The Haven

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  The last hen pecked at M.K.’s bare toes as she tossed cracked corn inside the chicken coop. “Try being mean like that again, Kayak, and I’ll have Fern introduce you to the inside of a pot.” Holding the corners of her apron, she hurried Kayak into the coop with the other chickens and locked it tight for the night. She didn’t want to miss a minute of excitement going on inside the farmhouse. She saw Uncle Hank come out from his buggy shop and waved her arm like a windmill. “Uncle Hank! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Sadie’s got the vapors!”

  They rushed over to the farmhouse and found Sadie, upright and talking, with color back in her cheeks, sitting at the kitchen table with Amos and Abraham. Will was walking the baby and Fern was at the kitchen sink, looking like she had a kernel of popcorn stuck in her back molar. But then, that look on Fern was not unusual. She was scraping carrots like they had done something that made her mad. She wasn’t idle. She didn’t know how to be idle. Daylight never caught Fern sitting down.

  They stopped talking for a moment as Uncle Hank and M.K. came in and sat themselves at the table. “Maybe we could finish up this conversation tomorrow, Sadie,” Abraham said.

  “No,” Sadie said. “We can settle it now, Abraham.” She looked around the room at everyone, then her eyes rested on the baby in Will’s arms. “I have something to tell you. Something I haven’t wanted to say until I knew for sure. But I think the time has come to tell you everything I know about the baby.”

  In a clear, calm voice, she explained about the baby in the bus station to Abraham. M.K. was amazed, watching her sister talk to the deacon with such confidence.

  After she finished, Abraham let out a long breath. “Sadie, why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place?”

  “But you didn’t ask, Abraham. You just told me what I had to do to make things right. You never asked me for the truth.”

  Nose in the air, Esther huffed. “Such disrespect!”

  For a span of a heartbeat, no one said anything. For an instant, Sadie felt free. She’d told the truth. Then she felt dreadful. “I’ll agree with you there, Esther.”

  Esther’s tiny mouth was pursed full of triumph as she looked around the room.

  “It’s disrespectful to assume the worst about someone. It’s disrespectful not to hope the best for another.” Sadie turned to Abraham. “I’m not trying to be rude to you, Abraham, but no one has ever asked me for the truth. Not you, not Gideon, not my friends and neighbors. Love is supposed to think well of others. Not tell tales and gossip.”

  Struck dumb by Sadie’s lengthy, emphatic speech, M.K. could only stare at her in amazement.

  Abraham looked at Esther. “Did you not tell me that you talked with Sadie about the baby at church yesterday?”

  “She talked to me,” Sadie said quietly. “She never talked with me.”

  Esther narrowed her eyes. “You could have offered up the truth. You never said a word.”

  M.K. exchanged a glance with Uncle Hank. There was so much electricity charging the air, she wondered if she’d be hearing a thunderclap soon. The tension in the air practically sizzled.

  Abraham lifted a hand. “You’re right, Sadie. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

  Sadie reached out and covered his hand with hers, a silent offering. The baby let out a wail and Abraham glanced at him.

  “Well, one problem is taken care of, yet we have another. What shall we do about this little one? Babies just don’t appear out of thin air.”

  “This one did,” M.K. offered. “We think an angel brought him to Sadie.” Everyone sent startled glances in her direction, as if they’d forgotten she was there.

  Abraham smiled. “Even a baby brought by an angel needs a family.”

  “Two parents,” Esther added. “A real family. Children are a blessing and a responsibility. He’s not just a doll for you to play with, Mary Kate.”

  Red heat swept through M.K. She forgot that she was a child and Esther an adult. She forgot it was the deacon who sat before her. She barely felt Fern’s fingers digging into her arm. “You can’t just take a baby and give him to this or that person like he’s no more than a stray dog!” She wasn’t exactly yelling, but she was very close.

  “You Lapps have your hands more than full already,” Esther pointed out, her voice sounding shrill as a pennywhistle. She turned to her husband. “I can think of a few families who would welcome a child.”

  M.K. was shocked. “But the angel brought him to us!”

  Esther frowned at her.

