The little girl stood there, in her kitchen, arms spread wide, eyes closed, and may falling from her lips.
Miriam glanced at Gabe, and then she had to look away at the tears in his eyes and the mix of raw emotions on his face—pain, confusion, and pride.
Pride won.
He hopped out of his chair and scooped up Grace in his arms. “You did it! You spoke!”
Grace’s eyes had popped open. She peeked over her dad’s shoulder at Miriam, surprise and embarrassment reddening her cheeks.
When Gave set her down the pushed the cookies toward her, they were all giggling.
“Perhaps he thinks you worked up an appetite, Grace.”
“Those exercises would work up an appetite in a grown man.” Gabe sat back in his chair, fingering his kaffi mug and thumping the table with his big hand.
“She did it. Did you hear her? She was singing like a little bird.”
“I heard.”
They sat at the table, grinning at one another.
Finally Miriam asked, “So you’ll do the exercises?”
“Ya, of course we will. Won’t we, Grace?”
She nodded as she chewed a mouthful of ginger cookie, no longer nibbling around the edge. Was it relief Miriam saw in her eyes? Hard to tell. There were so many emotions, so many different dynamics at play, and it wasn’t her place to know the hidden stories between the lines. It was only her place to help where she could.
“I should go. It’ll be deep dark soon.”
“Let me help you with your coat.”
“I’ll see you at church, Grace. Remember, try and describe your pictures while you’re drawing.”
Grace nodded, but it wasn’t until Miriam and Gabe were nearly at the front door that she jumped up, ran to where they stood, and threw her arms around Miriam’s waist. One tight hug, sending a river of warmth rushing over her, and then the child was gone, back to the kitchen, back to cookies and drawing, and—if she wasn’t mistaken—a bit of humming.
They stepped out on to the porch.
Gabe stood with his hand on the railing.
“Is it that simple? Would it have been that easy all along? A few exercises and she would have been talking?”
“It’s gut that she’s making progress, but I suspect it’s a combination of factors. No doubt last Friday’s incident affected Grace as much as it did you.”
“Also, she wants to please her teacher. That’s a strong incentive.”
Miriam smiled but didn’t respond. The hug had unnerved her. The entire visit had. She was becoming much too close to the Miller family.
“I don’t say that lightly, Miriam. Danki, for everything.”
“Gem gschehne.” The words were a whisper, but she knew from the intensity of Gabe’s look that he heard her.
Accepting his help, she climbed into her buggy and turned Belle toward home. This evening was so different from that night two weeks ago, but her emotions were no more settled.
Why did Gabe Miller have such a strong effect on her? Why did he cause her to question so many decisions in her life? Why couldn’t she be satisfied with what she had?
As Belle trotted into the evening toward her nice warm stall, Miriam tried to focus on the good things in her life, on the breakthrough they had just experienced with Grace, and on all the blessings she’d received from God.
She tried to ignore the aching place in her heart.
Chapter 23
Miriam trudged into the barn wearing her brother’s mud boots, the oldest work dress she could find, and her father’s discarded winter coat. It had been placed in the charity box, but she’d pulled it out, dusted it off, and rolled up the sleeves.
So what if she looked ridiculous? It wasn’t as if anyone would see her.
And one more minute in the house cleaning floors would drive her completely narrisch. She needed time in the barn.
She’d barely begun mucking out Belle’s stall when her dad leaned against the half-opened door. “What are you doing out here, Miriam girl?”
“If you can’t tell, I must not be doing it very well.” She plunged the apple picker into the soiled wood shavings.
Joshua wasn’t put off by her foul mood. “I suppose you’re doing a fair enough job. I’m just wondering why you’re even bothering, is all. Your bruder is home this weekend, and he will take care of the stalls.”
“One less for him to do.” Miriam picked up another pile of shavings, shook it so the clean pieces fell to the floor, and dumped what was soiled into the wheelbarrow. Something about the burn in her muscles and the pungent smell eased the restlessness she’d been suffering from all day.
“There are three more when you’re done with that one, if you’re so inclined.”
Miriam paused and gave her dad her teacher’s look. Unfortunately, he didn’t even blink. “You’re teasing me, but maybe I will clean the other stalls. I can do men’s work. Doesn’t take a Y chromosome to shovel horse manure.”
Joshua reached up and ran his fingers through his beard, slowly and deliberately. Finally, he walked into the stall, turned over a crate, and sat on it. “I wouldn’t know about chromosomes, but I do know that when someone mucks out a stall by choice, probably something is bothering that person. Care to talk about it?”
“Nothing to talk about.”
She stopped and wiped away the sweat that was pooling on her forehead, and then she unbuttoned the oversized coat and laid it across the door.
“Usually you would be inside grading papers on a Saturday afternoon.”
“Done.”
“Or helping your mamm.”
“She shooed me out.”
“Huh. I thought I was the only one she sent to the barn.”
Miriam dropped more manure into the barrel and then stopped and leaned against the stall wall. “I’ve never heard her send you to the barn.”
“She can do it with a look.”
Staring down at her brother’s boots, Miriam thought about all the things knotted up inside her. She didn’t know how to begin to explain them to anyone, let alone her father.
