Moses turned his back on the buggy. “I’m not going anywhere. Let her sit in the buggy where she won’t cause trouble.” He reached out and took Lia’s hand. Her legs quit shaking. “What do you want me to do?”
“These children need to get to the hospital. Can you go back to Van deGraffs’ and call a driver?”
“I knew they would want to be with their mother, so I called Roy once the ambulance was on its way. He should be here soon.”
Lia sighed in relief and turned to Hannah, who looked almost as pale as her mother had. “A driver is coming to take you to the hospital. You might want to pack a bag for her and bring some snacks for your brothers and sisters. I don’t know how long you will be there.”
Hannah nodded and hurried into the house. Her two sisters cried louder when she left them.
Moses bent over and scooped both girls into his arms. They cried out in surprise, but he held them securely and bounced up and down. The girls, about ten and eight years old, stopped crying and stared at Moses with a mixture of puzzlement and fascination. He kept bouncing.
Peter pressed his palm against one eye and swiped away whatever tear was thinking of forming there. “Will Mamm die?”
Moses, still bouncing, hardened his expression. “It is very serious. She has lost a lot of blood. But Lord willing, they will get her to the hospital on time. By the grace of God, Sarah knew what to do. He sent a wonderful-gute person to help your mother.”
“That’s right,” said Lia. “Sarah is smart. She knows what to do for your mother.”
Peter’s brother bowed his head and squeezed the bridge of his nose as he began to weep. This prompted all three little girls to start bawling again. Peter lifted the littlest sister off the ground and cuddled her in his arms.
Lia felt utterly helpless. She dug her fingers into her palms and blinked back her own tears. No good for them to see her crying. She was supposed to be the one with everything under control.
“We need to pray.” Moses placed the two weeping girls on the ground and took their hands. “Everybody hold hands.”
The girls swallowed their sobs and sniffled softly when they formed a circle chain. Lia tucked herself between Peter and one of the girls.
Moses bowed his head. Everyone else followed suit. “Heavenly Father, we give thee thanks for thy bounties. Wilt thou save a mother for her children and give us thy peace and comfort in this time of trial and help the sheriff to drive fast and safe. Thy will be done. Amen.”
They stood in silence holding hands until they heard Rachel tapping on the buggy window. No one could hear what she said, so she slid the door open. “Are you coming?”
Moses sighed as if all the weariness in the world had caught up to him. He let go of the girls’ hands and trudged to the buggy where Rachel waited impatiently. Lia didn’t hear what they said to each other, but she saw Moses cup his hand under Rachel’s chin. Rachel’s expression softened, and she scooted farther into the buggy as Moses slid the door shut.
Hannah came from the house with two bulging canvas bags as Roy pulled into the driveway in his clunky white van.
“Cum,” said Lia. “Get in.”
She herded the children to the van while Moses gave Roy instructions. Peter lifted all three of his little sisters into the backseat, and Lia helped them buckle their seat belts and handed each of them a tissue from her bag. She saw Moses give Roy two twenty-dollar bills. Hiring a driver wasn’t cheap.
The two boys climbed into the middle seat and buckled their seat belts. Hannah chose the front seat. Moses came around the front of the van and motioned for Hannah to roll down her window. He glanced at Lia and then held out his hand to Hannah. Lia caught a glimpse of green that could only be more cash. “Call my cheese factory if you need anything.”
Hannah nodded but didn’t speak.
Moses signaled Roy. “Let me know if more is needed.”
Roy put his van into gear and backed out of the driveway. Hannah kept her eyes glued to Moses’s face until Roy drove away.
Moses gazed into Lia’s eyes with concern lining his face as he wrapped his fingers around her upper arms. “What now?”
“Take Rachel home. I’m going to strip the bed and wash everything,” Lia said numbly. “They must not be burdened when they come back.”
“I’ll help.”
“You should get Rachel home.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Lia all but burst with gratitude. What would she do without Moses?
