Piece by Piece

by Laura Bradford

  Swallowing hard, she struggled up onto shaky legs, crossed to the bedroom for her purse and car keys, and headed out into the dusk.

  Chapter 11

  In retrospect, it was really just a soft, almost apologetic sound, but against the deafening roar of silence that had been hers since about eight o’clock the previous evening, it startled her up and off the bench. Hurrying over to the door, she peeled back the curtain panel to find a nearly shoulder-high straw hat tipped back to reveal a pair of familiar eyes and an equally familiar smile.

  Before she could truly process the ten-year-old’s presence or her feelings about it, Luke lifted his mother’s handwoven basket into view. “It is from Mamm,” he said just loud enough for her to hear through the glass pane.

  She drew in a breath, held it to a silent count of five, and then opened the door to the boy, hoping and praying her smile didn’t look as forced as it felt. “Good morning, Luke. This is . . .” She stopped, took another breath, and tried for a softer tone. “This is a surprise. I didn’t expect you to be at my door.”

  “I saw the basket sitting on the counter and I knew Mamm would want me to bring it to you.” He peeled back the freshly washed cloth covering and pointed at the pair of brown eggs, piece of ham, and slice of bread inside. “David said I should put in more ham, but I heard Mamm tell Dat you do not eat very much.”

  She shrugged a nod.

  “I do not know how to make Mamm’s cinnamon butter, so I could not put any of that inside,” Luke said, his smile drooping in tandem with his shoulders. “But I told Dat that Mamm’s bread is good even without butter.”

  She glanced from Luke to the main house and back again. “You’re right . . . it is.”

  “Dat ate only one piece this morning.”

  Unsure of what to say, she echoed his sentiment back to him.

  “Yah. Dat always eats two pieces when he has Mamm’s butter.”

  “I still have some. In the refrigerator. From yesterday,” she hastily added.

  And the day before that, and the day before that ...

  Luke’s blue eyes widened ever so slightly.

  “Perhaps, since I still have so much, you could take some back for your dat?” she suggested, sweeping her hand toward the refrigerator the boy couldn’t see from his spot on the front porch.

  Glancing over his shoulder toward the adjoining house, he tightened his grip on the basket handle. “If Mamm gave it to you, I should not take it away.”

  “You wouldn’t be taking it, sweetie. I’d be giving it to you. Because I have more than I need.”

  His smile returned, albeit briefly. “If it is no trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble at all.” She stepped back and waved him inside. “I’ll get that for you now.”

  The boy’s bare feet made soft smacking sounds against the wood-planked floor as he followed her into the kitchen and stopped beside his late grandparents’ kitchen table. With careful hands, he set the basket of breakfast items down as she yanked open the refrigerator and began shifting its contents around.

  “I am good at adding things at school. Subtracting, too. Sometimes I must use my fingers and toes, but I usually get it right.”

  “That’s . . . good.” She reached past the bulk of last night’s dinner and yesterday’s breakfast for the bowl she’d been scraping butter into every day for nearly two weeks. “Math is an important skill.”

  “When I am fourteen, I will get to spend all day working in the field and looking after Dat’s many animals.” Luke drew in a breath. “Could I try this?”

  “Try what?” She pulled out the bowl, closed the refrigerator, and froze—mid-turn—as her gaze followed Luke’s to the center of the table and the cream-colored plastic stick that she’d been staring at all morning.

  “I have not seen such an adding machine before,” he said. “Dat’s is square and gray and has all the numbers from zero to nine. This”—he picked up the pregnancy test, turned it over in his hands, and then held it up for her to see, his brow furrowed—“has only a plus sign.”

  Plunking the bowl onto the table, she grabbed the test from his hand and shoved it into her back pocket. “It is not an adding machine.”

  His eyes widened again. “What is it?”

  “It’s . . .” She cast about for something to say that would both answer his question and distract him onto something else. Something safer. “It is more of a yes or no machine.”

  He seemed to drink in her words. “A yes or no machine?”

  “Yes. It . . . it tells you if something is to be or not.”

