A Family for Christmas. Kate Welsh

middle of a conversation. I can see you’d be no better at parenting those children than Michael and his wife were. That is precisely why I want a hand in raising our grandchildren.”

      Trent had had enough. He pitched his voice low so he’d be sure Rachel couldn’t hear. “That child saw her mother’s dead body pulled from that wreckage. This morning Maggie had to tell her Mike had died as well. I’d think that’s all the excuse she needs to be a little rude. For crying out loud, Mother, she’s six-and-a-half years old!” He paused, wondering if anything he’d said had cracked their icy control. It hadn’t. His parents just stared at him blankly. “Your son is dead,” he tried again. “Can’t you even show emotion over that? Don’t you care?”

      Royce narrowed his eyes. “Of course we care but Michael had all but cut us out of. his life since his marriage. I don’t know why it surprised us. He never lived up to his potential. He became an auto mechanic, for pity’s sake. We barely saw him these past years. What did you expect us to feel?”

      Trent felt ready to explode, but Maggie’s hand moved over his back—soothing, comforting. “Nothing. I don’t expect you to feel anything. You never have. Why should this be any different? I think you should leave. You don’t belong here,” he told them.

      “Trenton—” his mother began.

      “Now, Mother.” Trent’s voice was steely. “Or I’m going to make a scene the likes of which will visit you in your nightmares for years.”

      “We came to see the children,” Royce demanded.

      “The children are awfully fragile right now, Royce,” Maggie warned.

      “Maggie’s right,” Trent added. “They are fragile. Too fragile to deal with virtual strangers. Please, just go back home. No good will come from your being here. Someone will let you know what the funeral arrangements are.”

      “Since I’m certain they’ll have something to do with those fanatics who meet in that converted barn, we’ll just see you in court,” his father said. Nearly identical frowns in place, they turned as one and left.

      Ed approached from the other end of the large room. “Not a pretty sight,” he murmured. “Did that go as badly as it looked?”

      Trent sighed. “They won’t be at the funeral, and they’ll see us in court.”

       Chapter Three

      During the ten years of her marriage, Maggie had been in the company of her in-laws only a handful of times. She knew them to be stiff, formal people. She’d felt uncomfortable with them even though they hadn’t objected to her marriage to Trent. They’d hosted the usual engagement party and rehearsal dinner, and Albertine had attended her bridal shower. But when Michael had fallen head over heels for her maid of honor, Maggie had seen their true colors—the people behind the polite facades they presented to the world. It had been an eye-opener, not a very pretty sight.

      Sarah was the daughter of Maggie’s mother’s livein maid. She and Sarah had grown up together. When Maggie had been headed for an exclusive private high school, her father had pulled some strings, donated some money to the school and arranged for Sarah to attend on a scholarship. There wasn’t a day of Maggie’s life when Sarah hadn’t been there—’til now— and back then, they’d been inseparable.

      At first, any friend of Maggie’s was good enough for Michael, as far as her in-laws had been concerned. But then Sarah had made the grave error of explaining their lifelong friendship. The Osbornes’ opinion had changed in the blink of an eye on learning that Sarah was the child of a maid.

      But Michael had loved Sarah to distraction. He’d agreed to begin attending services with her on Sundays. The change in him had been dramatic, but Maggie hadn’t understood the source of that change back then. She’d thought her friend Sarah was solely responsible. But she’d been wrong. Jesus, working in the life of a misunderstood, angry young man, had sparked the changes.

      But whatever the source, Trent had been thrilled when wild, unpredictable Michael had stopped getting into scrapes with the local police that Trent or their parents had to pay his way out of. After a few weeks, Michael had gone to Trent and told him that he wanted to go to school to learn to be an auto mechanic. Trent finally seeing real excitement in his brother’s eyes about learning something, had loaned him the money without a thought. And for the first time in his life Michael had flourished.

      A year later, Michael and Sarah had been married at Maggie’s parents’ home, under the same rose trellis where Maggie and Trent had stood a year earlier. Michael had invited his parents even though they didn’t approve of Sarah’s background. And they had attended. But it had been painfully obvious that they’d only gone because they hadn’t wanted their friends to know that Michael’s choice of a bride was causing a rift in the family. But there was a rift. And only now, hearing her in-laws denigrate Michael even in death, did Maggie realize how deep it had gone.

      “I’m sorry, Trent,” Ed said with a grimace. “This is one of those times I wish I’d been wrong, but I had a feeling they’d pull something like this.”

      Trent grimaced and shook his head. “No. It’s better this way. Now that the other shoe has dropped, we know for sure where it is.”

      Maggie dropped her arm from Trent’s waist. “I’m stunned. They’ve always been hard people, and you and Michael haven’t been close to them since before he and Sarah married. But to belittle Michael that way, and in front of one of his children, is unbelievable.”

      “And unforgivable. The worst part of the whole thing is that they don’t care about the kids. It’s the appearance that they do that matters to them. And they probably just don’t want me raising them.” Trent looked uncomfortable, as if he’d revealed something accidentally.

      “It’s probably more that they don’t want me involved,” Maggie said. “She’s always held my acceptance of Sarah as an equal against me. And did you hear that crack about our church? The one about me being as bad as Sarah at raising them was a little strange, though. How would she know what kind of mother Sarah was? This whole thing is just so unbelievable. If Albertine was always scandalized by the number of children they had, why would she want to raise them? That letter she wrote to Sarah when she heard Grace was on the way was nothing short of cruel. ‘Only animals have more than two children’? When Sarah called and read it to me, she was in tears and Michael was furious.”

      Trent frowned but remained silent Trent had been even angrier with his parents than Michael had. Maggie had wondered why then, and wondered again now, noticing his eyes glitter with suppressed fury.

      “I’ll keep an eye out for it in case they saved it,” Maggie promised, hoping to change the subject.

      Ed’s smile was almost mischievous. “They did, and now I have it. Michael was smarter than most people gave him credit for. He was determined that if something happened to him, Sarah would have plenty of ammunition in case his parents went after custody. And he was sure they would. They blamed Sarah for every step Michael took in a direction that they didn’t approve of.”

      “Speaking of the children,” Maggie said. “I think we should go check on them. I haven’t seen Grace or Daniel yet today, and they were asleep when I saw them yesterday. I wonder if the hospital would let Rachel in to see them. I think it would do all of them a world of good to be together. Especially Mickey.”

      Trent and Ed needed to sign papers for the release and transportation of Mike’s and Sarah’s bodies back to Pennsylvania, so Maggie took Rachel along with her to see the others. The nurses in pediatrics, who had shuffled patients to put Mickey’s siblings in the room next to him, saw no problem with one more child visiting.

      Rachel went immediately to Daniel, who was alone in a crib on the left near the windows. Maggie walked to the other crib where Grace slept on her side,