York Times Bestselling Author

Linda Lael Miller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Eight years ago, Glory Parsons had been forced to flee her hometown—and leave behind her first love. And Jesse Bainbridge would never know the heartbreaking price she’d paid—or about the child born of their fiery union….

Jesse had once wanted Glory with all the passion in his soul—until she walked out on him. Now she was back with shocking news that would change his life forever. Could he trust the woman who’d betrayed him—the only woman he would ever love?

For Betty Wojcik, a friend indeed.

Thanks for everything.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

One

Glory Parsons’s gloved hands tightened on the steering wheel when the familiar green-and-white sign came into view. Pearl River, Oregon. Population: 6710.

All it would take was one U-turn, and she could be headed back toward Portland. She’d find another job, and she still had her apartment. Maybe she and Alan could work things out….

She swallowed hard. She would be in Pearl River three weeks at the outside, then she could join her friend Sally in San Francisco, get a new job and start her life all over again. As for Alan, she hoped his teeth would fall out.

The feed store was festooned in lights and sparkling green garlands for Christmas, like the five-and-dime and the bookstore and the newspaper office. The street was thick with muddy slush, but fat puffs of new snow were falling.

Glory passed the diner and smiled to see the cheap plastic Santa and reindeer perched on the tar-paper roof. She touched her horn once, in a preliminary greeting to her mother, and drove on.

The cemetery was on the other side of town, overlooking the river. Glory parked outside the gates, behind a green police car, and made her way up the curving driveway. She left her purse in the car, carrying a bouquet of holly she’d picked along the roadside earlier in the day.

A crisp breeze riffled the drifting snowflakes and Glory’s chin-length silver-gold hair. She pulled up the collar of her long woolen coat, royal blue to match her eyes, and made her way carefully along a slippery walk.

Dylan’s grave lay beneath a white blanket of snow, and Glory’s throat thickened when she came to stand beside it. “Hi, handsome,” she said hoarsely, stooping to put the holly into the metal vase at the base of his headstone. Her eyes filled with tears, and she wedged both hands deep into her coat pockets and sniffled. “You had your nerve, dying at twenty-two. Don’t you know a girl needs her big brother?”

She dusted snow from the face of the stone, uncovering Dylan’s name and the dates of his birth and death. He’d perished in an explosion soon after joining the air force, and Glory didn’t want anyone to forget he’d lived, even for the space of an afternoon snowfall.

She drew a deep breath and dried her eyes with the back of one hand. “I swore I’d never come back here,” she went on miserably, “even to see you. But Mama’s getting married, so I had to come to her wedding.” She took a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her nose. “I got myself hooked up with a real jerk back in Portland, Dylan. If you’d been around, you probably would have punched him in the mouth. He pretended to love me, and then he stole my promotion right out from under me.”

She paused to look up at the cloudy sky. The bare limbs of maple and elm trees seemed to splinter it.

“I quit my job and had my furniture put in storage,” Glory confided to her brother, gazing at the marble headstone again. “And after Christmas and Mama’s wedding, I’m going to San Francisco to make a life for myself. I don’t know when I’ll be back to see you again.”

A swishing sound in the slush alerted Glory to someone’s approach. She looked up, and her blue eyes went wide.

“Jesse.”

He was standing on the other side of Dylan’s grave, dressed in the standard green-and-brown uniform of the sheriff’s department. He wore no hat, and his badge, pinned to his jacket, gleamed in the thin winter light. Like Glory, he was twenty-eight years old.

His caramel eyes moved over her frame then swept back to her face. “What are you doing here?” he asked, as though he’d caught her in a bank vault after-hours.

Glory had known she couldn’t come back to Pearl River without encountering Jesse—she just hadn’t expected it to happen this soon. Her temper flared, along with an old ache in a corner of her heart she’d long since closed off, and she gestured toward Dylan’s headstone. “What do you think I’m doing here?” she retorted. “I came to see my brother.”

Jesse hooked his thumbs through the loops on his trousers, and his brazen brown eyes narrowed slightly. “It’s been eight years since the funeral. You were really anxious to get back.”

Eight years since the funeral, eight years since Glory had laid eyes on Jesse Bainbridge.

Pride forced Glory to retaliate. She took in his uniform and then said, “I see you’ve been promoted to sheriff. Did your grandfather buy the election?”

His jawline tightened for a moment, but then he grinned in that wicked way that had broken so many hearts in high school. “Why not? He bought you, didn’t he?” Like everyone else in Pearl River, Jesse probably believed old Seth Bainbridge had paid her to leave town; Glory was fairly certain he’d never learned about the baby.

Without waiting for a reply, Jesse settled his hat on his head and walked away.

Glory barely resisted the urge to scoop up a handful of snow and hurl it at his back. Only the awareness of where she was kept her from doing just that.

When Jesse was out of earshot, Glory put her hands on her hips and told Dylan, “He really burns me up. I don’t know why you liked him so much.”

You liked him, too, she heard Dylan’s voice say, way down deep in her heart. You had his baby, Glory.

“Don’t remind me!” Glory snapped, folding her arms. “I was barely eighteen, and my hormones were out of control!”

She thought she heard Dylan’s laughter in the chilly winter breeze, and in spite of the unpleasant encounter with Jesse Bainbridge a few minutes before, she smiled.

“I love you, Dylan,” she said, touching the headstone again. Then, with her hands in her pockets, she turned and made her way down the walk to the driveway and the towering wrought-iron gates.

It was time to face Pearl River, something she hadn’t done since Dylan’s funeral, and she was reluctant for more than one reason.

Glory’s sports car, the one great extravagance in her life, started with a comforting roar, and she drove slowly back into town, telling herself to take things one moment at a time. Before she knew it, Christmas and the New Year’s wedding would be over, and she could get on with her life.

