Martha heaved a sigh. “You have to admit they were fun while they lasted. And pretty cute, too, each in his own way.”
“But we’d be in hot water up to our eyeballs if we went along with Bram’s big ideas,” Mary whispered. Then her lips curved. “At least he has a plan, though . . . a dream for his future. Can’t say that about any of the boys here in Cedar Creek—leastways, not the ones our age.”
“Jah, and it’s too bad about Nate getting the cold shoulder from his fiancée. If we’d had any idea how upset he’d be by us switching around . . .” Martha sighed as she took a piece of gum from her apron pocket.
Mary shrugged, feeling more disappointed with each passing moment. “I was really looking forward to Second Christmas tomorrow . . . spending all day out and around with those boys. But this wishful thinking’s not getting the rest of that bed down here.”
Together they carried the pieces of the bed frame, and when they’d covered everything with an old sheet to keep it from getting dusty, they returned to Owen and Noah’s room. Tearing down the rollaway bed Jacob had bunked in was simpler, because they stored it in a hall closet for when cousins and other kin came to visit.
“It’s probably time to help Mamma set the table for supper,” Mary remarked as they finished straightening Jacob’s room.
“Jah, but I’ll be thinking about how much food Bram and Nate would’ve tucked away—”
“And having them there at dinner when we blew out our candles would’ve been special, ain’t so?” Mary asked in a tiny voice. “We’re sounding like the folks, going on and on about what nice fellows they were.”
“Well, they are nice. We all just said and did some things that didn’t go over so gut,” Martha replied. “And who wouldn’t get their hopes up, looking forward to some fun with them? I can’t think they really wanted to head home . . .”
“Puh! Would you listen to us having a pity party instead of celebrating our birthday?” Mary leaned closer to Martha, keeping her voice low as an idea bubbled up inside her. “What’s to stop us from going to Willow Ridge? Isn’t Second Christmas supposed to be for having fun and visiting?”
“You mean, just drive on over there? To surprise them?”
“Why not?” Mary grinned, grabbing her sister’s arm. “I’m thinking Nate and Bram’ll be real glad to see us. And if we apologize first thing—”
“Jah, it’ll be the best chance we have to clear the air,” Martha said, her voice rising with excitement. “Really hate to leave things the way they are.”
“But not a word about this to anybody else.”
“Oh no, I’m not listening to any more remarks about the Kanagy boys leaving—”
“Or about how only loose, wayward girls would go chasing after them,” Mary said with a decisive nod. She was grinning from ear to ear, just like her sister. “Let’s box up some cookies to take along.”
“Jah, never hurts to sweeten the deal. And if we pack some clothes tonight, we can get out of here before anybody else is out of bed. It’s the best way.”
“We can write Mamma a note so she won’t worry about us.”
Martha let out a short laugh. “She can always call our cells. But by the time she thinks to do that, we’ll be having ourselves a gut time in Willow Ridge!”
“I like it! We’re going!”
When the mantel clock downstairs chimed four, Martha gave up on trying to sleep. As she began to wind her hair into a bun, Mary slipped into the dress she’d laid out last night. They rose so often before the sun that grooming in the dark came as second nature. Their whispered giggles were the only noise they made as they slid their duffels out from under their made-up beds. Down the stairs they went in their stocking feet, missing the squeaky spots from years of practice. Mary laid the note to Mamma on the kitchen counter, and then the two of them slipped into their leather sneakers, coats, and bonnets. Out they went, as silent and light as two snowflakes.
As a team they hitched Taffy to the enclosed buggy they shared with Noah. When they’d loaded the cookie box and their duffels, Martha slid inside and took the reins. “Geddap, Taffy,” she said, thankful that their mare seemed as excited about this adventure as they were despite the early hour. After Mary slid the barn door shut she, too, climbed in.
Once they were on the road, they stopped holding their breath. Mary grabbed Martha around the shoulders. “Oh, this is so much fun!”
“Jah, we’ve never tried the likes of this before!” Martha replied gleefully. “Bram made a gut point when he said we should get out and see something of the world during our rumspringa.”
