by Jo Ann Brown
“That’s possible.”
Standing, she motioned for Robert to come with her. He didn’t move.
“We need to talk to him,” she insisted.
“You try. You’re better with kinder than I am.”
She gave him a puzzled glance. No doubt, she was wondering why he’d say such a thing, but he knew the truth. He was his daed’s son, and he shouldn’t be trusted around kinder. If he lost his temper as his daed had...
Douglas returned to the table. The boy started to sit but paused when she said, “Be careful. You’re going to crush those muffins in your pockets.”
“Muffins?” He laughed. “I got chicken and biscuits, Lady Beth Ann.”
“I saw what you did.” She plucked a crumbling muffin from his pocket. Sitting again, she asked, “You don’t like these muffins. Who does?”
“I don’t know. You want me to ask around?”
She ignored his flippant tone. “Douglas, tell me the truth.”
“The truth is it’s none of your business.”
“You can tell me, or you can explain to the ladies in the kitchen why you’re taking the food they made.”
He glanced at Robert as if he expected help, then sighed. “Okay. I know someone who’s hungry.”
“Who?”
“I don’t—”
“Give up, Douglas,” Robert said with a terse laugh. He shouldn’t have been getting involved, but he didn’t like watching Beth Ann’s attempts at kindness being thrown into her face by a pint-size thief. “You know you might as well tell her, because she’s not going to give up until you do.”
Panic twisted the child’s face. “I ain’t done nothing wrong. You said I could take as much as I wanted as long as it got eaten.”
“Don’t you think,” Beth Ann asked, “your friend would like chicken and biscuits and cranberry sauce more than an unbuttered bran muffin?”
“Yeah.” The single word was reluctant.
“Finish up your supper while I finish mine. Robert, will you get a take-out box and spoon up a serving of the chicken and biscuits?” She smiled at the boy. “And plenty of cranberry sauce.”
“Get two servings,” Douglas said in between hasty bites as if he feared she’d take his food off his plate.
Robert nodded and stood.
Beth Ann gave him a swift smile that danced through his center. He looked away. Leaving the two at the table, he went to ask one of the kitchen ladies for the food. He couldn’t stop himself from peeking at the table where Beth Ann watched the boy eat. When Douglas cleaned his plate again, she scraped her own meal onto his. He grunted what might have been gratitude and proceeded to make that food disappear, too.
Robert moved to stand on the boy’s side opposite from where Beth Ann stood as they put on their coats, collected two bags of food and headed out into the night. If Douglas tried to run away, one of them was sure to catch him before he got too far. Robert couldn’t imagine racing around with such a full stomach, but the boy wasn’t happy to be taking them to his friends.
Through a thickening snowstorm, Douglas led them down a street Robert had never been on before. Most of the houses were neatly lit like the rest of the village, but he turned up the walk of the one that wasn’t. By the front door, an old claw-foot tub, minus three of its decorative feet, leaned against a stack of rusty metal chairs. An abandoned toilet sat on the other side of the porch next to a pair of refrigerators full of garbage. Even on the cold November night, the stench was appalling.
When the boy climbed the steps, skipping the broken or missing ones, and threaded his way through the junk on the porch, Douglas acted as if he didn’t notice the reek. Robert guessed he no longer did.
A curtain moved in the window set into the door, which didn’t seem to sit in its jamb. A faint light came from beyond it. When it flickered, Robert realized it must be a candle. Douglas made a quick motion he guessed they weren’t supposed to see. Was the kind warning someone he wasn’t alone?
“Supper’s here,” Beth Ann called. “Who wants chicken and biscuits?”
The door popped open. Two heads appeared in the light from a candle burning inside what had once been a kerosene lamp. Two redheads who were younger than Douglas. A thin girl and a tiny little boy who dragged his foot as he walked toward them.
“You brought us chicken and biscuits, Dougie?” asked the little boy. “It smells good!”
