The Christmas Child (11 page)

Yes, he knew the drill, better than he wanted to. With heart aching for a blue-eyed boy he'd grown to love, he moved through the small dwelling. Davey had lived in this shabby, run-down place. The investigators had to collect every piece of evidence to rule out foul play, but he
agreed with Chief Rainmaker. Nothing pointed to homicide. Nothing pointed to anyone living here except Davey and the woman who appeared to be his mother.

Kade stepped on a spongy bit of floor. The weak boards squeaked and gave slightly beneath his weight. “This house is about to fall down.”

Jesse, hawk eyes soaking in every detail, nodded. “Can't argue. You going back in the bedroom?”

Back there with the body, he meant. “Yeah. Got to.”

Jesse gave him that look again as though trying to see inside his head. Might as well forget that. Even Kade didn't understand, but he felt compelled to be here, compelled to know answers to the questions Davey would someday ask.

A masked and gowned officer, broad as he was tall, shouldered past the two men. “The coroner is on his way. ETA ten minutes.” He made a wry face. “Didn't like being woken up. This kind of thing doesn't happen very often around here.”

Well, it happened often to Kade. Maybe there was something to the quiet, small-town life.

Wearing the offered masks, he and Jesse entered the room. Several hours ago, Kade had found her. He'd been alone then, with Jesse Rainmaker on the way. He'd knocked, peeked in windows, called out and finally entered the seemingly abandoned house. The moment he'd opened the door, the smell of death had slapped him backward. With terrible knowledge and a dread deeper than the Redemption well, he'd gone inside.

The blanket he'd pulled over her face had now been replaced by a yellow plastic sheet. He'd never found the covering inadequate before. But for Davey's mom, the plastic was too impersonal and cold.

“Did you see the dog?” he asked quietly, gesturing toward the outlined shape of a stuffed animal. “I'm guess
ing that toy was Davey's favorite, and he left it behind to comfort his mother. He loves dogs.”

“Lord, have mercy.” The usually unflappable Jesse shuddered. “Grisly situation for a little kid.”

Kade had seen worse. Though his heart hurt so badly for Davey, he wanted to hit something. “The doc said some kind of trauma made him stop talking.”

Now he realized his idea of what caused the trauma had been way off. Kidnapping, abuse. Under the circumstances, he wasn't sure which was worse. Davey had awakened one morning to find his mother dead. He'd been hungry, scared, alone. No wonder he couldn't speak.

Jesse's voice was muffled behind the white mask. “Now that we know the cause, we can get him help to deal with the loss. Maybe he'll come out of it and talk again.”

Maybe. But maybe he never would.

“How does a kid ever deal with this? How can he erase the memories and terror?” Kade clenched his fist tight, fingers digging into his palms. He would never forget. How could Davey? “Think how helpless he felt. He's a little kid. He could do nothing to stop what happened. Not one single thing.”

A flash of young, helpless faces momentarily blinded him. He was projecting, the shrink would say. Forget the shrink. Kade knew how Davey felt, except Kade could have stopped what happened…and hadn't.

 

Sophie called in a substitute teacher on Tuesday morning. At eight o'clock she was still shaking, though Kade had arrived at daylight with the news about Davey's mother. With Davey still asleep, the adults had sought privacy in Sophie's extra room, a bedroom turned into a study.

Kade looked awful. Unshaved, eyes red and haunted,
he looked exhausted to the point of collapse by the news he had to share.

Everything in her wanted to hold him close and comfort him, but he didn't seem to want that. He'd come into the house with his aloof, professional demeanor carefully in place. Now he was perched on the edge of her office chair, bent forward, with elbows on his jean-clad thighs and clenched hands dangling between his knees. His usually polished boots were scuffed and dirty.

“How did he end up in Redemption?” she asked, setting a cup of coffee and a slice of pumpkin bread on the desk in front of him. She was sure he hadn't eaten. Probably not since before finding Davey's mother. “Potterville's thirty miles or more from here!”

