Glory, Glory

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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