Cradle and All Read online

Tom exhaled a heavy breath. “I never knew how old she was.”

  “Is that supposed to be some kind of excuse?” Anne’s voice was suddenly so cold—so very, very cold.

  “No. Just a statement of fact. Please sit down, Anne.”

  “I’ll remain standing, thank you.”

  “Will you listen to what I have to say?”

  “If I weren’t willing to listen, you’d be talking to Scott Hunter right now.”

  So she was here to give him a chance to explain, despite what she had learned and what she must think of him. That had taken some faith on her part. Hope filled Tom’s heart—the first hope he had felt since opening the door a few minutes before.

  Tommy stopped feeding, thrust the bottle aside and began to cry. Tom burped him and the little formula he had consumed came right up.

  The baby had been difficult ever since Tom had picked him up from Maureen Cooper the night before—almost as though he was still mad at Tom for leaving him for those few hours. Now his crying rapidly escalated into a scream.

  “Let me try,” Anne offered, stepping forward.

  Tom handed her the baby and she snuggled him gently against her chest. Tommy’s cries subsided. He stared up at her, his big blue eyes wide. Anne smiled at him and slipped onto a nearby chair. “Give me the bottle,” she said, her voice suddenly soft as she held out her hand, continuing to smile down at the baby.

  When Tom passed the bottle to her and she offered it to the baby, Tommy took it without hesitation. As Tom watched her work her magic with the child, he felt an ache to hold them both within his arms.

  “I believe you were about to explain yourself,” Anne said, still not looking at him.

  Tom knew she was keeping her voice soft for the baby’s sake. He got up and poured himself a cup of instant coffee. It tasted terrible and scalded his tongue. But it was strong and wet, and his mouth suddenly felt very dry.

  “It’s hard to know where to start,” Tom said.

  “The beginning,” Anne responded softly, still looking at the child.

  “I received my religious education at the General Theological Seminary in New York City,” Tom began. “My first assignment was a parish in Boston.”

  He could see it now in his mind’s eye, the transition from the quiet Chelsea oasis of cloistered lawns and flower gardens within redbrick buildings to the bustling working-class district of Boston teeming with traffic and the loud cacophony of all its untidy humanity.

  “The rector of the parish was a scholarly man and a masterful fund-raiser,” Tom said. “He set out to teach me all he knew. But it was the homeless, the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the mentally ill—society’s shamed and discarded, who showed up to eat the food we set out each day in the soup kitchen—who taught me the most. From them I learned the power of compassion.”

  Anne heard Tom’s sincere gratitude for those lessons woven deep within his words. Her eyes rose to his.

  “Then, one day, a boy—no more than eleven—stood in line with the rest,” Tom said. “The scared look in his eyes immediately told me he was a runaway.”

  He paused. Even now he could still see the boy’s face clearly—too clearly.

  “I sat with him while he ate, asked him if I could help,” Tom continued. “He was leery at first. After a while he relaxed a bit and told me his name was Kyle. He also told me that no matter what I said or did, he wasn’t going home.”

  “Why?” Anne asked.

  “There were cigarette burns on his arms. Someone at home was using him as an ashtray.”

  Tom saw the sharp sadness flash through Anne’s eyes. “What did you do?” she asked.

  “I took Kyle home with me. Eventually, he told me the whole story. I got his okay to report his abusive stepfather to the police. I promised Kyle they’d take the guy away. The police arrested the stepfather. Kyle’s mother came to the church to pick him up, all teary-eyed and thankful to have her son safely back.”

  “So it ended well,” Anne said.

  “No, his stepfather made bail and beat Kyle to death with a baseball bat.”

  Anne flinched.

  “The next runaway who came to the soup kitchen was a girl of thirteen,” Tom said. “Her pimp dropped her off.”

  He went on to describe the girl with the big brown eyes and bruises covering both her arms. It hadn’t been easy for Tom to win her trust. When he heard about her nightmare of a childhood, it chilled his heart. He worked hard to convince her that she had options other than prostitution. He promised he would see her safely to a state-run boardinghouse, and eventually she let him take her there. A week later Tom found out that she’d died from a drug overdose. The drugs had been supplied by another girl at the boardinghouse.

  A shudder ran through Anne’s shoulders as she heard the fate of the girl. Tom hadn’t wanted to shock her or cause her pain, but he was afraid he had just done both.

  “Anne, I’m only telling you about these children in order to explain why I wasn’t so eager to return the next runaways I found to their families or to the state.”

  Anne nodded but said nothing.

  “It seemed like every other week after that, I’d see a new one in the soup kitchen,” he continued. “I wanted to find a safe place for them to stay. So I convinced one of my parishioners to donate an old warehouse. It wasn’t much to look at but it had light, heat and plumbing.”

  Tom’s shelter for runaways gradually took shape in Anne’s mind as he described how he and the kids had haunted garage sales and convinced people to donate discarded appliances and furniture and even power tools. He’d taught the runaways basic carpentry skills, and in no time they had built separate bedrooms for themselves. Their sense of pride in what they had accomplished transformed them, as well as their living space. The five runaways he began with soon burgeoned into twenty-two.

