Lark! the Herald Angels Sing

by Donna Andrews

  Chapter 7

  “Michael and I are eligible foster parents? That’s a surprise.” I wasn’t lying. Michael and I had applied a couple of years ago, when Meredith had begun showing up to make lengthy fact-filled presentations at joint town and county meetings about the need for more foster parents. We weren’t inspired by civic zeal so much as the pragmatic realization that Meredith would keep returning again and again to repeat her earnest PowerPoint presentation until she had recruited enough potential fosters to meet some arbitrary quota and keep her happy. Others had volunteered, possibly for the same reason, and mercifully the torture by PowerPoint had ended. Although, since Meredith had never formally notified Michael and me that we were on the list, I had assumed we had somehow fallen short of the required level of perfection.

  And she didn’t look particularly delighted at welcoming us to the ranks of foster parenthood. “Of course, I can see how awkward that could be given … well, the circumstances,” she said.

  “You mean the fact that my brother is accused of being the father? It’s not as if Michael or I would hold that against the poor kid.” The mother, yes, if Chief Burke managed to track her down. But Lark was certainly an innocent.

  “If there were any other option available, I wouldn’t ask you to do this. Although I suppose it might be just as well to have her with your family in the event there turns out to be a connection.” Meredith brightened at the thought, as if it made everything so much tidier.

  “Not that it will turn out that way.” Clearly Meredith didn’t believe Rob. Perhaps I was foolish for doing so, but I did. “Just let me check with Michael.”

  I dashed out of the office before she could object and headed for the sanctuary. But I saw the chief standing just outside the door.

  “If you’re looking for your rehearsal, I sent it down to the parish hall,” he said. “We’re treating this as a crime scene.”

  “Did any of the kids see who left the baby?”

  “One of the shepherds asserts that two ninjas rappelled down from the ceiling with the baby hanging from a rope sling between them,” the chief said. “The girl wise man is positive that her fellow magi must have snuck it in as a joke, though she has no idea how. And a kindergartener explained to me with great earnestness that you can’t see the stork when he brings you babies because he’s invisible, and it doesn’t even matter if you don’t have a chimney.”

  “I think he’s confusing the stork and St. Nick.”

  “Probably. So unless I want to put out a BOLO on storks and ninjas, the children’s eyewitness testimony gives me nothing to work on. Any idea where Ms. Flugleman’s going to place the baby?”

  “Probably with us, if Michael has no objection,” I said.

  “That’s good,” he said. “Though I didn’t know you were approved foster parents.”

  “Neither did we. I suspect we’re on the secret list of people Meredith prefers not to entrust a child to unless she has no other options.”

  The chief chuckled, and I proceeded down to the parish hall. As I approached I could hear the children singing “Silent Night.” Reassuring. Most of the pageant consisted of the various cast members posing, pantomiming, or delivering very short lines to the accompaniment of Christmas carols sung by the children, with or without the choir.

  When I peered into the parish hall, I saw Michael standing on a chair with a copy of my script. The sheep and shepherds on one side and the wise men and camel parts on the other were either singing or pretending to, watching as Mary, Joseph, and the angel beamed down at the cardboard box that was representing the manger.

  Michael spotted me and waved.

  “Take five,” he said to the children when the carol had ended. “You want your director’s seat back?” he added, turning to me.

  “Any chance you could take over as assistant director for the rest of the rehearsal?” I explained about our newfound foster parent status. “So I should round up what we need to keep her for what I hope is a very short time—unless you think we should find some reason to weasel out.”

  “No, it’ll be great,” he said. “It’s not as if we don’t have plenty of room—and plenty of hands to help us out with her, with so many relatives coming to town for the holidays. It’ll be fun!”

  As I made my way back to Robyn’s office, I made a mental note to remind him of that the first time Lark woke us up for a midnight feeding.

