by Jo Ann Brown
He moved out of the front room. When Becky Sue glanced at them with suspicion, he made sure no emotion was visible on his face. The boppli chirped his impatience, and she went back to feeding her son.
Standing where he could watch them, he leaned toward Annie. A whiff of some sweet fragrance, something that offered a tantalizing hint of spring, drifted from her hair. He hadn’t thought of Annie Wagler as sweet. She was the forthright one, the one who spoke her mind. But standing close to her, he realized he might have been wrong to dismiss her as all business. She had a feminine side to her.
A very intriguing one.
“Caleb?” she prompted, and he realized he hadn’t answered her.
Folding his arms over his coat, he said, “Nobody mentioned anything about Becky Sue having a kind.”
“But you’ve got to let her family know she’s here. She...”
Annie’s voice trailed off, and Caleb looked over his shoulder to see Becky Sue getting to her feet. Annie didn’t want his cousin to know they’d been talking about contacting Becky Sue’s parents. A wise decision, because making the girl more intractable wouldn’t gain them anything.
He realized Annie had guessed the same thing because she strolled into the front room and began asking how Becky Sue and Joey had liked their impromptu picnic.
The girl looked at her coat that was splattered with soup. “He liked it more than you’d guess from the spots on me. I should wash this out before the stains set.”
Making sure his tone was conversational, Caleb pointed into the kitchen area and to the right. “The bathroom is through that door.”
Becky Sue glanced at her drowsy son and hesitated.
Annie held out her hands. “I’ll watch him while you wash up.”
“Danki,” the girl said as she placed the boppli in Annie’s arms.
Becky Sue took one step, then paused. She half turned and appraised how Annie cuddled the little boy. Satisfied, she hurried into the bathroom and closed the door.
Annie began to walk the floor to soothe the uneasy boppli. He calmed in her arms when she paced from one end of the kitchen to the other. As he stretched out a small hand to touch her face, she said, “This may be the first moment she’s had alone since they left home. I can’t imagine having to take care of a boppli on my own while traveling aimlessly.”
“What makes you think she’s being aimless?”
“It seems as if she’s thought more about running away than running to a specific place.”
Caleb nodded at Annie’s insightful remark. “We’ve got to figure out what to do.”
“What’s to figure out? She has to have a place to stay while you—” She gave a glance at the closed bathroom door. “While you make a few calls.”
He was grateful she chose her words with care. If they spooked Becky Sue, she might take off again.
“That’s true, but, Annie, I live by myself. I can’t have her under my roof with nobody else there.”
Puzzlement threaded across her brow. “Why not? She’s your cousin.”
“She’s my second cousin.”
Comprehension raced through Annie’s worried eyes. Marriage between second cousins wasn’t uncommon among plain folks. He had two friends who’d made such matches.
“Won’t Miriam take them?” she asked, adjusting the boppli’s head as it wobbled at the same time he began to snore.
“Under normal circumstances, but she has caught whatever bug has made so many of her scholars sick. When I stopped by earlier today, the whole family was barely able to get on their feet. She won’t want to pass along the germs.”
“Then there’s only one solution.”
“What’s that?”
“She can stay at our house.”
To say he was shocked would have been an understatement. “But they’re not your problem.”
She gave him a frown he guessed had daunted many others. He squared his shoulders before she realized how successful her expression nearly had been.
“Caleb, Becky Sue and Joey aren’t a problem. Becky Sue is a girl with a problem. Not that this little one should be called a problem, either.” Her face softened when she gazed at the sleeping boppli in her arms and rocked him.
He almost gasped, as he had when he recognized his cousin among the boxes in the bakery’s kitchen. The unguarded warmth on Annie’s face offered a view of her he’d never seen before. He wondered how many had, because she hid this gentle softness behind a quick wit and sharp tongue. He was discovering many aspects of her today. He couldn’t help being curious about what else she kept concealed.