  She knew she was pushing it, but she couldn’t help herself. It wasn’t fair! “How about for the baby? What’s fair and reasonable for him? Or for the rest of us?” She was on the brink of bursting into tears. She looked up at Sadie, expecting to see her sobbing right along with her.

  But she wasn’t. Sadie rose from her chair, standing tall and straight, calm and serene. “This baby does have a family,” Sadie said firmly. She bit on her lips, as if bracing herself. “There’s something else about this baby, something I haven’t wanted to say until I was sure.” She went over to the trunk that held her mother’s quilts and lifted it open. On top of the pile lay a yellow and blue crib quilt. She picked it up and brought it to her father.

  “Your mother made that,” Amos said. “All of you babies slept under it.”

  Sadie took a deep breath. “I think this baby belongs to Annie.” She turned to Abraham and Esther. “She’s the young Swartzentruber girl who lives with her grandfather.” As everyone started murmuring, she held up a hand. “Let me start at the beginning. It was really M.K. who gave me an idea. She suggested we find out who made the baby’s basket.”

  M.K. beamed at that remark. Her detective skills were paying off.

  “Until M.K. mentioned that, I had forgotten that Annie was a basketmaker. On a hunch, I went to visit her grandfather last Friday while M.K. was having that buggy race with Jimmy Fisher. He seemed pretty confused—at first he thought I was Annie. It seemed like he was waiting for her, but I could tell he lived there alone. I made some supper for him because he said he was hungry. I could tell that someone had been there pretty recently—there were some casseroles in the freezer with last week’s date on them—the day before I found the baby at the bus station. And I found this quilt, folded, in Annie’s bedroom. The dog I brought home—that’s our Lulu’s pup, all grown up.” Sadie took a deep breath. “I think it was Annie who saw me sleeping in the bus station and left the baby with me.” She lifted her eyes to look at her father. “She must have had the quilt because Menno had given it to her. He must have known about the baby. Do you remember how he told Julia he wanted to marry Annie? But then . . . he died. And Annie was left to have the baby alone. I think Annie left the baby with me because the father of the baby was Menno. Our Menno.”

  Everything slowed. Fern stopped peeling carrots and froze. M.K. felt frightened by how quiet the room got, and she didn’t scare easily. She didn’t know how Sadie got through that brave speech without her voice breaking in two.

  It was Uncle Hank who broke the ice. He rose to his feet and strode to Will, taking the baby out of his arms. Tears streaming down his face, he gazed lovingly at the baby. “THIS IS WONDERFUL NEWS! I knew there was something grand and glorious about this little one the very first time I laid eyes on him. God has given us a great gift, Amos. Our Menno has left us with a child.”

  After Abraham and Esther’s buggy rolled out of the driveway, Amos stood for a moment looking up at the stars through the treetops. He tried to absorb all that had happened today and it felt mind-boggling. He felt a flood of feelings, at the top was sorrow over his Sadie. How could anyone accuse Sadie of such a sin? His soul told him to forgive, but his heart ached with the unfairness of the situation. And on the heels of those feelings came another, one of awe and wonder. There was this child in the house, one of his own. He lifted his head and saw that more and more stars were now visible in the bruised sky. A chilly breeze blew and a few night birds twittered.

&
nbsp; “Heaven’s dazzling us with stars, like thousands of angels winking at us,” Fern said.

  Amos jerked his head down. Where had she come from? She was as stealthy as a cat on the prowl.

  “Did Abraham have anything else to say?”

  Nosy. Fern was downright nosy. “He said he would write some letters to the Swartzentruber colony and see if he can find out how to locate Annie.” He kicked a dirt clod on the ground with his boot. “And he said that if I felt the need, it would be all right to have the baby’s blood tested. To make sure he’s a Lapp.”

  “So what did you tell him?”

  “I told him it wouldn’t matter what the results were. The baby is one of ours.”

  She smiled at him, and he couldn’t help but smile back.

  “I suppose you, in your infinite wisdom, knew Abraham stopped by to talk to Sadie about this . . . this ridiculous gossip.”