She parked in front of Delphine’s Diner just before an orange snowplow came past, flinging a picturesque fan of slush at the sidewalk. Glancing up at the life-size plastic Santa and reindeer, Glory remembered Dylan sliding around on the roof to put them in place for Christmases past, deliberately clowning because he knew his mother and sister were afraid he’d fall.

The little bell over the door jingled when Glory went inside. Her mother, as slender and active as ever, lit up brighter than the Santa over their heads when she saw her daughter.

“Glory,” she whispered with a choked sob of pleasure. And then she was hurrying across the brown-and-white linoleum floor, with its swirls of fresh wax, to embrace her.

The hug brought a lump to Glory’s throat and quick tears to her eyes. “Hello, Mama.”

“It’s about time you got here,” boomed a male voice from one of the stools at the counter. Harold Seemer, the good-natured plumbing contractor who had finally persuaded Delphine to marry him after a five-year courtship, beamed at his future stepdaughter. “We were about to send the sheriff’s patrol out after you.”

Glory tried not to react visibly to the indirect mention of Jesse. She didn’t want thoughts of him interfering with her visit. “Hi, Harold,” she said, giving the well-fed balding man a hug. He and Delphine had visited her in Portland on several occasions, and she’d become very fond of him.

“You look skinny,” Delphine commented, narrowing her green eyes as Glory took off her coat and hung it on one of the chrome hooks beside the door.

Glory laughed. “Thanks, Mama. I’ve been dieting for two months to make up for all the food you’re going to force me to eat.”

Harold finished his coffee and replaced the beige china cup in its saucer, with a clink. “Well, I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll leave you two to catch up on everything.”

When he was gone, Glory took a stool at the counter, sighed, and pushed back her hair. “No customers,” she commented, looking around at the six Formica-topped tables. The chrome legs of the chairs glistened, and so did the red vinyl seats.

Delphine shrugged and, stepping behind the counter, poured a cup of coffee to set in front of her daughter. “The lunch crowd’s been and gone. Things’ll be quiet until dinnertime.”

Glory reached for her cup and saucer and pulled them toward her, feeling the steam caress her face and taking comfort in the familiar aroma, but she didn’t drink. “I saw Jesse,” she said, and her voice was shaky.

“Did you, now?” Delphine’s voice was light as the feathery snow falling past the window with its neon “We Serve Pepsi-Cola” sign. “How did that happen?”

“I stopped by the cemetery to leave some holly for Dylan, and he was there.” Glory raised her eyes, watched her mother’s face pale slightly at the mention of her lost son. But Delphine recovered her composure rapidly, like always. She was nothing if not a survivor.

“Jesse’s brother, Gresham, is buried there, along with his sister-in-law, Sandy, and his folks. Must be some special day to him, or something.”

Glory recalled the plane crash that had taken the lives of Gresham Bainbridge, promising young state senator, and his pretty wife, Sandy. The tragedy had been big news in Oregon. “They left a child behind, didn’t they?” Glory asked, because thinking about the Bainbridges’ misfortune was better than remembering her own and Delphine’s.

Delphine busied herself rinsing out a glass pot and starting a new batch of decaffeinated coffee brewing. “A little girl,” she said quietly. After a few more moments, she turned to face her daughter, leaning against the spotless counter, her shrewd eyes inviting—even demanding—confidences. “Tell me about this Alan man. What did he do that made you uproot yourself like that?”

Glory ran her tongue over her lips and fiddled with a paper napkin. She still hadn’t touched her coffee. “He was a rat, Mama,” she answered after a long time. “He cozied up to all my clients while I was away taking a training course in Chicago, and when I came home, the board had given him the promotion they promised me.”

“So you just threw your resignation in their faces, cleared out your desk and left?” Delphine put the question in a non-challenging way, but it still made Glory’s cheeks flame.

And she definitely felt defensive. “What should I have done, Mama? Stayed and brought Alan pencils and files in my teeth? I worked night and day for four years to earn that job!”

Delphine shrugged, leaning on the counter again. “I think maybe you just wanted out of the relationship and that was the best excuse that occurred to you. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that you’ve never gotten over Jesse Bainbridge.”

Glory’s hands shook as she picked up the coffee and took an angry gulp. It burned her tongue and the roof of her mouth. “Well, I have!” she sputtered moments later. It still hurt that Jesse hadn’t come for her at the unwed-mothers’ home in Portland and brought her home to have their baby, even though she knew the scenario was woven of pure fantasy. Jesse couldn’t have come for her because he hadn’t known she was pregnant. “It was nothing but a childish high-school infatuation in the first place.”

Delphine’s eyes took on a sad look. “It was more than that,” she insisted softly, resting one well-manicured hand on Glory’s arm.

Glory pulled away, went to the jukebox and busied herself studying the titles of the songs imprisoned inside. They were all old tunes she couldn’t bear to hear when her feelings were so raw.

She turned to the window instead.

Mr. Kribner came out of the drugstore across the street and hung an evergreen wreath on his front door.

“Merry Christmas,” Glory muttered, wishing she’d never left Portland. She could have made some excuse for the holidays, then dashed into town for the wedding and out again after the reception.

Her mother’s hands gripped her elbows firmly. “You’re tired, sweetheart, and I’ll bet you didn’t have any lunch. Let me fix you something, and then you can go upstairs and rest a while.”

Glory nodded, even though she had no appetite and hadn’t really rested for days. She didn’t want Delphine to worry about her, especially during this happy time, with the wedding and the holidays coming up.

“Harvey Baker was just in the other day,” Delphine called sunnily from the kitchen, as Glory stood hugging herself and watching the snow swirl lazily past the diner windows. When it got dark, the Pepsi sign would make a pink glow on the white ground. “He’s looking for an assistant over at the bank, you know. Allie Cordman left to take a job in Seattle.”

