An Amish Mother's Secret Past and Her Amish Suitor's Secret
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Jo Ann Brown
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35
Chapter One
The day couldn’t get any worse, ain’t so?
Rachel Yoder prayed the answer was “no” as she pushed the stroller with her two sick kinder along the sidewalk edging the village green. She was supposed to be helping at the day-care center today to offset the fees for her daughters’ care, but instead was taking Loribeth and Eva to the doktor because both were running a low-grade fever.
The little girls had been fussy from the time they’d awakened an hour before dawn. Loribeth, who was almost three years old and had hair as black as Rachel’s, had her thumb in her mouth, a habit she’d given up six months ago. Rachel hadn’t said anything to the toddler, because she knew sucking her thumb was giving her some comfort while she was feeling lousy. Eva, a year younger and with eyes the same warm blue as her mamm’s, was hunched into a pitiful ball on her side of the stroller. The September morning wasn’t chilly, but the two-year-old shivered as if it was the middle of January and clutched her stuffed bear close to her. She wrapped her finger in a string from her bright blue bonnet.
Looking at them, suffering and sick, broke Rachel’s heart. The pace of her steps increased as she walked across the village green. She watched for holes in the grass so the stroller didn’t bounce and make the girls feel worse.
“We’re almost there,” she said, though she doubted the girls were paying any attention to her. They were too lost in their misery.
A few cars moved along the steep street flanking the green. The trees cast long shadows toward the western mountains, and a few leaves crunched under her black sneakers. She tilted the stroller over the curb and hurried along the sidewalk toward the center of Evergreen Corners.
The doktor’s office was new, having opened in mid-August. It was staffed two days a week and was affiliated with the hospital in Rutland, which was more than an hour and a half north of Evergreen Corners. The office was sandwiched between the village’s diner and an antique shop on the far side of the bridge spanning Washboard Brook. The brook, which had become a torrent during the hurricane last October, was now so low that only the flattest stones were covered with water.
Traffic was busier across the bridge, so she waited for the walk light before she crossed the route that ran north and south. Hearing a moan from the stroller, Rachel paused and bent to check on her girls. They were holding hands as if trying to comfort each other. Tears filled her eyes. Their family was a small one—her and the girls since her husband’s death. The tragedy had changed their lives, though she doubted the toddlers were aware of the depth of their loss yet. They simply knew their daed wasn’t at home.
After tucking the blanket around them, she straightened. Her eyes widened when she saw someone else crossing the road. He was tall—so tall she doubted her head would top his shoulder. He wore a straw hat atop his sun-streaked caramel hair that fluttered in the breeze. She knew his eyes were the dark brown of muddy soil, though she couldn’t discern that because the brim of his hat shadowed his face.
He walked toward her with his purposeful stride. It always suggested he was in the midst of something important, and everyone should get out of his way.
Isaac Kauffman was the unofficial leader of the Amish volunteers in the village. He worked under the auspices of Amish Helping Hands, the group that coordinated with plain communities to assist at disaster sites, and he had found many of the volunteers himself. She’d heard some Englisch volunteers call him “Mr. It’s Gotta,” a shortened version of “Mr. It’s Gotta Be Perfectly Square.” Apparently it’s gotta be perfectly square was a phrase he used often while laying out the forms for concrete cellars. Despite their teasing, it appeared the volunteers appreciated his dedication, and he inspired everyone to make their own work match his expert foundations.
He displayed an air of arrogance few Amish men did. Her daed had conveyed the same silent message of believing he was better than the people around him. For his older daughter, he’d made it clear she could never meet his expectations, no matter how hard she tried. She’d struggled year after year, desperate for his approval. She’d given up and run away several times. The last time she’d jumped the fence and moved into the Englisch world with a vengeance.
Now...
She didn’t have time to complete the thought before Isaac’s path intersected hers.
“Gute mariye.” His deep voice resonated like the sound of heavy machinery.
