by Emma Miller
Rebecca felt her cheeks grow warm. It was good to hear that Fannie approved of what she’d done with Amelia, but Mary and Lilly were her friends. It wasn’t right to make light of their efforts. “Ya, Caleb’s house did need readying up,” she admitted. “But he’d just moved in when Mary and Lilly helped out. Just coming from Idaho to Delaware had to be upsetting to Amelia.” Feeling uncomfortable, Rebecca glanced across to where the men stood and was surprised to find Caleb watching her.
“If Rebecca has such a touch with that girl, she’d better see to her,” Martha retorted, pointing. “Looks to me as though the pot has just boiled over.”
Rebecca turned in time to see Amelia, on the porch, give Mae a hard shove that sent her tumbling off the back step. Susanna protested and Amelia answered back. Then Mae began to wail and Amelia burst into tears.
Rebecca grimaced.
“Go on,” Mam said. “Straighten it out.”
By the time Rebecca reached the porch, Amelia had worked herself up into a full-blown fuss.
Susanna was attempting to quiet her, to no avail. “She hit Mae and pushed her off the step,” Susanna said. “And...and Mae hurt her knee.”
Mae’s black cotton stocking was torn, and Rebecca saw a small scrape and a few drops of blood. Mae, naturally, was making the most of the incident, howling like a hound dog on the trail of a rabbit. “She hurt me,” Mae blubbered.
“I hate her!” Amelia shouted between outbursts of angry tears.
Rebecca gathered her charge—kicking and screaming—and whisked her into the house. As she carried the child through the back doorway and into the kitchen crowded with women and babies, she ignored unrequested advice sent in her direction and hurried through the kitchen and the rows of benches set up in the living room for church services. She turned into a wide hallway and found the spacious downstairs bathroom. Rebecca closed and locked the door behind them, and deposited the still-hysterical Amelia on the floor.
The girl stomped her foot and swung a fist at her. “I hate you, too!”
“Shh, shh, sweetie, you don’t hate anyone,” Rebecca soothed. She knelt on the floor so that she was eye to eye with the frustrated child. “Now, tell me what’s wrong.”
Amelia’s features crumpled and she began to cry in earnest. Rebecca held out her arms and the little girl first hesitated, then ran into them. “Mae said...said...I don’t have a mother,” she sobbed. “An...and I do so.” Her thin shoulders trembled. “I do.”
“Of course you do,” Rebecca answered. “She’s still your mother, even if she can’t be here with you.”
Amelia drew in a long, ragged sob. “Mae said...said she has a mother and I don’t.”
“Shh, shh,” Rebecca soothed, cradling the child against her. “That wasn’t very nice of Mae.”
“She said...” Amelia pulled away and rubbed her eyes with her fists. “She said my Mam went to heaven because I was bad.”
“Ne.” Rebecca shook her head. “It was an accident. If you ask your dat, he’ll explain it to you.”
“Mae is mean. She wouldn’t let me look at the book with the giraffe. She said she can read and I can’t.”
“I’ll tell you a secret, Amelia. Mae was pretending. She can’t read yet, either. But when you are a little older, you’ll go to school and then you’ll both learn.”
“I hate her.”
Rebecca sighed. “You don’t hate her. Mae is your friend. She let you play with her Noah’s ark, remember? Sometimes friends say unkind things to each other, but it doesn’t mean that you stop liking each other.”
Amelia sniffed. “I wasn’t going to take her book home. I just wanted to look at the pictures.”
“She should have shared with you.” Rebecca gave Amelia another hug. “Let me wash your face.”
“My tummy hurts.”
“I know, but you’ll feel better with a clean face.” Rebecca stood up, ran cool water on a clean washcloth and wiped the tears and sweat from Amelia’s face. “You know, Mae’s first mother, the one whose tummy she grew in, died, too. She’s in heaven with your mam. My sister Anna is Mae’s new mother. So, for a long time, Mae was just like you.”
Amelia’s eyes widened. “She was? Did her mam die in a fire?”
