by Kelly Long
“Ach, Dan . . . turn the CLOSED sign over, will you? I’ve got to finish stocking these jellies and then your mamm has supper going though she’s waiting on you to whip up some angel biscuits. Where have you been, sohn?”
Daniel turned the sign, though he knew his daed would open for anyone on the mountain, no matter the time, in the event of a sudden or urgent need. He walked across the wooden floor, knowing its creaks by heart, and automatically bent to help his fater finish stocking the jelly jars that bore homemade labels from several of the local women.
“I was up near the timberline, Daed. Having a bit of a walk.”
His father eyed him directly. “Ach . . . well, then, I hope you stopped by to cut Clara Loftus a load of firewood.”
Daniel felt a sudden tightness in his chest as he looked away. “Nee, Daed. I’ll not cut timber up near that spot again.”
His fater’s big brown eyes immediately welled with emotion as he reached out to touch Daniel’s shoulder. “Forgive me then, sohn. I forget that it’s been only two years since Seth . . . and you . . .”
Daniel quickly embraced his daed, then pulled away. “It’s all right, Daed. Look, I’d better get at those biscuits, okay?”
His fater nodded, pulling his white store apron up to wipe his nose; Daniel patted his back, then walked away through the store to the back kitchen, mentally preparing the ingredients for angel biscuits to go with the fragrant venison stew his mamm was stirring over the woodstove.
Daniel slipped off his coat and hat and hung them on the wooden pegs near the store’s entrance. He called out greetings to his numerous siblings, who were already seated around the table with a general air of expectation.
“The kinner be hungry tonight,” his mother observed as Daniel bent to kiss her plump cheek. “Can you whip up those angel biscuits of yours?”
“Sure, Mamm.”
He’d learned to bake angel biscuits and a myriad of other things, mainly by trial and taste, when he was ten years auld. His mother had been on necessary bed rest with one of her pregnancies, and while his daed was busy at the store, it had fallen on Daniel, as the eldest child, to become “the mamm” for a time.
Now he rolled up his blue shirtsleeves as he grabbed the homemade soap and started to wash his hands at the pump sink. He was drying off on an old tea towel when he remembered something vital to his recipe.
“I need my secret ingredient, Mamm. I’ll just run back into the store for a minute.”
There was a flatteringly collective groan from the hungry kinner at the table, and Daniel had to smile. Then he wondered with a sudden shiver of warmth whether Clara Loftus might have any secret ingredients of her own....
* * *
Long after midnight, Clara sought the relative comfort of the wood-framed bed that she and Seth had once shared. Blinks was settled in her usual mound of quilts on the floor, gently snoring. “I’m glad you can sleep,” Clara whispered to the animal, then sighed heavily in the dimness of the moonlit room.
Okay . . . okay, Gott . . . so having Daniel Kauffman appear on my front porch today was odd. It made me . . . unsettled.
She glanced over at Seth’s feather pillow, the one she faithfully changed the case on every week, and gave it a sudden thump that oddly made her feel better for a moment. Then she laid her head down on her own pillow, closed her eyes resolutely, and drifted into fitful sleep.
She dreamed that an angel with wings like ice stood beside her bed, bending with tender, luminescent fingers to gently stroke her forehead, stirring up memories and bringing back a past she didn’t want to face....
“Try,” the angel urged in a voice that pulsed with white light. “Try to bear remembering.”
* * *
They wouldn’t let her see him, no matter how much she fought. She wanted to see all of him—crushed in two or not, he was still hers.... But not hers... Gott was bigger. Gott took and gave. She clawed through the red haze of the jumbled words, and then there was only green. Steady green eyes; determined, resolute . . . Marry me . . . I’ll care for you. . . . I know I can never be Seth . . . but . . . Nee . . . she screamed. Again and again until the words pounded like fists on the broad shoulders of the living man and he’d turned away—leaving her alone. Time and grief convulsed with thought and purpose like labor pains must be, and she cried out, seeing herself weeping, longing . . . needing . . . Let me see him once more . . . his green eyes. Marry me; marry him. . . . She grasped the cookie plate and tried to hold it steady, but her hand shook and she watched it fall, breaking in two....
