A Ready-Made Amish Family

by Jo Ann Brown

  She appreciated his blunt answer and that he hadn’t asked her to explain her comment. She didn’t want to tell him that she was too well acquainted with matchmaking and the heartbreak it could cause.

  “Clara, don’t worry. We’ll ignore everyone’s matchmaking.” He walked toward the door to the dawdi haus before facing her again. “In a way, we should be grateful to Marlin for bringing the subject out in the open, so neither of us has to act like we need to hide something.”

  “Ja,” she said, as he urged her to try to have a gut night’s sleep.

  He closed the door, and she heard the lock slide into place. She reached for her flashlight. Her fingers trembled as she picked it up and turned off the lamp. She hadn’t been honest with Isaiah. She already was hiding something from him. The way her heart took a lilting leap whenever he touched her.

  “You can jump about all you want,” she whispered to her traitorous heart while she climbed the stairs. “There’s nothing you or anyone else can do to change my mind. I won’t be made a fool of by another man. Not ever again.”

  Chapter Four

  As the sun rose the next morning, Isaiah finished his second cup of kaffi and put the empty cup beside his plate with a regretful sigh. Clara brewed kaffi strong, as he liked it when he had a long day ahead of him. He’d already finished milking the cows and let them out in the meadow as well as feeding the chickens and the horses. He wanted to finish the final upright for a double gate ordered by an Englisch horse breeder in Maryland. He needed to make a few curled pieces and a half dozen twisted lengths to complete the pattern. When the gates were finished, they would be shipped to the man’s farm to be hung on either side of a driveway. A truck was collecting it at the end of next week.

  With Clara’s arrival, he should be able to finish the job on time. He couldn’t let her delicious French toast tempt him to have another serving and linger at the table with her and the Beachy twins. The kinder were eating their second servings, dripping maple syrup and melted butter on the oilcloth Clara had spread across the table before serving breakfast. Seeing Nettie Mae dipping her fingers in the syrup and then licking them, he smiled. She caught him looking at her and grinned.

  “Yummy, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yummy, yummy, yummy in my tummy, tummy, tummy.”

  “Is that your new saying, Nettie Mae?”

  “Ja. Yummy in my tummy.” She turned the phrase into a little song.

  “I see happy faces. What did I miss?” Clara asked as she brought a new stack of steaming, eggy toast from the stove. She set the platter next to him.

  “Nettie Mae said the toast is yummy in her tummy,” Isaiah replied. “And she’s singing about it.”

  “And a fun tune it is, too. More kaffi?”

  He pushed back his chair and stood. “Danki, but I need to get to work.”

  “Do you come home for dinner at midday?” Clara asked, sitting where she had the night before.

  “I’ve been since...” He glanced at the kinder who were too intent on their French toast to pay attention to the conversation.

  “I can move the main meal to the evening if it’s easier for you.”

  “I appreciate that. Once the forge is at the right temperature, I don’t want to cool it down and have to wait to reheat it again. I appreciate your flexibility, Clara.”

  She shrugged off his compliment. “Anything else I should know about your work schedule?”

  “Usually I am done around four. That allows me time to milk the cows and get cleaned up before the evening meal.”

  “I’ll have dinner ready around six.”

  “Gut.” He stamped down the thought that Clara had avoided joining them at the table until he got up to leave. That wasn’t fair to her. She’d been busy preparing breakfast and trying to stay ahead of four enthusiastic youngsters who seemed to have bottomless stomachs. But he couldn’t ignore how, when he looked at her, it was as if he faced a closed door.

  “Will you need a lunch packed for today?”

  He motioned for her to stay where she was. “I’ll get something at Amos’s store today. You finish your breakfast before it’s cold.”

  Going to the door, he took his straw hat off the peg above the low row where smaller hats and bonnets waited for the kinder. He put it on his head and reached for the doorknob.

  “Onkel Isaiah!” cried Nancy as she jumped up.

