Rosanna clasped her hands in her lap to keep from picking at her nails. It took every ounce of her willpower to sit still. What she really wanted to do was race up the stairs, snatch Mollie from the crib, sneak out the back door, and disappear from sight. But she sat still. Waiting. Wondering. The silence grated on her raw nerves.
Kandi cleared her throat. “Where is she?”
“Mollie is taking a nap,” Sarah answered when Rosanna didn’t.
Rosanna tried to coax her voice out, but that proved quite a chore, since simply breathing had become nearly impossible. “I-I tried to keep her up, but she got too sleepy.”
“Yeah. I guess I was a little late. I overslept.”
The three women stared at one another for another moment. Rosanna’s heart thudded so hard she feared it would fly right out of her body.
“How is she?” Kandi reached into her huge fuchsia handbag and pulled out a pack of gum. She held it out toward Sarah and Rosanna, who both shook their heads, before unwrapping a piece and popping it into her mouth. She chomped for a few minutes, keeping time with the rocking chair.
“Mollie is fine.” Rosanna finally got words past the knot in her throat.
Sarah jumped up from the sofa. “Let me get us all something to drink. Miss Kottyn, would you like water, kaffi, or tea?”
“I’ve had a gallon of coffee already. The motel had free stuff. A glass of water would be nice.”
“Rosanna?”
“Just water, Mamm. I’ll help you.”
“I can handle it. You sit.”
Rosanna feared her legs wouldn’t support her right now anyway, so sitting was probably the best option. She glanced at Kandi, waiting for and dreading her next statement. She shifted her gaze to the window. She’d give anything to be outside in the cold instead of in this room opposite the woman who presented such a threat. The popping gum dragged her attention back to the rocking chair.
“Can I see her?”
“Of course. She should be awake soon.”
Kandi rocked, chomped, and shook her head. “I don’t get it. Why would Jane want total strangers to have her baby instead of her own sister?”
“Maybe she thought a boppli would hinder your career. You’d have to tend to her all hours of the day and night or find a babysitter. Jane probably thought it would be hard for you to be a working mudder.”
“Hmmm. Maybe. But there are zillions of single working mothers in the world.”
“But your work requires you to travel and work different hours, ain’t so?”
“You’re definitely right about that. Just last week, I had a gig that went on until almost four in the morning. I would have needed to have a babysitter all night.”
Exactly. And what kind of life is that for a little girl? To be dragged around from one place to another or left with sitters for hours and hours. Rosanna bit her tongue to keep from giving voice to her thoughts.
“Here we are.” Sarah bustled into the room carrying a tray with three glasses of water and a plate of cookies.
Rosanna breathed a sigh of relief to have her mamm back in the room, even if she did look like she was serving freinden at an afternoon frolic.
Sarah set the tray on an end table and passed glasses of water around. “Help yourself to cookies, Miss Kottyn.”
“Thank you. And you can call me Kandi.” She reached for a plump oatmeal raisin cookie.
Rosanna wondered what the woman would do with the gum while she ate cookies. She didn’t have to wonder long, though. She could see that Kandi used her tongue to push the gum to the back of her mouth before she bit into a cookie. How did she manage not to get the two mixed together? Rosanna’s own stomach churned so much that it surely wouldn’t accept so much as a crumb of a cookie. She’d better stick to plain water.
“Rosanna said you were an actress.” Sarah returned to her spot on the sofa.
Thank goodness her mamm could engage in polite small talk. Rosanna’s own mind resembled one of those little slates she’d seen in the dollar store. Any thought she had immediately got erased, like lifting a corner of the filmy cover on one of those slates.
Kandi gulped down her bite of cookie and sipped her water. Rosanna wondered how she kept from swallowing the gum along with the cookie. “I am an actress, or I want to be. I’ve done more dancing than acting. I hope to get my big break soon.”
Did Mamm understand what that meant? Rosanna sure didn’t have a clue.
“You must stay very busy.” Sarah sipped her water.
“Usually I do. I get regular gigs. Sometimes I do a little singing, too.” Kandi popped the rest of her cookie into her mouth.
