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