  Her booster seat slid forward, pushing her toward the table. Her elbow hit her plate, and everything seemed to move in slow motion. The plate flipped into the air, spraying maple syrup everywhere. Her unfinished slice of toast struck her glass and knocked it into her sister’s. Both glasses bounced and rolled onto Andrew’s plate before coming to a stop in the middle of Ammon’s. More syrup and melted butter flew across the table.

  Clara grabbed the boys’ glasses and kept them from falling over and spilling more milk on the table. The kinder tried to help, but ended up with more food on them and across the chairs. A plate fell off the table and clattered on the floor. It landed upside down, one corner of toast peeking out from beneath it.

  Silence settled on the kitchen as they stared at the mess. He heard a muffled sound and glanced at Clara. She was biting her lower lip to keep from laughing.

  “Now I understand how the kitchen could get messy in a single day,” she said. “Maybe I should have put the oilcloth on the floor instead of on the table.”

  Isaiah had to put his hand over his mouth to stifle his laugh. The kinder were smiling, but exchanging the uneasy looks he realized were their way of reminding each other not to laugh. He lost any desire to give into the humor of the situation. There was nothing funny when four little kids refused to let themselves act as kinder should.

  Who’d told them not to laugh? Once he found out, he was going to have that person explain to the twins he or she had made a big mistake. It was gut for them to laugh. They needed to express their happy emotions as well as their sad ones.

  But they aren’t showing those either. That thought unsettled him more. How could he have failed to notice? Caught up in the day-to-day struggle to balance taking care of them with his work at the forge, he’d been too focused on each passing minute to look at the bigger picture.

  Hanging his hat on the peg, he ran to the sink and grabbed the dishrag. He wet it, wrung it out and began pushing the puddles of syrup from the edge of the table. The cloth became a sticky mess within seconds. Tossing it into the sink, he grabbed the roll of paper towels.

  “Komm, and let’s get cleaned up.” Clara motioned for the kinder to follow her toward the bathroom.

  Placing paper towels over the puddle of milk and syrup, Isaiah started to dab it up.

  “Leave it,” Clara said. “We’ll clean it once there are a few less layers of syrup on us.”

  “Let me get started so no more hits the floor.”

  “Danki.” Her smile warmed him more than another cup of her delicious kaffi. Before he could smile back, she’d turned to the wide-eyed twins. “Pick up your plates and put them in the sink on your way to the bathroom. Don’t touch anything else!”

  The abashed kinder obeyed without a peep, astonishing Isaiah anew. They’d done as he asked, though not always as he’d hoped. And the results had often been another disaster on top of the one he was trying to get put to rights.

  Isaiah went to work cleaning the table and the floor while he listened to Clara helping the twins wash in the bathroom. Later, when the youngsters were in bed and couldn’t hear, he needed to ask her how she persuaded them to obey her.

  He finished catching the last drip of butter off the oilcloth as the door opened. Assuming it was one of his brothers, stopping on the way to work, he gasped out loud when he saw a petite woman stepping into the kitchen.

  “Gute mariye, Isaiah. I’m here to help you and...”
She glanced around the kitchen, and her eyes widened. “It’s clean! Except for the mess at the table, I mean.”

  “Ja, it’s mostly clean.” It took every bit of his strength to keep his smile in place. It wasn’t Orpha Mast’s fault her voice was too much like her sister Rose’s. Putting his finger to his lips, he grimaced as he tasted syrup. “And please not so loud. The kinder went to wash their hands, and if they realize someone’s visiting, they’ll come running and drip water all the way.”

  “The little ones are washing their hands by themselves?” Orpha waved aside his answer. “Never mind. It won’t take long to wipe up the bathroom. It’s only soap and water, ain’t so?”

  “They aren’t—”

  Not allowing him to explain, she gave him a sympathetic smile. “You look better than the last time I saw you.”

  “I’d just finished speaking over the graves of my best friend and his wife.”

  She tilted her head so she could eye him with a sad smile. “You have such a burden to carry, Isaiah. Your work, your obligations to the district and four little ones. You don’t have to do it on your own, you know.”