“And it’s not like the parents don’t approve of him and Nate,” Mary pointed out. “Not like we’re running wild, without a set destination, either.”
Martha followed the county road between the Cedar Creek Mercantile and Graber’s Custom Carriages, and on beyond the grain elevator at the edge of town. As they passed through LaPlata, the first glimmers of pink glowed along the horizon. She steered Taffy east onto another county blacktop and settled back into the seat. “Now isn’t that a pretty sight, seeing the sun rise behind these farms and pastures?” she said. “Most mornings we don’t see past our own fences—”
“Or beyond the kitchen sink,” Mary remarked.
“—and we have no idea what goes on in the rest of the world. It’s all well and gut for me to help out around home while you’re baking for Beulah Mae—”
“But who knows what we’ve been missing?” Mary said as she peered eagerly at the farms they were passing in the early morning light. “Sometimes boys get a lot different picture of things before they marry and start families. I’m really glad we’re doing this, Sister. It’s gut to find out we can take care of ourselves beyond Cedar Creek.”
Wasn’t it wonderful to chitchat this way, just the two of them? Martha had so rarely left home on Second Christmas, except to go visiting with her entire family, that this adventure with only her twin was a real treat. “What do you suppose Nate and Bram will say when we pull into their lane?” she asked. “I can’t wait to see their faces when we knock on their door.”
“And what do you suppose they’ll want to do once we sweeten them up with cookies and convince them we really, truly like them?” Mary gazed through the windshield at the snowy fields now glistening with the sunrise. “Of course, we’ll have to stop at a house somewhere when we get to Willow Ridge, to ask where they live. No sense in driving around half the day, trying to guess.”
“Jah, there’s that.” Martha laughed. “But we won’t be like boys that way. We will ask for directions!”
On they drove, through LaPlata and a few other settlements that were too small to be considered towns. Taffy was trotting along, tossing her head and enjoying the brisk morning. The clip-clop! clip-clop! of her hooves punctuated their ideas about what they might enjoy doing with Nate and Bram today. When they fell quiet for a moment, however, Martha wondered if they hadn’t already passed the farmstead on the left, with its old gray silos and low-slung barns . . . or did a lot of places in central Missouri look much the same as those in Cedar Creek? She didn’t think she’d backtracked . . . yet as she saw an intersection coming up, she felt a rumbling in her stomach that had nothing to do with hunger.
“Um . . . which way do you suppose we ought to go at this crossroads?” she asked.
Mary blinked. She studied the horses in the nearest pasture as though they might have the right answer. “I haven’t the foggiest idea, Sister,” she finally admitted. “Guess we were so excited about this trip, it didn’t occur to me we’d never been to Willow Ridge.”
“Oh, we’ve gone through there—I recall seeing the café where the boys said they eat nearly every morning. But I wasn’t driving then, so I wasn’t paying attention to road signs.” Martha drove on for a bit, searching her mind for a logical solution to this problem as she studied the passing countryside. “But we know it’s south and west of Cedar Creek, so if we keep heading away from the sun—”
“Or we keep the sun to our left side,” Mary continued, gesturing toward the glow in the clear, crystal blue sky.
“—we’ll be on a gut road. Then when we see somebody out choring or driving, we can ask them.”
“Works for me.”
They rolled along the snow-packed county highway for another ten minutes . . . or was it twenty? Or only five? Martha shifted in the seat, becoming more aware that they didn’t know for sure they were on the best route to Willow Ridge. “How about you grab me a cookie or two out of your box, Mary?”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Then maybe you ought to call Bram and ask the best way to get there,” Martha said with a sigh. “It’ll let our cat out of the bag, but there’s no sense wandering lost on roads that won’t take us where we want to go.”
Mary fumbled in the plastic bin at her feet. She placed a napkin between them on the seat and then chose a couple of turtle brownies and two frosted sugar cookies. She jammed an angel cookie into her mouth. “Gut thing I thought to get Bram’s—oh, my stars!”
