The Christmas Angel Read online

  “I was jogging through the village green, past the church, and I saw something move in the big crèche, in the cradle. I went back and it turned out to be a baby. A little girl,” she added. “Her name is Jane.”

  Dan frowned. “How did you figure out her name?”

  “There was a note. Not much else though. It’s so sad. She’s really a beautiful baby, about three months old. I wish you could see her.” Emily glanced wistfully at the swinging doors that now separated her from the baby.

  Dan stared at her a moment. “That’s quite a story. Quite an experience.”

  “It was . . . odd. I took her into the church. Reverend Ben helped me call the police.”

  He touched her shoulder. “You’ve had some morning. Are you all done here?”

  Emily nodded. “I guess so.”

  Dan slipped his arm around her shoulders and they walked out into the parking lot. Although there was nothing more she could do, Emily felt strangely reluctant to go. But it was hard to put her feelings into words.

  Once they were in Dan’s car and driving away, she said, “I wish I could have seen her one more time, just to say good-bye. But I didn’t want to ask the social worker. I had a feeling she would have put me off, so I didn’t ask.”

  “It’s probably just as well. I’m sure the baby will get good care now. You don’t have to worry.”

  “That’s what the social worker told me. Her exact words.” Emily stared out the passenger side window.

  Dan reached over and touched her hand. “You’ve been through a strange experience, honey, like helping out at the scene of an accident. I think you’re a little in shock.”

  Emily didn’t know what to say. She certainly felt . . . not quite herself.

  “Are you still going in to the office?” he asked.

  “Yes, I need to catch up. I can get a lot done this afternoon.”

  “Let’s stop in town for lunch first. I bet you haven’t eaten all day.”

  She was hungry, she realized. Maybe some real food in her stomach would relieve the floaty, unreal sensation she’d been feeling ever since she’d found the baby. Emily felt as if she were in a trance. Maybe Dan was right; maybe she was in shock from finding the baby.

  But it had been a wonderful kind of shock, she reflected. And one of the most amazing moments of her life.

  She already knew she wouldn’t have missed the experience for the world.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALTHOUGH DAN DIDN’T ASK ANY MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT the baby on the way back to Cape Light, the child’s image was never far from Emily’s mind. How, Emily wondered, could this little being whom she’d known so briefly have made such a deep impression?

  Dan drove into the village and parked in front of the Clam Box. Emily was sure that by now everyone in town knew about the baby and she’d be barraged with questions at the diner, the town’s unofficial news hub. Then again, she would be answering questions wherever she went today.

  It was already past twelve and the Clam Box was nearly full. Emily spotted Charlie Bates, the diner’s owner and cook, second generation. He was at his usual post, working hard at the grill behind the counter. He deftly slipped a burger onto a waiting roll, added a side of fries, and then spun around and dropped the dish under the heat lamp at the service station.

  “Order up.” He slammed the little bell on the countertop.

  His wife and head waitress, Lucy Bates, ignored him, greeting Emily and Dan with a warm smile. “I have your favorite table by the window set up.”

  “Thanks, Lucy.” Emily took a seat as Lucy handed down the menus. “I’ll just have a bowl of chowder today and a salad.”

  “Me, too,” Dan said. “I’ll have the same.”

  Lucy laughed. “Soup and salad seems to be everyone’s choice today. I guess we all ate too much turkey and pumpkin pie yesterday.” She jotted down the order on her pad. “Hey, Emily, Tucker said you found a baby on the village green this morning. Is that really true?”

  Emily took a sip of water. “It’s true, all right.”

  “I can’t believe it. I thought Tucker was joking.” Lucy’s blue eyes widened, and then her expression grew more serious. “What an awful thing, to abandon a child like that. What did they say at the hospital? Is the baby okay?”

  “They’re running some tests. They won’t know for a few days. But she seemed pretty healthy to me,” Emily added.

  “Lucy? Baconburger? Table five? The dish can’t walk across the restaurant on its own, you know.”

