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Heather bit the inside of her lip until she tasted copper. She could easily imagine such a situation—any number of them, actually.
“I agree,” Shawn said in a low whisper so as not to startle the baby. “I was thinking the same thing. It’s awful even to consider.”
“It’s the infant we need to worry about right now,” Heather stated, her tone threaded with pain. “That’s what the mother would have wanted.” She believed the baby’s mother had taken this drastic step for the sake of her child, and her heart flooded with compassion for both. She could do no less for the unknown woman than to make sure her baby was safe and well cared for.
Shawn’s eyes slid to her, then shifted back to the infant. His gaze softened as he stared down at the tiny bundle. “Yes, of course.”
Heather rummaged through the box of supplies and produced a bottle of formula she’d mixed together before leaving the house. While she didn’t have any infants in her care currently, she’d never managed to get off the formula-makers’ sample lists, and she was now glad of it, for the expiration date had not yet passed. “Getting her changed and fed is a good first step, but it’s not going to solve the real problem.”
Shawn brushed his palm over his jaw, which was taut with strain. “Right. We need to call in the appropriate authorities and decide what needs to happen next. I’ll phone the police station first, and then we’d probably better get Delia Bowden on the line to make sure the poor little thing doesn’t have any pressing medical problems.”
He scoffed and shook his head. “What a mess. I really hate having to disturb everyone in the middle of the night, especially on Christmas Eve.”
“It can’t be helped, dear,” Jo reminded him. “I don’t think it’s anything we can wait on. The police will probably want to start looking for the baby’s mother sooner rather than later. She hasn’t had that long to have gotten out of town. We don’t know anything about her circumstances—she might be injured. And while she looks fine to me, we can’t assume sweet Baby Girl here is healthy until Dr. Delia has had the opportunity to look her over.”
Shawn’s gaze narrowed and his lips tightened into a straight line. “If you ladies will stay with the baby, I’ll make the calls.”
He stepped out of the sanctuary, and Jo slid into the pew next to Heather, holding her arms out for the baby. Heather gently transferred the fragile bundle into the older woman’s arms.
“What’s your take on all this?” Jo murmured.
Heather shivered, masking it as a shrug. “I can’t begin to guess. I feel in my gut that something truly terrible must have happened. It’s got to be just horrible for the mother, whoever she is. Wherever she is.”
“When Shawn returns we should all say a prayer for her,” Jo stated with a firm nod that sent her red curls bouncing.
“Mmm.” Heather acknowledged Jo’s suggestion without agreeing to it. Jo Spencer was a woman of faith, and they were in a church, after all, so Heather supposed it only made sense that prayer would be part of the equation. It wasn’t that she had anything against prayer, per se, but it seemed to her like an exercise in futility. Her prayers—not that she’d said many of them lately—seemed as if they bounced off the ceiling and came right back at her. They were certainly never answered.
“I know the police will want to look for her, but I have a feeling she’s not of a mind to be found. Chances are she’s out of Serendipity by now, though she couldn’t have gotten far. Or possibly she’s in hiding.”
Shawn approached, sliding his cell phone into the chest pocket of his shirt. Heather didn’t know how long he’d been listening, but he’d clearly caught Jo’s last statement, at the very least. “Can either of you hazard a guess as to who the mother might be? I’m fairly certain it’s no one here at the parish.”
Heather shook her head. She’d only been back in Serendipity for a few months, and the truth was, she hadn’t been overly social during that time. She preferred to spend all her time taking care of her three foster children, attending the older boy’s sports games, mentoring her little girl’s second-grade class in reading and volunteering for the preschool library day with little Henry. She’d crossed paths with some old friends at the grocery store or the gas station, but she made sure the chats were brief, and any plans to “get together and catch up” were kept deliberately vague. Frankly, she didn’t have much time or use for adult company.
She glanced at Jo for the answer to Shawn’s question, expecting that she would know something, but to her surprise, the older woman was likewise shaking her head.
“It’s the strangest thing,” Jo conceded. “I’m not aware of any women in the area who are bursting at the seams to be delivering a precious little bundle of joy—inside or outside the parish.”
“So probably not a local, then.” Shawn crouched before Jo and wiggled his fingers in front of the baby. The infant grasped his forefinger and pulled it toward her mouth. “She’s a strong little thing. A real fighter.”
“From the looks of things, she’s going to have to be,” Jo responded soberly. Both Shawn and Heather agreed with a nod.
Heather’s heart physically ached for the baby girl. So sweet. So helpless. The world was harsh even to the tiniest and most innocent of God’s creatures.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.