She replied to his good-morning, but other words dried in her mouth. Isaac Kauffman intimidated her, though she’d long ago vowed she wouldn’t let anyone daunt her. She’d made the pledge while surrounded by loud, powerful men and women. Isaac was not loud. In the four months since his younger sister, Abby, had introduced them after Rachel’s arrival in Evergreen Corners, Rachel had never once heard him raise his voice. He didn’t need to. When Isaac Kauffman had something to say, everyone paused to listen. He was a man who didn’t demand respect, but he received it.
In that important way, he was unlike Daed. She wished she could stop comparing her daed, Manassas Yoder, to Isaac Kauffman. She couldn’t, because the aura Isaac projected raised her hackles before he said a single word. Like a mamm hawk, she bristled at his approach, determined to protect her young daughters from what she’d endured for too many years. She wasn’t being fair to him, but she didn’t care. Loribeth and Eva were too precious to her to risk them being hurt, as she’d been.
So she continued to be tongue-tied whenever she was around him. She’d found ways to avoid him or would just say a few words in passing, because she could manage a greeting, but nothing more.
Why couldn’t he be more like his sister, Abby? Abby was outgoing, approachable and open, though she was as dedicated to helping as her brother was. It was difficult sometimes to remember the two were siblings. Isaac was almost ten years older than his sister. That made him about five years younger than Rachel.
“Are you heading to the community center?” Isaac asked when she didn’t say anything else.
“No.”
His eyebrows lowered at her terse answer, but he recovered and gave her a cool smile. “I thought you could take a message to my sister for me, but if you’re not headed that way, I can—”
Loribeth threw up, spewing in Isaac’s direction.
“Oh, no!” Rachel cried.
She reached to turn Loribeth away from him, but Eva began to vomit, too. The kinder sobbed, and their faces twisted with pain. Pulling tissues from her purse she dabbed at their gray faces. She jumped, unable to halt herself, when another round of sickness erupted from the girls. She leaned both of her kinder back so their lolling heads rested against the supporting wall of the stroller.
“Are they all right?” Isaac asked from behind her.
“They woke up sick this morning.” Why did his simple question make her feel inadequate? “We’re going to the doktor’s office.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
She gasped when she saw his boots were covered with what had been in her daughter’s stomach. God, why did You let her throw up on Isaac Kauffman?
It’d been accidental, she reminded herself. Isaac was being gracious, though she wondered if he’d ever had to deal with such a thing before. She couldn’t imagine him—even as a little boy—getting sick on someone else. He was too exacting, never seemed to make a mistake.
Or so she’d heard the other volunteers say when they came in for meals.
She shuddered as she recalled how strict her parents had been. Any mistake she’d made—even the simplest, most innocent one—had been deemed as dire as the most vile sin. Each was punished with lashings from a belt or by being denied meals, and each had led to her becoming more rebellious.
Don’t question the reasons behind someone else’s kindness, she warned herself. Be grateful God sent help.
Ja, that was how she must look at Isaac’s unexpected assistance. As a gift from God at the moment she needed it most. Would Isaac have been solicitous if he’d known the truth about her kinder’s parents? How would he have reacted if he’d known that four years ago, Rachel and her late husband had been serving with the United States Army in Afghanistan?
Hearing Rachel’s dismayed apology, Isaac looked at his splattered boots. “Don’t worry. I can assure you they’ve been covered in worse.”
He’d hoped Rachel would laugh at his jest, but she kept saying how sorry she was. Never before had he heard her string so many words together. Abby had assured him Rachel wasn’t shy around everyone, and that she chattered like an eager squirrel while working in the community center where the volunteers took their meals. She’d always been quiet in his company.
He wanted to put his hands on her shoulders and urge her to calm herself. Her bopplin were screwing up their adorable, pudgy faces, and he didn’t want three females crying in front of him. He knew too well how kinder could be, because he’d raised his younger brothers and sister after their mamm died and Daed had sought consolation in the bottom of a bottle he thought Isaac didn’t know he kept hidden in the barn.
