by Selena Kitt
Leah nodded, holding her arms out, the tears falling down her face in rivers. “Grace,” she whispered. “Grace.”
Gertrude looked back at the judge, hesitating.
He shook his head and Leah felt her stomach drop to her toes. “I have never, in all my years on this bench, seen anything like this fiasco today, and I have been sitting on this bench a long damned time.”
“Grace!” Leah croaked, sinking to her knees—they wouldn’t hold her anymore. “Oh God, please!”
The judge asked the woman holding the baby, “Who is the social worker who placed this foster child with you?”
“That woman… the one who just… left.” Gertrude swallowed, nodding toward the door. “Joan Goulden.”
The whole room seemed to sigh and Leah dropped her head, sobbing, and she felt Rob’s hands on her shoulders and then he was kneeling behind her, holding her around the waist, whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”
But it didn’t matter because the judge nodded to Gertrude, who took two, three, hesitant steps forward and dropped to her knees too, holding the still crying Grace out to her mother.
“Take her,” Gertrude urged.
And then Leah was holding her baby for the first time, all over again, her tears dropping on Grace’s sweet, fat cheeks just like they had on the day she was born.
“Grace,” Leah whispered, rocking her back and forth, the baby’s cries slowing and then stopping, her head cocked, eyes open, as if listening to her mother whisper her name over and over. “Grace, Grace, Grace…”
“She’s so beautiful,” Rob whispered, reaching around to let Grace grasp his index finger, and she did, hanging on tight. “Oh Leah, she looks just like you.”
They were surrounded, everyone crowding around, kneeling down to see the baby, Erica and Clay and Patty, even Donald knelt down to get a good look at the baby who had been the spoils of his victory in the courtroom today. Rebecca came over, and she was followed by a few more curious bystanders, and before she knew it, Leah and Grace were completely surrounded by a circle of adoring admirers.
Leah felt them all around her, kneeling down to exclaim over Grace like they had knelt around the manger of baby Jesus, marveling in wonder at the world begun again in one perfect expression of God as they all looked into the eyes of one brand new human being.
When Judge Solomon slammed his gavel down again, it was only after he had taken off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with his thumbs and blew his nose with a loud honk into his handkerchief. He sent everyone back to their seats, and he called Leah and Grace, and everyone who had come with her that day, to approach the bench.
“Young lady,” the judge began, shaking his gavel at Leah, but he was looking at Grace. “You have turned my courtroom upside down!”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Leah apologized, but she was grinning from ear to ear, still holding the bottle Gertrude had handed over for her hungry little piglet.
“Judge,” Donald interrupted. “I’d like to file a motion to have Joan Golden’s license revoked.”
Judge Solomon smiled. “That would be delightful. I look forward to it. So I think we’re done with this case for the day?”
“Well there’s still the matter of the assault charge against Mrs. Nolan, filed by Joan Goulden,” Donald reminded him.
The judge rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Considering the Goulden woman’s actions today in my courtroom, I wouldn’t doubt that Mrs. Nolan acted in self-defense. Is that your contention, Mrs. Nolan?”
Leah hesitated, glancing up at Donald, who gave her a nod. “Yes, Your Honor.”
“Good. Case dismissed.” The judge gave a satisfied nod, stamping something on the file on his desk and tossing it aside. “Now, I still don’t understand your relation to the Nolans, Mrs. Webber?”
“Well, I’m not.” Gertrude glanced over at her son. Clay was hanging back, holding Erica’s hand. “That’s my son, Clayton, right there. He’s dating Erica. She’s Robert Nolan’s daughter.”
Close enough, Leah thought. If they tried to explain it fully, they’d be there all day, and she was pretty sure the judge didn’t want that.
“And the Goulden woman placed the baby she was trying to hide with you?” The judge slapped his forehead with his palm. “Only stupid thieves get caught, right? That’s what they say!”
“Well to be fair,” Gertrude interjected. “Erica and Clay weren’t dating until recently. I don’t think the Goulden woman had any reason to suspect we would run into each other. And don’t they also say the best hiding place is in plain sight?”
