A Plain and Sweet Christmas Romance Collection

by Lauralee Bliss

  Without me. Glory understood the compassion in Marlin’s words, but their truth stung. The Grabill household did not need her. No one would miss her even if she did not go down to supper, missing the third meal of the day as she had the first two.

  “I insist,” Marlin said. He straightened the disarrayed evidence of a bed that had not been made that day. “Just lie down on top of the bed, as if you are taking a nap.”

  “Will you stay with me?” Grateful, Glory stepped to the bed.

  When Marlin patted the bed, Glory sat down. She swung her feet up while Marlin plumped a pillow and, as she sank into it, spread a quilt over her. He had not yet answered her question about staying with her.

  “I never thought of myself as a nervous person,” she said, forcing her eyes to stay open long enough to look into Marlin’s.

  “You are not a nervous person,” he said. “If you are sick, we will send for the English doctor.”

  Not sick. That seemed an incomplete word for what she could not describe.

  “I am sure you have things to do,” she said, eyes drooping. Although she had no place in the household, Marlin did. Even in the winter months there was work to do on a farm, especially one that kept livestock.

  “I will be back to check on you,” Marlin said. “You and your appetite can come down for supper. The nourishment will strengthen you.”

  Her eyes were closed before Marlin crept out of the room. Her fingers found a line of stitching in the quilt she had made three years ago for her hope chest, long before Marlin began catching her eye. She knew the Jacob’s Ladder pattern well. The stitches took careful counting to yield the same number on each side of every seam. Counting forward and backward, she had checked and rechecked her work.

  Counting. Backward. Counting again.

  Glory’s eyes flipped open and her hand went to her belly. Perhaps it was not nerves after all.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  He should have stayed with her. He should have encouraged her to eat now, rather than wait three hours for supper.

  When Marlin first brought Gloria home to live on the Grabill farm for much of their first year, she was happy. At least she gave that impression. After Old Christmas, they would visit other relatives, both in their church district and others, to receive well wishes and gifts that would give them a good start on their own home. They would be guests together—helpful guests, but guests. The Grabill farm should be different. It was home. It would always feel like home, even when he and Gloria found the land that would be their future.

  Christmas was less than three days away, a time of rejoicing in the Savior’s birth, of gifts that recalled the gifts of the kings from the east, of gratitude for family. The putz was meant for all of this. Glory would see that.

  Two days. In two days Marlin had to be ready, not only for the Angels putz he taunted his brothers with but the gift that would reassure Glory.

  Marlin left the house and hustled down the shoveled path to the barn. The snow on either side of the path was several inches deep but also several days old, awaiting a stretch of warmer temperatures and sun so the moisture could melt into earth to serve the roots of next spring’s crops and garden vegetables. One cleared path led to the outhouse, another to the barn, another to the stable, another to the henhouse. It was an efficient layout and one that Marlin could imagine using again on his own farm.

  He heaved a reluctant barn door open just far enough to slip in and closed it against the bracing air. The family dairy cows and the livestock they raised for butchering or taking to market were outside. It was John’s task to round them up at the end of the day so they could be milked or inspected for signs that the winter exposure affected their health. Marlin breathed relief that he found himself alone in the barn and made his way to an unused stall where an old horse blanket covered a small mound in the corner. He flipped back the coarse covering, sat on the half bale of hay, pulled his knife from its base, and lifted his work for examination.

  Marlin had goaded John into speaking up for the traditional Nativity putz. The Angels had been Marlin’s choice weeks ago, even before he was married. He had carved two angels from a single block of white pine wood. He did not possess the smaller carving knives that would have allowed more detail work, but the ragged style that resulted was not unattractive. It would please him to polish it to a sheen that would catch the lamplight of those who came to see it, but otherwise it was complete. The step that remained was deciding how to create the appearance of black night sky dotted with a host of glittering angels.