  She gave him a sweet look then, as if he were a naïve child. “Did you not notice how a few people treated Sadie at church yesterday? Like she might be contagious.”

  No, he didn’t.

  He had been so preoccupied with worry over his heart—convinced his body was starting to reject it—that he was hardly aware of anything yesterday. He couldn’t even say what the sermons were about. Or whom he sat next to for lunch. His body might have been at church, but his head was elsewhere. A blanket of guilt covered him. He had been so focused on himself that he hadn’t even thought about what might be going on in his daughter’s life. What kind of a father was that? “Surely not everyone treated her that way.”

  “No, but it felt like everyone to Sadie. You know how sensitive she is. She felt as if she had to protect Menno.”

  “I can’t bear the thought that anyone would think ill of Menno.” He wiped his face with his hands. “He’s not here to explain or defend himself, or even to confess.”

  “Amos, Menno was God’s special child. No one will accuse him of anything.”

  He sighed. “If some folks were so quick to accuse Sadie of sin, what will they be saying about Menno?” He glanced at her. “I know that’s why Sadie didn’t want to tell us about the crib quilt. Or who she thought was the baby’s father. Menno meant so much to her. She knows folks will talk.”

  “If folks want to say hurtful things, that’s something God will have to deal with.” She put a hand on his arm. “There’s good in all of this, Amos.”

  “Like what?”

  “Just today, your doctor told you to talk about Menno, to get your grieving out. Maybe this little baby is part of God’s healing for you.” She looked down at the ground. “He even looks like Menno, with that thatch of unruly hair. Menno never did comb his hair.”

  Remembering his son’s wild hair, a slight smile tugged at Amos’s lips. He felt a stone lifting from the pile weighing on his heart, shucking off into the newly plowed field. The tightness in his chest eased a bit.

  “And did you see how Sadie stood up for the truth? Maybe God is using all of this gossip nonsense to help her become a strong woman.” Fern looked over at the house. “When I first arrived here, she was afraid of her own shadow. Today, I saw a girl become a woman.”

  Amos mulled that thought over. It was true, what Fern said. Sadie was showing more backbone than he ever thought possible. He was grateful to Fern for those encouraging words, and tried to think of how to tell her that he appreciated it. That he appreciated her. That his feelings for her were growing in ways he had never, ever expected, that she filled his thoughts more and more each day. She turned to him and their eyes caught and held. Amos leaned closer, so close that the space between them felt intimate. Something was happening. His heart pounded like he was a seventeen-year-old boy again, an odd staccato that echoed in his ears. He cleared his throat.

  “Fern, I find that I have grown rather fond of you,” Amos had intended to say, but for some reason the words came out as, “Fern, dinner was good.”

  She tilted her head as if she hadn’t heard him correctly, then she squinted her eyes as if he might be sun-touched.

  Dinner was good? Dinner was good? Nice work, Amos Lapp, he chided himself. Just what a woman wanted to hear.

  But the moment had passed and Fern turned to leave. Over her shoulder, she tossed, “Amos Lapp, has it occurred to you that you’re a grandfather?”

  Back at the house, M.K. took care of the baby while Sadie and Will gathered dishes from the table and set them in the sink to soak. Uncle Hank sank into his favorite chair by the woodstove. He was into a sack of pecans Sadie and M.K. had gathered last fall. In a litter of shells he was trying to pick out nutmeats. Sadie seemed to see for the first time how twisted and knobby his hands were. Arthritis had gotten to his joints, and he had pain he never spoke of. Tonight, Sadie thought, she would mix up a special tea to help him with the pain.

  As Sadie went back and forth from the table to the kitchen, she was glad to see her legs were holding her up, solid and sure, though she prayed her trembling wasn’t still noticeable. She had never been so bold in all her life as she was tonight. She actually said some things she wanted to say. But the thing was, she wasn’t sure if it made things better or worse.

  Sadie’s conversation with Abraham had ended on a sweet note, as he took her small hands in his large, calloused ones. “You’ve reminded me of an important quality of love today, Sadie Lapp,” he said. “Love believes the best in others.”

