by Emma Miller
He pointed toward the board fence that separated the barnyard from the field. “Luke fell,” Tanner said in a thin voice. “He fell and...” Sobs wracked his small body. “He’s dead. Luke’s dead.”
Honor stared at her son, frozen for a moment. “Don’t say that,” she admonished. “That’s not funny. You don’t make a joke about—” Suddenly, she had no breath left in her. Darkness threatened to envelop her. Dead? Luke dead? Impossible. What was the child saying? Gooseflesh rose on the back of her neck and prickled the skin on her arms. “Luke fell?” It came out a whisper, but Tanner nodded, still pointing toward the fence.
And then she saw a man’s foot encased in a black high-top shoe on the far side of the bottom rail. Somehow she closed the distance in a heartbeat and climbed the fence. Hatless, Luke lay sprawled on his back in the mud. His arms were flung out on either side of his head, his legs as motionless as if they were carved of wood. Luke’s face was as pale as bleached flour, his eyes closed.
“Luke?” She fell to her knees beside him in the mud, and her blood turned to ice. Luke appeared to be asleep. His waxen lips were parted slightly, and his features were smooth. He’d shaved this morning, and she noticed a tiny scratch where he’d cut himself along his jawline. She could smell the clean scent of Ivory soap on his skin. “Dear God,” she whispered. “Let this be a bad dream.” She pressed her palm against the side of his throat, trying to find any sign of breath. “Luke,” she murmured. She turned to look at Tanner. “He fell? How far? Off that?” She pointed at the windmill.
Tanner nodded. “From the top.”
Honor tried to shut out the sound of the children’s cries as she tried to figure out what to do. Was Luke broken beyond healing? Had the fall snapped his neck? His back? She touched his cheek. The noonday air was cool and moist, but his skin seemed chilled. “Luke,” she repeated.
She didn’t know what to do. She pressed her fingers to his throat again. She thought she could feel a pulse, but what if she was wrong? If only she had a phone. But the nearest telephone was at an English neighbor’s house, too far to send Tanner on his own to call for help. Sending Greta would mean leaving the baby alone in the house for too long.
“Luke!” She patted his face again, first gently and then harder. “Luke!” If only she hadn’t lingered over her sewing. If only she’d called them to dinner five minutes ago. If only... The enormity of her loss washed over her in waves. Luke was dead and she’d never told him that she loved him. “Don’t be dead,” she whispered.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Greta peered between the boards, her eyes wide and frightened.
“He’s not dead,” Honor insisted. He couldn’t be. It was impossible that someone could have been laughing and teasing her only an hour ago and now lying lifeless in her corral. Desperately, she placed her fingers over his lips, praying for some sign of breath.
Nothing.
“Luke,” she ordered. “Wake up. Wake up, Luke.” She bent and brought her own lips close to his. Did she feel... Ya? Her heart hammered against her ribs. Surely it wasn’t her imagination. She’d felt something, hadn’t she? “Luke?” She seized his shoulders and shook him. “Wake up!” What was it her grandmother had told her about reviving a grandchild who had fallen off the barn? “Greta! Bring me a bucket of water! Now!”
She studied Luke’s face. No movement. Not so much as a muscle twitched. Not an eyelid fluttered. Time passed. Seconds? Minutes?
Greta dropped a sloshing bucket into the mud beside her. Honor looked from the clear water to the mask that was Luke’s face and back again. “Please, God,” she whispered as she dashed the cold liquid over him.
Luke gasped. His eyes flew open, and he coughed. He tried to sit up and then fell back into the mud. His eyelids fluttered, and he drew in a long breath.
“You’re alive,” Honor whispered.
He groaned. “I think so.” He exhaled slowly. “Did I...”
She nodded, wanting to shout, to throw herself onto him and to kiss him. “We thought you were dead,” she managed. She used her apron to pat the water off his face. Tears ran down her cheeks.
“So you tried to drown me?” His voice came low and rasping, but his eyes focused on her face and the corners of his mouth turned up in a crooked smile.
“You fell from the windmill,” she managed, finding suddenly that she could barely catch her breath. She wanted to cover his face with kisses, to hold him in her arms. She clasped her hands together to keep from touching him. “I think you should lie still. You might have broken bones.”
He groaned again and flexed first one limb and then another. “I don’t think so.” He sat up and put his hands on either side of his head. “The board broke,” he said. “The one I was standing on. I didn’t want to fall on the concrete pad or the fence. I think I jumped.”
Shakily, Honor got to her feet. “Greta, take the little ones into the house. Make certain everything on the stove is turned off. Tanner, see if Anke is awake. If she is, you can get her out of her crib.”
“He’s not dead?” Tanner asked.
Luke scoffed. “Do I look dead?”
“I think you should stay where you are.” Honor fretted. “You may have a concussion. Or you could have internal injuries.” She turned to Greta. “Please see to the children.”
As Greta rounded up the boys and led them away, Luke slowly got to his feet. “Nothing’s broken. I’m fine. Just a little woozy.” He took a step and staggered. Instantly, she was at his side, supporting him.
