His wife drowned, but said goodbye first?
Lord, what must he be feeling?
Hannah rocked and held Susie tight while promising she would see nothing but bunnies and kittens in her sleep, until her crying stopped and she slept. By then, an hour had passed and Hannah became increasingly worried about Caleb. She placed Susie on her bed and left the bedroom door open, then she went out to her small yard.
In the moonlight, she could see Caleb clearly, no coat or hat, about twenty yards distant, standing beside the fish pond, just staring at the water.
Could he imagine his wife floating lifelessly there?
Did he believe himself as responsible for the death of another, as Hannah believed herself responsible for so many? “It is not your fault,” she said when she reached him, mostly because that is what other people told her, though she did not believe it, and neither would he. Still, she had to try.
“Where is Susie?” he asked.
“Asleep on my bed.”
“What?” he shouted, turning on her. “She will be scared to death when she wakes.”
“No, no, she will be fine. She already knows my room. Earlier she examined it from—”
He bumped her shoulder as he passed, unaware of her losing her balance and barely regaining it, because of him. “Caleb, come back. It will do you good to talk.”
“My daughter needs me.”
“You cannot hide behind her small skirts forever,” Hannah said, regretting it instantly.
Caleb stopped but did not turn to look at her. “If that is what you think is going on here,” he said, his words clipped, “then you would be no kind of mother.”
He must have heard her gasp, because he turned to see her step back, as if he had struck her a physical blow. “Hannah, I did not mean—”
“You did mean.” She took some satisfaction now in passing him by, going inside, and letting the door shut in his face.
No matter the wound, Hannah gathered Susie in her arms and held her close, taking comfort in her heartbeat, if only for a moment. When Caleb entered the room, she placed Susie in his arms. “You are right, she will be safer now. Even your mothering instincts must be better than mine.”
Caleb set Susie back on the bed and covered her with a bright new quilt. In the hazy light from the kerosene lamp on her bureau, the quilt’s “sunshine” squares seemed sunnier, somehow, with Susie’s beautiful head of nutmeg curls peeking from beneath it.
Caleb took Hannah’s hand and tugged. “Come,” he said, but she did not move. His touch felt so good, she knew it must be wrong.
“Hannah,” he begged. “Forgive me. Please. I am so sorry.”
Her legs began to move, finally, but all she could feel was the touch of his hand warming her. Despite his earlier display of temper, he stopped and placed her shawl around her shoulders.
On her small porch, she sat on the new swing Old Abe Hershberger had made.
The wind whistling up the valley sounded like a cautioning wail as Caleb sat beside her and took her hand in his. She looked into the void of the past and she saw . . . winter.
When the silence stretched, she turned to Caleb. “For Susie’s sake, if not for your own,” she said, “tell me what happened to her mother.”
Chapter Six
“I do not know what happened to Naomi,” Caleb said. “One day she was sick, the next she was dead.”
Relief surged through Hannah. “Dead from her illness, then.”
Caleb shook his head, leaned forward, elbows on knees, and covered his face with his hands. “I wish to God I knew what happened that night.”
Despite his muffled voice, Hannah caught both prayer and irreverence in his words, and her icy heart began to thaw. “Tell me what you do know, from the beginning,” she said. “Share your burden, lighten it. No one will treat it more gently than I.”
Caleb sighed but remained silent, and when Hannah prepared to give up and check on Susie, he sat back and cleared his throat. For a few silent minutes, he ran his thumb over her blunt, broken fingernails, and Hannah wished she had not defied the laws of nature to dig in the winter earth. How prideful to care about jagged fingernails at such a time.
“Naomi had been unhappy for a long time,” Caleb finally said. “Since before our marriage, worse after it, but worse still after Susie turned a year old, because there were no more babies. Not that I kept from—” He cleared his throat. “I mean, there should—could have been. I . . . loved her, you know?”
“I understand,” Hannah said. “You did not keep from her.”
He nodded. “Yes, no, I did not . . . keep from her.”
“How sad your wife must have been if she chose to leave a man who loved her so much he could tell a stranger so.”
Caleb faced her. “Funny, I met you yesterday, but I do not think of you as a stranger.”
She touched his arm. “Danke,” she said. “Thank you.”
“A year ago, we thought she was carrying, maybe six months gone, but she was in pain, and she grew too big too fast.”
“Cancer,” Hannah whispered and saw the surprise in his eyes, wishing the moon was not so bright, because she could also see the tears he tried to blink away. “My mother,” she explained.
She read his sympathy. “Naomi died the night of the day we found out,” he said. “My fault.”
“No, that cannot be. She said goodbye to Susie. You did not know until just now in my kitchen. How could it be your fault? She did it herself.”
He raised an angry hand to stop her from speaking the vile word. Suicide. The only explanation possible, and yet she knew he would not accept it, not even to free himself of blame. “I knew she was afraid after we saw the doctor. I knew. And still, after she slept—or so I thought—I went to the barn to check on a mare about to foal and I stayed to deliver her.”
“Any responsible farmer would have done as much.”
