by Jo Ann Brown
“I appreciate that, Leanna, but I’m fine.”
“You may think so, but I know how difficult it is to have someone you love fall ill. When I was a kind, my daed died after being sick for what seemed like forever. I saw what my mamm went through nursing him. It took her a long time to recover her own health after that.”
“I told you. I’m fine.” His tone was as caustic as the lye she’d used. For a moment, she thought his bitterness was aimed at her, and then realized it wasn’t. “Leanna, can we change the subject? This is too hard to talk about.”
“It’s okay to admit that it was hard. We kinder depended on Mamm during that time, too. We were older than the twins, so I can understand how tough it was for you as she got sicker and weaker and you had to do more for her. Trust me. I do understand, and I think it’d be gut for you to talk to someone who understands.”
* * *
Gabriel’s hands clenched on the table. “You don’t understand a thing, Leanna! I didn’t do a single thing for her. I didn’t know how sick she was until she killed herself by overdosing on sleeping pills.”
Leanna blanched as she gripped the edge of the counter. “Freda killed herself?”
He berated himself for opening that door to the past he’d fought to keep closed. “I wish you could forget that I said that.” He shook his head and drew in a deep breath. His heart seemed to ache more with each beat, but at the same time a weight that had been grinding down into it had lessened at the exact moment he shared the truth.
His hands fisted more tightly. If he’d relieved an ounce of his suffering, it shouldn’t have been because he’d passed it to Leanna. She’d stepped up to help him when she had every reason not to, and shifting his pain and grief to her couldn’t be the way he repaid her.
“I can’t forget it,” she whispered, “but I won’t say anything to anyone else.”
“Danki.”
“I’m so sorry.” She put her hand on top of his clenched one. “You’re right. I don’t understand what you’ve gone through, but I hope that God will show me a way to help you.”
With a raw growl that came from the depths of his throat, he shook his head. “Don’t you think I’ve asked God for help? Go ahead and try it yourself if you want. Maybe you’ll get a better response than I did, which was nothing.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
She was still for so long that he wasn’t sure if she was going to reply. Finally she said, “Ja.”
He stood, unable to sit and face her while he recounted what had happened. Staring out the window, he said, “Freda never seemed to recover from the twins’ birth. After they were born, she didn’t want to pump her milch for them. She complained when the nurses urged her to do so. I thought once she got home, things would be better. When she was home and the bopplin at the hospital, she moped. I thought she missed them, but she never wanted to go and see them. I spoke with the doktor, and he said having two bopplin as a first pregnancy was extra rough.” He rubbed his uneven beard, then jerked his hand away from the thing that identified him as a widower. “I listened to him, because he’d been right about everything else. He’d been recommended to us, and he took such gut care of Freda during what was a difficult pregnancy.”
“He was wrong about this,” she whispered.
Her voice touched the chafed parts of his soul that had never healed. Instead of the pain he expected, her compassion offered a cooling balm. “Ja, he was wrong, but so was I. When Freda had a bad day, I’d try to reassure her that things would get better as the bopplin grew and slept through the night. When she had a gut day, I convinced myself it meant the dark days were going to be over soon.”
He’d failed Freda by not doing what his gut told him was the right thing. Instead, he’d let her convince him that seeing her doktor wouldn’t help her. She told him time would bring healing.
She’d been lying to him, and he hadn’t suspected.
That ate at him, though he didn’t blame Freda. She’d been ill. He should have insisted she get care so he didn’t have to come home and find her dead next to empty pill bottles and the picture of an Englischer. He should have been a stronger husband and put his foot down, taking her to the doktor. He’d failed her as the daed of her kinder had. Guilt swelled over him like a fever, hot and weakening him.
He took a deep breath and held it before exhaling. His guilt belonged to him and him alone. He couldn’t dump it on Leanna. She didn’t deserve that, though, he argued with himself, she deserved to know what type of man he truly was.
“And you came home,” Leanna softly from right behind him, “to discover the bopplin howling and got no answer when you called to Freda.” She put her hand on his back and leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “No wonder you reacted as you did the day you rushed upstairs here. I’m sorry to have made you go through that again. I had no idea.”
“I know you didn’t. You want me to be honest? Okay, I’ll be honest. I don’t want to risk my heart like that again. Not ever.”
“But...” Her voice trailed away as a thin cry came from upstairs. It was followed by a louder one, an announcement that the twins were awake.
Leanna pushed away from him and hurried into the other room. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she paused. She looked at him. Tears were luminous in her eyes.
“I understand why you don’t want to chance suffering any more sorrow,” she said in a broken voice.
In horror, he stared as she rushed up the stairs. She thought he’d been talking about falling in love with her. Was that what he’d meant? He wasn’t sure.
Of anything any longer.
He took a step to follow, then halted. If he gave chase, what could he do but hurt her—the one person he had never wanted to hurt—more?