  “I know. I—”

  “You know you can ask for help,” she said, not letting him finish again.

  “I know. I—”

  “Those who want to help are right in front of you.” The hint of a smile curved along her perfect lips. “Let me help you, Isaiah. I would do anything for you. Ask me, and I’ll be by your side to take care of these kinder.”

  He was saved from having to answer the unanswerable when the twins poured out of the bathroom, holding up their hands to show him they were clean. He had his back to the bathroom door, but he knew the moment Clara stepped into the room because Orpha’s smile became brittle.

  “Who is she?” his sister-in-law asked so crisply the twins halted and stared.

  Pretending not to hear the venom in Orpha’s voice, Isaiah said, “Orpha, this is Clara Ebersol. She’s here to take care of the kinder. Clara, this is my sister-in-law, Orpha Mast.”

  “How kind of you to come and check on Isaiah and the kinder,” Clara said with a smile.

  Had she missed Orpha’s tone? Unlikely. Clara already seemed able to discern what he was thinking far too often. She was being nice, he realized, and trying to defuse the situation. Why didn’t Orpha see that her sharp words were upsetting the twins?

  “I guess I don’t need to check on them if you’re here,” Orpha replied in the same clipped tone. “Are you related to the Beachys?”

  “No.” Clara folded a damp towel over her arm. “We’re about to sit back down for the rest of our breakfast. Would you like to join us?”

  Say no, Isaiah begged in his thoughts.

  “No.” Orpha glared at all of them. “It would appear I’m not needed here.” Without another word, she left, closing the door harder than necessary.

  “Why was her face like a duck’s bill?” asked Andrew as he stuck out his lips in an imitation of Orpha’s exasperated expression. “Did she taste something bad?”

  “We’ll never know, will we?” Clara steered the youngsters to the table. “Who would like more French toast?”

  The twins climbed into their chairs and booster seats. They began chattering as if there hadn’t been any interruption, and Clara went to the stove. Isaiah put the paper towels he was holding in the trash.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Orpha was surprised to see you here.”

  “She was.” Clara didn’t look at him. “Don’t worry about it. I know you’ve got a lot to do at the blacksmith shop.”

  “I do, but...” He raked his fingers through his hair, then grimaced when he realized syrup still stuck to them. Too late to worry now. “The folks around here are pretty friendly.”

  “I’m sure they are,” she said in the same calm tone as she set two slices of bread on the griddle. She stepped back as egg sizzled and snapped. “Your sister-in-law isn’t happy with me being here.”

  “You don’t have to put it politely. Orpha wants me to walk out with her. I don’t know how many times she’s mentioned being a minister’s wife must be interesting.” He grimaced. “Her description, not mine.”

  “Perhaps you should go after her and tell her she doesn’t have to worry about me being her competition.” She arched a single brow.

  Fascinated, because he’d never been able to make that motion, he replied, “That would begin a conversation I’d prefer to avoid.”

  “And more matchmaking?”

  “I hope not.” He gave her a wry smile. “There’s already enough of that going on because her mamm likes to arrange marriages for her daughters.”

  She started to smile back, then looked toward where the kinder were eating with enthusiasm. Turning to the stove, she didn’t say anything.

  He didn’t either. The problem of unwanted matchmakers was nothing compared to what the twins faced growing up without their loving parents. He needed to remember that. Matchmaking was an annoying irritant that he could—that he must—ignore. Everything he did and everything he thought about should be focused on four small kinder who now depended on him and Clara.

  * * *

  The kinder were upset when Isaiah didn’t come home for lunch as he had every day since the funeral, but Clara distracted them by letting them help her make church spread sandwiches for their midday meal. Soon peanut butter and marshmallow whip stuck to their hands, their faces and the table. She kept it from their clothes by tying aprons around their necks.

