The Body in the Sleigh (4 page)

As it had turned out, Mary
was
needed at home. Her father's first heart attack came just as she'd begun to think she could move off-island, get some kind of job, and take courses at UMaine. She'd decided to be a teacher. A teacher who would treat all her students with the same kindness and respect—no favorites and no scapegoats. She wouldn't teach on the island—they wouldn't hire her anyway, not Mary Bethany, the outsider. She'd pictured a classroom of maybe third-graders up where her father was from. They'd gone there once when she had been about seven. The potato fields were in bloom and she thought the wide openness of it all was beautiful She'd miss the ocean, but it would be a change. A good change.

His second attack was much worse than the first and he'd had to have an operation in Bangor. After that, there was no question of working. He sold his cows and most of the farm equipment, and leased the fields to the Harveys. He seemed to disappear right before Mary's eyes, shrinking into his clothes until he hardly looked like a grown man. He'd never had time to get interested in any hobbies and hadn't been a reader. He sat in the parlor and watched the television Martha had brought with her when she'd come to see them after he was released from the hospital. “It's cheaper than
a nursing home,” she'd told Mary, who had been surprised by the gift. They'd never had a television and her mother had always made disparaging remarks about the crop of antennae that sprouted from island roofs. “Put him in front of it in the morning and turn it off when you put him to bed at night,” Martha instructed.

It was a depressing notion, but Mary had found that Martha had been right and her father was content to sit and watch day in and day out. He even seemed to enjoy certain shows, occasionally shouting out answers when
Wheel of Fortune
was on.

Anne Bethany's schedule continued without the slightest variation. She rose before dawn, tended her chickens and the garden in season. She made meals her husband didn't eat. She was in bed and asleep at eight thirty. She wasn't interested in becoming a nurse and made it clear to Mary that taking care of her father was her job—a job in exchange for room and board now that she was an adult.

Mary had had no choice, and wouldn't have abandoned her parents and the farm even if she had. Martha called once in a while, but after that one trip, kept her distance.

So, Mary had stayed. Maybe if she had been more outgoing, more self-confident like Martha, she would have fit into island life better—or had the guts to leave, parents or no parents. The years went by and late one afternoon her father died quietly in front of the TV. Mary had gone in to offer him some broth. Vanna White was turning over
Ts.

The farm had been paid off a few years before Mr. Bethany's illness, so Mary and her mother had had enough to get by, especially after Mary started running a small B and B during the summer months to pay the mounting shorefront taxes. Her mother had taken her father's death as a personal affront and, after several years of intense anger, joined him, presumably to give him what for. That had been ten years ago.

Mary was alone. There was no lover past, present, or future. When she considered the complications love presented—gleaned from her reading and from observing those around her—she was usually glad to have been spared the bother. But it did mean she couldn't pass the baby off as hers.

Gradually, as the sky lightened, she had come up with a plan. Easy enough to say that Christopher was her grandnephew, that his mother couldn't take care of him. Although Martha hadn't been on the island since her mother's funeral, it was well known that she had had ten children herself and that those ten had been equally fruitful and multiplied. Mary invented a rich tale of a young niece with three children already, abandoned by her good-for-nothing cheater of a husband, driving through the night to leave the baby after calling her aunt in desperation.

“Could you take him for a while? Just till I get my feet on the ground?”

Mary had enjoyed rehearsing to herself—“She was so upset, I'm surprised she remembered to bring little Christopher.”

She'd tell her neighbor Arlene and ask her to pick up some baby supplies the next time she went off-island to Ellsworth. Arlene had two grandchildren she thought hung the moon. She brought them over to play with the goats when they visited every August. Arlene would be a big help. And since she also had a big mouth, Mary wouldn't have to tell the story to anyone else.

That settled, Mary had turned her thoughts to the rest of the plan. And the rest of the plan had meant calling Faith Fairchild. She watched the sun come up, waiting for the right time.

