by Kelly Irvin
Lilly wailed.
“I know, I know.” Iris laid her on the bed and unwrapped the beautiful crib quilt. Someone had stitched it with love many years earlier. She made quick work of changing the diaper. “We’ll find you some warmer clothes, little one, and cloth diapers. Mudder may have some tucked away in her chest or we can borrow from Rachel. She’ll have saved Annie’s clothes in case she has another girl.”
Iris had prayed for a family of her own, but not like this. Not the abandoned baby of another woman. Still, who was she to argue with God’s plan? And wasn’t Lilly better off with someone like Iris who knew about babies and who had family to help? Or was that her own pride and desire talking?
Maybe this was simply Quinn and Jessica’s plan. God surely frowned on abandoning babies. They were gifts from Him.
“Ach, Lilly, what am I to do?”
Gott, what do I do? Show me the way.
“What is all this caterwauling?”
Iris started. “Daed. You’re here.”
“I am. I came to take care of chores.” He strode into the room in the bowlegged walk he’d passed on to his boys. “Where are these Englischers who spent the night in my house?”
“They’re gone.” She held out the note, pleased that her hand didn’t shake. “They’ll be back, though. Jessica promises.”
Daed adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles, the frown over his gray beard deepening as he read. The wrinkles in his forehead pinched at that spot over the bridge of his nose between bushy, matching eyebrows. His gaze met hers, his blue eyes piercing. “They’re two teenagers who most likely ran away from home. They left a baby only a few hours old in the hands of strangers. You believe that promise?”
“I know if I were her mudder—”
“You’re not.”
Iris swallowed hard against the bitter bile in the back of her throat. She picked up Lilly and hugged her to her chest. Daed didn’t mean to be cruel. He didn’t have a cruel bone in his hefty body. “I know, but I’ve watched many mudders with their newborn boplin—”
“And not one of them has run off and left that bopli, has she?”
“Nee.”
“We need to find them. We can’t be responsible for their child.”
“Mahon and Salome will help.” She grabbed the gym bag and handed it to Daed. “She needs to eat.”
He took the bag and followed her out the door to the stairs. “They certainly will. They meant well, but bringing these people into our house wasn’t a good idea.”
“You would turn them away in the snow and ice? She was having a bopli.”
“Are they mann and fraa?”
She couldn’t lie. “Nee.”
“What kind of example does that set for your schweschders and bruders?”
“She was having a baby.”
“I know.” His growl softened to a low rumble. “And now we have a baby. If they can’t be found, we’ll have to get the Englisch authorities involved.”
“Daed—”
“How will she be fed?”
“They left formula and bottles. The mudder provided for her.”
“The Englisch way.” With a snort, he clomped down the stairs. “Formula costs a lot. Feed her and then go into town for more. We don’t want the poor thing starving in the meantime.”
His bark was worse than his bite. But his tone left no doubt. He was serious. What English “authorities” would be involved with an abandoned baby? Was it really abandonment if Jessica and Quinn left the baby with someone like Iris? If they told someone at the sheriff ’s office, Jessica might never get her baby back.
“We’ll figure it out.” She held Lilly closer. “I promise.”
CHAPTER 6
Sweet, sweet silence. Iris tiptoed from the cradle nestled between the table and the wood-burning stove across the kitchen to where her mother washed breakfast dishes at the sink. Fed, burped, and freshly diapered, Lilly had succumbed to sleep after a few lingering, halfhearted sobs. Daed left the house to go back to Freeman’s. Likely he would share the latest news with the bishop. Freeman would offer counsel. He might think it best to call the sheriff ’s office. In the meantime, Iris planned to take good care of this newcomer, as she would any other guest in their home.
Mudder glanced up from the cast-iron skillet in her hands and smiled. “Finally—”
“Shhh!” Iris put her index finger to her lips. “You’ll wake her.”
“She’ll get used to sleeping through anything around here.” Mudder chuckled and handed the skillet to Iris. “No point in babying the bopli.”