They took a few steps toward the house when another knock from the buggy pulled them up short.
Again, Rachel slid the door open. “Are you coming?”
“I need to help Lia with the laundry. You don’t have to wait. Walk home, if you want.”
“I can’t hike up that hill,” Rachel whined.
Moses smiled sweetly. “Then wait for me.”
Rachel slipped out of the buggy. “I’m coming in.”
“There’s a lot of blood,” Moses said, his words dripping with sympathy for Rachel’s delicateness.
Rachel halted as if she’d run into a brick wall. “Why do you have to help Lia? She is plenty able to do laundry by herself.”
“It wouldn’t take too long to walk home.”
Rachel’s mouth twisted in annoyance. “I will wait, but don’t be long. You said you had to fix Anna and Felty’s roof.”
Rachel slammed the buggy door, and behind the glass, Lia could see her clasp her arms tightly around her waist and turn her face away from them. Rachel would be fit to be tied when she finally made it home, and Lia would never hear the end of how badly she had been treated. Dat would hear of it before week’s end and probably summon Lia home in a matter of days.
Lia felt too emotionally spent to concern herself with Dat’s displeasure. Who could worry about Dat when Saloma’s life hung in the balance?
In Saloma’s bedroom, blood stained the bedsheets and towels—a vivid reminder that six children might lose their mother today and that Lia wouldn’t have known what to do if she had been called upon to care for Saloma by herself. Saloma would have died for certain under Lia’s care. The thought frightened her.
A sob escaped her lips, and before she could control herself, the floodgates opened and she dissolved into tears. Moses immediately wrapped his strong arms around her and laid a tender kiss on her forehead. She soaked his shoulder with salt water, but he didn’t seem to mind. His arms held her securely with no hint that he would ever let her go.
“It will be all right,” he whispered. “You are safe. Everything will be all right.”
“I can’t do this,” she said, weeping harder, touched that he wanted to comfort her. “I’m so weak.”
“You stayed calm, especially after Sarah left. The children were afraid, and you soothed them.”
“Nae, you did that.”
“I did no such thing. How much could I have helped if you had been running around the house screaming or pulling your hair out with fear? I distracted them. You gave them assurance.”
With her breath still coming in spasms, Lia stopped crying and savored the sound of Moses’s heartbeat against her ear and the warmth of his arms wrapped tightly around her. She could stand like this forever. For the moment, he was not her future brother-in-law or simply a good friend. He was a handsome, wonderful man with whom she wouldn’t mind spending the rest of her life.
She tilted her chin to look at his face. His brows were knit in confusion as if two conflicting emotions were feuding in his brain.
He cleared his throat and pulled his arms from around her as the corners of his mouth turned down. “Sorry.”
Why did he feel the need to apologize for something so pleasant? Did he feel disloyal to Rachel by giving Lia his shoulder?
Lia felt no such obligation to apologize to him. She would cherish his touch forever.
With his lips pressed in a hard line and his expression guarded, Moses pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to
Lia.
She took it and mopped up the moisture from her face. “Denki. I am not usually a crier.” She must look a sight. Her nose had probably turned bright red.
“It has been a difficult morning.” He didn’t take his piercing gaze from her face. “Your eyes are even prettier after you cry.”
Lia didn’t know how to respond to that, so she sniffled into his handkerchief until she regained her composure.
With heightened color in his face, he finally broke eye contact and took two steps away from her. “I will go find a bucket.”
Suddenly too flustered to utter a word, Lia busied herself stripping the bed. She gathered the sheets and mattress pad and took them to the washroom where Moses filled a bucket with a soapy solution. “I’ll do the floor,” he said.
Lia soaped and scrubbed and agitated the sheets until they probably looked whiter than the day they were purchased. Once she rinsed, she ran everything through the wringer twice so it would dry extra fast on the line. The wet sheets went into a basket for hanging.
