“Cows poo in the dirt,” Megan said with a look of disgust.
Willa held back a chuckle as she rose to her feet. She stepped aside as her grandfather carried a red pail of fresh milk up the steps. From under the porch, half a dozen kittens came out meowing for their supper. Her grandfather handed Megan the pail. “Pour this in the pan for the kittens.”
“I help.” Lucy grabbed the side of the pail. The two girls poured out the milk while the kittens tumbled around their feet and into the aluminum pie pan.
She left Megan and Lucy to play with the cats and followed her grandfather inside.
“Thank you for watching the girls and letting me sleep.”
“You were worn-out.”
“I was. It has been a long time since I’ve had a peaceful night’s rest.”
He was silent for a long moment, then he glanced toward the porch. The girls were still playing with the kittens. “Out in the barn Megan told me that bad people are looking for her and Lucy. What did she mean?”
Willa decided to tell him and took a seat at the table. After all, what did she have to lose? “My husband, Glen, had a falling-out with his parents before he met me. He would never talk about it except to say that they wanted to lock him up. He was a good man. I can’t believe he did anything wrong.”
Even as she defended him, she knew it wasn’t entirely true. Glen found it easy to assume new identities and fabricate stories about where they came from without remorse, but he had been good to her.
“Go on,” her grandfather said.
“He was always worried that they would find us. We moved three times the first year we were married. Then the girls were born.”
Shame burned in Willa’s throat, but she forced herself to continue. “Trying to take care of fussy twins wore us down. I’m not making excuses, but it was hard. We didn’t have any help. Glen had to work and I was home alone with the babies. I never got enough sleep. I became...sick.”
Her grandfather wouldn’t understand the terrible things she had done. How could he when she didn’t understand them herself. She should have been stronger. The doctors at the hospital had called it postpartum psychosis. The voices telling her to hide her babies from Glen hadn’t been real. They had been delusions, but she had done all they told her to do, even wading into the cold, rain-swollen river with the babies in her arms. They all would have died that night if not for the quick-thinking intervention of a stranger.
Willa realized she had been staring into the past, trying to remember all that had happened, but so much of her memory was blank. “I spent four weeks in a hospital. Glen couldn’t manage alone. He contacted his parents, believing they would help for the sake of their grandchildren. They came, but they only wanted to take the girls away from us. They said we were unfit parents and that the law was on their side.”
Tears slipped down Willa’s cheeks and she brushed them away. Tears wouldn’t help anything. She had to be strong. It was up to her now. “Glen managed to get away with the babies before the police came. He picked me up at the hospital and we left town with only the clothes on our backs. We tried to start over, but we had to move so many times I lost count. After Glen died, I didn’t know what to do except to come here. If his parents find me, they will take the girls away and I’ll never see them again.”
“Will the Englisch police come here?”
“Maybe, I can’t be sure. I was careful not to tell anyone where I was going. I purchased a ticket for the next town down the road, but I got off the bus before then. People on the bus may remember us. An Amish fellow gave us a lift here, but he wasn’t from this area. I do know Glen’s parents won’t stop looking for the girls, but it will be hard to find us among the Amish.”
He stared into his coffee cup for a long time. Finally, he glanced at her. “Up in the attic you will find a black trunk. There are clothes that you and the girls can wear in it. They will be warmer than what they have on now. They are goot Amish clothes. If you mean to rejoin the faith, you must dress plain.”
“Does this mean we can stay?” She was afraid to hope.
“With me, nee. Go to my sister, Ada Kaufman. She was also shunned by our church, but I hear she has kept to the Amish ways in a new church group in Hope Springs.”
Willa had fond memories of her great-aunt Ada, a kindly and spry woman with a son and daughter a few years older than Willa. A flicker of hope came alive inside her chest. She still had family she could go to.
The thought of spending Christmas with her aunt and cousins Miriam and Mark made Willa smile. They’d had some fine times together in the old days. Her cousins might be married with children of their own by now. Her daughters could have cousins to celebrate the holidays with the way she once did.
“Do you think Ada will help me?”
“That, I cannot say. I have an old buggy and a horse you can use to travel there.”
“How far is it?” Willa had never heard of Hope Springs.
“Three days’ travel to the east, more or less.”
Three days by buggy with the girls. It would be next to impossible. Where would they stay at night? What would they eat? She had no money. And yet, what choice did she have except to go on faith? There was no going back now. “Danki, Daddi. What made you change your mind?”
“Your children deserve the chance to know our ways. I pray Gott opens your heart and that you seek true repentance. When you do so, you will be welcomed here.”
“I’ll send you money for the horse and buggy when I can,” she promised.
“I want no money from you. They are a gift to your children. You may all sleep upstairs in your old room, but you must leave at first light on Monday.”
It wasn’t what she had hoped for, but she wasn’t beaten yet. Perhaps her great-aunt’s family would be like the kind Amish man she had met that afternoon. The memory of his solid presence and quiet kindness filled her heart with renewed hope. She wished she had been bold enough to ask his name. She would remember him in her prayers.