Martha cried out, too, as the front wheel struck something hard. Their cookies flew to the floor as the buggy lurched toward the ditch. “Whoa, Taffy! Easy now, girl,” she called to the mare.
Her heart was pounding frantically now. Here they were, out in the middle of nowhere, with no other vehicles in sight, and when she hopped out of the buggy she saw that the rim and two spokes of the wooden wheel had broken. “Well, we’ve got to call somebody now, for sure and for certain,” she said in a high, tight voice. “Can’t go any farther with a wheel like that—and there’s the chunk of ice we hit wrong,” she said as she pointed to the offending gray lump in the road.
“Oh, Martha . . . Dat’s going to be so angry at us.”
“Well, we’re not calling him! Besides, if nobody’s in the barn at home or checking the phone by the road, we might sit here forever.” Martha fought for reason, determined not to cry.
“I’m not inclined to call Noah’s cell, either,” Mary remarked as she fished her phone from her coat pocket. “He’ll be mad at us for taking the buggy, as it is. Sure hope there’s a gut cell signal out this way.”
With a shaky sigh, Martha got back into the buggy, out of the wind. She watched her twin’s fingers dance around the number pad, noting gratefully that she had three strong bars of signal.
“Come on now, Bram,” Mary prayed aloud as she listened to his phone ringing. “You always keep your phone close—jah, Bram?” she said in a louder, perkier voice. “Well, you’ll just never guess who this is, or uh, why I’m calling you.”
Martha let out a nervous giggle. She reached for the three cookies that had landed under the dashboard, wishing that the yellow-frosted star could guide them as the star of Bethlehem had led the wise men to the manger. But it was too late to be consulting such heavenly guidance, wasn’t it?
“Jah, it’s Mary! And it’s gut to hear your voice . . . jah, well, we’re sorry about how things ended, too. We got pretty put out yesterday and didn’t give you much chance to talk us back into a better mood,” Mary went on in a hopeful tone, “but right now we need a big favor, Bram.”
“A huge favor,” Martha murmured, shaking her head.
Mary listened for a moment. Her smile indicated that Bram at least hadn’t hung up on her so maybe . . . maybe they could get out of this mess without catching any flack from their dat or mamm.
“Well, we decided to surprise you guys for Second Christmas! Martha and I tossed our duffels in a buggy and started out this morning before anyone else was the wiser,” Mary recounted cheerfully. Then she paused. “Trouble is, we’ve hit a chunk of ice in the road and now a wheel’s broken . . . jah, just a second.”
Mary pressed the phone into her coat. “Sister, do you have any idea where we are?” she murmured.
Martha sighed. “Last town we went through was Cold Stream,” she replied, and then she squinted at the signs up ahead of them. “But we’re at the intersection of Double A and Highway 3.”
Mary repeated their location to Bram . . . chatted with him for another few moments as the sun lit up her relieved expression. “Oh, but I’m so grateful to you for helping us,” she said. Then her laughter rang inside the buggy. “Jah, we’ll owe you for this, for sure and for certain. See you in a little bit, then.”
Martha’s shoulders relaxed. “So, Bram wasn’t still mad at us?”
Mary chuckled as she pressed the End button. “Oh, I figure he’s going to get in a few licks about girls who take out on a wild goose chase. But he seemed kind of happy to have something to do today.”
“Like us, then. Didn’t want to hang around the house.” Martha reached for the cookie bin, and chose a butterscotch cashew bar. As she bit into its gooey, crunchy richness, relief washed over her. “Did he say how long he might be?”
“Probably twenty minutes. He knew right where this intersection was.”
“Maybe we weren’t so far off course, after all,” she remarked. “I guess whatever he teases us with, or expects us to do in return, well—we’ve got it coming, ain’t so?”
Mary, too, grabbed a butterscotch cashew bar. Then she grinned mischievously. “Bring it on, I say.”
Martha laughed out loud. “That’s the ticket, Sister! We can handle what’s happened to our buggy, and we’ll handle Bram and his big ideas along with it.”