“In here.” She helped him into the barn through the open doorway. “Sit,” she ordered when they reached a bale of straw. “Even if you didn’t break your neck, you’ve taken a bad fall. You probably knocked your brains loose.”
“I’m fine,” he repeated, but he did as she told him and sat. “The mud absorbed most of the blow...when I hit.”
With her hopelessly muddied apron, she dabbed at his face again at the smears of dirt that streaked his cheeks. He’d lost his hat in the fall but that didn’t matter now. “You’re alive,” she murmured. “I thought... I thought...” And then she lost whatever control she had and began to weep great sobs of relief. Tears blurred her vision, so that she was only vaguely aware when he stood again and put his arms around her. “I thought I’d lost you,” she wailed. “And I hadn’t told you—” She took a deep, gulping breath.
“Shh, shh,” he soothed, rocking her against him. “You hadn’t told me what, Honor?”
The words that I love you rose to her lips, but she couldn’t utter them. Instead, she laid her head on his shoulder and drank in the strength of his arms and the blessed sounds of his breathing. It wasn’t too late, she realized. God had given her a second chance. “I think,” she began and then found herself racked by another sob. “I think I would...like to...”
“Like to what?” He patted her shoulder. “Don’t cry, Honor. Please don’t cry. It’s all right. I’m all right. Tell me.”
“Luke, I think we should... I want to...” She wiped at her tears with a muddy hand, trying to find the words.
He searched for a handkerchief, but when he pulled it from his pocket, it was as wet as his coat and trousers. She stared at it, and her sobs became gasps of laughter.
Soon, Luke was laughing with her. “Is this your way of saying you’ll marry me?” he asked. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Ya.” She nodded, pulled free from his embrace and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “If you still want...”
“Say it,” he urged. “Say the words.”
She covered her face with her hands and then sniffed. She glanced down at her apron and skirts. Her muddy stockings sagged around her ankles, her shoes were soaked and her apron was dirty beyond belief. “Ne. You have ask me properly, first,” she said, sniffing again.
“I’ll ask you a hundred times if I have to.”
; He smiled at her, and her chest felt tight. She’d come so close to losing him. In those terrible minutes when she’d thought he was dead, all her doubts had evaporated, and all she could think was how much she needed him. Not only her, her children needed him. “My Anke... My boys need a father,” she whispered.
“And I want to be that father. I want to be your husband. So will you let me court you?”
“Ne.” She shook her head, fighting another wave of tears. She was so thankful for God’s grace. “I don’t need that. We’ve had our courtship, Luke. I think that’s what we’ve been doing here these last weeks.” She looked up at him. Took a breath. “I want us to marry...as soon as possible. I don’t want to be alone anymore. And you’re the only man I want, I’ll ever want for my husband.”
Now it was Luke whose eyes glistened with emotion. “I prayed I could win your love again. I was certain that God meant for us to be together. But I nearly lost faith that it could happen. But now God has answered my prayers. I’ll be a good husband to you, Honor. I will be the best father to your children...to our children that I can.”
“It was my foolish pride that kept us apart,” she said. “But I never... Luke, I never stopped loving you.”
He caught her hand and gripped it. “I love you,” he said. “I’ve loved you since I was eight years old and you threw that ladle of well water on my head.”
She laughed. “And now I’ve done it again, but this time with a whole bucket.”
He turned her muddy hand in his and pressed his lips softly against the underside of her wrist. “If I’d known it would win you over, I’d have jumped off the windmill the first day I got here,” he said.
He tugged at her hand, and she knew that in another second she’d be in his arms and he’d be kissing her mouth. And she wanted him to. But she made herself pull away from him. “First, we see you to a doctor and then to the bishop,” she said. “I think it’s wise we marry soon.”
“The sooner the better,” he agreed. “As soon as the banns can be cried.”
She nodded, backing away from him. “I do love you, Luke Weaver,” she said, and then she whirled around and ran for the safety of the house and her children.
* * *
“I haven’t done this since I was sixteen,” Honor said to Luke, holding on to his arm for balance. “I’ll probably fall and break my neck.”
“Skating isn’t something you forget,” he assured her.
She sighed. “I hope you’re right.” After a final glance over her shoulder at the campfire where members of the Seven Poplars youth group were helping her boys roast hot dogs, Honor made her way cautiously out onto the ice. Luke sat down to lace up his skates, and she took the opportunity to practice a few easy moves.
So much had happened in the past week that she could hardly believe it. Luke had gone to her bishop for permission for them to marry, and they were only waiting for certification from his Kansas church community to set a date. Most Amish weddings were held in November and December, but as a widow, she could marry at any time.
The only bad thing was that the bishop had asked Luke to stop working on her house until after the wedding, unless accompanied by others who could serve as chaperones. Since they’d made it plain that they cared for each other, the elders felt that the less time they spent together until they became man and wife, the more respectable it would appear to outsiders.
Honor could understand the bishop’s decision, but she did miss having Luke at her table, and the children asked for him every day. Being with him tonight was even more special because he’d been absent all week. Typical of Delaware weather, the thaw hadn’t lasted. The temperature had dropped to the single digits and the ice on the millpond had frozen faster and harder than it had in years.