“I think you’re happy about the progress with the Miller girl.”
“Ya.”
“Christmas is next week.”
Miriam glanced up at him and tried to smile. “Now you’re just poking around, trying to hit on what’s bothering me.”
Joshua didn’t deny it. “Ever have a sore place along your jaw but can’t quite figure out which tooth it is? Your tongue insists on darting around, testing every one, probing and checking, trying to figure it out. It isn’t as though your tongue can fix it or set it right, but it is as if you have a need to know.”
“Parents are like tongues?”
“In some ways. We’re always wagging about one thing or another.”
Miriam rolled her eyes and returned her attentions to cleaning the stall. Then her dad began to speak again, slowly, and quietly as if he were talking to himself. His next words surprised her more than if she’d stepped outside and found a field of spring flowers instead of the light dusting of snow she’d tramped through on her way into the barn.
“There was a time when I wasn’t sure what to do with my life. We weren’t living in this area then. When your grossdaddi first moved to Wisconsin, he settled in the Medford area. There weren’t many Amish in Wisconsin in the nineteen twenties. Your grossdaddi, he married your grossmammi in Pennsylvania, heard the land was cheap here, and that it was gut. Within a year they had packed up and moved.”
Miriam stopped shoveling and sat down on top of the pile of clean wood shavings. She’d heard this story many times before, but she never tired of it. She’d read much about the Great Depression, and Esther taught the historical period to the students at school. It was hard to imagine her grandparents making a move during that time.
“Your pappi Abel started with a small place, worked hard, and added on as Gotte provided. Because I was the oldest, I knew it would come to me. Maybe that was why I wasn’t sure I
wanted it.”
Miriam looked at him in surprise.
“One indecision led to another.” Joshua removed his hat and dusted some dirt from the top. “I couldn’t decide if I wanted the farm, so when I met your mamm, even when I knew I had feelings for her, I couldn’t decide if I wanted her and the responsibilities of kinner. I didn’t know what to do about any of it.”
“You had doubts about mamm?”
“Not so much. Not about her. My doubts were more about myself.”
“I’ve never heard any of this before.”
Joshua’s look was tender. It reminded her of the way she knew she looked at a student who still had much to learn. “Maybe you never needed to.”
Miriam sank her hand deep into the clean shavings. “What changed?”
“Nothing, right away. One of the ministers in our district was putting a group together to move to Cashton, and suddenly I had a way out.”
“Not exactly a rumspringa.”
“No. I wouldn’t say I was rebelling as much as I was looking for something I couldn’t put my finger on, something I wouldn’t have recognized if I’d bumped into it. I fell in love with the land here as soon as I saw it. Work was hard, winters hard, a smaller community… we struggled at first.” Joshua stared down at his hat. As he turned the brim round and round in his fingers, Miriam noticed the wrinkles and sun spots on his skin. It seemed to her he was aging before her eyes, but only last year he’d been such a young man. Why couldn’t everything stay the same? She wasn’t ready for what came next.
“Everything here was as I could have hoped for, and more. Still, the restlessness hadn’t gone away. I don’t suppose it ever would have. I heard another group was forming, ready to push on north and west. I considered joining them and selling this place.”
“Selling it?”
“Ya. Then your grossdaddi died and I was called home for the funeral.”
“That must have been a shock.”
“It was. He wasn’t an old man, and I’d always pictured him living well into his nineties. He’d been bringing in the crops and had an accident in the silo. I’d always looked at my parents as parents, never as a man and a woman. That week I was back, I saw my mamm as a woman who had lost her other half. I knew she would be fine. Gotte would provide, and I had nine bruders and schweschders still there to care for her.” He replaced the hat on his head. “I guess having been away, I saw what I’d always taken for granted—their love for one another, the tenderness with which she touched his clothes as she folded them for giving away, the love in her voice as she explained to the grandkinner, the way she held me when I first walked into the house.”
Miriam didn’t speak. She didn’t dare break the spell of his memories.
“When I saw your mamm at the funeral, I knew.”
His grin brought her back to Saturday in the barn, to the smell of wood shavings and manure. “I knew what I’d been running from was being in lieb and commitment and maybe one day knowing heartache such as my mamm was experiencing when my dat passed—all the things Gotte gives us to make life wondrous. I was running, but Gotte didn’t allow me to run far.”
He stood and returned the crate to its upright position.
Miriam refocused on her work. Joshua was nearly out of the stall when she voiced one of the questions that had been plaguing her all morning. “If I ask you something, do you promise to be honest with me?”
Nodding, her father met her gaze directly.
Tears stung Miriam’s eyes, but she blinked them away. “Are you ever disappointed…in the choices I’ve made?”
“Not even a little.”
She knew it was the truth, that he wouldn’t lie, and though it didn’t answer the other questions, it provided a measure of comfort in the same way that working in the barn used up some of the energy she needed to be rid of.
Now, if she could figure out who or what she was running from.
She walked out into the sunshine, fetched Belle from the pasture, and led the mare back into the stall. Running her hand down the length of her mane, Miriam felt a portion of her own tension fade away. Belle nudged her pocket, looking for a treat, and Miriam pulled out some dried apple slices that the mare greedily devoured.