“Jesse and I talked about that.” Kade cupped both hands around the warm mug but didn't drink. “Potterville is the nearest town to the house where Davey and his mother lived. Back in the woods, down a long, ragged driveway if you could call it that. More like a trail. No reason for anyone to go out there.” He looked up. “It's really remote, Sophie. She had no phone. Not even have a mailbox. Apparently she wanted to be alone.”

“I wonder why.” Sophie rubbed the chill bumps that wouldn't stop shivering down her arms. Kade had to be even more upset by the reality of Davey's deceased mother. He'd been there. He'd seen. And he'd wanted badly to bring a happy resolution to Davey's quandary.

“The investigation into who she was and where she came from should give us some answers about her reclusive lifestyle. Whatever her reasons, she put Davey in the terrible predicament of having no one to turn to when she died.”

“He must have been scared and confused,” she said,
imagining the thoughts that went through an eight-year-old's head.

“We figure he was with her body for several days before he ran out of food.” When she shivered again at the word
body,
his hard voice softened the slightest bit. “He probably decided to go into Potterville—familiar territory—for help but got turned around and went the wrong direction.”

“Surely he didn't walk all the way to Redemption.”

“We think he did.” He lifted the cup to his lips and sipped.

“Thirty miles? That could take days for a child who had no idea where he was headed.” Days of tramping through dark, scary woods and sleeping in the cold.

Kade's head tilted. He pinched off a bite of warmed pumpkin bread, rolled the moist cake around in his fingers before setting it back on the saucer. Sophie understood. She had no appetite, either. “Now we know why he took shelter in the Dumpster and why he was so gaunt and hungry.”

“Oh, Kade. Our poor Davey. What are we going to say to him?”

He pushed the plate away and sat up straighter. “The truth. Once we know what that is.”

“It's Christmas. Little kids are supposed to bask in the festivity and make wish lists and eat too much candy, not lose their mothers.”

Sophie wanted Kade to agree, and she wanted him to take her in his arms the way he'd done on Sunday. She wanted him to kiss away her sadness and tell her they would work things out for the little boy they both loved. Together.

He didn't.

“Christmas or not, Sophie, he already knows.” The chair rollers rattled as he shoved up from his seat and went to
the single window. Through clenched teeth, he said, “He always knew. That sweet little kid has carried the terrible knowledge all this time. And he couldn't tell us.”

“Oh, Kade.” She couldn't stand it any longer. She went to him, slid both arms around his rigid back and pressed her cheek against his flannel shirt.

He gripped each side of the window with a hand as if holding on could keep him from feeling. But she knew people. She knew him. And he was aching inside.

“You did everything you could, Kade.”

“Not enough.”

“I can't imagine what you went through last night, but it had to be awful.”

The muscles of his back tightened. “It's my job.”

“You're a man. With a big heart. Who loves that woman's boy.” With slow circles of her palm, Sophie rubbed the tension between his shoulder blades and silently prayed for him.

He went right on staring out the window at the bleak December landscape and said nothing for the longest time.

He wanted to be the strong one, even when he was hurting. He was the guardian, the protector.

“You don't have to be strong for me, Kade,” she said gently. “I know you're upset.”

He turned then and touched her face, a tender look in his eyes. Her heart filled. She was certain he had something more to say, but his cell phone interrupted.

After a glance at the caller ID, he said, “The police chief,” and answered.

The conversation was brief and as he slowly slid the phone into his jacket, he said, “He found something in the house he wants me to see. He says it's important.”

K
ade knew only one way to tell her. Straight-out.

Adrenaline pumping from the discovery, he drew in a deep breath, leaned both palms on her round dining table and said, “Davey was born without a voice.”

Sophie's gray eyes widened with shock. “But that doesn't make sense. I thought only deaf children were born mute.”