“So what’s next?” Heather asked, clasping her hands in her lap. She wanted to scream and rail at the air with her fists, but she knew that wouldn’t serve any purpose. It wouldn’t make her feel better in the long run, and it certainly wouldn’t help the baby.
“I just got off the phone with Captain James. He’s sending Slade and Brody over to meet with us and give us their take on the situation. They should be here any minute now. Oh, and Delia is on her way, as well. She’ll be able to give us a better idea if Baby Girl here needs special medical attention.”
They didn’t have long to wait—one of the blessings of living in a small town. Less than five minutes later, police officers Brody Beckett and Slade McKenna arrived in rumpled uniforms and with sleep-tousled hair. Though they were similar in build, both with the muscular stature of weekend bull riders, Brody was as blond as Slade was dark. Yet their half-asleep expressions matched perfectly. The police station in Serendipity on Christmas Eve was minimally staffed, and Heather guessed the two men were on-call rather than on duty and had been wakened to take this request.
Delia arrived immediately on their heels and went right to work on the baby, fussing over the infant while she checked her with her stethoscope, took her temperature, got her weight with the infant scale she’d brought and looked at her eyes and ears.
“My guess is that she’s about three days old,” Delia said, looping her stethoscope around her neck. “Eighteen inches and six and a half pounds. Someone’s taken adequate care of her and she’s not malnourished, although we’ll need to keep a close eye on her weight to make sure she doesn’t lose any more.”
“Did the mother leave anything else behind?” Slade asked, directing his question to Shawn. “A note, maybe? Something that might clue us in as to why she left her baby in a church?”
Shawn frowned. “I don’t think so, other than that tattered Cowboys blanket I found her wrapped in.” He gestured toward the altar. “She was in the manger, all alone. It completely freaked me out. I’m sorry. It didn’t even occur to me to look around. All I could think about was what I was going to do with the baby.”
“That’s understandable, and probably just as well,” Brody assured him as he and Slade moved toward the crèche. “It may be better that the area was untouched until we got here to investigate.”
“Are you considering this to be a crime scene?” Heather asked, shock skittering through her. How could they even think such a thing? Anger welled in her chest. The mother of this baby, whoever she was, needed someone’s compassion and assistance, not condemnation and a jail sentence.
Slade glanced her direction. “No. Not yet, anyway, though it’s always a possibility. Abandoning a child is a felony in the state of Texas. But we’re reserving judgment until we can piece together what really happened here.”
“What about safe-haven laws?” Jo asked. “Isn’t there anything in the law to protect the mother if it turns out that she can’t keep her child?”
“Technically, Serendipity doesn’t have an official drop site for a safe haven,” Brody explained, his jaw tightening. “We’re just too small. We don’t have a hospital. An argument could be made that the fire station might be considered an alternative, but even that’s kind of iffy.”
“Add to that the fact that the mother might not have known what the laws were, or she may not have been in a reasonable state of mind to be able to sort all that out,” Heather pointed out, feeling a need to champion the unknown woman. Delia had been holding the infant, but now Heather reached for her, coveting the comforting feeling of the baby in her arms. “She could have been thinking only of the baby’s safety. We don’t know what circumstances she’s facing. Maybe she’s poor and can’t feed the little darling. Maybe she was being chased by someone. Or she could be in an abusive relationship.”
Heather’s throat tightened around the words and her stomach lurched at the thought. She struggled for a breath as drops of cold sweat broke out on her forehead.
“Any of that could be true,” Slade agreed. “Then again, she could be a hopped-up crackhead who doesn’t even care that she’s dumped her baby into a stranger’s hands.”
“At a church,” Shawn reminded him gravely. “The mother left her child at a church. Surely that tells us something—it suggests the woman was cognizant of her baby’s needs, that she wanted the best for her. She could have abandoned the baby anywhere. I’ve heard horrible stories of babies left in Dumpsters or parking lots. That’s not what happened in this case. The fact that the mother chose to leave the child here—on Christmas Eve, no less—must mean that she was appealing to our Christian duty to step in and help. Right?”
Heather was surprised to receive help from that quarter. Pastor Shawn was sticking up for the absent mother?
“We shouldn’t speculate until we’ve gathered the facts,” Slade conceded. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
“I think I’ve found something.” All eyes turned to Brody, who was crouched next to the manger, sifting through the straw. He withdrew his gloved hand to present a small bundle tied with a dirty red strip of cloth, a seam that looked as if it had been ripped from the bottom of a cotton shirt.
“What is it?” Jo asked as they gathered around.