Rebecca flinched. She hadn’t known that Amelia was aware of the details of her mother’s passing. Compassion made Rebecca’s eyes blur with unshed tears. “Ne, sweet. Mae’s mam was very sick and she couldn’t get better.”
“Will my dat get sick like that?”
Rebecca shook her head. “He is a big, strong man, Amelia. Nothing bad will happen to him.” She wondered if it was wrong to say such a thing to an innocent child. Especially when her own father had been taken far too young. But she didn’t have the heart to say otherwise. “You must trust in God, Amelia. Say your prayers and try to do what is right. And you mustn’t hit or push or get angry with your friends.”
“She was mean.” Amelia pushed out her lower lip stubbornly. “She wouldn’t let me share her book.”
“That was wrong,” Rebecca agreed, “but hitting and pushing were two wrongs. You’ll have to think about that.”
“And say I’m sorry?”
“Only if you really are,” Rebecca pronounced. “Not if you don’t want to.”
Amelia chewed at the protruding lip. “Will I get a new mother, too?”
“Maybe,” Rebecca said. “Ya, I think maybe you will.”
“When?”
Rebecca shook her head. “Only God and your father know. And maybe your dat doesn’t know, either. But someday, I’m sure you will.”
“Will she be nice?”
“Absolutely. As nice as Anna is to Mae. And she will love you and take care of you.”
“Like Mae?”
“Ya, just like Mae.”
A sharp rapping on the bathroom door made the two of them jump.
“Amelia? Rebecca?” Caleb’s voice.
“Yes?” Rebecca swallowed to dissolve the lump in her throat. Caleb sounded cross. Had he seen what happened with the children? “I was just—”
“Open the door.”
Rebecca did as he asked. “Amelia’s fine. She and Mae just had a little fuss and—”
“Amelia? Did Rebecca spank you?”
The little girl looked at her father and burst into tears.
Rebecca blanched. “Spank her? Ne, I just—”
“I thought you said she was fine,” Caleb said. “Look at her.” Amelia flung herself into her father’s embrace and started sobbing again.
“She was fine until you...” Rebecca tried to maintain her composure. “It was just a children’s spat.”
“If there was a problem, you should have called me. I’m her father. It isn’t your place to discipline my child.”
Amelia’s wails became a shriek.
“I didn’t discipline her.” Against her will, Rebecca’s eyes teared up. Caleb wasn’t listening to her. He was judging her without hearing her side. “I was just trying to—”
“Your aunt told me what you were doing.” He glared at her, his face contorted with anger.
“I don’t care what anyone said. I would never—”
“When I need your help, I’ll ask for it,” Caleb said. Then he lifted Amelia into his arms and carried her out of the bathroom and down the hall.
Rebecca walked out of the bathroom, then turned, but not toward the parlor and living room where church members were already beginning to file in for the afternoon worship service. She went in the opposite direction.
She heard footsteps behind her and stopped, expecting to confront Caleb again. Instead she found that it was Mary.
“What happened?” Mary asked. “He yelled at you, didn’t he? I heard him from the kitchen. What did he say?”
&nbs
p; Rebecca shook her head. Mary was her friend, but she wasn’t about to escalate the embarrassing situation. Bad enough that Caleb had been misinformed and believed it—believed that Rebecca would spank his child. She didn’t want to distract the community from Sunday services and cause a bigger scene. “It doesn’t matter what he said,” Rebecca hedged. “Amelia was crying and Caleb thought I’d taken her into the bathroom to punish her.”
“You wouldn’t listen to me about him, would you?” Mary whispered with a satisfied expression. “But I told you so.”
Chapter Six
The following morning, Rebecca arrived early at Caleb’s house, not certain if she wanted to continue working for him—or if he wanted her. She’d gone over and over in her head what had happened the previous day, and she’d come to the conclusion that maybe she had overstepped her bounds in dealing with the incident between Mae and Amelia. As unusual as it was for a father to become involved in such a small matter in public, Caleb was Amelia’s parent, her only parent. And if he believed that she’d overstepped her boundaries and interfered, he’d been right to be irritated with her.