  Glory’s gift was the greater challenge with only two days remaining.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  In seven weeks in the Grabill household Glory had not yet discerned the pattern for when, apart from Sunday suppers, Marlin’s married brothers would turn up to share the meal that closed out the day. Rarely did both families come on the same evening, but usually Glory had not heard anyone was coming. Extra plates on the table were the first sign, and then the sounds of horses rattling a buggy behind them. On this evening, Glory welcomed Leroy, Sadie, and their two small children. While the parents went through the motions of trying to teach the kinner quiet, polite table manners, David and Magdalena’s eyes would light up at the presence of boppli, and Marlin’s sisters would manufacture excuses to tend the children.

  As she hoped, the meal had a focus other than everyone wondering why she had remained in bed the entire day. Glory nibbled at the beef yamasetti and vegetables canned from Magdalena’s garden with sufficient consistency to satisfy Marlin’s glances.

  Lyddie and Marianne were clearing dishes when Leroy’s wife turned to Glory.

  “Come and help me in the barn,” Sadie said. “I would be glad for your company.”

  “Of course,” Glory said. “Is there milking to do?”

  Why would Sadie be concerned with barn chores at her in-laws’? If there was extra work, Glory would gladly do it.

  “Sadie is a marvel with aloin,” Magdalena said, setting a stack of plates in the sink. “We have a cow that we may need to keep in the barn for a few days until we are certain she is ready to be out in the winter.”

  “So you are going to give aloin to the cow?” Glory said.

  Sadie nodded and then scooted back her chair to hand her youngest child to her husband.

  Glory’s daed always looked after the livestock. Among the Grabills, though, the women seemed to know as much as the men. She swallowed, supposing that they intended to make a Grabill of her after all.

  Sadie and Glory bundled into heavy cloaks and boots and took a lantern from the mudroom. In the barn, Sadie hung the light on a hook protruding from the side of the stall where the suspect cow turned to stare at Glory.

  “She likes you already,” Sadie said.

  Glory had drawn a different conclusion.

  “Do you want to try?” Sadie said.

  Glory’s fingers went to her chest. “Me? Give the aloin capsule?”

  “Anyone can learn,” Sadie said as she prepared the capsule of aloin and ginger in the capsule gun. “All you need is one spot along the jawline where you feel an opening.”

  Glory was not skittish about farm animals. No Amish child would be allowed to grow to adulthood without knowing where and where not to touch an animal or how to recognize basic signs of peculiar behavior that might mean illness. But so far she had never had to stick her finger in a cow’s mouth.

  “I will show you,” Sadie said. She ran her finger along the cow’s jaw a few inches, backtracked, and settled. “There. Put your finger where mine is and you will feel it.”

  Glory obeyed, moving her finger in both directions to detect the resistance around the opening. Sadie readied the capsule gun in one hand.

  “Now push your finger through and wiggle it to rub the roof of her mouth,” Sadie said. “I will do the rest.”

  Glory moved her finger gently.

  “Harder,” Sadie said. “We want her to be irritated enough to open her mouth.”


  Glory increased pressure. The cow complied. Sadie shot the capsule in and swiftly wedged the animal’s mouth under one arm.

  “We have to be sure she swallows it,” Sadie said. “It might take a couple of minutes.”

  Finally Sadie released her hold. “There. Finished. Next time you can try the capsule gun.”

  Next time. There would be a next time. And another and another. Glory was a married woman with a husband aspiring to his own farm as soon as they could manage it. She looked at the finger that had been inside the cow’s mouth, and her stomach revolted.

  “You look a little green.” Sadie took the lantern off its hook and adjusted it for a good look at Glory. “Do not worry. It gets better in a few weeks.”

  Chapter 6

  Wake up, sleepyhead.”

  Marlin opened one eye to find his bride dressed and standing beside the bed to look down at him.

  “What time is it?” he said, glancing toward the window.

  “Early still but late enough,” Glory said.