  I could hear her crying now—not an impressive Noah-style wail, but she definitely wasn’t happy about something. I found Meredith standing over the crib, wild-eyed, wringing her hands. When she saw me walk in, she backed against the wall on the opposite side of the room and seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

  “I was about to call your father,” she said. “It—the infant—she seems to be unwell.”

  “She’s probably hungry.” I checked Lark’s diaper, just in case, then picked her up and set her against my shoulder. “Or bored and wants attention.”

  Lark calmed a little when I picked her up, but was still fussing quietly. I checked the small fridge, in which Robyn usually kept a bottle or two of formula ready so whoever was keeping an eye on Noah would have something to give him if he howled bloody murder during the Sunday service or a meeting she couldn’t easily interrupt. I stuck the bottle in the microwave for what I recalled as the optimal number of seconds, tested the temperature on my wrist, and offered it to Lark. She began sucking greedily.

  “Well,” Meredith exclaimed. “You don’t seem to have lost the knack.”

  She didn’t have to sound so surprised. Maybe I wasn’t on her short list for parent of the year, but I happened to think Michael and I were managing to raise two pretty nice kids—in spite of whatever shortcomings she might see in how we went about it.

  “I’ll drop by later with the orientation kit,” Meredith said.

  “Orientation kit?”

  “A list of the major dos and don’ts,” she said. “Child welfare rules and regulations. Copies of several relevant parts of the Virginia code. Some nutritional guidelines. And—well, there has been a lot of new research in early development lately. I’m sure you’ll find it all very useful.”

  She favored me with another brittle, professional smile, picked up her purse, and trotted out.

  I waited, a little tensely—Meredith was famous for appearing to leave, then darting back in with one more question or bit of what she thought was useful advice. Rather like Lieutenant Columbo, except that his “one more thing” usually elicited an important clue. All Meredith ever seemed to accomplish was embarrassing people whose reaction to her apparent departure was to remark how glad they were she was gone.

  I didn’t relax my guard until I saw her car drive out of the parking lot. Then I breathed the traditional sigh of relief.

  “I’ll probably have to read her ridiculous orientation kit,” I told Lark. “Always possible that it was written by someone other than Meredith. Someone who’s actually fed or changed an infant at some point in her life—or at least picked one up. But I think Uncle Michael and I have a pretty good idea what you need.”

  Though I mentally marshaled my defenses against any Meredithian interference. My cousin Rose Noire, who occupied one of our many spare bedrooms, was currently off in the mountains on some kind of winter solstice retreat with a group of fellow New Age herbalists. But she’d be back tomorrow, and I could put her in charge of Lark’s nutrition and of making sure her stay with us was a wholly positive, organic, enlightened experience. I could get Dad to drop in daily to monitor her health and well-being. Meredith might try to boss Michael and me around, but she’d have a harder time doing so if we were backed by Caerphilly’s eminent natural food and wellness expert and its most beloved physician.

  “So the boys want to meet our new temporary family member,” Michael said, strolling into the office with Josh and Jamie behind him.

  “Couldn’t we have a new brother instead?” Josh asked. “That would be more fun.”

  “I
t’s okay,” Jamie said. “We can still teach a little sister to play baseball. Look at Great-Grandma Cordelia.” Cordelia, who had played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League as a young woman, was the unofficial but highly effective batting coach for the Caerphilly Eagles, the boys’ Summerball team.

  “Lark’s only staying with us until we find her real parents,” I explained. “I doubt if she’ll stay around long enough to learn to play catch.”

  “What if her real parents don’t want her?” Josh countered. “After all, they dumped her on us.”

  “Then Child Protective Services will find someone to adopt her,” Michael said. “Someone who wants a baby very much but doesn’t have one.”

  “But we don’t have a little sister,” Jamie protested, assuming an expression designed to show that he was suffering mightily from this cruel deprivation.

  “I think we’ll survive,” Josh replied.

  “I gather rehearsal is over,” I said.

