Christmas Comes to Morning Star

by Charlotte Hubbard

  His gray-blue eyes drew her in until she lost herself and all ability to think. His dat’s kindly chuckle reminded her that Nelson had heard their conversation—and that was all right, wasn’t it? Once she and Michael were going out alone together, they would have plenty of opportunities to share sweet secret words.

  “Let me be the first to congratulate you,” Nelson said, leaning forward so he could smile directly at Jo. “I think you two are well suited. After years of wondering if Michael would ever find a young woman who’d draw him out of his shell, I’m delighted that we’ll be spending more time with you, Jo.”

  She thought her heart might explode, it was beating so fast. She and Michael had his father’s blessing to court and to marry when they were ready! It was a blessing she’d never dared to hope for, a future she’d never believed she would find. A thousand questions whirled in her mind: Would she be moving to Queen City next year? Would the wedding need to be held between the Wengerds’ busy seasons at the nursery?

  How could I keep managing my bakery and The Marketplace?

  Jo stared out the rig’s windshield, hoping Michael wouldn’t see the change in her expression and suppose she was having second thoughts about their budding romance before it had a chance to bloom. When Regina Miller had married Gabe, she’d started doing her special embroidery at home. After school let out next May, when Teacher Lydianne Christner married Bishop Jeremiah, she wouldn’t have as much time to keep The Marketplace’s books, either—if indeed the bishop allowed his wife to be associated with the business at all.

  And when Jo and Michael married, it would leave the Helfing twins as the last maidels to oversee all the many aspects of running The Marketplace. Their noodle business was extremely successful, but they’d never shown any inclination toward taking on any of the managerial responsibilities.

  So if your dream of marrying comes true, does that mean your dream for The Marketplace falls by the wayside? Who will carry on, now that so many shop owners have invested in their inventories—and now that so many groups are scheduling reunions and other gatherings in the commons area, too?

  The gentle pressure of Michael’s hand brought Jo out of her woolgathering.

  “If it’s your mamm’s reaction you’re worried about, we’ll figure out a way to bring her into the picture, too,” he said softly. “We won’t leave her all alone. Dat and I suspect that’s what she’s worried about, deep down.”

  Jo blinked, willing herself not to cry. Of course Michael had read her expression and anticipated her concerns—even if he hadn’t addressed the issue she’d actually been stewing about.

  “Michael and I have talked about this, and we’ve considered several options,” Nelson put in. “Hopefully Drusilla will find at least one of them acceptable.”

  When has Mamm ever found anyone else’s ideas acceptable?

  Jo swallowed that thought before she blurted it out, not wanting to ruin the Wengerds’ fine mood. Their handsome smiles told her they were ready to move beyond the grief of losing Verna, to try a new life despite the many times Mamm had snipped and snapped at them—and despite the ominous remarks her mother had made the last time they’d all eaten supper together and then again when Jo had left on Sunday morning.

  By the time the buggy rolled up the lane toward the house, Jo’s happiness was overshadowed by a huge cloud of doubt. Her stomach was in a knot. She frowned when she saw dresses flapping on the clothesline—her mother was a stickler for doing all the laundry on Monday. Did this mean Mamm had taken ill? Or were the garments flapping like flags of warning, an omen of her mother’s attitude?

  Drusilla Fussner never did anything without a reason. Perhaps she considered the neglected laundry just one of the many chores Jo hadn’t helped her with because she’d become a willful, disrespectful daughter who’d abandoned her mamm. As Nelson pulled up alongside the rail at the side of the house, Jo steeled herself for whatever might happen next.

  Lord, we need Your love and Your presence with us—and so does Mamm. Guide me in the way You’d have me go, because right now I’m being ripped apart at the emotional seams.

  While Nelson tied the horse, Jo and Michael went to the front door. He followed a few feet behind her, knowing that any show of their affection might upset her mother. Through the glass, she saw Mamm’s shadowy silhouette—as though her mother had been watching and waiting, ready to pounce at the moment of their arrival.