“Smart girl,” Glory murmured. Pearl River was a nowhere town, with nothing to offer. Anybody who deliberately made his home here ought to have his head examined.

Delphine hummed in the kitchen, happy with her world, and for one difficult moment Glory envied her profoundly. She wondered what it was like to be in love with a man she could trust and depend on, and to be loved by him in return.

Presently, Glory’s favorite lunch—a clubhouse sandwich with potato salad—appeared on the counter, along with a tall diet cola with extra ice.

Glory would have sworn she wasn’t hungry, but her stomach grumbled as she got back onto the stool and pulled a fresh napkin from the holder. “Thanks, Mama,” she said.

Delphine was busy wiping the already immaculate counter. “There’s an old-movie festival at the Rialto tonight,” she told Glory cheerfully. “Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life and Cary Grant in The Bishop’s Wife.”

A poignant sensation of nostalgia came over Glory. “Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant,” she sighed. “They don’t make men like that anymore.”

Delphine’s green eyes twinkled, and she flashed her diamond engagement ring. “Don’t be too sure,” she said coyly, and Glory laughed.

“Mama, you’re hopeless!” But she couldn’t help thinking, as she ate her sandwich and tangy potato salad, that it would be nice to have a handsome angel turn up in her life, the way Cary Grant had appeared in Loretta Young’s.

Two teenage boys came in, raising a great ruckus lest they go unnoticed, and plunked quarters into the jukebox. A lively old Christmas rock tune filled the diner, and they piled into chairs at one of the tables.

Suddenly wanting to relive her after-school waitress days in that very diner, Glory abandoned her sandwich and reached for a pencil and an order pad.

“What’ll it be, guys?” she asked.

The young men ran appreciative eyes over her trim blue jeans and gray cashmere sweater.

“Will you marry me?” asked the one with braces.

Glory laughed. “Sure. Just bring a note from your mother.”

The other boy hooted at that, and the first one blushed. The name on the sleeve of his letter-man’s jacket was Tony.

“I want a cheeseburger, a vanilla shake and an order of curly fries,” he said, but the look in his eyes told Glory he had bigger things in mind than food.

Glory was writing the order down when the bell over the door jingled. She looked up to see Jesse dusting snow off his shoulders onto Delphine’s clean floor.

His gaze skirting Glory as though she’d suddenly turned invisible, he greeted the boys by name and took a place at the counter. “Hi, Delphine,” he said, as the woman poured his coffee. “How’s my best girl?”

Glory concentrated fiercely on the second boy’s order, and when she’d gotten it, she marched into the kitchen and started cooking. She had to keep herself busy—and distracted—until Jesse finished his coffee and left the diner.

“What’s he doing here?” she whispered to her mother, when Delphine joined her to lift the basket out of the deep fryer and shake the golden fries free of grease.

Delphine smiled. “He’s drinking coffee.”

Glory glowered at her. “I’m going upstairs!” she hissed.

“That’ll fix him,” Delphine said.

In a huff, Glory took the cheeseburgers off the grill and the shakes off the milk-shake machine. She made two trips to the boys’ table and set everything down with a distinctive clunk. All the while, she studiously ignored Jesse Bainbridge.

He’d just come in to harass her, she was sure of that. He probably bullied everybody in Pearl River, just like his grandfather always had.

The jukebox took a break, then launched into a plaintive love song. Glory’s face was hot as she went back to the kitchen, hoping Jesse didn’t remember how that tune had been playing on the radio the first time they’d made love, up at the lake.

She couldn’t help glancing back over one shoulder to see his face, and she instantly regretted the indulgence. Jesse’s bold brown eyes glowed with the memory, and his lips quirked as he struggled to hold back a smile.

Glory flushed to recall how she’d carried on that long-ago night, the pleasure catching her by surprise and sending her spiraling out of her small world.

“That does it,” she muttered. And she stormed out to her car, collected her suitcase and overnighter, and marched up the outside stairs to her mother’s apartment.

The moment she stepped through the door, Glory was awash in memories.

The living room was small and plain, the furniture cheap, the floor covered in black-and-beige linoleum tiles. A portable TV with foil hooked to the antenna sat on top of the old-fashioned console stereo.

Glory put down her luggage, hearing the echoes of that day long, long before, when Delphine had taken a job managing the diner downstairs. Dylan had been fourteen then, Glory twelve, and they’d all been jubilant at the idea of a home of their own. They’d lived out of Delphine’s old rattletrap of a car all summer, over at the state park next to the river, but the fall days were getting crisp and the nights were downright cold.

Besides, Delphine’s money had long since run out, and they’d been eating all their meals in the church basement, with the old people and the families thrown out of work because of layoffs at the sawmill.

Dylan and Glory had slept in bunk beds provided by the Salvation Army, while Delphine had made her bed on the couch.

Pushing the door shut behind her, Glory wrenched herself back to the present. It was still too painful to think about Dylan twice in one day, even after all the time that had passed.

Glory put her baggage in the tiny bedroom that was Delphine’s now, thinking that she really should have rented a motel room. When she’d suggested it on the telephone, though, her mother had been adamant: Glory would stay at the apartment, and it would be like old times.

She paced, too restless to unpack or take a nap, but too tired to do anything really demanding. After peeking out the front window, past the dime-store wreath with the plastic candle in it, to make sure Jesse’s car was gone, she went back downstairs for her coat.

The cook who took Delphine’s place at two-thirty had arrived, along with a teenage waitress and a crowd of noisy kids from the high school.

Delphine handed Glory her coat, then shrugged into her own. “Come on,” she said, pushing her feet into transparent plastic boots. “I’ll show you the house Harold and I are going to live in.”

The snow fell faster as the two women walked along the familiar sidewalk. Now and then, Delphine paused to wave at a store clerk or a passing motorist.

