The Christmas Quilt (Quilts of Love Series) Page 6

  “Everyone in your schweschder’s house knows that Rachel acted inappropriately, but maybe we don’t know why. Sometimes, Adam, a thing is broken in a person, much as the bone was broken in my leg. The doctors were able to fix my leg.” He tapped his shin with the cane, and something inside of Adam flinched.

  He remembered too well the fear his father might not have survived the buggy accident and the deathly whiteness of Jacob’s face when they had found him in the snow that evening. Samuel had been the first to spy the twisted buggy, but Adam had joined them there as they’d waited for the ambulance. It had been a frightening time and perhaps when he’d first stepped into manhood.

  “When a thing is broken inside a person, way down deep inside, it can become infected. It can affect everything else—like the infection in my leg affected my entire body. Like the dirt in the engines you fix affect the entire machine. Until the person allows the Lord to see their deepest needs, their deepest fears, they’re likely to limp along.” This time Jacob reached down and rubbed at his leg, and Adam wondered if it hurt. His father wasn’t one to complain, so he’d probably never know. “Fears and needs cause folks to limp along emotionally, much like my leg forces me to hobble.”

  Adam stood and began pacing. “So you’re saying I should allow her to talk to Leah that way, that I shouldn’t have defended my fraa.”

  “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”

  “Rachel is neither deaf nor blind. You’re telling me to be kind to her, but the woman is bitter and I will not have her being rude to Leah. At the very least, given Leah’s condition, Rachel should treat her with respect—”

  “Do you?”

  Adam froze, midway to the wall of the barn, pivoted, and stared at his father. “What?”

  “Do you treat Leah with respect?”

  “Why would you ask me that?”

  “It seems you’re quite worried about her when someone else acts unkindly, but perhaps you have forgotten your first job as her husband is to love her as Christ loved the church.” Jacob didn’t blink, didn’t back down.

  For a moment, Adam thought the sadness in his father’s eyes might have something to do with his marriage, but that was crazy. It wasn’t as if Jacob could have heard their fighting on the way over, or as if he could know they no longer slept together. Surely those things were normal for a couple in their situation.

  Had Leah talked to his father or mother?

  And beneath that, quieter, the question his father asked echoed, Did he treat Leah with respect?

  Reba bounded into the barn. “Mamm says the food is ready to eat if you two have finished out here.”

  “I’m starved, and I imagine your bruder is too.” Jacob stood and smiled when Reba linked her arm through his.

  He made it to the barn door before he turned and said, “You’re coming, right?”

  Adam nodded, but he didn’t follow immediately. He needed a few minutes alone, and suddenly eating wasn’t the most important thing on his mind.

  Annie waited as long as she could, but when her mother sent Reba to the barn to fetch Adam and her father, she knew it was time.

  “I’ll go and check on Samuel and Rachel.”

  Rebekah patted her arm. “Gut, dear. You tell them the food is ready.”

  She would have knocked on the guest room door, but Samuel had left it ajar, so she pushed it open, clearing her throat to signal she was walking in. She didn’t want to interrupt a private moment between brother and sister-in-law. This was all so awkward. Before they were married, Samuel had shared with her that Rachel had suggested he move back to Ohio. Move there, marry her, and help to raise his nephews.

  He might have done it too, out of a sense of obligation, but he’d fallen in love with the community nurse.

  “Rachel, I want you to listen to me—”

  But she wasn’t listening. She was standing with her back to him, looking out the window at the clouds pressing down over their pasture. He reached for her arm and turned her around, and that was when she noticed Annie had entered the room.

  “Annie. Have you been listening for long?”

  “Nein, Rachel. I haven’t. Mamm asked me to come and tell you the food is ready.”

  “And so you decided to sneak in here and eavesdrop?”

  Samuel let out a sigh of exasperation. His gaze met Annie’s and somehow she knew what he wanted. She crossed the room, and instead of joining him, she went to Rachel.

  She stood close, but not too close. In the years since Rachel had moved to Mifflin County, Annie had attempted to befriend her. She had failed. Now it seemed to her that Rachel was acting like one of Reba’s animals—cornered and frightened. At the same time, the memory of the scene in the next room was fresh. She didn’t want anything to hurt or upset Leah or the babies she was carrying.

  “Rachel, is there something you need? Something that Samuel and I can do for you? If the store isn’t making enough money, we’d be happy to—”

  “To do what, Annie? Hold an auction for me? Make me your next charity case?” Rachel stiffened her spine. “That won’t be necessary, danki.”

  “You are important to me, Rachel. I think you know that.” Samuel scrubbed his hand over his face, and it dawned on Annie how much weight he carried on his shoulders. They’d spoken of this as they lingered over their Bible study earlier. Samuel had confessed some days he did a better job than others of handing his burdens over to their Lord. They’d laughed at the time, admitting their failures. Now she understood that the failing, for both of them, could be a costly one.

  “I will, we both will, gladly do what we can to help you—” Samuel paused and glanced toward the door. “As well as Zeke and Matthew.”

  Annie noticed that Rachel closed her eyes at the mention of her boys.

