“Ya, and I need to get home. Claudia’s with the children, but I promised her I wouldn’t be long.” Eli picked up his shopping basket from the floor. “Just needed to pick up a prescription at the drugstore for Lizzy and stop for a few groceries. I’ve got a driver waiting. Hired a van to take Lizzy to the doctor this morning, then home, then back into town.”
“Forty-nine!” a different clerk called from the deli counter. “Forty-nine!”
“Guess I’d best go get my sub before someone else does.” Joe boldly met Ginger’s gaze. “You going to the Fishers’ Saturday night? I hear there’s going to be a bonfire.”
“I think so,” she said, trying not to sound too excited. But if they were both there, Joe would surely offer to take her home, wouldn’t he? It was the way young men and women dated among the Old Order Amish. They attended chaperoned events separately and then a boy was free to ask a girl if he could give her a ride home.
“We’ll have to see,” Ginger’s mother responded, then turned to Eli. “Ginger will be there at seven-fifteen on Monday.”
“Excellent.” Eli nodded his head again and again, gripping the shopping basket in one hand. “Wonderful.” He looked at Ginger. “Goodbye. Thank you again.”
“You’re welcome,” Ginger told Eli, but her eyes were all for Joe Verkler as he walked away.
* * *
Eli entered his cozy kitchen in his stocking feet. They had an unusual rule for an Amish family—no boots or shoes in the house. They wore socks or slippers beyond the mudroom. He had made the rule after his wife, Elizabeth, died three years ago. It was the only way he had found to keep clean the hardwood floors he had so lovingly laid for her. “Guess who’s home?” he sang, carrying a paper sack of groceries in each arm.
“Dat!”
“Dat!”
“Dat!” his three sons cried, one after the other.
The youngest, five-year-old Phillip, threw himself at his father, wrapping his arms around Eli’s knees. “What did you bring us?”
“Phillip.” Eli’s sister, Claudia, spoke from where she stood at the stove, stirring something in a cast-iron kettle. Something that smelled deliciously of chicken and vegetables and herbs. “Don’t ask such things. Offer to help your fadder with his bags.”
“I’ll get one,” Eli’s oldest son, eight-year-old Simon, said, taking a bag from his father’s arms.
“I’ll help,” seven-year-old Andrew piped up.
When Andrew took the second bag from Eli, Phillip immediately grabbed it, practically knocking both of them off their feet.
“Whoa,” Eli said, taking the bag from his boys and righting Andrew.
“I want to help,” Phillip complained.
Andrew crossed his arms over his chest in annoyance. “You’re not big enough.”
“Am too!” Phillip, who looked just like Eli had as a child—bright red hair and all—gazed up at his father. “Andrew says I’m not big. But this morning you said I was big now.”
Eli rumpled his son’s coarse hair as he walked past him, taking the grocery sack to the table. “I said you’re bigger than Lizzy. Which means you’re responsible for her and also means you shouldn’t tease her.”
“I see you bought cookies.” Claudia left her place at the stove and began to unload the first bag. “Plenty of cookies.” She stacked the packages of them on the table. “Did you remember the rosemary?”
“Ya. It’s in one of the bags. They didn’t have fresh, but you said dry would do.” Eli walked to the stove. “I don’t know what you’ve made but it smells wonderful.” He picked up a wooden spoon from the walnut countertop he’d built and stirred the thick, creamy stew in the pot.
“Chicken potpie,” Claudia told him. “I just turned it off. Piecrust is already made and on the counter under the damp towel. Pour the stew into the piecrust, cover it with the second crust and be sure to vent it or you’ll have a mess to clean up. Bake for forty-five minutes at three-fifty degrees. The oven is already preheating.” She held a pack of Oreos in one hand and peanut butter sandwich cookies in the other. “Really, Eli,” she said gently. “The children don’t need all of these sweets.”
“Maybe they’re for me,” he teased as he set down the spoon.
“Then you don’t need them, either.”
He laughed at the stern look on his sister’s face. “They eat healthy enough. We all do. How’s Lizzy?”
