Merry Mary Read online

  Also by Ashley Farley

  Her Sister’s Shoes

  Saving Ben

  Table of Contents

  Also by Ashley Farley

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  14

  15

  16

  17

  Author’s Note

  For All My Angels

  1

  The first rays of pink sunshine ushered in another day of suffering for the people who called Monroe Park in downtown Richmond home. An early winter storm had dumped six inches of snow on the city. With no clouds to blanket in warmth, temperatures had dipped into the teens for the third night in a row.

  Scottie Darden parked her 4Runner alongside the dirty snowbanks on Main Street. She pulled her stocking cap down over her blonde mane and tucked her camera inside her down coat. Grabbing the two Bojangles’ bags and carton of coffee from the backseat, she trudged through the snow to a cluster of men and women huddled around a burning trash can.

  Eyeing the bags of food, the group of five homeless people navigated toward Scottie. She handed out sausage biscuits and paper cups of coffee.

  Scottie had stumbled upon the Five by accident a year ago while investigating a series of muggings in the area. Their despondent faces had such a profound impact on Scottie that she’d returned the next day with warm blankets and buckets of fried chicken from Lee’s. Their gratitude had moved her even more, and over the next twelve months, she’d stopped by on a regular basis, always delivering nourishment and supplies. She’d seen others come and go, but this core group of five banded together like a family.

  “I brought extras today.” Scottie held up the second bag.

  Mabel gestured toward a row of makeshift tents fifty feet in front of them. Her name wasn’t really Mabel. At least not as far as Scottie knew. With gray hair pulled back from her café au lait face, the old woman reminded Scottie of the housekeeper who once worked for her grandmother.

  Scottie had never exchanged names with any of the Five. She’d grown to know them by their physical appearances instead.

  Buck was a strapping black man of about thirty, the one Scottie feared the most because of the temper she sensed smoldering just beneath the surface Then there was Pops, the oldest male, with leathery skin the color of dark chocolate. While he never showed his teeth, Scottie often detected the hint of a smile tugging along his lips. She’d named the woman with the plain face and dull green eyes Miss Cecil after her third grade teacher. She referred to the man in the wheelchair, with both legs amputated at the knee, as Dan, after Lieutenant Dan in the movie Forrest Gump.

  Scottie offered each of the Five another biscuit before moving to the makeshift tents. She passed out biscuits to women and men who were buried under blankets and sleeping bags. She heard the faint sound of crying outside the fourth tent. She tapped lightly on the cardboard door. When no one responded and the crying grew louder, she pulled back the cardboard and peeked inside.

  “Hello in there,” she called in a soft voice. “Can I interest you in some breakfast?”

  The crying intensified to a squall. Beneath a threadbare blanket, Scottie made out the unmoving form of an adult-size body and the flailing limbs of a smaller figure next to it.

  “Hello.” Scottie dropped to her knees and crawled inside. “Can I hold your baby for you while you eat a biscuit?”

  When the adult body remained still, Scottie peeled back the blankets to reveal a baby—three or four months old if she had to guess—with blonde peach fuzz on top of her head and a beet-red face. A girl, judging from the dirty pink fleece sleeper she was wearing. She pulled the covers back the rest of the way and gasped at the sight of the woman’s gray skin and purple lips. Scottie assumed the woman was the baby’s mother. She backed slowly out of the tent. “Someone, please help!” she cried. “I think this woman in here is dead.”

  The Five fled the scene, along with every other homeless man and woman in sight. Scottie patted her pockets for her phone, then remembered she’d left it connected to the charger on her bedside table. She surveyed the area for help—a policeman, a student, a businessman on his way to work—but the park was deserted.

  Scottie crawled back inside and picked up the baby, rocking her back and forth until she settled down a bit. She scooted over closer to the baby’s mother and checked her wrist and neck for a pulse, but there was none. The woman had been dead long enough for her skin to grow cold. Her eyes were closed, but her rosy lips were turned up into a smile, as though she’d seen an angel. Poor woman was probably no more than twenty years old.

  Scottie pulled the blanket over the woman’s face and said a silent prayer.

  Getting to a phone to call for help was the only thing on her mind when she zipped the baby inside her coat and made a dash for her car.

  2

  Scottie lay the baby in the passenger seat next to her. She started the engine and cranked up the heat. With one hand resting on the baby’s chest, she navigated the back streets of the Fan toward home. She had driven several blocks before her heart rate slowed and she began to process the situation. The medical examiner would take possession of the young mother’s body to await identification by the next of kin. If there even was a next of kin. The woman had been living on the streets. Where was her family? And what about the baby’s father? The makeshift tent they’d been sleeping in was tiny, too small for another body.

  Then there was the matter of an autopsy. Scottie assumed the mother had died of hypothermia, but what if that wasn’t the case? What if the young woman had overdosed on drugs, or worse, if her scorned lover had murdered her during the night? Scottie hadn’t seen any blood, at least not in the upper region of the body, but that’s not to say she hadn’t been stabbed in the gut. Scottie’s mind raced. If the woman had in fact been murdered, she had not only tampered with evidence at the scene of a crime, she had wrongfully taken the child away from the scene.

