by Jo Ann Brown
“You said they want their parents’ attention.”
She put a hand on his arm to stop him from following the kinder up the hill. When he turned toward her, she said, “Of course they want their parents’ attention first and foremost, but they’d be happy to have anyone’s. That’s why I try to take them places where they can be pampered a bit, like getting their hair cut or to the ice-cream shop.”
“Have you mentioned this to them?”
“The kinder?”
He shook his head. “No, their parents.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She clasped her hands behind her so he couldn’t see how they tightened at the futility of the situation. “I don’t want them to think I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong. I’m their nanny, not a family member.”
“Don’t tell the kinder that. They treat you like a beloved aenti.”
“Maybe, but an aenti isn’t a mamm.”
“Are you arguing for telling your bosses the truth or against it?” He gave her a taut smile. “As I’ve told you before, they’re not going to fire you. Why would they when they’ve had so much trouble finding a nanny who will stay?”
“You’re looking at this logically, and logic might not have anything to do with their reaction. If they do fire me, then the kinder will have nobody other than a parade of other caretakers.”
“As they did before you were hired?”
“Ja.”
She must choose the time to confront them, so they would listen. How she wished Toby understood! He wasn’t going to remain in Harmony Creek Hollow to see the consequences, so she had to trust her instincts.
Could she trust her instincts right now when her heart begged to be given to him?
Chapter Ten
Toby recognized the name on the mailbox as Sarah turned the buggy into the lane leading to a farm set on a broad lawn. Wagler was the surname of her twin friends. He wondered which one they were visiting after collecting the pine boughs. Or would both women be there?
He thought about what he’d witnessed after church when Sarah and her three gut friends laughed and chatted together with an ease that suggested they’d known each other their whole lives. However, he’d discovered that they’d met only a few months ago.
Was it possible for him to build strong friendships as Sarah had? He’d avoided them, even while working on J.J.’s ranch. Maybe he should consider lowering his guard and explore the possibilities of developing more than work relationships. Friendships and—he glanced toward Sarah, who was focused on driving along the twisting lane—perhaps something more.
Then what? demanded the voice that always warned him away from making rash decisions.
He wanted to retort to the voice but had never won an argument with it in the past. The one time he’d refused to heed it when he was twelve ended with his heart being broken into uncountable pieces. Once burned, twice the fool to try again.
To ignore his thoughts, Toby looked at the farm ahead of them. It looked like the others they’d passed on their way along the twisting road into the hollow. There was a rambling white house, recently painted because it glistened in the sunshine. A broad yard was edged by flowerbeds and a vegetable garden. Every row seemed to be exploding with vegetables waiting to be picked.
Behind the house were three barns, a chicken coop and what looked like a rabbit hutch. A pen was filled with goats in every combination of white, black and brown. One barn was much larger than the others, and he guessed it held the farm’s milking parlor. The rumble from the smallest outbuilding told him the Waglers had a diesel generator to run their milking lines and the air compressors that powered other equipment.
Toby listened to the excited kinder behind them as Sarah slowed the buggy beside the house. The youngsters scurried out as soon as the wheels stopped moving, but halted when Sarah asked them to wait in case he needed help.
He could get out of the buggy on his own but didn’t gainsay her, knowing she was using him as an excuse to keep the youngsters from scattering like windblown leaves.
Alexander stepped up, flexed his muscles with a big grin and offered to help Toby. With one hand on the boy’s scrawny shoulder, Toby made sure he didn’t put too much weight on Alexander.
Doing so made it more awkward to get out than on his own. He grimaced as he shifted his balance onto his right side while trying not to knock the boy over. Gripping the edge of the windshield, he nodded his thanks to Alexander, who was grinning as if he’d been the greatest help imaginable.
“Danki, Alexander,” Sarah added, stepping toward them and steering the boy away without appearing to do so.
“Why are we here?” asked Natalie.
“You’ll see.”
“Why won’t you tell us?” Ethan stuck out his bottom lip.
Sarah smiled and tapped it, making the boy grin and his siblings giggle. No wonder Sarah was so gut with Bay Boy. She’d shown the horse the same patience she exhibited with four impatient kinder. Not that she was passive. Quite to the contrary, because he’d seen her eyes filled with heated sparks, but she knew how to pick her battles and when.
When she hadn’t said anything to him on the short trip from her brothers’ farm, Toby was sure something was bothering her. He thought through their conversation among her family’s Christmas trees. She’d been distressed by how Summerhays and his wife paid too little attention to their kinder, but she’d been ready to speak her mind on that subject.
So what was bothering her now?
You.
Again, the small voice in his mind startled him. He’d heard it as clearly as he could the birds chirping overhead and, for once, it wasn’t warning him away from becoming too close to someone. Instead, it was telling him the reason why there might be a wall between him and Sarah.
Maybe it was for the best. Every day he lingered was another drawing him into the community in the hollow. Each moment he spent with Sarah enticed him to look forward to the next time they could be together. In spite of his determination, his life was being linked to hers and her neighbors.
