The Amish Widower's Twins

by Jo Ann Brown

“He’s okay.” She spoke so everyone listening could be reassured, though her words were for the Millers.

  “He gets so excited when he laughs that he forgets to breathe,” Gabriel said as he put Heidi on the grass by his feet and took her twin. “I’ve seen it happen a few times before, and he’s always fine afterward.”

  “You could have warned me.” Michael released a sigh that countermanded his sharp words.

  Gabriel shifted the boppli so he could see his son’s now smiling face. “You didn’t want anyone to forget you were here, ain’t so?”

  Leanna bit her lower lip. There must be more to Harley’s breathing problem than what Gabriel seemed to believe, but now wasn’t the time to question his assumptions.

  Juanita ran over to them, smiling. “Komm and watch the rest of the game. You don’t want to miss any of our celebration.”

  “Sounds fun,” Michael said with a grin. “And in August, you’ll have to come to the celebration at our house.”

  “What will you be celebrating?” Leanna asked.

  “Birthdays.”

  “Weren’t you and Gabriel born in January?”

  “Ja, but the twins were born at the end of August.”

  “The twins will be a year old in August?” The words came out in a squeak as she turned to where Gabriel was grabbing for a quick-moving Heidi.

  He froze and looked over his shoulder at her. His face was as ashen as Harley’s had been minutes ago. Dismay and a stronger emotion filled his dark eyes. Fear?

  Behind her, she heard a sharp gulp. Michael began to speak, but Gabriel waved him to silence. Michael frowned and stamped away. Juanita glanced at them, then spun to run back to the game.

  Leanna started to ask Gabriel to explain, but halted when she saw Heidi had somehow made it to the top of the steps on the school’s porch. Jumping forward, Leanna grabbed the boppli before she could attempt to crawl down. She held the little girl close like a cloak to ward off the cold. The chill was inside her, oozing out of the most wounded parts of her heart.

  “Danki,” Gabriel said in an emotionless voice. “One of these days, she’s going to fall on her nose, and maybe then she won’t be so ready to explore.” His attempt at humor was futile.

  She walked to him. Though she was unsure she could speak louder than a whisper, she didn’t want to chance anyone overhearing them.

  “Is it true?” she asked. “Is their birthday in August?”

  “Ja, at the end of the month,” he said. “They will be nine months old next week.”

  “I thought they were younger.”

  “Lots of people do because they’re small for their ages.”

  “So they’ll really be a year old in August?” It was a stupid question, but she still couldn’t wrap her mind around what he’d said.

  “Ja,” he repeated, and this time didn’t add anything more.

  After he gathered up both twins, he walked toward his buggy. He didn’t slow. Would he stop if she called after him?

  So many thoughts collided in her mind. The memory of Grossmammi Inez saying how twins were born early. The questions she had about how advanced Heidi seemed for her age.

  No matter how she tried to rearrange the facts, they added up to one conclusion. Freda had been pregnant when Gabriel married her less than two weeks after the day he and Leanna were supposed to meet in Strasburg.

  Chapter Eleven

  After a sleepless night spent debating whether she should return to the Millers’ farm or not when she could simply send Juanita and let her take over watching the bopplin, Leanna went through the motions of helping prepare breakfast for her family. Nobody complained about overcooked eggs and barely browned toast. Instead, they gave her sympathetic glances. She was grateful no one asked how she was feeling.

  She had no idea.

  She was strangled by hurt, puzzlement and disbelief. All the things she’d felt when she heard he was marrying Freda after he’d stood up Leanna and sent a letter she hadn’t bothered to read. She hadn’t cared what excuses he’d given her to explain why he was becoming someone else’s husband without telling Leanna the truth face-to-face.

  She should have been suffused with a sense of relief that she hadn’t been wrong about how the twins didn’t act the age Gabriel let her assume they were, but she wasn’t. What was being right worth when she had to endure the pain as if for the first time?

  Betrayed.