  Again his brow furrowed. “God will show you that.”

  God?

  Nibbling back a response she knew wasn’t appropriate to give, she pulled in a deep breath and released it, slowly. “So . . . The butter . . . That should be enough for your mom and dat and everyone else at dinner tonight, yes?”

  His blue eyes dropped to the bowl. “Yah. If Mamm eats.”

  “Why wouldn’t she eat?” Dani asked. “Is she not feeling well?”

  He tilted his head as he seemed to consider her question. “I do not know, for sure. But Mamm is not always hungry when she comes back from a visit with Miss Lottie.”

  “Who is Miss Lottie?”

  “She lives down the road.” Luke pointed toward the window. “Mamm says she is a good listener and a good friend, and she makes very good cookies.”

  “Ahhh . . . cookies . . .” She felt the corners of her mouth twitch with a smile she quickly squelched. “Perhaps that is why your mother is not hungry after visiting with her friend.”

  Luke’s cheeks flushed pink. “Mamm does not eat the cookies. She sits only in the rocking chair next to Miss Lottie’s. The cookies are for me and David and Mark and Nettie. But when we are in school, it is just Nettie who will get cookies and blow bubbles with Digger. That is Miss Lottie’s dog. He is very old, but Miss Lottie says chasing bubbles makes him think he is still a puppy.”

  “Luke?” They turned, as one, toward the partially open door and the slightly younger version of Luke peeking around its edge with a mixture of curiosity and . . . hesitation? “Dat says we are to go now or we will be late to school.”

  “But I did not feed Molly’s baby,” Luke protested. “It is morning and he is hungry.”

  The little boy slanted a shy glance in Dani’s direction before shifting his slight frame across his trouser-clad legs. “Dat says we must go,” the boy repeated. “Mark is not very fast on his bike.”

  “But Mamm is at Miss Lottie’s, and Dat is to help Daniel Schrock with his buggy today.”

  “Yah. He has gone.”

  Worry sagged Luke back a step. “Who will feed the calf if I do not? It is morning. He is hungry. It will be too long until we are home.”

  Without really thinking about what she was saying, let alone doing, Dani rested her hand on Luke’s shoulder and squeezed. “I will feed him, Luke. Don’t worry.”

  Luke looked from Dani to his brother and back again, the worry in his eyes and stance only deepening. “But Mamm said we are not to ask things of you.”

  “Yah,” the younger boy added. “That is what Mamm said.”

  “You didn’t ask,” she said, retrieving the bowl from the table and handing it to Luke. “I offered. Now, the two of you . . . Go put the butter in your refrigerator, get your lunch and your shoes and your little brother, and then head out so you won’t be late for class.”

  Halfway to the door, Luke turned back, the hesitancy she’d first spied on David’s face now alive and well on Luke’s, too. “What if it upsets Mamm to see you feeding the calf?” Luke asked. “I do not want her to have more sadness.”

  “It won’t upset her. I’ll see to it that it doesn’t. I promise.”

  * * *

  She waited until the trio of hatted heads disappeared from her sight and then slipped into the barn through the wide-open door. Ahead, and to the right, the morning sun cast shafts of light into an empty stall. The missing horse, sh
e suspected, was the one used to pull the buggy either Elijah or Lydia had taken. To the left of the empty stall was a series of full ones, each one boasting one of the larger, more powerful mules used in the fields.

  Slowly, Dani inched her way into the largely unfamiliar surroundings, the occasional smack of a hoof against the hard-packed earth and the snorted exhalation from one or more of the barn’s tenants reverberating off the walls of the otherwise quiet structure. She peeked into a few of the stalls she passed, but it was more out of curiosity than anything else. The not-so-occasional moo of a clearly unhappy calf was all the directional guidance she needed.

  “Shhhh, little one, I’m here.” She sidled up to the half wall that separated the baby cow from the rest of the animals and peeked over the edge at the large brown eyes that instantly locked on to hers. “You thought you’d been forgotten, didn’t you?”