“We’ve got plenty of room in our house,” she went on, her voice rising and falling with the motion of her arms as she rocked the kind. “There will always be someone there to help Becky Sue.”
He couldn’t argue. The twins’ younger sister, Juanita, was in her final year of school. In addition, Annie’s grossmammi and younger brother lived with them.
At that thought, he said, “You’ve already got your hands full.”
“True, so we won’t notice another couple of people in our house. Let us help you, Caleb. You’ve worked hard building our community, and doing this will give our family a chance to repay you.”
Guilt suffused him, but he couldn’t think of another solution. It seemed Becky Sue had already decided she could trust Annie. Now he must show he trusted her, too.
The bathroom door opened and Becky Sue emerged. When Annie asked her to stay with the Wagler family, she made the invitation sound spontaneous.
Caleb held his breath until his cousin said, “Danki.”
“Get your things,” he replied. “I turned the heater on in the buggy when I got the thermos. It’s as warm in there as it’s going to be, so bundle up. I’ll stop by later and check on you.”
“You aren’t coming with us?” Becky Sue asked suspiciously.
“No. I’ve got work to do.” Turning to Annie, he said with the best smile he could manage, “You taking them tonight will let me keep my work on schedule.”
“Gut,” Annie replied, as if the timetable for the bakery was the most important thing on their minds.
As soon as Becky Sue went into the front room, Caleb lowered his voice and said, “Danki for taking her home with you. Now I’ll have the chance to contact her family.”
“Do they have access to a phone?”
“I’m pretty sure they do. If not, I can try calling the store that’s not far from where they live. The Englisch owner will deliver emergency messages.” He couldn’t keep from arching his brows. “I don’t know what would constitute more of an emergency than a missing kind and kins-kind.”
“You know the number?”
“The phone here at the bakery is for dealing with vendors, but I’ve let a couple of our neighbors use it, and at least one of them mentioned calling the store. The number should be stored in the phone’s list of outgoing calls.”
Becky Sue returned with a pair of torn and dirty grocery bags in one hand. The girl carried a bright blue-and-yellow blanket in the other. Stains on it suggested she and her boppli had slept rough since leaving their home.
Joey woke as Annie was wrapping the blanket around him. He took one look at Caleb and began to cry at a volume Caleb hadn’t imagined a little boy could make.
As Annie cooed to console him, she handed him to his mamm. She finished winding the blanket around him at the same time as she herded Becky Sue out of the bakery.
Caleb went to a window and watched them leave in his buggy. He went to the phone he kept on top of the rickety cabinet that must be as old as the building. He’d planned to start tearing the cupboard out after giving Annie a tour of the bakery. He wondered when he’d have time to finish.
Soon, he told himself. He’d set a date at the beginning of May to open the bakery. He’d already purchased ads in the l
ocal newspaper and the swap magazine delivered to every household in the area because his customers from the farmers market had been so insistent he inform them as soon as the bakery opened its doors.
Picking up the phone, he frowned when he began clicking through the list of outgoing calls. Someone had made a call about ten minutes before he and Annie had arrived. He had no doubt it was Becky Sue.
The number wasn’t a Lancaster County one. It had a different area code, one he didn’t recognize. He wasn’t sure where 319 was, but he’d ask someone at the fire department where he was a volunteer firefighter to look it up for him.
But that had to wait. For now...
He found the number for the small store and punched it in. This wouldn’t be an easy call.
Chapter Three
As Annie had expected, her arrival with Becky Sue and the boppli in tow threw the Wagler house into an uproar. The moment they walked in, her two sisters stopped their preparations for supper and came over to greet their unexpected guests. The family’s new puppy, Penny, who was a hound and Irish setter mix Annie’s younger brother had brought home the previous week, barked and bounced as if she had springs for legs.
Annie’s efforts to catch Penny were worthless. The copper-colored pup was too eager to greet the newcomers to listen. Little Joey seemed as excited as the puppy. Becky Sue had to wrap him in both arms to keep him from escaping.