“Very funny.” Iris kept her voice low all the same. She picked up a towel and dried the skillet. “I need to go to Salome’s. Do you think you can take care of her for a few hours?”
“I think I can handle it.” Mudder made quick work of a pot and laid it in a plastic drain on the counter. “Do you really think you can catch up with them? I reckon they’ve gotten pretty far down the road, and you don’t even know what direction.”
“Quinn said they were headed to Texas, but they would have to stop in town for some supplies for Jessica.” Heat toasted Iris’s cheeks. Even talking to Mudder about these things was awkward. “We don’t know what time they left either.”
“Samuel said the truck was gone when he went to feed the animals.” Mudder dried her hands and went to the table. She picked up a rumpled piece of paper. “What do you know about this?”
Iris peered over her shoulder. It was a drawing in pencil. The artist had a delicate touch. The details were fine, the wrinkles in her dress, the stains on her apron, the tendrils of hair that had escaped her kapp, her long chin. Iris didn’t own a mirror, but she’d seen herself in mirrors many times. Her mind replayed the previous evening. Mahon at the desk, his hands over the tablet. The swift move to crumple the top sheet and toss it in the wastebasket. “That’s me, isn’t it?”
“Any idea how this got in our wastebasket?”
“Mahon was sitting at the desk last night.”
“Why would he draw a picture of you?”
Why indeed? Heat curled its way up her neck and across her cheeks. “Did Daed see it?”
“Nee, I was cleaning the front room, and I emptied the basket.” Mudder crumpled the sheet. She marched to the stove, opened the door, and tossed it in. Flames consumed it in an instant. “I knew he sketched. His mudder mentioned it.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“Animals, landscapes, and the like, nee.” Mudder bent over the cradle and adjusted the quilt around Lilly’s chin. “Leaving portraits of you lying about is another thing. We don’t abide by pictures of ourselves. It’s vain and leads to idolatry.”
A sermon Iris had heard many times. During rumspringa, she and Salome took their pictures in a booth in town. Black-and-white strips of half a dozen silly poses, arms around each other, tongues sticking out, laughing so hard, their mouths hung open. Mudder found the strip. The lecture lasted twenty minutes and the photos disappeared into the fire, the paper curling and crackling in the flames. “He threw it away.”
“But he drew it.” Mudder went back to her dirty dishes. “What’s done is done, I reckon. As long as you understand why I burned it.”
“I’m not one to think highly of myself.” Her tone was far too sharp for a daughter addressing her mother. She softened it. “I’m sorry. I’m tired.”
“And worried, I suspect. Worrying helps nothing.”
“Daed wants Quinn and Jessica found or Lilly turned over to the authorities. I don’t even know what authorities it would be.”
“Your daed will figure that out with Freeman. He wants what’s best for the bopli.” Mudder made quick work of another pot and laid it on the counter. “So do you, I reckon.”
“Jessica is so young. I’m not sure she can be a gut mudder.”
“But you can?”
“You don’t think I can?”
“I know you will be. When the time comes. But this isn’t your time.”
/> “If it ever comes.” The words were out before she could corral them. “I mean—”
“I know you’re impatient. You’re uncertain.” Mudder examined a plate, then dunked it in the tub that held rinse water. “I can understand that, but there’s no hurrying Gott’s plan. His timing is different from our own.”
“Maybe it’s not a matter of hurrying the plan. Maybe the plan doesn’t include me being a mudder.”
“You talk about being a mudder, but you don’t mention being a fraa.”
That would require a mann. She dried the pot and returned it to its spot in the cabinet. How could she explain the vacant space in her heart? She no longer ached for Aidan. Knowing he loved another had closed that door forever. “I feel as if I’m waiting for something. I’ve been waiting forever.”
“Or someone?” Mudder scooped up silverware from the bottom of the tub and began to scrub. “Like someone who draws pretty pictures of you.”
“Mudder!” Mahon had been bored, nothing more. Iris cast about for another topic. “I know it’s been a few years, but do you have any cloth diapers stored away? Or any of Abigail’s baby clothes?”