“Do they?” The judge laughed. “I think it must have been divine intervention,” he countered, looking at Leah. “Sounds to me like someone up there likes you, Missus.”
“Well, we do go to the same church,” Clay interjected.
“Oh my God!” Gertrude exclaimed, covering her mouth with her hand, eyes widening in horror. “I almost forgot! That’s why I came here to find Clay! He told me he was going to Erica’s and I heard on the radio about the fire at the warehouse and I rushed right over!”
“Warehouse?” the judge asked, confused.
“What?” Rob interjected. “What warehouse? My warehouse?”
Gertrude nodded at Robert Nolan, covering her mouth with her hand again before exclaiming, “I ran right over and Solie told me you were all here. I’m sorry to be one to tell you, but the fire department is there right now. I heard on my way over here, they suspect arson—Mary Magdalene’s was on fire too, last I heard.”
“What about Solie?” Leah gasped. “Was she okay?”
“The church too?” Erica exclaimed, looking at Clay, both of them wide-eyed.
“Yes!” Gertrude shook her head in disbelief. “The church too! Connie, our nanny, took the bigger kids to the park, but I had Lily with me, and when I heard it on the radio, I rushed right over. I’m so glad Father Patrick called me last night and told me he didn’t need me to come in today.
Clay and Erica exchanged looks, but Leah didn’t understand what it was all about. She was more concerned about the Nolans’ housekeeper.
“What about Solie?” Leah asked again.
“Yes, yes, Solie was fine.” Gertie turned to Leah, looking down at Grace resting in her arms. “Shaken up, but she was okay. She said the fire was already out of control by the time she got there.”
“For pete’s sake!” Judge Solomon burst out. “You people wouldn’t have any luck if it wasn’t for bad luck, would you?”
Leah looked from Rob over to Erica and Clay holding hands, to her mother and back to Rob again in the stunned silence, and then down to the little baby in her arms, and she couldn’t help it—she burst out laughing.
The poor man had no idea!
“When it rains it pours, I guess!” the judge threw up his hands, and it just made Leah laugh even harder, and pretty soon, were all laughing, laughing and hugging and leaning on each other as they left Judge Solomon’s courtroom, headed back into God only knew what next.
But none of that mattered. Leah looked around at her crazy little family and down at the now sleeping baby filling her once empty arms and knew, in spite of everything, this was all that mattered—all that ever would matter. The wish she and Erica had made together on Christmas Eve, two sister angels in the snow, had come true.
Grace had returned to them all.
Epilogue
Erica poked her head into Father Michael’s office—his makeshift office, a supply closet they’d cleared out in the girls’ school that still smelled a little like paste, construction paper and bleach. He looked up from where he’d been sitting at his little desk, head down, eyes closed, hands folded, the epitome of a man in prayer. He smiled at the sight of her, motioning her in.
“Am I interrupting?” Erica hesitated. “There are a million people crowded in the chapel. It’s almost time.”
“They can’t get the new church built soon enough.”
“I’m just glad you�
��re going to be the one heading it.” She smiled, sitting in the chair across from him. “So any official word?”
“They’ve sent Father Patrick to a rehabilitation facility called Via Coeli in Jemez Springs, New Mexico.”
“They think he can be rehabilitated?” Erica scoffed. “He should be in jail!”
“The church felt it best to handle things internally. There was an investigation. My hands are tied.” Father Michael shrugged, turning his hands up. “Besides, what evidence did we have? Father Patrick had it all burned to the ground. There was nothing left.”
Nothing except the memories of all the Marys and the Magdalenes who had participated in Father Patrick’s sick, twisted rituals, Erica thought with a shiver, but she didn’t say anything. The man was, after all, Father Michael’s father.
“So I guess the Hitler scandal didn’t turn out to be that much of a big deal?” Father Michael asked.
“Nein. “
He laughed. “Who knew Robert Nolan would turn out to be a spy for the CIA—before there even was such a thing as the CIA?”