They rounded a corner and entered an attractive development. The houses had turrets and gable windows, though they were modern, and the yards were nicely landscaped.

Glory remembered playing in this part of town as a child. There had been no development then, just cracked sidewalks that meandered off into the deep grass. The place had fascinated her, and she’d imagined ghost houses lining the walks, until Dylan had spoiled everything by telling her there had been Quonset huts there during World War II to accommodate workers at the town smelter.

Delphine stopped to gaze fondly at a charming little mock colonial with a snow-dusted rhododendron bush growing in the yard. The house itself was white, the shutters dark blue. There were flower boxes under all the windows.

Glory’s eyes widened with pleasure. This was the kind of house her mother had always dreamed of having. “This is it?” she asked, quite unnecessarily.

Proudly Delphine nodded. “Harold and I signed the papers on Friday. It’s all ours.”

Impulsively, Glory hugged her mother. “You’ve come a long way, baby!” she said, her eyes brimming with happy tears.

Both of them stood still in the falling snow, remembering other days, when even in their wildest dreams neither of them would have dared to fantasize about owning a house such as this one.

“Are you going to keep the diner?” Glory asked, linking her arm with Delphine’s as they walked back toward the center of town.

Delphine’s answer came as no surprise. After all, she’d worked and scrimped and sacrificed to buy the place from her former employers. “Of course I am. I wouldn’t know what to do if I couldn’t go down there and make coffee for my customers.”

With a chuckle, Glory wrapped her arm around her mother’s straight little shoulders. “I imagine they’d all gather in your kitchen at home, they’re so used to telling you their troubles over a steaming cup.”

Back at the apartment, Delphine immediately excused herself, saying she had to “gussy up” for the Stewart-Grant festival at the Rialto.

“Sure you don’t want to come along?” she queried, peering around the bathroom door, her red hair falling around her face in curls. “Harold and I would be glad to have you.”

Glory shook her head, pausing in her unpacking. “I feel as though parts of me have been scattered in every direction, Mama. I need time to gather myself back together. I’ll get something light for supper, then read or watch TV.”

Delphine raised titian eyebrows. “You’re getting boring in your old age, kid,” she said. “Just see that you don’t eat over at Maggie’s. Last week one of the telephone linemen told me he got a piece of cream pie there that had dust on top of it.”

“I wouldn’t think of patronizing your archrival, Mama,” Glory replied, grinning. “Even though I do think serving pie with dust on it requires a certain admirable panache.”

Delphine dismissed her daughter with a wave and disappeared behind the bathroom door.

As it happened, Glory bought spaghetti salad in the deli at the supermarket and ate it while watching the evening news on the little TV with the foil antenna. Downstairs in the diner, the dinner hour was in full swing, and the floor vibrated with the blare of the jukebox.

Glory smiled and settled back on the couch that would be her bed for the next several weeks, content.

She was home.

After the news was over, however, the reruns of defunct sitcoms started. Glory flipped off the TV and got out her mother’s photo albums. As always, they were tucked carefully away in the record compartment of the console stereo, along with recordings by Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson and Elvis Presley.

Delphine probably hadn’t looked at the family pictures in years, but Glory loved to pore over them.

Still, she had to brace herself to open the first album—she was sitting cross-legged on the couch, the huge, cheaply bound book in her lap—because she knew there would be pictures of Dylan.

He smiled back at her from beside a tall man wearing a slouch hat. Glory knew the man’s name had been Tom, and that he’d been mean when he drank. He’d also been her father, but she didn’t remember him.

The little boy leaning against his leg, with tousled brown hair and gaps in his grin, was another matter. Gently, with just the tip of one finger, Glory touched her brother’s young face.

“When am I going to get over missing you, Bozo?” she asked, in a choked voice, using the nickname that had never failed to bug him.

Glory stared at Dylan for a few more moments, then turned the page. There she made her first photographic appearance—she was two months old, being bathed in a roasting pan on a cheap tabletop, and her grin was downright drunken.

She smiled and sighed. “The body of a future cheerleader. Remarkable.”

Her journey through the past continued until she’d viewed all the Christmases and Halloweens, all the birthdays and first days of school. In a way, it eased the Dylan-shaped ache in her heart.

When she came to the prom pictures of herself and Jesse, taken in this very living room with Delphine’s Kodak Instamatic, she smiled again.

Jesse was handsome in his well-fitting suit, while she stood proudly beside him in the froth of pink chiffon Delphine had sewn for her. The dress had a white sash, and she could still feel the gossamer touch of it against her body. Perched prominently above her right breast was Jesse’s corsage, an orchid in the palest rose.

She touched the flat, trim stomach of the beaming blond girl in the picture. Inside, although Glory hadn’t known it yet, Jesse’s baby was already growing.

Glory closed the album gently and set it aside before she could start wondering who had adopted that beautiful little baby girl, and whether or not she was happy.

The next collection of pictures was older. It showed Delphine growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and there were photographs of a collage of aunts, uncles and cousins, too.

Glory reflected as she turned the pages that it must have been hard for Delphine after she left another abusive husband. Her family had understood the first time, but they couldn’t forgive a second mistake. And after Delphine fled to Oregon with her two children, she was virtually disowned.

Saddened, Glory turned a page. The proud, aristocratic young face of her Irish great-grandmother gazed out of the portrait, chin at an obstinate angle. Of all the photographs Delphine had kept, this image of Bridget McVerdy was her favorite.

In 1892, or thereabouts, Bridget had come to America to look for work and a husband. She’d been employed as a lowly housemaid, but she’d had enough pride in her identity to pose for this picture and pay for it out of nominal wages, and eventually she’d married and had children.

The adversities Bridget overcame over the years were legion, but Delphine was fond of saying that her grandmother hadn’t stopped living until the day she died, unlike a lot of people.

