by Jo Ann Brown
“We’re not sure.” Leanna pushed aside the goat poking her with its head. “Her doktor thinks it may have something to do with one of her heart valves, so he’s sending her to a cardiologist.”
“I never imagined her so weak she’d need a cane.”
“Me, neither.” Leanna became all business, and he knew she didn’t want to say more about her grossmammi. She told him what she charged for a quart of milch and what containers he would need.
“I leave for work by ten most mornings,” she said, “so please be here before then. Until school is out, Grossmammi Inez is here by herself, and it’d be better if she wasn’t disturbed.”
Though questions about where Leanna worked demanded answers, he didn’t ask them. “I’ll make it a priority to be here before you head out. If I can’t be, we’ll work out something else. I appreciate you helping me, so I want to make this as easy as possible for you.”
“Danki.” She glanced at the black goat on the milking platform, and he knew she and the doe wanted him gone.
Had she guessed he hadn’t been speaking just about picking up the milch? When he’d made the decisions he had almost two years ago, he’d hoped there would be a way to avoid hurting Leanna. He’d spent hours working on that letter to her, praying God would give him the right words. God hadn’t listened to that prayer, as He hadn’t so many others in the past year. Somehow, in the midst of his chaotic life, he’d lost his connection with God, and he wasn’t sure how to find it again.
“No, I should be the one saying ‘danki.’ If you didn’t have milch to sell, I don’t know where I could have found some.” He backed away a couple of steps.
“There are several people around here who sell it. If you want, I can give you their names and addresses. That way if you want to check prices or—”
“I’m sure you’re giving me a fair price, Leanna, and I won’t find any place more convenient than next door.”
“True.”
When she didn’t add anything else, he began to walk toward his gray-topped buggy. It’d been delivered that morning, and he had other errands before he headed home and continued unpacking enough so they could get through another day.
“Gabriel?” Leanna called.
Facing her, he asked, “Ja?”
“If it’s easier, your wife is welcome to komm and pick up the milch for your bopplin.”
It was his turn to flinch.
She must have seen because she hurried to say, “Gabriel, it’s okay. Tell her she and the kinder are welcome here anytime.”
“I can’t.” He kept emotion from his face and his voice as he added, “I can’t, because she’s dead.”
Chapter Two
Leanna stood by the fence and watched Gabriel’s buggy drive out of sight along the curving road. She wasn’t sure how long she would have remained there, frozen in the warm sunshine, if Charity hadn’t voiced her impatience again.
Milking the rest of the goats took Leanna less than an hour, and she carried the milch into the house in two large pails. As she’d expected, her grossmammi was sitting at the comfortable kitchen table.
Grossmammi Inez looked up from her mending as Leanna walked past her to pour the milch into storage containers. Most of it went into the refrigerator to wait for customers to pick it up, but she kept some to freeze in plastic containers for when she made soap on Saturdays. She did that every other week, when a church Sunday didn’t follow, because she doubted anyone would want to sit for three hours beside her when she reeked of the fragrances she used in her soap mixtures.
“Are you still going to have enough milch to make soap?” her grossmammi said, halting to take a breath after every word.
“I may have to go to a schedule of making soap once a month.” She sealed the plastic containers and marked the date on them with a wide-tipped felt pen before putting them in the freezer. “I’ve been making soap since I started milking the goats this spring. I should have enough to set up a table at the farmers market for June and July.” She calculated in her head. “It’ll work out fine, though Gabriel wants to buy three pints every day.”
“With two bopplin, he’ll need that. Bopplin depend on milch when they’re young.”
“He said something about them eating some solid food.”
“How old are they?”
“I’d say from looking at Harley that they’re around six months, but I don’t know.” She put the buckets in the sink and began to rinse them so they’d be ready for milking the next day. Some people milked their goats twice a day, but she’d opted for once. That allowed her time to work and help her sisters take care of the house.
“Twins usually look younger than other bopplin. You and your sister needed some time to catch up.” Grossmammi Inez gave a half laugh that turned into a cough. “Not that you ever grew very tall.”
“Gabriel didn’t get married that long ago.”
“Bopplin come when they want, and twins are often raring to be born. You and Annie weren’t eight months in the womb before you decided you had to come out. Your mamm always said Annie dragged you with her because you’ve always had so much more patience than she does.”
Leaving the buckets by the sink to dry, Leanna looked across the kitchen to where Grossmammi Inez’s needle dipped in and out, mending a tear across the upper leg of a pair of her younger brother Kenny’s barn pants. Most of her brother’s work clothes were crisscrossed with repairs.
“Grossmammi?”
As she raised her eyes, her smile faded away. “Something is wrong, ain’t so? You look bothered, Leanna. Is it because Gabriel and his family have moved in next door?”
“Partly.” She couldn’t imagine being anything but honest with her grossmammi.
During Leanna’s childhood, Grossmammi Inez had taken them in twice. The first time had been following Leanna’s daed’s death, and then the kinder moved in again during the horrible days after her mamm and beloved stepfather were killed in a bus accident on their way to a wedding in Indiana. Not once had her grossmammi complained about having to raise a second family in the cramped dawdi haus attached to her son’s home.