Chapter Fourteen
Leanna became aware of how her family was avoiding getting in her way when she stamped around the kitchen while she helped prepare supper that evening. It was as if she had an invisible cloud of silence around her and nobody was allowed to intrude. She also noticed she was chopping onions for a salad as if trying to drive the knife through the cutting board, the counter and right down to the floor.
She hadn’t thought she could become any angrier at Gabriel than she’d been the day she’d found out he was marrying Freda Girod.
She’d been wrong.
When he’d told her that Freda had committed suicide, she’d offered sympathy with all her heart. He’d taken it, or at least he’d seemed to before he told her he wasn’t ever going to risk his heart on another relationship.
But he never said he was ever in love with you.
She wished she could silence that thought, repeating in her mind like Heidi’s endless nonsense words. Every thought, no matter how she tried to halt it, led her to Gabriel and his kinder. It’d been barely more than a month since he’d shown up by the pen where she kept her goats. Before that, she’d been sure she was on the road to forgetting how much he’d wounded her. Seeing his handsome face had swept aside all progress—albeit slight progress—that she’d made.
Leanna tried to focus, but it was impossible. Every motion felt as sharp as the knife she was using. During supper, the efforts her family made to act as if everything was normal seemed to emphasize how much was wrong in her life. She tried to participate in their conversations, but she couldn’t seem to swim through the swamp of her thoughts and concentrate on what everyone else was saying.
At the end of a supper she hadn’t tasted, Leanna offered to do the dishes because her twin was planning to take a walk with Caleb. Her younger siblings were so tired they could barely keep their eyes open, and she didn’t want her grossmammi to help.
However, Grossmammi Inez remained at the table while Leanna washed and dried the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. Other than the clatter of plates and cooking pots,
the only sound in the room was her grossmammi’s labored breathing. Leanna considered urging her grossmammi to go to her bedroom and rest, but a single glance in the older woman’s direction was enough for Leanna to know that Grossmammi Inez wasn’t going to retire until she’d said what she had to say to Leanna.
“Would you like some more milch?” Leanna asked.
“That would be nice to sip on while we chat.”
She poured a glass and carried it to the table. She set it in front of her grossmammi and sat beside her.
“Was iss letz?” Grossmammi Inez asked after taking a sip.
Though Leanna wanted to say “everything was wrong,” she answered, “To begin with, I’m worried about you.”
“You’ve been worried about me for weeks.” Her grossmammi waved aside Leanna’s words. “Something else is wrong. Was iss letz?”
Knowing she was wasting time by equivocating, she said, “I’m upset with Gabriel.”
“I guessed that. You’ve been upset with him for longer than you’ve worried about me, but tonight’s the first time you’ve tried to saw through the counter.” After sipping again, she said, “Don’t make me ask a lot of questions to persuade you to be honest with me, kins-kind, when I sound like an old train engine running out of steam. Just tell me what happened.”
Leanna explained why she was upset with Gabriel, though she said nothing about Freda’s suicide. She couldn’t break the promise she’d made to Gabriel such a short time ago. When she ran out words, she closed her eyes so the tears searing her eyes wouldn’t fall.
She waited for her grossmammi’s advice, but Grossmammi Inez didn’t answer right away. Was it because she wanted to gather her thoughts, or did she need to fill her lungs with enough oxygen to let her to say what was already on her mind?
At last, Grossmammi Inez spoke. Her words were punctured by her gasps for breath, but that couldn’t lessen the impact of what she said as she met Leanna’s eyes.
“My dear kins-kind, do you want me to say it’s okay for you to punish Gabriel for marrying someone else?”
“No!”
“Then you must be trying to punish yourself, because you continue to care about him after the greatest betrayal you’ve ever suffered.” Compassion warmed her wrinkled face. “Is that what you plan to do with your life? Are you upset with him—and with yourself—because you let yourself hope he’d turn to you and you could decide together what your futures would be?”
She was about to reply, then halted herself. Could Grossmammi Inez be right?
At last, Leanna said, “It’s not my place to decide the future.”
“Gut. I’m glad you’re seeing sense before you destroy the kitchen.”
Leanna smiled in spite of her aching heart. She was blessed to have her grossmammi to keep her on an even keel by reminding her of the need for faith in the One who held the future in His hands.
“I don’t think it would have been all of the kitchen,” she replied. “Maybe a quarter.”
Grossmammi Inez patted Leanna’s arm. “As it never happened, let’s forget it.”
“I owe you and the rest of the family an apology for being so self-absorbed.”
“I know they would appreciate hearing that as much as I do.” She smiled. “I know they will forgive you as I already have. And they do understand. All of us have had rough days.”
She almost asked if any of her family had endured a day like she had with the news of Freda’s suicide. The thought of her grossmammi’s grief when Leanna’s parents died halted her. “Danki, Grossmammi.”
After lifting her glass, the older woman drank deeply before she lowered it to the table. “Two of the most important verses to us plain people are in the sixth chapter of Matthew. Verses fourteen and fifteen. You know those verses, ain’t so?”
“Ja.”
“They are?”
