Faith gave her a grateful look and took the tray into the dining room. The table looked very pretty. She'd covered it with shiny gold paper and put candles everywhere. She'd filled every vase she could find with greens and red carnations, then tied trailing gold moiré ribbons around the bases. The dining room had a fireplace too, and she went back into the kitchen to tell Tom it was time to light the fire.
She came in on the tail end of a joke. Tom, Chat, and Ben—who was joining in just to be merry—were in gales of laughter.
“Tell Faith," Tom said as he wiped his eyes. "She needs some comic relief."
“I told Tom that now there was absolutely no reason for you to feel guilty. Hubbard House was going on, and the next time Millicent said anything, you should look past her and say sweetly, 'I was merely finishing what I started two years ago—now I have the bats in the belfry.' “
Faith jotted it down next to the phone.
The Millers were the first to arrive, and Samantha promptly took charge of Ben and the children's table set up in the kitchen after first exclaiming how precious he looked. He did look pretty precious in navy-blue velvet short pants and a shirt with tiny trains embroidered on the collar that Chat had given him.
“What will I do when she discovers older boys?" Faith wailed to the Millers.
“Bite your tongue," said Sam. "Now we older boys"—he put an arm over each of his sons' shoulders—"want to know where all the edibles are.”
Faith steered them into the dining room, whereChat was doing the honors—a teapot in one hand, her own mug of vin chaud in the other. Pix followed her in, and followed her out again as the front doorbell sounded. She had been there for several hours earlier, but still appeared to need to shepherd her friend around.
The parsonage filled quickly, and soon guests were happily munching and sipping. Millicent had arrived, and Chat was managing to keep her away from Faith by waving a plate of brandy snaps someone had brought in front of her face. Millicent wasn't a member of First Parish—she was a Congregationalist, as were her ancestors back to the flood but she moved with ecumenical fluency from the functions of one religious institution to another, putting an oar in wherever possible—welcome or unwelcome.
Pix wasn't the only one attached to Faith, and she found that whenever she went into the kitchen to replenish supplies, she was accompanied by a dozen or so people who seemed not to want to let her out of their sight. This was terribly reassuring, though rather inconvenient. Tom and Charley MacIsaac had been among their number until Faith pulled them aside and swore she wouldn't even go to the bathroom without telling one of them.
The children were decorating gingerbread cookies under Samantha and Jenny Moore's watchful eyes. The Nutcracker was on the CD player and Faith took a moment to let the feeling of the holiday wash over her. It was Christmas Eve, a time of magic and promise. And despite a few scratches, she was here to enjoy it.
Two hours later she and Chat were sitting in the family pew waiting for the pageant to start. It was very cold out, and the few steps from the parsonage to the church had felt like the Iditarod. Faith hugged her coat close to her and moved an inch or two nearer to Chat's ample frame. The three Advent candles burned brightly on the altar. The choir began to sing "Silent Night" while the children walked down the aisle dressed in sheets, cut-down bathrobes, old drapes, looking for all the world like real angels, shepherds, kings, queens, and the Holy Family. Eight-year-old William Carpenter stepped forward and started to read slowly and clearly: "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree ...”
Ben was one of the angels and did not fidget too much until it was time for him to appear to the shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night. Faith thought of her own public debut, a nonspeaking role as a tree in first grade. She'd felt she was destined for better things. Ben seemed to be handling his first foray with an equal lack of stagefright. The only hitch had been when he had removed his halo during the processional, saying loudly that it itched him. Tom was watching his flock while seated to one side of the pulpit, and his eyes searched for Faith's as Ben's group started to sing "The First Nowell." There seemed to be a tear or two in his and she knew there were in hers. Chat squeezed her hand.
It was a lovely pageant, and Pamela Albright, kneeling unobtrusively in front of the children and gently supplying a line here and there, deserved a medal. The kings arrived and the congregation welcomed them with a rousing rendition of "We Three Kings." More than one dear friend of Faith's seemed to stumble over the "Sealed in the stone cold tomb" line, and the lady herself skipped the verse altogether.
Near the end of the pageant the three Queens arrived, an addition Pamela had suggested after discovering Norma Farber's poem "The Queens Came Late." Samantha Miller stepped forward and read it now:
The Queens came late, but the Queens were there with gifts in their hands and crowns on their hair. They'd come, these three like the Kings, from far, following, yes, that guiding star.
They'd left their ladles, linens, looms, their children playing in nursery rooms, and told their sitters: "Take charge! For this is a marvelous sight we must not miss!”
Faith thought she would have felt the same way: not wanting to miss anything. It was what life was all about. She listened to the gifts the Queens brought—"a homespun gown of blue, and chicken soup—with noodles, too—and a lingering, lasting cradle-song." Then she heard the last lines:
The Queens came late and stayed not long, for their thoughts already were straining far—past manger and mother and guiding star and child a-glow as a morning sun toward home and children and chores undone.
Faith folded her hands over her for-the-moment flat belly and said thank you, then stood up with the rest of the congregation to sing "Joy to the World."
“How about Sophie?"
“How about Sophie who? Sophie Tucker? Hagia Sophia?”
Tom had been on the edge of sleep and he was tired. A few hours after the pageant there had been the candlelight service; then when they got home, Chat was waiting with champagne, ginger ale for Faith, and some caviar from Petrossian's she'd secreted in the back of the refrigerator. The three of them had sat by the tree talking and savoring until late. There was the Christmas Day service tomorrow and Ben would be rousing them in what seemed like a few minutes to see what Santa had brought.
“How about Sophie as a name for the baby? Like a little French schoolgirl? Or maybe Emma? Emma Woodhouse? Emma Bovary? Emma the Laura Ashley perfume?"
“What makes you so sure this is going to be a girl?"
“I don't know. It just feels like it's going to be a girl.”
Tom rolled over and drew Faith close to him. "Well then, why don't we name her Pandora after her mother and be done with it?”