She went down the hall to check on Moses’s progress. The bucket of filthy water stood in the hall outside Saloma’s room, and Moses was on his hands and knees buffing the floor with a dry towel. The refreshing scent of lemon and pine hung in the air.
Moses stood up, a satisfied smile playing at his lips. “Does it look okay?”
“I wouldn’t dare walk on it. How did you get the wood so shiny?”
“My mamm is very particular about her floors. She trained me well.”
Moses was the finest man Lia knew. His mamm had trained him well indeed.
He picked up his bucket. “How is the bedding coming?”
“Ready to be hung. The sun will give them an extra whitening.”
“I will help you.” Moses dumped his dirty water down the sink in the washroom and picked up the basket of wet sheets. “Let’s go out the back door. If I give Rachel one more excuse, she’ll probably want to throw very large rocks at me.”
Lia couldn’t help but smile. Moses knew Rachel too well. Lia didn’t try to understand why he liked her.
Lia grabbed a small plastic box of clothespins and they marched, somewhat stealthily, out to the clothesline on the side of the house opposite where Moses had parked his buggy.
They each held up a corner of the first sheet and pinned it to the line. Moses’s fingers weren’t deft with the clothespins, but he managed to fasten the sheet securely. Lia handed him another pin as they worked their way fixing the long folds of fabric to the line and raising the sheet higher in the air with the pulley.
Moses held out his hand for another pin. “Did I ever tell you I like tall girls? Your height comes in very handy when hanging clothes.”
“A short girl can hang laundry just fine.”
“But it gives her sore shoulders and a crick in the neck.”
Lia raised an eyebrow and grinned. Moses had been talking to Rachel.
His eyes twinkled mischievously, and he showed his dimple. “Will Rachel start throwing things at me if we stop at the Van deGraffs before I take you both home? I need to apologize to them and beg them not to have me arrested.”
Lia laughed out loud. “What are you talking about?”
His face clouded over before he smiled reassuringly. “I broke into their house.”
“You did?”
“They weren’t home, so I bent a screen and crawled in through a basement window. I made two calls, left some money and a note.”
Lia tried not to think about what might have happened if Moses hadn’t been determined to get into the Van deGraffs’ house. “Do you think they’ll be mad?”
Moses shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe not. I left a lot of money.”
With a teasing note to her voice, she said, “You must be very wealthy. How much money do you usually carry on outings with me?”
“Not enough. That screen is going to cost more than the fifty dollars I left.”
“I will help you pay for it. I got my wages from Anna yesterday.”
“That’s a ridiculous thought. You weren’t within a mile of Van deGraffs’ when that screen broke.”
“But I am partly responsible.”
Moses pulled the clothesline toward him, propelling the fitted sheet higher into the air. “No, you are so graceful and slender, you would have been able to fit through their doggie door, and the screen need never have been damaged.”
Lia smiled and tossed him another clothespin. “The sheets should not take too long to dry. After we go to Van deGraffs, you can drop me off here, and I will make up the bed before the Millers return. Then I can walk home.”
“I would not think of letting you make up the bed by yourself.”
“Do you know how to make a hospital corner?”
Lia’s heartbeat set some sort of speed record when Moses winked at her. “My mamm is very particular about her beds.”
“Moses!”
Both Lia and Moses snapped their heads in the direction of Rachel’s voice. She stood at the back door, hands on hips, glaring in their direction.
Moses lost his smile but his eyes shone with amusement as he glanced at Lia and turned to face the attack. “I think it is best we take Rachel home before going to the Van deGraffs’,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.
“Uh-huh,” Lia agreed without moving her lips or changing her expression.
Rachel’s high-pitched voice sounded like fingernails against a chalkboard. “I ran through the entire house screaming for you. I’ve been waiting for hours, and neither of you had the decency to tell me you would be in the backyard.”
Moses flashed that winning smile that always turned Lia’s knees into jelly. “I’m just about ready.”