  If someone had asked her how she felt, that would have been her answer. She couldn’t say Gabriel had betrayed her...again. No, this time her heart had been the traitor. It had persuaded her to trust him while she welcomed his kinder into her heart, believing she was helping it heal.

  How wrong she’d been!

  She was sure her family noticed how little she said, but nobody, not even her older brother, Lyndon, who’d joined them for breakfast after finishing the milking with Kenny, mentioned it. That warned her that her silence wasn’t fooling them. Usually Lyndon loved to tease her and his other siblings, but today he ate his food, talked about the weather and stood as soon as he’d cleaned his plate. He paused by the door long enough to aim a sympathetic glance in her direction.

  Despite being curious about what they thought had happened, she didn’t ask. Maybe they assumed she was upset because today she’d be handing over the job of caring for the Miller kinder to Juanita.

  A terse laugh tickled her throat, but letting it escape would be a sure sign that there was something distressing going on between her and the Millers. Her family might suspect the truth, but to confirm it could cause the dam restraining Leanna’s hot tears to collapse. Instead, she ate her breakfast and tried to pretend the morning was like any other.

  As Leanna reached for her bonnet when breakfast was over, Juanita edged across the kitchen to stand in front of her. “You don’t need to go with me this morning. I can go by myself.”

  “No, I told him that I’d show you around this morning.”

  “How difficult can it be? Gabriel and Michael have a kitchen. We have a kitchen. They’ve got a washing machine. We’ve got a washing machine. They’ve got a clothesline. We do, too.”

  “He has two bopplin.”

  “I know that! I’ve played with them a bunch of times.” Her younger sister stood with her hands on her hips and gave Leanna a frown she’d borrowed from their grossmammi. “What’s wrong? Did you two have words after the graduation?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “I’m not being silly. You are. You looked thrilled to see Gabriel when he came into the school. After Harley choked, he took off, and you acted as if he’d never showed up at all.”

  Leanna didn’t bother to correct her sister. Harley hadn’t choked, and there was no possible way Leanna could ever be unaware of Gabriel.

  “You were there, Juanita. You would have heard if we’d had words.”

  Except for the ones ricocheting through my head, and I don’t know how to silence them. How can I ignore the truth that he wasn’t honest—he was walking out with me and seeing Freda at the same time?

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like you being glum and dreary,” Juanita said with a childish stamp of her foot. “If you won’t tell me what happened, I’ll ask Gabriel.”

  “You—”

  Grossmammi Inez’s voice interrupted Leanna. Folding her arms over her chest, she said in a voice that grew more halting every day, “You will not, Juanita Wagler, stick your nose into matters that don’t concern you. Yesterday you graduated from school into the adult world, so you need to start thinking like an adult instead of a scholar. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Ja, Grossmammi.” Juanita hung her head before opening the door and walking out.

  Before Leanna could follow, the older woman said to the otherwise empty room, “It’s wrong for Juanita to intrude, but it’s as wrong for you to ke
ep punishing yourself and Gabriel.”

  “I’m not punishing anyone.” She wanted to add that she was the one suffering, but then she’d sound as immature as Juanita.

  “I want you to ask yourself two things. First, are you following God’s path or your own? Second, are you acting as you’d want others to act toward you?”

  Leanna lowered her head, chastised. She knew the answer to the questions, and neither answer made her comfortable. Nothing was simple, a sure sign she’d wandered away from God’s plan for her. When she’d first looked for work near Harmony Creek Hollow, everything had fallen into place so quickly that Leanna had no doubts God’s hand had been in the changes. Even before she put the word out that she was looking for housecleaning jobs, three women had come to her asking if she was interested in working for them. Now she was returning to that work, and she should be grateful she had jobs where she enjoyed working for people she liked.

  “Danki for making me think,” she said, “instead of just being emotional.”

  “Our emotions are there to guide us, but sometimes we get so caught up in them they blind us to the truth. Don’t forget that, Leanna.”