Glory gazed at the hair, which was probably red, and the eyes, rumored to be green, and the proud way Bridget McVerdy, immigrant housemaid, held her head. And it was as though their two souls reached across the years to touch.

Glory felt stronger in that moment, and her problems weren’t so insurmountable. For the first time in weeks, giving up didn’t seem to be the only choice she had.

Two

The next morning, after a breakfast of grapefruit, toast and coffee, Glory drove along the snow-packed streets of Pearl River, remembering. She went to the old covered bridge, which looked as though it might tumble into the river at any moment, and found the place where Jesse had carved their initials in the weathered wood.

A wistful smile curved Glory’s lips as she used one finger to trace the outline of the heart Jesse had shaped around the letters. Underneath, he’d added the word, Forever.

“Forever’s a long time, Jesse,” she said out loud, her breath making a white plume in the frosty air. The sun was shining brightly that day, though the temperature wasn’t high enough to melt the snow and ice, and the weatherman was predicting that another storm would hit before midnight.

A sheriff’s-department patrol car pulled up just as Glory was about to slip behind the wheel of her own vehicle and go back to town. She was relieved to see that the driver wasn’t Jesse.

The deputy bent over to roll down the window on the passenger side, and Glory thought she remembered him as one of the boys who used to orchestrate food fights in the cafeteria at Pearl River High. “Glory?” His pleasant if distinctly ordinary face beamed. “I heard you were back in town. That’s great about your mom getting married and everything.”

Glory nodded. She couldn’t quite make out the letters on his identification pin. She rubbed her mittened hands together and stomped her feet against the biting cold. “Thanks.”

“You weren’t planning to drive across the bridge or anything, were you?” the deputy asked. “It’s been condemned for a long time. Somebody keeps taking down the sign.”

“I just came to look,” Glory answered, hoping he wouldn’t put two and two together. This had always been the place where young lovers etched their initials for posterity, and she and Jesse had been quite an item back in high school.

The lawman climbed out of his car and began searching around in the deep snow for the “condemned” sign. Glory got into her sports car, started the engine, tooted the horn in a companionable farewell, and drove away.

She stopped in at the library after that, and then the five-and-dime, where she and Dylan used to buy Christmas and birthday presents for Delphine. She smiled to recall how graciously their mother had accepted bottles of cheap cologne and gauzy handkerchiefs with stylized D’s embroidered on them.

At lunch time, she returned to the apartment, where she ate a simple green salad and half a tuna sandwich. The phone rang while she was watching a game show.

Eager to talk to anyone besides Alan or Jesse, Glory snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”

The answering voice, much to her relief, was female. “Glory? Hi, it’s Jill Wilson—your former confidante and cheerleading buddy.”

Jill hadn’t actually been Glory’s best friend—that place had belonged to Jesse—but the two had been close in school, and Glory was delighted at the prospect of a reunion. “Jill! It’s wonderful to hear your voice. How are you?”

In the years since Dylan’s funeral, Glory and Jill had exchanged Christmas cards and occasional phone calls, and once they’d gotten together in Portland for lunch. Time and distance seemed to drop away as they talked. “I’m fine—still teaching at Pearl River Elementary. Listen, is there any chance we could get together at my place for dinner tonight? I’ve got a rehearsal at the church at six, and I was hoping you could meet me there afterward. Say seven?”

“Sounds great,” Glory agreed, looking forward to the evening. “What shall I bring?”

“Just yourself,” Jill answered promptly. “I’ll see you at First Lutheran tonight, then?”

“Definitely,” Glory promised.

She took a nap that afternoon, since she and Jill would probably be up late talking, then indulged in a long, leisurely bubble bath. She was wearing tailored wool slacks in winter white, along with a matching sweater, when Delphine looked her up and down from the bedroom doorway and whistled in exclamation.

“So Jesse finally broke down and asked for a date, huh?”

Glory, who had been putting the finishing touches on her makeup in front of the mirror over Delphine’s dresser, grimaced. “No. And even if he did, I’d refuse.”

Delphine, clad in jeans and a flannel shirt for a visit to a Christmas-tree farm with Harold, folded her arms and assembled her features into an indulgent expression. “Save it,” she said. “When Jesse came into the diner yesterday, there was so much electricity I thought the wiring was going to short out.”

Glory fiddled with a gold earring and frowned. “Really? I didn’t notice,” she said, but she was hearing that song playing on the jukebox, and remembering the way her skin had heated as she relived every touch of Jesse’s hands and lips.

“Of course you didn’t,” agreed Delphine, sounding sly. She’d raised one eyebrow now.

“Mother,” Glory sighed, “I know you’ve been watching Christmas movies from the forties and you’re in the mood for a good, old-fashioned miracle, but it isn’t going to happen with Jesse and me. The most we can hope for, from him, is that he won’t have me arrested on some trumped-up charge and run out of town.”

Delphine shook her head. “Pitiful,” she said.

Glory grinned at her. “This from the woman who kept a man dangling for five years before she agreed to a wedding.”

Delphine sighed and studied her flawlessly manicured fingernails. “With my romantic history,” she said, “I can’t be too careful.”

The two women exchanged a brief hug. “You’ve found the right guy this time, Mama,” Glory said softly. “It’s your turn to be happy.”

“When does your turn come, honey?” Delphine asked, her brow puckered with a frown. “How long is it going to be before I look into your eyes and see something besides grief for your brother and that baby you had to give up?”

Glory’s throat felt tight, and she turned her head. “I don’t know, Mama,” she answered, thinking of the word Jesse had carved in the wall of the covered bridge. Forever. “I just don’t know.”

Five minutes later, Glory left the apartment, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her long cloth coat. Since the First Lutheran Church was only four blocks away, she decided to walk the distance.

Even taking the long way, through the park, and lingering a while next to the big gazebo where the firemen’s band gave concerts on summer nights, Glory was early. She stood on the sidewalk outside the church as a light snow began to waft toward earth, the sound of children’s voices greeting her as warmly as the golden light in the windows.