  Serving potato chips and milk to them and getting fresh ice tea for herself, she joined the kinder at the table. They yawned while they gobbled their food as if they hadn’t had breakfast a few hours before. A morning spent picking up the mess in their shared bedroom had tired the youngsters...as she hoped. A gut nap this afternoon would allow her time to check the cellar and see what food was stored there. The dishes left in the freezer could be part of a meal, not the whole thing.

  The twins’ naptime seemed to fly by, and she’d finished inventorying about half of the canned fruit, vegetables and meat in the cool cellar. Tomorrow, she would count the rest, but she was relieved to see there was plenty of food for the next four to five weeks until their family came to get the twins. She’d also found bottles of root beer with no date on them. Maybe Isaiah would know when Esta had bottled it. If it was gut to drink, the kinder would enjoy the treat.

  Clara was coming down the stairs with the twins when she heard the door open. Sending up a prayer Orpha Mast hadn’t decided to return, Clara hurried through the living room to see who was calling.

  A short woman with gray lacing through her brown hair stood next to a gray-haired man with the bushiest eyebrows Clara had ever seen.

  “Are you Clara?” asked the woman.

  “I am.”

  “I’m Wanda Stoltzfus. Isaiah’s mamm. I wanted to stop by and see how you’re doing.” Her round face split with her smile. “And I brought chocolate chip cookies.”

  The kinder cheered and danced around her. When Clara reached to grab little hands, the man grinned.

  “They’re fine,” he said in a deep voice that resembled distant thunder. “Trying to catch them is like trying to capture a clutch of chicks. Oh, I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Reuben Lapp.”

  She recognized the name of the local bishop. “I’m glad to meet you. Let me put on the kettle. Or would you rather have kaffi?”

  “Tea would be gut,” the bishop said. “Ice tea if you have it.”

  “I made some this morning when it appeared the day was going to be hot.”

  “Summer is early this year.” Wanda gestured with her plate of cookies. “Shall we enjoy these outside? Then the birds can have the crumbs instead of giving Clara another reason to sweep the floor.” She smiled over the youngsters’ heads. “I assume yo
u’ve already swept at least twice today.”

  “Three times, but who’s counting?” She regretted the words as soon as she spoke them, because Reuben let out a guffaw.

  The kinder stared at him, not sure if the sound had been a laugh or a cough or a sneeze. Before they had time to react further, Clara shooed them and her guests out the front door. She would explain to the bishop and Wanda about the twins and their fear of laughter, but she didn’t want to when the youngsters could overhear.

  Diverted by the cookies, the twins followed Wanda and Reuben onto the porch. The sound of their voices drifted to Clara as she filled glasses with ice tea for the adults and cool water for the kinder. There were enough plastic ones for everyone, which was a relief. She didn’t want one of the barefoot twins bumping a glass and leaving shards on the porch.

  She brought the glasses out on a tray. Wanda and the bishop were seated on the porch. The twins were kicking a ball around the front yard under their watchful eyes.

  Serving the ice tea to her guests and setting the tray on a small table beside the cookies, Clara sat on the glider at the far end of the porch. She took a grateful sip as she realized it was the first time she’d been off her feet since breakfast. During lunch, she’d been too busy to sit for more than a few seconds.

  She wanted to make her guests comfortable, so she began talking about her impressions of Paradise Springs. While they asked questions in return, she waited for the opportunity to tell them about the odd situation with the twins. She avoided speaking of Isaiah other than to express how concerned he was about the youngsters. And she didn’t mention Orpha Mast’s call.

  Reuben asked where she lived, and she told him. He smiled. “I know your bishop well, and we often meet on a Saturday halfway between his districts and mine for a cup of kaffi. If you’ve got a message you want to get to your family quickly, let me know, and I’ll pass it along.”

  “Danki.”

  “If you can trust me with a letter, you can trust me with what’s troubling you.”

  Clara wasn’t surprised the bishop had guessed at her uneasiness by how she prattled like Andrew one minute and was almost as silent as Ammon the next. Setting her empty glass on the floor by her feet, she folded her hands in her lap.