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The little girl nodded.
“Me, too,” Nancy announced as she jumped to her feet.
Clara drew the horse to a walk, then looked at the excited little girl. “It’s important we sit when we’re riding in a buggy.”
“Why?” both boys asked at the same time.
Worried that speaking about the dangers on the road might upset the twins and remind them of how their parents had died in a truck accident, she devised an answer she hoped would satisfy them. “Well, you see my horse? Bella is working very, very hard, and we don’t want to make it more difficult for her by bouncing around too much in the carriage.”
“Oh,” said a quartet of awed voices.
“Like horse,” Nancy said, sitting on the front seat again. “Pretty horse.”
“Ja. Bella is a pretty horse.” She slapped the reins and steered the carriage along the twisting road, making sure she watched for any vehicles coming over a rise at a reckless speed.
When a squirrel bounced across the road in front of them, the kids were as fascinated as if they’d never seen one before. They chattered about where it might live and what it might eat and if they could have one for a pet.
“It’s easy to catch a squirrel,” Clara said. “Do you know how?”
“How?” asked Andrew, folding his arms on the top of the front seat.
“Climb a tree and pretend you’re a nut.” She waited for the kinder to laugh at the silly riddle, but they didn’t.
Instead they became silent. The boys sat on the rear seat, and the girls clasped hands as Nettie Mae again began to chew on the end of her braid.
What had happened? They were old enough to understand the punch line, and she’d expected them to giggle or maybe groan. Not this unsettling silence.
“Where Onkel Isaiah?” Nettie Mae asked.
“Want Onkel Isaiah,” whined her twin.
“We’re going home to make supper for him,” Clara said, keeping her tone upbeat.
“Onkel Isaiah make supper,” Nettie Mae insisted.
“She’s right,” Andrew added. “Onkel Isaiah said he’d make supper until Grossmammi and Grossdawdi get home from ’freeca.”
Glad Isaiah had explained the kinder’s grandparents were in Ghana, Clara was able to understand the boy’s “’freeca” meant Africa. She struggled to hold on to her smile as she said, “But I offered to make supper tonight. It’s nice to share chores sometimes, isn’t it? Your onkel and I will be sharing the work.”
“I’ll help,” crowed Andrew at the top of his lungs.
“Me, too!” shouted his twin.
Before Clara could ask them to lower their voices, Nettie Mae began to pout. “Me too little.”
“Nonsense,” Clara replied. “My grossmammi says God has work for all his kinder, no matter if they’re young or old.” She turned the buggy at a corner, following the directions Daniel Stoltzfus had given her. “Sometimes it means taking care of the beasts in the fields or making a nice home for our families. Other times, it’s letting Him know we love Him. We can sing a song for God. Do you know ‘Jesus Loves the Little Children’?”
“Ja!” they shouted.
She put her finger to her lips, but was relieved that they hadn’t withdrawn as they had when she told the joke. “Do you know sometimes Jesus hears the song best if we sing quietly?”
“Really?” asked Andrew.
Already she could tell he was the one who spoke for his siblings. She suspected he was also their leader when they got into mischief.
“Ja,” she answered. “Jesus listens to what’s in our hearts, so when we sing quietly, it helps Him hear our hearts’ voices.”
Singing along with the youngsters, she watched for the lane leading to the Beachys’ farm. Her hopes were high this job would be the perfect way for her to have time to decide what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. The kinder were easy to be around...as long as she kept them entertained. Their onkel would be busy with work, so she probably wouldn’t see him other than at meals.
Driving up the lane toward the large white house with its well-kept barns set behind it, she imagined the first day her parents found money from her in their mailbox. She planned to send her pay home to her parents. Perhaps even Daed would be pleased with her efforts and acknowledge she wasn’t a silly girl any longer. There was a first time for everything. Wasn’t that what the old adage said?
Chapter Two
Clara kept the twins busy once they arrived at the Beachys’ house and had put Bella in a stall in the stable out back. The boys’ straw hats hung on pegs next to her bonnet by the door. The kitchen was a spacious room with cream walls and white cupboards. A large table was set near a bow window with a wunderbaar view of the dark pink blossoms ready to burst on the pair of crabapple trees. Every inch was covered with toys or stacks of dirty dishes.
