From part 3…
By the time that Harm arrived, they were all ready, but it had started snowing again.
"Is it too heavy out there?" Mac asked, gesturing to the window.
"No, it's not too bad," Harm dismissed, "Just as long as we take the SUV."
"Where were you thinking about going?"
"Well, I was thinking about the park, but I now we're going to have to find somewhere indoors.
"Yeah," Mac agreed, "Let's think about it in the car."
She checked through her latest 'fashion accessory,' the diaper bag, before they left. Lifting Calum up onto her hip, she grabbed her purse and key, and they headed out the door.
As it turned out, the fall of snow was much too heavy for a trip to the park, so they decided to head for a nearby mall with a large soft-play area.
Part 4…
"Wow!" Harm exclaimed, for the little boy's benefit, "Look at all of that, buddy! That looks like so much fun!"
Unfortunately, first they had to stand in the long admission line. But a few minutes later, they were inside, deciding what to do first. Calum toddled over to the ball pool and Mac let out a laugh when Harm grabbed him and jumped in.
Calum seemed to be having a great time!
"C'mon Aunty Mac!" Harm encouraged, "It's fun!"
With a giggle, Mac gave in and jumped in beside them.
"You like this, sweetie?" she beamed at the little boy 'splashing' the colourful, plastic balls.
"Yeah," Harm nodded, "he sure does!"
Next they watched Calum as he climbed through tubes and went down slides. All too soon, their fifteen minutes were up and they had to leave.
"Hoo, boy!" Harm exclaimed, "That was fun!"
Mac just grinned at Harm's 'happy kid' facial expression.
"Daddy," Calum demanded, "Go pee-pee…"
"At last!" Mac exclaimed, picking the little boy up, "I was getting worried about that!"
She turned to Harm, "Would you believe that this boy hasn't been to the bathroom at all since Bud and Harriet were around, yesterday?"
"No," Harm replied, "But just because I took him while you were on the phone to your Uncle Matt. Didn't I tell you?"
"No…" Mac looked at him, "You took him?"
"Yeah…so? You want me to take him, now?"
"No, I just didn't think…"
"I'm not that bad with kids, Mac."
"I didn't say you were…that's just something that I guess I never realised about you, that's all…"
"Do you want me to take him?"
"No, it's alright. It should be okay for me to take him into the lady's room, he's only three."
"I need to go to the men's room anyway."
This was all taking up valuable time and Calum tugged urgently on Harm's hand.
"Daddy…"
"Okay," Mac agreed, if only so that Calum would get to a toilet in time.
"Imagine that!" Mac thought to herself, once she was on her own, "Harmon Rabb Jr. acting all paternal! I could really get used to this…"
Afterwards, they went to the cookie stand in the mall, before returning to the car, because the parking time was due to expire.
"How about we just take a drive around DC?" Mac suggested, as she was getting Calum all strapped up and settled in the back of the car. Harm had put the heating on so that it was nice and warm and Calum sat quite happily, munching on his cookie.
"Don't you need to get home?" Harm asked, "You said you were going to call social this afternoon."
"It's still quite early," Mac shook her head, "Besides, everybody will be out at lunch, around this time."
"Okay, whatever you think," Harm conceded.
Part of him wondered whether this was an avoidance ploy on Mac's part, though.
"I know!" Mac suddenly exclaimed, asking, "Do you think that Bud and Harriet might mind having visitors, today?"
"I don't see why they would," Harm supposed, "Why don't you give them a call and see."
Mac did so and Harriet told her that they were always welcome around, at any time.
So, twenty minutes later, they pulled up in the Robert's driveway. Harriet had their front door open before Harm and Mac were even out of the car and while Mac was getting Calum out, she walked out to meet them.
"AJ's going to be happy to see Calum again," she noted, "You should have heard him last night, after we got home. It was Calum this and Calum that! 'Mommy, can Calum come and sleep over, tomorrow?' I had a hard time explaining that Calum is still too little for something like that."
"I don't know, Harriet," Mac said, as she lifted Calum into her arms, "He's been with me for two days and he still hasn't mentioned anything about his Mom…"
Here, Calum exclaimed, "Mommy!" and leaned in to snuggle into the side of Mac's neck and wrap his arms around her.
"He seems like he's got to be very attached to you, though," Harriet noted, smiling.
Once inside, Harriet went to go and find little AJ and Jimmy, while Harm, Mac and Calum joined in the living room, where he was feeding the twins.
As Harm and Mac were watching the twins get their lunch and chatting to Bud, quietly, something got hold of Calum's attention. His eyes became huge and his mouth widened into a grin of delight. On Christmas Day, the day before, Bud had fixed a battery-operated plane, suspended on a string, to the ceiling in the dining room. Now, Calum eyed the circling plane with glee and took off in a joyful, babyish half-run/half-hop, to go and take a closer took.
