by Jo Ann Brown
Squealing tires and a scream vanished beneath a crash that reverberated through the winter afternoon. The huge snowbanks couldn’t muffle it.
Annie whirled. A buggy was crumpled against a tree. Caleb’s? No, he’d been going in the other direction. She ran toward it.
The cold lashed at her. She paid it no mind. She heard shouts from the barn behind her, but didn’t slow as she ran out onto the road.
A car appeared over a hill, racing in her direction. She scrambled toward a snowbank. The car skidded right in front of her. She tumbled forward and stared at its out-of-control bumper coming toward her.
Hands grasped her arms. She was yanked up the bank and away from the car. Snow spurted from beneath the tires, pelting her. She heard a deep grunt and knew the icy shards had also struck the person who’d pulled her out of the way. They collapsed together into the softer snow on the far side of the snowbank.
“Are you hurt?” she heard from beside her.
Caleb!
She glanced toward the drive where his buggy stood just down the road, safe.
Caleb had pulled her away from the car. He’d saved her from injury, possibly from being killed.
She longed to throw her arms around him and press her face to his chest while she thanked him over and over for saving her life. She couldn’t. For so many, many reasons, but the most important was that Lyndon and Juanita were hurrying at their best possible speed through the snow toward them.
“I’m fine.” Thanks to you. She was surprised how the idea of saying those words made her feel so shy. “How are you?”
“I’m okay, Annie.”
“What happened?” shouted Lyndon.
As one, she and Caleb stood and looked in the direction the shouts had come from.
Annie didn’t wait to answer her brother’s question. She slid over the snowbank and down to the road. Racing along it, she reached the broken buggy. The horse was being cut loose by a teenage boy, and the mare pressed against the snow as it raced past her, panicked but unhurt.
Two more boys were standing behind the buggy. They were staring at the snow. Not by the buggy, but by a tree several feet beyond it.
She gasped when she saw another boy lying in the snow next to the tree. She recognized the groan she’d heard too often when her younger brother didn’t want to do chores.
Running up to him, she pushed past the boys. “Kenny, are you okay?”
“Ja.” The word, spoken through his cracked and bleeding lips, wasn’t reassuring, but he pushed himself to his feet. He winced when he bent to pick up what she realized were broken skis. Limping, he hobbled to where Caleb had reached the boys by the ruined buggy.
The boys let out a worried yell when Kenny’s knees folded beneath him and he fell, face-first, into the snow.
Rolling Kenny onto his back, Caleb motioned the rest of them to stand aside. He swept snow off her brother’s face before running his hands along Kenny’s arms and legs, then his torso. Though unconscious, Kenny winced when Caleb touched his left side.
“I’d say he’s cracked a rib or two.” Caleb motioned to the boys. “Go to the nearest phone and call 911. Tell them to send an ambulance.”
“Go!” Annie ordered when the boys seemed unable to move.
They rushed away.
Not wanting to leave Kenny in the snow and risk hypothermia, Caleb and Lyndon tore the seat out of the buggy and slid it beneath the boy. Annie dug in the broken buggy and found a blanket, which she draped over him, then she watched as they carried Kenny to the house.
The next two hours were a blur as the rescue squad came and the two EMTs checked over Kenny, who’d regained his senses by the time he was inside the house. The EMTs agreed with Caleb’s diagnosis and suggested taking Kenny for X-rays. However, Grossmammi Inez decided that, because the emergency room was more than thirty miles away, it wasn’t worth putting him through the uncomfortable ride on roads filled with potholes. They wrapped his ribs and suggested Kenny see the local doktor tomorrow.
One of the EMTs let Annie use his cell phone to make the appointment before they packed up their supplies and left, each with a bag of chocolate chip cookies and a jar of chowchow. Becky Sue had put together the food while everyone else hovered around Kenny’s room.
The teen asked if she could see how he was doing, and Annie said, “You’re going to have to wait. He’s sleeping, but when he wakes he’ll be bored. Maybe you can take Joey in and spend some time with him.”
“Joey likes your brother.”
“And my brother likes him.” She smiled. “I think he’s glad for once not to be the youngest guy around the house.”
Becky Sue chuckled. “I’ll put together some blocks and books for Joey. That way they can entertain each other.”
“And give you some time to catch up on the mending you need to do.”
The girl’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “I hate mending.”
“Me, too,” she said, copying Becky Sue’s expression.
Again the girl laughed, and Annie suspected she was seeing a bit of the person Becky Sue would have been if she didn’t hide her true self among so many secrets.
Coming down the stairs, Annie saw Caleb pacing in the kitchen. He’d remained there after bringing Kenny in, not wanting to upset Joey.
“Kenny is going to be fine,” she said before he could ask. “Danki for helping.”
He ignored her gratitude as she’d known he would. “Did he mention what happened?”
“They were buggy skiing.” She shook her head in amazement. “One of the boys spent some time on the internet at the library and saw other plain kids skiing behind a buggy. They thought it would be fun, and I’m sure it was.”
“Until a car came speeding along the road. Most likely, more kids out for what they considered fun.”
