A Season of Angels (Angels Everywhere #1)(89)

“You’re my real-life dad?” Timmy asked, staring up at Jeff with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“Yes, son, I’m your father.” Although Jeff answered Timmy, his gaze was leveled on Jody, his look expectant and filled with nervous anticipation.

Her pulse had yet to right itself, and the dizziness from the frantic beat of her heart continued. He was terribly thin, she noticed. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes seemed to sink back into his head. This was a man she didn’t know and barely recognized as the one she’d loved.

Jeff seemed greedy for the sight of Timmy and her, staring at the two of them as if he couldn’t quite believe this moment was real.

Timmy opened the screen door and Jeff walked inside the house, pausing in front of Jody.

Her eyes begged him to convince her this was happening and that he was as real as he seemed. She’d been under a good deal of stress and she feared that this was all a figment of her imagination. Some dream she’d wake from with a start. When Jeff had first disappeared she’d repeatedly dreamed of a moment like this when they’d be reunited. Then she’d wake with a heavy heart and the loneliness would close in and swallow her.

Her hand trembled as she worked up the necessary courage to touch him. She laid her fingers against his forearm. He felt solid and real. Warm and alive.

Alive. Jeff was alive.

“Where were you?” she asked in a sobbing breath, pressing her hands to her throat. “Why did you leave us? Why?” The questions crowded on top of each other, damming her mind and her tongue. The only one to escape was the least important.

“Do you mind if I sit down?” he asked, and Jody realized how terribly shaky he was. “I’m a bit weak yet,” Jeff explained.

It was all Jody could do to nod.

Timmy took Jeff by the hand and led him to the sofa. “You don’t look like my dad,” he commented, carefully studying his father. “You’re too old.”

“I feel like I’m about a hundred,” Jeff said, examining his son. He cupped Timmy’s face and his eyes filled with tears. “Not a day passed that I didn’t think about and pray for you. I carried the picture of you with me through the months. I swear it was what kept me alive. I could endure anything as long as I remembered my wife and my son.”

“Where were you?” Timmy asked, sinking onto the cushion next to his father.

Trembling almost uncontrollably, Jody sat in the chair across from them both, her legs too numb to continue to support her.

“I was in a Russian prison,” Jeff explained. “It’s a miracle I was released.”

“You were in Russia?” Jody repeated in a breathless whisper.

“I’d gone to Germany on business and on a fluke decided to visit East Berlin. I was curious about the other side of the wall, but doubted that I’d be able to make it through the border with an American passport. It was surprisingly easy to obtain fake identification.”

“You went through all that trouble because you were curious about East Berlin?” Jody found the entire story unbelievable and a fermenting kind of anger took hold of her. He’d risked everything for some crazy need to look at life on the other side of the wall?

“I was young and stupid, so incredibly stupid,” Jeff said, the regret weighing down his voice. “My German was passable, and all I intended to do was wander into a few shops and get a look around. I was heading back to the border when I stumbled upon two soldiers beating a teenager. They would have killed him. I couldn’t stand by and do nothing and so I intervened. That proved to be a costly mistake.”

Jody’s anger dissipated. He’d paid a terrible price for his curiosity, and consequently so had she and Timmy.

“I was taken in for questioning and soon arrested,” Jeff continued.

“Why didn’t you contact the embassy?” Jody demanded. He could have saved them both this agony.

“I wasn’t allowed. And when they discovered I was an American with a false passport my fate was sealed. I was a spy, and tried as one. I wasn’t able to talk to an attorney, and the trial, such as it was, lasted all of two minutes. Before I fully understood what was happening to me, I was shipped off to a prison camp in Russia.”

Jody covered her mouth with both hands.

“I’ve been held there ever since.”

“But how did you escape?”

“I didn’t,” Jeff explained. “I was freed. They dropped me off on a German street as if nothing had happened. The last two weeks I’ve been hospitalized and debriefed. From what I’ve been able to grasp this all has something to do with the breakup of the Soviet Union. There was a British man with an experience similar to mine who was released about the same time.”

“Why wasn’t I contacted right away?” Jody demanded.

“In the beginning I was too ill. Apparently the authorities communicated with my mother first. I learned that you’d divorced me.”

“I had to do that for financial reasons,” Jody told him. “It wasn’t what I wanted.”

A weak smile lit up his face.

“If you were well enough to travel, surely you could have made a phone call?” Jody wasn’t satisfied, not yet.

“All I knew was that the woman I’d loved had divorced me. I talked to my mother only once and she insisted I get home right away because you were about to marry another man.”