Silent night, holy night

All is calm, all is bright…

Glory drew a breath cold enough to make her lungs ache and climbed the church steps. Inside, the music was louder, sweeter.

Holy Infant, so tender and mild…

Without taking off her coat, Glory slipped into the sanctuary and settled into a rear pew. On the stage, Mary and Joseph knelt, incognito in their twentieth-century clothes, surrounded by undercover shepherds, wise men and angels.

Jill, wearing a pretty plaid skirt in blues and grays, along with a blouse and sweater in complimentary shades, stood in front of the cast, her long brown hair wound into a single, glistening braid.

“That was fabulous!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “But let’s try it once more. Angels, you need to sing a little louder this time.”

Glory smiled, brushing snow off her coat as Jill hurried to the piano and struck up an encore of “Silent Night.”

The children, ranging in age from five or so to around twelve, fascinated Glory. Sometimes she regretted studying finance instead of education; as a teacher, she might have been able to make up, at least in a small way, for one of the two major losses in her life—she would have gotten to spend time around little ones. As it was, she didn’t even know any kids—they just didn’t apply for fixed-rate mortgages or car loans.

Joseph and Mary looked enough alike to be brother and sister, with their copper-bright hair and enormous brown eyes. Two of the wise men were sporting braces, and the third had a cast on his right arm.

Glory was trying to decide who was an angel and who was a shepherd when her gaze came to rest on a particular little girl. Suddenly she scooted forward in her seat and gripped the back of the next pew in both hands.

Looking back at her from beneath flyaway auburn bangs was the pretty, pragmatic face of Bridget McVerdy, Glory’s great-grandmother.

For a moment the pews seemed to undulate wildly, like images in a fun-house mirror, and Glory rested her forehead against her hands. Almost a minute passed before she could be certain she wasn’t going to faint.

“Glory?” A hand came to rest with gentle firmness on her shoulder. “Glory, are you all right?”

She looked up and saw Jill standing over her, green eyes filled with concern. Her gaze darted back to the child, and the interior of the church started to sway again. Unless Dylan had fathered a baby without ever knowing, or telling his mother and sister…

“Glory,” Jill repeated, sounding really worried now.

“I—I’m fine,” Glory stammered. She tried to smile, but her face trembled with the effort. “I just need some water—”

“You sit right there,” Jill said in a tone of authority. “I’ll get you a drink.”

By the time she returned with a paper cup filled with cold water, Glory had managed to get back in sync with the earth’s orbit, and the feeling of queasy shock in her stomach had subsided.

Talk about your forties movies and Christmas miracles, she thought, her eyes following the child that had to be her own.

Jill excused herself and looked at her watch as she walked up the aisle. Parents were starting to arrive, peering through the sanctuary doors and congregating in the back pews.

“All right, showstoppers,” Jill said, “it’s a wrap, for tonight, at least. Angels, practice your songs. You were a little rusty on ‘It came upon a Midnight Clear.’”

Glory wondered if she’d be able to stand without her knees buckling. She fumbled through her purse for aspirin and took two tablets with what remained of her water.

Just then, the little girl on the stage broke away from the other angels and shepherds and came running down the aisle, grinning.

Glory’s eyes widened as her daughter drew nearer and nearer, turned slightly in her seat to see her fling her arms around a man clad in blue jeans, boots and a sheepskin coat.

Jesse.

“Hi’ya, Munchkin,” he said, bending to kiss the child where her rich, red-brown hair was parted.

Glory’s mouth dropped open. He knew, she thought frantically. Then she shook her head.

He couldn’t know; fate couldn’t be that cruel. His grandfather wouldn’t have told him, Dylan hadn’t known the truth, though he might have guessed, and Delphine had been sworn to secrecy.

At that moment Jesse’s maple-colored eyes found Glory’s face. They immediately narrowed.

Glory felt no more welcome in the First Lutheran Church than she had in the cemetery the day before. She sat up a little straighter, despite the fact that she was in a state of shock, and maintained her dignity. Jesse might be sheriff, but that didn’t give him the right to intimidate people.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. After raising the collar of his macho coat, he turned his attention back to the child, ignoring Glory completely.

“Come on, Liza,” he said, his voice sounding husky and faraway to Glory even though she could have reached out and touched the both of them. “Let’s go.”

Liza. Glory savored the name. Unable to speak, she watched Jesse and the child go out with the others. When she turned around again, Jill was kneeling backward in the pew in front of Glory’s, looking down into her face.

“Feeling better?”

Glory nodded. Now that the initial shock had passed, a sort of euphoria had overtaken her. “I’ll be fine.”

Jill stood, shrugged into her plaid coat and reached for her purse. “Jesse’s looking good, isn’t he?”

“I didn’t notice,” Glory replied as the two women made their way out of the church. Jill turned out the lights and locked the front doors.

Her expression was wry when she looked into Glory’s eyes again. “You were always a lousy liar, my friend. Some things never change.”

Glory started to protest, then stopped herself. “Okay,” she conceded, spreading her hands wide, as Jill led the way to a later-model compact car parked at the curb. She was too shaken to offer an argument, friendly or otherwise. “He looks terrific.”

“They say he’s never gotten over you.”

Glory got into the car and snapped her seat belt in place. Strange, she’d spent the past eight years thinking about Jesse, but now a gangly child with auburn hair and green eyes was upstaging him in her mind. “The little girl—Liza. Where did she come from?”

Jill started the engine and smiled sadly before pulling out into traffic. “You remember Jesse’s big brother, Gresham, don’t you? He married Sandy Piper, from down at Fawn Creek. They couldn’t have children, I guess, so they adopted Liza.”