Kade had been as stunned as Sophie when Chief Rainmaker showed him the fat notebook crammed with wide-rule paper and dark, scribbled cursive. He'd spent an hour browsing through the rambling, sometimes erratic writings.

“Apparently not,” he said, voice low. Davey and Sheba were only a few feet away in the small living room watching cartoons. Even now, the zippy music of
Tom and Jerry
seeped through the walls, a contrast to the serious discussion going on here. “We don't know the whole story—and we may never—but at least we have some information, thanks to a journal kept by Melissa Stephens, Davey's mother.”

“And she wrote that Davey has never spoken?” Sophie
slowly withdrew a chair from the table and slumped onto the seat. “Ever?”

“Never.”

Stunned, she propped her elbows on the gleaming cherry wood and rested her chin on folded hands. “I can't quite come to grips with that.”

Her hair swung forward. Kade resisted the urge to brush it back, to feel the silkiness on his skin. Duty first. Always.

“Neither could she, apparently.” He tugged a chair close to hers and straddled it, too juiced to sit for long. Seeing the pieces of an investigative puzzle come together did that to him. “She wrote long, stress-filled pages about his illness, as she termed it. She had some notion her mistakes had caused the problem.”

Sophie turned her face toward him. “What had she done?”

Kade shrugged a palm. “She never said. Maybe she never knew.”

The journal's discovery had eased his anxiety, as he hoped it would Sophie's once she'd absorbed the shock. Davey had not been abused or mistreated, at least not in the ways he'd imagined. If Melissa Stephens parented poorly, she did so out of ignorance and fear.

“Appears she worried about everything. Worried D.H.S would take him away. Worried he'd be bullied at school. She was phobic about her mute son.”

“So she didn't take him out into the world. At least not very much.”

“Right. Not even to school. She was terrified of school authorities, although she mentioned homeschooling at one point.”

Sophie's folded hands thudded to the tabletop. “I have my doubts about that.”

“I think she did her best.” He dangled his fingers over
the top of the chair and onto Sophie's forearm in a light tickle of reassurance. “In her own way, she loved him, but she was a scared, lonely woman with no apparent support system. She was afraid to go out in public, afraid of people.”

In a gesture so natural Kade didn't notice in time to resist, Sophie turned one hand up and laced her fingers with his. “Agoraphobia?”

So much for duty first. Aw, who was he kidding? Sophie and Davey came first, no contest.

“Maybe,” he said. “Hard to say because she doesn't appear to have sought treatment.”

“What about her family? Didn't she have relatives to help her?”

“The police are checking into that. Into all her background for that matter. But the journal mentions no one but Davey.”

“That's incredibly sad.”

“Yeah.”

He squeezed her fingers, letting her in close now that he'd gotten himself under control. Hard as it was to admit, he needed this, needed her.

Earlier, when the discovery of the body had been so raw inside him, he'd feared imploding right before Sophie's eyes. He wanted to be strong for her. For both of them.

“You're exhausted,” she said softly.

He was tired to the marrow, but there would be no sleep today. Probably not tonight, either. “I'm okay.”

She rose and came around behind to knead the knotty slope of his shoulders.

He tensed, the hard knots tightening to the breaking point. “You don't have to—”

“I know,” she said, a smile in her voice as she stroked along his hairline. “I want to. Relax.”

Relax? When his heart had shifted into overdrive?

She karate chopped the top of his shoulders. “I said relax, McKendrick. Don't make me have to hurt you.”

Sophie hurt him? He chuckled, and when he did, the cords of stress in his neck eased.

“That's it,” Sophie said. “Let go.”

Let go? He wanted to grab her and never let go.

But he kept those random thoughts to himself and let his head fall forward in a pendulum sway.

“You're pretty strong for a girl.”

She gave him another karate chop. “Watch it, buster.”

He chuckled again and let himself relish the surprising strength of Sophie's fingers against his tight, tight muscles.

Last night's ugliness dimmed a bit. Being with Sophie had that power.