Brody shifted from a crouch to his knees and set the small bundle on the floor in front of him. Gingerly, he worked the knot in the cloth until it loosened.
“There’s a bit of cash here,” Slade said, sifting the contents. “And a crumpled piece of paper. Maybe it’s a note?” He dropped it into an evidence bag.
“Can you use fingerprints from the letter to identify the woman?” Shawn asked, moving closer to Slade.
“It’s a possibility, but not a great one. If the mom has a criminal record—maybe.”
The men appeared to be more interested in the money as Brody rifled through the bills. Heather’s attention was on the scrap of paper within the clear plastic evidence bag Jo plucked away from Slade. Heather, Delia and Jo all hovered over the mysterious missive.
“What does it say?” Heather asked, scooting closer to Jo as the older woman carefully handled the evidence bag. Heather’s breath caught and held when she laid eyes on the delicate handwriting within the letter. The loops and curls were carefully formed and ornamented, so much so that Heather had the distinct, immediate impression of youth.
“I think we may be dealing with a teen mom,” she speculated aloud.
Jo met her gaze, her eyes warm with a mixture of compassion and sorrow. “Unfortunately, I think you might be right, dear. Though for the life of me I still can’t place any woman in Serendipity who looked to be in the family way, most especially a young lady. Teenage girls these days keep themselves so blooming skinny. I feel sure I would have noticed if one of them had been expecting.”
Heather laid a reassuring hand on Jo’s arm. From the tone of the older woman’s voice, Heather could tell Jo was taking a good deal of the responsibility for the abandoned baby upon herself. The townspeople often joked that Jo was the first to know everybody’s business. In this case, she was clearly calling herself to task for not knowing, likely believing that she could have helped the mother if she’d been attentive enough to spot the situation in time. Heather saw no reason for Jo to take any of the blame.
“It may very well be that you don’t know her at all. It seems to me that, given the circumstances, it’s far more likely that the mother wasn’t a local.”
“Serendipity is hardly the kind of place one just passes through, especially a teenage girl on her own. And on Christmas Eve, no less. This town is miles away from anywhere significant.”
“If she is a stranger, somebody here is bound to have seen her. Or maybe there’s a clue in the note.”
Jo nodded and held up the missive, adjusting the range to support the farsightedness that came with age. “Wish I had my reading glasses with me,” she mumbled, then cleared her throat and began reading aloud. “‘Please take care of my baby. She is not safe with me. Her father must never find out I had her. This money is all I have to give.’”
The note was not signed, but there was a hastily scribbled postscript at the bottom of the letter that caught Heather’s attention. “‘P.S. Her name is Noelle.’”
The men approached just in time to hear the baby’s name. Shawn smiled and reached out to brush the palm of his hand over the baby’s silky black hair. “It’s beautiful. A Christmas name for a Christmas baby.”
Heather stiffened. Shawn was close enough that she could smell his spicy aftershave, and though he didn’t actually touch her, she knew his palm fell just short of the small of her back as he leaned over to murmur nonsense syllables to Noelle.
“Any clues as to the mother’s identity or whereabouts in the note?” Brody asked, leaning forward to see for himself.
Jo shook her head and handed the evidence back to the officer. “Nothing definitive. Heather and I are guessing she’s a young mother and not local.”
“It sounds like she is running away from the baby’s father,” Heather added, then hesitated. That wasn’t quite right. She, of all people, knew how difficult it was to break free from an abuser’s hold on her life. “Or maybe she’s staying with him and she’s just trying to protect the baby from him,” she amended hastily.
“In any case, she’s made it perfectly clear that she’s not coming back for little Noelle, at least not at present. I think we can work off the assumption that she’s gone.” Slade frowned, his brow creasing.
Heather was glad that baby Noelle had so many people here concerned about her future, folks who Heather knew would help this child get a running start at life. That was more than many others had.
“There’s roughly thirty-five dollars here, mostly ones,” Slade informed them, holding out the crumpled wad of cash. “It’s not going to get the child very far.”
Heather sniffed as tears burned in her eyes. The sound evidently caught Shawn’s attention, for he laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and his compassionate blue eyes flashed to hers. Their gazes locked for a moment and he seemed to be probing her thoughts and measuring her feelings, all without speaking a word. She shuddered and physically jerked from him, refusing to be taken in by whatever kindness he was showing her.
This wasn’t the time to think of herself, or about Shawn. The baby needed all of their attention. “I believe that was all that the mother had to give.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_27fd1065-1a56-5bab-aa6c-9c6bdc79c2f0)
All that the mother had to give.