“Tired but good,” she said, putting the packages of cookies in the pie safe that had been a gift to Eli and Elizabeth when they’d married. It had been his great-grandmother’s. “I think the trip to the doctor wore her out. She should stay in bed for the rest of the day. If she wants to eat with the family, maybe carry her out to the kitchen?”
“I’ll see what she wants to do. Some nights we eat with her in her room.” He looked to Simon, Andrew and Phillip. “Don’t we, boys?”
“Sometimes,” Phillip agreed, biting on the end of a package of cookies, trying to open it with his teeth.
Simon took the bag from his little brother. “None before supper.”
“Dat!” Phillip cried in protest.
“He’s right. You shouldn’t be eating cookies, Phillip.” Eli turned to his sister. “Thank you so much for staying with them while I went back into town. You should go home. John will be wanting his supper soon.”
“You sure?” Claudia closed the pie safe. “I can get the potpie in the oven for you.”
“I can manage the potpie,” Eli assured her. “Guess what?” Suddenly he couldn’t hide his excitement. “I found someone to watch the children while I work that job. The one Ader Verkler wants to hire me to do.”
“You did? That’s wonderful news.” She removed her apron and hung it on a peg on the wall. “Who?”
“Ginger Stutzman,” he announced, unable to stop grinning. There was something about Ginger that made him smile every time he saw her. Yes, she could be silly and coquettish at times, but he admired her enthusiasm for life. She always had a light in her eyes that he sensed came from deep within her.
“Ginger?” Claudia made a face that left no room for interpretation. Obviously she didn’t approve.
He lowered his voice, walking near to his sister so the children wouldn’t hear. “What’s wrong with Ginger? The children adore her.”
His sister looked at him in a way that immediately made him feel a little bit as if they were back on their parents’ farm in Wisconsin, and he was ten, and she was fifteen again. Their mother had died when he was eight, and at thirteen, Claudia had taken on most of the household chores so their father could continue to work their dairy farm. Her duties, among others, had been to care for Eli and their other siblings. She had not quite taken on the role of mother but embraced her new responsibilities as an older sister. Eli and Claudia had remained close, and after he lost his wife, she had become his best friend.
Claudia took a deep breath. “I’m sorry to be cross. It’s just been a long day. There’s nothing wrong with Ginger. She’ll make an excellent sitter.”
He followed her to the mudroom. “My same thought.”
“I just think you need to be careful,” she went on as she took her heavy wool cloak from a peg and threw it over her shoulders.
“Careful of what?”
Claudia glanced in the direction of the boys as she reached for her heavy black bonnet. Phillip had managed to get into the cookies and each boy had one stuffed in his mouth. She looked back at Eli. “She’s a flirt,” she said quietly.
“And?” Eli pressed. Because he knew she was a flirt. Everyone in Hickory Grove knew it. She always had been. But she was also a good person, a woman of faith, and he had never heard anyone ever speak of her behaving improperly. More importantly, he knew he could trust her with his children, who were more precious to him than anything he had on this earth.
“And I wouldn’t want yo
u to...misinterpret anything she might say or do.”
He tipped back his head and laughed. Nothing could dampen his mood today. Because his problem was solved with childcare, and the money he would make would not only be enough to pay all of Lizzy’s medical bills but also to buy a pony for Christmas for the children. “Misinterpret?”
Claudia met his gaze with green eyes. “You know very well what I’m talking about. I understand you want to marry again. I just wouldn’t want you to—” She let the sentence go unfinished.
“Wouldn’t want me to what?” he pressed.
“Fall in love with her,” she said.
Eli laughed. “I’m not a boy just out of school.” He opened his arms wide. “I’m practically an old man. A woman like Ginger wouldn’t be interested in me.”
“That said...” Her tone softened. “You have such a big heart, Eli.” She exhaled and went on. “I wouldn’t want to see it broken. And Ginger Stutzman—” she tapped his chest “—will break it if you let her.”
Copyright © 2020 by Emma Miller
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ISBN-13: 9781488060601
A Daughter for Christmas
Copyright © 2020 by Stephanie Newton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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A Daughter for Christmas Page 19