Doing his best not to drool, he dropped his head deeper and deeper until his forehead rested on the chair back. Sophie massaged and hummed while in the living room Scooby and Shaggy raced around saving the world.

He wished it was that easy.

After a while, his neck felt like putty and he fought the urge to doze. Sleeping on the job was not allowed.

Reluctantly, he placed a hand on Sophie's to stop the glorious kneading.

“Thanks,” he said. The word came out in an embarrassing slur. He cleared his throat and sat up straight.

“Better?” she asked, coming around to his side.

“Much.” He drew in a deep, cleansing breath. Her macaroon scent swirled into his brain. A man could get used to this, he thought. With her around, he'd go soft as a marshmallow in record time.

Right now, he couldn't decide if that was a good thing or a bad one.

“What now?” she asked and the simple question jerked
him back to the terrible reality of death and an orphaned child.

“We have to tell him.”

“Yes. He needs to know, and he needs our assurance that he did everything he could and nothing was his fault.”

Raking a hand over his mouth and chin, he sighed a noisy sigh. Reality stunk. “He has bad dreams.”

“I'm not surprised,” she said. “I doubt if he really understands what transpired. Those awful days are inside him and he can't share what he knows or fears.”

Kade pushed up from the chair, heart heavy with dread. So much for the relaxing massage.

“All right, then,” he said. “Let's do it.”

 

The conversation went easier than either adult expected. Davey had known his mother was gone, and even though his eyes filled with tears, he seemed relieved when Kade told him he'd done the right things and his mother was simply too sick to get better.

Sophie made comments about heaven and Jesus and how much Davey's mother loved him. Kade cleared his throat a couple of times, moved by her gentle compassion and the way Davey clung to every word. And to Kade's neck.

“She knew how much you loved her, too,” Sophie said, touching the place over Davey's heart.

He nodded, fat tears quivering on his pale eyelashes. Kade tightened his hold on the skinny waist and tugged him closer, wishing he could absorb the pain and let Davey go free. Davey's thin arms clung with a desperation that ripped Kade's heart out.

Sheba, with her dog sensibility, nudged close to her favorite child and whined. Davey reached a grubby, nail-
bitten hand to Sheba's head. The connection seemed to comfort them both.

The four of them, man and woman, boy and dog, were locked in a circle of grief and love. For all his determination to remain aloof and professional, Kade accepted that he was done for. No matter what happened from here, he was connected by this experience. To these people. Letting go would not be easy. Not now.

Over Davey's head, he met Sophie's questioning gaze. He nodded, signaling agreement. Davey would grieve and process in the hours and days ahead. They'd help him all they could. If there was a chance he could talk again…

“Davey?” Sophie asked, stroking his hair the way she'd stroked Kade's, kneading and tender and comforting all at once.

Davey raised his head from Kade's chest and left a warm spot on his shirtfront, right over his heart.

Sophie handed him a tissue from her pocket, and Kade almost smiled. The teacher was always prepared.

“Have you ever been able to speak?”

The adults knew the answer, but Kade also knew where Sophie was leading. The sooner they started, the sooner they'd know if Davey could be helped.

Davey scrubbed the tissue over his tearstained cheeks and shook his head no.

“Did your mama ever take you to a doctor to have your throat checked?”

The small face screwed up in thought before he shook his head again.

Sophie and Kade exchanged glances. No big surprise there.

“Add that to your Christmas list,” he murmured, tugging Davey back to his chest. For some reason, he couldn't keep his hands off the hurting boy. Though, come to think
of it, Davey seemed to be handling things better than the adults.

Of course, he'd been dealing with his mother's death these past few weeks on his own. Amazing kid.

“I'll call the clinic today.” Sophie sat back on her heels. “Dr. Stampley didn't discover anything amiss before, but he mentioned more tests. We were going to see an ENT after the first of the year anyway. Maybe we can move things up.”