“Then was iss letz?” asked the elderly woman.
“Grossmammi...” She wanted to say what was wrong was that two tiny bopplin would never know their mamm, but the words stuck in her throat. She’d never met Freda, whose family lived in another church district. Even so, sorrow surged through her at the thought of the bopplin growing up without their mamm. Crossing the room, she sat beside her grossmammi. She folded her hands on the table and drew in a steadying breath. As soon as she spoke the sad words, it would make them more real.
“Say what you must,” Grossmammi Inez urged. “Things are seldom made better by waiting.”
Leanna stumbled as she shared what Gabriel had told her before driving away. Tears burned her eyes, and she blinked them away. “He didn’t say when Freda died, but it couldn’t have been very long ago.”
Her grossmammi regarded her steadily before saying, “You know your feelings had nothing to do with God’s decision to bring Freda Miller to Him, ain’t so?”
“I know.” She stared at her clasped hands, not wanting to reveal how hearing Freda connected to Gabriel’s surname always sent a pulse of pain through her. She’d imagined herself as Leanna Miller so many times.
Why did the thought of Gabriel married to someone else remain painful? Leanna frowned. She shouldn’t be thinking of herself, only the bopplin. The poor woman was dead and her kinder were growing up without her.
“Are you upset because you think Gabriel Miller has come to Harmony Creek Hollow specifically to look for a wife to take care of his bopplin?”
Leanna’s head snapped up at the sound of her sister’s voice coming from the back door. Trust Annie, her identical twin, to get right to the heart of the matter. Her twin never hesitated to say what was on her mind.
Deciding to be—for once—equally blunt, Leanna asked, “How long have you been eavesdropping?”
“Long enough to find out who moved into the empty house next door.” Annie stooped to give Grossmammi Inez a hug. “I came in to pick up a different pair of shoes.” She pointed to her paint-stained ones. “I put the wrong ones on when I left for the bakery this morning. Before I go, though, you haven’t answered my question, Leanna. Are you worried Gabriel Miller is here solely to find a wife to take care of his bopplin?”
Being false with her twin would be like lying to herself.
“Ja.”
She watched as Annie and their grossmammi exchanged a glance, but couldn’t read what message they shared.
Getting up, she hugged them. She retrieved her milch buckets from the sink and took them out to the shed before hitching the horse to their buggy. Today was her day to clean Mrs. Duchamps’s house, and she needed to hurry or she’d be late.
The questions her family had asked were a wake-up call. She must not let the lingering longings of her heart betray her more than Gabriel had.
* * *
What was he doing wrong?
Gabriel looked from the handwritten recipe on the battered wooden counter to the ingredients he’d gathered to make formula for the twins. Realizing he’d missed a step, he added two tablespoons of unflavored gelatin. As he stirred the pot, he frowned. Something wasn’t right. The color was off, and it was getting too thick too fast. He tried a sip. It tasted as it was supposed to, which was without a lot of flavor. He guessed, once they sampled this mixture, the twins would be more eager to eat solid foods.
A quick glance across the crowded kitchen reassured him the bopplin were playing on the blanket he’d found at the bottom of a box marked “kitchen” and “pots and pans.” Friends had helped them pack, and he guessed one person had filled the box and taped it closed before another person labeled it. Bath supplies had been discovered in a box marked “pillows.” True, there had been one small pillow in it, but the majority of the box had been stuffed with shampoo, toothpaste and the myriad items the bopplin required, including extra diaper pins.
The house, which would need his and his twin’s skills to renovate, was stuffed with boxes. He and Michael had brought the barest essentials with them, including their tools. However, two bopplin didn’t travel without box after box of supplies and toys and clothing.
He should be grateful the boxes covered up the deep scratches in the uneven wood floors. Other boxes were set to keep the kinder from reaching chipped walls and floor molding. An old house could be filled with lead paint.
Eventually, it would become a wunderbaar family home, because the rooms were spacious. Large windows welcomed the sunlight. There were three bathrooms, one on the first floor and two more upstairs amid the six bedrooms. One toilet upstairs had plumbing problems, but the water had been turned off before damaging the floors or ceilings. Some furniture had been left behind by the previous owners, but, other than the kitchen table and chairs, it needed to be carted to the landfill because it reeked of mold and rot.
Gabriel paused stirring the formula as Heidi began to clap two blocks together and gave him a grin. Her new tooth glittered like a tiny pearl. Beside her, Harley lay on his back, his right hand holding a teething biscuit while his other hand gripped his left toes. He rocked and giggled when his sister did. With their red hair and faint beginnings of freckles across their noses, they looked like a pair of Englisch dolls. Their big brown eyes displayed every emotion without any censoring.
Had he ever been that open with others?
It seemed impossible after the tragedies of the past couple of years.
“What a schtinke,” said his brother, Michael, as he walked into the kitchen through the maze of unpacked or half-unpacked boxes. Pausing to wave to the bopplin, who giggled, he added, “I hope it tastes better than it smells, or the kids won’t drink it.”