* * *
Three days after delivering his restored sleigh, John was home and hard at work on his new project. The coals in his forge glowed red-hot with each injection of air from his bellows. Sweat poured down his face. He tasted salt and ashes on his lips, but he didn’t move back. The fire was almost hot enough. Using long tongs, he held a flat piece of iron bar stock in the glowing coals, waiting until it reached the right temperature to be shaped by his hammer. A black heat would be too cold. A white heat would be too hot. A good working heat was the red-orange glow he was waiting on. The smell of smoke and hot metal filled the cold air around him.
Movement out on the road that fronted his property caught his attention. He let go of the tongs and shaded his eyes with one hand to see against the glare of the late-afternoon sun. Was his mother coming home from the quilting bee already? He didn’t expect her for another hour.
A buggy approached the top of the hill, but it wasn’t one he knew. He didn’t recognize the skinny horse between the shafts, either. He’d put shoes on nearly every horse in the area. He knew them and their owners on sight. This was someone new, and he or she was driving erratically.
The horse trotted up the road veering from side to side in a tired, rambling gait. Its black hide was flecked with white foam, but it kept going. The road led uphill to where his lane turned off at the crest. Just beyond that, the road sloped downward for a few hundred yards before it ended in a T where it intersected the blacktop highway that skirted the edge of the river just beyond. The tired horse crested the hill and stumbled but didn’t turn in John’s lane. As it went past, John realized there wasn’t anyone in the driver’s seat.
It was a runaway. Without someone to stop it, the horse was likely to trot straight across the highway into traffic and perhaps even into the river.
John let go of the bello
ws, sprinted up his lane and out into the road after the buggy. Had the horse been fresh, he wouldn’t stand a chance of catching it, but it was tiring. The steep climb had slowed it.
“Whoa there, whoa,” he shouted, praying the horse was well trained and would respond to the command. It kept going. Sprinting harder, he raced after the vehicle, his lungs burning like his forge. There was traffic below on the highway. A horse-drawn wagon loaded with hay slowed several cars, but one after the other, they pulled out and sped around him. The buggy was unlikely to make it across without being hit.
Running up behind the vehicle, John realized it was a Swartzentruber buggy. The most conservative group among the Amish, the Swartzentruber didn’t fit their buggies with the slow-moving-vehicle sign, windshields, mirrors or electric lighting. One rear wheel wobbled heavily. He finally drew close enough to grab the rear door handle. Yanking it open, he gave one final burst of effort and threw himself inside, no easy task for a man of his size.
The buggy wasn’t empty. There were two little girls in black bonnets holding on to each other in the back seat. They started screaming when they saw him.
“Shush, shush. Ich bin freind.” He spoke in Deitsh, telling them he was a friend. He quickly climbed over the seatback. An Amish woman lay slumped on the floorboards, her face obscured by the large black traveling bonnet she wore. The reins had fallen out of her hands but not out of the buggy. He glanced out the front and saw the horse was nearly at the bottom of the hill. The highway was less than ten yards away.
John grabbed the reins and pulled back as he stomped on the buggy brake. The foam-flecked black mare stumbled to a halt and hung her head, her sides heaving as a car zipped past. The poor horse didn’t even flinch.
John quickly checked the woman on the floor. She was dressed in a heavy black winter coat, gloves and a black traveling bonnet. He could see she was breathing. He tried rousing her without success by shaking her shoulder. He had no idea what was wrong. The girls in back kept crying for their mama.
After lifting the woman onto the seat, he spoke to the girls again in Deitsh. “What are your names? Do you live near here? What is your papa’s name?”
They were too frightened or too shy to answer him. As he pulled his arm from behind the woman’s head, he noticed a smear of blood on his sleeve. He untied her bonnet and removed it. Her kapp came off with it and her blond curls sprang free. His breath caught in his throat as he recognized the woman he’d given a lift to several days before.
What was Willa Lapp doing here?
The side of her head was matted with dried blood, but the wound under it was only a shallow gash. Had she struck her head hard enough to be knocked unconscious, or had she hurt herself when she fell? He had no way of knowing.
He asked the children what had happened, but they only stared at him fearfully without answering. He would have to wait until the woman could answer all his questions when she came to.
Leaving her settled more comfortably on the seat, he stepped forward to check on the horse and noticed a piece of harness hanging loose. It had been repaired with a loop of wire at some time in the past. The wire had snapped, leaving a sharp point sticking through the leather. The flapping piece of harness had been jabbing the mare’s side with each step she took, forcing her to keep moving even as she was close to exhaustion.
Now what? John pulled on the tip of his beard as he looked around. He couldn’t ask the trembling, exhausted horse to pull the buggy back up the steep hill. He didn’t want to leave two crying children and an unconscious woman at the side of the road until he could return with a fresh horse. The mare had to be walked until she cooled down or she would sicken in this cold. It left him with only one option. He had to take them all together.
The girls had stopped crying and were huddled behind their mother. She hadn’t stirred. He found a horse blanket beneath the back seat, unhitched the mare and covered her with it. Leading her back to the buggy door, he opened it and held out his hand to the nearest child. “Kumm, we lawfa.”
She pushed his hand aside. “Bad man. Go away.”