“I thought you said you’d forgotten how to skate.” Luke called, coming up behind her on his skates. “Race you to the far side.”
Her response was to lengthen her stride, and she glided away from him. It felt wonderful to fly along on the ice with the wind on her face and the full moon illuminating the pond as brightly as twilight. Birds must feel like this, she thought. It was a glorious night, and her grossmama Berta’s old skates fitted her as though they’d been made for her.
Honor and Luke had skated before, one cold winter when they were first dating, years ago. Tonight, it was almost as if those years had faded and she was young again. The moon was huge and bright, and the ice a sheet of silver. She could smell the crackle of apple wood on the fire and hear the sounds of children’s laughter rising above the hiss of the skate blades. She felt as light as a feather...as free as a puff of wind as they skimmed over the frozen millpond. How could she have forgotten how much she loved Luke...how happy he made her?
Other Amish families and couples had gathered along the wooded shoreline of Freeman’s pond, glad for an opportunity to get together for an evening of fellowship and pleasure. Anke was safely in the house with Katie and some of the women, and Greta and Zipporah were helping serve hot chocolate and marshmallows. A few Amish were on the ice, some with skates and some with sleds or just sliding along on their shoe soles, but she and Luke had most of the expanse of the large pond to themselves.
They reached the opposite bank side by side. She turned to avoid a tree root jutting out of the earth and spun out, landing on her bottom and sliding across the ice. Luke was immediately at her side, getting down on his knees beside her. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head and laughed. “Ne, just feeling silly. Pride goes before a fall.”
His gloved hand closed around her arm and he leaned close. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are tonight?”
“Don’t,” she protested, but hearing him say so was sweet.
“Kiss me,” he said.
“Ne.” She shook her head, savoring the giddiness that made her tremble. “No kissing until we’re man and wife.”
“Just one kiss?”
His voice was teasing, but she found herself staring at his mouth. Wanting to press her lips to his. “Ne, absolutely not. We’re not teenagers, Luke.”
He groaned. “Honor, Honor, Honor. You’re right, but...” He sighed and got to his feet. He offered his hand, and she took it and he pulled her up. “Skate with me,” he said.
“All right.” She felt her left skate suddenly loosen. “Wait,” she said. “I think my lace came undone.”
Still holding her hand, Luke helped her to the edge of the pond. “Here. Sit here,” he said, motioning to a section of a tree that lay half below and half above the ice. She did as he told her, careful to keep her skirt in place over her thick stockings.
“Let me see your skate.”
Her heartbeat quickened as he took her skate in his hands and bent over it.
“Ah” He nodded. “The lace snapped. I think I can knot it so it will work.”
She breathed in the cold, clean air with its bite of cedar and pine. She could see the others on the other side of the pond and she assumed they could see her and Luke, but here in the quiet semidarkness, it seemed as if they were alone in the world beneath this silvery moon.
He pulled off his gloves and unlaced her skate. “The rest of the lace seems strong enough,” he said. He knotted it just above the break and then laced the top again, leaving an inch-long gap between. “If it doesn’t hold, I can give you one of mine,” he offered.
“Let me try. It feels all right,” she answered. “We should go back to the group, anyway.”
But she didn’t want to go back. She wanted to go on skating alone with him, with her heart full and his strong hand clasping hers. Was it wrong to feel like this? She was a widow, a mother of four, but this couldn’t be wrong, could it? She shifted her weight and skated a few feet beside him. “I think it’s fine,” she said.
And then they were off again, hand in hand, skimming over the shimmering surface, fin
ding joy in being together and silently making promises to each other about the days and months and years ahead.
Chapter Twelve
“Boys, you’re too noisy. Go outside and play. Better yet...” Honor stopped pedaling her sewing machine and looked up.
Freeman’s mother, Ivy, had come to visit while her son helped Luke out with a project. While Honor worked at her sewing machine, Ivy was knitting. The two women had been trying to talk when the boys got too loud. “Get your coats on and go watch Luke and Freeman repairing the chicken house. Learn how it’s done, so that you can mend your own buildings someday. They might even find work for you to do.”
“We want to skate,” Tanner said. “Can you take us to the millpond? I’m going to take my sled.”
“Ne,” Honor replied firmly, glancing down as she lifted the pressure foot of the sewing machine. “I’ve no time to take you anywhere today. We can’t play on the pond, anyway. Freeman says the warmer temperatures are melting the ice.”
Tanner pulled a face. “But we wanna go. We could stay close to the bank.” Justice stood solidly behind him, the two of them united in a purpose for once, instead of quarreling or teasing each other.
Honor removed the shirt she was sewing and shook it out. “You heard me,” she said. “Skating is only safe when it’s very cold and the ice is thick. It may freeze again this month, or we could have to wait until next winter. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“But we want to go,” Justice insisted.
Honor took a deep breath and prayed for patience. Since the night of the winter frolic the previous week, Tanner and Luke had been wild to return to the mill with their sled. But the changeable Delaware weather made skating a rare treat. Some winters the temperatures never dropped and held long enough to make ice-skating safe at all.
“Please,” Tanner begged.