 

Faith knocked on Mary's back door. Few people used their front doors on Sanpere—or anywhere else in New England to Faith's knowledge. It was a mystery why they bothered putting them on houses at all. Using Mary's front door other than during the win
ter months was also complicated by the tangle of lilac and rose bushes that had grown up over the granite stoop.

Mary opened the door and slipped out. Faith was puzzled. From the urgency in Mary's voice, she had expected to be ushered immediately in and told whatever Mary thought was important enough to pull someone away from hearth and home on Christmas Day. She'd said it wasn't the goats. What else could it be? Mary didn't have anything else to worry about. Or, Faith thought with sudden apprehension, it might be Mary herself. This must be it. She was ill. Cancer. She had cancer. And she'd just heard yesterday.

“Faith, I don't know how to put this any other way. I want to tell you a secret.”

Mary's face, although slightly anxious, didn't look distraught. Or terminal. Faith felt anticipation begin to replace her fears. She loved secrets.

“But I have to have your absolute word that you won't tell anyone else. Not even your husband.”

Husbands were exempt from the not-telling-secrets rule, but maybe Mary didn't know that, not having one herself.

“Tom's a minister. He'd keep anything you tell me totally confidential. He has to or they take away his collar or robes or something.”

Mary folded her arms across her chest. She was the kind of woman who looks so ordinary that you have trouble placing her—did I go to elementary school with her? See her in the waiting room at the bus station in Bangor? Talk to her in line at Marden's, the big discount store in Ellsworth? Vague familiarity at best. Now Mary stood transformed by the determined gesture and defiant expression on her face. This woman was a woman you'd remember.

“No Tom. If you can't agree, I can't tell you.” She paused. “And I'm sorry I called you out all this way for nothing.” Mary's
farm backed onto Eggemoggin Reach. By water, or as the gull flies, it wasn't far from the Fairchilds'. By land, it took a good fifteen minutes.

“It's not a crime or anything like that, is it? I mean, of course you haven't murdered anyone.” Faith thought she'd better ask. It was no never mind to her, but Tom tended to take a dim view of her involvement in these things.

“No crime has been committed to my knowledge,” Mary said firmly. “But you don't have to agree. Go into the shed. There's some fresh cheese. Take one home with you for your trouble.”

“Oh, Mary, of course I agree. You have my word.” Instinctively Faith put out her hand and Mary shook it, opening the door wider.

Faith stepped into the kitchen, thinking they should have mixed spit or pricked their fingers with a safety pin. But she didn't think for long; she simply reacted and was on her knees by the basket instantly. Christopher was wide awake; his dark eyes shone up at her and his mouth curved in what was definitely a smile. They weren't supposed to do this until they were older, but both of Faith's babies had smiled from birth—and recognized her face, despite what the experts said.

“Where on earth did this beautiful baby come from?”

“I found him in the barn last night when I went to do the milking. His name is Christopher.”

“In the barn! Christopher! Was he in the manger? Any visits from angels lately?” It was too much.

Mary grinned. “And I'm a virgin too. You can hold him if you want. He's a hungry little fellow and I was just going to warm a bottle.”

Faith was only too happy to comply. She adored babies, especially other people's at this point in her life.

“Sit down in the rocker and I'll tell you everything I know, which is not much. And I'll tell you why I wanted you to come.

“I couldn't involve anyone on the island. It would be too dangerous for the baby. His mother obviously brought him here because she knew how isolated it is—still, there is the bridge, and word could spread to the mainland easy enough.”

The Sanpere Bridge across Eggemoggin Reach connecting the island to the mainland had been a WPA project, a graceful suspension bridge that looked from a distance as if a particularly talented child had constructed it from an Erector set. For many on the island, it was still a bone of contention. Joe Sanford, age ninety, had never been across. “Never had a reason. Everything I need is here.” But others found it pretty handy, especially before the Island Medical Center was built and the closest health care was in Blue Hill. A new generation of bridge haters had recently grown up, as wealthy off-islanders began to build second homes similar to Newport's “cottages.” These people wanted to preserve Sanpere in aspic. In other words, “the last person across always wants to pull up the bridge behind him.”