Rachel let the screen door slam and stormed toward them with her hands held stiffly at her sides and clenched into fists. Not paying attention, she passed under a tree, and a low-hanging branch ripped the kapp off her head, along with some strands of hair that came with the pins. She squeaked in annoyance and pain as her hands flew to her head in an effort to smooth her hair. It didn’t help. Unruly tufts of golden locks stuck out from her bun in all directions.
Moses sprouted a sheepish smile. “I guess you could have driven the buggy home an hour ago. I don’t mind walking.”
Rachel growled like a guard dog, and Lia was grateful there were no rocks nearby. Rachel would have been hurling them at Moses for sure.
Rachel had a very gute arm.
Chapter Fifteen
Hoping to catch a glimpse of Lia, Moses didn’t take his eyes from the window as he walked his horse up the lane. It had been three whole days since the scare at Saloma’s, and only the demands of running a cheese factory had kept Moses from Huckleberry Hill.
Lia was nowhere to be seen, and not even Rachel sat at her usual perch. Disappointed, he trained his eyes on the ground and kept walking. He didn’t know Lia’s whereabouts, but at least Rachel would not attack him the minute he set foot on the porch. Always the trade-off—if he wanted to see Lia, he had to endure Rachel.
He shook his head a couple of times. No matter how many curds and whey he separated or how many molds he pressed or how many days he stayed away from Huckleberry Hill, Moses could not get Lia off his mind. Thoughts of her played in his head like a graceful melody floating through the fragrant summer air. She smelled of roses and pine trees, apple spice and lilacs.
Nor could he banish the feel of Lia in his arms as she’d soaked his shirt with her tears on Tuesday at the Millers’. The desire to protect and care for her had almost overwhelmed him, and it took all the willpower he could muster to kiss her forehead instead of those soft, inviting lips that surely tasted of vanilla and sugar.
As he led Red into the barn, Moses took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. Had it been this way with Barbara? He loved her, but he remembered the heartache as she pulled further and further away from the church and him. She hadn’t loved him enough to stay.
Jah, he remembered the
heartache.
In her stall, Dawdi’s horse bobbed her head up and down and whinnied softly as she restlessly stomped her feet with no place to go. Moses led Red to the stall opposite Dawdi’s horse, but Red didn’t seem to want to cooperate. He threw his head back and grunted rebelliously, and Moses had to tighten his grip so the reins wouldn’t be ripped from his hand.
“Whoa there, calm down, boy.”
Red reared on his hind legs and this time Moses couldn’t keep hold of the reins. He took a few steps back to avoid getting kicked, then circled to see if he could reach the reins dangling around Red’s neck. Red perked up his ears and snorted in panic. Something had him spooked all right.
Moses held up his hands and spoke soothing words to his horse as Red shuffled his feet in one direction and then another. “Whoa, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
Red turned a complete circle as Moses tried to dance around him. Without warning, Red swished his tail into the air and kicked up his back legs. He forcefully smashed into Moses’s leg with his metal-shod hoof. Moses felt a sickening snap, and he screamed in agony as his leg gave out from under him.
Red shook his head, whinnied, and trotted to the far end of the barn where he stood with his snout nudging the wall.
Moses gasped. It felt like Red had kicked him in the gut as well as the leg. He lay on his back, trying desperately to catch his breath, and focused squarely on the pain that radiated from his leg and filled every space in his body. He resolved not to pass out even though the pain made him unbearably light-headed and the warm sensation of blood trickled into his boots. The blow must have broken the skin as well as the bone.
Taking deep, deliberate breaths in an attempt to calm his racing heart, Moses moaned as he slowly pulled himself to a sitting position to take a look at his injury. The bottom half of his left pant leg was saturated with blood. He carefully pulled the fabric back to examine the wound and nearly collapsed in shock. The sight of blood usually didn’t bother him, but the sight of his bone sticking straight out of his skin made him a bit dizzy. He clamped his eyes shut and pulled the pant leg back over the wound. He should probably get to a hospital right quick.
Huckleberry Hill Page 17