Shawn acknowledged that Heather was probably correct, and his chest squeezed with sympathy. He anxiously wondered where the mysterious young mother was and what she must have been feeling to leave her precious baby in the care of strangers.
He would make this right. He had to. Although he couldn’t fathom a reason for it, God must have His reasons for depositing the baby into Shawn’s care. He could do no less than follow this thing through to the end. It didn’t matter that he had no training in infant care or that he hardly even knew which end of a bottle was up. God willing, he’d figure it out.
He’d been having a running conversation with God ever since the moment he’d first seen the small movement in the hay, and he wasn’t about to stop praying now, not when he was facing the possibility of walking a tightrope with no safety net underneath him.
“So the question remains,” he said, knowing even before he asked that he was committing himself to something far beyond his scope of expertise. “What are we going to do with an abandoned baby on Christmas Eve?”
“I suppose one of us could drive her into San Antonio, if we can rustle up an infant car seat somewhere,” suggested Brody, although with the catch in his voice, he didn’t sound particularly warm to the idea.
“And do what with her once you get there?”
Shawn thought he detected an edge of panic in Heather’s voice and discreetly narrowed his eyes on her.
Yes, there it was. The flare in the black irises of her eyes, which were surrounded by a beautiful hazel color. She was afraid for this baby. So was Shawn. They all were. Every person in the room knew what taking Noelle to San Antonio in the middle of the night on a holiday would mean—dropping her into the inhospitable hands of an aloof system where she would have no one to be her personal advocate.
But Noelle had an advocate. Shawn.
“Do we have a legal obligation to make a permanent decision about her situation tonight?” Shawn piped up. Maybe with a little time they could figure out a better plan.
Slade raised his dark eyebrows. “Well, eventually we’ll have to report her to the proper authorities. Texas social services will want to know about her. But that does not necessarily have to happen tonight. If I’m not mistaken, we have somewhere around one business day to bring her to the attention of the state. The fact that it’s Christmas Eve works in our favor, if you’re wanting to hold off a bit. Is that what you want? And if you don’t mind my asking, why? What do you have in mind?”
“Yes, dear,” Jo urged, patting Shawn’s forearm. “Tell us—what’s your plan?”
“I’m not— That is, I don’t have a plan. I just can’t help but feel this baby was sent to us, to our town, to this church.”
To me. He wasn’t about to say those words out loud, but he was certainly thinking about them.
“I agree,” said Jo. “We know our good Lord. He doesn’t make mistakes. Somehow this baby is part of His good and perfect gift to us.”
“Amen to that,” Delia agreed, adjusting the stethoscope draped around her neck.
Shawn’s heart welled even as his stomach tightened. Jo had the extraordinary ability to see the good in everything and everyone, along with the uncanny ability to be able to remind others of God’s hand in their life circumstances.
But how could an abandoned baby be a gift from God?
Shawn acknowledged in his heart that the Lord could turn even the worst of circumstances into blessings, but he was struggling to wrap his mind around it. Whatever God had planned for them and for this child, it was beyond his ability to see.
“If we’re not going to take Noelle to San Antonio tonight,” Slade said, his even tone indicating the statement was a fact and not so much a question, “then what are we going to do with her?”
Shawn took a deep breath and stepped out onto the wire, knowing there was no net below him. If he looked down he knew he would take a mental nosedive, so instead he stared into the stormy blue-eyed gaze of baby Noelle.
“I’ll take care of her.”
* * *
Shawn taking baby Noelle overnight sounded like a reasonable enough plan, at least until four o’clock in the morning came and went and he hadn’t gotten a single moment of sleep. The small gathering of neighbors had loaded him up with suggestions on baby care, wished him well and then gone home to catch a few hours of shut-eye before Christmas morning dawned, where they would celebrate with their own families.
Shawn had mistakenly thought he had everything under control. How hard could it be, really?
Ha! The joke was on him. The Lord certainly had a sense of humor.
He groaned and smothered a yawn. Instead of enjoying a happy snooze with sugarplums dancing in his head as he would have done if he’d gone home alone, he was pacing the hallway with an unappeasably fussy baby.
Holding her close to his heart, he gently patted her back in a slow, steady rhythm. The little bundle of joy wasn’t the least bit happy, and he hadn’t a clue what to do for her. He wished he knew what was wrong so he could fix the problem.
After a bottle of formula and a diaper change, Noelle had initially drifted off to sleep. Shawn had thrown together a makeshift bassinet from a shallow plastic bin and some blankets and placed it by the side of his own bed. All was calm—and bright.
For about five seconds.
No sooner had he laid his head on the pillow than Noelle started to wail. And wow, but the kid had a pair of lungs.