Isaac had met Rachel several times at the community center’s kitchen. She had the blackest hair he’d ever seen, without a hint of silver, though she looked to be in her middle thirties, around his age. The color was as if the night sky had been stripped of its stars, but their glow had been left behind. When she glanced at him as she tried to clean her kinder, he realized her eyes were almost the same vivid blue as the sheen of September sunlight on the hair in front of her pleated, box-shaped kapp.
Her face, however, was almost as colorless as her kinder’s. Was she ill, too?
“Can I help?” he asked.
“No!” She sounded as appalled at the idea as she had when her little girl had thrown up on his boots. She squared her shoulders, then added, “Danki, Isaac, but that’s not necessary. I know you’re busy. Like I said, we’re on our way to the doktor, and he’ll give them something to settle their stomachs.”
“I’ll pray for quick healing for them.”
“I’m sure it’s some twenty-four-hour bug, but their fevers worry me. Danki for offering. Again, I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay, Rachel.” He bent toward the stroller to tuck in an end of the blanket covering the kinder.
He froze when he looked into eyes as deep a brown as his own. The words he’d been about to say, that he wished Rachel and her little ones well, disappeared when he saw the entreaty in the older girl’s eyes. Why was the kind looking at him like that? She didn’t know him.
Sorrow pinched him as he remembered hearing the kinder’s daed was dead, leaving his pretty widow with two bopplin. Did the little girl long for a man to comfort her when she was ill? Did the kind remember her daed?
He sighed. Though there had been many years when he’d wished his daed had been different, he wouldn’t have traded a single day with him. Daed had remarried and given up drinking. The jovial man Isaac recalled from his youth was back. It was a treasured gift, one these little girls would never experience because their daed wouldn’t return.
“Is there something else, Isaac?”
At Rachel’s question, he realized he’d been lost too long in his thoughts. Standing straighter, he said, “Let me walk with you to the doktor’s office.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“If they start throwing up, you may need help.”
When she hesitated, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d done something to offend her.
Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. The verse from the first chapter of Isaiah rang through his mind. It was one he’d learned from his mentor, Clyde Felter, when he was a boy and had followed Clyde around while the wizened mason taught him how to work with stone and concrete. Clyde had liked to quote Scripture, and his favorite verses had to do with helping those who were in need.
If Clyde had been standing beside him, the old man would have insisted Isaac do what was right. What was right, Isaac knew, was overruling Rachel’s polite refusal for his assistance.
Isaac took the stroller’s handle and motioned for Rachel to lead the way to the doktor’s office. She didn’t move for a long moment, then nodded. Gut! She could be sensible. He chided himself for his impatience. She was anxious about her kinder’s health. What a gut mamm she was!
The type of mamm he hoped to have for his kinder when he was able to purchase a farm and settle down with a wife and family. He pushed aside that thought. His family still needed his assistance at their farm in northeast Vermont. His youngest brother, Herman, should be taking over soon, and then Isaac could move ahead with his plans.
As they walked over the bridge, Isaac glanced at the buildings on either side of the street. Most near the brook had been damaged during the flood, but only the massive brick factory building remained closed. It was scheduled to open next month, almost a year after Hurricane Kevin had sent a wall of water crashing through the village. To the north, along a slow curve in Washboard Brook, he could see the half skeleton of the covered bridge. It wouldn’t be rebuilt soon because the list of bridges needing repair or replacement in central Vermont was long. Fortunately, the highway bridge in the center of town had been repaired.
When Rachel paused by what once must have been a private home, which was set in the shadow of a huge Victorian with an antique store on the main floor, he saw the plaque announcing the small building housed the Evergreen Corners Medical Clinic. The white cottage had dark green shutters with silhouettes of pine trees cut into them. The front door was a welcoming red and had a wreath decorated with fake thermometers and tongue depressors hanging on it.
