Gabe was late returning from the barn, which justified burning breakfast—again. At least it did in his mind, and Grace didn’t complain. She didn’t complain verbally. She did squirrel up her nose and leave half of the oatmeal in her bowl, but then again, maybe she wasn’t hungry.
Sometimes he interpreted her silence in his favor.
Today he’d give himself a break because the snow was still falling and the roof on his barn hadn’t fixed itself.
“Ready for school?”
Grace nodded and ran for her coat, pausing at the back door long enough to retrieve Miriam’s basket, which had held last night’s dinner.
It wasn’t until they were halfway down the lane that he noticed she’d put on a few pounds since breakfast—quite a few.
“What’s under the coat?”
She gave him her most innocent, wide-eyed look.
“That might work with someone who hasn’t known you all your life, Grace Ann, but it won’t work with your dat. What’s under the coat?”
As her luck would have it, Eli’s buggy pulled up at the end of the lane, and Grace tugged on his hand.
“I don’t want you to be late either,” Gabe agreed, “but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get away with what you’re doing.”
He allowed her to pull him toward the horses and buggy. Because they were the farthest farm from the school, Grace was the first student picked up and the last one dropped off, other than Eli’s own kids. They sat at the windows, waving at his daughter as she hurried up the steps.
“Hold it,” Gabe said, when she would have taken her seat without finishing their conversation.
Rather than share her secret with the others, Grace stepped closer to him, close enough that he could smell the children’s shampoo he’d bought for her at the general store.
“Show me,” he said.
With a pronounced frown, she unbuttoned the top of her coat, revealing Stanley’s box.
“Why—”
She stopped him with a finger to his lips and then quickly rebuttoned her coat and ran to her seat.
“Heavy snow coming,” Eli noted.
“Heard it could be up to twelve inches.”
“Ya, I heard the same. That would be a lot for us, especially if it fell all at once and so early in the winter.”
Gabe nodded and stepped away from the buggy’s door, but Eli didn’t shut it. Instead, he looked toward him, and then he leaned forward and glanced past him to where the roof of his barn was just barely visible. “If you need help bedding your animals down until you have time to repair the barn, I could come back after I drop the kinner off.”
Gabe stared out at the snow piling up on the ground. It was a beautiful sight now, at less than an inch. If it continued to fall all day and into the night, he wouldn’t be thinking it looked so nice.
“I appreciate the offer, but I’m sure you have your own place to tend to.”
“I do, but I wouldn’t volunteer the time if I couldn’t afford to give it.”
Gabe knew he should accept the man’s help. Maybe it was pride, stubbornness, or the fact that he didn’t yet know how to judge when he was in over his head, but he raised his hand and waved goodbye to Grace. “We’ll be all right, but danki.”
Something passed between the two men then.
Gabe wasn’t sure what it was. Perhaps a moment of raw honesty. All he knew was that he had to turn away from the look in Eli’s eyes and turn back toward his barn, which was even now falling in on his animals. Back toward his day of work and the cold, burnt oatmeal on his stove.
He hadn’t come here to make friends, and he was determined he didn’t need them.
He’d find a way to do this on his own.
Somehow he’d become convinced it was better for Grace and better for him this way—alone and independent.
At this point, he doubted he’d ever feel different.
Chapter 8
Miriam and Esther allowed the children to play outside for twenty minutes after they had eaten their lunch.
“Do you remember the time your bruder Noah ambushed the Stutzman twins on the way home?”
“Remember?” Miriam gazed outside at the snow, the children, and the fun they were having, and suddenly it seemed she was seven years old again. Seven years old and riding home in the buggy with her brother. “Noah made us all help with his snowball stockpile. It took us three afternoons because we had to do it on the way home and still get there in time to do our chores. We thought he was narrisch when he’d piled up more than two hundred and fifty snowballs.”
“That many?” Esther laughed so hard some of the younger children who had chosen to stay inside and play checkers turned to look at her in surprise. “Did you actually count them?”
“He made me. He said he wouldn’t build a new pen for my puppies unless I helped him. My job was to count while the others made snowballs. We were like the furniture factory over on the interstate, only we specialized in snow!”
“Why was he after the twins?”
“I didn’t find that out for years. They had bested him the summer before…that time it was buckets of water, set up for when he walked out of the barn. He’d, um, been spending some time in there with a certain young lady.”
“Oh, my. So it was revenge?”
“Of a sort,” Miriam said, not adding that the young lady was now her brother’s wife. “When the twins came walking around the corner, they didn’t stand a chance. Back then their parents owned a farm that was less than a mile from here, so they often walked. He had my other brothers lined up where the road narrows, and they each had a huge pile of snowballs.”
“Your brother became the king of snow fights.” Esther sighed as she looked out at the white flakes still coming down.
“Don’t worry about the storm,” Miriam said, patting her on the arm. “Even if it is as bad as they say, at least it will make for a good three-day weekend.”
“So no school tomorrow?”
