Yuletide Baby

Could she do it? Would she be able to overcome years of terror and defensiveness to help the little one?

For the baby’s sake, she had to try.

Once her next-door neighbor had arrived to watch the children, Heather and Jo set off. The drive from Heather’s house to the chapel was only a few short minutes, but to Heather the distance seemed agonizingly long. Jo bustled out of her old truck the moment she parked it. Heather held back, clutching her hands together in her lap as she gathered her courage. After what felt like an hour but was probably no more than a few seconds, she forced herself to exit the vehicle. A wave of dizziness immediately overtook her and she grasped at the rim of the truck to keep her balance.

Air in. Air out, she coaxed herself. When these panic attacks hit, her breath came in shallow gasps and she hyperventilated, resulting in the light-headedness she was now experiencing. She was so...angry that she couldn’t control her reactions. It was embarrassing. Humiliating.

“Heather, are you coming?” Jo had made it up to the chapel’s red double doors before she glanced back and realized Heather wasn’t following her. The old red-headed woman’s face instantly crumpled with concern. “What is it, dear?”

Suppressing a shiver, Heather straightened her shoulders and picked up the box of baby paraphernalia from the back of Jo’s truck.

She forced a smile. “I’m sorry I’m being so slow. Don’t worry. I’ll be in right behind you.”

While in essence, that was true, emotionally, Heather was lagging, and she was painfully aware of why.

The chapel is just a building, she scolded herself sternly. If anything, this particular chapel was a place of happy childhood memories. But she couldn’t seem to separate the structure from the experiences in her past. The thought of church—any church—was tainted by the thought of Adrian, who had been a beloved and highly respected deacon. No one had realized that it had all been one big lie.

This guy isn’t Adrian.

Truthfully, she didn’t know anything about the pastor she was here to assist. There was no reason for her to believe Shawn O’Riley would be in any way similar to Adrian, other than being a part of the active leadership of a church. It was wrong to judge all men on a single man’s faults, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. In her experience, men said one thing and did another. And what they did was bad. It was bad. All of her self-preserving instincts were screaming at her to run fast and far away from this situation.

She knew it wasn’t logical. This place, Serendipity’s little white chapel, was the church she’d grown up in, a place of warm memories and happy times. It was where she’d first learned to sing “Jesus Loves Me,” where she’d been told she was His little lamb and that if she became lost, He would cheerfully leave all of His other sheep to come and find her.

Only, when she’d become lost, no one had come to find her, not even the Lord.

And that was just one more grudge to hold against Adrian—one more way in which he’d hurt her. This place, that used to stand for security and love, now just made her anxious and uncomfortable. There was no safety to be found here. Not for her. Nor was there a chance of trust on her part to be given to any man who had a hand in running it. Just the thought of meeting the pastor made her stomach twist.

If she had a lick of sense she’d turn right around and go home. This wasn’t her battle.

If it weren’t for this baby...

But there was a baby. That infant made it her battle. She’d promised Jo she would help, and that alone would have been enough to keep her walking forward. But more than that, she’d made a personal vow that she would help children in need wherever and whenever she found them. She couldn’t make up for what Adrian had done—and she could never fully forgive herself for what she had stepped aside and allowed him to do—but maybe, just maybe, she could help someone else’s child, like this tiny gift of humanity who had apparently been horribly abandoned by the very people who should have loved him or her the most.

She’d help the baby, she’d do whatever Jo needed her to do—and then she’d leave the chapel, and the pastor she had no interest in knowing, behind.

As she entered the church and was greeted by Pastor Shawn, it was all she could do not to recoil from his handshake. Oh, he appeared pleasant enough with his Irish good looks—reddish-blond hair, a kind expression on his face and laugh lines fanning from his light blue eyes. Both his gaze and his smile were welcoming. He was obviously relieved that support had arrived. But Heather knew how easy it was for a man to put on a mask for the world and hide his true nature. A charming smile no longer had the capacity to fool her. Especially not on a preacher.

“Jo. Ma’am.” He tipped his head toward Heather. “Thank you both for coming in the middle of the night.”

“This is Heather Lewis,” Jo said by way of introduction. “She’s our resident expert, seeing as she has a house full of foster children. She also has a professional background in child care, which I suspect will be invaluable to us.”

As small as Serendipity was, Pastor Shawn had probably heard her name, just as she knew his, but up until now they’d had no reason to cross paths. He wasn’t a native of Serendipity and had become the pastor of the small congregation a couple years after Heather had left town for college, where she’d met and eventually married Adrian. And she’d certainly never even remotely considered darkening the door of his church upon her return.

“Thank you, thank you. I’m happy for any help I can get. I couldn’t believe it when I found— Well, here. Come with me and I’ll show you.”

Shawn’s stride was long and confident as he led them up the sanctuary aisle to where a life-size crèche beckoned. Heather’s heart leaped when she saw the tiny infant lying in the manger, swaddled in what looked to be a tattered football blanket. She wondered if the baby had been left that way by the mother, or if the blanket was Shawn’s touch.

“Oh, the poor little dear,” Jo exclaimed, wasting no time in scooping the baby into her arms.

“He fell asleep, so I placed him back in the manger. Or her—I don’t really know yet. It seemed like a safe spot, as close to a crib as I have available. As you can see, I’m way out of my league here.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine how you felt when you discovered the babe,” Jo agreed, kissing the now-squirming infant’s forehead. “And this is how you found him? Er—her? All wrapped up in this blanket?” Jo turned and thrust the baby toward Heather. “Heather, dear, can you help me get this poor little thing’s diaper changed and get the boy/girl thing settled for us? I am already weary of referring to him/her in a double-gender fashion.”

Heather accepted the infant and sat down on the front pew to change the child. It wasn’t the most ideal of conditions, but at this point the baby’s needs and comfort were more important than the propriety of the church setting.

“It’s a girl,” she informed them as she reswaddled the infant, this time in a soft, clean pink receiving blanket she’d brought along in her stash of baby things, leftovers from her previous career as a day-care provider.

“A girl,” Shawn repeated, his gaze tender and his voice full of wonder. “How about that?” From the bemused expression on his face and the way his warm voice dipped in awe, she might have thought he’d never seen a newborn baby before. Maybe it was just the shock of the situation that had thrown him.

“The poor mother,” Jo breathed, placing an empathetic hand over her heart. “I can’t imagine what she must be feeling right now, to have abandoned her own flesh and blood on Christmas Eve, of all times. What kind of circumstances must she be under to prompt her to such an action?”

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

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.