“I sampled a bit of it, and it doesn’t taste as bad as it smells.”
“I don’t think anything could taste that bad.” He reached for the kaffi pot.
Gabriel motioned for his brother to pour him a cup of kaffi, too. He was becoming dependent on caffeine. When was the last time he’d gotten a full night’s sleep? “If this doesn’t work for them, I don’t know what will.”
“Why not be positive? Isn’t that what you always say?”
He watched Michael fill the cups and add a touch of cream and sugar to each. He and his brother weren’t identical twins. There never had been any trouble telling them apart, but the physical differences had grown more pronounced as they grew older.
Michael’s hair wasn’t flame red. Instead it was a darker brown with a faint tinge of russet that became, in the summer sunshine, more pronounced. He was several inches taller than Gabriel and had a nose someone once had described as aristocratic. Gabriel wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, but he’d always admired his brother’s strong profile, which was not softened by a beard, for his brother remained a bachelor. Like Gabriel, he had hands calloused from work. His fingers, which were broader than Gabriel’s, could handle a plank of wood as delicately as if it were glass. He’d worked as a finish carpenter in Pennsylvania while Gabriel had focused on rough-in work.
There were more subtle differences, too. Gabriel was the steady one, the person anyone could go to when things were getting rough. He’d give them a well thought-out solution after deliberating on it. Michael jumped into any situation. As a boy, Gabriel had read comic books with an Englisch friend, and Michael had reminded him of a superhero who never hesitated to run toward trouble. Gabriel saw himself more as the person picking up the pieces after the super-villain had been defeated.
“Here you go,” Michael said, holding out a cup.
“Danki.” Gabriel continued stirring the goats’ milch formula while they talked about the job they’d been hired for next week.
The small project, rebuilding a garage in the tiny town of West Rupert, Vermont, about six miles east, was a beginning. They’d need as much work as they could get because they’d arrived too late to get a crop in this year.
Gabriel stared into the pot. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be this thick.”
“You should ask the person you’re getting the milch from. Maybe he’ll know.”
“She. Leanna Wagler.”
His brother’s brows rose in surprise. “The same Leanna Wagler you met in Pennsylvania?”
“One and the same.” He didn’t add she’d wandered through his daydreams almost every day since he’d last seen her. “I knew she’d moved with her family away from Lancaster County, because her brother was eager to get out of that meat-processing plant and wanted a farm of his own.”
“And she was eager to get away from you.”
“Ha ha,” he said without humor. He didn’t want to give his brother’s teasing comment any credibility although, with a sinking feeling, he wondered if it were true.
No! He wasn’t going to add another layer of guilt to the burden he carried.
Michael whistled a long note. “Talk about coincidences! Who would have guessed you’d find the one who got away here?”
“She’s not the one who got away.”
“Okay, she’s the one who let you get away when you decided to marry Freda instead.” Slapping Gabriel on the shoulder, he asked, “Do you think Leanna wants you back?”
“No.” The answer burst out of him.
Seeing Michael’s gut humor become astonishment, Gabriel didn’t want to hear another lecture on how he should get on with his life. Why did everyone seem to think they could tell him what to do? How many people had told him the bopplin needed a mamm? He was fumbling through each day, trying to be a competent daed as well as a gut business partner for his brother. He wasn’t succeeding at either because he snatched only a few hours of sleep each night. Eve
n on the nights when the twins slept through, his conscience kept him awake with questions about how he could have failed to notice Freda’s despair before she died.
He set the pot aside to cool, then joined his brother at the table, selecting a seat where he could keep an eye on the bopplin. Wanting to talk about anything but Leanna, he asked, “Have you found the rest of our tools yet?”
“Most of them. I dug the nail gun out of a box marked ‘curtains.’” He laughed. “That’s not close!”
Michael didn’t seem to notice when Gabriel remained silent. Had his brother gotten accustomed to Gabriel’s inability to smile and laugh? Gabriel hadn’t been able to remember the last time he’d done either; yet, seeing Leanna today resurrected memories of the times they’d shared a laugh together. It was shocking to think a part of him had died along with Freda, and he hadn’t realized that until he’d looked into Leanna’s wunderbaar eyes and recalled when his biggest concern had been if he’d have the courage to ask her to let him drive her home.
“Have you found someone to take care of the kids while we’re at work?” Michael asked, yanking Gabriel out of his thoughts.
“Not yet.”
“Our job begins a week from yesterday.”
“I know.”
“It’s going to take two of us to get that foundation straight again. Or as straight as we can get it after the garage has been leaning for the past fifty years.”
“I know,” he repeated.
“Benjamin Kuhns—he and his brother run the sawmill—mentioned his sister used to be a nanny for an Englisch family. Maybe she’d be interested in the job.”
“Maybe.” He hated the idea of leaving Harley and Heidi with a stranger.
“How about Leanna? You know her. Do you think she’d be willing to watch the kids?”
“She said she already has a job.”
“Doing what?”
“I didn’t ask.”
Michael arched that expressive eyebrow again. “What did you two talk about? Certainly not about old times.”