  Charlie stood at the end of the counter, scowling at his wife. Emily wasn’t sure how Lucy put up with him. She had left him about two years ago but had come back, for the sake of their children, Emily suspected. Someday when the two boys were grown, Charlie might not be so lucky.

  Charlie was Emily’s only real political rival. He’d made a run for mayor in the election two years ago when Emily ran for her second term. His defeat had only sharpened his ambitions. He’d remained active in town politics, never letting an opportunity pass by to stir up trouble for her.

  Emily tried to imagine how Charlie would interpret her finding the baby. Undoubtedly, he would figure out some way to put a negative spin on it.

  Emily came to the diner anyway. The food was reliable if not gourmet, and she needed to show Charlie she wasn’t afraid of him. Besides, she liked and admired Lucy, who managed to put up with her onerous husband, work full time at the diner, raise two boys, and go back to school for a nursing degree. Though she was only able to take a few courses each semester, and was still years away from finishing her degree, Lucy plugged doggedly away.

  “Catch you later. Charlie’s on the warpath.” The pretty redhead rolled her eyes. “But I want to hear more about that baby,” she said over her shoulder as she walked away.

  Emily felt Dan watching her. “Are you okay?”

  She looked up at him. “Me? Sure. I’m fine. I guess everyone’s heard by now. Better to answer all the questions and get it over with.”

  He smiled mildly at her. “It might be more efficient to hold a town meeting and invite the press. But I guess that would be a little extreme.”

  He glanced out the window and his smile widened. “Speaking of the press, look who’s coming this way. Now you’ll really be interrogated. I’ve heard this girl is tough.”

  Emily turned to see her daughter, Sara Franklin, rush toward the restaurant and pull open the door. Sara glanced around, spotted Emily and Dan, then quickly walked over. She looked very professional and smart, Emily thought, in a knee-length tweed coat and high black boots. Sara slipped off her coat and swung her long, dark hair over her shoulder. Her blue turtleneck matched her eyes perfectly. Emily realized that Sara—who always seemed to have her mind on more idealistic matters—didn’t really know how pretty she was.

  “Hi, guys.” Sara leaned over and kissed Emily’s cheek, then slipped into the booth beside her. “I lucked out and saw your car parked outside.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it. She’s like a little bloodhound, tracking down a story,” Dan teased.

  Though he claimed to be perfectly happy retired now for almost two years, Dan still missed running the newspaper and running after stories. He had given Sara her first chance writing professionally and liked to take credit for teaching her the ropes. She had done well on her own merit, though, with a talent for writing and an intuition for ferreting out news.

  “You want to know all about the baby, I guess,” Emily said.

  “Everything.” Sara pulled a notebook out of the leather knapsack that also served as her purse and sometimes seemed to contain everything but the kitchen sink. “What time did you leave your house this morning?”

  Emily sat back. She could tell this was going to take awhile. She had been interviewed by Sara before: her daughter was relentless in her quest for detail.

  Emily answered Sara’s questions right through her soup and salad and into coffee. Finally, Sara seemed satisfied.

  “Now plea
se don’t make a big deal out of it, Sara. I didn’t do anything heroic, just what anyone would have done in the situation.”

  “Okay, but how many people find a real live baby in a manger scene? It’s practically . . . a miracle,” Sara pointed out.

  Emily didn’t reply, because Sara’s casual use of the word struck a chord in her.

  “I wouldn’t go that far. This isn’t a piece for the grocery-store tabloids,” Dan cut in. “It seems pretty logical to me that someone chose a cradle as a place to park a baby.”

  “Logical, perhaps,” Sara agreed, “but it still makes great copy. Maybe some relatives will see the story and come forward. Maybe I can help find the mother or whoever abandoned her.”

  Emily hadn’t thought of that. The idea of finding the mother disturbed her. If the mother was found, would she be allowed to have the baby back after abandoning her? And what about relatives? Emily hoped that if any came forward, they would be more responsible than the child’s mother.

  Sara took a last sip of coffee and excused herself to go write up the article.