He hooked a thumb behind him. “They’ve got the food.” He aimed a frown at Beth Ann and Robert. “Guess they didn’t trust me to carry it.”
“We didn’t trust you not to eat it,” Robert said in a solemn tone that triggered giggles from the younger kinder.
Before Douglas could answer, Beth Ann asked, “Will you introduce us?”
Robert thought the boy would refuse, but fatigue was heavy in Douglas’s voice as he said, “These two nosy snoops are Robert—don’t call him Bob—and Lady Beth Ann. This is Crystal, and the runt is Tommy.”
“Ain’t a runt,” retorted the smaller boy.
“I would say not,” Beth Ann hurried to say before an argument could start. “You’re a big boy for someone who’s...”
“I’m five!” He jutted out his chin in a pose identical to his brother’s. “Well, almost five. I’m going to be five on Christmas. Me and Baby Jesus were born on the same day.” Without a break to take a breath, he added, “Crystal’s eight, and Dougie is twice my age. See? I can do big-boy numbers.”
“So I see.” Robert was astonished to discover the fast-talking boy was only ten years old.
Looking over their heads, Robert saw paint chipping off the walls and littering the floor in small piles. A single chair was visible, and the seat had half fallen out of it.
“Where do you want to eat?” he asked.
The little boy grasped Beth Ann’s hand. “I’ll show you!”
Robert tried not to stare at his right foot slapping the floor on every step. His rolling motion was similar to Beth Ann’s. Was the little boy supposed to be wearing a brace also?
His attention was pulled away when he heard a moan. Not from the kinder or Beth Ann. It came from the house. A warning, if he had to guess, that it needed more than a deep cleaning. The two windows in what he guessed was a dining room were cracked, and their moldings were several degrees off square.
Crystal set the lamp on a table covered with dirty dishes and what looked like rodent droppings.
Putting her hand to her mouth, Beth Ann retched. They couldn’t let the kinder eat in such conditions.
“Get your coats,” he said. “This food has gotten cold. Let’s go and get you some warm supper.” As the littler ones cheered and ran to get their coats farther in the unlit house, he asked their big brother, “Where are your parents?”
“Our dad is gone.” Douglas spoke the words without malice, stating what for him must have been a fact of life. “Mom is in rehab.” His mouth twisted. “Again.”
“So who lives here with you?”
“Aunt Sharon does.”
Robert warned himself to remain calm, but he wanted nothing more than to give the kinder’s aenti a very large, very angry piece of his mind. The kinder’s squalid house was falling down around them. There was no light other than a candle and, from what he could see, no running water. “Can you ask your aenti to come and speak to us?”
Crystal came in. “She’s not here.”
“Where did she go?” Beth Ann asked.
The girl grinned, showing gaps in her teeth where new ones hadn’t come in yet. “Las Vegas. She’s going to bring me some bling.” She paused, looked at her brothers and asked, “What’s bling?”
Beth Ann glanced at Robert, and he knew her thoughts matched his. The problem was far bigger than a boy begging and stealing. These youngsters needed an adult in their lives.
He was sure that adult mus
t not be Robert Yoder. As much as he longed for a family of his own, the encounter with the mayor had been a warning. His temper was far from under control, and he didn’t want anyone else—not Beth Ann, not the kinder—to suffer the next time it overtook him.
Chapter Three
When Beth Ann tugged on his arm, drawing Robert away from the kinder, he was amazed he could move when every muscle seemed frozen. He wasn’t sure if he was more shocked by the state of the house where the Hendersons lived or by his reaction to Beth Ann’s touch. A shimmer of sensation rippled out from where her fingertips had brushed the bare skin of his wrist.
Wrong time, his head warned his heart. The last thing he needed now was to begin a relationship. He was in debt up to his ears, and he had no prospects for a job beyond his volunteer work. Worse, he hadn’t learned how to tame the temper he’d inherited from his daed.
Beth Ann’s mind was on more practical matters, he discovered.