“I have a few things tucked away.” Mudder tugged the towel from Iris’s hands. She patted her fingers dry, a faraway look on her lined face. Iris knew what she would look like when she reached middle age. Fine wrinkles framed her mudder’s blue eyes. Gray had overtaken her blonde hair. Her figure grew rounder with each child and each passing year. “The baby’s crib quilt is very pretty, for sure.”
Iris followed her mother’s gaze to the cradle. “It’s old. The colors have faded, and there’s a stain on the back.”
“It’s strange . . .” Mudder’s voice faded away. She dropped the towel on the counter. “I have something to show you.”
After a last peek at Lilly, who slumbered with one fist against her tiny mouth, the other hidden under the quilt, Iris scurried to catch up with her mother, who headed for the back hallway and the bedroom she shared with Daed. There, she flipped up the clasps on a massive trunk at the foot of the bed. Iris had never seen it open. She used to ask as a child, but Mudder never let her look inside.
“What is all that?”
“Originally this was my hope chest. Now it’s mostly full of quilts and keepsakes. A few things my mudder gave me.” Mudder’s voice had an odd tremor in it that Iris had never heard before. She smoothed her hands across a baby’s lilac nightgown, then held it up. “This was your sister Molly’s.”
“I don’t have—”
Iris stopped, compelled to silence by the pain etched on her mother’s face. She looked much older for a split second. She looked like Groossmammi Plank before she passed.
Mudder laid the nightgown back in the chest with the care reserved for something precious and irreplaceable. “Molly was our first bopli. Your older schweschder. She only lived a few hours.”
She plopped onto the bed and picked up an envelope yellowed with age. Her head bent, she turned it over and over. Finally, she lifted the flap and showed Iris the contents. A single, small lock of wispy, auburn hair. Her fingertips, callused from years of gardening, laundry, and sewing, caressed the tendrils and then returned them to the envelope.
“I didn’t know.” Iris eased onto the bed next to her mother. “You never talked about her.”
“Some of Gott’s gifts are fleeting.” Mudder shrugged. “My pea brain isn’t big enough to understand them all. She was here. Then she wasn’t. No point in dwelling on it. You came along a year later.”
She patted Iris’s hand. Her fingers were warm and sturdy. “I’m glad you stayed around.”
It was as close as her mother ever came to expressing affection through words. Iris cleared her throat. “Me too.”
She had had a big sister. Her life would’ve been so different with an older sister to share a room, to share secrets, impart wisdom, make mistakes with, and learn from them together. They might have teased their brothers together, gone to singings together. Molly would’ve known what to do about Aidan. Big sisters knew these things. They might have bickered over which side of the bed to sleep on or whether to have the window open or closed on a fall evening or who would wash and who would dry the dishes. Life would’ve been different. “No one knows? There’s no marker at the cemetery.”
“We were visiting your aenti Esther in Haven.” Mudder’s voice cracked. She reached for a tissue from the box on the table next to the bed. “I was sick after the birth. We stayed almost a month. We buried her there. It was a long time ago.”
“But it still hurts.”
“Boplin are Gott’s gifts. Their days with us are in His province. Still, my prayer for you is that you never have to know how much.”
Mudder placed the envelope back in the chest, nestled in the folds of the nightgown. She bent over and lifted a pile of quilts. “Here it is.” She laid a crib quilt in Iris’s lap. “A nine-patch quilt.”
The same pattern as the one Jessica left for Lilly. The colors were different. Black blocks framed the outside. The inner blocks were purple, a pale lavender, and black. It was old as well, but someone had cared for it better. “Where did this come from?”
“It’s been handed down, mudder to mudder, for generations on my family’s side.” Mudder patted the quilt. “I intended to give it to you when you had your first baby. That’s the way we’ve always done it.”
“So Groossmammi gave it to you when you were expecting Molly.”
“Jah.”
“It would’ve gone to her?”
“It would have, but instead it’ll go to you.”