Clara awoke with a gasp, staring frantically into the shadowed darkness, feeling Blinks lick her hand. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and tried to slow the racing of her heartbeat. A dream . . . only a dream . . . She pulled Seth’s pillow close for a moment, seeking any warmth in its pristine chill, then flung it from her to land with a soft thud across the room.
* * *
In the cool, moonlit confines of his narrow bed, Daniel was dreaming. He knew it on some level but he couldn’t wake....
Hot, chocolate-drizzled cookies overflowed from Clara’s hands as she reached out to him. He wanted to lick the sticky goodness that dripped between her slender fingers and twine his hands in her loose blond hair. “Clara is as shy as a doe . . . gotta take it slow.” Slow. But Daniel was hot and his mouth ached for a taste of her full lips. Seth’s wife . . . Seth’s wife . . . Entrusted, treasured, given . . . Mine. The word seared itself inside his eyelids, and he reached for her, intent on taking what she offered. But then a large goat blocked his way and Clara was suddenly distant and removed, half-turned from him. Absurd that a goat should stand between them. . . . He moved to push the animal away and fell on a patch of ice. Then he was a child again, making snow angels in rising biscuit dough....
He woke, sweating, and slipped on his pants. He needed a drink of water to banish the strangeness of his thoughts and crept quietly downstairs toward the kitchen.
“Can’t sleep, buwe?”
Daniel nearly jumped as he passed his grandfater’s bed in the dark living room.
“Da, you scared me to death. Are you all right?” Daniel moved through the shadows and turned a kerosene lamp up low as he blinked at his elder.
Sol Kauffman had once been a big bear of a man, but now, at nearly ninety-two, his frame had shrunk and his mind drifted between the past and the present with a lot of odd statements in between. But tonight, he looked at Daniel with seemingly lucid eyes and sat up as if wanting a midnight chat.
Daniel suppressed a sigh and sank into a nearby chair, sliding it close to the comfortable couch.
“You’ve been dreaming, sohn?”
Daniel smiled in surprise at the accurate assumption. “Jah.”
“Ach.” Sol reached a heavily veined hand to brush at his long white beard. “About a woman, no doubt.”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“Well, that be your problem, buwe. Yer afraid . . . of her?” The faded blue eyes seemed to search the heart beneath Daniel’s bare chest.
Daniel looked away. “Nee . . . she just . . . Well, it’s not an easy situation, Da.”
“Because of the promise you made to Seth Loftus that day in the wood?”
Daniel turned to stare at his grandfather and felt his heart begin to pound in his throat. I’ve never told a living soul what Seth asked of me the day he died—not even Clara. She just thought I was nar-risch . . . asking her to marry me so soon—after . . .
He cleared his throat. “Da, how do you . . . What are you talking about?”
Sol gave him a toothless smile. “You think I’m alone all nacht down here, sohn? Nee . . . when I cannot sleep, I talk with the angels. ’Twas an angel what told me about when Seth wuz dyin’ and him asking you to take his Clara in marriage . . . A heavy load to bear, I’m thinkin’ . . . a heavy load.”
Daniel wondered if he was still dreaming when he leaned closer to the auld man and touched his hand. “Da . . . did . . . did the angel te
ll you how I can keep my promise to Seth? Because Clara won’t have me, and . . .”
His grandfather startled with a jerk and a frown, his bushy white brows nearly meeting. “What? What’s that you say?”
“Clara Loftus, Da . . . the angel?” Daniel felt a surge of desperation.
“You woke me up for such foolishness as this? Turn the lamp down—it be the middle of the nacht!”
Daniel pulled back in confusion, then hastened to rise and turn down the lamp. He had no desire to wake his folks upstairs, but he wanted desperately to keep talking with his grandfather. Yet in moments, his da was snoring and Daniel stood with his fists clenched in the dark room, unbidden tears in his eyes. I’m going crazy, he decided . Truly crazy . . . Maybe I should go back to bed and pray....
But in his heart, he wondered if Gott would hear the prayers of a man who did not keep a promise that even the angels knew....
