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mouth without saying something that rubbed her the wrong way. Of course, if he stopped talking and just stood around looking good, she might get used to him.
    * * *
    Eli found his friend Drew Stacey’s truck in the driveway as he pulled up to the small winterized cottage he was renting on Paradox Lake. He parked next to the truck and got out.
    “Hey, I thought you’d stood me up,” Drew said.
    Eli’s mind went blank for a moment. The game. He’d invited Drew over to watch the game. He was becoming as absentminded as his mother. Between repairing his mother’s heating system and the distraction of running into Jamie at the hardware store, he’d forgotten about Drew. Maybe he should cut Mom some slack. Civilian life was proving less predictable than his former life.
    “Time got away from me.”
    “Now, that’s a first,” Drew said.
    Eli rubbed the back of his neck. “I had to go into Ticonderoga and get a release valve for Mom’s heating system. She wanted to come along to pick up some groceries.”
    “Let me guess. She ran into someone she knew.”
    Drew obviously knew his mother. “Several someones.” Eli opened the door and the men went in the house. “Including Jamie Glasser.” Eli winced. He had no idea why he’d added that.
    “Better watch out,” Drew said, making himself comfortable on Eli’s couch.
    Eli picked up the remote and flicked the TV on. The screen flashed a zero-zero score and went to a commercial break. “How’s that?”
    “After Jamie’s husband was killed, your mother helped her out. All of us at church did. But your mother more than many. She said she could relate to Jamie’s situation having been a young widow herself. And having a son in the military.”
    “That sounds like Mom. She has a big heart.”
    “That she does. And it was broken when Jamie and the kids stopped coming to church and she couldn’t convince her to return.”
    “Jamie was a member of Community Church?”
    “Yeah, she was one of the charter members of our Singles Plus group, sang in the choir and often helped with the women’s group fund-raisers.”
    “And she just stopped coming?”
    “Pretty much.”
    Eli would have thought that, if her faith had been as strong as her church activities seemed to indicate, she would have drawn on that faith. That’s what he’d always done.
    “Jamie’s bitter. John was supposed to have come home in less than a month. Pastor Joel, your mother—no one’s been able to break through that bitterness.”
    “Tough situation.” One he’d seen too often. And one he didn’t need to get involved in. “I’m going to get a drink. Do you want anything?” Eli needed to distance himself from Drew’s words and the pain they recalled.
    “I’ll take a cola if you have one.”
    “Sure thing.”
    Eli walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He’d been stunned when he’d learned that his ex-fiancee had been killed. And he’d lost other friends. So he knew a little of what Jamie had gone through. He knew the bitterness, too. The questions about how a loving God could allow the atrocities of war. But he’d found solace in prayer. Turned to, not away from Him.
    He grabbed two sodas and closed the refrigerator with his elbow. Who was he to judge Jamie’s actions? Still he pitied her for not taking the healing love offered her. And he pitied her kids more for Jamie’s denying them that healing power by taking them away from church.
    “What did I miss?” he asked as he returned to the living room and tossed Drew his cola.
    “Incomplete pass.” Drew waited a second and popped the tab on the can.
    Eli settled in the worn recliner. Thoughts of Jamie and his mother clouded his concentration on the game. Army called for a timeout and the station went to another commercial.
    “You know you never told me what I needed to watch out for,” Eli mused.
    “Huh?”
    “When I’d said we’d run into Jamie, you said I’d better watch out.”
    “Oh, that. Your