The Christmas Quilt (Quilts of Love Series)

by Vannetta Chapman

  Leah stared at him, stared at this man it seemed she didn’t even know anymore. Where was her Adam with his easy smile and carefree spirit? The Adam who had taken her for a picnic on the foundation of their home before the walls were even finished. Tears spilled down her cheeks, and though she knew she should let it go, she couldn’t help asking the question that had kept her tossing and turning until the wee hours of the morning.

  The same question they had argued about last night.

  The question he had yet to answer.

  “And is that why you had to leave so late in the evening, Adam? Because of your engines?”

  “Leah, I will not have your suspicions.”

  “I’m asking, not accusing.” Worry, insecurity, and exhaustion caused the words to stick in her throat, but Leah pushed forward. She didn’t want to worry over this all day. “I’m asking because I didn’t know if I should keep your dinner warm or throw it out. I didn’t know if I should stay up or go to bed. What am I supposed to do when my husband hitches up the buggy and takes off late at night? Can you tell me that?”

  They’d arrived at Annie’s, but Adam had stopped their buggy halfway down the lane.

  “I don’t want to fight again today.” He picked up his hat, glanced at her, and resettled the hat on his head. “Please. It’s the Lord’s Day. I know carrying the twins is difficult—”

  “Do not blame this on the bopplin.”

  Adam closed his eyes, and she knew, absolutely knew then he couldn’t stand the sight of her. Did he need to shut out the image of her completely?

  “Turn around,” she said, trying to sound firm, trying to sound like she wanted to spend the entire day at home alone.

  “What?” His eyes opened and he gawked at her as if she’d sprouted corn out of the top of her head.

  “Turn around. I want to go home.”

  “Nein.”

  “Yes. I want to go home.”

  “Well, you will have to walk because I’m not taking you.” When it seemed they would glare at one another until the snow began to fall, Adam added, “You don’t always get what you want, and now is not the time to throw a tantrum like a child.”

  She had been leaning forward, gesturing toward the reins to make her point. At the word tantrum, she pulled back as if he had slapped her.

  Adam’s jaw clenched and he snapped the reins, signalling to their pretty black gelding to continue down the lane. “Ya. We’ll be staying and you’ll act like a happy fraa, whether you feel like it or not. I might not be able to satisfy you in any way Leah, but we won’t be upsetting our family over this. They have enough worries.”

  She stared straight ahead as he directed the gelding around the bend and into view of Annie and Samuel’s home—a picture-perfect house with two stories. A garden bed neatly cleaned for the winter surrounded the front porch, and to the southwest, tucked behind the house, sat the traditional red barn.

  Leah peered ahead. She could barely make out Annie and Samuel walking from the barn to the house, arm in arm like two young people still courting!

  Annie, who had married a man over ten years her senior, a widow with a broken heart. Is that why they were still in lieb? Because he had suffered so much? And Annie had spent her time away, among the Englisch, earning her nursing certificate. It was a career she gave up to come home and nurse her father. That had led to her joining the church. She seemed so content now. Perhaps after her time away, she more fully appreciated being home.

  Annie wasn’t the only Weaver child who had spent time away on a rumspringa. Adam had too, although he’d never spoken of it in detail. Sometimes Leah worried he would rather still be there, where life was easier, where he wouldn’t have three additional mouths to provide for.

  Adam brought the buggy to a stop near the back door. When Samuel heard them, he turned with a smile, to help her out. For a moment, a fleeting second or less, she thought something passed between Samuel and her husband. It seemed they shared a look of concern, for the smile almost slipped off Samuel’s face. Or she could have imagined it.

  Because then he was at her side of the buggy, helping her down, smiling and laughing as he accepted the casserole dish from Adam and helped her into the house. Pretending, as they were, there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong.

  Leah tried not to grimace as she set her huckleberry pudding on the kitchen counter. Her dish was so small and insignificant among all the others. A sigh escaped before she could stop it, but Annie seemed not to notice, or pretended not to notice.

