by Jo Ann Brown
Leanna hoped Gabriel hadn’t noticed her siblings’ silliness. He motioned for her to step out of the way so he could turn the buggy toward the house.
Minutes later, she was holding Harley in the kitchen while Annie kept Heidi entertained with a game of peekaboo. Gabriel stood by the table and looked from her grossmammi to her, perplexed.
When Grossmammi Inez motioned, Leanna said, “Gabriel, we know you need help with your kinder. We’ve come up a solution we hope will work for you. Juanita wants to help once school is out.”
“When’s that?”
“A little over two weeks. Until then,” she said quickly before gut sense halted her, “I’m willing to step in. I can milk my goats before I go to your house, and I can find someone to take over my cleaning jobs.”
“The rest of us will pitch in,” Annie said, not pausing in her game with Heidi. “So do you want Leanna’s help now and Juanita’s later?”
“I do,” he replied, his voice thick with relief.
Leanna blinked back abrupt tears when she heard Gabriel speak the words she had longed to hear him say, though not standing in her family’s kitchen with his two kinder. She had to forget that absurd fantasy of having a happily-ever-after with him if she wanted to make this temporary situation work. She wasn’t sure how she was going to let that dream go, but she must.
Chapter Four
Four hours of sleep...
He would have settled for three.
In a row.
Gabriel stared at the blackened pan and wondered how he could have fallen half-asleep standing by the stove. The four eggs he’d been frying looked as if they’d been dunked in soot. Smoke hung in the air, though he’d opened the kitchen window over the sink. Beneath heavy eyelids, he considered the stacks of dishes waiting to be washed. Maybe the smoke couldn’t find its way past them.
Now there was another to add to the ones he needed to scour. He should have known better than to offer to make breakfast when he couldn’t string two thoughts together.
Freda would have been horrified by the state of the kitchen. His late wife had jested over and over she wanted a house where a speck of dust wouldn’t feel at home. After she’d died, Gabriel had wondered if she’d been joking. She had insisted on everything being in its place. A single glass askew in a cupboard had bothered her so much she couldn’t eat before straightening it. The slightest disruption in her day sent her into a dark mood he couldn’t draw her out of until she was ready to emerge.
When he and Michael had first gone to live with Freda’s family after their own parents died, Freda Girod had been a happy little girl. Like her daughter, Heidi, she’d always found fun in every experience.
The Girod family had lived on the neighboring farm, so it had been a simple transition for the Miller twins to move next door. When the Miller farm was sold, the community had assumed the money would be used to raise the eight-year-olds. Instead, Aden Girod, Freda’s daed, had put the funds into the bank and brought up the two boys along with his daughter, who was four years younger.
The money, which Aden had called their inheritance, was to be put toward buying a farm for the twins to share. He’d refused to let either Gabriel or Michael use it to help offset his medical bills piling up on the small table in the kitchen. The cancer treatments would be covered by the community, and Aden wanted “his boys,” as he’d always called them, to have a gut start in life with a farm of their own.
Then, one night, Aden had asked Gabriel to take a walk with him along the line of trees separating the Girod farm from the one where the Miller twins had been born. He had something he wanted to discuss with Gabriel. Jumping at the chance to talk alone with the man he considered his daed, Gabriel had decided it would be the perfect time to tell Aden about his hopes of marrying Leanna Wagler.
He never had the chance.
Aden had opened the conversation by saying if Gabriel married his daughter, the Girod farm would be his when Aden died from his cancer, as his doktors feared would happen within the year. The inheritance money from the twins’ parents could then be Michael’s, and perhaps he could find a nearby farm so the brothers could raise their kinder together.
When Gabriel asked why Aden was making such an extraordinary offer when he had a daughter to inherit his farm, he’d answered, “Because I want my kins-kinder to grow up on a family farm as my daughter did. There’s not much time left to make sure that happens.”
“The doktors have been wrong before,” Gabriel had begun.
“I’m not talking about my cancer. I’m talking about Freda’s situation.” His voice had dropped to a whisper. “I know I should have been stricter with her when her rumspringa friends started spending time with Englisch boys.”
Gabriel had almost asked when that had begun but didn’t, ashamed to admit he’d been so caught up with his courtship of Leanna he hadn’t been paying much attention to anything else. “You’re a gut daed, Aden,” was all he’d been able to find to say, eager to finish discussing Aden’s daughter and move the conversation to discussing asking Leanna to marry him.
“If I’d been a better daed, maybe Freda wouldn’t be pregnant.”
“Pregnant?” That had stopped Gabriel in his tracks.
“The Englischer who she says is the daed has refused to marry her.” He turned to face Gabriel. “How can I accept God’s will that I soon will depart from this world when I have to leave my daughter in such a predicament on her own?”
“I’m so sorry.” Then he’d spoken the words that shattered his dreams. “If there’s anything I can do to help, ask.”
“I’m glad you feel that way. Will you marry Freda and give her kind a name?”
The earth seemed to sway in every direction as Gabriel had stared at the old man’s face. Seeing the last remnants of hope there, Gabriel hadn’t been able to ask why Aden hadn’t talked to Michael instead of him. Maybe Aden had. No, he’d corrected himself. Aden understood the Miller boys well, and he’d known Michael wasn’t interested in farming.