Chapter Ten
Nate steered Clyde along the road at a brisk clip, trying not to feel too hopeful. While this little diversion with the Coblentz twins was a surprise he couldn��t have hoped for on a day that had been dragging by at home, there were still some issues to be cleared away before he allowed himself to fall for their upturned noses and cheerful smiles again. But the bright morning sunshine and the sleigh bells accompanying the steady clip-clop! clip-clop! of his draft horse’s hooves raised his spirits.
“Did Mary sound upset? Like, will we have to put up with their crying when we get there?” he asked Bram.
Bram, who had been grinning like a little kid ever since Mary had called him, crammed his fedora lower so it wouldn’t blow off in the breeze. “She sounded mighty glad I answered the phone, but seemed on top of things, all in all,” he replied. “I can’t think Martha would be one to weep and wail, either. She impressed me as the more level-headed of the two.”
“Jah, I caught that about her, too,” Nate admitted. “And if she was driving, and they got to that crossroads at Highway 3 without knowing where they were going, they’re neither one helpless.”
“Jah, and I’m thinking that if I hadn’t answered, they’d have called some other fellow.” Bram shrugged, obviously delighted at the turn their day had taken. “I hope you can set aside your pity party so we can have a gut time today. After all, this was to be their surprise to us. They want to see us again, even after—well, that’s not a big deal anymore.”
Nate glanced sideways at his younger brother. “So what did you do after I left? I thought it was odd that you weren’t that far behind me getting home.” Anybody could see Bram was keeping a secret . . . maybe another issue to clear up before they took their relationships with the twins beyond this playful stage.
Sure enough, his younger brother laughed and looked away. “Ohhh, I got the big idea to ask the girls if they’d want to go into business with me, running an auction barn.”
“And?” Nate asked pointedly. Things were never the way Bram let on at first. It always paid to dig a little deeper to get to the root of his doings.
“I, um, said I could set them up with a place to stay . . . hinted that I might be up for jumping the fence—”
“And they told you to go fly a kite, ain’t so?” Nate let out an exasperated sigh. “And you didn’t think you’d upset them by asking them to leave their faith and their family for—”
“Jah, I get that now,” Bram retorted. “The girls have put it behind them or they wouldn’t have started out for Willow Ridge before dawn. So stow it, all right?”
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Nate’s lips lifted. Somehow, even after Bram had made such an outlandish blunder, the twins had looked beyond his impulsive talk to give him another chance. With any sort of luck, he, too, might get back into their good graces...
“And there they are.” Bram pointed to a buggy alongside the county road at the intersection they were approaching. When he waved his arms high in the air, a girl in a black bonnet hopped out of each side of the rig to wave back.
Even from here, the Coblentz twins looked bubbly and happy and—well, they were certainly the bright spot in Nate’s day. Adventurous and open to getting out of their comfort zone. Unafraid, at least from appearances. Maybe he could take a lesson from the way they were handling this setback in their plans. After all, how many young women had ever asked him to help celebrate their birthday? And now that he was in the driver’s seat, in more than one sense, he felt more confident about the direction things might go today.
When Nate pulled the sleigh alongside their buggy, the twins seemed pleased to see that he’d come along with Bram, and that made him return their smiles. “Well now,” he teased as he stepped down from the seat. “Imagine meeting the two of you out here—”
“And it’s mighty gut to see you, Nate!” one of the twins remarked.
“Lots more fun with the four of us,” her sister chimed in. “But you can see we’re going nowhere without your help.”
“We did bring a big box of cookies, though.”
“And our sunshiny selves, of course.”
And didn’t they make a sight, smiling up at him? Nate slung an arm around their shoulders and hugged them both briefly. “Let’s take a look at this wheel, and we’ll decide just how much this personal pickup and repair service is going to cost you.”
“Best thing would be to take this wheel to Graber’s carriage shop,” Bram said from where he was studying the damage. “We brought a few tools, but this is a pretty bad break. More than we can fix for you.”
Both girls’ faces fell. “But that’s clear back in Cedar Creek—”
An Amish Country Christmas Page 8