When she asked the youngsters to pick up their toys and put them in the box in the front room, they kept her busy showing off their dolls and blocks and wooden animals and more trucks and tractors than she had guessed existed. She tried one more time to tell them a silly story, but again they became as silent as a moonless night.
What was she doing wrong? She must mention this to Isaiah when he returned to the house. Maybe after the kinder were in bed, though she’d be wiser to talk to him in the morning when the youngsters were focused on breakfast and paid no attention to the conversation.
Help me find the truth, Lord, she prayed as she put another stack of dishes in the sudsy water and began washing them. The youngsters wanted to help, but she had visions of water splashed everywhere. Instead, she made up a game, and they arranged boots by size beside the door. The weather might be warm, but a good spring rain would turn the yard into mud. It’d be a few weeks before they’d put winter boots away in the cellar.
As the twins debated which boot went where as if it were a matter of the greatest importance, Clara hid her smile and finished the dishes. She took the youngsters upstairs so she could see their rooms after she had swept and mopped the kitchen floor. Once it dried, her shoes wouldn’t stick to the wood on every step.
All the kinder slept in the same room. It was the breadth of the rear of the house, and she guessed from patches in the wood floor it once had been two rooms. Had their daed planned to put the wall up again once the twins were older? She silenced her sigh so she didn’t upset her charges. Not that they would have noticed. One after another tugged on her hand, urging her to come and see the dresser and the pegs on the wall where their clothes hung or to look out the windows, both with a view of the fields beyond the barns and a pond. By summer, the frogs living there would sing a lullaby each night to soothe them to sleep.
The sound of the mantel clock downstairs tolling the hour interrupted Andrew, who was eager for Clara to see his coloring book.
“Time to make supper,” she said.
“Me help!” Nancy and Nettie Mae cried at the same time.
“Everyone can help.” She led the way down the stairs, looking over her shoulder to make sure she was not going too fast for their short legs.
It wasn’t easy, but Clara found jobs for each kind with setting the table or helping her find the bread, as well as telling her where the pickles were stored in the cellar. The twins were excited when she uncovered a bright red oilcloth in the laundry room and spread it over the table. Using it under the youngsters’ plates would make cleaning up afterward simpler and quicker.
Once the twins were carrying spoons and plastic glasses to the table, she went to the refrigerator. As she’d expected, it was full of food brought by caring neighbors. She lifted out a large casserole pan. Peeling back one corner of the foil covering the dish, she discovered it was a mixture of tomato sauce, hamburger and noodles. She hoped the kinder and Isaiah would enjoy it. She was sure they would savor the chocolate cake she’d found in an upper cupboard. She lit the oven with matches from a nearby drawer, put the casserole in, set the timer and went to help the youngsters finish setting the table. Several glasses and two spoons hit the floor on the way to the table, but she rinsed them off and handed them back to the twin who’d been carrying them.
Soon a fragrant, spicy scent filled the kitchen. The casserole must contain salsa as well as tomato sauce. Her stomach growled, and the kids kept asking when supper would be served. She reminded them each time that they needed to wait for Onkel Isaiah. That satisfied them until they asked the same question thirty seconds later.
Hearing the unmistakable sounds of a horse-drawn buggy coming toward the house, Clara helped the kinder wash their hands. She scrubbed their faces clean before urging them to take their seats at the table. As the timer went off, she opened the oven and lifted out the casserole. She was putting it on top of the stove when the kitchen door opened and Isaiah walked in, the twins instantly surrounding him.
He started to speak, but a peculiar choked sound came out of him as he scanned the room as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. He set his straw hat on an empty peg next to her bonnet and strode past the long maple table where the twins again sat. He paused between the gas stove and the kitchen sink, turned to look in each direction before his gaze settled on her.
“Am I in the right house?” he asked.
She couldn’t help smiling in spite of her determination to keep Isaiah at arm’s length. As long as the only thing between them was business, everything should be fine. “I hope so, because this is where your brother said to go, and we’ve spent the past two hours here.”
He shook his head. “But there were dirty dishes everywhere when we left this afternoon, and my boots tried to cement themselves to the floor where the kinder had spilled food and milk.”