  The door swung open. Mamm stepped out onto the porch, blocking the doorway as though to prevent their entry. Her lined face, stern and unsmiling, looked twenty years older than when Jo had left on Sunday.

  “You Wengerds can go right back where you came from,” she announced loudly. “Don’t come back, and don’t think you’ll be staying in my dawdi haus anymore. You’re not welcome here.”

  Chapter 15

  On Wednesday evening, Glenn slumped wearily at the workbench in his home wood shop. As he chose the various sizes of nails to complete the willow chair he was making, his vision was bleary from another restless night. His head and sinuses felt dry because he and Pete and Gabe had sanded and installed the new kitchen cabinets this morning. Ordinarily, the finishing details were what he did best—and it was a blessing that the house was totally enclosed now, because a drastic drop in the temperature had confined them to working indoors.

  He felt anything but blessed, however.

  All morning as he’d worked with his faithful friends, Glenn had tried hard to feel grateful and excited about the new house that was quickly taking shape. But the unpainted drywall and wooden studs were nothing like the rooms where he and his family had once lived such a wonderful, ordinary life together—and where he’d taken refuge after Dorcas and Mamm had passed. The sharp tang of new wood was far from comforting as he struggled to recall how his wife’s cooking had filled their home with such heavenly aromas. He missed the front room’s cozy, careworn chairs and sofa. He longed for the bed, with its familiar dips and creaks, where his sons had been conceived.

  This new place will never be home.

  As he’d hammered and sanded the cabinets, Glenn had been going through the motions of rebuilding his life, but there’d been no love in it. The Scripture from First Corinthians had it right: even if a man had the gift of prophecy and could understand all mysteries and had all faith—but didn’t have love—he was nothing. At this point, Glenn had no idea about the future, and he didn’t understand anything. Worse still, he’d all but lost his faith. Instead of love, he was feeling a whole lot of loss and spiritual emptiness.

  Had God forsaken him?

  Rather than descending into the hell of that particular question, he’d kept his mouth shut and kept working all morning. It was better than doing nothing, adrift in his lonely little boat without a paddle as one storm after another tossed him around.

  It also rankled Glenn to be such a burden to his friends—and to be so dependent upon them for every little thing. He was pretty sure the dark blue shirt he was wearing had once belonged to the twins’ dat. He regretted dumping baby Levi on Marietta and Molly, too, so that he could work—and he felt bad that his father preferred to remain underfoot in the Helfings’ warm home rather than at the unheated work site. And Billy Jay was such a chatterbox when he came in from school, he was surely driving the twins crazy. Glenn sensed their noodle making was falling way behind during this Christmas season, when their sales could be spectacular—all because his family required so much of their attention.

  With a sigh he slipped off his high wooden stool. Out of habit, he tucked nails between his lips in the order, by size, that he’d need them. The thickness of the branch and the tension caused by curving it to the shape he wanted determined the size he’d need—longer nails, or nails with more threads—to keep the willow from splitting.

  The chair’s slatted seat, legs, arms, and back were complete, so Glenn told himself he could quit for the day after he’d attached the supple branches that formed rustic, decorative arches around the ba
ck and the arms. The slender, flexible lengths of willow transformed an ordinary piece into the one-of-a-kind custom chair a longtime English buyer had come to expect of Glenn—and he’d paid top dollar for it, because it was to be a special Christmas gift for his wife. He was to pick it up on Saturday, only three days away.

  Glenn slipped one end of a willow branch through the arm slot on his right and nailed it to the chair’s front leg with three deft whacks of his hammer. Working his way upward at intervals of about four inches, he held the slender branch against the chair, tacking and carefully bending the wood around the curve of the back until he went down the other side and ended at the bottom of the other front leg.

  First branch attached. Hallelujah.