  “I won’t.” She gave her grossmammi a gentle hug, shocked anew at how much more fragile the older woman was with each passing day. The testing on Grossmammi Inez’s heart was scheduled for Thursday, and Leanna couldn’t wait for results. Surely they would lead to a treatment to make her grossmammi feel better.

  In spite of her determination to accept the future God had mapped out for her, Leanna was uneasy as she walked with her sister to the Millers’ house. She was surprised but relieved when they got there that Gabriel had already left. Michael told them a lumber supply order had come in a day earlier than expected, and Gabriel had gone to make arrangements to have it delivered to their next work site on Archibald Street in Salem. They were repairing the porches on a house that had been built almost three centuries before.

  Giving her sister a quick tour of the house, Leanna tried to think of what, if anything, she’d overlooked. “If you’ve got any other questions, ask. If I can’t answer them, he will.”

  “He has a name, y’know,” Juanita said in a petulant voice. It would take her sister some time to forgive Leanna for the conversation that had led to Grossmammi Inez scolding them.

  “I know.”

  “How long are you going to avoid saying it?”

  Leanna didn’t reply. If she said she wasn’t trying not to speak Gabriel’s name, it might be a lie. She didn’t know why she was calling him “he.” It could be as simple as she wanted to keep some distance between her thoughts of him and her aching heart.

  “I think I’ve told you everything you need to know,” Leanna said as she looked around Gabriel’s kitchen.

  She’d explained to Juanita how the kitchen faucet had to be turned on slowly or it sprayed everywhere. She’d shown her younger sister which burner on the stove didn’t work. The goats’ milch formula was poured into bottles and waiting in the refrigerator. Fresh diapers and bibs were stacked on one end of the kitchen table.

  “I’ve taken care of other bopplin, Leanna. We’ll be fine.”

  “I know you will.”

  “Then go, or you’ll be late. You know how Mrs. Duchamps gets annoyed if you don’t get there on time.”

  Leanna struggled to smile. “It’s because she worries something has happened. She can find a cloud around any silver lining. One time, she convinced herself I’d had a buggy accident and was lying beside the road near death because I wasn’t there ten minutes early.”

  “You’re babbling.” Her younger sister made shooing motions with her hands. “Go, or you will have that nice old lady ready to call nine-one-one.”

  She bent to kiss the tops of the twins’ heads. Their soft red hair tickled her nose, but she didn’t feel like laughing. For more than two weeks, she’d spent most of her waking hours with them, and now she’d see them far less often. Ja, she could offer to bounce one of them on her knee during the long Sunday service. She might run into Gabriel and the bopplin along the twisting road through the hollow or at a store in the village. If she came over with fresh lemonade and sat on the porch with the Millers when they returned home at the end of the workday, it wouldn’t be the same as spending each day with Heidi and Harley and watching how they grew and changed.

  Without another word, she left and walked home. There, she hitched up the horse and drove to Mrs. Duchamps’s house, which was the easternmost one in the village of Salem. Such a short time had passed since the last time she’d been there, but it seemed as if it’d been part of someone else’s life. Someone who hadn’t run into her past and had it implode around her.

  Mrs. Duchamps answered the front door herself. She was a white-haired woman who towered over Leanna. She carried a cane, but she stood as straight as the spruce dominating her front lawn. Always dressing in bright colors, she collected whimsical bear figurines. She had hundreds, displayed on every flat surface in the house. As well, she had paintings of teddy bears hanging on the walls and a quilt with blue-and-green bears draped over her bed.

  “It’s good to have you back, Leanna.” She stepped to one side, letting Leanna in.

  “I’m glad to be here.” That was the truth.

  Or at least part of it.

  At Mrs. Duchamps’s house, she didn’t have to judge each word she spoke before she let it past her lips. She could think of the present and not worry about what had happened in the past.

  On the other hand, at Mrs. Duchamps’s house, she wouldn’t see the twins and marvel at their endless mischief and efforts to try something new. And she wouldn’t have a chance to talk to Gabriel or see one of his rare smiles. Even when he annoyed her so much that she wanted to stamp her foot and demand that he listen to common sense, she’d enjoyed watching him with his kinder.