“I know.”
“How did you do all this in such a short time?” he asked as if he expected to see dirty dishes piled in a corner.
“Practice.” She smiled at the kinder. “And plenty of eager hands to help.”
He faced her, surprise in his eyes. “Those same hands make anything I try take two or three times longer than if I’d done the job by myself.”
“I know a few tricks.” She smiled. “I’m glad there are plastic glasses in the cupboard. Otherwise, I would have been sweeping up plenty of glass.”
“Ja. They sometimes confuse glasses with a volleyball.”
Her smile widened. “Wash up, and I’ll get the food on the table. It’ll be ready when you are.”
When he glanced at her in astonishment, heat rushed up her face. She was acting as if she belonged there. It wasn’t an impression she wanted to give him or anyone in Paradise Springs. As soon as he went into the bathroom, she busied herself getting milk from the refrigerator and filling each kind’s glass halfway. She needed to guard her words and remember she was the hired girl whose duties were to cook and clean and look after the kinder.
If Isaiah was bothered by what she’d said, he showed no sign when he walked into the kitchen. As he pulled out a chair, he said, “I’m amazed how fast you cleaned the kitchen. It took two of my sisters-in-law more than a day to set everything to order yesterday.”
“The kitchen was cleaned yesterday?” She halted with the casserole halfway between the stove and the table.
“Ja. They came over to help.”
Clara blurted, “You made such a mess in a single day?”
He arched a pale brow, and she laughed.
Sudden cries of dismay erupted from the twins, and Clara set the casserole on the stove. Had one of them gotten hurt? How? The shrieks threatened to freeze her blood right in her veins.
At the same time Isaiah jumped to his feet and hurried around the table to where the youngsters stood together in a clump as if trying to protect themselves from an unseen monster. Their eyes were huge in their colorless faces.
“What is it?” Isaiah asked, leaning toward them. “What’s wrong?”
All four pointed at Clara. Shock riveted her. Were they insulted by her comment about the house becoming a disaster area in a day? No, they were barely more than toddlers. They didn’t care about the state of their house.
“No laugh,” said Nettie Mae around the end of her braid she’d stuck into her mouth again. She put her finger to her lips and regarded them with big, blue eyes. “Quiet and no laugh.”
“No laugh. Quiet.” Nancy pointed at Clara. “No laugh. Gotta be quiet.”
Clara listened in appalled disbelief. Isaiah’s face revealed he was as shocked as she was.
“Not laughing is hard,” Andrew lamented. “Really, really hard.”
“Squirrel funny, but no laugh,” added his twin, his words coming out in an odd mumble. Was he trying not to cry? “Really, really hard no laughing.”
“Really, really hard.” Nettie Mae’s lower lip wobbled, and a single tear slid down her plump cheek.
Clara gasped when Isaiah sat on the floor. He held out his arms, and the kinder piled onto his lap. But there was nothing joyous about them as they held onto him like leaves fighting not to be blown away by a storm wind.
“Tell me about the squirrel,” Isaiah said. “I like funny stories.”
Andrew shook his head, and his brother and sisters did, too. “No laughing. Be quiet.”
“Who told you to be quiet?”
“She did.” He pointed an accusatory finger at Clara.
When Isaiah frowned, she said, “I asked them—”
“It’s gut,” Andrew said. “What Clara told us. To be quiet when we sing so Jesus can hear what’s in our hearts.”
Again Isaiah’s pale brows rose, but his voice became calmer as he replied, “That is true. Clara was very kind to help you learn that. Has anyone else told you to be quiet?”
“You!” Nancy poked one side of his suspenders.
He tapped her nose and smiled. “I’ve told you that a lot, because you make more noise than a whole field of crows, but you don’t listen to me. You keep chattering away.”
The twins exchanged glances, and Clara couldn’t help wondering if they had some way to know what one another was thinking. She’d heard that twins seemed to be able to communicate without words, but had no idea if it was true.
“Tell me the story about the squirrel,” Isaiah urged. “Did he chatter, too?”
Four small bodies stiffened. Nettie Mae chewed frantically on her braid, and Nancy’s thumb popped into her mouth. The boys grabbed each other’s hand and shook their heads.