“Probably not. We’ll have the children write notes this afternoon saying school is closed on Friday, and whether we open Monday will depend on the weather. Someone from the school board will be by later this afternoon to give us a final decision, and then we’ll be ready to sign them. I’m sure our students will be terribly disappointed.”
Esther smiled. “Oh, ya. I always hated snow days.”
“No doubt you still do. Think of it this way—it’ll give you an extra day to sew.”
“And it’ll give you an extra day to decide what to do with Stanley.”
Miriam shook her head, the strings of her prayer kapp falling forward as she did. “I’ve received a lot of gifts since I began teaching, but never a mouse.”
“The note was very sweet.”
They both stared at the sheet of paper Miriam had pinned to the board near her desk. Written in Grace’s young penmanship, which was improving by the day, it read,
MiRiam,
I’d like to give you Stanley. He is the Bestest thing I own.
GRAcE
“I’ll think of something,” Miriam murmured. “I don’t think my mamm or my dog would appreciate a mouse in the house.”
As she rang the bell to call the children inside, she realized what she needed to do. It was a bit manipulative, but because she had decided it was in Grace’s best interest, she didn’t feel too badly. So much of teaching was directing students’ behavior. You did it for their own good, and because they didn’t always want to do what was best for themselves.
Not all students wanted to study arithmetic, memorize multiplication tables, learn to spell correctly, or commit to memory the states and their capitals. So teachers gave grades and came up with rewards, which worked much better than punishments.
She’d make a deal with Grace, one that she hoped would return Stanley to Gabe Miller’s home and, in the process, move Grace one step further along the path she’d planned out for her.
Grace scribbled a question on her tablet. “You don’t
want Stanley?”
“I do want him. I like him very much.” Miriam ran one finger down the back of the little gray mouse as the children put away their school books and prepared the building for the long weekend—what would be at least a three-day break because the snowfall had increased throughout the afternoon. “But I’m afraid my dog wouldn’t like him very much. He would smell him. You know dogs have a keen sense of smell, right?”
Grace had been scuffing her toe against the floor, but when she heard this, she looked up in interest.
“Pepper doesn’t just smell well, he’s actually a hunting dog, which means he smells very well—almost as well as you draw.”
Grace smiled broadly now.
“Pepper isn’t allowed in the house, of course, but he’d smell Stanley, and he’d probably sit outside the door and howl so loud and so long that he would keep the entire family awake.”
Grace began to giggle, though she didn’t make any sound. She covered her mouth with her hand and her eyes almost squinted shut.
“I thought I might ask you to take care of Stanley for me, as a favor. Because you gave him to me, and he is my mouse now. I would appreciate it an awful lot.”
Grace’s eyes widened at the request, and Miriam pushed on.
“I have one more favor too. You know we’ve been practicing our Christmas music. I thought I might send home the words to these songs, and you could look at them and think of a way you could help us.”
Now the little girl’s expression turned to one of panic.
“I’m not asking you to sing, Grace. I’m only asking you to think of a way to help the other kids. They like you, and it would mean a lot to me if you would stand with them when they perform. I’m sure you can think of a way to participate.”
Miriam waited a few seconds, giving her a chance to say no. When she didn’t, Miriam added, “Okay? To both requests?”
Grace threw her arms around her teacher’s neck and then planted a kiss on her cheek. For a fleeting second, Miriam thought she heard an “umm-umm”—like the sound you make when you hug someone tight. Then the young girl was running to put on her coat, snuggling Stanley, in his box, safely inside.
Miriam and Esther were only a few minutes behind Eli’s buggy. They closed the school up tight before making their way through the rising snowdrifts—Miriam to her buggy, which the boys had hitched to her mare, and Esther to Joseph’s buggy, which was waiting.
He raised a hand to wave to Miriam, and then he leaned out the front of the open buggy. “Need me to follow you home?”
“No, thank you, Joseph. I’ll be fine.”
Nodding once, he turned to Esther, made sure the blanket was wrapped snuggly around her lap, and then giddy-upped to his gelding. The horse trotted off through the falling snow.
The scene was picture-perfect, but Miriam wasn’t fooled. The temperature was cold, and the snow was falling fast.
She would have liked to drop off another dinner at the Millers’, but at the rate the drifts were accumulating, Miriam knew she needed to drive straight to her parents’.
Something told her this storm was going to be worse than anything they had experienced in recent years. She climbed into her buggy and made sure the leather flap was closed beside her. It didn’t provide complete protection against the cold, but it helped. Wrapping her own blanket across her legs, she picked up the reins, murmured to Belle, and hurried toward home.
Gabe Miller would have to feed his own family.
No doubt he’d managed for the last several years, or however long it had been since Mrs. Miller had passed. For some reason that image bothered her more than the storm outside her buggy. She focused on pushing it away. The last thing she needed to do was involve herself personally in Gabe’s problems. Of course, she would fulfill her Christian duty—that was the right thing to do.
And her professional duty as Grace’s teacher. It was natural to care for her students.
Strictly Christian and professional. Not personal.
