“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
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.
He shuffled through his mental list. Diaper changed. Warm bottle. Patting her back to help her remove any lingering bubbles in her tummy. Swaddled. Multiple attempts at a pacifier, although he’d qualified that as a fail, since he couldn’t even get the baby girl to keep it in her mouth.
Nothing seemed to work. If anything, the more a
ttention he paid to Noelle, the harder she cried, and now she was making little hic sounds when she breathed. He was afraid she was hyperventilating.
Could babies hyperventilate? It frightened him that he didn’t even know the answer to that question.
What if she passed out? What if something was seriously the matter with her? Had Dr. Delia missed something critical when she’d examined the baby?
Noelle scrunched up her tiny face and sneezed. Shawn reached for his cell phone, then stopped and shook his head, laughing at how easily flustered he was getting.
Who was he going to call? Emergency services? And say what?
Hello, can you help me? My baby just sneezed!
“I’m overreacting, aren’t I, little darlin’?” he murmured to Noelle. Her face relaxed, and she quieted, appearing to respond to the sound of his voice. Well, that was good, right? He kept talking. “Let me tell you, sweetheart, I have a brand-new appreciation for the parents of infants. Is this what Eli and Mary are going through every night right now? Huh? You think?”
Noelle sneezed again.
“Uh-oh. I hope you’re not getting sick. Dr. Delia was pretty thorough when she was examining you, and she pronounced you good to go, at least for the time being. But I suppose there’s always the possibility that she missed something. Are you coming down with a cold, little darlin’? Or am I just being a worrywart?”
He chuckled softly when he realized Noelle had stopped crying. When he gazed down at her, he realized she was looking at him expectantly, sucking contentedly on her tiny fist.
“So that was all you needed? A little man-to-baby conversation? Well, I don’t mind talking to you, sweetheart, but wouldn’t it be great if we could table this discussion for now and pick it up in the morning?” From the expectant look on her face, it seemed the answer to that question was no.
Well, if all he had to do was talk, he supposed he could handle that. He was a preacher, after all. Words were his livelihood.
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