  “I promised them that if they kept away from drugs, alcohol, gangs and prostitution, they were welcome,” Tom said. “I even got my parishioners to employ them in odd jobs so they’d have a little pocket money.”

  “You weren’t afraid they’d use it to buy drugs?” Anne asked.

  “Having a job where they learned responsibility and earned money from honest labor was emancipating for them—and a strong contributor to a sense of self-worth. A kid needs a strong sense of self-worth to stay away from drugs.”

  “What about school?” Anne pressed.

  “I did some basic remedial math and reading with the ones who needed it, but mostly what the kids wanted and needed was the sense of belonging they got when we sat down at the table together every night.”

  “Like a family,” Anne said, not finding it difficult to picture Tom sitting at a table with a bunch of smiling kids.

  After hearing the experiences of their fellow runaways, some had realized they didn’t have it so bad, after all, and had asked him to take them home. He was happy to do it. But for the remainder, going home would never be an option. They weren’t wanted there and they knew it.

  “Did you consider that these kids could have been placed in foster homes?” Anne asked.

  “They were emotionally and physically abused preteens and teens with attitudes. Anne, we both know that those kinds of kids are virtually impossible to place.”

  She agreed with a troubled nod.

  Anne’s phone rang and Tom reached into her bag and retrieved it for her. He took Tommy out of her arms as he handed her the phone.

  The baby had finished feeding, so Tom flipped a fresh towel over his shoulder and proceeded to burp him. He spit up less this time. Anne told Maureen Cooper that she was in the middle of something and would have to call her back.

  “Where does Lindy fit into all this?” she asked as she closed the cell phone.

  Ah, Lindy. Tom held the baby with one hand as he chugged down t
he last of the bitter tasting coffee with the other. Compared with his thoughts it was sweet. He set his cup on the counter.

  “Lindy showed up at the soup kitchen one afternoon. She wore a torn, skimpy outfit and was limping. One of the women parishioners who prepared the food asked Lindy if her pimp had hurt her. When I saw the shocked look on Lindy’s face, I knew that despite her appearance, she wasn’t a prostitute.”

  Tom had talked to Lindy for hours as that snowy afternoon turned into evening. He’d tried to convince her she’d be safe at his shelter. But Lindy was very distrustful, even more so than the other runaways he’d met. She finally agreed to go because it was so bitterly cold out and her only other option was sleeping on the street.

  Slipping onto the kitchen chair next to Anne, Tom settled the baby against his shoulder. “The other girls at the shelter later told me that Lindy had been beaten and kicked out of the house by her mother. The mother’s latest boyfriend was showing too much interest in Lindy and the mother was jealous.”

  “Lindy told them that?” Anne asked.

  “Apparently. She never said a word to me about her past then or later.”

  Anne learned from Tom that it had taken two weeks at the shelter before Lindy started to relax and realize she was safe. Tom was trying to figure out which one of his parishioners he could approach to get her a job when the parish computer went into meltdown. Without a word, Lindy sat down at the terminal and fixed it.

  “She must have been trained in computers,” Anne said.

  “She told me she had taken a couple of classes,” Tom said. “But I also think she just had a natural talent.”

  Tom put her to work in the parish office. In no time at all she had transferred all of the parish’s paper records to the computer database, was zipping out letters and answering the telephone like a pro.

  “As the months went by, I didn’t know how I had ever done without her,” Tom admitted. “I said those very words to her. Only too late did I realize my mistake.”

  “Mistake?” Anne repeated.

  “Lindy was very leery of men. That was why it had been so difficult for me to convince her she’d be safe at the shelter. It didn’t take much imagination to realize she’d been sexually abused. But it didn’t occur to me that being kind to Lindy would be misinterpreted.”

  “She thought you were in love with her,” Anne guessed.

  “And she thought she was in love with me.”

  “When did you find out?” Anne asked.

  “She came into my office one afternoon and started to take off her clothes. I asked her to stop. When she told me she loved me and wanted me, I tried to explain to her that what she was feeling was gratitude—not love. When she persisted, I had no option but to leave the office.”

  “You left?”

  “Yes, Anne. I realized then that I had been wrong to let her work at the parish.” Tom exhaled heavily. “I should have realized it from the first.”

  Anne heard the deep sadness in Tom’s voice as he described his conversation with Lindy the next day. He had tried to explain to her that he respected her too much to touch her in any way that would be improper. He told her he’d found her another job, away from the parish house. But Lindy didn’t want the other job. She begged him to let her stay with him. When Tom explained that it wouldn’t be possible, she became upset. Before she stalked out of the parish house, she telephoned the bishop and told him about Tom’s shelter for runaways.

  “You never told your bishop about the shelter?” Anne asked.

  “I knew neither he nor the rector would approve. When the bishop found out that I was taking care of homeless, underage kids, he demanded I close the shelter at once and turn the children over to the proper authorities.”

  “Did you?” Anne asked when Tom paused.

  “I tried to convince him that the only real chance for the kids was the support of adults who cared.”