  Sadie readily forgave Abraham. How could she not? Yet she couldn’t quite keep her hands from shaking. It occurred to Sadie that she had actually confronted Esther—one of the most intimidating women in their church. Some would say the most intimidating woman. Which proved to Sadie that she could confront people when push came to shove! That little epiphany made her day.

  But all of those thoughts would need to be sifted through later, when she was alone. As for now, Will Stoltz was waiting for her to bandage his blistered hands. She filled a bowl of water for him to soak his hands, first, and ended up sloshing the bowl of water onto the table hard enough to spill some water on the floor. She wiped it up and fetched another clean towel from the hall closet, then poked her head around the edge of the doorjamb to find Will waiting for her in the kitchen, a patient look on his face. The very first time she saw Will she had the vague thought that he looked sad, but the second time she realized it was mainly the shape of his eyes. Everything else about him looked pleasant enough, handsome, but his eyes, even when he smiled, pulled down a little at the corners. His jawline was square, and his thick hair had just the slightest hint of a wave in it. Not fair! Not fair that a boy had such thick, wavy hair. She would have loved such hair.

  She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. Watch that line of thinking, Sadie Lapp, she told herself. Jealousy will only take you down wicked and twisted paths. “Come to the table. After your hands soak for a while, I’ll put some healing salve on them.”

  Will smiled, sat at the table, and held his hands out to her. She plunged his hands into the bowl of water. Dirt was caked into the blisters and Will winced as the water hit the open sores. She made a mental note to get to work on expanding her herb garden with a variety of herbs that Old Deborah had taught her about, if only to keep some healing remedies handy. She moistened several diamond-shaped pigweed leaves and placed them, one at a time, on the tender, reddened flesh on Will’s palms. “Leave them sit a spell. You’ll still blister some more, but not as bad. You’ll heal quicker too.”

  “That feels much better. Thank you. The sting is almost gone.”

  She glanced at his face. “Your hands looked as dirty as if you’d been digging for worms.”

  “Now there’s an idea. Digging for worms sounds like a lot more fun than plowing. Do you like to go fishing?”

  “No. How did you ever manage to plow a field with those blisters?”

  He shrugged. “Just kept at it. Will you go fishing with me?”

  Sadie glanced over at M.K. on the couch, feeding the baby a bottle. She knew her little si
ster was straining to hear every word. “Maybe,” she whispered.

  She pulled the leaves off his hands and had him rinse in the bowl. She took one of his hands and dried it carefully with a towel. Then she gently spread a salve over it.

  Will made a face. “That is vile smelling! What’s in it? Kitchen waste?”

  “Comfrey.” Her lips twisted into a reluctant smile. “It might smell bad, but it will speed up the healing.” She bandaged his hand carefully with gauze and snipped off some lengths of adhesive tape to wrap around the gauze.

  She dried his other hand and applied the comfrey salve. “You’ll need to be careful with these wounds.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you for helping me.”

  “Keep them covered for now. You don’t want them to get infected.”

  Will caught hold of her hand to keep her from concentrating on bandaging his wound. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing I could think of to come back and have you take care of them.” His fathomless blue eyes gazed into hers in a way that made her pulse skip more beats than was healthy. “Maybe I can use these blisters as an excuse to spend time with you if you won’t go fishing with me.”

  “I like to go fishing,” M.K. piped up. “So does Uncle Hank!” She looked at him happily.

  “THAT’S A FINE IDEA, MARY KATE!” Uncle Hank boomed, startling the baby. He put a finger to his lips and whispered, “We’ll go tomorrow. First thing!” He scratched his head, remembering something. “No, scratch that. I promised Edith Fisher I’d get her broke-down buggy back to her. Saturday, then. Crack of dawn! We’ll take Menno’s little one too. Can’t start him out too early.”

  “I can’t go Saturday,” M.K. said glumly. “I’ve got community service with that horrible—”

  Sadie pointed a finger at her to shut off the flow of words. “Don’t start on a list of complaints about Jimmy Fisher. We already know everything.”

  Uncle Hank kissed the top of M.K.’s head. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll help you and Jimmy out on Saturday. Then, if there’s time, we’ll do some sunset fishing.”