“My, you have many talents.”
“I hope the folks I audition for think so, too.” Kandi reached for another cookie. “I really shouldn’t eat all these calories, but the cookies are so delicious.”
“You probably work hard enough that you don’t need to worry about the calories in a few cookies.” Sarah smiled and slid the cookie plate a little closer to their guest.
“I do rehearse a lot.” Kandi nibbled the edges of her cookie, apparently saving the plump raisins for last.
It reminded Rosanna of what she used to do as a little girl when Mamm let her purchase an ice cream bar from the truck that came around in summer. She always tried to bite off the hard outer chocolate coating first and save the vanilla ice cream for last.
“Had you known Jane long? We hadn’t been in touch much.” Kandi’s tongue snaked out to capture a few crumbs.
“I actually only met her when Mollie was born,” Sarah admitted.
“Really?” Kandi turned her gaze on Rosanna.
“I met her that day, too.”
“What? My sister gave her baby to people she’d never seen before?”
“Not exactly,” Rosanna whispered.
“You just said you hadn’t met her before.”
“True, but Jane told me she had been watching me. She knew about me, my habits, even my name. I guess she lived nearby and followed me whenever she could.”
Kandi shivered. “That’s kind of creepy.”
“Not if you didn’t know it was happening. Jane seemed to really care that her boppli have a gut home.”
“I could have given her a good home.” Kandi brought the gum out of reserve and chomped it again as she rocked harder. “Did you go to the hospital and get the baby or did Jane leave her here in a basket on the doorstep with a note, or what?”
Sarah chuckled. “Nothing like that. Jane gave birth here.”
“Here? In this house?”
“Jah. Mamm is a midwife, and I often attend births with her.” Rosanna read horror mixed with surprise on Kandi’s face.
“Jane didn’t even have medical care?”
“Birth is a natural experience, not a sickness,” Rosanna replied.
“What if something went wrong?”
Sarah leaned forward a bit. “I have attended many births. I do not hesitate to send a woman to the hospital if necessary. In fact, I encouraged Jane to give birth at the hospital since I had not seen her prenatally and did not know her history. I did not know she was sick when she arrived. Her labor progressed so quickly there was not much time to do anything but deliver the infant.”
“Wow! She wouldn’t even consider going to the hospital?”
“She wouldn’t hear of it.”
“I suppose that sounds like Jane. She always was feisty, even stubborn. Did she have any problems?”
“Everything went well with the birth.” Sarah sat back and took another sip of water.
Kandi popped her gum. “I don’t get it. Did Jane stay here a few days and then decide to leave her baby?”
“She snuck away before she had two full days to recover following the birth.” Sarah set her glass on the end table and clasped her hands in her lap.
“So you’re telling me my sister gave birth one day, jumped out of bed less than forty-eight hours later, and hightailed it out of here?”
; Rosanna cut her eyes over to her mamm. She had the insane urge to giggle. What would Kandi say if she knew Jane had somehow found the strength to climb out a second-story window to flee? She had better let Mamm handle that question.
“Actually, that’s exactly what she did. She never even wanted to hold her boppli.”
Kandi raised her over-plucked eyebrows. Her red-tinted mouth opened, but not a single sound came out.
“I-I think she didn’t want to form any attachments.” Rosanna recalled Jane’s absolute refusal to hold or even look at her newborn, but tried to soften the blow for Kandi. “You know, it probably would have been ever so much harder to let the boppli go if she’d cuddled her.”
“I guess.” Kandi chewed harder and harder. Rosanna expected to see her spit out bits of her tongue any second.
“I’m sorry to ask, but couldn’t Jane have gotten help for her medical problem?” Instantly Rosanna regretted her question. She didn’t want to add to the other woman’s pain. “Forgive me. You don’t have to answer.”
“That’s quite all right. I’m surprised Jane didn’t tell you herself.”
“We didn’t talk much except for getting through the birth.”