Gabriel had found what he wanted, too: a life with Leanna.
But everyone said Aden Girod hadn’t hesitated to take in two orphans when he’d buried his own wife a few years before. How could Gabriel say no to what might be a dying man’s final request?
Nobody had seemed surprised when Gabriel and Freda’s wedding plans were published at the next church Sunday. If there were whispers about how they were married outside of the usual wedding season in the late fall, he’d never heard them. That they remained at the Girod house instead of traveling to visit friends was accepted, too, because Aden’s condition didn’t improve, and he would need their help more than ever.
Leanna had vanished out of his life. The letter he’d written to her to explain why he’d done what he had—though he’d never mentioned Freda being pregnant because Aden had asked him never to tell anyone, not even his twin brother—hadn’t brought any response. Had it been delivered? Should he have sent another?
He hadn’t had a chance to decide because Aden had taken a turn for the worse, and Freda’s morning sickness hadn’t abated. He’d thought about talking to his brother about his concerns, but hadn’t because Michael would urge him to pray to God for strength. Faith seemed so simple to his twin. To be honest, it had seemed simple to Gabriel, too, before his whole life started spiraling downward after the bopplin were born. Freda had become withdrawn, and he’d assumed it was because she was exhausted from giving birth and having to take care of the twins only weeks after her daed had succumbed to the cancer he’d been fighting for five years.
Gabriel had offered to get a boppli nurse to assist Freda, but she’d refused, saying she didn’t want anyone coming into her house and changing things. His insistence the girl would do as Freda requested hadn’t changed his wife’s mind. When she had burst into tears the third time he made the suggestion, he gave up, fearing he was causing her m
ore distress with his persistence.
That had been his first mistake, but he believed his second had been his assumption God was going to help Freda. Instead, she’d died, and Gabriel had been left with two tiny bopplin and a wagonload of guilt. One thing Aden hadn’t ever spoken of, because it didn’t need to be said, was his deep wish his kins-kinder be raised with two loving parents as neither Freda nor Gabriel and his brother had.
When Michael had suggested they move to the new settlement where they could leave the grief behind them, Gabriel had agreed. Anything to get away from the familiar sights that were tainted by sorrow.
Now...
A quiet knock came from the back door, jerking Gabriel out of the vicious circle of his memories. He looked up to see Leanna waiting on the other side. A quick glance at the clock over the stove told him she was right on time as usual. He’d wasted too much time reliving the past when he should be focused on the future for his family.
Leaving the blackened pan on the stove and picking up Heidi before she could crawl out of sight under the table, he was glad that while he was lost in his thoughts she hadn’t decided to go into the front room again and try to lift herself up on the stack of unpacked boxes. If they fell on top of her, she could be hurt, but there was no way to explain the danger to a young kind. He saw Harley was right where Gabriel had put him before starting what was supposed to be breakfast. At least one of the twins was a content boppli.
He hoped no signs of his recent thoughts were visible when he opened the door. As he did, smoke whirled in a crazy dance through the kitchen. He couldn’t help seeing how Leanna grimaced as the stench of burnt food struck her. He wanted to assure her the place didn’t always look and smell so bad, but he didn’t have the energy.
He said, “Komm in.”
Waving away wisps of smoke trying to exit around her, Leanna entered. She set down a basket holding formula bottles before she lifted off her black bonnet. Her crisp white kapp popped into its heart shape, which accented her pretty face. In her neatly pressed pale pink dress and black apron, she seemed out of the place in the chaos. He thought he remembered seeing the ironing board in one of the unused bedrooms upstairs, but it was useless without an iron. Did he have any idea which box it might be in?
She looked well rested, too. Like his brother and the bopplin, who somehow had figured out how to make short spurts of sleep work. He had to be happy the only mirror in the house was the tiny one over the bathroom sink he and Michael used when they shaved. Michael complained about its size, but, for Gabriel, who only had to shave his upper lip and cheeks, it was fine. He wouldn’t have wanted to see his sleep-deprivation next to Leanna’s neat appearance this morning.
Had he’d remembered to shave this morning? He ran his fingertips over the stubble on his left cheek. No, he’d forgotten again. Unlike men with darker hair, his russet beard was uneven and resembled an unshorn sheep losing its winter fleece. And combing his hair? He’d forgotten that, too, which meant clumps stood up as if he’d tried to catch a bolt of lightning.
“Gute mariye,” Leanna said with a smile for Heidi, who returned it with a giggle. “You look ready for trouble this morning.”
“She is.” Gabriel was relieved Leanna acted as if she hadn’t been surprised to discover him looking unready for the day. He could play along, too, though he hated the idea they were pretending instead of living their lives honestly. “Harley is a gut boppli, happy to play where he’s put. Heidi is our explorer. I’ve had to keep a close eye on her to make sure she stays away from unpacked boxes.”
“Maybe she wants to help.” Leanna smiled, but her expression froze when he didn’t return it. Walking past him, she went to the refrigerator. She opened it and put the bottles of formula inside. She glanced at the stove and the pan where he’d burned breakfast.