Obviously, Aunt Martha had said something to Caleb that had agitated the situation. What she’d said Rebecca didn’t know, but she could imagine. “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” Aunt Martha loved to quote that, although Rebecca had never seen her aunt physically correct Dorcas or any other child. Rebecca had to believe that Aunt Martha hadn’t meant to cause discord. Mam said Aunt Martha had a good heart under all her bluster; she just said whatever popped into her head without considering the harm it could do. Rebecca liked to think that Mam was right, but sometimes...sometimes it was difficult not to believe that her aunt enjoyed making mischief—especially for her sister-in-law Hannah and her daughters.
When Rebecca arrived at the farm, she found Caleb in the kitchen attempting to pack his lunch. Amelia, still in her nightgown and barefooted, was standing beside him, chattering away about Mae’s giraffe book. When Rebecca entered the room, the little girl gave her a shy smile and ran to greet her.
“I’m hungry, Becca. Can I have pancakes for breakfast? I like pancakes. Blueberry. Can I?”
Rebecca removed her bonnet and hung it on a hook near the door, then added her cloak. It was cool this morning and the snap of autumn filled the air with the scents of wood smoke, newly split kindling and falling crimson and gold leaves. “Good morning, Caleb,” she said hesitantly.
Fritzy gave a happy yelp and wagged his tail before dropping into a sitting position and raising one front paw.
“Good morning, Fritzy,” Rebecca said. “Good boy.”
Ignoring the dog, Caleb’s eyes locked with Rebecca’s, his steely gray gaze clouded with emotion. “I’m glad you came this morning.” He looked at the floor, then back up at her. “I talked to Amelia. She told me what happened with Mae and what you said to her in the bathroom. I was wrong to jump to conclusions.” Tiny wrinkles creased his forehead. “I owe you an apology.” He swallowed. “I let my temper get the best of me, and I made a fool of myself. I hope you can forgive me.”
“Ya,” Rebecca murmured. “You did. Embarrass me,” she added quickly. “I didn’t mean to imply you were a fool.”
“Only right if you did,” he answered. He spread his hands, palm up, and Rebecca noticed a smear of mustard on his fingers. “I’m a blunt man. It’s a fault of mine, and I fear I’m too old to overcome it. But I wronged you, and I intend to say so—not just to you, but to the community. Someone said something that made me think—”
“Aunt Martha,” she supplied, going to the sink and retrieving a clean washcloth.
He nodded.
“Your hand,” she said, running water on the cloth. She held it out to him. “Mustard...from your sandwich.”
Caleb took the offered washcloth and cleaned off the mustard. “I’m all thumbs in the kitchen. Always was.” He indicated the lumpy sandwich with bits of cheese and roughly cut ham spilling from the sides of the bread slices. Neither of them mentioned the obvious. His scarred hand didn’t work as smoothly as the other. Not that he was handicapped. He managed his woodworking business, but using the burned hand was more awkward. “I’m apparently not much better in the role of preacher,” he added.
Rebecca smiled gently. “I thought your sermon yesterday was a good one.” A basket of clean laundry stood on the counter and Rebecca rifled through pillowcases and towels in search of socks for Amelia.
“Your opinion or that of the other members?”
“I only know what some of the women say. Mam gave you a B plus.” Rebecca had worn a lavender dress today with the usual white apron. The garment was new. She’d finished stitching it on Mam’s treadle machine on Saturday. It was as plain as her other dresses, but the cotton was soft and it was just the right weight for a fall day.
Caleb chuckled. “Bishop Atlee said I was a little long on the flight from Pharaoh’s army and a little short on scripture.” Caleb grimaced. “Too short altogether. He said that it was a good thing that Preacher Reuben can always be counted on to bring an abundance of sermon.”
Caleb wore navy trousers, a light blue short-sleeved shirt and navy suspenders over his high-top, leather work shoes. It was what he wore every day but Sundays. Rebecca noticed that, as usual, his shirt was wrinkled. This one was also marred at the shoulder by what looked like a burn mark in the shape of an iron. She washed and ironed Amelia’s clothes, but not Caleb’s. He’d said that it wasn’t fitting, and he liked to do his own laundry. Rebecca thought that he needed, at the very least, either help or instruction in the art of ironing.
