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.