  His answering moo tugged a fleeting smile to her lips. “Luke had to go off to school, so you get me this morning. Me, and”—she lifted the milk bottle into his sight line—“this.”

  Instantly, the calf stretched his head toward the bottle, latching on to the nipple so hard and so fast, she nearly lost her grip. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down there. If you spill this, you’re going to really be hungry.”

  Shifting her weight forward against the wall, she held the bottle steady against the strong tug of the calf’s every suck, his dark eyes still locked on hers. “You really were starving, weren’t you, you poor thing—”

  “I see he’s got you wrapped around his little hoof, too, eh?”

  Startled, she stepped back so fast she pulled the bottle from the calf’s mouth. The calf, in turn, lurched forward, but her gaze, her attention, was now on the lone figure standing just inside the open doorway. The sunlight wafting in from outside made it difficult to make out specifics of the person’s face, but she could see enough to know it was a man—a tall one, with broad shoulders, a cowboy hat, and—

  Moooooooo . . .

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt breakfast,” the man said, stepping out of the shadowed entryway to reveal a royal-blue and black plaid shirt . . . faded blue jeans . . . the scuffed toes of brown leather boots . . . defined cheekbones . . . and the same friendly amber-flecked eyes she’d run from her first full day on the farm. “I just stopped in to make sure he’d eaten and, well, here you are, doing my nephew’s job.”

  Diving her gaze back to the bottle and then the calf, she threw up a quick shrug and returned to the task at hand, her gaze, if not her words, focused on the clearly grateful animal. “Luke ran out of time before school. So I offered to feed this little guy.”

  “That’s not like Luke to fall behind on his chores.” Caleb rested his elbows on the top of the wall, nodded at the calf, and then turned his chin toward Dani. “Was there some sort of problem?”

  With two last tugs, the calf drained the milk from the bottle, leaving her with nothing to focus on besides the man standing less than two feet away, waiting for her answer. Setting the empty bottle on the wall beside her own elbow, Dani used a second, longer shrug to gather her thoughts. “He saw the basket Lydia usually uses for my breakfast sitting on the table. So he filled it and brought it over to me. I guess we got to ”—she closed her eyes against the memory of the pregnancy stick in his little hands—“talking and the time he would have had to feed this guy slipped away. As it was, I have to wonder if Luke was able to pack a proper lunch for himself and his brothers before they were scootering down the driveway and onto the road.”

  “Where was Lydia?”

  Something about the sudden thickness to his voice had her abandoning her view of the now-satisfied calf in favor of the sudden tension in Caleb’s clean-shaven jawline. “Oh . . . no. It’s not like she’s sick or anything. She just went off on a visit. With Nettie.”

  “Before the boys left for school?”

  “Yes. Apparently.”

  Straightening up, he strode over to a metal rake propped against a nearby upright and, after a moment’s hesitation, grabbed it and carried it over to the buggy horse’s empty stall. Two steps shy of his destination, he turned back to Dani.

  “I’m sorry about what I said that first day here in the barn. I really am. And while I know it’s not a good excuse, I didn’t know. I thought it was just . . .” He inhaled his eyes up toward the ceiling and shook his head. “I didn’t mean just. There’s nothing just about any of that. I . . . I just didn’t know your mom was in the car, too.”

  The on-again, off-again lump inside her throat was back, making it impossible to answer with anything more than a quick nod.

  “I know we haven’t seen each other in more than twenty-five years, and that back then we were just kids who played together a few times over the course of a week, but if you need anything—someone to scream at, someone to vent to, someone to hold you when you cry, someone to help you feel a little less alone with the pain—I’m here. And I’m a good listener. . . Then again, maybe I’m just kidding myself considering my own sister keeps going to . . .” Waving off the rest of his sentence, he reached into his front pocket, pulled out a small cream-colored card, and crossed back to her with it, his hand extended. “Anyway, I’m willing to listen. Any time. Day or night. Just call my cell.”