  “That does sound like just the right time to get up.” Marlin sat up and reached for his trousers at the foot of the bed. “You feel better, ja?”

  Glory shrugged one shoulder, which was not a persuasive response. She was up and moving, but her spirit did not shine through her face in the way that had made him fall in love with her long before she ever knew. Marlin’s bare feet hit the bare wood floor and he winced at the chill of the collision. With yet another resolution to learn the virtues of slippers at this time of year, he stepped to the chest of drawers and pulled clean socks out of the top drawer before snatching his shirt off a hook.

  Glory’s gaze snapped toward the door. In the hall, footsteps pounded toward their room. Marlin shoved his arms into sleeves just as the banging on the door started.

  Glory opened the door. “What is wrong?”

  “John needs Marlin,” Lyddie said, breathless. “He said right now, please.”

  “But what is wrong?” Glory said again.

  “Marlin will know what to do,” Lyddie said.

  “Do about what?” Glory opened the door wider.

  Lyddie looked past Glory to Marlin. “Just come. I promised John. Right now. In the stable.”

  Lyddie’s steps retreated down the hallways as insistently as they had approached.

  “What do you think it is?” Glory said.

  Marlin thrust his feet into work boots, squelching the wish that he had new footwear. “I guess I will not know if I do not go.”

  It was early in the day for an emergency. The time was still well before breakfast, but it was hard to say what John might have encountered on the early round of chores. John, though, had a penchant for being dramatic. So did Lyddie. Perhaps it was nothing requiring such haste.

  But perhaps it was.

  Marlin took a thick sweater from another hook. Whatever he was about to encounter, the stable would be frigid. “It must be one of the horses. Gone lame, maybe.”

  Marlin looked out the window, frosted at the edges. The way the snow glistened was enough to tell him that the night’s plummeting temperatures had glazed everything afresh, even the pathways branching out from the house. The English would put an image like this one on a postcard or a Christmas card and pin it up on a wall to enjoy. Marlin would simply savor the sight in his mind.

  And he would dress warmly for stepping into it.

  He glanced at Glory, who returned his smile. Was that hesitation at the corner of her mouth?

  “Go,” she said. “I will see you at breakfast.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Glory was grateful that the family seating plan at the broad kitchen table put her at her husband’s side. Occasionally under the table his fingers would graze hers. It had been that way since the first morning she woke under the Grabill roof. At breakfast, she made sure to find reason to put a hand in her lap every couple of minutes.

  But the grazing never came, and she wondered if he had tired of the gesture already. She was a Grabill now, he had said. Did he also think she should not need reassurance any longer?

  Glory ate a slice of bacon and one of the biscuits ubiquitous in the Grabill home. Glory made tasty biscuits—but no one would know, because it seemed that Magdalena or one of her daughters had always just pulled another batch out of the oven.

  “There is Sadie,” Lyddie said.

  Glory caught the blur of Sadie’s cloak as it passed the kitchen window on its way to the back door. John jumped up and opened the door, and Sadie burst into the kitchen, shivering.

  “I thought I would check on the cow,” Sadie said, clapping gloved hands together.

  “You could have waited,” Magdalena said. “No need to come all the way over here before the sun has warmed the morning.”

  “It is not so far,” Sadie said. “But I will not stay long. I left the kinner with Leroy, but all he has on his mind is the putz of the Annunciation, and they are too little to help him.”

  John tapped the table twice. “But the putz is supposed to bring the family together. He should let them help.”

  Sadie gave her easy laugh, a quality Glory admired about her new sister-in-law.

  “That is easy for you to say,” Sadie said. “You have the capable assistance of Lyddie and Marianne. Our two can barely stand in the snow without tumbling. They would hardly give Leroy the same advantage.”

  “Perhaps,” Marlin said, “Leroy should focus on essentials and not be competitive.”

  Sadie laughed again. “I have been a Grabill long enough that you cannot fool me.”