  Anne knew what Tom would tell her next—that his plea had fallen on deaf ears. The bishop could not condone violating the law under any circumstances. He’d given Tom twenty-four hours to close the shelter. Tom went to talk with the kids. He hoped to get some of his parishioners to take them in, but Lindy had gotten there first and convinced them that Tom was turning them over to Child Care Services. They had vanished into the wind.

  “I’m confused why Lindy would turn on other runaways that way,” Anne said after a moment.

  “I had hurt her,” Tom said. “She was trying to hurt me back by sabotaging what she knew I cared about—providing the kids with a family.”

  “Did you ever see them again?” Anne asked.

  “No. Lindy had spread the word on the street. None of the kids even came back to the soup kitchen. That’s why when the bishop asked me to interview for the vacancy at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Cooper’s Corner, I agreed.”

  “You felt you had failed in Boston.”

  “No, Anne, I knew I had failed in Boston. I told the search committee here all about the illegal shelter I had run for the homeless kids. And how I had let the kids down. The committee conferred quietly for a few minutes before their chairman, Felix Dorn, stood up, looked me right in the eye and said that the Berkshire Hills were full of survivors looking for a fresh start. And if I would like to join them, they would be proud to have me as their priest. That was just over a year ago.”

  “And what of Lindy?” Anne asked.

  “I did not see Lindy again until she presented Tommy to me for baptism last Friday afternoon.”

  “Are you telling me you didn’t impregnate her?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  Anne’s face was suddenly full of light. Tom didn’t think he had ever seen anything more beautiful than her smile of relief.

  “I could kill you for lying to me before,” she said.

  “Anne, I’ve never lied to you.”

  “Of course you did. You told me you were Tommy’s father.”

  Tom took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I am.”

  The smile washed off Anne’s lips like water. “Are you playing word games with me?”

  “No, Anne. I’m telling you the truth. I will always tell you the truth.”

  “Well, if Lindy wasn’t Tommy’s mother, who is?”

  “There are some things that I am not able to discuss.”

  “What’s to discuss? I just want to know who Tommy’s mother is.”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Tom, you can tell me,” Anne said, her voice a sudden plea. “I need to know. Please.”

  “I...can’t.”

  The disappointment darkened her eyes and her voice. “Why can’t you?”

  Tom wanted to tell her. God knew, he wanted to be able to see her lovely smile again. He wanted everything that he knew was possible between them. With all his heart he wanted it. He would have given anything. No, almost anything.

  “I can’t explain, Anne. Please understand. I would if I could.”

  Anne rose to her feet. “I left my blouse here yesterday. I’m going to get it now.”

  And then I’m leaving and I won’t be back. She hadn’t said the words, but they were written all over the dark distress and disappointment on her face. She headed out of the kitchen.

  “Anne...”

  She didn’t turn around. A second later she was gone.

  Tommy started to cry. Tom hugged him. “I know how you feel, little guy. Believe me, I know.”

  The doorbell rang. Tom did not want to answer it. He wanted to go after Anne and find the words to convince her to stay. But he knew he had no words now that could do that.

  The obstacle that stood between them was not one he could move.

  The doorbell rang again. He had to answer it. The Church of the Good S
hepherd was always open to those in need. He could still help others, even if he couldn’t help himself. Tom’s step was heavy as he went to see who was there.

  * * *

  ANNE FOUND HER blouse hanging up in Tom’s closet. It had been ironed. She let out a sigh that hurt. She didn’t want to be touched by anything that Tom did.

  But she was touched by everything he did. When she listened to how he had put himself in jeopardy with both the church and the police by personally taking responsibility for those runaway children, she had seen a depth of courage and kindness in him that she’d never seen before in a man.

  She tried to swallow the hard knot of disappointment sticking in her throat. After showing her all that, how could he do this to her now? All she had asked him for was the answer to a simple question. What was behind this stubborn secrecy that he held on to so tightly?

  Well, whatever it was, she didn’t care anymore. She was fed up with his evasions. A man who couldn’t be completely honest with a woman wasn’t worth the anguish.

  What kind of relationship could any two people hope to have when openness and honesty were missing? She didn’t have to wonder. She’d had two of those relationships already in her life.

  The doorbell had sounded a moment before. As she stepped into the hallway, carrying her blouse, Anne could hear male voices coming from the living room. She was glad that Tom had company. Now she could slip out through the kitchen door and not have to see him. Ever again.

  Then she heard Tommy let out an anguished cry.

  Anne rushed to the end of the hall and looked into the living room to see what was wrong.

  Two men were standing just inside the entrance with Tom. The short, burly one had a balding, broad head, shrewd eyes, and wore a custom-made silk suit. Anne conservatively estimated its cost at six months of her salary. A gold Rolex winked from beneath his sleeve. His voice was an annoying bark.

  “I’m Attorney George Shrubber. This is my associate, Chet Bender.”

  Chet Bender was a moose of a man with a mop of thick black hair and feral eyes. He stood at least six-five and probably weighed two hundred fifty pounds.

  “Associate?” Tom repeated.