“We’ve got to help them,” she said. “They can’t stay here.”
“I agree.”
She breathed what appeared to be a sigh of relief, and he wondered if she’d expected he’d give her an argument. Anyone with eyes in their head—or a sense of smell—would decide instantly the filthy house was no place for kinder.
“Where will they live?” he asked when she remained silent.
“Why not with you?”
“Me?” He recoiled as if she had jumped out at him and shouted, “Boo!” Didn’t she realize what she was asking?
No, she didn’t. She had no idea how having an instant family, especially one with a boy as rebellious as Douglas Henderson, might become a recipe for the disaster his own youth had been. Already, in the short time since he’d met the boy at the community center, Robert had had to quell his temper when Douglas sassed Beth Ann or showed a total lack of respect for anyone else.
How could he look for a job when he was responsible for three young kinder? Maybe when they were in school. Or were they attending school? He didn’t know much about Englisch education other than it continued beyond the age of fourteen, when formal studies ended for plain scholars.
“Don’t you have room for them? You said you’re living in David Riehl’s barn. It’s got to be bigger than the place where I’m staying.”
“I’ve got roommates, and it’s under construction. It’s no place for kinder.”
She nodded, unable to argue with those facts. “I don’t have much room. Not enough for three children. Could you take the oldest one?”
He noted how careful she was not to speak the boy’s name, drawing the kinder’s attention. Could he provide shelter for Douglas? It was for a single night. In spite of the warnings shouting in his head, he said, “I’ll take him tonight. Tomorrow we need to look at other solutions.”
“I agree.” She gave him a quick smile. “Thank you, Robert. I don’t know where I’d have all of them sleep in my tiny cabin.”
He hadn’t been sure what he’d say next if she hadn’t accepted those facts. He was glad she seemed logical and hadn’t pestered him to explain further. Shame swept through him. Being honest meant telling the whole truth, but he couldn’t. He didn’t know Beth Ann, so he couldn’t trust her.
He wanted to laugh. He didn’t trust anyone with the truth. Not even himself.
“I guess,” Beth Ann said, “the first thing is to gather what the children will need tonight. Tomorrow we’ll have to alert the authorities that the children were left on their own.”
“Why?” When her brows rocketed up, he added, “Sorry. We Amish are accustomed to handling our own problems.”
“These children aren’t Amish, and neither am I.”
Her statement drew him up short. She seemed so much like the plain women he knew he’d let himself forget that important fact.
Before he could speak, she went on, “I know what you’re thinking. I seem to know a lot about Amish folk. It’s because I’ve been welcomed into dozens of Amish homes in Lancaster County as their local midwife.”
“You’re a midwife? How can you get enough time away from your patients to come to Vermont?”
An emotion he couldn’t decipher flashed through her eyes. She waved aside his curious questions as if they were unimportant, but he suspected they were as crucial to her as the secret he carried so deep within his heart.
“We can talk about the past later,” she replied. “Right now, we need to focus on helping the children.”
Not wanting to leave the whole task to her, Robert said, “Let me get what the kinder need to take with them.”
“All right.” Beth Ann hesitated, and he guessed she had no idea where to look in the vile house for what the youngsters needed.
Neither did he.
When he glanced into the dining room, he realized the kinder had gotten tired of waiting to eat. They were finishing the meals brought from the community center. He wasn’t surprised Douglas had spooned gravy and chicken onto a biscuit for himself. The boy must have a bottomless pit inside him, but he’d waited to assure himself his siblings had enough to eat before he dug in himself.
“Oh, dear,” Beth Ann murmured beside him.
He glanced at her. “What’s wrong?”
“I’d hoped we could get them out of here before they ate. Who knows how long it’s been since those plates were last cleaned?”
“Yummy,” announced Tommy. “You make good food, Lady Beth Ann.”
“You can call me Beth Ann,” she said with a smile. “I didn’t cook that food. The nice ladies at the community center did.”