If there was any way to help Davey, Kade was all over it. He'd even pay for the office call. “I'll take him myself. Anywhere, anytime. Name the day.”

She placed her hand over his. “I know. Me, too.”

A day with Sophie sounded good, even on a trip to a throat specialist.

Davey looked back and forth between the adults, listening intently to the conversation.

“We think a doctor might be able to fix your voice,” Sophie told him.

He cocked his head and frowned before touching his hand to his throat. To a boy who'd never spoken, the notion probably seemed impossible.

Kade hoped not. Life had taken Davey's mother. The least it could do was give him a voice.

Reality, that cruel viper, raised its head and Childissed. Davey had no one. He was an orphan. A voice would help, but he'd still be alone in a cruel world.

“And then what?” he murmured, suddenly angry at the lousy injustice he couldn't control. Not in Chicago. Not even here.

Sophie shook her head and frowned a warning. Today was not the time. She was right, he knew, but he also knew if no relative was forthcoming, social services would make the decision. Davey would be lost in the system.

 

News travels fast in a small town and by afternoon, the buzz around Redemption reached a level louder than the church bells playing carols on the quarter hour. Pop bottle Jones, bundled to the ears against the cold, appeared at Ida June Click's front door. Today wasn't his first stop to check on the child he'd discovered in his trash bin, but this visit carried greater import.

Ida June, a dear but prickly friend, welcomed him inside to a hot, humid kitchen filled with scents he'd not smelled since his mother was living.

“What is that delectable smell?” he asked. His stomach, prone to beg, grumbled.

“Mincemeat,” she said as she slid a perfectly browned pie from the oven and placed it on a rack on the counter. “You have a very good nose on you, Ulysses,”

“A wise man does not forget the finer foods of Christmas past.”

“Sit down over there and I'll give you a slice.” She flapped an oven-gloved hand toward the metal dinette. “Be careful. This is hot. Don't burn yourself and blame me. You'll have milk with it, too. Much better that way.”

Hiding his smile, Popbottle shucked his coat and gloves and settled at the table. “Yes, ma'am, I shall, and will be grateful for both.”

Ida June sliced the flaky crust, the rich goodness of cinnamon and cloves filling the air as the steaming pie fell apart on the saucer. She set the plate and milk in front of him and then jerked out a chair and plopped down. “I reckon you heard about our Davey's mama.”

Popbottle held a fork aloft, waiting for the steam to dissipate. “Indeed. A real tragedy. How is the lad faring?”

“Pretty well, considering he has a funeral to attend and
not a relative anywhere to help him say goodbye. Cried awhile last night. Tore my heart right out.”

The news saddened him, as well. A child ought not to be subject to such heartache. “Then the rumors are accurate. Davey is alone in the world.”

“From all we can tell. A crying shame, too. He's a good boy. Sweet as that pie.” She jabbed a finger. “I wish I knew what was to become of him.”

“He seems to be thriving here. Perhaps he could remain with you.”

“Howard Prichard says I'm too old to take on a handicapped child.” She huffed. “Why, the only thing handicapped about Davey is his speech, and if you ask me, silence is golden. The world would be a better place if certain individuals were struck dumb.”

Popbottle grinned around the moaningly delicious bite of pie. He felt Ida June's pain. Being considered too old raised his ire, as well. “The only thing old about you, my dear lady, is a number.”

“Agreed. I doubt Howard could climb a ladder and repair a roof if his life depended on it, but I certainly can.” She flapped a hand in irritation. “I think he's still miffed over the time he was ten and I caught him striking matches behind his daddy's shed. Could have set the whole town on fire in that drought. I marched him right up to the back door and told his daddy. Fred fanned his britches good.”

“Yes, well, this time Howard is in charge and he says we're too old.”

“You, too?”

Popbottle scooped in another bite of scalding pie. He'd lose a taste bud or two and the proverbial hair off his tongue, but he didn't mind. A hot pie of this caliber was a rare delight, not to be taken lightly.