“I must thank you,” Callie said after she settled onto a chair. She used both hands to smudge away the tears she had cried as she spoke with Abe.
“It is you who deserves the credit,” he replied. He was amazed at her ability to put aside her pain and attend to those who needed her compassion. Without thinking, he reached out and squeezed her hand, suddenly realizing that her reaction would likely be shock.
Callie didn’t pull away. She only looked at him with huge dark eyes. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever known, but he was sure she viewed him through eyes of friendship, not love, something he was powerless to change. After arriving at the mission, he had learned she was expected to wed Levi. Joshua didn’t care for the situation, but he would not damage what she and Levi had established together.
As if uncomfortable with his gaze, Callie abruptly stood and went over to the hearth, where she prodded the embers of the fire. When she turned back, he was gone.
Chapter 7
We will be all right,” Abe said, nudging Callie toward the door. “Love will see us through.”
Before leaving, she gave Suzannah one last look. Then, finding words insufficient, Callie closed the door behind her and walked out into the bright sunshine.
At home, she prayed God would be with the Solomons during this tragic time. Thoroughly drained, she collapsed into a rocking chair in the corner, and that was how Sarah found her.
“I am so sorry, Callie,” her sister said, resting her hand on Callie’s shoulder. “I heard about … the babies.”
Callie rubbed at her eyes before answering. “I … we did all we could, but there was nothing …” Her voice caught and she raised tear-filled eyes to Sarah. Why did she have to go through this again? More importantly, why did Abe and Suzannah? What was the purpose in giving life if it was to be snuffed out before it could begin?
Sarah patted her shoulder. “You do not have to talk about it. I know how you felt the last time this happened.”
Callie threw both hands over her face. “I do not know that I can ever talk about this. There is too much pain….”
The pain was not only due to losing Sophie Ruth; it also was caused by Levi’s ungentlemanly behavior at the Killbuck cabin and the spring.
“I am sorry. It must sound lacking, but that is all I can say.” Sarah rubbed her arms. “I will light a fire. Perhaps the warmth will cheer us up.”
“There is no fire on earth that can take away death’s chill, Sarah.”
“I know that,” Sarah rejoined, but she moved toward the hearth anyway, keeping her face turned away from her sister.
Melancholy hung over them for the rest of the afternoon. Sarah tried her best to lighten the mood with bits of news she had picked up. She mentioned Storm, in case it might shock Callie into remembering that life must go on.
“I stopped by the Killbucks’,” Sarah said, her voice firm and steady. “Storm is still weak and feverish.”
“Then there is no change?” Callie didn’t know why she had asked. She hadn’t expected there to be, but she hoped.
“No, none. Your Joshua came by while I was there.”
“He is not my Joshua!” She should have been the one to check on the boy, not him. A fresh round of despair moved through her.
Sarah nodded. “Whatever you say. He administered another potion and said to tell you not to worry about going there tonight; he will take care of Storm.”
“How nice.” Callie’s words were laced with irritation. He had brushed her off without any regard to her involvement. For a few days she had forgotten that in the beginning she had thought he had come to take her position away from her. Now that concern resurfaced.
“Yes, it was thoughtful of him,” Sarah went on. “We had a little chat, and then Levi walked me home.”
“Levi picked you up?” Shock propelled her words from her mouth.
Sarah clucked her tongue. “It was harmless, Callie. All he did was walk me home.”
Sarah might think it harmless, but Callie was concerned. She must tell her sister about the way Levi had behaved that morning. But how? Sarah would no doubt take it the wrong way and point out that Levi was apparently becoming bored waiting for Callie to decide to wed him.
“I am glad you had an escort,” she finally said.
“That is all it was. No harm in that, is there?”
“No.” Callie clasped her hands in front of her. What was Levi up to? And why couldn’t she just tell Sarah about what he had done that morning?
Sarah and Levi? She could not let that happen! Sarah was sixteen and had no idea of the intricacies of a man-woman relationship. And Levi, hunter-lean Levi, whose actions this morning had proven to her once and for all that she could never stand beside him as his wife … what was he up to? She had plainly told him not to count on her for any future relationship. Any chance for closeness between them was now gone.
But Sarah? How quickly he may have switched his allegiance after the fiasco at the spring.
Sarah’s brows narrowed and a quizzical expression appeared on her face; it was as if she could read Callie’s thoughts. “You must be tired. I promised MaryBeth I would come see her, so I had better be going.”
“Sarah?” Callie began, deciding she must at least warn her sister to be careful.
“Yes?” Sarah turned and gazed at Callie with such innocence, Callie found she could not speak.
Perhaps if she just stood back and watched, things would work themselves out. “Be careful,” she finally said.
“I always am,” Sarah replied.
The day’s events had drained Callie emotionally, and as she recalled them, her heart surged with renewed grief. Thoughts of the little blue infant would not leave her. The tears she had been fighting for most of the day filled her eyes. This time she did not try to stem the flow.
“We could not save both,” Joshua explained to Brother David across the table. He had sought out David after leaving the Solomons’ cabin and checking on Storm.