“The driving is becoming more reckless. They’re drag racing before it gets dark.”
He sighed and reached for his hat. “We’re going to have to talk with the sheriff’s office again. Not that it’ll do much gut. They’ll patrol for a few weeks, and the kids will lie low. As soon as the patrols ease off, the drag racing begins again.”
“It’s all we can do. The rest is in God’s hands.”
“You have such a solid faith,” he said with a smile.
“Some days. Others it’s as wobbly as Kenny on his skis.” She came around the table. “That’s why we call it faith, ain’t so? Because we have to depend on it no matter how sure we feel about anything.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She held up a finger. “And before you ask, everyone else is, too. Leanna is keeping a close eye on our grossmammi, and Becky Sue is going to sit with Kenny when he wakes up.”
“The two of them alone?”
She laughed, “You sound like a suspicious daed, Caleb. Don’t worry. To Kenny, your cousin is a much older woman. He’s twelve, and the only females he’s interested in spending time with are the calves he hopes to raise to add to our dairy herd.” Her voice softened. “Don’t look for trouble where there isn’t any.”
“You’re right.”
When he closed the distance between them with a couple of long steps, she knew she should back away, find an excuse to head upstairs before...
Before what?
Before he reached out to her, or before she stepped forward and drew his arms around herself? She yearned to feel the strength that had hefted her brother and carried him through the snow to their house. How much joy would there have been in that powerful, yet gentle, embrace?
The answers weren’t for her to find. Leanna was the one who should be in his arms, not her. Pain rushed through her, so potent that a gasp slipped past her lips. When Caleb asked her what was wrong, she shook her head.
Was this what Leanna had been feeling since Gabriel Miller abandoned her to marry someone else?
Stepping away from him before she could no longer resist the invitation in his eyes, she bade him a gut nacht in a strangled voice.
“Annie, what’s wrong?” he asked again.
She wouldn’t lie and tell him that everything was fine. But she couldn’t speak of the tempest within her, a storm pulling her this way and that like a maniacal tornado.
“Gut nacht,” she said again.
He took the hint and left.
She sank to sit at the table, her face in her hands. How much longer could she bear being torn apart by her longings, which were in opposition to one another? She had to bring this to an end.
But how? Next week, Leanna would be spending the whole day with Caleb, and Annie would be as lost as she’d ever been. Because she couldn’t pretend to herself any longer. She might not be joining her sister and Caleb, but her heart would be because somewhere, sometime, when she hadn’t realized it, she’d given it to him.
Chapter Fourteen
Annie smiled when her twin sister came into the kitchen the morning of the mud sale. Breakfast wasn’t ready yet. She’d been serving it later the past week. Until Kenny’s ribs healed, he couldn’t help in the barn. Lyndon was doing the milking alone, and he had twice as many cows as most plain farmers did. Other farmers and their kinder who were old enough to help came when they could. Leanna had pitched in, but not today when she didn’t want to go to the mud sale smelling of animals and hay.
“Gute mariye,” Leanna said. She couldn’t hide her excitement about the day ahead. No wonder. Not only was she going to the Salem Volunteer Department’s first ever mud sale—something that the firefighters already hoped would become an annual event—but she was going to spend the day with Caleb.
Though Annie wanted to thank God for offering her twin sister the chance to have time with a man she was attracted to, the words wouldn’t come. She hoped her envy was hidden.
“You look lovely.” Annie brushed a bit of lint from her sister’s dark cranberry-colored sleeve. She wondered when Leanna had managed to make a new dress as well as finish up the quilt she’d donated.
“For a mud sale?” Leanna laughed. “They didn’t get their name because we’re expected to dress in our best.”
“Then maybe I should have said you look as if you’re anticipating having a great day.”
“I hope for Caleb’s sake—and for the sake of the firefighters—that it’s going to be a great day. From what you and Lyndon have said, they’ve been working hard to make it the best mud sale ever.”
“That’s why Caleb’s been exhausted the past week. Working on the mud sale and his farm and the bakery.”
“That’s opening soon, ain’t so?”
“The first week of May.”
Leanna plucked her bonnet off its peg. “So you’ll be trading your paintbrush for cookie cutters.”
“I don’t know how much baking I’ll be doing.”
Caleb hadn’t said, and she hadn’t asked. Becky Sue had come to the bakery a few days ago and had prepared several more pies and batches of cookies to show him what she could do. The teen was an excellent baker, and though Caleb had said nothing, Annie suspected his cousin would be working at least part-time in the kitchen once the bakery opened its doors.
That would be for the best, she’d told herself over and over. With Becky Sue present, she and Caleb wouldn’t be alone as they’d been for the past few weeks. The timing was perfect if he and Leanna started walking out after their day together. God knew what He was doing.
Oh, if only she did.
“Caleb’s buggy’s coming up the drive,” Leanna said, breaking into Annie’s thoughts as she opened the door. “I’ll see you there.”
“I hope so.”
Leanna frowned. “I shouldn’t go with Caleb. He’ll understand.”