  “Berry pudding? Are these from the patch in your south field?”

  “They are. We put them up in the summer, and I made the pudding after we got home from town yesterday.”

  “You should have rested. I know everyone will love it though.” Annie scooted around her, placing her hands on her shoulders as the door opened again and her parents walked inside.

  Jacob Weaver’s face lit up when he saw her. Leah knew that her father-in-law loved her. There was no faking some things, and the grin on his face was genuine.

  “It smells wunderbaar in here,” he declared as he set his cane by the door and made his way across the room. He still walked with a slight limp from the buggy accident that had happened three years earlier, the disaster that had brought Annie home—and brought Annie and Samuel together. Leah supposed it was a case of what had been meant for evil, God had used for good.

  Thinking back to that time caused her heart to ache.

  She glanced up and across the room, saw Adam talking to Samuel and laughing at something he said. Things had been so natural between her and him then—before they wed, before the babies. She’d spent months looking forward to being a wife and a mother. Now she was learning that sometimes life was nothing like what you expected.

  “You’re looking very gut. Both of you are.” Jacob hugged first Leah and then Annie. “How are my favorite girls?”

  “Dat. I thought you said I was your favorite girl.” Reba stuck her bottom lip out in a pout as she set a plate of cold chicken on the counter.

  She was still tall and awfully thin for a seventeen-year-old girl, but any outside markings of a tomboy were gone. Now the quietness and beauty about her was hard to ignore. Leah had noticed how she’d changed at church meeting last week. When Reba walked by a group of older boys, they had stopped talking and stared after her, as if she were new to their community. One had shaken his head and blushed all the way to the rim of his hat.

  Reba, in keeping with her natural inclination to be clueless around two-footed beasts, had seemed oblivious.

  “Didn’t you?” Reba teased, sneaking a piece of cheese from one of the plates. “Tell Annie you did call me your favorite last night.”

  “Ya. I suppose I did,” Jacob admitted. “Just now I meant she and Leah are my favorite older girls.”

  Reba laughed and moved to the living room, where she proceeded to corner Samuel. Leah heard the words poultice and herbs then mare. Samuel walked over to a shelf of books, selected one, and handed it to her.

  The room filled with conversation as Charity described her latest buggy ride with David Hostetler and Rebekah remarked on the pudding Leah had brought.

  The back door opened again and the gusting winter wind nearly tugged it out of Onkel Eli’s hand. Onkel Eli, Jacob’s brother, stepped inside with Rachel. She had apparently accepted a ride with Eli, though Annie confessed she had feared Rachel would change her mind and not come. After having been married to Adam over two years, Leah felt as if she knew Eli well, but she couldn’t have told anyone a lot of details about him. He was one of those people you seemed to have known all your life, and she probably had. He’d lived in their district for as long as she could remember, but she’d been a child and he’d been an adult.

  After she’d joined the Weaver family, he’d become her onkel—plain and simple. He’d accepted her as if she’d always been part of the family. She still didn’t actually know anything about him though. He was merely Onkel Eli—a sweet o
ld guy who loved to make toys, nearly always had a twinkle in his eyes, and didn’t seem to have a harsh bone in his body. She wondered for a moment if he could fix the problems in a marriage, if maybe she should go and talk to him next week.

  That was ridiculous though. He’d never been in a relationship as far as she knew! She pushed the thought away.

  Eli wasn’t as old as she had at first thought—maybe in his early forties. When she’d once asked Adam why he’d never married, Adam had shrugged and said, “Maybe he never met the right gal.”

  The right gal was certainly not standing next to him, removing her coat. Rachel Zook might still be beautiful, and she couldn’t be over thirty, but she was not marriage material. How old was she? Leah would never even think of asking. She wasn’t exactly scared of her, but she wasn’t foolish either. Rachel had the prettiest skin of any woman she’d ever known, other than maybe the Englisch movie stars, and Leah hadn’t known any of them personally. She had seen them on the front of magazines as she waited in line to check out at the larger discount store.