That would change once J.J.’s trailer pulled into the long driveway of Summerhays Stables.
A door to the house opened, and a petite brunette walked toward them. He wasn’t sure which twin she was until Sarah greeted her.
“Leanna, in case you don’t remember, this is Toby Christner.” Sarah smiled.
“Nice to see you again, Toby.” The brunette who was shorter than Sarah turned to the kinder. “Now, let me see if I can match the right name to the right person.” She pointed to each kind and spoke his or her name.
“How do you know I’m Mia?” asked the littler girl.
“Because Sarah told me you loved animals, and I can see how eager you are to meet my goats.” Leanna held out her hand.
Without hesitation, Mia grasped it. The two led the way toward the pen where the goats rushed forward as Leanna approached. The little girl didn’t falter when the animals, which must have seemed huge to her, crowded around the fence. A pure white kid jumped onto a plastic box so it could look at Mia.
“Will it bite?” the little girl asked.
“Any animal with teeth can bite.” Leanna’s voice was calm. “Snowball is a gut little girl and likes to have her head scratched between her horn buds.”
Mia reached through the fence and touched the kid on the head. When her hand was butted, she giggled before scratching Snowball. She grinned at her siblings as more young kids pushed forward to get attention.
When Leanna opened the gate, Mia was the first to follow her into the pen.
“She’s brave,” Toby said.
“Ja, she is.” Sarah’s smile softened. “She adores animals, but it’s more than that.” She gestured toward where the kinder were now encircled by the goats. “They’re hungry for love.”
“The goats?”
“No, the kinder.” She faced him. For a moment, sunshine glinted off her glasses, hiding the expression in her eyes. “They’ve been left behind too often.”
“You’re worried they’re going to be hurt when I go back to Texas.”
“Ja.”
He wanted to ask how she would feel when he left, but he’d hurt his ankle, not his head, so he didn’t have an excuse to ask a stupid question. Better to focus, as she was, on the youngsters.
“If you want,” he said, “I’ll wait here.”
Shock filled her eyes. “No, that’s not what I want. I don’t know what I want.” She grimaced. “Don’t change what you’re doing. The kinder will be upset when you go, but won’t it be better to give them nice memories of your times together to enjoy when they think about you after you’ve left?”
Without giving him a chance to answer, she pointed at the buggy and asked him to bring a bag of pine boughs to the goats’ enclosure. She lifted two bags off and walked toward the gate.
He sighed as she strode away. Nice memories of times together? Maybe that would be sufficient for the kinder, but he doubted it would be enough for him. Was it possible he’d been wrong? Could it be that time spent building a relationship had nothing to do with the pain of breaking that connection with someone? He wasn’t sure any longer.
* * *
The pine boughs were a huge success for the goats who ate them as fast as the kinder could take them out of the bag. Sarah stood between Mia and Natalie as they hand-fed the goats. Leanna kept an eye on the boys and made sure no animal got too aggressive.
Sarah giggled when the goats tried to climb one another for the treat. If Mia made sure Snowball got more than her share, nobody said anything. Each Summerhays kind seemed to have a favorite or two among the small herd.
There were complaints from both the kinder and the kids when the bag was empty. Leanna was adamant that too much of a gut thing was bad for goats.
“How can fresh greens be bad for them when they eat tin cans?” asked Alexander, digging out a final bough from the bag.
“They don’t eat cans,” Leanna said as she rolled the plastic bag and held it too high for the goats to reach. “They will eat the paper stuck to the outside of cans, but not the metal itself. That’s a narrisch story.”
“What?”
“A crazy story,” Sarah explained. “Narrisch means crazy. Or you can say someone is ab in kopp.”
“Kopp means head, ain’t so?” asked Ethan.
Sarah nodded. “I didn’t realize you knew that.”
“I want to learn to speak Amish so I can play with the kids in the hollow.” He grimaced. “Not these kids, but the others.”
“I know what you mean.” She brushed dirt from an overeager goat’s hooves off his back. “I didn’t realize you knew the kinder here.”
“I don’t. Not yet.” He turned to where Toby was leaning on the fence, his arms folded on the top. “Toby said we could have fun with them and go sledding after it snows.”
“Did he?” She wondered when Toby had mentioned such things to them. Probably while they were collecting the boughs. Once she had a chance to speak to Mr. Summerhays, she wanted to introduce her charges to the local plain kinder. She had some ideas of how to do that, but she must make sure their daed approved.
As Ethan babbled about finding the biggest hill and riding on the fastest sled, she extracted the four youngsters from the herd. The goats stepped aside reluctantly. The kinder went out, telling Toby about everything they’d done, though he’d witnessed each minute. They skipped to the buggy to bring the other bags of pine boughs to the barn.
When Leanna closed the gate, she paused and looked at the goats feasting on the pine needles that had fallen on the ground.