“I guess they figured it’s been long enough now since the war, they could declassify it,” Erica said. “Leah keeps teasing him, calling him Mein Führer.”
“Sounds like fun at your house.”
“Speaking of houses… what about Magdalene House?” Erica asked. “How’s progress there?”
“Good!” He smiled. “Thanks to the leadership of Patty and Gertie, things are moving along. It should re-open again in a month or so.”
“But this time, they’re going to provide job training and child care for mothers who want to keep their babies, right? No more giving away babies for big donations to the church?”
“Right,” he agreed. “And thanks to your referral, your friend, Yvonne, is going to head up the social work team to make it all happen.”
“I’m glad she’s helping.” Erica had heard the rumor floating around that Yvonne had married Erica’s ex-boyfriend, Bobby, which turned out not to be true—but she had finished social work school and was looking for a job. “Thankfully there are some good social workers in the world.”
Father Michael nodded. “Not all of them are like Joan Goulden. Some of them really do want to help.”
“Thank God they took that woman’s license!” Erica exclaimed and then caught herself. “Oops, sorry about that.”
“I am thanking God for that, actually.” Father Michael grinned. “So, have you heard from USC?”
She smiled. “They accepted me for the fall. They accepted Clay too.”
“I’m really glad, Erica.” He smiled and she searched that smile for the truth, returning his smile when she found it. She thought he really was glad for her. Relieved, even, that she’d found Clay and moved on. “Please don’t think for a moment that I regret… anything. Not a minute of it. You’ve given me so much, I can’t tell you. Because of you, I’ve rediscovered my calling in the church again. That’s priceless to me and I thank you for that.”
“I don’t regret it either,” she murmured. “And I won’t ever forget it.”
She couldn’t help but feel her love for Father Michael in that moment, although it had been transformed, somehow, into something less desperate and more tranquil in the months that had passed. She knew now that she had fallen in love with Father Michael because he was safe, a man she couldn’t have, a man she could idolize and worship from afar, a man she could use to torture herself with until her penance felt it had been paid—around the twelfth of never.
It wasn’t until she met Clay that she realized how much she went around trying to punish herself, not for being a bad girl, which she’d been working hard at when she met him, just like she worked hard at everything she did, but just for existing in the first place, like she had no right to be here in this world at all.
Clay made her realize that she did belong here. She belonged here with him.
Clay lived and breathed and loved her in the real world, where it was dirty and painful and hard and that was good too. It was better than good. It was perfect. Perfectly messed up. That’s what they had, a perfectly messed up relationship, and she didn’t think she had ever been happier in her life.
“So no more Mary Magdalenes?” Erica asked.
He shook his head. “No. Father Patrick was the center of that wheel. The hub. Without him, it all just crumbled.”
“What about the women who worked in the laundry?” she asked, thinking about Father’s Michael’s mother—and sister—poor abused Marianne, and the girl Leah had roomed with , the slow one, Jean.
“They’ve been relocated to new jobs or new homes,” Father Michael replied. “My mother is living in the nunnery here, and she’s quite happy.”
“I’m so glad.” Erica was also glad the fire had been contained to the church and hadn’t spread to the nunnery or rectory or the schools. Just one corner of the square block had been damaged.
“Father Michael?” A knock came on the door. “Have you seen—?”
Erica pulled the door open and there was Leah, holding Grace propped up on her shoulder, the baby looking around with big dark eyes, wearing the same christening gown her mother had worn.
“There you are.” Leah laughed. “We’re ready, Father Michael.”
Father Michael stood, smiling as he reached his arms out for the baby. She was just three months old, but she held her head up and laughed when she saw him, holding her arms out and squealing with delight.
“Okay, but don’t run off with her,” Leah warned.
“Leah’s going to have Grace surgically attached to her hip next month,” Erica said, rolling her eyes, but she winked at her sister, letting her know she was just teasing. She couldn’t blame Leah for being a little paranoid about letting the baby out of her sight.