Annie pulled off her coat and tossed it over a nearby chair. She finally was able to grab Penny by the scruff. The puppy wore a mournful expression when Annie shut her in the laundry room. She hoped Penny would calm down at the sight of her dish filled with kibble.
Annie returned to the kitchen and looked around. A bolt of concern riveted her. Grossmammi Inez wasn’t in the rocking chair by the living room door. Her grossmammi had lived with them for a year after Annie’s daed died from a long illness. When Annie’s mamm married her late husband’s cousin and had two more kinder, Annie had used any excuse to visit her grossmammi.
The elderly woman had taken them in a second time after Mamm and her second husband, a hardworking man who’d been a loving daed to his stepchildren, were killed in a bus accident when Kenny was a toddler. Though she couldn’t do as much as she once had, Grossmammi Inez supervised the kitchen she considered her domain.
“She’s resting,” Leanna said before she shot a smile at Becky Sue and introduced herself.
Annie nodded, glad her twin knew what was on her mind. However, her uneasiness didn’t ebb. Her grossmammi sometimes took a nap, but Annie couldn’t recall her ever staying in bed while meal preparations were underway.
Her attention was drawn to her guests when Becky Sue asked, “You are twins, ain’t so?” The teenager stared, wide-eyed, at Leanna before facing Annie. “You look exactly alike.”
Leanna said with a faint smile, “I’m a quarter inch taller.”
“Really?”
Leanna lifted her right foot. “Only when I’m wearing these sneakers.”
Everyone, including Becky Sue, laughed, and Annie wanted to hug her twin for putting the girl at ease.
“I’ve never met girl twins before,” Becky Sue said. “There were two pairs of boy twins in my school, but no girls.”
“No?” Annie laughed again. “Well, now you have.”
Before Becky Sue could reply, Annie’s younger sister, Juanita, edged around Leanna. She was a gangly fourteen-year-old who was already three inches taller than the twins and still growing, though Annie doubted she’d ever challenge Becky Sue’s height. Juanita’s light brown hair was so tightly curled it popped out around her kapp in hundreds of tiny coils. It was the bane of Juanita’s existence, and nothing she’d tried had straightened it enough to keep the strands in place.
“Can I hold him?” Juanita held out her arms to the boppli.
Annie smiled at her younger sister. Juanita wavered between being a kind herself and becoming a young woman. It was shocking to realize Becky Sue couldn’t have been much older than Juanita when she became pregnant. Annie’s sister hadn’t begun to attend youth events yet, preferring to spend time with girls her own age. They seemed more interested in besting the boys at sports than flirting.
“This is my sister Juanita,” she explained to Becky Sue. “We’ve got two brothers, as well. Lyndon is married and lives next door, and Kenny, who’s twelve, should be out in the barn milking with him. You’ll meet him at supper.”
Juanita cuddled Joey, who reached up to touch her face as he had Annie’s. Becky Sue took off her coat and hung it up by the door as she scanned the large kitchen with cabinets along one wall and the refrigerator and stove on another.
Standing by the large table in the center, Annie smiled at her younger sister, who loved all young things. She delighted in taking care of the farm’s animals, other than Leanna’s goats and the dairy cows. She tended to the chickens, ducks and geese as well as the pigs and two sheep.
When Joey began fussing, Annie urged her sisters to return to making supper while she took Becky Sue upstairs and got her and the boppli settled. The extra bed was in Annie’s room, but if Becky Sue was bothered by the arrangement, she didn’t mention it. Annie cleared out the deepest drawer in her dresser and folded a quilt in it. Tucking a sheet around the quilt, she added a small blanket on top to make a bed for Joey. She urged her guests to rest while she went to help her sisters finish supper.
Annie asked Juanita to run next door to ask their sister-in-law if they could borrow some diapers and a couple of bottles for the boppli. Her younger sister was always happy for any excuse to visit her nephews and nieces.