  Once again he placed nails of the various sizes he needed between his lips. He picked up the second willow branch, which he would attach to the first one at the bottom of the chair’s leg, as before. Then he would gradually arch it a few inches away from that original branch as it looped around the chair’s back to allow a curved space about three inches wide before rejoining it on the opposite side. Glenn had worked with willow so many times, he could almost put a chair together in his sleep. It was a matter of following the pattern his client had chosen, creating the graceful curves around the chair’s back and arms.

  Tap-tap-whack. He attached the second branch to the leg and deftly continued with it, his hands acting as an extension of his mind. The willow felt dryer than he preferred because it had been stacked in his shop for the past couple of weeks while he’d worked on the new house. Tap-tap-whack . . . tap-tap-whack.

  Second rung done. One more on the back, three on each arm, and I’m outta here.

  Sighing tiredly, Glenn repeated his procedure of choosing nails—longer ones this time, and the nails where the curve at the back became wider had more threads to anchor the branch securely. He picked up the remaining willow branch, which was the longest of the three.

  Tap-tap-whack . . . tap-tap-whack. Up the chair’s leg he went. This third and final branch curved around the top at the same distance from the second one, but it required more patience and reinforcement because the willow was following a much more pronounced reshaping than the previous two branches had.

  Pressing the branch firmly in place where the willow went into the curve, he slipped a nail from between his lips. He positioned it between his thumb and index finger, and hammered it.

  Tap-tap-CRACK.

  With a sickening sound, the branch split open. Frustrated beyond belief, Glenn cried out, spewing nails. The willow had felt dry—he should’ve soaked it, but he hadn’t taken the time—and then he noticed that he’d accidentally chosen a larger nail than he’d intended to use.

  “I can’t believe you—what a stupid thing to—” Glenn’s self-accusations morphed into a cry that filled the shop with his pent-up frustration and anger. He threw his hammer against the wall. The willow branch was ruined, and he didn’t have another one long enough to take its place. He’d have to go to the river where the willows grew and see if he could find a replacement, which meant the chair couldn’t possibly be ready by Saturday.

  Too angry to see straight, he shut off his shop lights and stalked outside. Dusk was falling, so it was too late to hunt up more willow branches. All he could do was hitch up his rig and go home—

  But no, I don’t have a home, I’ll go back to the Helfing place, and everyone there will see how upset I am—and I’ll drag them right down into the pit of my despair. And that’s just too bad, isn’t it?

  Sensing his foul mood, Nick sidestepped and hesitated before Glenn ordered him to head down the road. As the rig lurched forward, Glenn’s thoughts circled like angry crows, black and noisy, jeering at him for ruining that chair. All he wanted was to walk through the twins’ house without anyone stopping him to ask questions, straight up the stairs, where he could slam the door to his bedroom and stew for the rest of the evening. He was hoping his scowl would discourage Dat or Billy Jay from trying to engage him in conversation—and heaven help them all if Levi was crying again.

  When he’d pulled into the Helfings’ stable, Glenn quickly unhitched the horse and tossed some oats into his feed trough. Up the snowy path he strode, wondering why his lazy seven-year-old son hadn’t shoveled it. His boots thunked noisily across the wooden porch—and when he yanked the front door open, the baby’s wailing immediately set him off.

  Glenn stalked toward the kitchen, determined to stop the fracas before he exploded into a million pieces—

  But the desperation on Marietta’s tear-streaked face stopped him cold.

  He couldn’t bear to witness the same naked terror in her eyes that he was feeling in his own soul, so he turned and stormed out the front door again. Grabbing the porch post, Glenn sucked in cold, wintry air. He had to get a grip—had to take charge of himself and this situation before he did something unthinkable or irrevocable.

  That woman in there is at the end of her rope—because my baby is bawling again and she has no idea how to stop him. Because I’ve dumped my son on her and ruined her day—and she doesn’t know how to get me out of her home and out of her life.