  “She’ll get good copy out of this,” Dan predicted as Sara disappeared out the door. “Everybody wants to read about an abandoned baby. Front page, above the fold.”

  “You sound as if you wish you were writing this one yourself.”

  “Been there, done that.” Dan grinned at her; then his expression turned serious again. “Are you sure you’re all right? You just don’t seem like yourself.”

  Emily was about to claim again that she felt perfectly fine, but instead she shrugged, touched that he’d noticed. “I feel a little . . . unsettled, I guess.”

  “You want to talk about it?” he asked gently.

  Emily sensed that he knew old feelings about Sara had been stirred up—how hard it had been to give her up so many years ago, and the shame, guilt, and regret that were with her still.

  “No. I mean . . . I’m not ready to talk about it right now,” she admitted. “But thanks for asking.”

  “All right, I’m here when you’re ready.” He reached across the table and touched her hand. “Do you still want to go in to the office? Why don’t you just come home with me and relax?”

  “That’s a tempting offer, but I really need to take care of a few things on my desk today,” Emily insisted.

  The truth was, her office was the best place to hide away. There she could bury herself in work, her foolproof method for avoiding her painful memories.

  “IT WASN’T MY FIRST FRONT-PAGE STORY, OF COURSE. BUT I THINK IT came out pretty good. I got a great quote from Officer Tulley,” Sara added. “He said something like, ‘I thought the dispatcher was playing a joke, but I knew it wasn’t April Fool’s Day.’ ”

  “Yes, I read it. I read it twice,” her boyfriend Luke McCallister teased her. “I’ve saved it in a scrapbook for you.”

  Sara shrugged and smiled slyly. “You ought to get together with Lillian. You could have a scrapbooking party. I hear it’s the latest thing.”

  Sara’s grandmother, Lillian Warwick, actually did collect Sara’s articles and paste them into books. But Lillian openly disdained Luke and told anyone who would listen that he wasn’t good enough for her granddaughter. The very thought of sitting in Lillian’s parlor and working on scrapbooks together was so bizarre, it made Luke laugh out loud.

  “Now you’re scaring me,” he joked, slinging his arm around her shoulder as they walked steadily up a steep hill in the village of Newburyport. Filled with shops and restaurants, bookstores, galleries, and even a movie theater that showed foreign films, Newburyport was a popular destination on Saturday nights, and the sidewalks were crowded with couples. “But even the idea of scrapbooking with Lillian won’t dim my appetite. I’m starving,” he said. “Where do you want to eat?”

  Sara shrugged, feeling comfortable and warm cuddled up against him. Luke was tall, though not quite six feet. He wore his brown hair short, almost in a crew cut. With their faces so close, she could just about discern the thin, faded scar that ran from the corner of his eye down his lean cheek. His changeable, hazel eyes matched his temperament, introverted and often moody. Luke had a rough-around-the-edges quality she found incredibly attractive.

  “I’m not sure what I’d like to eat,” she said honestly. “Let’s walk a bit.” She slowed her steps to look at a shopwindow and Luke stopped alongside her.

  “Do you want to go inside?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. I’m not ready to start Christmas shopping yet. I can’t believe it’s the holidays already.”

  “Neither can I. Doesn’t it seem time goes faster when you get older than when you were a little kid?”

  “Yeah, it really does.” Sara nodded, wondering if it went even faster for Luke, who was ten years older than she was. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to tell you, my folks want me to come down to Maryland this year for the holidays.”

  “Are you going?”

  “I think so. Would you like to come with me? They said to ask you,” she added quickly.

  Luke glanced down at her for a moment. “How about you; do you want me to come?”

  She nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “Of course I do, silly. But it’s pretty boring. Family stuff. My town makes this place look like New York City.”

  Luke laughed. “I’m sure it’s not that bad. Besides, I like your parents,” he added. “They’re cool.”

  Sara rolled her eyes. “I don’t think cool is a word I’d use to describe Barbara and Mike. But it’s sweet of you to say.”

