The Christmas Child by Linda Goodnight Page A

normally pretty full, but I can stay awhile until we’re sure he’s all right.”
    â€œI can’t believe he’s never been to school. Do you think perhaps we misunderstood?”
    â€œNo.” Kade made a noise of frustration. “I was hoping to trace school records. Easy to find a person that way. Which means the investigation into his identity just got tougher.”
    â€œOh.” She hadn’t thought of that. She knew nothing about investigating a lost child or anything for that matter. Police work was off her grid. Where would he start? How would he ever discover anything about Davey’s past?
    They both stared for one silent, concerned beat at the boy happily playing with the affable dog. When Kade pushed a hand against his stomach—a stomach she knew bothered him when he worried—Sophie knew she would stay awhile. There were two males here that needed fixing and she was a fixer.
    â€œThere’s only one thing we can do at this point,” she said.
    The cynic raised a doubtful eyebrow. “What?”
    She grinned a cheeky grin. “Bake cookies.”
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    The place was chaos. Granted, her classroom was organized chaos, but noisy and vibrant just the same. Far different from the quiet Saturday morning spent baking cookies with Davey and Kade. Two males, one terse and one mute, didn’t generate a lot of noise. Nonetheless, Sophie couldn’t get them out of her head this busy Monday as she and her fifth graders began the cookie project in earnest.
    Sophie stole a quick glance toward the narrow window in her classroom door—a tiny space surrounded by bright paper poinsettias and shiny red garland—praying the noise didn’t seep out into the hallway and disturb the sixth graders next door. More than that, she hoped the principal didn’t decide to pay an unannounced visit to her classroom today.
    â€œMiss B., our group estimates eight pounds of flour.” The speaker was Shyla, a red-haired girl with freckles across her nose. Her twin, Skyla, listened in with an identical, perplexed expression. “Zoey’s group says we need five. Who’s right?”
    A babble of voices from surrounding groups all tried to speak at once, defending their estimations. Each year she divided the students into cooperative groups with diverse assignments. Set up in pods around the room, they began with math, estimating and figuring amounts of supplies needed for their groups’ baking, costs of the goods, expected gross and net profits. The early days were always the most chaotic as kids got the hang of the project. Sophie, of course, loved every minute of it, even though she went home every evening exhausted.
    â€œI think we have a mistake here somewhere, Shyla.” She tapped a finger against Shyla’s notebook figures. “Look at your recipes. Take the amount of flour you need for each batch of cookies. Multiply times the number of batches. Then divide that into the number of cups in a pound of flour. Remember, we’re using an estimate here to have plenty.”
    Shyla’s eyes glazed over. Sophie laughed and turned the child toward the screen hanging on the wall. “The data is on the SMART Board. Go. Check your figures. Teamwork, sugar doodle. And remind Trevor I’ll need his cost estimate once you’re done.”
    Shyla scooted away, a frown between her eyebrows as she and her twin debated the figures. Across the room Zoey, the local vet’s daughter, ran her fingers across braille instructions and spoke to her best friend, Delaney Markham. Sophie’s heart warmed at the way the two little girls had latched on to Davey and drawn him into their group. In two hours’ time, the blind girl and the mute boy had worked out a simple, effective process of communication with bouncy blonde Delaney as their go-between.
    Sophie’s thoughts drifted to this morning when she’d picked up Davey for school. He had been