Page 4 of At Midnight Comes the Cry
Russ shifted the baby and manipulated his tiny arm in a wave.
Clare laughed. “I don’t think he’s really feeling it.”
“At least he’s not scared. I wasterrifiedof the jolly old elf. Mom has all these photos of my sister smiling and sitting on his lap while I ran shrieking from the VA hall.”
They watched as the sleigh rode out of sight. It was the end of the parade. The start of the holiday season. Clare put her arm around her husband. “It’s going to be our first Christmas together as a family.”
“Hopefully it won’t involve any more street fighting and screaming women.”
She bumped him with her hip. “No more police work for you. Things are nice and quiet at the church.” Something cold touched her nose. Then another. “Oh, Russ, it’ssnowing.It’s perfect.” Snowflakes began drifting out of the night sky, dazzling in the street light and the firelight and the glowing lanterns. She took a breath and dared fate. “It’s going to be a perfect holiday.”
Russ looked down at her, bemused. “We’ll see, Reverend. We’ll see.”
THE FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
1.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30
For a guy who didn’t believe in God, Russ thought, he spent a lot of time in a church. He had done his time in the Methodist kids’ choir and youth group, but his regular attendance ended right around the time his dad had died—not from any embittered broken religious beliefs, but because at sixteen, he was too much of a handful for his beleaguered mother to budge of a Sunday morning. Except for the occasional unavoidable prayer or memorial, his twenty-odd-year career in the army had never included worship, and his first wife had been about as nonobservant as a Catholic could get. When she had died, he hadn’t even tried to corral some never-met-her-before priest; he let Kilmer’s Funeral Home handle the service.
And then he had married the rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church.
He hadn’t avoided Sunday shifts at the police department, but he hadn’t sought them out, either, and after Ethan was born, well, somebody needed to keep him on Sunday mornings, and it wasn’t going to be the parish priest. And if Russ was taking care of the baby anyway, it seemed ungenerous to sit alone at home when they could be sitting in Clare’s church. Soon, he’d be old enough to go into the church nursery, but for now, Russ was still polishing a pew, listening to Old Testament and Gospel readings and hearing his wife preach.
He liked the singing.
The Advent hymns, he had discovered, tended to be deep and doleful, with some nice baritone parts. They were doing one now for therecessional; the choir marched down the aisle two by two, singing, “The king shall come when morning dawns, and daylight gilds the sky.” The older lady next to Russ, seeing him trying to juggle the hymnbook and a wriggling baby, plucked the book from his hand and held it out so he could follow. She, he noticed, didn’t need to look at it for either the words or the alto harmony.
The crucifer passed by, then the deacon, and then Clare, who winked at him. Then they were on the big finale: “Oh, come that day so longed for, the dawn that e’er shall last.” It wasn’t printed with an exclamation point, but that didn’t stop the congregation from singing like it was.
And then church was over for another week.
Except, of course, it wasn’t. Clare had to stand by the narthex—why Episcopalians had fancy words for things like “entryway” Russ never understood—and greet the people lining up to leave. Other parishioners headed for the hall, looking for coffee and the offerings of competitive baked goods. Then there were the baby groupies. He had discovered Ethan worked like a magnet, drawing a mostly older, mostly female crowd who liked to comment on his growth—bigger!, his hair—so blond!, and his cheeks—so plump! While he was still chief of police, he could always expect a few remarks directed toward him from parishioners curious as to the best way to make their parking/speeding/failure-to-yield tickets disappear. But after resigning, he had been reduced to the status of Bearer of the Sacred Infant. This morning, he allowed Ethan to be carried away by a group of besotted aunties. Maybe that could be his next job. Rent-a-grandchild.
“Hey.” Clare slipped her arm around his waist. “I’m going to shuck my vestments. Do you want to go to coffee hour, or head home?”
“Coffee hour, definitely.” The parish bought a variety of fair-trade, locally sourced, environmentally friendly beans that should have tasted like smugness, but instead were ridiculously good.
“Okay, see you in there.” Clare headed for the sacristy, which, Russ allowed, was a shorter name than “changing room and silver storage.” She was almost knocked over as several kids came running full tilt through the hallway and pelted up to the choir pews behind the altar.
Betsy Young, the choir director, appeared from behind the organ, settling kids in their places and handing out sheet music. Russ imagined he could smell that coffee waiting for him, and was about to resume his advance on the parish hall when Hadley Knox came through the hallway door.
Knox, the newest officer on the MKPD, was the single mother of a boy and girl, both of whom had been pressed into service in the children’s choir. Knox herself attended services in an on-again, off-again fashion, but since her grandfather, who served as St. Alban’s janitor, was a regular, the kids rarely missed Sunday school. Today must have been an exception, since they were both shedding their parkas as they crossed to the chancel—another fancy liturgical word for “everything up there around the altar.”
Knox spotted him. “Chief!”
He shook his head. “Not anymore, Knox.”
She was carrying two mugs. She sidled into the pew and handed him one, setting the other on the polished wood and shucking off her coat.
He took a sniff.Coffee. “May I?”
“Go right ahead. It’s not crazy sweet like you take it, though. I always bring two if I’m sitting through rehearsal. They tend to run long.” She settled next to the mug on the pew. He lowered himself, careful not to slosh the hot drink on the polished wood.
“How are you doing?” Russ was pleased the first question out of his mouth wasn’tHow is the department doing?It was a small town; if anything was going wrong, he would have heard. The fact he wasn’t privy to every detail of every day… was something he needed to get over. “How was Thanksgiving?”
