by Jo Ann Brown
“Pretty obvious, ain’t so?” He was pleased that she was beginning to get more comfortable with him. For the first hour, while they sat in the bleachers under the big white tent behind the fire station, she hadn’t said a word.
He’d thought she’d voice her opinion of some of the animals being auctioned off, but she hadn’t spoken. She’d watched as each lot was sold, though she’d leaned forward when two lots of goats came under the hammer.
The mud sale was going well, as far as he could see. There was a single auctioneer at a time instead of the usual two or three he’d seen at the mud sales in Lancaster County, where there were many more donations after years of the events. But the firefighters were pleased with the amount of goods they’d received and how much money was being raised. Several lots had been sold for more than they were worth, which meant there were many generous souls in the crowd that was bigger than Caleb had hoped because the temperature seemed more like mid-January than early April.
Leanna’s intricate nine-square quilt, in shades of cranberry, green and off-white, had sold for almost two thousand dollars because a pair of Englisch women had pushed the price higher and higher until one gave up. As soon as the next item came up for bid, the loser sought out Leanna and asked if she could hire Leanna to make her a similar quilt. Leanna had agreed to do so for the price of the materials and a donation to the fire department of the same amount as the other woman had paid.
“That was generous of you to agree to make the second quilt,” Caleb said, hoping to keep the conversation going. How could it be so easy to talk with Annie while it felt as if he had to wrest every word out of Leanna?
“I’m honored to be able to help the fire department.” Leanna took another bite of her burger and dabbed her napkin at the ketchup clinging to her lips.
Caleb watched her motions. How could her mouth be so like her twin sister’s, but he wasn’t tempted to taste it as he was Annie’s?
When she caught him staring at her, he rushed to say, “You know Chief Pulaski is going to hope you’ll donate another quilt next year.”
“I plan to. I enjoy putting the pieces together. There’s something about a quilt pattern that brings sense to an otherwise chaotic world.” She flushed as if she’d revealed too much. “Sorry. You don’t want to hear about my quilting.”
“Nonsense. I understand how you feel. Being in the kitchen gives me the same feeling of peace.”
She smiled at last. “You do understand. I’m glad.” She paused, then asked, “My sister talked you into bringing me here today, ain’t so?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I know my sister better than I know anyone else in the world.” Leanna’s gentle laugh told him she wasn’t upset by Annie’s matchmaking. “I’ve seen how she looks at me when she thinks I don’t see. She’s determined to make me happy, no matter what.”
“And you’re not happy being here today?”
“I’m having a wunderbaar time, Caleb. Not as she’d hoped, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a very nice man, and your sister is one of my best friends in the whole world, but I know you don’t have any interest in me beyond being friends.”
“Or you in me?”
“That’s a loaded question.”
He shook his head. “Don’t worry what you say will hurt my feelings because, to be honest, Leanna, you’re a very nice woman, and my sister is also one of my best friends in the whole world.”
When she didn’t laugh as he’d anticipated, he wondered if, despite the forthrightness she seldom revealed, he’d insulted her. He realized he’d misinterpreted her silence when she spoke again after he put the papers from their food in a trash barrel.
“What about my sister?” she asked. “Do you consider her a friend, too?”
It was his turn to be silent. Friend? Was that how he’d describe what he felt about Annie? Friend seemed too tepid when he thought about the fiery woman. And he’d be a dummkopf to pretend he didn’t want more with Annie.
But not now, he started to tell himself as he had so often. This time the words wouldn’t come. He didn’t want to lie to himself any longer. He wanted to put his past behind him and look to the future. A future with Annie.
Leanna chuckled, and when he looked at her, he saw she was grinning. His thoughts must have been visible, no surprise when such a big revelation struck him.
“You don’t have to answer,” Leanna said, patting his arm as she stood. “But I do have one important request. Please don’t hurt my sister as her last boyfriend did.”
“Last boyfriend?” He was amazed at the rush of anger that filled him at the thought of someone hurting Annie. “What did he do?”
“It’s not my place to say. If Annie wants you to know, she’ll tell you.” With another smile, Leanna walked away toward where her grossmammi and brothers were talking with some Englischers he didn’t recognize.
His heart thudded with anticipation; then he realized Annie wasn’t with them. Hadn’t she come to the mud sale? He stood and began to walk through the crowd. If she was there, he intended to find her. It was long past time that he spoke from his heart.
* * *
The kitchen door opening roused Annie, who was somewhere between awake and sleeping. Raising her head from her arms folded on the table, she smiled at her twin.
“Did I wake you?” Leanna asked.
“No. I was almost asleep, but not quite. Everyone else came home about two hours ago.” Her words were interrupted by a wide yawn. “Did you have a gut time?”
“I did.”
Annie almost mentioned what she’d discovered about Joey’s sight, but halted herself. She must tell Caleb first so they could inform Becky Sue together. After that, the rest of the family and the Leit would be told.
“I thought you were coming to the mud sale today, too.”
“Didn’t Becky Sue tell you why I stayed behind?”
