Maybe Miriam’s mother, Abigail, would have time to show her a few simple dishes.
Taking her breakfast plate to the sink, she washed it clean and placed it on the drain board. She had to stand on the stool her dad had made to help her reach the faucet handle, and the water that came out was ice-cold. She knew it was better to use hot water, but she didn’t know about boiling water on the stove and then carrying it to the sink. Instead, she had scrubbed the plate extra hard.
Even so, when she was done it hadn’t taken much time. She walked back to the window and peered outside. Nothing had changed, except maybe there was more snow. She wasn’t sure.
Snow or more snow. It all looked the same.
She pressed her face to the window and noticed how her breath fogged the glass.
Last year she’d gone outside in the snow and made angels with her cousins. They’d even had a sled that they’d ridden down the hill over and over again.
With her finger, she drew a hill on the frosty window and set a sled halfway down it.
What had her dad told her?
To stay in the kitchen where it was warm and to follow the rope if she needed to go to the outhouse.
She didn’t need to use the outhouse again. It was a funny place, not at all like their bathroom at their old house.
But if she did have to go, she could walk in the snow, and maybe play in it just a little.
The idea made her feel less sad. Which was a good thing, because sometimes the sadness felt very, very big.
Grace knew when it felt like that she needed to do something or pretty soon she’d be in her bed crying like a baby, and she was not a baby.
So she went into the mudroom, which was little more than a back porch, but she liked the word “mudroom” better. After glancing around, she pulled on her boots and coat and scarf and mittens.
And that was when she saw Stanley’s box.
She opened the top and inspected Stanley’s world. The mouse squinted back at her, his little nose twitching. He ran down one side of the box and then turned and ran up the other.
Grace began to laugh, and her sad feelings slid away like snow melting on a sunny morning.
Tugging off one of her mittens, she ran her finger down Stanley’s back. He wasn’t as soft as Miriam’s kitten, but he was very funny. His whiskers tickled her skin, and then he was off again, burrowing under the pile of hay she’d placed in the corner.
As she started to close the lid, Stanley poked his nose out, his tiny dark eyes staring up at her, and it seemed as though he was pleading with her.
She could almost hear him.
What if he wants to talk but can’t? What if he wants to go with me?
“You can come.” Grace’s voice was a croak. It was scratchy and tickled a little.
Stanley didn’t look scared like her dat did that last time she had made a sound—the time they’d had an argument and she tried to speak. Stanley didn’t even seem surprised at the sound of her voice. He only twitched his nose and waited.
So she reached into the box. Her mouse hopped onto her outstretched hand and let her put him in her pocket. Grace forgot about how her voice sounded. She forgot about the fact that she’d even talked. All she could think about was the snow outside and playing and Stanley.
She even forgot about how she was supposed to stay inside the house.
Chapter 12
By the time Gabe stopped for lunch, large drifts of snow completely covered his path back to the house. Visibility was worse, and there was no sign the storm was lessening. But all wasn’t lost. The barn was in slightly better condition. At least he thought the animals would survive the night. God willing and if the snow would let up.
If the rest of the roof would hold.
Too many ifs.
Now it was well past lunchtime. He knew that and felt bad about it. Breakfast hadn’t been nearly enough, though Grace had eaten it like the tough little gal she was. Not one to complain, his Grace.
Once again, he reminded himself she hadn’t complained because she couldn’t—correction, didn’t—talk. His irritation with Miriam King flared again like a fire that had received a burst of wind. He’d not questioned the way he was raising his daughter until the teacher had made her opinions known.
Knocking the snow off his boots, he opened the back door and trudged into the mudroom.
His hand froze on the door, still holding it open.
Something looked wrong. What was it?
Then he spotted it.
One of Grace’s mittens was lying on the floor. He picked it up and stuffed it into his coat pocket.
Okay. She usually put her things in her cubby. Actually, she was very careful about it, but maybe she’d gone to the outhouse. Maybe she hadn’t noticed she’d dropped one. He scanned the room and then noted that her coat, scarf, boots, and other mitten were gone.
Inside or out?
He hadn’t seen any tracks in the snow, so she must be inside.
“Grace? Are you in here? I found your—” The word “mitten” died on his lips. The kitchen was empty. Had been empty for some time by the looks of things. He turned around and retraced his steps through the mudroom to the back door.
Only one set of prints were in the snow, and those were his.
Hurrying back through the house, he called her name again, checking each room quickly, but those rooms were dark and cold. The only light was the one he had left burning in the kitchen, and she wasn’t there. Her drawing tablet and pencils were on the table.
So where was she?
He forced down the panic, though it wanted to claw up and out of his throat. His heart was beating faster than if he’d run from the pasture. Looking out the kitchen window, he tried to see what she would have seen, but the snow was falling so hard he couldn’t even make out the fence.
He closed his eyes and prayed for guidance, for God to protect his child, for forgiveness. This was his fault.
When he opened his eyes, he looked out the window once more and saw what she had smudged there with her fingers.
What was it?