  Glory glanced at the indisputable twinkle in Marlin’s eye.

  “Thank you for helping to insulate the barn,” Sadie said. “Your help is what gives Leroy the time for this greater task. The result will be remarkable, I am sure.”

  “No doubt.” Marlin broke another biscuit in two and put half in his mouth.

  “Next year,” Sadie said, “decide sooner than three days before Christmas what to make. You have all done this enough times to know better.”

  “Is that your way of saying Leroy feels pressure?” Marlin said, holding the smile back from his mouth. He pointed a finger at John. “And you, my little bruder, do not again cause my heart anxiety with an early morning emergency about your putz. You asked to be able to do the Nativity.”

  “You are helping each other?” Sadie feigned shock. “That hardly seems fair.”

  “I did not succumb to his sorry shenanigans,” Marlin said.

  “You are my big bruder,” John said. “I ought to be able to seek your advice on many issues of life.”

  There was Sadie’s laugh again.

  Glory’s eyes bounced from one Grabill to another. Her family was quietly fond of each other, but they did not tease in this manner—especially not during the somber days before Christmas. She hoped she would still see her siblings on Old Christmas, even though her parents were gone. A letter would remind her nearest brother how much she looked forward to the day. His farm was just far enough away to belong to a different district, so she did not hope to see him on Christmas Day. The others lived farther still.

  “Glory, come with me, please,” Sadie said. “If we need to do anything else for the cow, we can do it together.”

  Glory glanced out the window and nodded. She could hardly complain about not feeling included in the family if she turned down the opportunity to share in their work. Sadie had come all this way.

  They bustled along the outdoor path, knowing the barn would be warmed by the animals that had not yet been led to snowy pastures.

  “Have you told Marlin yet?” Sadie said.

  “Told him what?” Glory said, watching her breath swirl ahead of her.

  “About the babe of course.”

  Glory’s heart lodged in her throat. That was what Sadie meant. “Do not worry. It gets better in a few weeks.”

  Sadie yanked open the barn door. “It is all right. I will not mention it to Leroy if you do not wish me to.”

&nbs
p; “I have barely even told myself,” Gloria said. The thought that someone might guess had not crossed her mind in the fifteen hours since she had counted backward and counted again before coming to her suspicion.

  “I know the feeling.”

  “I am sure you do, with two little ones.”

  “No, I mean I know the feeling now.”

  Gloria’s heart quickened. No wonder Sadie saw the early signs. Sadie grinned.

  “Sisters having boppli together. Such fun it will be!”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “We know how to set up the house for church, Mamm,” Marlin said. The Grabills had hosted at least one church service each year for his entire life—and more often two. He and his siblings knew how the furniture would be moved and what checklist of tasks their mother carried in her head.

  “It is different this time,” his mother said. “Our turn to host falls on Christmas Day. I cannot imagine such an opportunity will come to us again.”

  “Of course,” Marlin said. Even when Christmas fell on a Sunday again in a few years, it might not be on one of the two church Sundays each month. If it were, it would likely be another family’s turn to host. Perhaps someday he and Glory would have the privilege.

  His sisters listened attentively to the list of items their mother wanted them to bring from the cellar for the Christmas pies. Marlin and John watched as she pointed around the wide front rooms of the house designating how to relocate the furniture to make room for the church benches already waiting in a wagon pulled up alongside the house and covered with tarps. The floors would be spotless. Every windowsill would have a Christmas candle. A bit of greenery on the mantel from one of their own trees would not be sinful as long as they did not add ornamentation. Marlin and his siblings nodded at every stage. He would gladly do whatever made his mother feel more prepared about the day after tomorrow.

  Two days. Today and tomorrow. Glory’s gift was nearly ready, and perhaps he could coax her into helping him with the Angels putz—they were a family now and should do it together. Perhaps she would not find the tradition so odd if she saw it from the inside.