  Glenn gasped for more air. “How long, oh Lord?” he whispered hoarsely. “What am I supposed to do? I don’t have any more idea than Marietta does about how to stop Levi’s crying, and it drives me up the wall, and—”

  A flashback hit him, a recollection of when Billy Jay had been a colicky infant and Dorcas, as a new mother, had worn the same shell-shocked expression he’d just seen on Marietta’s face. As the scene in his mind continued, his mother spooned some sugar into the center of Dat’s bandanna, tied it off with string, and stuck the little bulb under the faucet.

  Glenn’s body relaxed—just as his firstborn son had, once he’d started sucking on the homemade pacifier.

  This time when he entered the house, Glenn went upstairs and fetched a clean handkerchief. As the baby’s wailing escalated, he tamped down the urge to cry along with him. Instead, Glenn headed for the sugar bowl on the kitchen table and repeated the solution his deceased mamm had provided for him, direct from heaven.

  Marietta, bless her, continued to walk and rock and coo even though she was clearly at her wit’s end. After he doused the bulb with water, Glenn walked up behind the slender woman and gently grasped her shoulder to stop her pacing. He popped the pacifier into Levi’s red, open mouth and prayed.

  Within seconds, the baby was suckling. The kitchen went quiet.

  “Denki,” Marietta whispered as she blinked back tears. “I’ve tried feeding him and burping him and—and I didn’t know what else to—”

  “Shhh.” Glenn gently held her against him, resting his head on hers. Levi’s baby-powder scent soothed him—and so did Marietta’s elemental fragrance, enhanced by the aroma of bacon. When he glanced toward the stove and saw that she’d started supper—a meal interrupted by his son’s neediness—he knew he owed her more of a debt than he could possibly pay.

  For several long moments Glenn let the tension melt from his body, praying that Dat and Molly and Billy Jay remained in the noodle factory until he and Marietta could simply breathe again. He became aware of the fact that it had been way too long since he’d held a woman in his arms. When he could trust himself to remain calm rather than dumping all of his day’s frustrations on her, he eased away.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “When I came here to stay with you and your sister, I never intended—”

  “I’m sorry, too, Glenn,” Marietta said with a shake of her head. “You must feel so fragmented and scattered right now, while you work in your shop and rebuild your home, trying to hold your family—and yourself—together.”

  Fragmented and scattered.

  With three words, she’d described his life—the state of his soul. And without a thought for herself or how he’d inconvenienced her, Marietta had consoled him. As she shifted contented little Levi higher onto her shoulder, her smile returned.

  Glenn was sudden
ly struck by her beauty. He’d known Marietta for years, yet her face had taken on a glow he’d never noticed before. She was angular—bony to the point of appearing frail, without the alluring feminine curves he’d always adored on Dorcas. And because her kapp was slightly askew from frantically tending his son, uneven tufts of her brown hair reminded him of the ordeal she’d undergone during her cancer treatment. Because her face had lost all of its excess flesh, her lips looked too large—

  Yet he suddenly wanted to kiss them.

  “It’s been a rough day,” he murmured before he followed up on that momentary urge. “For both of us.”

  “It has,” she agreed. She smiled again at the baby resting in her arms, and then she handed Levi over to Glenn. “But we got past this bump in the road, and on we go. Everything will get better once supper’s underway, jah? I’m making pancakes tonight.”

  Just that quickly, Marietta set his world back on its axis.

  Glenn settled into a chair at the kitchen table, cradling Levi in the crook of his elbow. As his baby boy drifted off to sleep, a return to a happy, purposeful life didn’t seem so impossible anymore.

  Chapter 16

  Very early on Saturday morning, Jo unlocked the back entry to The Marketplace and flipped the light switches. Ever since her return home on Tuesday, she’d been desperate to get away from Mamm’s probing, disapproving gaze—as though her mother suspected Jo had engaged in something horribly immoral during her time with the Wengerds. All hope of defending Michael’s and Nelson’s honorable motives had vanished, along with her wish to share the lush, colorful tranquility she’d found amid the poinsettias in their greenhouses. Jo knew better than to even hint at Michael’s wish to court her . . . to marry her someday.