  “You remember where everything is?” the elderly woman asked.

  “Ja. I’ll start in the upstairs bathroom as usual.”

  “Your sister started in the kitchen.”

  “Do you prefer that?” She hadn’t guessed Juanita would make such a change from the routine Leanna had given her. What would her sister alter with the twins?

  “Whatever works for you, dear.”

  Leanna nodded, but went into the kitchen instead of upstairs to the bathroom. She’d worked long enough for Mrs. Duchamps to recognize that any comment, even one that the elderly woman said wasn’t important, was a suggestion that needed to be followed.

  As she collected the cleaning supplies from the shelf where she’d stored them in the pantry so they were available when she came, she tried to focus on her job. It was impossible. Her mind was filled with confusion and sorrow. If someone else was in such a state, she would have urged them to talk to the person upsetting them.

  What was the point of talking to Gabriel? She couldn’t ask him point-blank the one question that preyed on her mind: Why had he spent time with her when he was having a more intimate relationship with Freda? Gabriel had walked out with Leanna for almost five months, so it wasn’t as if he were on the rebound from breaking up with Freda. She didn’t want to think she’d been wrong—now as well as months ago—when she’d believed he was a gut and decent man. Yet he must have married Freda after she became pregnant.

  Pregnancies that happened before wedding vows were spoken weren’t unheard-of in plain communities. In fact, the bishop who’d overseen their district had a daughter who’d anticipated her vows. The girl had asked for forgiveness and been granted it. She’d gone on to marry the man she loved.

  Why had it been so easy to offer forgiveness to that young woman and impossible to offer the same to Gabriel? He must have atoned to his district’s Leit before he’d been baptized and spoken his vows with Freda.

  When Grossmammi Inez had been reading to them from the Bible each evening, she’d reminded them of the importan
ce of forgiving one another. “To deny others what we have been given means that we’re turning our faces and our lives away from God.”

  Leanna didn’t want that, but she couldn’t let go of her anger and betrayal, either. Scrubbing the tile floor so hard she threatened to rub the pattern right off the ceramic didn’t help.

  She didn’t pause when a phone rang. Mrs. Duchamps’s muffled voice drifted to her, and she looked up when the old woman peeked into the kitchen and said the caller had asked for Leanna.

  Praying her grossmammi hadn’t taken a turn for the worse, Leanna went into the living room where the phone was. She picked it up, listened and said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She put the phone in its cradle. Seeing Mrs. Duchamps in the doorway, she said, “I need to go. It’s an emergency.”

  Mrs. Duchamps rubbed her hands together. “What’s wrong? Is someone ill? Changeable weather in the spring brings on colds and other worse things. Or did someone get injured? There are so many ways to be hurt on a farm. It isn’t your grandmother, is it? She—”

  Knowing that the elderly woman could go on and on, Leanna said, “It’s my younger sister. She needs help with two bopplin—babies—she’s watching for the first time.”

  “Are they okay?”

  “They’re going to be fine, I’m sure.” She wasn’t certain she could say the same for Juanita. It wasn’t like her younger sister to panic. “Let me check on her, and then I’ll come and finish up.”

  “Take as much time as you need.”

  “Danki.” Leanna gave Mrs. Duchamps a stern look. “Don’t touch that bucket. It’s too heavy for you.”

  The old woman made a sweeping motion toward the door. “I won’t touch it. I promise. Go and see what’s wrong with those little ones.”

  A dozen possibilities ran through Leanna’s head as she drove the buggy at the highest possible speed along the main road before turning onto the one following Harmony Creek. Racing past the camp where Mercy Stoltzfus planned to have city kinder come to spend a couple of weeks in the country with horses, she saw her friend Sarah’s brother jump out of the way as the buggy rushed past. Benjamin shouted a question after her, but she didn’t slow.