“Jane had a rare childhood cancer. I don’t understand all the medical stuff. They said it could return when she was older, which it did. It showed up in her liver, and there was nothing they could do about it. At least that’s what the coroner’s report said.”
“Jane never talked to you about it?” Rosanna didn’t want to appear nosy, but she couldn’t imagine a family that didn’t communicate about such things.
“We weren’t that close. She wrote me that letter to tell me goodbye, I guess.”
“I’m sorry.” Rosanna struggled to resist the urge to cry. What a sad story. Did poor Jane die alone? She wouldn’t ask that.
“What about your parents?” Sarah asked.
“Our parents passed away a long time ago, and there were just two of us kids. What about the baby’s father?”
“She never mentioned him that I heard,” Sarah replied. “Did she say anything to you, Rosanna?”
“Nee. She didn’t even tell me how sick she was.” Rosanna found it so hard to believe that a girl so desperately ill could give birth without any medication and then steal away like a wounded animal that wandered off to die alone. Rosanna barely suppressed a sob.
Kandi pressed down with the toes of her boots to stop the chair from rocking. “Do you suppose I can see the baby now? We’ve really got to get moving. I’ve got to dance tonight at a club in DC.”
Rosanna started to rise, but Sarah stretched out a hand to stop her. “I’ll get Mollie.”
We. Kandi said we. Did she plan to take the boppli right now? Mollie belonged to her! She had all the legal papers to prove it. “What are your plans?” Rosanna feared the answer but had to ask the question anyway.
“Well, I’m the only family the baby has.”
“We’re her family.” Please, Gott, don’t let her take my boppli away.
“She just woke up.” Sarah entered the room with a wide-awake infant in her arms. She crossed to the rocking chair, where Kandi sat stock-still, not even chomping on her gum. “This is your aenti, Mollie.”
Kandi clapped her hands to her face. “She’s beautiful.”
“Would you like to hold her?”
“I, uh, I guess, uh, but I don’t know how.”
“I’ll put her in your arms.” Sarah lowered the little girl into Kandi’s stiff arms. “You won’t break her. She’s pretty strong.”
“Hi.” Fear shone in Kandi’s eyes. “I-I’m your aunt.”
Mollie apparently picked up on Kandi’s discomfort. How could she not, with those wooden arms around her? Her little forehead wrinkled, and her lower lip trembled.
“Hey, don’t cry, kiddo.” Kandi looked up with a helpless expression on her face. “I don’t think she likes me.”
“She’s not used to you, that’s all,” Sarah assured her.
Rosanna pretended glue held her to the sofa. Otherwise she would have darted over to the rocking chair and snatched Mollie from Kandi’s arms. The other woman might be a blood relative, but Rosanna was Mollie’s mudder. How could Kandi possibly think she could raise the boppli when she was afraid to even hold her? How would she feed her or change her diaper?
“She doesn’t look a lot like Jane, does she? I mean, Jane had brown hair. The baby’s hair is blonde.”
“A lot of bopplin are born with blonde hair, and it darkens when they get older, ain’t so, Mamm?” Rosanna’s arms ached to hold her little girl, but they didn’t hurt nearly as badly as her heart did.
Mollie’s wail startled all three women. She cranked her little head around as if searching for a familiar face.
“Take her!” Kandi held the infant away from her.
Rosanna shot off the sofa and gathered Mollie close to her. “You’re okay, sweetheart.”
“She’s probably hungry. I’ll get her bottle.” Sarah rushed from the room.
Mollie immediately calmed in Rosanna’s arms. Rosanna bent to kiss the boppli’s little forehead and caught Kandi’s look of dejection. Suddenly filled with compassion, she attempted to smooth things over. She would be crushed if a niece or nephew rejected her. “You’re new to her, Kandi, and she’s probably hungry, too.”
“You’re good with her. You calmed her right down.”
“I’ve had practice.”
“Here we go.” Sarah shook the bottle of formula as she walked into the room. She held the bottle out toward Kandi. “Would you like to feed her?”
“Uh, no, I think I’d better watch. I don’t want to upset her again.”