CHAPTER 3
The following morning dawned bright and cold while Clara stared, vexed, into the recesses of a cabinet. She’d woken early in the hopes of banishing the vestiges of her dream and tried to focus solely on baking.
“We need pecans,” she cried in sudden dismay to Blinks.
The goat lived up to her name and blinked in solemn acknowledgment.
“We have to go down to the store!” And I might see Daniel again. . . . The intensity of his forest-green eyes was fresh enough in her mind to make her distinctly uncomfortable, but she squared her shoulders. She could not allow the possibility of him outbaking her.
She rushed into the bedroom with Blinks at her heels and began to layer on clothing. “Sarah is right,” Clara grumbled aloud. “I should keep a horse and sleigh for emergencies.” She struggled to add a third skirt atop her normal dress and almost fell over. Then she straightened and gave her normally trim hips a ruthless pat. “Okay . . . so I look like a snowman. Who cares?” But she could not deny the little voice inside her head that mocked her words. You care . . . because you’d like to look your best in front of . . . him.
“Bah!” she exclaimed as she tugged on her bonnet and tied the strings with a jerk. Blinks echoed her sentiment. Baaaa . . . Clara rolled her eyes heavenward, grabbed her pocketbook, and opened the door with the goat following. She took one determined step off the front porch and fell flat on her face. She floundered and got to her feet, realizing that she had underestimated the depth of the snow that had fallen overnight. Even when she let Blinks out to see to the animal’s needs or to her milking, the powdery white was not usually so deep. She sighed, knowing she’d end up sodden and dripping by the time she got to Kauffman’s store, but the thought of the necessary pecans kept her moving at a slow but determined pace.
* * *
Daniel normally cut timber or worked in Joseph King’s furniture shop doing fine crafting of wood. But today he’d promised to help his daed for a few hours, decorating the store for Christmas. It wasn’t the tradition of his people to do much more than greenery and a tree with homemade ornaments, but Daniel knew his daed believed that the tang of pine and cedar was an aromatic balm to the senses and made for a better shopping atmosphere.
“Daniel Kauffman, you smell like Christmas.”
He turned, suppressing a faint sigh, his arms full of greenery, when he recognized the feminine whisper of Ruby Zook.
“Hello, Ruby.” He nodded, intent on getting to work, when she stepped closer, her long skirt touching his legs. Will the girl pursue me even in the middle of my fater’s store? But he knew the answer to his own internal question. Ruby was pretty and dead focused—that was being seventeen. He didn’t want to be rude, but he’d become weary of late when she approached him at every gathering.
“Do you need some help placing the greens?” she asked.
“Nee, danki, I—”
“Now, that’s a fine offer, Dan,” his daed boomed from behind him. “Especially coming from so pretty a customer.”
Daniel wanted to run. The dual implications of the customer always being of primary significance and his fater’s thinking that he should have long since been a grandfather could be heard in the expectant tone, not to mention the accompanying nudge to his shoulder.
Daniel forced a smile. How am I supposed to explain that I don’t want a pretty girl with eyes as focused as a cobra’s? How do I say that I’m waiting for Clara, that I need to . . .
“So, I can help?” Ruby reached for some of the boughs, her fingernails grazing his shirtfront. He wanted to roll his eyes but handed over a good number of pine branches instead.
His daed had backed off, and Daniel eased through the cheerful bustle of the store to the first deep-set windowsill. He’d started to lay the boughs, trying to ignore Ruby’s innuendo-filled chatter, when the shop doorbell jangled and he was struck by the odd cessation of conversation behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, then took a hasty second look as he recognized the beautiful face beneath the wilting black bonnet. Soaked didn’t even begin to describe the misshapen and dripping Clara Loftus.
He dropped the cedar branches into Ruby’s arms, ignoring her hiss of protest, and started toward Clara. She was breathing in gusty little gasps, clearly worn out.
“Widow Loftus? Are you—all right?” he asked quietly. “Clara?”
He was aware of his daed hovering on the periphery and the slow resumption of conversation, but all he could truly see were her gray eyes and their fringe of ridiculously long black lashes. Why haven’t I pursued her? Why did I let her go so easily? Turn me away? Gott . . . Help me. Help me, Seth. Help me know what to say to her here....