Putting her hand on the stroller and drawing it toward the door, Rachel said, “Danki for coming with us, Isaac. You’ve been kind.”
“We help one another.”
She flinched at his answer, and he realized it had been more curt than he intended. How often had his sister warned him he needed to be more aware of his tone when he spoke to others? Abby could discern his true feelings in spite of how his words sounded, but he’d been a part of her life since she was born.
He reached to open the door, and Rachel checked her daughters before she tipped the stroller over the threshold. She couldn’t hide her amazement when he followed her into the office. Had she expected him to leave her with two sick kinder? When she looked away without saying anything, he guessed she’d come to accept that he intended to do as he said.
The doktor’s office appeared empty. No patients waited on the half-dozen plastic chairs arranged along the walls. Posters with health information decorated the light green walls. Opposite the front door, a half wall was topped by frosted glass.
A window in the glass wall slid open. “Can I help you?”
Isaac said, “Go ahead. I’ll watch your girls.”
Rachel hurried along a bright blue section of the tile floor to the half wall. Her voice was hushed as she spoke with the gray-haired woman who sat on the other side of the window.
Rocking the stroller as she had, he listened while Rachel gave her name as well as the kinder’s and explained why she was there.
“Oh, the poor dears,” the woman said. “There’s a nasty bug going around, and it seems to like the little ones the most. The doctor has just arrived from Rutland.” She smiled. “He was delayed by the birth of triplets this morning. Please take a seat, and I’ll call you in as soon as he’s ready to see you.”
Isaac chose a chair and watched as Rachel kneeled next to the stroller. She drew some wet wipes from her black purse and dabbed them along the little girls’ faces. They moaned, and he was glad he’d stayed. It had been the right thing to do.
He knew Glen Landis, the project manager overseeing the plain volunteers in Evergreen Corners, would understand why Isaac was late for their scheduled meeting. Glen would be leaving the town at the end of the year along with most of the aid organizations. A new project manager would be appointed, if necessary. Isaac had heard rumors he would be offered the job, but Glen hadn’t mentioned anything to him.
If offered, would he take it? It didn’t fit in with the plans he had for his life, but how could he walk away when so much remained to be done in Evergreen Corners?
A door to the right of the half wall opened, and a man stepped out. The doktor, who wore a red-and-white-striped shirt and blue jeans under his white medical coat, was a short, rotund man with a pair of gold-rimmed glasses perched on top of his bald head.
“Mrs. Yoder?” the doktor asked with a reassuring smile. “I hear the stomach bug has come to your house.”
“Ja.” She stood and faced him. “Are you ready for us?”
“Whenever you’re ready. Let’s see what we can do to make these two youngsters more comfortable.” When she started toward the door, the doktor looked at Isaac. “Why don’t you come in, too? It’ll be simpler with two sick children to have both parents there.”
“Isaac isn’t their daed.” A bright pink flashed up Rachel’s cheeks. “He’s a... He’s a...”
“I’m a fellow volunteer in town,” Isaac said quickly. “Isaac Kauffman.”
“I see.” The doktor hooked a thumb at the door. “If you don’t mind volunteering right now, Isaac, it’ll make the exam easier for everyone.”
Standing, he nodded. The doktor walked through the doorway, and Rachel followed, pushing the stroller. She didn’t turn her head in time for him to miss her expression. She wasn’t happy about him coming into the examination room. He’d stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong with no more excuse than her kind had thrown up on his boots. He’d have to find a way to apologize later.
The doktor was washing his hands when Isaac joined Rachel and her daughters in the examination room. Like the waiting room, the walls were covered with posters. A table topped by a paper sheet dominated the room, and three plastic chairs were set along the wall.
“I’m Dr. Kingsley.” He dried his hands and walked to the examination table. “What’s wrong with these cuties, Mom?”