“All bopplin cry for all sorts of reasons.” Sarah passed the bottle to Rosanna. “It doesn’t mean they don’t like someone or that anything is necessarily wrong. Crying is their way of communicating with us.”
Rosanna took the bottle and lowered herself to the sofa. She was glad Kandi refused to feed Mollie. Maybe she wouldn’t want to take the infant, since she was obviously so uncomfortable with her. Rosanna positioned Mollie in a semi-upright position and touched her lips with the nipple. Mollie smiled at her before swigging down her formula.
“Look at that! She smiled at you.”
Because I’m her mamm. “She’s used to me.”
Kandi pulled up a sleeve to check the chunky silver watch strapped to her wrist. “Oh my gosh! I’ve got to drive all the way to DC and get ready for tonight. I don’t have a car seat, so . . .”
Rosanna gasped. “You weren’t thinking of taking Mollie, were you? You know she is legally in my care. The adoption will be final soon.”
“Not if I contest it.”
But you don’t have the first idea how to care for an infant. You wouldn’t even feed her. Rosanna opened her mouth to protest, but Sarah jumped in first.
“I can understand how you feel obligated to care for your niece, but raising a boppli is a full-time job and a huge responsibility.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“You seem to really enjoy your work.”
“You bet I do. My work has been the most important thing to me. I’m so close to reaching my goal, so close to being a star.”
Sarah’s voice took on that soothing tone she used with laboring women. “If you continued your work, you’d have to pay someone to watch Mollie. And, of course, you’d have all the other expenses, like diapers, formula, clothes, and so on.”
“Yeah, so?”
Rosanna wondered how a job could be more important than a person but didn’t say anything. Apparently Englischers, or this one at least, had different priorities. She’d keep quiet and let Mamm finish this conversation lest she say something she regretted.
“I’m only saying you need to think things through carefully, weigh all the pros and cons.”
“And think of what Jane wanted, too,” Rosanna whispered.
“I-I’ve gotta go. I guess I can’t call you, can I?”
>
“We don’t have a phone in the house. Wait and I’ll give you a number where you can leave a message.” Sarah scurried from the room and then right back. She handed Kandi a slip of paper.
“Okay.” Kandi stuffed the paper into her pocket. “I guess this will have to do.”
Maybe she’ll lose it, Rosanna thought, but then she’d probably show up unannounced. It would definitely be better to have a little advance warning of her visit.
Kandi rushed to the door without so much as a wave in Mollie’s direction. “Thanks for letting me visit.” She didn’t even turn back to look at them. Before the door closed behind her, Rosanna heard Kandi mumble, “I wonder how much a lawyer costs.”
Rosanna set the empty bottle on the end table and lifted Mollie to her shoulder to pat her back. She kissed the top of the honey-haired head. When Sarah turned from the door to look at her, Rosanna burst into tears. “What are we going to do, Mamm? We can’t let her take Mollie. She’s mine!”
Sarah crossed the room and dropped to the sofa beside Rosanna. “I don’t think she really wants the boppli.”
“She mumbled something about a lawyer when she left.”
“True, but I’m wondering if she only feels obligated to take her niece. You heard her. She wants to be a famous actress. It would be pretty hard for her to concentrate on that goal while caring for a little one all alone.”
“She could hire a nanny or a babysitter.”
“I gathered money was not in abundant supply.”
“Maybe, but I’m worried just the same. Should I contact the lawyer who checked over all my paperwork, or maybe Social Services?”
“It might be a gut idea, but you’ll probably have to wait until after the Christmas holiday.”
“Ach, Mamm, I couldn’t bear it if Mollie was taken away from me.”
Sarah opened her arms into a hug that encompassed Rosanna and Mollie. “Let’s not borrow trouble, jah?”
Rosanna sniffed. “I’ll try not to.” She sniffed harder. “You don’t think the court or whoever makes decisions will give Mollie to Kandi just because she’s a relative, do you? Mollie has a gut home here, a loving, stable home with lots of family who care about her. They’ll take that into consideration, won’t they?”
Rosanna's Gift Page 17