“Let’s go bless you, beautiful,” Father Michael murmured to the baby, cuddling her in his arms. She cooed and kicked her feet under her long, white satin gown.
“Hey, Leah, can I talk to you for a minute?” Erica asked, tugging on her twin’s sleeve. Leah looked annoyed at first and then she saw Erica’s face, doing a double take.
“We’ll be right there, Father!” Leah called after the priest as he carried the baby down the hall. “What is it?”
Erica took a deep breath, blurting it out. “I’m pregnant.”
Leah gaped at her, blinking in response. No words, just blinking, like a mute’s version of Morse Code.
“No one else knows,” Erica rushed on. “Except Clay, and I was so afraid to tell him because he knows about the Mary Magdalenes and the operation and I know it’s impossible and it’s crazy but I went to a doctor sure I was dying or had cancer or something because I hadn’t had a period in two months but he did a pregnancy test, and I made him do it again, and then I made him to do again—I swear to God, Leah, I made him kill three rabbits—and when I told him I’d had an operation so I couldn’t have children he said if they didn’t take my womb, if they just tied those tubes, those filipino tubes or whatever they are—”
“Fallopian tubes,” Leah corrected, her voice just above a whisper.
“Right, those, he said if they had just done that, it was possible that the ends of those tubes could have grown back together so that my eggs could have been, I don’t know, ripe or something, and whatever, however it happened, I’m going to have a baby…” Erica stopped, looking at Leah in the silence. “Say something.”
Leah laughed, and then Erica did too, and they hugged and laughed some more and Leah, wiping tears from her eyes and kissing Erica on the cheek and whispered, “You are going to be a mother.”
Those words made Erica burst into tears instantly. She had become accustomed to her infertile state, had even moved into a place of acceptance with it—and then wham! God had a funny sense of humor sometimes. Funny, strange—not funny, ha ha, as Clay liked to say.
“What did Clay say?” Leah asked.
“He thought I was kidding of course. Started making jokes about th
e immaculate conception.”
“Oh no!”
“Luckily I had the doctor give me a note.”
Leah laughed. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” Erica giggled. “The doctor wrote it on his prescription pad. And told Clay to call him if he had any questions.”
“And did he?”
“At four in the morning.”
“You told him at four in the morning?”
“I told myself I was going to sleep on it and tell him in the morning, but I woke up and couldn’t keep it a secret one minute longer.”
Leah and Rob and the baby had rented a little apartment until the house they were having built in the suburbs was finished—Leah had changed her mind about New York and dancing the minute Grace had been back in her arms—but Gertie had invited Erica to live with them after the fire—in the guest room of course. Clay slipped into her room after everyone was asleep though.
“Well, it looks like we’re going to be twins in everything again.” Leah took her sister’s hand, teasing. “You always do this. Steal my thunder. Gotta one up me on everything, don’t you?”
Erica froze, jaw dropping. “No!”
“Just a month or so along.” Leah grinned. “And I haven’t told anyone. Not even Rob. Not yet.”
“Mom is going flip.” Erica laughed, hugging Leah and congratulating her while trying to imagine their mother’s reaction. “Both of her daughters managed to end up unwed mothers.”
Leah smiled. “I have no doubt you’re going to have a ring on your finger before long. And we’ll get to plan another wedding!”
Erica groaned, following her sister down the hall. “I just hope we don’t both have twins.”
“Hush your mouth!” Leah gasped. “Anyway, that skips a generation. Doesn’t it?”
“I sure as hell hope so…”
Leah shushed her as they neared the chapel, where the pews were full of family, friends, Rob’s clients, people they had gone to school with, had attended church with. Solie and Ada were up front with Patty, Donald Highbrow sitting on her other side. Erica spied Judge Solomon up front and waved at him. He dropped her a wink. Erica even spotted Rebecca and her baby in the crowd, sitting with a few other former Magdalenes—Lizzie/ Carolyn and Frannie/Marguerite among them. No Marty though, although Leah told her she’d sent a lovely set of knitted white booties that Grace was wearing under her gown.