“No laughing,” Andrew whispered.
Clara squatted beside them and Isaiah. “Who told you that, Andrew?”
The little boy clamped his lips closed as his eyes grew glassy with tears. Beside him, his siblings’ lips quivered.
When Isaiah started to speak, she put her hand on his shoulder to halt him. She wasn’t sure if she was more astonished at her temerity or at the pulse of sensation rippling up her arm. She didn’t want to be attracted to her employer—or any man—until she had sorted out what to do with her life. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake of believing a man loved her and then being shown how wrong she was.
Pulling her hand back, she forced a smile. Now wasn’t the time to worry about herself. She needed to focus on the kinder. “Let’s have supper,” she urged. “It’ll taste better hot than cold.” She made shooing motions, and the twins clambered onto their chairs.
She started to stand but wobbled. When Isaiah put a steadying hand on her back, she almost jumped out of her skin at the thud of awareness slamming into her so hard that, for a moment, she thought she’d fallen on the hard floor. She jumped to her feet as the kinder had and edged away so he could stand without being too close to her.
He asked quietly, “Do you have any idea what’s going on with them?”
“You’d know better than I would. You’ve been around them their whole lives.”
Gritting his teeth so hard she could hear them grind, he said, “My guess is, sometime during the funeral or the days leading up to it, someone they respect enough to listen to must have told them laughing was wrong.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. You see how they don’t always listen to me, and they love me. I’ve got no idea who might have told them not to laugh.”
Why hadn’t she seen the truth for herself? But who could imagine four little kinder would believe they shouldn’t laugh again? When they’d become silent in the buggy, she’d known something was amiss.
But not this.
Putting her hand over her mouth before the sob bubbling up in her throat could escape, she turned away, not wanting them to see her reaction. “Kinder take everything at face value, so if someone told them not to laugh, they couldn’t guess it meant only at the...” She gulped back the rest of what she was going to say. She didn’t want to speak of their parents’ funeral and cause further distress. “How much do they know about what’s happened?”
He shrugged. “They attended the...the event.”
“Ja, I assumed that.” She was relieved he didn’t say funeral or the names of the deceased. It was further proof he cared deeply about the twins.
“Who can guess how much a young kind understands?” His mouth grew straight. “I’m an adult, and I find it hard to believe my friends are gone.”
“Are we going to eat?” called Andrew, again the spokesman for his siblings.
“Of course.” Hoping her smile didn’t look hideous, Clara slipped past Isaiah and went to get the casserole. “We don’t want supper to get cold, do we?”
She placed the casserole dish in the middle of the table. She reached to pull out an empty chair next to where the girls sat on red and blue booster seats, but moved to another at the sight of the stricken expressions on the twins’ faces. Nobody needed to explain the first chair was where their mamm used to sit.
Isaiah lifted Andrew out of his chair and moved him over one. Sitting between the two boys, he winked at them before bowing his head. Clara watched as the kinder folded their tiny hands on the table and lowered their eyes, as well. They had been well-taught by their parents. Looking from one to the next and at Isaiah, she closed her eyes and, after thanking God for their meal, prayed for Him to enter the Beachy twins’ hearts and ease their grief.
And Isaiah’s heart, too, she added when he cleared his throat to signal the time for silent grace was over.
The kinder dug into their meal with enthusiasm. Clara was sure it was delicious, because it’d smelled that way while heating. In her mouth, the meat and noodles tasted as dry and flavorless as the ashes on Isaiah’s forge would have. She saw Isaiah toying with his food as well before scraping it onto the boys’ plates when they asked for seconds.
He raised his eyes, and his gaze locked with hers across the table. In that instant, she knew what he was thinking. They needed to help the kinder. She agreed, but couldn’t ignore how uneasy she was that she and Isaiah were of a mind. It suggested a connection she wasn’t ready to make with a man again. She wasn’t sure when she would be.
Maybe never.
* * *
Isaiah smiled, hoping the youngsters wouldn’t guess he was forcing it. Kinder were experts at seeing through a ploy, so he tried to be honest with them. When Clara gave a slight nod, he hoped she shared his belief they had to help the twins laugh again.