“She did. That was kind of you, Annie.”
Embarrassed by her sister’s praise, she asked, “Did the auction go well?”
“From what Lyndon was told by the fire chief, they’re guessing that the fire department made as much or more than they do from their annual Fourth of July carnival.”
“That’s so gut to hear.”
“I saw several volunteers thanking Caleb for giving them the idea of holding the auction and sale.”
“Did you have fun with him?”
“We did, but after lunch we went our own ways.”
Shocked, Annie blurted, “You did? So, who brought you home?”
“Sarah’s brothers.”
Annie was astonished. Menno and Benjamin Kuhns were two of the most hardworking men among the Leit, running a sawmill and a Christmas tree farm while planting an apple orchard on another of the steep hills behind their house. She wondered if one or both were interested in her sister, but she was more curious why Leanna hadn’t spent the whole day with Caleb.
Before she could ask, her sister went on, “We talked about having a skating party tomorrow night on their pond. Will you come, Annie?”
Ach, how she wished Caleb had been the one to ask, but she would be a fool to keep hoping for something that wasn’t going to happen.
“It sounds like fun,” she said.
“Probably more fun than I had today with Caleb.”
Annie sat straighter. “Did something go wrong?”
Pulling out a chair across from her, Leanna smiled. “Of course not. I had a nice day watching the sale and listening to Caleb talk about the bakery.”
“He’s so excited that it’s going to open next month. Did he tell you about his plans for opening day?”
“No, because he spent most of our time together talking about you.”
“Me?”
Leanna reached acros
s the table and clasped Annie’s hand in hers. “For someone who’s so smart and has so many wunderbaar ideas, Annie, you don’t have a clue to what’s right in front of your eyes. He’s not interested in walking out with me, and I’m not interested in walking out with him.”
“He told you that?”
“Ja.” She smiled. “You did us a favor, Annie. Today showed us—both of us—that we can be friends. Nothing more.”
“Are you sure? I know he’s not similar to Gabriel—”
“Gabriel has nothing to do with any of this.”
Annie doubted that, but didn’t want to quarrel with her sister.
“He’s not interested in me, Annie, because he’s interested in you.”
“Me?” Her voice squeaked as she repeated the single word.
“Ja. You think I’m lost in my grief over losing Gabriel. It’s true the hurt remains, but how many more years are you going to hide behind your betrayal after what Rolan did to you?” She squeezed Annie’s hand, then stood. “You’ve always been the brave one, Annie, the one who dares to speak her mind. Do you have enough courage to take another chance on love?”
Chapter Fifteen
It should have been like any of the other days that Caleb had come to the Waglers’ house to pick up Annie so they could ride together to work at the bakery.
It wasn’t.
He was exhausted from tossing and turning, checking his bedside clock every few minutes in the hope that dawn was near. Leanna’s voice echoed in his mind: But I do have one important request. Please don’t hurt my sister as her last boyfriend did.
Doing Annie any injury was the last thing he wanted. Despite not knowing what her ex had done, he wanted to see Annie’s scintillating smile and listen to her excitement when she offered up yet another idea. If he had his way, she’d never be sad ever again. That wasn’t realistic, but his heart didn’t care. Its yearning was to be given in to her care.
Was that why he felt as nervous as a new scholar on the first day of school when he jumped out of his buggy? Only the kitchen lights were on, and he guessed the family was sleeping later after a busy day at the mud sale. A glance at Lyndon’s house showed it was dark, too, but the barn glowed. Milking couldn’t be delayed because someone had had a long day the day before.
Walking into the kitchen, he started to greet Annie, who was reaching for a bowl on an upper shelf. Joey stood behind her, unsteady on his feet, groping toward the top of the stove where oatmeal bubbled in a pot.
Caleb exploded across the kitchen, scooping up the boppli and swinging him away from the stove before his little fingers were burned. Joey let out a cry of surprise as if he couldn’t figure out how he went from standing on his own two feet to having them sway twice his height above the floor.
“Turn him around, Caleb!” Annie ordered.
“What?” Caleb looked at her.
“Turn him around, Caleb! Now!”
“He’ll scream once he sees who’s holding him.”
“Turn him around and hold him nose to nose.”
“What?”
Annie was usually so pragmatic. Why was she acting crazy?
“Do it, Caleb!”
Not sure what she meant, he shifted the kind so Joey was facing him.
“Nose to nose,” Annie urged. “Do it, Caleb! Fast!”
Lifting the boppli higher, Caleb felt like a dummkopf when he put the tip of his nose against Joey’s tiny one. He steeled himself for the screech that would batter his ears.
But the little boy didn’t scream. Joey regarded him with dark green eyes much like Caleb’s own, then gave him a big grin.
When the kind reached up and ran his fingers along Caleb’s face as he’d done to others, Caleb’s breath hitched. Was the boppli accepting him? Tears blurred his distorted view of Joey’s face as the toddler began to chortle as he repeated something that sounded like “Kay-eb” over and over.
“He’s trying to say your name,” Annie said.