  She pulled up in front of her row house on West Avenue and put the SUV in gear. She beat the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. “God, Scottie, how could you be so stupid?” she said in a voice loud enough to make the baby cry.

  “Shh, don’t cry,” she said, rubbing the baby’s tummy.

  What would become of the baby? Scottie didn’t think the Commonwealth had the authority to place the baby up for adoption without permission of next of kin, which meant the baby would be placed in a foster home until the police could track down the father. If the father even wanted the child. If the father even knew he was the father.

  The baby began to wail, presumably with hunger. “Don’t worry, little one.” She picked the baby up and held her tight. “We’ll get it all sorted out. In the meantime, I have plenty of formula and diapers to keep you comfortable.”

  By the time Scottie got the baby inside, and mixed up a bottle from the supplies in her baby cabinet in the kitchen, the little girl was screaming, flailing her arms and legs in hunger. Scottie plopped down on the leather sofa in the adjoining family room, propped her snow boots up on the coffee table, and brought the bottle’s nipple to the baby’s mouth. The infant took the nipple between her lips, then thrust it back out with her tongue. Scottie turned the bottle upside down on her arm, letting a few drops of formula leak from the hole in the nipple, before returning the nipple to the baby’s lips. When she tasted the formula, the baby began to suck greedily.

  “Careful now, baby girl. Don’t drink too fast or you’ll upset your tummy.” The baby stared up at Scottie with bright eyes. “We need to give you a name, don’t we?”

 
Scottie had been in the process of picking out names for her baby when her daughter was stillborn at thirty-one weeks. She’d been torn between Kate and Liza, after her grandmothers Katherine and Elizabeth. She ended up calling the baby Angel, which seemed appropriate for an innocent child who never drew her first breath.

  Scottie’s eyes traveled the room, coming to rest on the nativity scene on the mantle above the fireplace. “Why don’t we call you Mary after the Virgin Mary?” She caught sight of the needlepoint pillow Brad had brought down from the attic—a green background with Merry Christmas in curlicue script in red across the front. “Or Merry, which seems appropriate for a spunky little girl like you.”

  The baby stopped sucking and smiled up at her.

  “I agree,” Scottie said. “I like them both as well. Merry Mary it is, then.”

  Scottie drew in a deep breath and sank further into the sofa. Exhausted already and it was only eleven o’clock in the morning. She reached for the remote control and powered on the television, tuning in to the local ABC affiliate. The cast of The View was seated around a table discussing the day’s news. Scottie was certain a unit had been dispatched to the park by now, although the discovery of a dead homeless person was rarely considered breaking news.

  She wondered how long it would take the police to learn of the missing baby.

  Scottie thought of her cell phone charging on the bedside table upstairs. As soon as Mary finished her bottle, she would call the police and explain the situation. No harm would be done, and they’d whisk the baby off to a foster home where she’d spend the rest of her life neglected and abused.

  “That’s settled, then, Merry Mary. I don’t see any harm in providing you with a warm place to stay and all the formula you can eat. At least not until the authorities locate your family.”

  Scottie removed the bottle from Mary’s mouth and lifted the baby to the burp cloth on her shoulder, rubbing her back until she let out a loud burp.

  “That’s a good girl. I bet you feel better now.” She returned the baby to the crook of her arm and gave her back the bottle.

  Scottie watched Mary’s eyes dart around the room, from the table lamp beside them to the canned light in the ceiling to the Christmas tree in the corner. Brad had dragged the tree home a week ago and strung it with lights, but so far, Scottie lacked the motivation to hang the ornaments. She wasn’t in the mood for celebrating the holidays this year.

  Following the loss of her baby in March, Scottie’s father suffered a near-fatal heart attack and subsequent quadruple bypass in April. Even her job as a freelance photojournalist, which had always inspired her, had begun to dishearten her lately with the constant arguing between the political parties in Washington and the endless mass shootings. Terrorist groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda remained a threat, but Americans killing Americans en masse on American soil was even more heartbreaking to Scottie.

  The faces of the Five stared down at her from various positions on the wall. Brad had been after her to take down the framed photographs for some time. “All these sad and lonely people are depressing me,” he’d said.

  Scottie visited the Five a half dozen times before she dared to bring out her camera. They didn’t mind if she took their picture as long as she handed out hot food in exchange. The emotions she captured were genuine and raw—anger and pain, loneliness and helplessness. She called her collection the Lost Souls. Two or three more photographs and she’d have enough for a gallery showing.

  The baby sucked the remaining formula out of the bottle and let out a contented burp. “Good gracious! Most men don’t burp that loud.”

  Mary tensed her body and scrunched up her face, grunting as she pooped.

  “I bet it’s been a while since anyone changed your diaper,” she said and clucked her tongue at the baby. “But that’s all right. We’ll get you cleaned up in no time.”

  Scottie carried the baby up the steep flight of stairs to the second floor. After her first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, she’d been cautiously optimistic when she made it through the first trimester the second time around. Even more so when her midpregnancy ultrasound revealed a completely formed fetus. Confident she would deliver a healthy baby, her friends had thrown her a big shower and outfitted her nursery with all the high-tech baby products on today’s market. And Scottie had spent hours watching YouTube videos on every infant care subject available—from breastfeeding to bathing to bedtime routines.