Leanna said, “‘For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’”
“Don’t you think it’s time you forgave Gabriel?”
“I’ve tried!”
“I know you have, and I’m glad that you haven’t offered lip service to forgiving him in order to placate your conscience. Forgiveness that doesn’t come from the heart isn’t true forgiveness. But, Leanna, you need to search your heart and find a way to forgive him. Otherwise, you won’t ever be free of the anger that has betrayed you today.”
Leanna stared at her grossmammi in astonishment. Her anger had betrayed her? If asked, she would have said today’s betrayal had come from Gabriel. Yet he hadn’t done anything except to be honest with her as she’d asked him to. He’d been honest with her. Did she want him to spare her feelings by deceiving her?
No!
“Let me give you another set of verses to pray with tonight before you go to sleep,” her grossmammi said as she pushed herself to her feet. “I’ve found they help me when someone doesn’t meet my expectations, and I’m hurt. This is from Psalms 55: ‘As for me, I will call upon God; and the Lord shall save me. Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and He shall hear my voice. He hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me: for there were many with me.’” She put her hand over Leanna’s. “Sometimes our battles are with others. Sometimes they are with ourselves.”
Her grossmammi leaned forward to kiss Leanna’s cheek before she moved out of the kitchen, leaving Leanna with thoughts whirling like a tornado.
* * *
Gabriel put down his pen on Thursday evening and rubbed his eyes as he looked across the kitchen, which was lit by a single propane lamp. His brother was out, visiting the Kuhns brothers. Michael and Benjamin were becoming gut friends, and Gabriel suspected they might go into business together while Gabriel concentrated on the farm.
The farm...
He almost groaned as he picked up the page of estimated expenses he’d compiled for the next six months. He and Michael had found enough work to pay their bills this month, even with the extra cost for the cows delivered that afternoon. He hoped he hadn’t made a big mistake by starting a herd now. Next month, the budget must include money to pay for the cows’ upkeep, as well as household expenses. The twins had another visit to the pediatrician in a few days, and though the fee for the last month’s visit, including medicine for Heidi’s ear infection, had been lower than he’d expected, it had been enough to put a burden on their budget.
“Not that you’re a burden, little girl,” he said as he glanced down at where she sat banging two wooden blocks together. “Or you, either, little man.” He smiled at Harley, who was watching his sister.
Both bopplin grinned at him, and his heart swelled with love. He was blessed by having these two kinder in his life. That was something he’d never regret. What would Leanna think if he could tell her the truth about why he’d married Freda?
His lips tightened, and he put the budget page on the stack of papers in front of him. He needed to keep Leanna out of his head. She’d invaded his thoughts more than usual—though he hadn’t guessed that could be possible—since he’d told her about Freda’s death two days ago.
He sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling where shadows moved in rhythm with the propane flame. Everything had changed, but nothing had. Leanna had come downstairs with the twins that afternoon when he’d arrived home, and she had made sure they were fed before she left for home. She’d returned the past two mornings, acting as if he’d never said a single word about Freda. She was kind and smiled, but he couldn’t miss how her face seemed shadowed by sadness. She hadn’t once met his eyes during their short conversations before he left for work and when he returned at day’s end.
Yet she seemed to be keeping her promise. As far as he knew, she hadn’t said a word about Freda’s death, not even to
him.
That hadn’t surprised him, but he’d expected in the past two days she’d mention something—anything—about the heartfelt letter he’d written to her before he married Freda. When he’d agreed to Aden’s offer, he had been determined that Leanna would hear the news from him instead of through friends and neighbors. Though he couldn’t explain in the letter the real reason he’d made the decision to become Freda’s husband, he’d asked Leanna to forgive him for any pain he might have brought her.
Might have?
The urge to laugh at his own foolishness choked him. Maybe he didn’t deserve to be forgiven when he’d hardened his heart to the truth of how his choice—the one he’d believed he should make to repay the debt he owed to Aden for being a daed to him and Michael—had injured the woman he loved.
He wished he could reach out to God for comfort and guidance, but how could he hope for help when he’d turned his back on his Lord like a petulant kind who hadn’t gotten what he wanted?
I needed You then, Lord. Why did You ignore me? It was a prayer he had made often over the past year.
“Sometimes you’re a mule-headed fool.”
The voice that emerged from the darkness made him jump out of his seat. A second later, he recognized the voice as his brother’s.
“Hello to you, too,” he said to hide his reaction that he’d been getting an answer directly from God.
Michael set his hat on a peg by the door and crossed the room, being careful to skirt the twins.
His brother scowled. “Ja, sometimes you’re a mule-headed fool, Gabriel, and the rest of the time you’re just plain stubborn.”
“So you’ve said. About a million times.”
“Well, maybe the millionth-and-first time will be the time when you’ll listen.”
“I’m not going to argue with you when I don’t have any idea what’s got you so hot under the collar.”
“I’m annoyed for the same reason you’re sitting here pouting in the dark.” He put his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Leanna Wagler.”