The other girl patted her mother’s face. “Is Mama sick?”
He switched to English. “Ja, your mother is sick. I will take you to my house. Come, we must walk there.”
They looked at each other with uncertainty. He slipped his arms beneath their mother and lifted her out of the buggy. His suspicion that Willa was pregnant proved to be true. Starting up the hill with his burden, he glanced back. The children climbed down and hurried after him, giving a wide berth to the horse he was leading. They reached his side and stayed close, holding hands with each other as they struggled to keep up with his long strides. He slowed his pace.
One of the girls caught hold of his coat. “Horsey man, wait.”
He stopped walking. “I’m not horsey man. My name is John, John Miller.”
“Johnjohn.” She grinned at him.
“Just John, and what is your name?”
“Lucy. Is Mama okay?”
“You are all okay thanks to God’s mercy this day.” He had stopped this woman’s buggy from running into traffic and being hit by a car. Why hadn’t someone stopped Katie May’s buggy before it had been smashed to bits and her life snuffed out?
Why hadn’t he stopped his wife from leaving that day? It was a question that haunted his days and nights.
The woman in his arms moaned, pulling his mind from the past. He started walking again. She wasn’t heavy, but his arms were burning by the time he reached the front steps of his house. He dropped the horse’s reins and hoped she was too tired to wander off until he got his unexpected guests settled. This was costing him valuable time away from his forge and wasting fuel. He didn’t like interruptions when he was working.
He carried her into the living room, laid her on the sofa and then knelt beside her. The little girls pressed close to him.
“Mama’s sleeping,” whispered the one who’d told him her name was Lucy. The only way he could tell them apart was that Lucy still had her bonnet on. The other sister had taken hers off somewhere between the buggy and his front step.
He gazed down at Willa’s peaceful face. Her dark blond eyelashes were fanned against fair cheeks framed by golden curls. She was even prettier than he remembered.
He shook off his unusually fanciful thoughts and gave her injury closer inspection. The gash wasn’t deep, but the fact that she hadn’t roused had him worried. He unbuttoned her coat to check for other injures and found none. He pulled his hands away. He had no idea what to do with an unconscious pregnant woman.
Lucy tugged on his coat sleeve. “I’m hungry.”
The other child crossed her legs. “I need to go potty.”
He sat back on his heels in consternation. Where was his mother when he needed her?
Chapter Three
Willa heard voices she didn’t recognize. Were they real, or was she hallucinating? The psychosis wouldn’t start before her baby was born, would it? Her hands went to her stomach. Reassured by the feel of her unborn child nestled there, she opened her eyes. She was in a room she’d never seen before. Where were her girls? She tried to sit up. Pain lanced through her head, sending a burst of nausea to her empty stomach. She closed her eyes, hoping it would recede. She needed to find her children.
“Take it easy,” a man’s voice said close beside her.
She turned her head to see someone looming above her. She blinked hard, and he swam into focus. He was a mountain of a man with broad shoulders and a black beard that covered his jawline and chin. He knelt beside her and slipped an arm under her shoulders to ease her upright. His dark brown hair was cut in a bowl style she remembered from her youth. He was Amish or perhaps Old Order Mennonite. The beard meant he was a married man. His eyes were a rich coffee brown with crow’s feet at the corners. She thought she read sym
pathy in their depths. The longer she looked at him, the more convinced she was that they had met before, but her mind was so fuzzy she couldn’t remember where.
She clutched his arm as she struggled to get up. “Where are my daughters?”
His muscles were rock hard beneath her fingers. The feel of his steely arms was reassuring. It triggered her memory. She did know him. This was the man who had kindly given her a ride to her grandfather’s farm.
“Relax. Your children are with my mudder. She is getting them something to eat.” He patted her hand, and she let go of him. He sat back on a chair at the end of the sofa.
Willa had to see them for herself. “Lucy, Megan, come here!” A deep, harsh cough sent burning pain through her chest. Her cold was getting worse.
The pair hurried through the open doorway. “Mama, you awake?” Megan asked.
Her little worrier. Older than her sister by five minutes and a hundred years. Willa pulled both girls to her in a fierce hug. “Yes, I’m awake.”
Megan scowled and took Willa’s face between her hands. “Don’t fall down!”
“I’m sorry I frightened you.” She kissed Megan’s hair and noticed her Amish kapp was missing. Willa had had trouble keeping the unfamiliar head covering on the girls. They didn’t like them.
“I got peanut butter and jelly.” Lucy offered her half-eaten sandwich to her mother. “Want some?”
Willa shook her head, ignoring the pain the movement caused. “I’m fine. You finish it.”
“Okeydokey.” Lucy didn’t need further urging. She bit into her food with relish and was soon licking her fingers. The girls hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning when they’d finished the last of the bread her grandfather had grudgingly given them. Willa hadn’t had anything for two days, not since leaving her grandfather’s farm. Her stomach growled loudly.
An elderly woman in Amish garb came to the doorway. “Kinder, kumma to the dish and let your mamm rest.”
Megan leaned in to whisper in Willa’s ear. “She talks funny.”
Amish Christmas Twins Page 3