Leanna didn’t pause chopping vegetables for the stew simmering on the gas stove. Not that her twin would do any actual cooking. Juanita was already a more competent cook.
Hanging up the coat she’d draped over the kitchen chair, Annie went to the stove and checked the beef stew. She halted, her fingers inches from the spoon, as she wondered if Caleb would be joining them for supper. He’d said something about coming over after he called Becky Sue’s parents.
“We need to set extra plates on the table,” Annie said as she stirred the stew so it didn’t stick.
“More than one?” Leanna looked up from the trio of carrots she had left to chop.
“Caleb said he’d stop over.” Annie dropped her voice to a whisper to explain why he’d remained behind at the bakery. “It’ll be a gut opportunity for us to get to know him better.”
Her twin set down the knife and walked away from the counter. Taking the broom from its corner, she began to sweep the kitchen floor. “Why were you at the bakery today?”
“Caleb wants an assistant to help with getting it ready and to wait on customers when it opens. He asked me, though he thought he was asking you.” She told Leanna about the conversation by the goats’ pen. “If you’d like to take the job instead, I’m sure he’d agree.”
Leanna stopped sweeping. “I’ve already got a job.”
That was true. Leanna cleaned for several Englisch neighbors. She could have a house sparkling in less time than it took Annie to do a load of wash.
“This would be different.” Her answer sounded lame even to Annie, but somehow she had to convince her sister to be honest about her feelings for Caleb.
Leanna was generous and kind and, other than her inability to cook and bake, something that shouldn’t be as important to a man who owned a bakery, would make Caleb a wunderbaar wife. It was a fabulous plan, even if it broke Annie’s own heart.
Frustration battered her. Why couldn’t those two see what was obvious to Annie? Leanna and Caleb could make each other happy as husband and wife. Of that, she was certain.
Because you believe you would be happy with him as his wife.
Annie wished her conscience would remain silent. It was true she’d imagined walking out with Caleb before she noticed how her sister reacted each time he was
near.
God, make me Your instrument in bringing happiness to Leanna, she prayed as she had so many times since her sister’s heart was broken.
“It doesn’t matter,” Leanna said, “whether the job is different or not. I wouldn’t have time to work for Caleb. This morning, I agreed to clean Mrs. Duchamps’s house twice a week.”
Annie recognized the name of one of the few Englischers who lived along the meandering creek. Mrs. Duchamps had worked at the bank in Salem most of her adult life as well as taking care of her late husband during the years when he was ill. Having no kinder of her own, it was no surprise Mrs. Duchamps had hired Leanna to help.
“I didn’t know you were looking for more houses to clean.”
Leanna smiled. “I enjoy the work, so why not? And we could use the money. Kenny is growing so fast it seems as if he needs new shoes every other month. This works out for the best because I wouldn’t want to work at Caleb’s bakery.” She began sweeping again. “Don’t you think it’s odd he wants to start a bakery at the same time he’s trying to keep his farm going?”
“Not really.” Annie recalled the light beaming from his eyes when he spoke about his plans for the bakery. It was a chance to make his dream a reality.
“Then it’s a gut thing he asked you instead of me.” Leanna shuddered. “I don’t know what I’d say to his customers, and I’d get so nervous I’d end up dropping a tray of cookies.”
“You navigate among your goats without stumbling. Even when you’re milking them.”
Leanna laughed, “Having them crowd around me hides a lot of my clumsiness. Besides, I’m sure you’re going to have wunderbaar ideas to help Caleb.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Annie began to chop the rest of the carrots.
“You never used to hesitate sharing your ideas, Annie. I wish I had half of the ones you have.”
“Ideas come when they come.”
Ideas did always pop into her head. She used to speak them without hesitation, but that was before she’d started walking out with Rolan Plank three years ago. They hadn’t lasted long as a couple. After a month, he’d started to scold her for speaking up. He chided her for what he’d called her silly ideas. Yet, after he’d dumped her, he’d taken one of her so-called silly ideas and let everyone think it was his own.