Iris ran her hand over the pieced cotton blocks. The quilting, done by hand, was perfectly stitched. She held it out to Mudder. “It’s not time. Keep it until it’s time.”
“I wanted you to know I have faith. It’s more than a quilt that warms a baby on a winter night. It reminds us that behind our faith and community, family is most important to us.”
“I know.”
“Don’t lose faith because of what happened with Aidan.”
It was the closest her mother had come to speaking of her courtship with Aidan. “I loved him for a long time.”
“But you knew in your heart that he was meant for another. When we marry, we are yoked for life. You don’t want to give that gift to the wrong person.” Mudder wrapped her arms around the quilt and held it to her chest as if wrapping it in a hug. “You were wrapped in this quilt on your first day on earth. It kept you warm. It let you know you were loved. You are still loved. And one day you will find your mate.”
Iris managed a smile. “If I don’t marry, there’s always Louella.”
“Wait upon the Lord.” Mudder cleared her throat and smiled back. “In the meantime, I think I have a small stack of Abigail’s clothes in here somewhere.” She pulled back a folded full-size quilt to reveal more nightgowns. “I guess I wasn’t quite ready to let go of them. Just in case.”
In case Abigail wasn’t the last. There would always be room in the Beachy house for one more and in a mother’s heart. “I’ll take them to the laundry room.”
Mudder laid the crib quilt back in the trunk. “It’ll be here when you’re ready.”
Iris nodded. No need to tell Mudder she’d been ready for years now.
CHAPTER 7
Gott had a way of providing. Iris studied the two drawings. Others in the Gmay might not think much of Mahon’s skill as an artist, but it was a God-given gift. Perfect likenesses of Quinn and Jessica stared back at her. When Mahon heard that the couple had left their newborn daughter at the Beachy home and disappeared before dawn, he had agreed to help. It took him less than five minutes to sketch the two pictures with Iris peering over his shoulder at the table in the Kurtzs’ toasty warm kitchen that smelled of baking cinnamon rolls and simmering beef stew. He caught Quinn’s dark, handsome features and Jessica’s elfin quality in the shape of her chin, upturned nose, and large eyes.
“You draw well.” Her mind’s eye pictured
the rumpled sketch Mudder had tossed in the stove earlier in the day. Iris picked up the drawing of Quinn. The tuft of brown whiskers under his bottom lip spoke of the desire to look older. The beard wouldn’t grow no matter how hard he tried. “It’s not just how he looks, but how he is.”
Mahon glanced at his mother, who stooped to pull the cinnamon rolls from the oven. He shrugged and laid his pencil next to a thick, rectangular sketch pad. “It’s just something I do in my spare time. Anything to help you find them.”
A harrumph from the vicinity of the stove told Iris that Bertha Kurtz was listening. Iris slid into the chair across from Mahon. She flattened her hands on the rough pine to keep from reaching for the sketch pad. Curiosity killed the cat. “It’s raining now and the snow has turned to slush. Not much to do in the way of chores.”
“I know. I was waiting to return the horse until it lightened up.” He picked up the pencil and stuck it behind his ear. “It’s a mess out there. I should drive you into town. We can talk to a few folks, see if anyone saw them or talked to them.”
“Maybe they told someone where in Texas they’re headed.”
“Sounds like something Salome should do with Iris.” Bertha turned from the stove, potholder mitts still on her hands. Her wrinkled cheeks were rosy from the heat. “I reckon your daed will need help with something before the afternoon is over.”
“Salome won’t be home from teaching until late.” Mahon’s tone was respectful, but firm. “Cyrus wants this taken care of. He has concerns.”
Iris waited. Her heart did a crazy one-two-one-two beat that made her catch her breath. Because of the baby, not because of the prospect of spending an afternoon with Mahon. Their conversation the previous evening had replayed in her head, keeping her awake for more than an hour after his departure, despite her exhaustion. That touch. Had she imagined it? Rachel had planted the seed. It was the power of suggestion, nothing more. The power of suggestion made her warm despite icy temperatures outside. That was all.