Glory let her head fall back against the headrest, feeling dizzy again. The car and Jill and even the snowy night all fell away like pages torn from a book, and suddenly Glory was eighteen years old again, standing in Judge Seth Bainbridge’s imposing study….

She was pregnant, and she was scared sick.

The judge didn’t invite her to take a chair. He didn’t even look at her. He sat at his desk and cleaned out his pipe with a scraping motion of his penknife, speaking thoughtfully. “I guess you thought you and your mama and that brother of yours could live pretty high on the hog if you could just trap Jesse, didn’t you?”

Glory clenched her fists at her sides. She hadn’t even told Jesse about the baby yet, and she figured the judge only knew because he and Dr. Cupples were poker buddies. “I love Jesse,” she said.

“So does every other girl between here and Mexico.” At last, Jesse’s grandfather raised sharp, sky-blue eyes to her face. “Jesse’s eighteen years old. His whole life is ahead of him, and I won’t see him saddled to some social-climbing little chippie with a bastard growing in her belly. Is that clear?”

The words burned Glory, distorted her soul like some intangible acid. She retreated a step, stunned by the pain. She couldn’t speak, because her throat wouldn’t open.

The judge sighed and began filling his pipe with fresh tobacco. The fire danced on the hearth, its blaze reflected in the supple leather of the furniture. “I believe I asked you if I’d made myself clear, young lady.”

Glory swallowed hard. “Clear enough,” she got out.

The defiance he’d heard in her tone brought the judge’s gaze slicing to Glory’s face again. He and Jesse had a tempestuous relationship, but he obviously regarded himself as his grandson’s protector. “You’ll go away to Portland and have that baby,” he said. He waved one hand. “For all I know, it could belong to any man in the county, but I’m taking you at your word that Jesse’s the father. I’ll meet all your expenses, of course, but you’ve got to do something in return for that. You’ve got to swear you’ll never come back here to Pearl River and bother my grandson again.”

She was trembling from head to foot, though the room was suffocatingly warm. “When I tell Jesse about the baby,” she dared to say, “he’ll want our child. And he’ll want me, too.”

Judge Bainbridge sighed with all the pathos of Job. “He’s young and foolish, so you’re probably right,” the bitter old man concluded. He shook his head mournfully. “You leave me no choice but to drive a hard bargain, Missy. A very hard bargain, indeed.”

Glory felt afraid, and she wished she hadn’t been scared to tell Dylan about her pregnancy. He would have gotten mad all right, but then he’d probably have come with her to answer Judge Bainbridge’s imperious summons. “What are you talking about?”

The most powerful man in all of Pearl River County smiled up at Glory from his soft leather chair. “Your brother—Dylan, isn’t it? He’s had a couple of minor scrapes with the law in recent months.”

Glory’s heart pounded to a stop, then banged into motion again. “It wasn’t anything serious,” she said, wetting her lips with a nervous tongue. “Just speeding. And he did tip over that outhouse on Halloween night, but there were others…”

Since Jesse had been one of those others, she left the sentence unfinished.

The judge lit his pipe and drew on the rich, aromatic smoke. He looked like the devil sitting there, presiding over hell, with the fire outlining his harsh features. “Dylan’s about to go off to the air force and make something of himself,” he reflected, as though speaking to himself. “But I guess they wouldn’t want him if he were to be caught trying to break into a store or a house.”

Glory felt the color drain from her face. Everybody knew Judge Bainbridge owned the sheriff and the mayor and the whole town council. If he wanted to, he could frame Dylan for anything short of murder and make it stick. “You wouldn’t—Judge Bainbridge, sir, my brother doesn’t have anything to do with—”

He chuckled and clamped down on the pipe stem with sharks’ teeth. “So now I’m ‘sir,’ am I? That’s interesting.”

Glory closed her eyes and counted methodically, not trusting herself to speak. She was afraid she’d either become hysterical or drop to her knees and beg Jesse’s grandfather not to ruin Dylan’s chance to be somebody.

“You will leave town tomorrow morning on the ten o’clock bus,” the judge went on, taking his wallet from the inside pocket of his coat and removing two twenty-dollar bills. “If you stay, or tell Jesse about this baby, your brother will be in jail, charged with a felony, before the week is out.”

Glory could only shake her head.

Seth Bainbridge took up a pen, fumbled through a small metal file box for a card, and copied words and numbers onto the back of an envelope. “When you arrive in Portland, I want you to take a taxi to this address. My attorneys will take care of everything from there.”

She was going to have to leave Jesse with no explanation, and the knowledge beat through the universe like a giant heartbeat. Just that day, out by the lake, they’d talked about getting married in late summer. They’d made plans to get a little apartment in Portland in the fall and start college together. Jesse had said his grandfather wouldn’t like the idea, but he expected the old man to come around eventually.

All that had been before Glory’s appointment with Dr. Cupples and the summons to Judge Bainbridge’s study in the fancy house on Bayberry Road.

“I won’t get rid of my baby,” she said, lifting her chin. Tears were burning behind her eyes, but she would have died before shedding them while this monster of a man could see her.

Bainbridge’s gaze ran over her once, from the top of her head to the toes of her sandals. “My lawyers will see that he or she is adopted by suitable people,” he said. And with that he dismissed her.

“Glory?”

She was jerked back to the here and now as the car came to a lurching stop in Jill’s slippery driveway. She peered through the windshield at a row of Georgian condominiums she’d seen that morning, while driving around and reacquainting herself with the town. There had been lots of changes in Pearl River over the last eight years; the sawmill was going at full tilt and the place was prosperous.

Jill strained to get her briefcase from the back seat and then opened the car door to climb out. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re wondering how I could afford a condo on a teacher’s salary, aren’t you?”

Actually Glory hadn’t been wondering anything of the sort, but before she could say so, Jill went rushing on.