“A good farmer maybe, but a selfish man for certain. I wanted to think about anything but the fact that my wife was dying. I wanted to pretend life was normal, not filled with the dread of a slow and painful death. Naomi was young and beautiful. She should not have died that way. She should still be alive and—” “Wishing she had married another man,” Caleb nearly said.
Was that why he had let Naomi down? Because the only thing she ever felt for him was disappointment that he was not someone else?
He looked full at Hannah then. “Someday Susie is going to figure out that her mother . . . that Naomi seems to have chosen—” He covered his face again and rubbed briskly, as if he could wash the truth away. “What will I tell her?”
“You could tell her that her mother’s pain might have driven her beyond rational thought. That God forgives. He forgave you, Caleb, if absolution was your due, though I suspect it was not. Now you must forgive yourself.”
With a hand to her face, Caleb turned Hannah so he could see her better. “I think I am not the only one who needs to forgive myself.”
She must know that her blush spoke volumes, because she tried to pull away. So he would not read her? Or because she did not care for his touch? He wished he knew.
“Want to tell me about it?” he asked. “You know my worst secret.” He used to think it was the fact that he had married a woman who did not love him, who was forced by her father to marry him. But it was not so simple as that. He had been certain he would fill Naomi so full of love that she would not be able to help loving him in return. He paid dearly and daily for being that young and foolish.
Hannah shook her head and slipped from his grasp. “We should go in before Susie wakes.”
“Someday, you will share your pain with me,” Caleb said. “It does lessen it, as you said. Danke. You are a good neighbor.”
“And a better cook than you, I hear.”
As she intended, he chuckled. “Ach, that too.” They rose together, but he stopped, caught by the bench. When he tried to free himself, something ripped loudly.
“I am sorry,” Ha
nnah said. “Abe doesn’t do carpentry so well anymore. His eyes are going. What was it?”
“Are you as good at mending torn britches as you are at cooking?”
“I am. Are you still decently covered?”
“Near enough. Why did you want to know?”
She stopped, and Caleb grunted when he walked into her. To keep them balanced, he grasped her waist from behind.
After a minute, during which he savored the feel of her beneath his hands, she opened the door, and his hands slipped away as she stepped inside.
“I asked because I thought you might want to wait outside while I got Susie,” she said.
“Oh. Too bad.”
Hannah shook her head but kept walking. “I darn socks, too, big and little ones. I miss such chores. You would not have some for me, would you? It would be a great comfort if you did.”
Caleb caught her hand. “I am rich with socks to darn.” He squeezed the hand and let go before they reached her room. “I will take my sometimes noisy little girl and go home now. See you at school tomorrow.”
“Ya, see you,” she said, tucking her quilt tighter around Susie in his arms. “Do not forget your paints,” she said following them.
Outside, Hannah smiled when Caleb charged Indigo to “fly like the wind.” As she watched his buggy disappear into the barn at the top of the rise, she could still feel his big strong hands warm at her waist. She pulled her shawl tight and sat on the hickory swing until Caleb came from the barn carrying Susie. He waved before going into his house.
For the first time in four years, Hannah almost wished she still lived there. What would it be like to sit with Caleb in harmony of an evening or to step with him into a shared bedroom at the end of a day?
She did not think he would be sullen or turn on his side away from her in the bed. She already knew he did not eat in aching silence, ignoring her good food. Ignoring her.
“Foolishness,” she said aloud. “What makes you think you would be a better wife to anyone than you were to Gideon?” There must have been a reason he was so unhappy that his last words were a scold.
Caleb might complain less than Gideon, she thought, but he would likely be as miserable if he were so foolish as to consider marrying her.
She turned to go inside, but before she did, she looked up the hill one last time. Was that Caleb or a shadow in the window facing her way?
*
She noted the next morning that Caleb arrived with mischief in his eyes. “Turns out we have only one set of paints between us,” he said. “Susie and I will have to share.”
Hannah took his hat off his head, because it seemed natural to do so, then she blushed at the familiarity, as if she’d been doing it forever.
Her ease in his presence could be dangerous to her peace.
It would all end soon, anyway, she told herself, as soon as Susie could stay at school without him. Then everything would go safely back to normal . . . but she would always hold these days dear.
Before Caleb went to his seat, he regarded her, seeming to ask if he should test Susie by trying to leave this morning. She shook her head imperceptibly and he nodded.
How had they done that? Hannah wondered, spoken without words. She did not remember having the ability with Gideon. But they agreed; Susie was to have an easy and quiet day. Them, too.
When school ended, Caleb stopped beside her desk. “How would you feel about having supper at my place tonight? I think Susie could use another evening or two in your company and then she should be fine here. What do you say?”
“Fine,” she said. “What were you thinking of cooking?”
Caleb looked taken aback, but then his eyes began almost to dance. “Bratwurst,” he said. “And noodles.”
“They laughed like children at the memory of Susie’s unappetizing description.”
“How about roast and slaw with cherry pie for dessert?” Hannah asked. “Can you cook that?”
Caleb paled.
Hannah rapped his knuckles with her ruler lightly, just for fun.
He yelped.
She shook her head. “You are as bad as the little ones. I will do the cooking, and I will help you wash Susie’s hair.”