  “And the boys and I are going Christmas shopping,” Michael said.

  “You’re not invited,” Josh added.

  “Because you’re the one we’re shopping for,” Jamie explained.

  “Good,” I said. “Someone needs to wait with the kids until their parents can collect them.”

  “Robyn’s handling that,” Michael said.

  “Then I will take Lark back to our house and get her settled in. I’ll text you if I think of anything she needs.”

  “Good idea. Laters!” Michael gave me a quick kiss and headed out, with the boys following.

  Lark had fallen asleep still holding the nearly empty bottle, so I tucked her back in the crib. Then I pulled out my trusty notebook and began making a list of things we’d need to care for an infant, even temporarily.

  “Coast clear?”

  Dad and Grandfather had returned.

  “Meredith’s gone, if that’s what you mean,” I told them. “And Lark’s coming home with us for the time being—apparently Michael and I are the only available foster parents in the county.”

  “Good! That will make it much easier to keep an eye on her.” Dad beamed at the prospect of adding another patient to his roster.

  “Any chance you could help me haul a few things to my car?”

  Dad and I left Grandfather in charge of Lark—after all, how hard could it be with her fast asleep?—and went to the overflow room, the church’s general-purpose storage and filing room. Robyn had installed a couple of cabinets there, in which she collected clothes and household items to be donated to the poor or to women passing through the Caerphilly Women’s Shelter. Michael and I had long since handed down the baby gear we’d used with the boys—much of it to this very collection—so I didn’t think Robyn would mind if we borrowed a few items for the short term.

  We loaded the car with a portable crib, a folding playpen, some bottles, a few items of clothing, and half a dozen diapers scrounged from Robyn’s ample supply. It would normally have been a very quick task, but we spent at least fifteen minutes searching the vast herd of snow boots to find Dad’s. A few parents had arrived to pick up their kids after the rehearsal and were doing the same frustrating task. I couldn’t help gloating over the fact that my boots—like Michael’s and the boys’—were relatively easy to find, since I’d attached brightly colored sleigh bells to the laces. Although, to my dismay, I noticed at least one other pair of boots whose owner had done the same thing. If my bells became a fad, I’d have to think of something else to make our boots easily findable.

  When we stepped out into the parking lot, we both had to stop for a moment to let our eyes adjust to the glare. Some of the children were running up and down one end of the parking lot, yelling excitedly as they threw snowballs at each other, while a couple of the parents were plying snow shovels at the other end, removing some of the mounds of snow the plow had left behind. A pity their efforts were about to be undermined by the next round of snow.

  “What a beautiful winter day!” Dad exclaimed.

  “It’ll cloud over later,” I reminded him.

  “Bringing us even more snow!” he exclaimed, and then burst into song. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas!”

  I decided not to point out we already had more than enough snow to ensure a very white Christmas indeed. Instead, as we crunched over the parking lot to my car, I breathed in the cold, crisp air, listened to the happy shouts of the snowballers, and made a conscious effort to match my mood to his buoyant good spirits.

  “Need anything else?” Dad said when we’d finished loading my car. “Because unless you do, I should go and change.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “What are you changing for?”

  But he’d already dashed back into the church.

  No doubt he’d tell me when he felt like it.

  Chapter 8

  I went back inside and shed my snow boots, being careful to remember where I’d left them, exchanging greetings with the various parents who were rummaging for their children’s boots. Then I returned to Robyn’s office to find that she had taken over the job of watching Lark. Grandfather, who was probably grateful to be off the hook, had disappeared.

  “Oh, good,” Robyn said. “There you are. You found everything you needed for Lark, then? She’ll be such a big hit at the party.”

  “Party? What party?” Not that I had anything against parties, but I had a lot to do to get ready for taking care of Lark, and I had been planning to go straight home. But I put on a cheerful face. No matter how loudly all the tasks in my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe were calling to me, I didn’t want to spoil Robyn’s excitement over the latest entry in Caerphilly’s packed calendar of holiday events.