  She laid Mary on the changing table and stripped off her filthy sleeper and rancid diaper, gasping at the sight of the infant’s body. Dirt was caked in the creases of her skin and a rash covered her neck and bottom.

  With the naked baby tucked under one arm, Scottie gathered the things she needed for her bath and headed down the hall to the bathroom.

  She filled the infant tub and lowered the baby into the warm water. Mary splashed and kicked the water with delight. “Looks like Merry Mary likes her bath,” Scottie cooed. She lathered the baby with soap, then rinsed away the dirt with a soft washcloth. She lifted her out of the tub, dried her thoroughly, and wrapped her in a hooded towel for the trip back to the nursery. After coating Mary’s bottom in Desitin cream, she squeezed her into a newborn-size diaper, and maneuvered her little limbs into the largest sleeper she could find.

  “First chance we get, we’ll go shopping for supplies.”

  Once in her crib, Mary fell asleep before Scottie could close the blinds and turn off the light.

  Scottie stretched out on the twin bed beside the crib. No wonder my friends with babies are always complaining about being tired, she thought before drifting off to sleep.

  3

  The ringing of the doorbell followed by the loud tapping of the brass knocker woke Scottie an hour later. Mother. Only Barbara Westport announced her arrival with such enthusiasm. Scottie hopped to her feet and tiptoed out of the nursery. She was halfway down the stairs when the bell rang again.

  Scottie swung the front door open. “Geez, Mom. Give the doorbell a rest. I heard you the first time.”

  Her mother eyed Scottie’s disheveled appearance. “Time to get up, sweetheart. I thought you’d given up sleeping until noon in college.” Barbara brushed past her in a cloud of Chanel No. 5 perfume.

  “For your information, I was taking a nap.” Scottie followed her mother through the house to the back room. “I got up at the crack of dawn to work this morning.”

  Barbara stopped in front of her bare Christmas tree. “And just what have you been working on? Obviously not your tree.”

  Scottie’s parents lived on a spread of land in Goochland, twenty minutes west of Richmond toward Charlottesville. Every year, on the day after Thanksgiving, her mother decked their Dutch Colonial farmhouse out in bows of holly and every other kind of evergreen that grew on their property.

  Aside from her L.L. Bean gumshoes, Barbara appeared the picture of elegance dressed in gray flannel slacks, a gray cashmere sweater, and a lavender wool cape. Her dark hair and eyes were in stark contrast to her daughter’s. Scottie took after her father’s Swedish ancestors, while her brother, Will, was the spitting image of their mother.

  “I plan to finish the tree today, Mom. I’ve been working on my series.”

  Her mother shot a glance at the Lost Soul photograph nearest her. “Please tell me you haven’t been in the slums taking pictures of those filthy vagrants again.”

  Barbara was no stranger to volunteer work. She frequented soup kitchens and raised money for a number of different charities. One year she served as Christmas Mother for the Times-Dispatch Christmas Mother Fund, a program that raised funds to provide toys, clothing, food, and other assistance to needy families and children across the area.

  “I was delivering hot food to the homeless. I don’t see how that’s any different than working in a soup kitchen.”

  “There’s a big difference, Scottie, and you know it. You won’t catch me venturing into unsafe neighborhoods.” Barbara wagged her finger at Scottie. “And you sh
ouldn’t either. Your husband and I don’t see eye to eye on much, but his concern about the safety of your… hobby is one thing we have in common.”

  Scottie’s parents had warned her against marrying Brad. They’d not only been concerned about their daughter getting married right out of college, they’d also seen straight through Brad’s big talk.

  “Don’t be so quick to believe everything he says, honey,” her mother had warned, while her father had suggested they wait a year or two until they got to know each other better. When all their attempts to persuade Scottie to postpone the marriage failed, her mother had even begged them to try living together first, a proposal that contradicted her parents’ traditional values.

  “I’m thirty-years old, Mom. I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m not so sure about that, if the state of your home is any indication.” Barbara noticed the nativity scene above the fireplace. “At least you decorated your mantle.”

  “Ha. I never took it down from last year.”

  “Well, then.” Barbara dropped her Stella McCartney hobo bag on the sofa. “Lucky for you I’m free this afternoon. We can have this tree decorated in no time.”

  Scottie picked up the purse and handed it back to her mother. “Thanks, Mom, but I can handle the tree myself. I’ll probably wait until Brad gets home, anyway.”

  Her mother arched a manicured eyebrow. “I didn’t realize Brad was away.”

  “He’s gone to California for his annual Christmas visit with his family.”

  “Ah, yes, the Phantom Fam.”

  Scottie hated it when her mother threw her own words back in her face. Brad’s family wasn’t exactly a figment of their imaginations. They’d all met his obnoxious, opinionated parents when they came for their wedding seven years ago. They’d just never returned to Virginia again. Never mind that he never asked Scottie to go to California with him. The one time she’d confronted him about it, he’d made a lame excuse about being unable to afford the airfare.