“I washed it last night.”
“Ya, I can tell; you left too much soap in. That’s why it is more like hay than hair this morning. Six o’clock,” she said as another parent came in, a woman known for embellishing the facts. Lord, it would be all over the district tomorrow that Caleb hung around the school.
Chapter Seven
“Teacher does it nice, Datt,” Susie said from a washtub in their new kitchen before a roaring fire, as she pushed her father’s big hard-scrubbing hands aside and pulled Hannah’s gentle ones back to her hair. “And she doesn’t get soap in my eyes.”
Hannah raised a brow Caleb’s way before she went back to tending his daughter. Then she bent and whispered something in Susie’s ear.
Distracted by their conspiring giggles, Caleb did not expect his daughter’s cupped hands to become a ladle for throwing water his way until it was too late.
The shock of it made him jump back and slip in the puddle on the floor. Grabbing Hannah for support, he toppled them both, him on his back, her on top of him.
Susie, in the washtub beside them, shrieked when he started falling, as did Hannah, but now they were all stunned silent. Noting the tears in Susie’s eyes, he winked to reassure her, then he grunted and removed Hannah’s knee from between his legs, grateful nothing important got bruised, and he lifted her face from his chest. “Teacher likes to play, I see.”
He plotted retribution as he tried not to tumble headlong into the bottomless depths of her wide, sky-blue eyes.
Hannah knelt beside him. “I— Oh, Caleb, I—” Her sobs came fast and from deep inside. Then he was rocking and shushing her while juggling his slippery daughter and the towel he tried to wrap around her as she joined Hannah in his arms. All three on the floor.
Together they tried to calm Hannah, and while she accepted hugs and kisses, even his, absolution she would not accept.
There on the kitchen floor in a cool puddle of soapy water, the confession of Hannah’s “flighty” ways came tumbling out. “I laugh and play too much,” she said. “I sing at all the wrong times. My behavior is unseemly, disgraceful.”
Caleb’s rage at Gideon Barkman grew. “Whoever convinced you of this had no more right to stifle you than a nightingale,” Caleb declared. “Your joy in life is as God-given and beautiful as any creature’s song.”
“Not joy, frivolity, Caleb. I almost killed you with it. I did kill Anyah, Gideon, and Gracie.”
“You most certainly did not!”
Hannah nodded, her eyes overflowing. “I distracted Gideon with my singing and when he turned to scold me, the horse slipped on the ice and he could not—” Sobbing, she returned to his embrace.
Caleb might like having her in his embrace if the reason were not so sad and regrettable. If it did not make him so angry. “Sounds like his temper did the damage,” Caleb said, stroking her back, “but until you see it, no good will come of my saying so. I would drive better with you singing beside me,” he said. “I could do anything better that way.” And to prove it, Caleb sang as he rocked her in his arms, a song about forgiveness and love.
He liked having her there so much, he sang it twice.
After a while, he gave her his schnoopduff, his handkerchief, and when she dried her eyes, they found his singing had put Susie to sleep.
“Did you hurt yourself?” Hannah asked him, seeming as loath to rise from his embrace as he was to have her leave, no matter their foolish spot on the floor.
“We nearly bruised my . . . dignity.”
That incited a smile as they rose from the floor.
Susie got tucked in and never even woke for supper, but she needed sleep more.
Alone together, the kitchen warm and cozy, dinner conversation flowed pleasant and relaxing, until he asked the question uppermost o
n his mind. “Do you think you will marry again?”
Hannah rose to clear the dishes. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you are young and pretty.”
She blushed. “Goodness. No one has ever said such a thing.”
“That you are pretty? How could they not?”
She shrugged. “We are Amish. Looks do not count with us, or have you forgotten?”
“A man notices. It is in his nature to do so, no matter his upbringing. He sees what is on the outside before he decides whether to look at the inside.”
“You are looking for another wife, then?”
Caleb groaned. “Frankly, I cannot bear to fail another.”
“I feel the same,” she said.
Did she mean that she did not want to fail again, either? If not, it might be better, he thought, if they stopped having supper together, better for both of them.
On the other hand, if she did not care to remarry, he was safe with her.
“Ah,” Hannah said, raising her chin. “Here he is, come to prove my lie.” Then she hid her emotions. “The bishop will not allow me to remain single. I have two months of freedom left, and I intend to enjoy it.”
“What happens after two months?”
“I marry Enos Miller. Bishop’s orders. Down the road he comes now. Enos, not the bishop.”
A yellow buggy pulled into Dovecrest Farm, its driver using the horsewhip more than Caleb approved. “He’s eighty if a day!”
Hannah shook her head. “Seventy-three.”
Anger filled Caleb. “You love him?”
“Of course not. Therefore I will not die inside when he dies, which must be soon. I could not bear the pain when I lost Grace and Anyah.”
No mention of Gideon, Caleb noticed.
“Hannah!” Enos Miller called, as he tied the horse to the post. And the louder he talked, the higher Hannah raised her shoulders and the lower she bent her head.
A Winter Heart, Sexy Amish Historical Novella Page 3