Maybe she could talk her dad into driving her over in the morning if the snow had stopped. Her mother always overcooked when there was a snowstorm. It would be neighborly to share some of the extra food with her newest pupil.
When Miriam woke Friday morning, the first thing she noticed was how quiet everything was. True, it was early. Try as she might on weekends, she couldn’t seem to sleep past her normal six a.m. Though the sun wouldn’t rise for another hour, when she went to her window to look out over the farm, there was enough light to see the miracle awaiting outside.
Enough for her to draw in a sharp breath and understand why she’d woken to that muted quiet.
An unmarred blanket of white stretched as far as the horizon and beyond—covering fields, trees, barns, and even Pebble Creek in the distance. It muffled the normal winter sounds of birds in the trees.
The morning wasn’t completely quiet, of course. Now that she stood with her nose pressed to the window, peering out at the storybook scene, she could see the redbirds hopping on the branches of the sugar maple tree outside her window. When they hopped, the snow would tumble from the branch, making a slight swish sound.
And then she heard something else. Something that had her grabbing her robe and making her way downstairs and outside to take care of her morning bathroom needs. It was the sound of the oven door closing, bringing with it the aroma of fresh cinnamon rolls.
Chapter 9
Miriam was sidetracked.
She’d headed to the outhouse, as planned. On the way there, she’d had to stop to put on her boots, coat, scarf, and hat with earmuffs.
The outhouse itself wasn’t as cold as she’d feared. Her dad had built it with consideration for the Wisconsin winters—so he’d sheltered it from the north wind by building it on the south side of the house, behind the woodshed. In addition, he’d built an awning over the building which kept the majority of the snow off the structure. Lastly, he’d rigged it to receive some of the heat which vented from the big stove in the kitchen.
It was almost comfortable.
No, the main problem wasn’t walking to the outhouse or even around the mounds of pristine snow accumulating at an alarming rate. Though the snowfall had stopped momentarily, Miriam could tell by the lowness of the clouds and the weight with which they seemed to press down that more would be falling soon.
She had hurried into the outhouse and was on her way back to the kitchen, back to hot kaffi and her mamm’s warm cinnamon rolls when she was sidetracked.
Pepper’s bark pealed across the morning, bright and clear, like the sound of the Englischer’s church bell. Glancing toward the barn, she saw the dog jumping up and down as if he had treed a prize animal after a long hunt.
What in the world?
His yapping grew more urgent with each leap.
Miriam gazed longingly toward the house as she turned and trudged along the path to the barn her dad and brother had already made in the snow. Simon lived with their older brother, David, because his place was closer to town and Simon’s job. He tried to come home most weekends to help their parents. She was relieved he’d made it before the storm closed in on them.
Now what was wrong with her dog?
Pepper didn’t usually tree an animal unless he was set on its smell. At the moment his silky brown ears were bouncing with each jump, his bark pronounced as he went up into the air. Each time he popped up, he gained a good height of two to three feet.
When he saw that he’d earned Miriam’s attention, he ran toward her and then shot back toward the tree near the barn. He continued sprinting back and forth—tree, Miriam, tree, Miriam, tree, Miriam.
My, but he was excited.
If he had treed a squirrel or a coon, it would faint from fear before she could pull him away.
“What is it, Pepper? What have you found, boy?”
Once Miriam was standing under the tree, Pepper flopped at her feet, a whine escaping from his throat as he waited for her to set things right.
/> She stared up and into the branches, looking for eyes or ears, but she saw only snow.
Then she couldn’t see snow because it was in her eyes.
Pepper barked once as she wiped it away, and that was when she heard a tiny meow.
Stormy, Grace’s kitten, had somehow escaped the barn and scampered up the tree.
“How did you get up there?”
Pulling her coat more tightly around her, Miriam began to carefully climb the tree. Even in her boots it wasn’t that hard. She’d climbed it a hundred times as a child.
She had made it to the middle limb and grabbed Stormy, earning herself a nice scratch across the back of the hand in the process, when her dad walked out of the barn.
“Aren’t you a bit old to be playing in trees?” He stood beside Pepper, a smile plastered across his face. Both of them looked up at her as if they were expecting an answer.
“It’s the kitten’s fault.”
“Ya?”
“I couldn’t leave her up here.”
“Why’s that?”
“She would freeze.”
“She found her way up there. Chances are she would find her way down.”
“Oh, dat. It’s not so simple.”
“Why not?”
Miriam clutched Stormy inside her robe. She could feel the kitten shaking as she made her way back down and out of the tree. She reached for her dad’s hand as she jumped from the final limb, landing in the soft snow.
Suddenly, she didn’t feel so cold as she stood there, holding her father’s hand with the cat purring against her and Pepper pressed against her legs. As she surveyed their home, it occurred to her that it looked like an illustration out of one of the children’s storybooks—wrapped in snow and only two weeks before Christmas. It almost seemed as if it were a picture-perfect morning—except for the scratch bleeding on her hand, which was a small price to pay for Stormy’s safety.
A Promise for Miriam Page 6