“He’s not crying.” Caleb chuckled when the little boy continued to pat his face.
“Because he can see you.”
He looked past the kind to where Annie stood by the stove. She wasn’t smiling. When she outlined what she suspected about Joey’s vision, he listened without comment until she mentioned that she believed the boppli had mistaken him for someone else, someone who had treated him poorly.
When she took Joey and put him in his high chair, where pieces of toast waited on the tray, Caleb struggled to dampen his rage. Who would have frightened a little kind so?
“Do you think it’s why Becky Sue...?” He let his voice trail off when his cousin walked into the kitchen, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“What about me?” she asked before looking from him to her son. “He’s not crying!”
Annie put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder as she said, “He knows Caleb isn’t the person who’s scared him.”
The teenager shuddered before stiffening her shoulders. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Caleb went around the table to stand in front of his cousin. “I think you do, Becky Sue.”
Behind him, Joey kept repeating his name in a singsong voice before giggling with obvious joy.
Becky Sue moved to collect her son, but Annie stepped between her and the high chair.
“I don’t know,” Annie said quietly, “how to tell you this other than straight out. Joey should be examined by an eye doktor. He can’t see more than an inch or two in front of his face.”
The girl’s face lost color. “No, that’s impossible.”
“It’s possible, and it’s true.” Annie’s voice remained gentle. “I discovered it yesterday while you were at the mud sale. It was confirmed when Caleb held Joey close enough so your son could see his face. We’ll get him to see a doktor who can help him. Doktors can do marvelous things, so they should be able to help him.”
Caleb interjected, “Say the word, Becky Sue, and I’ll make an appointment for him. Once we know what’s wrong and what can be done, then we can talk about the other issue.”
With a brokenhearted cry, the girl snatched the boppli from the chair and sped out of the room.
“Let me,” Caleb said as Becky Sue’s footsteps pounded up the stairs.
“I’ll show you where to go,” Annie replied.
He followed her upstairs. When she pointed to the second door on the left, he nodded and walked toward it. He paused at the door, unsure if he should enter the room his cousin shared with Annie.
“Go ahead,” Annie murmured from behind him. “You must talk with her. I’ll wait out here.”
He gave her a quick nod, took a deep breath and went into the room that didn’t look so different from the one where he slept. Though there were two narrow beds instead of his broad one, they were covered with handmade quilts as his was. Joey’s crib, where the little boy was cuddling a blue teddy bear and babbling to it as if it understood him, sat in a spot where, in his own room, Caleb had placed a dower chest that had been in his family since their arrival in America over two hundred and fifty years before. The same green shades as in his room could be drawn to keep out the sun, and rag rugs warmed the oak floors.
Becky Sue looked up at him from where she sat on the bed closer to the crib. She didn’t say a word, but seemed to withdraw into herself like a turtle pulling into its shell.
Deciding to take a cue from Annie, he cut to the heart of the matter. “I don’t know what I’ve done to make you distrust me so much.”
“You haven’t done anything.”
“Then why are you upset that Joey didn’t shriek today when I was holding him? I’d have thought you’d be glad, too, that he isn’t terrified of me any longer. What’s wrong?”
She stared at her folded hands. “I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
�
�Isn’t that the same?”
Not wanting to get into another discussion with her that would go in circles and never get to the point, he said, “You’ve been here over a month, Becky Sue. I thought you would have come to trust me.”
“It’s not a matter of trust.”
“Then what is it?”
She didn’t reply, only continued to look at her hands that were clasped so hard her knuckles were bleached.
He noticed how her fingers trembled, and he sighed. Confronting her like this wasn’t getting him anywhere. She held on to her secrets as if they were as precious as her son.
No, he corrected himself when he saw her lips trembling harder than her fingers. She was terrified. Of revealing her secrets?
He knelt by her bed. “Becky Sue, whatever or whoever frightened you and Joey was wrong. I’m here and the Waglers are here—in fact the whole Leit in Harmony Creek Hollow is here—to help you and your son.”
“Danki,” she whispered, then added nothing else.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he said, praying she’d have a change of heart.
God must have had other plans for them, because she stared at her folded hands and added nothing more. When Caleb stood, she didn’t move.
Walking out of the room, Caleb closed the door behind him. He shook his head when Annie’s worried expression voiced a question she didn’t have to ask.
They had no choice but to wait for Becky Sue to be honest with them.
He hoped it would be soon, and he prayed that the teenager wouldn’t take it in her head to run away with her boppli again.
* * *
Annie was relieved when Becky Sue agreed to join her and her siblings at the pond down the hill from the Kuhns brothers’ tree farm. Moonlight shone on the snow, making it look fresh. About thirty people, including some of their Englisch neighbors, had come together for the evening. Annie looked forward to sampling popcorn balls and the taffy that the youth group had made.
“I guess God does love us,” she said as she sat beside Caleb on a hummock where the snow had been covered with tarps and blankets.
He laughed as he laced up his skate as she did. “You sound as if this is something you’ve just discovered.”