  But the frown on Rachel’s face—it seemed carved there.

  Today she wore her customary gray dress and black apron. Did she ever wear anything else? And why? Was she still in mourning for her husband, who had passed three years ago?

  All these thoughts flitted through Leah’s mind in the time it took Eli and Rachel to walk into the room. Rachel’s two boys tumbled in from the cold, but Leah barely had time to focus on them. Her attention was completely on Eli, who made no attempt to conceal his argument with Rachel.

  “ ’Course I can read.” He took off his hat and knocked it against his pants leg, as if it had snow on it, which it didn’t. Eli was tall and had managed to keep fit though he had no fields to speak of, but rather a small garden. His light brown hair had a tinge of gray to it, and he sported no beard since he’d never been married. Around his eyes a few wrinkles were beginning to show, but who noticed? He had the kindest, bluest eyes Leah had ever seen.

  “You seem confused.”

  “I am confused.” He didn’t move out of the doorway, and Rachel had to nudge him a little so she could close the door.

  She let out a sigh and shook her head. “I don’t have time for this. What exactly is your problem?”

  “My problem is that you’ve doubled the cost of the toys I sell at the store. People won’t pay that much.”

  “Of course they will. It’s ridiculous, but they will because it’s Amish woodwork. I’m running a business, Eli.” She stopped and looked around as if she were seeing the group for the first time. Everyone had fallen silent.

  “I tell you they won’t, and I didn’t make those toys so they could sit on a shelf. I made them for children.”

  “Eli, those are the prices I’ve decided on. Leave them in the store or take them somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “Not my problem.” Rachel turned around, searching the room for her boys, content when she saw them seated at the checkerboard.

  “That’s all you have to say? It’s not your problem?” Eli’s voice rose in frustration.

  “It’s not.”

  Jacob cleared his throat and limped toward them. “Perhaps today isn’t the proper time to be discussing business matters—”

  “One moment, Jacob.” Eli turned back to Rachel. “Bontrager never raised my prices without consulting me.”

  “As you’re aware, Bontrager doesn’t own the store anymore. I own the store.”

  “What if I take a smaller commission and you return the prices to what they were previously?”

  Rachel closed her eyes. “I fail to see what difference it makes to you. Your profit will remain the same—”

  “It does make a difference, because I tell you they won’t sell.”

  “They will, and I needed to change my price structure for business purposes, which I don’t expect you to be able to understand.” Her hand came out and she dismissed him with a wave as she turned toward the main part of the room. “Trust me when I say Englischers will buy anything I hang a Made by Amish sign in front of. They’re even buying those horrid knitted booties Leah makes.”

  Eli gaped at her, but Rachel didn’t notice. She was searching the room for Leah. “There you are. Leah, I need more of your knitted booties if you’ve managed to finish any.”

  Leah’s mouth opened, though she was too stunned to say anything. Fortunately, she didn’t have to, because at that point Adam stepped forward.

  6

  When Adam stepped forward, he knew it was a bad idea.

  Samuel’s hand on his arm told him it was a bad idea. Then there was that tingling sensation on his scalp. His mother used to call that his good angel. Adam wasn’t so sure he had a good angel anymore, not the way things had been going.

  But he was certain about one thing.

  “There’s no need to insult Leah,” he said.

  “Did I insult her?” Rachel looked at him in surprise.

  “You did. You were rude to her a moment ago when you referred to her knitting as horrid. She works very hard on those booties you make a profit on, and if you don’t want them you should say so—”

  “Oh my goodness.” Rachel threw up her hands in exasperation. “I believe I asked her for more.”

  “You owe her an apology,” Adam insisted.

  “For what?”

  “For what you said to my fraa.”

  Rachel clamped her mouth shut, but she did have the good grace to blush.

  “Adam, perhaps you could allow me to have a word with my schweschder.”