A clean stall and a little bit of fruit. Horses were easy to please.
Hearts not so much.
“Owww.”
“I’m sorry, honey. I don’t know how your hair becomes so tangled. It’s as if knots grow in there while you’re sleeping.”
Grace began to giggle, which was at least better than the near tears of five seconds ago. Girls’ emotions changed so quickly, and often Gabe had no idea what caused the change for better or worse. He thought he’d be used to it by now, but he wasn’t.
“Owww!”
Grace’s speech was like a stream uncovered in the desert. She’d only been speaking for three days, and her responses were short and gravelly, but there was no stopping the flow of words.
“Maybe we should cut your hair off.” Grace stopped wiggling, suddenly as still as a fawn caught in an Englischer’s headlights.
“Uh-uh.”
“Ya. Your mammi Sarah used to say short hair is quickly brushed.”
Grace’s hand reached back behind her waist until her fingers located and touched her long brown hair. Gabe continued to comb through the tangles, which was easier to do now that she was holding still. “All done. Time to braid you up.”
When they had lived in Indiana, Hope’s mother had done the braiding. As soon as he’d begun to look in the Budget at the land deals in Wisconsin, she’d made him take over the chore. “My gross dochdern all go out of their homes in a presentable manner. You won’t be sending Grace to school or church with anything less than perfectly braided hair and a well-kept kapp.”
He’d learned quickly. Braiding Grace’s hair was no different than braiding a rope for the pony—other than the rope held still and didn’t whine.
Surveying his work, he realized Hope would be proud of him.
The thought pierced him as acutely as if a knife had been thrust into his side.
It was the way of things, since he’d lost her.
He could go hours, sometimes days, without feeling the burn of the loss. Then something as simple as preparing Grace for church would drive his loneliness abruptly home.
“You’re ready to go. Want to check how I’ve done in the mirror?”
“Ya.” She hurried off to her room—half skipping, half walking.
Like the rest of the house, her room was simply furnished, but he had placed a small mirror on the wall near the door so she could be sure she’d dressed properly. Humility was important, but so was correct attire. There were many things a small girl couldn’t check for herself, and though he didn’t want her to grow up and be preoccupied with her reflection, neither did he want her unaware if she was walking around with shoofly pie on her face.
She walked back into the room, a smile on her lovely face and her Bible tucked under her arm.
“Ready?” he asked, grabbing his black Sunday hat off the peg by the door.
“Ya.” Her answers were brief, but each one brought true delight to his heart, mixed though it was with the bitterness of missing his wife. He recognized that this was a day he had much to thank the Lord for. Grace had made great strides since seeing the doctor. Though her throat was still hoarse from lack of use, and though she still tended to choose silence over words, the exercises were going well.
He could hardly wait to talk to Miriam about it.
Chapter 24
Church was held at the Schmuckers’ farm, the elder Schmuckers’—Aden’s parents. Gabe had wanted to ask Eli if something romantic was going on between Miriam and Aden, but he didn’t think it was his place to pry. He had only noticed that one glance between them the night everyone was searching for Grace. He could have imagined the look and unspoken words.
Gabe hadn’t been to the Schmuckers’ farm before, but he knew where it was. Eli had des
cribed the place to him, and he’d driven by their lane several times.
Pulling up to the barn, he tamped down the feelings of envy that naturally rose. Aden’s parents had a large spread, and it looked as if every acre of it was in tip-top shape.
Joseph Bontreger, another young fellow who had shown up to help look for Grace, was on hand to take Chance and lead him into the barn.
“Large place,” Gabe said as he helped Grace out of the buggy.
“Ya. You’ve not been here before?”
“No. This is our first time.”
“But you have met Clemens Schmucker.” Joseph patted Chance as he nodded toward a group of older men standing outside the main house.
“I suppose I have. Is that him? Standing with the bishop?”
“Ya. He would never miss a church meeting, so I’m sure you have met him. Probably you just haven’t put all the names to faces yet.”
“I expect it will take me a while.” Gabe had started toward the house with Grace when Joseph called him back.
He was a pleasant enough kid. Gabe suddenly recalled that Miriam had mentioned he was to be married to the other teacher, the younger one, in the spring, though they hadn’t published their intentions yet.
Probably his youth was why he said what he said next. Young ones, they didn’t always buy into the Amish ways of silence. Or maybe there was more to it. Maybe he was trying to warn Gabe. Later, riding home, Gabe would remember the conversation and wonder.
“Clemens can be a bit overbearing at times. Don’t set too much store by anything he says. I don’t believe he means any harm, but sometimes…well, sometimes he doesn’t understand words can be as blunt as a tool.”
“Humph.” Gabe glanced over toward the front of the house and then back at Joseph. “See you inside then.”
“Sure. See you inside.”
As he walked toward the front steps, Grace tucked her hand in his. He noticed she did that whenever they were in a new place or if a situation unsettled her—like with the doctor. It didn’t bother him. She was growing up quickly, and he might not ever have another boppli.
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