“They’re running a slight fever,” Rachel replied. She pointed to each kind as she spoke their names. “Loribeth, the older one, had a temperature of one hundred point two, and Eva had ninety-nine point eight.”
“Any other symptoms? Fussiness? Coughing? Vomiting?”
“All of them.”
The doktor glanced at Isaac, his gaze slipping to Isaac’s boots. “Ah, so I see.”
“I wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way,” Isaac said, annoyed at the doktor’s jesting tone.
“No one can be fast enough to escape every time.” Dr. Kingsley motioned for Rachel to put Loribeth on the exam table and for her to remove the kinder’s dress. Picking up his stethoscope, he said, “My oldest once stood at the top of the stairs and vomited. She hit every step. My wife and I were grateful we’d pulled out the old carpet days before.” After warming the stethoscope between his palms, he cupped it so Loribeth could examine it.
The little girl ignored him, whining and holding up her arms to her mamm in a wordless request for comfort. Rachel soothed the little girl but glanced at the stroller as the other kind began crying. Raising her remarkable eyes, she shot Isaac a pleading glance.
Hoping he remembered the skills he’d learned when his siblings were tiny, he unlatched the straps holding the toddler in the stroller and scooped her up. She retched, and he steeled himself, but she didn’t throw up. He cradled the kind until the doktor had finished examining her sister.
While Rachel held Loribeth, he put Eva on the table and stepped back to let Dr. Kingsley check her, as well. He was pleased to hear the doktor announce the kinder were fine except for the stomach bug. He prescribed something to ease their cramps and help them sleep.
“If they’re feeling better tomorrow,” Dr. Kingsley said, “and I suspect they will be, you can discontinue the medicine. However, they’re contagious. You all are. You should go home and stay away from other people until at least tomorrow. If you don’t have any symptoms by noon tomorrow, you shouldn’t be able to pass along the germs any longer.”
Isaac bit back his groan. He was supposed to be finishing the preparations for a new foundation today. “If I’m working outdoors, will being around other people be a problem?”
“It won’t be a problem as long as you don’t breathe around them or touch anything they touch.” The doktor gave him a regretful smile. “I know it’s difficult, but the best way to avoid this spreading is to stay away from others for twenty-four to thirty-six hours. I suspect we’ll be seeing more children from the day-care center today and tomorrow.”
Accepting the inevitable, Isaac stood to one side as Rachel dressed her kinder. She thanked the doktor and put the girls into the stroller with Isaac’s help. As soon as they were on the street, she began to apologize again.
“It’s not your fault, Rachel. God decided I need a day off. I’ll spend the time doing the paperwork Glen has been after me to complete. It’s better I skip a day than infect everyone else.”
When he asked if she needed help getting the kinder home, she shook her head and thanked him as she walked away.
He watched her push the stroller along the sidewalk. Odd. He hadn’t paid much attention to her until this morning. He’d noticed her, of course, because she was a lovely woman and a dedicated volunteer.
Maybe he should have looked more closely. He’d turned thirty-five and no longer had the obligations he’d had for the years when his daed had been impaired by alcohol. It was time to find the perfect wife. He wasn’t seeking a great romance. His heart, he knew, was too practical.
He’d escorted plenty of girls home in his courting buggy when he was a teenager. Not once had he been interested—nor had they—in him taking them home a second time. As he grew older, the pool of available women had lessened in their district and the neighboring ones in Lancaster County before his family moved north. His hope he’d find his match waiting for him in northern Vermont hadn’t worked out, either.
He knew what he wanted in a wife. An excellent cook. A wunderbaar mamm for their kinder. A hard worker who wouldn’t hesitate to join him in making the farm he intended to buy a success. Someone who loved animals. A woman of deep faith.
As Rachel crossed the road, heading away from him, he smiled. He’d seen that she fit one of his criteria. She was a dedicated mamm. What about his other requirements for a perfect Amish wife? Did she meet them?
It could be, he decided, time for him to find out.