"Calum!" Mac laughed as she watched on, then followed behind, so that he wouldn't be out of her sight.
Harm and Bud also chuckled, peering around the archway separating the living room and dining room.
"Look at him!" Mac got out between bouts of laughter, "He loves it!"
Calum was now running in circles beneath the plane, trying to keep up with it and look up at it, at the same time. But he soon got dizzy, so fell back onto his diapered rear-end, to sit with his head right back and watch it.
With Calum so easily occupied, everyone else went back to the grown-up conversation and Harriet joined them, once she had brought the boys downstairs. Little AJ and Jimmy, who tagged along close behind his big brother, brought a whole stack of Christmas toys that they wanted to show Calum.
"He's so quiet," Harriet commented as she watched Calum politely watch AJ and Jimmy as they showed him all of the toys and what each one did.
"Isn't he?" Mac remarked, "I would have thought that a child his age would speak a lot more, but he hardly says a word."
"Maybe he's an only child," Bud suggested, "I remember that little AJ was a lot quieter before Jimmy came along. And Jimmy's certainly chattier than AJ was at the same age."
"Perhaps," Mac nodded, then continued, "I meant to ask you, how much sleep each night will Calum need?"
"At this age," Harriet told her, "Every child will be different, but I would say that the more sleep he gets, the better. So long as he isn't getting tired during the day. And a short nap in the afternoon will help to make sure that he doesn't get cranky in the evening."
Mac nodded, "Okay, well he started dozing yesterday evening, while you were over, then once we started eating dinner he woke up and had some too. I think we must have put him to bed around eight…"
She looked to Harm, who nodded and confirmed, "Yeah, around then."
"Then he slept until about five this morning. Once I got him settled again, he slept in until about half-seven. So, what…that's well in excess of ten hours…"
"That's really good, Ma'am," Bud told her, "When little AJ was around two, he went through this stage of only needing about six hours. He'd wake up at four in the morning, then end up really cranky in the afternoon."
"Hey," Harriet reminded him, "You were at work. You didn't have to put up with him! Remember?"
Harm and Mac laughed.
"Calum?" Mac called out to the boy, "Do you need to go potty, sweetie?"
The little boy looked to where she stood and nodded his head.
"C'mon then!" Mac urged him, holding her hand out to him.
He quickly got to his feet and ran to her.
"Here, Mac," Harriet stood, also, "I'll make sure that you've got everything you'll need…"
Jimmy wasn't quite at the potty training stage, yet, but little AJ was long past it, so Harriet wasn't sure that everything needed for Calum would be sitting out, in plain sight. Mac grabbed an extra pair of pull-ups from the diaper bag, just in case they would be needed.
When they returned, Calum returned to AJ and Jimmy and sat down beside them on the carpet.
"Hey, Mom!" little AJ called to his Mother, "Can Calum come to my birthday party?"
"We'll see, honey," Harriet told him, "It's not for a while, yet."
She looked back to the rest of the grown-ups, who all wore the same expression on their faces. They all knew that, in all possibility, Calum would not be around anymore for little AJ's birthday, he'd either be back with his Mother or in a new home. However, Harriet knew that she couldn't tell her son this, without upsetting him.
"We'll think about it, closer to the time," she told her son.
This seemed to satisfy little AJ.
After that, a subdued air settled upon the grown-ups.
"Umm," Harriet changed the subject, "So, do you have any plans for when you start back at work on Monday, Ma'am? Who's going to be looking after Calum?"
She was immediately sorry, when Mac replied, quietly,
"I was going to wait to sort that out. I'll be talking to social services this afternoon."
"But would they take Calum into care that quickly, Ma'am?" Bud asked, "I wouldn't think anybody would get out to you so fast. Then there's a suitable foster-home to find. I would think that it would take a bit of time…"
"I really don't know," Mac told him, "I don't know what to expect, yet, so I'm not going to worry myself about it in the meantime."
"Yes, that is sensible, Mac," Harriet nodded, patting Mac's arm, comfortingly, "Don't worry about finding daycare for Calum. With little AJ at school, I'd be glad to watch him for you, during the day. I'm used to having my four here and they all get on with him so well…"
They looked back to where the three boys were sitting together on the carpet, Jimmy and AJ playing with the toys and Calum just watching, but all of them never-the-less getting on like a house on fire.
Soon after that, the conversation dried up, so Harm and Mac thanked the Roberts for their hospitality and, with Calum, made their way back to Mac's.