“Blinks is outside. I can’t take long. I need pecans.” She glared up at him, and he thought of a gray kitten he’d found once in a dim cellar as a buwe. The small creature had swatted at his attempts to help, but he’d gradually earned her trust with gentle hands and timely persistence.
Daniel smiled with tenderness into her pink, upturned face. “Daed, she needs pecans. I’m going to take her out to the kitchen to warm up.”
“I’m fine. I told you . . . Blinks—”
“We’ll bring her in. Clair Bitner always runs his goat, Benny, into the store when he drops off the milk we sell.”
She swallowed and he waited, wondering if he’d pressed too hard, suggesting he take her to the back kitchen.
“Well, I could use a bit of a rest, I guess, and—”
“Why, Daniel,” Ruby Zook said in a carrying tone. “What poor wet crow do we have here?”
Daniel didn’t miss the way Clara’s full lips set in a grim line as she swept a glance downward over her black garb, and he wanted to rap Ruby’s knuckles for her calculated comment.
Instead, he reached out and gently caught one of Clara’s small hands in its thin black glove and gave her an experimental pull. To his surprise, she moved, but her chin came up with determination as she passed Ruby.
Daniel was about to make some retort to the girl’s crow comment, when Clara spoke in a clear voice.
“Not a crow, Ruby Zook—a raven. With hard claws.”
Ruby looked abashed, and Daniel didn’t hide his grin as he led the dripping Widow Loftus down the center aisle of the store, heedless of his fater’s dazed expression and the sensation he knew he was creating among the customers. He understood that a young, single Amisch man didn’t make a show of holding a widow’s hand or suggesting that he take her somewhere private to seek warmth, but he didn’t care. For the first time, Clara was yielding to him and it felt more than gut. . . .
* * *
Clara resolutely took in the curious stares, the feeling of being frozen on the outside, and the warmth of her hand in Daniel’s as he led her like some sodden prize through the fragrant store. But she didn’t care . . . He’s touching me again. Why am I letting him? I’m letting him, Seth, and it seems like Christmas....
But she lost some of her nerve when he pulled her through the doorway that led to the family kitchen, fully expecting to be swarmed by the Kauffman family. She stopped sti
ll, and he seemed to understand.
“No one’s back here,” he soothed in a low voice that added to the sensation of water and new warmth running like a stream down the small of her back. “The kinner are all at school; Mamm’s gone visiting somebody, and Da is snoring in the sitting room. It’s just us.”
She nodded. Just us. Just us . . . when there’s been just me for so long. . . . That dream last nacht must have rattled me more than I thought.... She shook her head, feeling her bonnet sink farther onto her brow, and then he was taking it off with careful fingers. Her kapp came off with the wet wool, and she parted her lips to exclaim at the impropriety of a man other than her husband seeing her head uncovered. But then she stopped. My hair isn’t down, she reasoned. So it’s all right for a few minutes while I rest.
“You’ve got to get out of these wet clothes,” he murmured.
She blinked as his fingers sought the hook and eye of her cape, and she took a startled step backward. “I—I—um . . . can manage.”
To her surprise, his handsome face flushed and he half smiled. “Of course you can. Look, why not go into my mamm and daed’s room and undress? You can get into her housecoat and come out here by the stove while I go get Blinks.”
“Uh . . . nee. I need to start back soon. The trip down took me longer than I thought.”
“I’ll take you back,” he said a bit roughly. “I cannot think how you managed to hike that distance down in deep snow with a goat in tow.”
She straightened her chilled spine. “Well, I did it. Besides, I need pecans so I can bake today.” Her gaze inadvertently slid to the huge wooden table behind him; it had a mixing bowl, dark brown bottle of corked vanilla, and several wooden spoons, standing at the ready. She looked back up into his eyes and saw the amusement in their emerald depths.
“Jah,” he whispered, as if telling a secret. “I’m baking today, too . . . but I’m not doing anything until you are warm and dry. Perhaps I might get a woman from the store to help you with some of the—layers. I’m sure Ruby Zook wouldn’t mind. . . .”