A hill? And a sled? Had she been remembering the area behind his parents’ house? There was a small hill there where the children used to play.
Had she gone out to play?
Anger sprouted like corn in the summer fields and fought with his panic, but he tamped them both down.
She wouldn’t disobey him that way.
Grace was a good girl. He’d told her to only go to the outhouse. Could she be out there? Could she be stuck in the small building? Stuck in the snow?
This time he didn’t pause as he rushed back through the mudroom and out into the storm. The guide rope he’d fastened was still in place and still led to the outhouse. He could barely see the outline of the structure through the snow that was now falling even harder than it had been ten minutes earlier. He called her name as he went, the wind whipping the words away as soon as he spoke them. Stealing the words as each second that passed stole the hope from his heart.
He yanked open the door to the outhouse, but he knew before he did that she wasn’t there. In fact, he had trouble opening it, the drifts were so high. He had to dig the snow away with his hands, calling out to her the entire time.
There was no answer. But how would she answer him?
The question was agony in his heart, sending pain so deep that he had to stop and rub at his chest. Was this what it felt like to have a heart attack? But he was too young, and God wasn’t through punishing him yet. First his wife. Then this travesty of a farm. Now his daughter. What had he ever done to God to deserve this?
He stood in the doorway of the outhouse as the wind bit at his cheeks and the snow continued to fall.
Why had he left her alone?
Hadn’t he realized the danger to her, how badly the snow had piled up between the house and the privy?
Had she come looking for him?
He walked back outside the outhouse, not thinking to shut the door b
ehind him. It knocked against the doorjamb.
Bending into the wind, he made his way through the blizzard, and it was a blizzard now, he admitted to himself. Probably had become a blizzard hours ago when he was tucked inside the barn.
Gabe stood on the back steps and studied his farm. How late was it? Two o’clock? Three? Realizing that each second he hesitated meant one more second Grace spent in the freezing weather, he walked inside and stared at the clock. Three twenty in the afternoon. It seemed impossible. But the old clock over the sink, the clock his dad had made, didn’t lie.
How many hours had she been out there? Two? Three? More?
He was wasting time.
Walking back outside, he scanned from right to left. He would search each building. He would find her.
Half an hour later Gabe had been through every building, and most of the day’s meager light was gone. Panic consumed him, sending sweat down his back and causing his heart to hammer in his chest.
Should he keep looking? Should he go for help? Was he too late?
Hurrying to the barn, he pulled Chance from his stall. The gelding was the best thing he’d bought since coming to Wisconsin. At fifteen and a half hands high, the dark bay with white tips was a beauty. Gabe didn’t take the time to harness him to a buggy. Instead, he threw on the Western saddle which had been part of the purchase, led him out of the barn, and carefully fastened the door.
Though it pained him to do so, he galloped to the house, secured the horse to the porch rail, and ran inside long enough to leave Grace a note.
He also pumped up the lantern so that it would shine brightly. He set it on the hook over the kitchen table, near the window she looked out of most often.
Maybe she would see the light. Maybe she would find her way home.
And maybe she wouldn’t.
Outside, he murmured once to Chance and swung up in the saddle. The horse seemed eager to run and he was grateful for that. He didn’t know his neighbors well. He hadn’t wanted to know them well. Certainly he had no idea what to say when he showed up on their front step.
What he did know, what he was now convinced of, was that he couldn’t find Grace alone.
Chapter 13
Miriam stirred the stew. It smelled heavenly—a rich dark broth, seasoned with herbs they had dried just a few months ago and flavored with vegetables she’d helped to can.
“Should we put the cornbread in now?”
“Ya. I think your bruder and dat will be ready for it. They’ll be mighty cold when they come in.” Abigail whacked her piecrust with the rolling pin and reached for the jar of apple preserves at the same time.
When Miriam first heard the banging outside, she thought it was her mother thumping the dough into submission. Then she realized, at the same moment Abigail did, that the sound was coming from the front door.
“What in the world—”
“That couldn’t be dat or Simon,” Miriam said, following her mother through the sitting room to the front door. Even before they had answered his knock, she saw Gabe pacing back and forth in front of the window and his horse winded and tied to their front rail.
Her heart beat faster because she realized two things in the second before her mother opened the door—Grace wasn’t with him and something was terribly wrong.
“Gabe, come inside,” Abigail said as she reached for his arm and pulled him through the open door. “Tell us what it is. Where’s Grace?”
“That’s why I’m here. I tried to find her. I can’t. I looked everywhere. I just—it’s growing darker and colder, and I don’t know where else to look.” Icicles had formed in his beard, and his eyes darted back and forth between them and then around the room, settling on nothing. He reached for the doorknob. “I have to go back. I can’t stay. I only came to ask—”
His hand began to shake on the door. The tremor traveled up his arm to his shoulders until the sob overtook him.
“I’ll run for dat,” Miriam whispered. She didn’t wait for an answer but turned and fled across the room and out the door toward the barn.
The last thing she saw was Gabe, a man she had come to think of as distant, big, and strong—but now he was broken.