The little boy turned to his big brother. “Can we go there tomorrow to eat?”
Douglas blushed with what Robert guessed was embarrassment, and Beth Ann’s laugh startled the boy as much as it did him.
“Yes, you’ll be going there tomorrow. At least for breakfast. I eat at the community center, and you can come with me. Hey, I’ve got an idea.” She made it sound as if the thought had just entered her mind. “Come and stay with me tonight. That way, we can go to breakfast together tomorrow. Where I’m staying isn’t very big, but it’s—”
When she faltered, Robert wondered if she’d been about to say clean. Did she think the kids would care about her appraisal of the pigpen where they lived? Ja, she did. Her heart must be even gentler than he’d guessed.
“My place has got plenty of room for Crystal and Tommy to have a sleepover with me tonight,” she hurried to say. “Douglas, you can stay with the bachelors at Mr. Riehl’s barn. We—”
Douglas jumped to his feet. “Get out and don’t come back! We don’t want your food or your plans or—or—or anything!”
When the boy continued bellowing orders and moved to shove Beth Ann, she caught him by the shoulders before he could knock her off her feet. The other kinder cried out in dismay as Douglas squirmed to escape and swung his fists at her, but she held him gently.
“What’s wrong?” she asked in little more than a whisper. She repeated the question as if singing a lullaby.
The boy calmed enough to mutter, “We don’t need your help.”
“I realize that,” she replied in the same soft voice. “But we want to help.”
“Not my problem.”
“If us helping you isn’t the problem, what is?”
Before the boy could answer, Crystal got up. She held her younger brother’s hand as they walked to Douglas.
“Mommy told us not to let anyone separate us,” the girl said with dignity far beyond her age. “We could end up in fester care.”
“Yeah,” echoed Tommy. “Fester care is the worst.”
Beth Ann’s mouth twitched, but her voice remained serious. “Have you been in it before?”
“No,” Crystal answered, “but Mommy was, and she said our aunt was better than being sucked into the system.” Puzzlement clouded her eyes. “Do you kn
ow what system she’s talking about?”
Robert understood. As a boy, one of his friends had been an Englischer living on a nearby farm. The boy had been in foster care. One day, he’d been there, and the next, gone. No explanation as the boy was ripped out of Robert’s life. He remembered the boy had spoken of siblings, none of whom he’d seen in years.
“Yes, Crystal, I do,” Beth Ann said as he struggled with his memories. “We’re talking about tonight only. Douglas can go with Robert, and—”
The kinder shook their heads.
Beth Ann sighed. “All right. You all can stay with me tonight. Someone may have to sleep standing up, but we’ll figure it out.” Without a pause, she added, “In the morning, we’ll go to the community center for breakfast. Did you know they’ve got both pancakes and waffles? So will you come with me tonight?”
Both younger children shot a pleading glance at their big brother. Robert guessed they would have followed Beth Ann to the ends of the earth to get such an enticing breakfast.
“Dougie, let’s go with Lady Beth Ann,” Crystal urged. “I want pancakes and waffles for breakfast.”
“Me, too!” piped up Tommy before he reached onto the table for the last biscuit and took a huge bite.
“Douglas?” prompted Beth Ann. “What do you say?”
“We can have both pancakes and waffles?” he asked with suspicion.
“You know the rules at the community center. Take all you want as long as you eat all you take.”
“Sounds to me,” Robert interjected, “like you can have both pancakes and waffles as well as both bacon and sausage.”
As he’d hoped, the mention of bacon and sausage sealed the deal for Douglas. The boy nodded, then halted himself as if he didn’t want to show the adults how much he wanted a big breakfast.
Or how much he needed that meal and others. Maybe he was skinny because he was going through a growth spurt. Robert would have liked to believe that, but the stove in the kitchen didn’t have a single pot on it. It was an electric stove. How long had the electricity been off in the house? Since their aenti left or before?