Presently the back door opened and Ben tumbled in shrieking, with Tom close behind. "This time I really am going to catch you, Benny Boy!”
Ben grabbed Faith ecstatically around the knees. "I won, I won!”
Faith picked him up, gave him a big kiss, stroked his hair, blond like hers and beginning to lose its curl, then asked that timeless maternal question, "What did you do in school today, sweetie?" It received the usual answer, one that varies only among "nothing" and "I don't know" or, in Ben's particular case, total silence. She reflected how silly it was to ask day after day, but knew she would keep on and one day, perhaps when he was in high school, he'd sit down and give a blow-by-blow account of his every waking minute since he'd left her side and then she'd probably not be paying attention.
Tom held up a blood-red finger painting. "Look what Ben made. Isn't it wonderful?" Their eyes met. Neither of them had any illusions as to their son's precocity or lack thereof. It looked like millions of other two-and-a-half-year-olds' finger paintings. Ben was affectionate, cheerful, sometimes cooperative, and that was enough for them.
“Sit down and I'll get lunch. I had an interesting call from Chat this morning.”
Tom would miss supper—much of a minister's life is spent not in prayer but at committee meetings—so Faith had cooked a big lunch, as she often did when his schedule was like this. They'd have something light when he got home, and she'd feed Ben early. With luck, he'd be asleep. Now they sat down to a casserole of boneless chicken breasts she had lightly poached in white wine and layered with zucchini and carrot matchsticks and blue cheese. The juice from the chicken and what was left of the poaching liquid that she had poured over it made a delicious sauce. There was also some nutty basmati rice and steamed pea pods. With the holidays, she was trying to keep an eye on their calories, although Faith was as slender as she had always been and Tom never seemed to fill up his tall, rangy frame. He was trying manfully now.
“This is delicious, honey. Ben, we are two lucky guys." Ben was daintily picking up each grain of rice left on his plate after he had impaled all the rest of the food on his eager little fork.
“So—what's the news? Why did Chat call? It had to be for a reason; she never calls just to talk.”
Faith related the call and, as she did, wished she had jotted down the exact wording of Howard's letter. She'd call Chat back and ask her to read it again.
“Farley is over at Hubbard House now. You met him before he moved—Farley Bowditch. I've dropped by a couple of times to visit him. He seems happy enough and I've never seen anything that would suggest he should be otherwise. The place itself is beautiful. It was the Aldrich estate, and Dr. Hubbard has kept the grounds pretty much as they were. People go over to see the rhododendrons in the spring. They're planted along the drive and pretty spectacular." Tom glanced out the window at the overgrown, woody shrubs in the parsonage backyard. They looked particularly bleak in winter. "This year we really have to do something about those bushes. Cut them back, fertilize ..."
“Yank them out and start over," Faith suggested. "But tell me more about Hubbard House."
“I don't really know much more. I've met Dr. Hubbard several times, and he seems to genuinely care about the elderly. People around here have a great deal of respect for him—and his whole family. They're all involved with the home. His son's a doctor too and his daughter's a nurse, I think."
“Sounds like 'Marcus Welby' and 'Father Knows Best.' "
“Now that you mention it, he does look a little like Robert Young, except Dr. Hubbard is taller—bigger all over, and he has that old Yankee voice, sort of a combination of marbles in the mouth and foghorn."
“Not unlike your father." Faith laughed.
Tom glanced involuntarily over his shoulder. The adage in the Fairchild house had always been "Spare the voice and spoil the child."
“I can't see that there could be any harm in asking around about the place—or danger," Tom added pointedly, referring to some of Faith's previous investigative endeavors.
“You know, Tom, I'm pleased that Chat asked me to help. Not that I'm about to trade my whisks and spatulas for a cape and magnifying glass, but it means she has some respect for my sleuthing abilities.”
Tom's reply, which Faith recognized as a heavy-weather warning flag gliding up the mast, was cut short as they both suddenly realized that during their conversation Ben had slid down from his chair and was quietly and gleefully scattering an entire box of linguine over the pantry floor.
“Ben! What are you doing? No, no. That's very naughty! You help Mommy pick up all these spaghettis immediately!”
Tom surveyed the mess. On the Ben scale it was merely a two. Nothing like emptying the vacuum or the ultimate ten, crawling into Tom's mother's car and releasing the emergency brake—fortunately on level ground with several adults running frantically after him.
“Honey, I have to run. I have a meeting with the new divinity school student who's going to be working with us this winter. I'll call you later.”
Faith came over and gave him a kiss. "You mean you actually prefer talking to another adult to cleaning up pieces of spaghetti from the floor? Naughty, naughty."
“Don't put ideas in my head. I hive to work this afternoon.”
Faith turned back to the linguine. Ben thought it was almost as much fun picking it up as throwing it down, and afterward Faith cleared away the lunch dishes and took him upstairs for a nap.
While he was sleeping, she planned her campaign. MacIsaac first, then Millicent. Not that she believed in delaying the inevitable, but since Millicent was going to treat her like a congenital idiot, she'd like to know at least one or two things about Hubbard House beforehand. That way she might not appear to be a complete fool—to herself.
She made a quick call to Chat, took down the exact wording of Howard's letter, and baked the Norwegian Christmas bread she had prepared that morning.
Faith loved the holidays—the traditions, the food, the getting and giving. She'd taken Ben down to New York last week for a look at the tree at Rockefeller Center, the poinsettias massed on the altar of St. Patrick's, and the windows at Saks and Lord & Taylor—even though he was still a little too young to truly appreciate it all. It was never too soon to start. For her these periodic trips to the city, especially at certain times of the year, were a kind of life-support system. Back in Aleford at the end of the long cord, she was willing to grant that New England was the perfect place to be at Christmas. They had already had the first snow, which melted quickly but brought a reminder of things to come. At this time of year no one thought of getting stuck in snowdrifts, backbreaking shoveling, chapped lips and drippy noses. Instead, memory brought the full moon shining like a bea- con over unmarked fields of snow, snowflakes on mittens and tongues, sledding and snow angels, tall pines covered with white, and the feeling of sitting before the fire while the storm swept past the windows and down the chimneys.
But Faith wasn't thinking Currier and Ives. She was thinking Hubbard House.
Chief MacIsaac wasn't at the station. Deputy Dale Warren told Faith to try Patriot Drug—the Chief had mentioned he needed some throat lozenges, might be starting a cold. If he wasn't there, then, of course, try the Café. Faith thanked him and wheeled Ben in his stroller out the door and back up the street toward the pharmacy. Like most of Aleford, it had been there forever and no one save herself appeared to find anything humorous about the name, or the fact that besides what one would expect to find in a store of this nature, they also sold the odd case of tuna fish, lawn mower parts, seed packets in the spring, and shoes. Not shoes like those found in Svenson's Shoe Store up the street, where Ben sat on a wooden pony and tried on little Stride Rites with what seemed liked greater and greater frequency, but shoes with the labels cut out or slightly mismatched. If one of your feet was a seven and the other an eight, Patriot Drug was the place for you. It was also one of the few places in the country, no doubt, where you could still get old favorites—and possibly collectibles—in the Friendship Gardeh line, Dierkiss talc, and Muguet des Bois perfume. Patriot's policy was keep it till it sells. Faith peered in the door, noticed they were having a special on rather dusty cases of imported bonbons, but didn't see Charley.