He was astonished when she pushed back her chair and rose. She opened a cupboard and took down the chocolate cake Fannie Beiler had brought over yesterday. The Beilers lived next door to his mamm, and Fannie’s daughter Leah was married to his brother Ezra. He’d stashed the cake away so the kinder didn’t tease for it before they ate.
And then he forgot about it.
As Clara carried the cake to the table, the twins began squirming with anticipation of chocolate and peanut butter frosting. “Who wants a piece?”
“Me! Me! Me! Me!” echoed through the kitchen.
She smiled and took six small plates out of a lower cupboard. Setting them on the table, she cut the cake. She sliced four small servings and then put a plate in front of each kind. The piece she put in front of him was much bigger.
“Is that enough, Isaiah?” she asked. “Or do you want more?”
“How about if I say I want less?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t believe you.”
“And you’d be right.” He fought not to chuckle, not wanting to distress the twins again.
“Don’t wait for me,” she said. “Try it.”
The kinder needed no further urging. Within seconds, they were covered with chocolate crumbs and wearing broad smiles.
Though he was as eager as the twins to sample the cake, Isaiah waited for Clara to cut herself a small slice. He watched as she ate and glanced at the kinder, smiling at their silliness.
She was gut with them. He’d seen that from the moment she walked into his blacksmith shop and took control of the chaos. She had an intangible air of calm around her that seemed to draw the kinder’s attention so they listened to what she said.
And with her face not half-hidden beneath her bonnet, her hair rivaled the colors of the sunset. Somehow, her red strands weren’t garish but more a reflection of the glow that transformed her face when she smiled. Really smiled, not a lukewarm one aimed at hiding her true feelings.
“Wasn’t the cake gut?” Isaiah asked and was rewarded with four towheads bobbing together, though Ammon wasn’t as enthusiastic at first. The youngsters must be exhausted. “Next time we see Fannie Beiler, you must tell her how much you enjoyed this cake.”
“Yummy!” Nettie Mae said, patting her stomach. “Yummy in my tummy!”
A laugh, quickly squelched, came from where Clara sat beside the girls. She had her hand over her mouth and a horrified expression on her face.
He put hands on the boys’ shoulders to keep them from running away from the table again. Clara had slipped her arm around the girls and started to apologize to them.
“No, don’t say you’re sorry,” he hurried to say. “There’s nothing wrong with laughing, right?” He looked at the boys.
Andrew nodded. “Clara can laugh, I guess.”
“But not you?” she asked.
When the kinder remained silent, Isaiah pushed his plate away, though he hadn’t finished the delicious cake. He folded his arms on the table.
“God wants us to be happy,” he said as he looked from one young face to the next. “He loves it when we sing and when we pray together. Do you believe that?”
They nodded.
“And when we laugh together, too,” he added.
The boys ran into the front room. When Nancy let out a cry, Clara drew her arm back from the girls who chased after their brothers and huddled with them by the sofa.
He wanted to go and comfort them, but wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t tell them they should accept the hurts in their lives because God had a plan for them to be happy in the future. He couldn’t say that because he wasn’t sure he believed it himself any longer. Since he’d learned of Melvin’s and Esta’s deaths, the uneasiness that had begun inside him after Rose’s death had hardened his heart like iron taken from the forge. Every heartbeat hurt.
He struggled with his faith more each day. He believed in God, but it wasn’t easy to accept a loving God would watch such grieving and do nothing. More than once, he’d considered seeking advice from his bishop, because he trusted Reuben Lapp as a man of God. But he knew what Reuben would say. Trust in God and be willing to accept the path God had given him to walk. Once he’d been happy to follow, but that was before Rose died from a severe asthma attack and then his friends’ lives came to an end, leaving behind hurt and bewildered kinder who couldn’t understand why the most important persons in their lives had gone away.
“Don’t push them,” Clara said from the other side of the table. “There’s got to be a way to persuade them it’s okay to laugh again like normal kids. I know there is.”
“I wish I could be as sure.”
When she stared at him, shocked a minister would speak so, he rose and went to the back door. He grasped his straw hat, put it on his head and said, “I’ve got to milk the cows. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”