"Gert understood. She knew you a lot better than you realize. I might have been good for her, but it was a two-way street. She was good to me. I loved that sassy old girl."

I'd finished most of the eggnog when the doorbell rang. Figuring it was a salesman or a religious group playing on the season for a donation, I dragged myself up out of the chair and hitched up sweatpants that were hanging off my hips. That alone was a Christmas present. Just that morning I'd looked in the mirror and found the hip bones I hadn't seen in at least fifteen years.

A cold north wind whipped around the edge of the house and through the doorway when I opened it. Crystal stood there like a stone statue.

I stared at her as if she was an apparition.

"Momma?" she whispered.

Her pretty blond hair, usually cut and highlighted to perfection, hung in limp strands. Swollen, red eyes and a fresh blue bruise across one cheekbone were the only things that gave color to her face. She wore sweatpants cut off raggedly right below her knees and old rubber flip-flops. She hugged herself in an attempt to keep warm.

Her voice quavered. "May I come in?"

I grabbed her arm, pulled her inside, and slammed the door. "I'm so sorry. You surprised me. Get in here out of the cold. You want some hot chocolate or coffee? Here, let me get you a quilt to wrap up in. You're trembling like a leaf. Have you got a fever? Where is your coat?"

"In the car with everything else I own, which is precious little."

I yelled toward the living room. "Billy Lee, it's Crystal!"

He peeked around the edge of the door.

I turned back to Crystal. "We're putting up the tree. Let me make you something hot to drink, and then you can help us, if you're staying that long."

She hung her head, and my heart went out to her. Who on earth had broken my spirited child down like this? If I found the sorry sucker, he was taking a midnight swim in Lake Texoma with a pair of concrete boots and a .38 slug between his eyes.

"Hot chocolate, please," she mumbled.

I went to the kitchen, and they both followed me. "Chocolate will warm you up. You're frozen"

She sat down at the table. "I need to talk to you."

Billy Lee pulled out a chair and sat down.

She pushed her chair back so fast, it hit the floor. I expected the fight to begin. She'd yell enough to wilt the Christmas tree. But she took two steps toward me, threw her arms around my neck, and broke into sobs so hard, she could scarcely breathe.

I hugged her tightly and patted her back, soothing her the way I did back when she was a little girl and someone had hurt her feelings. "Shh. Shh. Stop that right now, and tell me what's happened."

"I don't have anyplace to go, and I've been so mean to you, and he left, and I quit school without telling you. Daddy said I was a disgrace and I couldn't live there because he won't be disgraced again, and I'm afraid, Momma. Jonah said he wasn't ready to be a father, so he went home to Pennsylvania, and he's divorcing me. I've lost my job at McDonald's, and I don't know what to do," she said between sobs and wiping her nose and eyes with the Kleenex Billy Lee handed her.

I maneuvered her across the room and back to the kitchen table. "Sit down, and start-from- the beginning." "

She melted into the chair Billy Lee had set upright, laid her forearms on the table, and kept crying. "I'm such a fool."

Billy Lee reached across the table and touched her arm. I expected her to go up in flames and pull away from him, maybe even give him a royal piece of her mind, but she looked into his understanding eyes, stood up, and threw her arms around his neck and cried on his shoulder.

I hurriedly made microwavable hot chocolate and set it before her. She finally let go of Billy Lee and sat down but kept her hand on his right there on the table. When I sat down, she ignored the hot chocolate and grabbed my hand with her other one. "I've made a mess of my life. I'm being punished for treating you the way I did."

.,start at the beginning," Billy Lee said softly.

"Jonah and I had this big fight when I got pregnant. It was an accident, but he wouldn't believe me, and he's gone back to Pennsylvania, and he took everything we had with him." She looked so miserable that it broke my heart all over again.

"Well, that's probably a good thing. It would be wise for him to stay in his part of the world if he wants to live to see his next birthday," I said with absolute conviction.

"Don't worry. He won't ever be back," she blurted out.

"Keep going," Billy Lee said.

She sipped the hot chocolate, and a little color came back into her ashen face.

"When I told him I was pregnant, he said I had to get rid of it, because he wasn't being saddled with a kid."

Billy Lee patted her hand and waited patiently.

I still had visions of feeding a fifty-pound catfish the remnants of a pretty boy's body.

She continued in a broken voice. "The rent is due in five days. I got laid off from my job yesterday. The food is gone. I've got ten dollars and a tank of gas. I went to Daddy and told him about the baby, and he told me to get out."

Billy Lee's expression was pure disgust. "You did the right thing, coming here, Crystal. Your momma has missed you"

I patted her hand with my free one. "We'll get through this. I've got a lovely spare room upstairs you can stay in. Then, when the semester starts again, we'll go find you another apartment"

"I'm not going back to school. I hate it. I was on probation all last semester. My grades were horrible," she said.

That put a whole new light on the issue. I was barely getting my own life together. I had a mother with Alzheimer's, a fresh divorce, and it wasn't an easy job keeping my emotions in check with Billy Lee. But this was my child, and I loved her so much that her pain was tearing my heart out.

"We'll talk about that later. Right now, we'll help you bring in your clothes."

"There's only one suitcase. We've pawned everything I had to keep going. Daddy cut off my credit cards when I got married. I got a job at McDonald's, but Jonah said he wasn't working fast food."

That fellow wasn't going to be tossed into the lake. I'd think of something much more painful and longer lasting than a simple bullet or drowning.

"I'll go get your suitcase, then, and you finish that hot chocolate," Billy Lee said.

"You had any supper? Billy Lee and I made vegetable soup today, and it's still on the back of the stove," I said as I hugged her tightly.

"I am hungry," she admitted.

The tone of her voice sent chills up my spine. My child was scared, pregnant, and hungry, and her father had turned her out. Maybe he'd join this Jonah-whoever in a shallow grave.

"Momma, I am so sorry. I didn't mean to butt in on you and Billy Lee. You don't need me messing things up for you," she whispered when Billy Lee was out the door.

"What are you talking about? You're not messing anything up"

"But I thought he lived with you"

"Billy Lee doesn't live here."

"That's what Daddy said. He said you traded him in for the village idiot." She blushed.

"Billy Lee is my best friend and the most caring, kind man in the world, but he goes home at night, Crystal."