  “The Christmas party at the women’s shelter,” she said. “And in honor of the occasion, we’re relaxing the rules and allowing a man to visit.”

  “A man? Who?” Both for practical safety reasons and for the peace of mind of the women who stayed there, Robyn had made it a rule that no men were allowed at the shelter. As a result, I was there a lot—if the place needed any repairs, they usually fell either to me or to one of the two young Shiffley women, Amber and Brianna, who’d defied old-fashioned gender stereotypes and gone into the building trades like at least half of the men in their family. As far as I knew, only one man was ever welcomed or even tolerated at the shelter—Dad, who provided free medical care to the women and children who stayed there.

  “Well, who do you think would visit this time of the year?” Robyn asked.

  Possibly a repairman for the furnace, I mused, if it was acting up again, although I’d thought that it was working reasonably well now, thanks to the repairs Brianna and I had done. But neither of us were furnace experts.

  Robyn was humming something. Trying to give me a clue, no doubt. But while Robyn had many excellent qualities, being able to carry a tune wasn’t one of them. She seemed to be humming either “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” or “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” neither of which suggested any visitor who would be particularly welcome at the shelter.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake—Santa!” she finally exclaimed. “‘Santa Claus is comin’ to town,’” she warbled, in several randomly chosen keys.

  So that was what she’d been trying to hum. I’d never have guessed.

  “Nice,” I said aloud. “The kids will love that. Not, I suppose, with the reindeer and sleigh, though.”

  “No—actually, we did think of that. A horse-drawn sleigh, at least—it was a tempting idea. But then we realized all the tourists would think it was part of the Christmas in Caerphilly festival, and follow it to the shelter, and that would draw too much attention. So he’s just going to ride over there with me—I can drop him at the door, so he doesn’t have carry the presents very far.”

  “And who do we have playing Santa?”

  “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!”

  Of course. I turned to find Dad, resplendent in red velveteen and white fake fur. He hadn’t put on the boots yet,
and the beard was askew, but still, even partly costumed he made a decent St. Nick.

  “Can one of you fix this?” he asked, pointing to the beard. “And help me with these blasted boots? I can’t bend over properly in this costume.”

  I directed Dad to sit on Robyn’s sofa and got to work with the spirit gum to attach the fluffy white beard. Robyn handed Noah to Dad, and bent down to help him with the boots. To our astonishment Noah, who had been fussing persistently in what was, for him, a relatively low level of volume—not much louder than a jet engine—gurgled a few times before falling fast asleep in Dad’s lap.

  “You’re hired.” Robyn seemed awestruck. “I’ve never seen him do that.”

  We were almost sorry when our work with beard and boots was done and Dad had to give up Noah to pick up the sack of presents. But Dad’s calming effect seemed to linger on, even after Robyn had tucked the little noise machine back in his carrier.

  “Wait—wasn’t Grandfather with you?” I asked Dad as we all marched out to the foyer. “What’s he going to do while we go to the party—because we can’t take him to the shelter, you know.”

  “He understands about not being able to come with us.” Dad had picked up a pair of boots that was obviously several sizes too small to be his and was studying them with a puzzled expression—apparently having forgotten that he was already wearing boots. “He’s going to get some reading done in the parish hall, and one of us can pick him up after the party.”

  “Great.” I retrieved the boots Dad was holding and put them down in what I hoped was their original location. Thank goodness the parents had now collected most of my pageant participants, so there were only twenty or so pairs of boots left in the foyer.

  Robyn and I took off to make our separate ways to the shelter. Well, not exactly to the shelter but to one of the places nearby where those of us who helped at the shelter tended to park so no one who knew of our involvement would spot all our cars in one place. As I made my way through the crowded streets of the town, I wondered if the shelter’s location was really such a big secret anymore, but I wasn’t going to be the one to give up the cloak-and-dagger precautions we all took.