  Interesting that Samuel used that term. It had the desired effect, causing Adam to pull in a deep breath and step back.

  He understood Rachel was Mary’s sister—she was Samuel’s sister-in-law, but that didn’t give her the right to come into the midst of their family and act rudely. It didn’t give her the right to disregard his wife’s feelings.

  “Adam, let’s you and I step outside for a moment.” Jacob’s tone indicated it was an order, not a request, so Adam snatched his coat off the hook by the door, along with his hat, and stormed out ahead of his father. The last two things he saw before stepping out into the cold were Samuel leading Rachel into the front guest room and Leah standing in the kitchen.

  Leah, with a smile playing on her face.

  Now what was she looking so pleased about? And how long had it been since he’d done anything to make her happy? She’d been stewing over their fight in the buggy since they’d arrived.

  Adam made it to Samuel’s barn before he realized his dad was having trouble keeping up with his long, angry strides. Correction—Jacob wasn’t even attempting to keep up with him. As usual, Jacob went at his own pace.

  He even paused to gaze up into the limbs of a forty-foot red maple to the east of Samuel’s barn.

  “You’re going to freeze out here, dat. The weather’s turning. Come into the barn.”

  Jacob appeared not to hear. He pointed up at the brilliant red and orange leaves with his cane. “Never ceases to amaze me, these colors.”

  “It’s only a tree. Leaves turn every year.” Adam realized he sounded like a stubborn child, but he couldn’t stop himself. He’d worked on the handsaw until late into the night. It had not gone back together as easily as he’d predicted, especially after he’d broken one of the parts in the small engine. Fortunately, the part he’d picked up in town at the hardware store—the part he’d left at eight-thirty to purchase—had worked, once he’d finally put the machine back together correctly.

  “True. You’re right, but the fact it happens every year doesn’t make it less of a miracle.” Jacob turned and looked at him then, raised an eyebrow, and joined him at the door to the barn. “Same is true with Leah’s bopplin, Son. Kinner are born every year, every day of every year, but it’s still a miracle they are—a true miracle of Gotte.”

  “I know, Dat. Miracle—got it.” Adam walked over to an upended milking pail and sat on it. “I suspect that i
sn’t what you wanted to talk to me about.”

  Jacob sat on the wooden crate next to him, so they were both staring down the length of Samuel’s barn. It wasn’t an overly large barn, and Samuel used a portion of it for seeing patients, so barely half of it contained animals. Adam could see everything was well tended though. The familiar smells and sounds eased some of the tension in his shoulders. How long had it taken Samuel to set things just so? How long had Samuel owned this place? And how had he survived the years alone, the years after Mary and his child had died?

  A shiver passed through Adam’s heart, but he pushed it away. He focused instead on what had happened back in the house. “Rachel was in the wrong, and you know it.”

  “Ya, maybe you’re right.”

  “She shouldn’t have been rude. Leah is having a difficult enough time.”

  “Why is that?”

  Adam’s train of thought slammed to a stop. He’d been making a list of Rachel’s wrongs, ready to rattle them off to his father, ready to tick them off on the fingers of his left hand. “Why is what?”

  “Why is Leah having a difficult time?”

  “Let’s not make this about Leah.”

  Jacob squinted at him and waited, resting his hand against the top of his cane and stretching his leg, his right leg that had never healed as well as the other, out in front of him.

  “It’s not about Leah,” Adam repeated. “It’s about Rachel and her behavior.”

  Silence settled around them, until Adam became aware of the horses in the stalls, the wind against the side of the barn, and the grumbling in his stomach.

  Finally, he took off his hat and scrubbed his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what you want to talk to me about. I don’t even know why we’re out here when we could be inside eating Sunday dinner.”

  Jacob nodded, as if that made sense. Slowly he moved his fingers down the length of his cane and studied the grain of the wood. When he began speaking, there was no condemnation in his voice, and perhaps that’s why Adam was able to listen to what he had to say.