"Why don't I stay for a while?" Harm suggested, when they arrived at his place.
"It's okay, Harm," Mac thanked him for his thoughtfulness, "but I'll be fine getting this done."
"But what about Calum?" Harm pointed out, "You don't want him around when you're speaking to social. I could keep him occupied, while you make the call in the other room."
Mac conceded that he was right, there was no way that she wanted Calum to hear anything about what was going to happen.
"Yeah," she nodded, "I guess that does make sense. Thanks."
"No problem."
Mac went into the bedroom to make the call, while Harm kept Calum occupied in the living room. Once she got through, she was passed around from office to office for a good while, which didn't serve to brighten her spirits any.
"What wrong with these people?" she thought to herself. Each person she spoke to thought that another colleague would be 'better equipped to deal with this sort of situation.'
"Chicken shit," Mac mumbled quietly, after being transferred for the sixth time.
Finally she got somebody who seemed to know what they were doing. She explained the whole situation to him and was actually unnerved when he didn't seem all that surprised.
"So the child was left on your doorstep, Ma'am?"
"Yes, that's right. I opened my front door, just after eight and he was just sitting there, in the hallway, asleep."
"Your front door? So the child was not outdoors for any length of time?"
"No, not as far as I know. The building is well-heated."
"And you are not a blood relative of the child?"
"No, I'm not, but the note from Calum's Mother left, it seemed that she might have known me or at least have been familiar with me. I meet a lot of people through my job as a lawyer, but I don't recall having seen Calum before."
"Do you still have the note, Ma'am?"
"Yes, I still have it."
"Good…Could I ask you, Ma'am, if you could please seal it in a plastic bag, so that we could send it for analysis?"
"Yes, that was one of the first things I did. But my fingerprints will be on it, I didn't realise what it was, at first."
It's unlikely that we'll get a hit on any fingerprints," the social worker discounted, "unless the mother has a criminal record, but maybe we could determine something else from the stationary used to write the note."
"Okay," Mac nodded.
"I could manage to get out to see you two tomorrow afternoon, if that suits?"
"Tomorrow?" Mac repeated, "Um, you could get here as soon as that?"
"If that is suitable for you, Ma'am," the social worker told her, "Are you able to manage in the meantime? If not, I'm sure that we could manage emergency…"
"No! No, we're managing just fine," Mac assured him.
"Okay, good. Well, I think I could be there by one…If you could give me your full address, Ma'am and your apartment number…"
Mac did so and that was that. She let out a breath as she replaced the receiver. Her mind told her that this was all for the best, but another, unidentifiable, part of her wondered just what she had set in motion.
"Hey," she greeted Harm as she came out of the bedroom, "All done."
Harm held a finger to his lips then pointed to Calum, bundled up in a blanket on the couch. The glint in Harm's eye suggested mischief and Mac soon caught onto the game that they were playing.
"Oh, Aunty Mac!" Harm exclaimed, melodramatically, "I can't find Calum! I only turned my back on him for a second and he just disappeared! I can't find him anywhere…"
Mac smiled as she eyed the tiny pair of feet sticking out of the end of the fluffy blanket.
"Well," she huffed, "I'm sure he must be around here somewhere…He couldn't have gone out of the apartment without all of his clothes."
All of Calum's clothes were on the floor, so Mac assumed that he must have shed them to play about in just his pull-ups.
"Oh my!" Mac continued, "Where on earth could Calum be?"
She sat down on the couch beside Calum with a 'whump' and carried on with the charade for a minute before suddenly reaching over and grabbing one of his exposed feet. She was rewarded with a burst of wild giggles.
"Wait a minute!" she exclaimed, "What's this!"
She pulled back the folds of the blanket, until Calum's smiling, impish little face came into view.
"Here he is!" she laughed, "We haven't lost him after all! Hey, you! What have you been up to? All of your clothes are on the floor."
"I was just taking off his shoes, after you went through to the phone in the bedroom," Harm told her, "And he just kept on pulling stuff off. First it was just his socks, but then it was his sweater, his t-shirt and his pants…Luckily, he stopped there!"
"Otherwise we'd be seeing that little six!" Mac playfully lay the boy across her knee and swatted his behind. Calum roared with laughter while she did so, then scrambled from Mac to Harm with gleeful, childish excitement. For a good few minutes, Mac pretended to go for him, again and again, while Calum would scream with delight and pull his legs in out of her way.
"Okay, that's enough, now," Mac finally decided, "We'd better start dinner. You wanna stay, Harm?"
"Yeah, sure," Harm nodded, "If you'll have me…"
"Hmmm," Mac thought to herself, making her way towards the kitchen, "Would I ever?"