“Go ahead. Grossmammi Inez seems to be in gut spirits and was breathing better yesterday. Maybe she’s right, and her symptoms are just left over from her cold.” Annie longed to believe that, but feared there was something else wrong with her grossmammi. “I don’t want you to miss the quilt auction.”
“Our grossmammi is more important than seeing who buys my quilt.”
Annie made shooing motions. “Go! You don’t want to make Caleb late.”
Blowing her sister a kiss, Leanna rushed out the door.
As the door closed, Annie’s smile fell away. She bit her lower lip, refusing to let the tears burning her eyes fall. Wasn’t this what she’d been working for? Leanna had been smiling as she left. Annie hadn’t seen her sister look so happy since the news of Gabriel’s marriage.
“You should have gone with them” came her grossmammi’s voice from behind her.
Annie spun to assist Grossmammi Inez to the table. “I didn’t realize you were up already.”
“I’ve been awake for a couple of hours.” She looked past Annie toward where a buggy was visible through the windows that gave a view of the road. “I hope you are sure of what you are doing.”
“Doing?”
“Matchmaking.” She sat at the table. “Be careful about matchmaking for your sister and Caleb. Your own heart is too involved, and it may keep you from seeing what’s right in front of you.”
“I know.” Annie sat facing her grossmammi. “But if there’s a chance Leanna will be happy again—”
“That is God’s choice and hers.”
At Grossmammi Inez’s tone, Annie didn’t argue further. What could she say? She was on a treacherous path, a path that might not be the one God had for her or for her sister, but she didn’t know how to step off.
* * *
Annie smiled at Joey, who sat in the middle of the kitchen floor. When he dropped to his belly to crawl to a block that had fallen off the pile he was gathering, she tried not to laugh while he groped to grab it and pull it to where his toes touched the other blocks.
“You’re a cute little worm,” she said as she finished drying the last of the dishes from breakfast.
He looked at her with his grin that showed several more teeth that had popped up during the past week. After days of misery, he was content again. But he had sniffles, and Becky Sue hadn’t wanted him to go to the mud sale. The teenager had been thrilled when Annie volunteered to stay home with the boppli while she joined the rest of the Waglers—including Kenny, who promised to sit quietly—at the mud sale.
Grossmammi Inez had aimed a knowing glance at Annie when she left with the others. The older woman thought that Annie was hiding at home so she didn’t have to see her twin with Caleb. Again, it was something Annie couldn’t argue with because it was the truth.
But spending time with the boppli had been delightful. Every time she looked at him she thought of how adorable he’d looked while covered with paint at the bakery. He was a gut little boy, willing to entertain himself. If only he didn’t panic when he saw Caleb... Joey went to her brother and to Jeremiah and to Eli and to the Kuhns brothers. The list went on and on.
A pair of blocks tumbled away. Again Joey stretched out, keeping his foot on the pile while he reached for a block. He swept his hands along the floor, missing the other block.
Annie gasped as she watched the boppli reaching as far as he could, again running his hand along the floor. But he misjudged, and he missed the block a second time. Frustrated, he cradled the block he’d found.
Was it possible that the little boy couldn’t see well? She thought of the times he’d touched her face as if confirming what his eyes failed to show him.
Tiptoeing around the kind, she picked up a ball with a bell in it. She kept it silent and knelt an arm’s length away. She held up the ba
ll to his left and rang it.
Joey’s head swiveled toward it. To his right, she rocked his favorite blue bear. He didn’t look at it. She shifted the bell to his right side and shook it again. His head shifted, but he didn’t reach for his beloved bear though it was about eighteen inches from his face.
She moved it closer. When it was about two inches from his face, Joey chortled. “Bear-bear.” He grabbed for it with such excitement she knew he hadn’t seen it until then.
Annie handed him the bear and let her hands fall to her lap. She watched as he pressed his nose to it and repeated its name as he did each time one of them picked him up.
Her head spun. The little boy couldn’t see past the end of his nose. That explained why he preferred to pull himself along on his belly than get up on his hands and knees or walk. So close to the floor, he was able to perceive what was right in front of him.
Was there a way for a doktor to test his ability to see? If it were possible, were there glasses small enough for a boppli?
But it wasn’t her decision to make. She must talk to Becky Sue before she did anything. She hoped that this time the girl would listen to gut sense.
Again she gasped as she realized something else. None of the men Joey went to had hair as light as Caleb’s. Was the kind confusing Caleb for someone else? She wrapped her arms around herself as she wondered if that other person was the reason Becky Sue had run away.
Annie must talk to Caleb and get his insight on how best to break the news to his cousin. None of this was going to be easy, but this was one secret they couldn’t keep. Joey had to have help, and she guessed Becky Sue did, too.
* * *
Caleb took an appreciative bite of his second hot dog. There was almost as much relish as meat in the roll, and he savored it. Leanna sat beside him near one of the propane torches that fought back the cold outside the auction tent. She ate her hamburger much more delicately than he was wolfing down his lunch.
“How’s your burger?” he asked.
“It’s gut. I can tell you like hot dogs.”