A short time later they were all in the kitchen. Abigail had managed to press a hot cup of kaffi into Gabe’s hands.
“We have to go.” Gabe’s voiced teetered on the brink of panic. “She’s out there freezing. She’s eight years old and out there freezing, and I’m here drinking kaffi!”
He pushed the cup away.
“We’ve rung the bell,” Joshua reminded him. “Wait ten more minutes. Then this room will be full of help, and together we’ll accomplish more than you can alone.”
Gabe nodded once and raised his eyes to Miriam’s, but he didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to. The storm outside said it all. Her heart ached to witness the agony written all over his face. She might not agree with his ways, but there was no doubt his daughter meant everything to him.
And to think of Grace—scared, cold, and alone.
She closed her eyes and prayed as they waited.
The murmured conversations were interrupted by the arrival of not one but many buggies. Abigail stood and began pouring hot kaffi into Thermoses. Within five minutes the kitchen was crowded with men from their district. Miriam didn’t know how they had managed to arrive so quickly through the storm.
But she understood how their system worked.
When her brother Simon had rung the bell outside their barn, its call had carried to at least four other farms. They in turn had sent out a similar cry for help, which had reached still more farms. No one stopped to ask questions. The call was enough.
One call sent out a ripple through their people.
One call and all would come.
Folks parted as Bishop Beiler made his way to the center of the room and placed his hand on Gabe’s shoulder. Miriam’s mind flashed back to six days before when Gabe and Jacob had stood at the front of their Sunday meeting, when Gabe had joined the church and Grace had stood beside her father to be prayed over. It had been here, in their home, but no one could have known then that the girl’s life would be at stake a few days later.
“I didn’t know it was Grace, but I knew someone must be missing for the call to have gone out. I spoke with the Englisch,” Jacob said. “They are sending people out to help, but because of the storm the roads are impassable. The road crews have been sent to clear a path, but it will be a few hours before the Englisch officers arrive at your farm.”
“In the meantime we go to your place to start searching on our own.” Joshua stepped forward and set his kaffi cup on the table. “It’s not hopeless, son. Every man here knows these winters, has experienced these storms, and has a dochder or schweschder at home. We’ll find your Grace.”
Gabe nodded and Miriam thought he wouldn’t speak, but then he stood and cleared his throat. “Danki. I appreciate what you’re doing. I…I need to remind you that my Grace…she can’t…that is… she won’t talk.”
He looked from man to man and then continued. “She’s not slow minded. She’s lost. If she sees you, she’ll make a signal so you can see her, but I don’t think she would cry out. I don’t think she would speak. I thought I should let you know.”
Each man confirmed their understanding with a gesture, nod, or word of encouragement as they filed out into the gathering darkness and into the snow, which hadn’t slowed in its assault.
Gabe was walking out with Miriam’s oldest brother, Noah, when she thought of Pepper. She hurried to catch up with them before they were out the door and reached forward to snag Gabe’s sleeve.
He glanced back at her in surprise.
A few other women had come with the men. They were moving supplies into boxes, and boxes into buggies.
“Simon is coordinating supplies,” Noah said, pushing out through the front door, but Miriam pulled him back.
“It’s not that. It’s Pepper. I think he can help.”
/> Gabe shifted from foot to foot, his eyes on his horse. Someone had given the gelding a few oats in the barn and then brought him back around. Miriam knew she would need to explain quickly if she had any hope of Gabe and Noah hearing her out.
“He’s a good hunting dog. He’s familiar with Grace. At least give him a chance. What can it hurt?”
“We’re not hunting, Miriam.” Gabe’s voice was more tired than angry.
“He’s a German shorthair, he operates off scent, and he’s spent time with your daughter. What harm is there in allowing him to help?”
“You may have a point, but we can’t wait for you to get him ready. Bring him with Simon and the supplies.” Noah pulled on his gloves and walked out of the house.
As Miriam was about to turn away, Gabe stopped her. “Here. Take this.” Cupping her hand in his, he reached into the pocket of his coat, and pulled out something small, knitted, and blue. Slipping Grace’s mitten into her hand, he closed her fingers around it.
He paused long enough to look deeply into her eyes, to share with her what he’d been careful to keep hidden since she’d known him—the pain, the loss, and the loneliness.
Then he disappeared into the storm.
Chapter 14
Grace kicked the snow out from under the branches of the tree. She needed to go to the bathroom, but it was almost completely dark. She kept her hand on her pocket, on top of the buttoned flap, on top of the place where Stanley was safely sleeping. At first she had been a little angry at him. It was his fault they were here to begin with. At least that’s what she told herself, but she knew it wasn’t true.
She should have left him in the box. She should never have taken him outside. And once outside, she should have zipped up her pocket.
It was a miracle she’d even caught him.
But now what? Once she’d chased him through the snow, past the buildings and into the woods, once she’d caught him and realized she was lost, she had found shelter under the circle of trees. Her grandpa had taught her to do that. “If you’re ever lost, don’t keep running around in circles. Sit still and wait for us to come find you.”
A Promise for Miriam Page 8