It would be strange, Nest thought, if he was to return to Hopewell after all this time. Findo Gask had seemed sure he would, and despite her doubts about anything a demon would tell her, she was inclined to think from the effort he had expended to convince her that maybe it would happen.
That was an unsettling prospect. An appearance by John Ross, especially with a demon already looking for him, meant trouble. It almost certainly foreshadowed a fresh upheaval in her life, something she didn’t need, since she was just getting used to her life the way it was.
What would bring him back to her after so long?
Unable to find an answer, she walked with Josie down the empty, shadowed hallway, stained glass and burnished wood wrapping her in a cocoon of silence.
-=O=-***-=O=-
She spent the next two hours working in the nursery, having a good time with the babies and Josie, doing something that kept her from thinking too much about things she would just as soon forget. She concentrated instead on diaper changing, bottle feeding, telling stories, and playing games, and left the world outside her bright, cheery room of crayon pictures and colored posters to get on by itself as best it could.
Once or twice, she thought about Paul. It was impossible for her to be around babies and not think about Paul, but she had found a way to block the pain by taking refuge in the possibility that she was not meant to have children of her own but to be a mother to the children of others. It was heartbreaking to think that way, but it was the best she could do. Her legacy of magic from the Freemark women would not allow her to think otherwise.
Josie helped pass the time with wry jokes and colorful stories of people they both knew, and mostly Nest found herself thinking she was pretty lucky.
When the service was over, a fellowship was held in the reception room just off the sanctuary. After returning her small charges to their proper parents, Nest joined the congregation in sipping coffee and punch, eating cookies and cake, and exchanging pleasantries and gossip. She wandered from group to group, saying hello, asking after old people and children come home for the holidays, wishing Christmas cheer to all.
“What’s the world coming to, young lady?” an indignant Blanche Stern asked when she paused to greet a gaggle of elderly church widows standing by the narthex entry. She peered at Nest through her bifocals. “This is your generation’s responsibility, these children who do such awful things! It makes me weep!”
Nest had no idea what she was talking about.
“It’s that boy shooting those teachers yesterday at an outing in Pennsylvania,” Addie Hull explained, pursing her thin lips and nodding solemnly for emphasis. “It was all over the papers this morning. Only thirteen years old.”
“Takes down his father’s shotgun, rides off to school on his bike, and lets them have it in front of two dozen other students!” Winnie Ricedorf snapped in her no-nonsense teacher’s voice.
“I haven’t read the papers yet,” Nest explained. “Sounds awful. Why did he do it?”
“He didn’t like the grades they were giving him for his work in some advanced study program,” Blanche continued, her face tightening. She sighed. “Goodness sakes alive, he was a scholar of some promise, they say, and he threw it all away on a bad grade.”
“Off to his Saturday Challenge Class,” Winnie said, “armed with a shotgun and a heart full of hate. What’s that tell you about today’s children, Nest?”
“Remember that boy down in Tennessee last year?” Addie Hull asked suddenly. Her thin hands crooked around her coffee cup more tightly. “Took some sort of automatic rifle to school and ambushed some young people during a lunch break? Killed three of them and wounded half a dozen more. Said he was tired of being picked on. Well, I’m tired of being picked on, too, but I don’t go hunting down the garbage collectors and the postal delivery man and the IRS examiner who keeps asking for those Goodwill receipts!”
“That IRS man they caught dressing in women’s clothes earlier this month, good heavens!” Winnie Ricedorf huffed, and took a sip of her coffee.