Mary was right not to involve anyone on Sanpere, even with a blood oath. There were no secrets on the island, and the bridge made sure they traveled.

“But I can't find his mother by myself. Aside from taking care of him, I can't—”

Faith finished for her. “Leave the nannies. Besides needing your company, they haven't been taught to milk themselves yet. So, very fortunately I'm here for a while.”

Mary looked a bit embarrassed. “I'd heard about that business with the real estate man who was found murdered by the lighthouse and how you figured out who did it.” Several summers ago, Faith had found a corpse while walking along the shore near Sanpere's lighthouse. The death appeared to be accidental, then more “accidents” occurred until Faith untangled the threads leading to the killer.

“This isn't like that,” Mary said, “but I thought you might be
able to help me find out who his mother is and why she left him here.”

Faith studied Mary's face. Her normally forgettable face—a plain, pleasant face, rather flat and with the look of one of those antique Dutch wooden dolls. But today it wasn't normal. Faith had never seen Mary look so excited. Not even when one of her does had quintuplets the spring before last.

“But why? Why do you want to find her? To give the baby back?”

Mary was horrified. “Oh, no, not to give him back.”

“Then why don't you just keep him? Your little grandnephew,” Faith said.

Mary had been through this the night before many times. Just as she had debated back and forth whether to call Faith. She had changed her mind about the latter so many times that she still wasn't completely sure that it was the real Faith in front of her or the one she had conjured up and talked to during the wee hours.

“I think she's in trouble. She must be in trouble; otherwise she wouldn't have left him here. And I feel that I have to find her. It's hard to explain. It just doesn't seem fair to Christopher either. To have her simply disappear. What would I tell him when he was older? I'd have to tell him. Too horrible to find out when he's grown that everything he thought was real wasn't.”

Faith had thought this was what Mary would say. It was what she herself would do. Besides, Mary would be in a precarious legal position. They hadn't mentioned it, but they both knew it. There hadn't been any birth certificate in the basket—or adoption papers to sign.

What Faith didn't ask Mary—and wouldn't ask—was, “How will you feel if she wants him back?”

Faith decided to call home. She needed to stay longer. When she'd left the house, Ben had been assembling some kind of LEGO for geniuses. Amy was spreading pinecones with peanut butter
and rolling them in birdseed, planning to hang them in the firs outside the cottage as a Yule treat for the birds. Tom had been dozing by the woodstove with the latest Peter Abrahams in his lap. Still, Faith thought she'd better check in and see whether anyone minded if she stayed for another thirty minutes or so. The food was ready to go to the Marshalls' and they weren't due there until noon. Tom answered. Reminding herself that she'd kept secrets from him before—and always with the best of intentions—Faith told him Mary's story. Literally Mary's story, the one fabricated for public consumption. Tom immediately said there was no need for her to come home yet. Their conversation was so brief that Faith was pretty sure he'd picked up the book and was eager to get back to the page-turner.

“Okay, what can we figure out from this stuff?” she asked, spreading the contents of the baby's basket on the enamel-topped kitchen table. Mary's circa 1949 kitchen was currently back in vogue. Unchanged—as if it had been transported intact like Julia Child's to the Smithsonian. Reproducing what Mary took completely for granted would cost more than all the goat cheese she could sell in her lifetime. Many, many more dollars than those stuck in the Hellmann's mayonnaise jar left so trustingly on top of the refrigerator in the shed.

The basket itself, although a roomy one, was unremarkable. You saw stacks of them at Pier 1—or rummage sales. Baskets and mugs—that was what future archaeologists would find in our middens, Faith had often observed as these ubiquitous items arrived for First Parish's annual May Market sale. The red bow on the handle was the kind usually found attached to wreaths and the wire was threaded through a small white cardboard tag with Mary's name written on it in block letters.