Looking at his shirt, she thought how strange it was that she noticed the burn on his shirt first, not the scars on his face. His scars had been a little frightening the first time she’d seen them, but now she accepted them as part of Caleb. She simply didn’t notice them when she looked at him. One side of his face, one hand, were smooth, and it was easy to imagine the other half as a mirror image...the way he’d been before the tragic fire.
She met his gaze. “I liked the part where you spoke about Moses’s doubts when the Israelites were crossing the Red Sea and the soldiers were right behind them. That was good.”
“I think I can understand a little of how he felt. Moses. God had called him, but he didn’t feel up to the task.” He opened a plastic bag and began to gather up his sandwich to put it in. “It’s all new to me, preaching. I can’t help thinking there are other men in the church who would do a better job.”
“I can help,” Amelia said.
“Wait—” Rebecca put out her hand to take Amelia’s, but it was too late. Amelia pulled her father’s sandwich to the edge of the counter, knocking half onto the floor. Fritzy dove for the bread and meat and gobbled it up.
“Fritzy!” Caleb said. The dog trotted to the far side of the kitchen, lay down and licked the crumbs off his chin with a long, red tongue.
“Not much left of your ham sandwich, I’m afraid,” Rebecca said. “Do you like tuna salad?”
Caleb’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “Like it fine. Don’t have a can of tuna in the house. It doesn’t matter. I can do without—”
“You can’t work without your midday meal. Take this.” She went to where she’d hung her cape and removed a foil-wrapped package from the pocket. “Two tuna sandwiches on rye with lettuce and mayonnaise. Mam was pushing them this morning. We had a lot of tuna salad left over from yesterday.”
Caleb’s face reddened. “I can’t take your lunch.”
“Of course you can. I’ll just make some macaroni and cheese at nooning. Amelia loves mac and cheese.” She looked at the little girl. “Don’t you, Amelia?”
“Ya,” the child agreed.
Caleb hesitated. “If you’re sure...”
“I’m sure. I like mac and cheese, too, and we had tuna sandwiches for supper last night.”<
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“All right.” Caleb reached for the foil-wrapped sandwiches. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Rebecca lifted Amelia onto a chair and knelt to slip stockings on to her bare feet. “You need to find your shoes,” she said. “The floor is cold.” She glanced back at Caleb as Amelia jumped down off the chair. “What you said about you being a preacher. Grossmama says that God doesn’t make mistakes. If He chose you for the job of preacher, it was the right decision.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself.” He grabbed an apple off the counter and put it in a battered old black lunchbox, along with Rebecca’s tuna sandwiches. “I may be a little late this afternoon. I have to finish cutting out some delicate pieces and pack them for a UPS pick up.” In the doorway, he grabbed his straw hat and pulled it down over his forehead. He turned back to her. “I hope you’ll accept my apology.”
Rebecca looked at Caleb. “You’ve already apologized to me. There’s no need to say anything more to me or to anyone else.” That would give people more to talk about, she thought, but wisely didn’t add.
“There’s every need,” he said gruffly as he reached for his denim jacket. “How can I point out the mistakes others make if I’m not willing to take responsibility for my own?”
“Is that how you think of it?” she asked. “A preacher’s job is to point out mistakes?”
“Isn’t it?”
She nibbled at her lower lip. “I think it’s about being a shepherd, helping the flock to find water and a safe place to rest.”
He shook his head. “People aren’t sheep. I’m responsible for their souls.”
She wasn’t certain that she agreed his job was to point out the errors of people’s ways, but it wasn’t her place to argue. “I still don’t think you need to say anything to anyone about what happened. It was such a small misunderstanding, Caleb. And I was partly in the wrong, too. I’m not Amelia’s mother.”
“Ne. You’re not.”
His face hardened and Rebecca wished she’d had the good sense to keep her mouth shut while she was ahead.