  Her adoptive parents, she meant, Barbara and Mike Franklin, who had raised her in the small town of Winston, Maryland. All through college Sara had been obsessed with finding her birth mother. Right after graduation, she came to Cape Light on her own and located Emily. Their relationship had been rocky at first and Sara had nearly gone back home. She had felt so angry, as if she could never forgive Emily for giving her up. But Emily’s sincere love and understanding had eventually won her heart.

  As much as Sara loved her adoptive parents and knew that no one could replace them, she now couldn’t imagine her life without Emily. Sara had carved out a place for herself in Cape Light these past years and rarely thought of returning to Maryland anymore, though she did sometimes dream of someday moving to other, more exciting places.

  Sara paused to gaze into another window where colorful ski sweaters with matching scarves were cleverly displayed on a row of fake snowpeople.

  “I just dread all the holiday shopping,” she confessed. “I’m not a shopping kind of person. I start off pretty good. Then about an hour or two into it, I panic and end up buying everyone sweaters or calendars.”

  Luke laughed. “You need a good list. That’s the whole secret. Plan your attack and don’t deviate.”

  She glanced at him curiously. “You sound as if you’re already done.”

  “Not exactly. But I have started my list,” he admitted. “It’s shaping up nicely.”

  The glint in his hazel eyes made her even more curious, but she didn’t pursue it. They’d come to a jewelry store and Luke made them stop.

  “How about jewelry?” he asked casually.

  “How about it?”

  “Would you like some for Christmas?”

  “It’s not necessary,” she said. Luke always got her lovely gifts, but this suggestion seemed extravagant. “Come on.” She tried to tug him away. “You don’t have to buy me jewelry. It’s a sweet thought, but this store is way too expensive.”

  Luke wouldn’t budge and, as he was much bigger and stronger, it was hard to get him moving again.

  “Let’s go inside,” he said, tugging Sara along in his wake. “I want to see something.”

  “I thought we were going to have dinner,” she protested. “I don’t really feel like shopping right now.”

  “We’re not shopping; we’re browsing. I just want to get some ideas of what you like. For my list,” he reminded her.

  They were inside the store no
w. A tall saleswoman with bright red lipstick and glossy dark hair seemed to swoop down on them. “Can I help you with something, sir?” Her bright smile was fixed on Luke, Sara noticed.

  “We’re just browsing,” Sara said.

  “We’d like to see some rings,” Luke said, almost at the same time.

  The saleswoman ignored Sara. “Anything in particular?”

  “Not really. That case would be a good place to start, I guess.” Luke pointed at a nearby glass case and Sara’s mouth dropped open. It was filled with diamond engagement rings.

  The woman’s smile widened. “Just a moment. I’ll get the keys.” She walked away quickly as Sara grabbed Luke’s arm.

  “What are you doing?”

  He patted her hand. “Calm down. This is going to be fun.”

  “Luke, I’m serious. We can’t waste this woman’s time. She’s trying to make a living. This isn’t a joke.”

  “I’m not joking. Didn’t you ever want to try one of those on? Hey, that one looks like your taste, and it’s a good size, about two carats, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I have no idea,” Sara sighed. Almost against her will, her gaze was drawn to the case, zeroing in on the ring he was talking about.

  It was a beautiful ring, a sparkling round stone in a simple setting that blended platinum and gold. Classic, but with a slightly unexpected, artful touch, just the kind she would like, if she ever wanted a diamond. Luke did know her taste by now; she had to grant him that much.

  The saleswoman appeared again with a big key ring. “Have you found something you like?” she asked cheerfully.

  Sara smiled through gritted teeth. “I don’t think so. Sorry we—”

  “That round solitaire in the second row caught my eye,” Luke told the saleswoman. “May we see it?”

  “Yes, of course.” Before Sara could protest again, the saleswoman had the ring out on a dark blue velvet cushion and was describing the stone and setting in great detail.

  Luke picked it up and held the diamond to the light. Then he looked at it under a magnifying lens, all the while asking the saleswoman questions.