Sarah waited beside her friend as the kinder followed Toby to the buggy. She couldn’t keep from smiling. There was something so endearing about the strong but injured man listening to four youngsters vying to get his attention and asking his opinion. It would have been wiser to keep distance between him and the kinder—and her—but it was impossible.
“Be careful,” Leanna said in not much more than a whisper as she latched the gate. “Don’t get your hopes up, Sarah.”
“My hopes up? On what?”
“On persuading Toby to stay here in our settlement.”
“I’m not trying to convince him to stay in Harmony Creek Hollow.” I don’t know if I want to stay.
Leanna patted the head of a goat that butted her through the fence, looking for another treat. “It looks like you are. I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
“Annie—”
“It’s not just us. Lyndon asked me about you and Toby and your plans. Several people mentioned it to him after you arranged for Toby to check out the horses Mercy wants for her camp.”
Lyndon was older than the twins. He lived nearby with his family, including his son, who was a kind Sarah had in mind for Alexander to play with. Now she wondered what the reaction would be if she asked.
“Your brother shouldn’t listen to gossip or repeat it.” Sarah struggled to swallow her dismay.
If her brothers heard such rumors and believed them, what would they do? They seemed determined to prevent her from making mistakes. They could insist she avoid Toby, though she had no idea how she would while working at the house where he lived.
Don’t borrow trouble, her common sense warned her.
Leanna put kind fingers on Sarah’s arm, and Sarah knew her thoughts had seeped out to be displayed on her face. “Don’t worry, Sarah. Lyndon didn’t speak about it to anyone but me. He wanted to know if it was true you and Toby were walking out together, because he planned to squelch the rumor if it wasn’t.”
“So you told him it wasn’t so.”
“I told him the truth. I didn’t know if you were trying to convince Toby to stay or not.” She wiped her hands on her apron.
“Toby has made it clear right from the beginning that as soon as his boss returns, he’ll go home to Texas.”
“Things change.”
“Not that much. Toby loves his life in Texas.”
“How much do you love your life in Harmony Creek Hollow?” Leanna looked away as she asked, “Would you leave here to go with him?”
“I’ve never given that idea the slightest thought.” Whether she stayed plain or became Englisch, she intended to remain close to her family. Her brothers might want nothing to do with her, but she couldn’t imagine walking away from them forever.
Leanna smiled. “I’m glad to hear that. You’ve become a dear friend, Sarah, and I wouldn’t want you to leave the Harmony Creek Spinsters’ Club.”
A gasp came from behind her. Sarah whirled to see Toby standing there. How much of their conversation had he heard?
“Harmony Creek Spinsters’ Club?” he repeated as his eyes widened. “Did I hear you right?”
“It’s a joke.” She hoped her face wasn’t turning red, but the familiar heat warned her that her skin was becoming the same shade as her hair. “It’s a name we older unmarried women gave ourselves when we decided to do more things together. We didn’t want to call ourselves the ‘Older Girls Club’ because that sounds worse.”
“But Harmony Creek Spinsters’ Club?” He started to add more, but his words dissolved into a laugh that burst from deep within him.
She couldn’t help but stare. There was such candid and unabashed joy in his eyes and his stance as he leaned on his crutches. The Summerhays kinder rushed over to discover what was behind his unexpected laughter.
Then she began to laugh, too. She hadn’t imagined Toby’s laughter, once freed, would be so infectious. When Leanna and the youngsters joined in, the goats began to bleat as if they wanted to be part of the merriment.
“Everyone tell Leanna danki for letting us vis
it her and her goats,” Sarah said when she could talk again.
The chorus of responses included Toby’s much deeper voice.
“Komm anytime,” Leanna said. “I can always use helpers to feed the goats.”
“Now,” Sarah added to curtail pleas to stay longer, “we need to get home for lunch, lessons and—” she turned to Toby and said with a mock frown and a stern tone “—physical therapy.”
The kinder and Toby gave emoted groans but went to the buggy. Sarah gave her friend a quick hug before following. They waved goodbye to Leanna as Sarah drove them toward the road that followed the sinuous Harmony Creek.
Again, the conversation in the back seat was nonstop until the youngsters scrambled out in front of the Summerhays house. They rushed up the porch steps, and Sarah reminded them they needed to wash first.
Toby followed her as she unhitched Charmer and put him to graze.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
“For laughing at our club’s name?” Her grin ruined her attempt to sound serious.
“No, for mentioning about the kids going sledding with the other kinder without saying anything to you first. I don’t know if I’ve stepped on your toes.”
“You haven’t. I’ve been thinking about ways to get the Summerhays kinder and the plain ones together to play when they’re not in school. There aren’t a lot of Englisch kinder nearby, and they need to have friends beyond each other.”
“The kinder will be excited to have you act as a conduit for them to meet others their own ages among the Leit.”
“I grew up with a group of five other girls who were with me from diapers to school and beyond. We did everything together, learning to cook and do farm chores and take care of the smaller ones. We helped each other in school and, when we were old enough, we attended singings and other youth gatherings together. I know how important those friendships have been to me.”