A Season of Angels (Angels Everywhere #1)(22)
“No one seems to know much more about you.”
“I . . . generally don’t combine my home life with business.”
“I understand,” Glen was quick to assure her. “If you’d rather not talk about yourself, that’s fine. I don’t want you to think I’m pressuring you.”
“You aren’t,” she said, touched by his gentleness and how hard he worked to please her. “It’s only fair that I tell you about Jeff . . . he was my husband.”
“Only if you want,” he said and sipped from his coffee. As he did, Jody noticed what nice hands he had. Large, but gentle. They were the kind of hands that comforted a child, that shook on fair deals, and were rarely clenched in anger.
“I met Jeff shortly after he graduated from college,” Jody continued. “I was going into my junior year and we fell deeply in love. We dated for several months and talked about marriage. The next thing I knew Jeff had sold his car so he could buy me an engagement ring.” She paused as she remembered how she’d wept with joy the night he’d given it to her. For weeks afterward he took a bus to job interviews. “To make a long story short,” she continued when she could, “he got a job with Boeing and shortly after that we were married. Timmy wasn’t a planned pregnancy, but I’ve thanked God for my son every night since I lost Jeff. I . . . I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for Timmy. He . . . he gave me a reason to live.”
She paused, needing a moment to collect herself.
“Jeff’s job entailed a lot of traveling. He was always very good about keeping in touch with me. Timmy was only ten months old when Jeff was sent on assignment to Berlin. We set a convenient time for him to phone me each day. When he didn’t call one evening I knew immediately that something was dreadfully wrong. I tried his hotel room several times, but there wasn’t any answer.”
Her voice wobbled and Glen reached for her hand.
“A week passed with no word. Nothing. I was frantic and so was Jeff’s mother. Together we traveled to Germany. We stayed there nearly a month, in an effort to learn what we could.”
“You mean he just disappeared into thin air?” Glen asked as they pulled into Winslow, the dock on Bainbridge Island. The sound of the cars driving off the ferry was followed by those boarding. The activity in the cafeteria increased.
“It seemed that way. We did everything we could, pulled every string, made a nuisance of ourselves at the police station and the American embassy. The best we could figure then was that Jeff had gone for a walk along the Spree River, which was close to the hotel. There’d been a string of muggings and beatings that year. The only scenario the authorities could give was that Jeff had been the victim of such a crime and either been thrown or had fallen into the river. I toured every hospital in the city. Gloria, Jeff’s mother, did as well. She insisted Jeff was alive, and refused to give up hope.”
“And you?”
“I held on to the belief as well because the alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Soon there was nowhere else for us to look, no one for us to see. We didn’t have anywhere else to turn, and had no choice but to return to the States. Gloria lives on the East Coast and after I returned to Seattle, she continued to pressure the powers that be.”
“Did she learn anything?”
“Nothing . . . but I did.” Those early months had been a living nightmare to Jody. “As much as I believed in Jeff’s love for me and Timmy, I couldn’t help wondering if this disappearance was planned. I know it sounds ridiculous now, but you have to understand my mental state at the time. I . . . had him investigated. If there was another woman in his life, I needed to know about her. I had to find out if this was some kind of cruel hoax.”
“What did you learn?”
Jody focused her gaze on the caffé latte. “Very little. The only remote possibility came from a background check and I discovered Jeff had been approached by a government agency, the CIA, I believe—one of those—while he was in college. He turned down the offer. My father had a good friend in government who did some discreet checking and they reported back that what I’d found out was true. Jeff had been recruited, but declined, and that was the end of it.”
“How’d you manage to live?”
“It wasn’t easy because I wasn’t working at the time. Within a few months my finances were a nightmare. My parents helped me out as much as they could, but I didn’t want to live off their generosity. I couldn’t. Jeff had disappeared, but because there wasn’t a body I couldn’t collect his insurance or any of the other benefits that would normally be available to a widow. Somehow I managed to hold on for nine months, with the help of my family and a few good friends. Eventually I was forced into filing for a divorce in order to sell some property. That gave me income to return to school and live on until I could get a job.”
“They never found a body?”
Jody looked out the window, the night was inky and thick, and her heart felt more so. “Yes, eventually they did, but it took nearly three years.”
“My God, what happened?”
A tingling sensation roved up and down her spine even now, after all this time. “I . . . received word from the German police that they’d found a body caught in the cable beneath a bridge. They believed it was Jeff. They needed me to provide dental X rays and claim the body.”