  “But there are others I care for as well. Annie, of course.” Their eyes met again, and Annie thought she felt the baby inside of her move. “As well as Annie’s family. Leah is young and at a vulnerable time in her pregnancy right now. I consider her to be my family as well as one of my patients.”

  Samuel stepped closer and lowered his voice. “You will not speak rudely to her again. You will not devalue her in any way. If you have a difference of opinion with Eli, or any business matter that needs settling, you will save it—”

  “But he—”

  “You will save it for the proper time and place, which is not my home or any home on Sunday.”

  Rachel’s face blushed red.

  “Am I clear?”

  Rachel drew herself up to her full height, and Annie was struck again by how tall she was, tall and exceptionally beautiful.

  “Tell me you understand, Rachel.”

  She pressed her lips together until they formed a white line. “Oh, I understand.”

  He motioned, a ladies-first gesture. Rachel left the room, heading straight for the bathroom.

  “Do you think she’ll be all right?”

  “Today? Yes. But something is wrong she’s not speaking of. I’ll ask the bishop to meet with her, but I doubt she’ll be any more open with him. I’ll also write her mother.” His last words were added softly as he touched her arm gently and they returned to the sitting room.

  Jacob and Reba were back from the barn. As they began a time of silent prayer, Adam slipped in through the mudroom. Within a few moments they all began eating and soon they put the rough start to their meal behind them. It wasn’t too hard, at least on the surface. Reba entertained them with tales from the veterinary practice. Charity updated them on how David was doing, and Rachel’s boys chimed in with stories from the schoolhouse. Soon the snow began to fall outside—not a heavy snowfall, but enough to cast a special glow on the day.

  A fire crackled in the big cast-iron stove, and its coziness dispelled any earlier gloom. Eli challenged Matthew to a game of checkers and Jacob sat by the fire, showing Zeke how to whittle a piece of wood into a whistle.

  Adam was pretending to read The
Budget, but it was soon obvious from the sounds behind the paper that he was asleep.

  Though Rachel didn’t actually participate, she did sit near the window and read.

  Leah waddled out of the bathroom and up to the counter as Annie was setting out the desserts. “Little guys must be taking up a lot of room inside me. I can’t believe I had to go again.”

  She glanced from Annie to Rachel, who stood and walked to the other side of the room, to watch Matthew’s checkers game.

  Annie and Leah were carrying the leftover lunch food to the refrigerator in the mudroom when Leah started giggling.

  “Are you going to share with me what you’re laughing about?”

  “I wish you could have seen the look on your face, and on Samuel’s face, when Rachel said my knitted booties were horrid.” Leah’s giggles turned into full laughs and she had to put her dish down so she could hold her stomach. “Oh my, that was priceless.”

  “Leah Weaver.” Annie lowered her voice to a whisper. “Here I was worried that Rachel Zook had hurt your feelings.”

  “Didn’t hurt my feelings. Doesn’t keep her from selling the things I make, and I can use the money. Maybe we can fashion a sign saying horrid little booties.” Leah giggled again, then wiped her eyes and grew serious as they moved to the window, propped their elbows on the ledge, and studied the falling snow. “And did you see the way Adam jumped to my defense? It was nice.”

  The silence stretched between them for a few moments.

  “My life isn’t perfect by any measure,” Leah added. “But hers must be awful lonesome.”

  “Lonesome?”

  “Sure. You can be surrounded by people and still be lonesome. No one to speak to once the boys are in bed. No one to watch the snow fall with if you wake early in the morning.”

  Annie reached forward and touched the windowpane. The temperature outside was dropping, and she was glad she’d be spending the evening beside Samuel. “You’re a pretty smart girl, you know that?”

  “Doesn’t take smartness to understand why someone snaps or to see that Samuel’s sister-in-law is afraid of something.”

  Annie was so surprised at Leah’s words that she jerked her head up, bumping it on the window shade that was half pulled down.

  Smiling, Leah reached out and straightened Annie’s prayer kapp.

  As they stood there, the sounds of their family in the room behind them, Annie thought about Leah’s observation. The idea gained merit the longer she considered it.

  “What would Rachel have to be afraid of though?”

  “I don’t know. Some days I’m afraid of what people will think about me being as big as a house. Other days I’m afraid that my marriage might be broken, and I’m certainly afraid I’m doing things wrong.”

  Leah’s words stayed with Annie as they walked back into the sitting room and helped themselves to a small piece of dessert.

  It didn’t occur to her until later in the evening that the fight had actually begun with Rachel and Eli. Why would Rachel be picking a fight with Eli?

  She’d been so worried about Leah the last few weeks, but now she wondered if maybe Rachel was the one who needed rescuing.

  But how did you rescue someone who was afraid, especially when they wouldn’t give you even a clue as to what had given them such a fright?

  7

  Annie spent Monday morning doing the laundry that had piled up from the previous week. Since there was only she and Samuel, there wasn’t a lot to do, but she was still surprised at how dirty a man’s clothing became when he spent the day working in the fields or in the barn.

  She accessed their basement by going outside via the mudroom and down two steps. It had long narrow windows running the length of the south wall. Annie couldn’t have explained it, but there was something she liked about the basement. Maybe it was the shelves of food—canned and winking at her along the north wall.