  She knew she should say something. An okay, an I’ll keep that in mind, a basic thank you—something, anything, to acknowledge his apology, his kind offer, and the card she’d yet to take. But she couldn’t. Not when the walls of the barn seemed to be closing in on her, stealing the oxygen from the air and the strength she needed to remain standing there any longer. Instead, she turned and ran from the barn.

  Chapter 12

  She didn’t need the wall calendar she’d failed to turn to know another Saturday had dawned. The sounds emanating through the open kitchen window told her that all on their own. Instead of the occasional giggles or squeals or sweet conversations between Lydia and Nettie that marked the pre-lunchtime hour for Dani most days, the audible joy that both intrigued and pained her was magnified by the presence of Luke and his two brothers.

  There were chores to be done still, of course—a chicken to corral, mules to help hitch, tools to fetch from the barn—but yet, amid all of that, the Schlabach family still managed to have fun, to thoroughly enjoy one another’s company. Even the spring rain, beating a steady pattern on the front porch, seemed unable to dampen the lighthearted fun happening from the vicinity of the driveway, maybe the stretch of grass in front of the main house.

  Pushing back from the table and the breakfast she’d been trying but failing to eat for nearly two hours, Dani stood and wandered over to the window and the shade she’d yet to open on another day. She slid two fingers between the side of the dark green fabric and the window’s edge and gaped a hole just big enough to see out without being seen. Sure enough, as the sounds had indicated, she spied three straw hats and one heart-shaped kapp bobbing up and down as the children who sported them hopped back and forth across a water-filled rut in the center of the driveway.

  One by one they took their turn. First Luke, then David, then the youngest boy she knew only by name, and, finally, Nettie, her inability to jump as far as her brothers landing her inside the puddle and showering water onto the bottom edges of her pale blue dress and the pants of all three boys. Instead of chorusing watch out or some other equally gritted reprimand, Luke and the other boys laughed and squealed. Again and again they did the same thing with the same outcome, and each time the resulting laughter was as heartfelt and genuine as ever.

  “Jump bigger, Nettie,” Luke advised each time the little girl stepped to the edge of the rut for her turn.

  “Yah! Bigger! Bigger!” chimed the younger boys in near perfect unison.

  Nettie’s kapped head would nod . . .

  Her little bare feet would run in place for a moment . . .

  She’d emulate the crouch Luke demonstrated each and every time . . .

  And then she’d jump straight into the puddle
, her answering squeal just barely audible over the belly laughs of her brothers.

  Movement over by the barn stole Dani’s attention just long enough for her to realize Elijah was watching the whole encounter, a smile stretched across his bearded face. Seconds later, Lydia emerged from the barn, stood beside her husband for a few moments, and then, after a quick gesture toward the house, strode side by side with him toward the children.

  Dani braced herself for the disappointed reactions she expected when the puddle jumping was brought to an end, but they never came. Nor did the puddle jumping stop. Instead, first Lydia, and then Elijah, joined in on the fun, their own clothes growing wetter and wetter with Nettie’s repeated attempts to perfect her jump.

  Elijah demonstrated . . .

  Luke demonstrated . . .

  David demonstrated . . .

  Mark demonstrated . . .

  And when it appeared as if the child was simply too little to clear the puddle-filled rut, Lydia took her hand, waited for Nettie to bend her knees just so, and then, on the count of three, they jumped—and cleared—the puddle together, the feat drawing claps and smiles from Nettie’s father and brothers.

  “I did it!” Nettie shouted, looking up at Lydia. “I did it, Mamm!”

  “Yah! You did it!”

  “Can I try again? By myself?”

  Lydia and Elijah exchanged amused looks, with Elijah’s answer coming via a single nod of his hatted head.

  Nettie ran around to the side of the rut she clearly saw as the starting line. She bent her knees . . . She fisted her little hands . . . And she pushed off the wet ground as her brothers stepped forward in the hope of getting wet once again. But, lo and behold, the little girl who now believed she could do it thanks to her mother cleared the puddle with nary a slip or a splash.

  “I did it again! I did it again!”

  Elijah and the boys gathered around the little girl while Lydia stayed just outside the group, her hands clasped together in quiet joy.