He wanted to kick himself. Would it have hurt him to give her a smile? Maybe, because it could have opened him up to feelings he shouldn’t have for her any longer. Those feelings were another secret he couldn’t share. How many more secrets could he keep before he burst wide open and revealed the web of half-truths he’d created?
“Where’s your brother?” Leanna asked, breaking the silence.
“He went into Salem to check on our order at the hardware store. We need to make sure it’s delivered on...” His words faded into a yawn. When she looked over her shoulder, he apologized.
“There’s no reason to say that,” she said so quickly he had to wonder if she was talking about his yawn or their combined pasts. “You’ve got every reason to be tired. You’ve just moved in, and you have two bopplin to take care of. I don’t think anyone will be running to the bishop with complaints about you yawning in the middle of a sentence.”
“Or having a house that looks as if a tornado came through?”
“Last I knew, dirty dishes in the sink aren’t a sin.” Again she smiled.
Again he didn’t.
Walking toward him, she stopped more than an arm’s length away. “Why don’t you go and take a nap?”
“At this hour of the morning?”
She shrugged as she took Heidi from him. “I’ve never heard there’s a particular time for a nap. You’re asleep on your feet.”
“If I’m asleep, then why do I feel so tired?” He didn’t try to halt another yawn.
“Maybe because you’re on your feet. Go on, and get an hour or so of sleep. I’ll keep the kinder as quiet as possible.”
“I could sleep through an explosion.”
“Go!” She motioned with her free hand. “Get some sleep.”
He nodded, took a single step toward the front room and the stairs, then asked, “So having you here today isn’t a dream?”
He wanted to retract the words he’d meant to be a weak jest, but it was too late. The faint pink in Leanna’s cheeks vanished as she whirled to pick up the scorched pan and put it on top of the other dishes in the sink. Muttering a “danki” under his breath, he strode out the door, letting the rusty screen slam in his wake.
How could he have spoken so foolishly? He couldn’t blame it on his lack of sleep, because he’d guarded his words before. Maybe the sight of Leanna in his new home had torn down the walls he’d built around his battered heart the night he’d agree to marry Freda. Had seeing Leanna in his kitchen been enough to evoke the dreams he’d decimated when he stood before the Leit and vowed to be Freda’s husband?
If so, he had to make sure it didn’t happen again. He’d hurt her too much to risk doing so again. He must keep the boundaries in place between them.
Always.
* * *
Leanna flinched at the sound of a door closing upstairs a few minutes later. Gabriel must have come back in the front door so he could avoid her. Offering to help him until Juanita graduated from school had been a mistake.
A big mistake.
She had to find someone else to take her place. She shouldn’t be here, because being around Gabriel brought too many futile hopes to life. He’d made his choice, and she had to accept that.
Her working at his house wasn’t about her and about Gabriel. If it had been, she never would have volunteered to help him. The bopplin needed her to be there to feed them and change them and play with them.
And you need them.
The thought should have startled her, but it didn’t. How often had she imagined having a family of her own? More than once, she’d thought about how much fun it would be to have twins so she could watch them grow up and grow close to each other as she and Annie had.
Harley and Heidi wouldn’t be hers, but she could spend time with them in the years to come because they’d be part of the small community along Harmony Creek.
“How about something to eat?” she asked the little girl she held.
Heidi answered with nonsense sounds and grinned, dancing in Leanna’s arms.
Seeing two hig
h chairs set beside boxes waiting for someone to open them, she set the boppli on the blanket beside her brother. Leanna had moved one chair before she noticed Heidi crawling at a remarkable speed and intent toward the front room. Scooping up the kind, she put her in the high chair.
“You’re a cute little monkey looking for trouble, ain’t so?” Leanna made a silly face at the tiny girl.
“Be careful,” replied a voice even deeper than Gabriel’s. “Your face might freeze that way, and it’d be a shame.”
Her eyes widened when she saw a dark-haired man standing in the doorway. He was taller than Gabriel, and his prominent nose would have dwarfed a face with gentler planes. Hints of red glistened in his hair when sunlight rippled across it.
“Gute mariye?” She hadn’t intended to make the greeting a question, but she wasn’t sure who the man was.
As if she’d asked that question, he said, “You must be Leanna. I’m Michael, the smarter twin.”
Leanna smiled in spite of herself. She’d never met Gabriel’s twin, and she was surprised how different the two men looked. Not just their coloring, but how Michael smiled easily while Gabriel remained somber even when she made a joke.
Gabriel used to laugh and smile. A lot. In fact, it had been his grin that first caught her eye during a Sunday evening gathering. He’d been on the opposite side of the barn, but when the enticing rumble of his laugh caught her ear, she had turned toward him. Her eyes had been captured by his dark brown ones, and a sensation she’d never known rushed through her like a rising wind before a thunderstorm. It was filled with warmth and anticipation and a hint of possible danger.
At the time, she’d been delighted by the instant connection between them. That had been before she’d come to understand the hint of danger was real and aimed at her heart.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she replied when Michael got the other high chair.
She set Harley in it and bent to tie a bib around the boppli’s neck.