“It is sad when we lose a soul, especially when the soul is untried,” David commented.
“Sophie Ruth is with Jesus.”
David nodded. “Yes, but we must not forget the parents. Their road has been paved with loss.” He wiped at the corners of his eyes. “They have one they can hold, but the memories of the others will always walk with them.”
“It is hard to lose someone you love,” he agreed. Joshua had never lost a child, but he had lost Callie.
David removed his ever-present Bible from under his arm and laid it on his lap. “How are things between you and Callie?”
The only thing Joshua had left was the open wound of an aching heart. “I am not sure I can continue this way,” he admitted.
“I do not believe that,” David replied. “You waited five years for this and now you have changed your mind?”
“I do not know.” Joshua jumped up and began to pace.
David settled back in his chair. “You are the only one who does know, Joshua. Are you telling me you are giving up?”
Was he? David had told him Levi and Callie had planned to wed someday. Where would that information lead him?
“I am not giving up. I just never imagined how difficult this would be when I decided not to tell her who I really am. And you have enlightened me as to Levi’s expectations for her,” he added.
“I will not preach to you, Joshua, but sometimes we make decisions that seem entirely wrong. We must trust God to work out any good that can come of them.”
“So you do not believe I am wrong?” The question gouged a canyon in his heart. He did not really need David’s approval. He had made his decision long ago to find Callie and pursue the promise they had made, despite the obstacles that might entail.
David cocked his head to one side. “You still believe she will look at you and remember who you are and who she is, do you not?”
“Yes. Well, I—”
“I will say this,” David interjected. “At the risk of sound
ing pessimistic, I do not think that will happen. She has come a long way. She has risen above challenges that would have made many strong men turn tail and run. She lost her parents, and then she lost her home at the orphanage. And if that were not enough, Callie followed me to this lonely piece of wilderness.” David crossed his arms.
“It was not as if she had much of a choice, David,” Joshua said. “I was there. She did not know who she was. You offered safety. What else could she have done?”
David studied him silently. Long moments passed. Finally, with a look of exasperation on his face, the elder offered his opinion. “Have you considered why she did it? I think in her heart she thought it would distance her from what had happened.”
Joshua mulled over David’s words. “You sound as if you have spoken with her about this.”
David shook his head. “It is in everything she does. She is gentle and patient with children, yet she never gets too close to them. She loves being around elderly people, yet she does not socialize with them much. She is happiest when she is alone, or with Sarah; but she gives freely of herself to any needy person in our midst. Do I have to tell you why?”
“She sees them as outcasts from their former homes also,” Joshua mused. “Since God loves them, she believes no one but He can accept her for what she is since she does not know who she was.”
David nodded. “Everyone here expects her to marry Levi someday, but I do not think so. The man who marries Callie will be the one who can help her build new memories.” He paused and glanced into Joshua’s eyes. “He will show her that yesterday does not matter. Above all, he will accept her for who she is now, not who she was before.”
Joshua stared out the window. He loved that woman. But was it the Calliope he had known in the orphanage or the Callie he had found here in the wilderness that his heart longed for?
“You were not worried about her when she went to the spring with Levi because you trusted her judgment,” Joshua reflected.
Why hadn’t he realized that before? Because he had been too caught up in seeing her with Levi that all he could think of was the worst—that she had deserted Kukara and Storm.
David leaned forward, keeping his arms crossed in front of him in the manner Joshua was learning meant the elder had something important to say. “I knew Callie would do the right thing. What about you, Joshua?”
It was all Callie could do to roll out of bed after a restless night. Her stomach was queasy and every muscle between her neck and her ankles ached. In fact, her entire body felt as if it were a piece of buckskin that had been stewed in hot water all night long.
Without waking Sarah, she visited those who were ill then returned home, preferring the silent condemnation of the log chinking to facing well-meaning men and women who would want to talk about Sophie Ruth and how sorry they were she and Joshua had not been able to save the infant.
Escape was not that easy. Even after she had returned home and flopped on her bed, her mind kept revisiting what had happened yesterday. The incident with Levi. Then Sophie Ruth. Hannah Grace. Suzannah’s wail of grief. And when those memories had played themselves out, the image of Joshua kept coming back to her. Joshua bravely explaining to Suzannah about Sophie Ruth. Joshua touching Callie’s hand in friendship, looking at her across the table through those endless blue eyes, eyes she had compared to the color of a lake just a few short weeks ago when he had first joined them at the mission.
Then, she had thought him mysterious, perhaps intent on taking her position away from her. But after watching him as he worked with her fellow villagers, Callie knew there was nothing mysterious about Joshua. He was kind and more than willing to share what he had with those who had little. He did everything he could to ease a person’s pain.
So where did that leave her? Since the day she asked him where he was from, Joshua had avoided any further conversation about the orphanage or why she should remember him. But at the Solomons’ cabin, when he sat across from her and reached for her hand, she had felt something stir between them. Something unfamiliar. Something bothersome. It made her wonder if there had ever been anything between them ….