  To the left were rows of vegetables—squash, beans, carrots, corn, and peas. They all waited there for her to choose from each evening. It was like having her own grocery store, and though the canning had been hard work, she loved walking downstairs and selecting one for their dinner. The right side of the shelves held berries from Leah’s bushes and preserves Annie had made with her mother. There were other fruits as well. Items she’d traded with women from church.

  There was abundance.

  Every time she came into the basement, to fetch one of the jars or to do the laundry, she was reminded of the harvest and of God’s goodness. The words she’d read with Samuel the day before echoed through her mind. “I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth.” It was from the book of Jeremiah, from the Old Testament. Jeremiah was one of her favorite books, though there was much violence within its pages. What she clung to were the promises there, despite what Jeremiah and God’s people endured.

  The jars of food, the windows with the light, even the smell of washing powder—all of it combined to make the basement a cheery place. So even when she came down to do the loads of laundry, Annie found she was in a good mood. She was grateful.

  Although it was cold outside, the snow had stopped and the temperatures were above freezing. She’d try hanging the clothes out on the line and see if they’d dry. They probably would.

  She filled the machine with two small buckets of hot water, tapped from the water heater, which was a wood-burning one—same as her parents had. Samuel always checked the room on Mondays and made sure everything was ready for her before he went to the barn. Actually, the basement was almost warm, given the water heater, the windows, and the size of the room—about the length and width of their living room.

  After measuring a half-cup of laundry powder, Annie pushed their bed sheets into the machine. One yank on the starting cord was enough. The gasoline engine had been stalling, but Adam had come by and serviced it a month ago. This time it started up immediately. She added the soap powder to the water as the agitator began moving the sheets back and forth. Annie glanced at the battery-powered clock on the wall, noting when ten minutes would be up.

  A large sink was positioned under the south wall with a cold-water faucet. Next she went through the process of filling both washtubs with rinse water using a small bucket. One she added fabric softener to and the other she added bleach to. By the time she had both of the washtubs ready, the ten minutes were up and she began running the sheets through the wringer and into the first tub of rinse water.

  It took several times through to work all the soap out, but in the end their sheets smelled fresh. This was her third and final load for the day. The first two loads sat by the door, waiting for her to carry them outside.

  After she’d moved the sheets to her basket, she wrapped up in her coat and scarf and carried the basket outside. In the summer, she would have combined all three loads into one basket, but Samuel had cautioned her about carrying lighter loads—because of the baby. She didn’t think wet laundry weighed so much, but caution was a good thing.

  As she walked over to the clothesline, the sun was fighting through the high clouds, and she was certain everything would be dry by afternoon. She could hang things in the basement, but preferred the freshness of laundry hung outside.

  She was pinning the second sheet to the line when Samuel appeared at her side. “Ready for me to dump your rinse water?”

  “Ya. How do you always know when I’m done with a load?”

  She smiled and slapped at his hand as he reached for the other end of the sheets. “Don’t think about it, Samuel. Those sheets took me thirty minutes to clean. Let me see your hands.”

  “Maybe I’ll empty that water for you,” he said with a wink.

  “Danki,” she called after him.

  He waved as he moved toward the basement. Watching Samuel dump out the water from her washtubs, then stack them back inside the basement, Annie wanted to make him something special for lunch.

  And she wanted Leah and Adam to experience the home life s
he had. She wanted life to always be like this.

  It would seem that Adam was feeling he couldn’t measure up as a father. And Leah felt unloved or unlovable as a wife. What were they going to do with those two? Or maybe, as Samuel had suggested, it wasn’t their place to do anything.

  Maybe they were to pray and be the best family they could be. She continued pinning the sheets as her mind replayed their conversation from the night before, after everyone had left, when she heard a buggy approaching. Peeking around the sheets, she saw her sister, Charity, smiling and waving from her buggy.

  Samuel came back out of the barn to see to her buggy, and Charity met her at the basement door as she was going back for the other two loads of laundry.

  “Let me help you with that.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t come to help me hang clothes,” Annie teased.

  “Actually I did. I was hoping to make it here before you finished.” She ducked inside with Annie and they both came out carrying a basket. They had the rest of the clothes hung in five minutes.

  Annie enjoyed watching Charity. She hadn’t changed at all in the last three years. Still slightly round and still completely beautiful. She seemed to grow more like their mother every day, both in how she looked and in her temperament. Annie was expecting an announcement that Charity and David Hostetler were to be married, but so far nothing.

  Maybe today.

  Maybe it was what Charity had come to talk to her about.

  They hurried into the kitchen, out of the cold.

  “Tell me the real reason you stopped by.” Annie began pulling out the leftover stew from a few days before and put water on the stove so she could make them a hot drink.

  “I did want to help you with the laundry. I would have been here earlier, but Reba’s clothing was a real mess. You wouldn’t believe what her dresses look like after a day at the vet clinic.”

  “Worse than the barn?”

  “Ya. Much worse.”

  Annie thought back to the evening she had helped birth the calf. “I suppose I can imagine. Is she working again today?”