“Carl and I bought the place when we were married,” she said, slamming her door as Glory got out to follow her inside. “When we got divorced, I kept the condo in lieu of alimony.”

The evergreen wreath on Jill’s front door jiggled as she turned the key in the lock and pushed.

“I guess that’s fair—” Glory ventured uncertainly.

“Fair!” Jill hooted, slamming the door and kicking off her snow boots in the foyer. “I should hope so. After all, Carl makes five times as much money as I do.”

Glory laughed and raised her hands in surrender. “I’m on your side, Jill. Remember?”

Jill smiled sheepishly, and after hanging up her coat and Glory’s, led the way through the darkened living room and dining room to the kitchen. “I thought I’d make chicken stirfry,” she said, washing her hands at the sink.

“Sounds good,” Glory replied. “Anything I can do to help?” She felt like a mannequin with a voice box inside. She said whatever was proper whenever a comment was called for. But her mind was on Liza, the little girl she’d been forced to surrender to a pack of expensive lawyers nine years before.

Jill shook her head and gestured toward the breakfast bar. “Have a seat on one of those stools and relax. I’ll put water in the microwave for tea—or would you rather have wine?”

“Wine,” Glory said, too quickly.

Although she didn’t make a comment, Jill had definitely noticed Glory’s strange behavior.

Nevertheless the two women enjoyed a light, interesting dinner. After a couple of hours of reminiscing, Glory asked Jill to take her back to the diner.

Glory didn’t even pretend an interest in going upstairs to her mother’s apartment. She plundered her purse for her keys and went from Jill’s car straight to her own.

The sports car wasn’t used to sitting outside on snowy nights, instead of in the warm garage underneath Glory’s apartment complex, but it started after a few grinding coughs. Glory smiled and waved at Jill before pulling onto the highway and heading straight for the sheriff’s office.

The same deputy Glory had encountered earlier that day—she saw now that his name tag said Paul Johnson—was on duty at the desk when she hurried in out of the cold.

It took all her moxy to make herself say, “I’d like to see Sheriff Bainbridge, please.”

Deputy Johnson smiled, though not in an obnoxious way, and glanced at the clock. “He’s gone home now, Glory.”

Of course. Glory remembered that Jesse had been dressed in ordinary clothes when he’d come to the church to pick up Liza, instead of his uniform. “He still lives out on Bayberry Road, with his grandfather?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound like a crazy woman with some kind of fatal attraction.

The deputy plucked a tissue from a box on the corner of the desk and polished his badge with it. “The judge has been in a nursing home for five years now. His mind’s all right, but he’s had a couple of strokes, and he can’t get around very well on his own.”

Glory skimmed over that information. She couldn’t think about Seth Bainbridge now, and she didn’t want to take too close a look at her feelings about his situation. “But Jesse lives in the Bainbridge house?”

Officer Johnson nodded. “Yep.” He braced his chubby hands on the edge of the desk, leaned forward, and said confidentially, “Adara Simms will be living out there with him soon enough, unless the missus and I miss our guess. Jesse’s been dating her since she moved to town last year. ’Bout time they tied the knot.”

Glory did her best to ignore the unaccountable pain this announcement caused her. She nodded and smiled and hurried back out to the parking lot.

The snow was coming down harder than before, and the wind blew it at a slant. The cold stung Glory’s face and went right through her coat and mittens to wrap itself around her bones.

The downstairs windows of the big colonial house that had been in the Bainbridge family ever since Jesse’s great-great-grandfather had founded the town of Pearl River glowed in the storm. Glory parked her car beside Jesse’s late-model pickup truck and ran for the front porch.

She pounded the brass knocker against its base, then leaned on the doorbell for good measure.

“What the—” Jesse demanded, pulling a flannel shirt on over his bare chest even as he wrenched open the door. He was already wearing jeans and boots. “Glory,” he breathed.

She resisted the temptation to peer around his shoulder, trying to see if the woman Deputy Johnson expected him to marry was around. “Is Liza here?” she asked evenly.

Grimacing against the icy wind, Jesse clasped Glory by one arm and wrenched her inside the house. “No,” he said, on a long breath, after pushing the door closed. “I have legal custody of Liza, but she spends most of the time in town, with my cousin Ilene. I’m always getting called out in the middle of the night, and I don’t want to leave her alone.” He buttoned his shirt and shoved one hand self-consciously through his hair.

Jesse Bainbridge looked for all the world like a guilty husband caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Glory didn’t care if she’d interrupted something. “Did you know?” she demanded, taking off her coat.

“Did I know what?” Jesse frowned, looking agitated again.

It was possible, of course, that he really hadn’t learned who Liza was, or even that Glory had borne him a child, at all; but it seemed unlikely now. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Jesse and his grandfather had been in this together from the beginning.

“I guess the joke was on me, wasn’t it, Jesse?” she said. Glory was amazed by her calm manner; inside, she was a raging tigress, ready to claw the man to quivering shreds.

He stood so close that she could feel the heat of his body. “Damn it, Glory, what the hell are you talking about?”

It was then that her control snapped, when she thought of all the Christmases and birthdays she’d missed, all the important occasions, like the appearance of the first tooth and the first faltering step. “God in heaven, Jesse,” she spat, all pain and fury, “I hate you for keeping her from me like that!”

His hands came to rest on her shoulders, and their weight and strength had a steadying effect. So did the look of honest confusion in his dark eyes. “I get the feeling you’re talking about Liza,” he said evenly. “What I don’t get is why she’s any of your concern.”

Glory’s tears brimmed and shimmered along her lashes, blurring Jesse’s features. “Liza’s my daughter, damn you,” she sobbed. “Mine and yours! I had her nine years ago in Portland, and your grandfather made me give her up!”

Jesse let her go and turned away, and she couldn’t see into his eyes or read the expression on his face. “That’s a lie,” he said, his tone so low she could barely hear him.

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