Callie shook her head. She was thinking like Sarah, imagining things that weren’t there. She was just worn out from all that had happened.
“You do not know how to relax,” Sarah had told her a few months ago. She had been running back and forth to almost every home in the mission, trying to prevent a round of influenza from taking root and wiping out half of the mission’s population. “Take some time and just be yourself.”
Callie wanted to, but she didn’t know who she was supposed to be, apart from someone who tended to Schoenbrunn’s ill. The only thing she knew about herself was that she was a castoff her parents had not wanted. Brother David and the others at the mission didn’t see her that way. It was her viewpoint, but a view so firmly ingrained that it was all she knew. If her own parents had not wanted her, then why would anyone? There was only God, the supreme being of total understanding.
Frustrated, Callie clenched her fists then let her hands drop into her lap. How would she ever find out who she had been? Joshua. His name erupted into her consciousness like an answer to prayer.
He knows. He can tell me. Her pulse beat out the words and battered them against her heart. Callie shoved them away. From all appearances, he did not like talking about those days in Pennsylvania. And it was not proper, no matter how much she wanted to know, for her to demand he tell her what he knew.
Callie felt as if she were trapped in a circle, the questions bouncing around in her head until the only thing she could think of was that somehow, some way, she must convince Joshua to explain what he knew about her.
“You awake?” Sarah called.
Lost in her own thoughts, Callie hadn’t heard her sister slip across the room. I must not let Sarah know what I have been thinking, she thought as she rolled over and opened one eye halfway.
“I have already done my rounds. For now, I am going to rest. Yesterday took a lot out of me.”
A look of surprise crossed Sarah’s face. “What about morning service?”
“I am not going anywhere,” Callie explained.
“Not even to Sophie Ruth’s funeral?” Sarah asked.
“Just let me sleep,” she answered. She turned away, hoping Sarah would not probe for her reason.
Sarah patted her shoulder as she was apt to do when she had no words with which to reply, then puttered around the cabin until Callie heard her leave for the morning worship.
Try as she might, with Sarah gone, Callie could not avoid the cabin’s silence pressing in on her. In the past when she faced a tragedy, she had done so alone. Since she had found God, she had sincerely tried to allow Him to take her burdens and show her the answer. Sometimes, though, she felt it took God too long to reveal His will.
She had Sarah, and though they were natural sisters, she had never felt as close as she thought sisters should be. The seven-year age difference was one thing, but Callie also suspected it was due to the fact they had been kept separate at the orphanage.
The whoosh of her front door swinging open jerked her away from what was quickly becoming a depressing line of thought.
“Callie? Coming in. Stay where you are.”
Ruth Lyons’s voice preceded the tiny woman into the room. Ruth was Levi and Suzannah’s mother. Her gray-silver hair was covered by the bonnet common among the Moravians. Age lines around her eyes drew attention to sullen smudges beneath them. The dress she wore was tattered and much patched, typical of a frontier woman.
“Sarah mentioned at worship that you were not feeling well. I have come to sit with you.” Ruth breezed across the small room.
Callie had known Ruth the entire time she had been with the Moravians. Ruth would go out of her way to make others feel better. Callie knew she had no choice but to submit to the woman’s ministrations. She motioned Ruth to have a seat as she pushed herself up and leaned her back against the wall that served
as her bed’s headboard.
For the first few moments, Ruth made small talk, as if hesitant to bring up the subject of the twins. Then Callie watched helplessly as Ruth shoved a hand against her mouth and sobs poured forth.
No one blamed Callie or Joshua, Ruth insisted. They were all thankful one infant had survived.
Callie shifted position, trying to ignore her exhaustion. “Is there anything I can do?”
Ruth seemed to measure how ill Callie looked. “Levi is worried about you,” she commented.
“Tell him thank you.” Callie wanted to ask if Levi had said that or if it was just Ruth trying to make her feel better. Ruth didn’t know what Levi had done, and Callie was not about to raise that subject. Memories of that ugly episode and the baby’s death hung around her heart like a dead weight.
“He is digging the grave,” Ruth added. Her voice caught at the end, but she did not break her gaze with Callie.
Callie tried to keep her distance when small children were lost. This one, though, seemed to have destroyed her resolve.
She asked again what she could do to help.
Ruth’s lips trembled. “Pray for Suzannah,” she said. “And …” She glanced around the cabin as if she expected to find someone there listening. “And stand with us—with our family—tomorrow as we give Sophie Ruth to God.”
A hollow feeling settled in Callie’s stomach and a roar filled her ears. “Is there not something else I could do?” Callie asked. Standing with them, hurting with them, watching as they lowered the tiny body into the earth. How could she do that?
Ruth patted her hand. “It would mean so much to us, to Suzannah,” she added. The look in her eyes ripped Callie’s heart and made her feel even worse.
“I will think about it,” Callie murmured.
“I must go check on Levi and then to Suzannah’s.” Ruth gathered her skirt folds and brushed Callie’s cheek with a kiss.
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