Love Inspired November 2013 #2 Read online

  He paused to push a lock of dark hair off the child’s forehead. Amelia had crawled up into the rocking chair and fallen asleep when Caleb was seeing the last of his neighbors off. He hadn’t even had time to bathe her before carrying her upstairs to the small, whitewashed room across the hall from his own bedchamber. A mother would likely wake a drowsy child to wash her and put her in a clean nightgown before putting her to bed, but there was no mother.

  It seemed to Caleb that a sleeping child ought to be left to sleep in peace. It was only natural that active kinner got dirty in the course of a busy day. Morning would be good enough for soap and water before breakfast.

  “God keep you,” he murmured, turning away from the bed. To the dog standing in the doorway, he said, “Fritzy. Bescherm!” Obediently, the black Standard Poodle dropped to a sitting position and fixed his attention on Amelia.

  Absently, Caleb’s hand rose to stroke the gnarled side of his face where only a sparse and ragged beard grew. The burned flesh that had pained him so fiercely in the days after the fire had finally healed. Now he had no feeling in the area at all.

  Some said that he’d been lucky that his mouth hadn’t been twisted, that his speech remained much as it had always been, but Caleb didn’t agree. Luck would have been reaching his wife before the smoke had claimed her life. Luck would have been that Dinah and he and Amelia could have built a new home and continued their lives as before. A small voice whispered from the far corner of his consciousness that he asked too much of God, that the blessing had been that his daughter had come out of that inferno alive.

  He did not blame God. The fire that had consumed their farmhouse had been an accident. A gust of wind... A spark from a lamp. The cause was never truly determined, but as Caleb saw it, the fault, if there was fault, had been his. He had not protected his family, and his precious wife had been lost to him and his beloved child.

  “Watch over her,” he ordered the dog. With Fritzy on duty, Caleb was free to check that his horse was safe, that the toolshed doors were locked and that all was secure.

  Flat, green Delaware was a long way from the dry highlands of Idaho and the Old Order Amish community that he’d left behind. After the fire and the death of his wife, Caleb had tried to do as his bishop had urged. He’d tried to pick up his life and carry on for the sake of his child. He’d even gone so far as to consider, after a year, courting a plump widow with a kind face who belonged to his church. But the bitter memories of his past had haunted him and he’d decided to try to pick up the pieces of his life somewhere new. In Idaho, there had been no family ties to hold him. Here, where his cousin Eli lived, things might be better. It had to be good for Amelia to grow up with relatives, and Eli’s wife had six sisters. A woman’s hand was what Amelia needed, he told himself.

  Caleb left the kitchen and walked out into the yard. All was quiet. His house was far enough off the road that he wasn’t bothered by the sounds of passing traffic. There were several sheds and a decent stable for the horse. The old barn, a survivor from earlier times than the house, stood farther back. Caleb was pleased with the work that had been done on it today. Alone, it would have taken him months. There were good people here, people that he instinctively knew he could trust. He prayed to God that this move to Delaware had been the right one for both him and Amelia.

  He walked on a little farther, drawn by the sweet scent of new wood that lay stacked, ready and waiting for the following day. He stood for a moment in the semidarkness and gazed up at the exposed beams. He thought about the laughter and the camaraderie during their work today. Everyone had been kind to him and Amelia, trying to make them feel welcome. And he had felt welcome...but he hadn’t felt as if he was part of the community. He still felt like an outsider, looking in through a glass-paned window, hearing their laughter but not feeling it. And he so wanted to feel laughter again.

  Caleb was about to turn back to the house when he heard a thud and then a clatter from the barn. Something had fallen or been knocked over inside the building. Had some animal wandered in? Or did he have a curious intruder? “Who’s there?” he called as he approached the open front wall.

  “Just me,” came a woman’s voice from high above.

  Caleb stepped inside and looked up to see a shadowy form swaying on a loft floor beam. A sense of panic went through him and he raised both hands. “Stop! Don’t move!”

  “I’m fine. I just—” Her foot slipped and she swayed precariously, arms outstretched, before recovering her balance.

  Caleb gasped. “Stay where you are,” he ordered. “I’m coming up.”

  “I’ll be fine.” She lowered herself down onto the beam until she was kneeling. “It’s just hard to see. Do you have a flashlight?”

  “What in the name of common sense are you doing in my loft, woman?” He ran for the ladder and climbed it at double speed. “Ne! Don’t move.”

  “I don’t need your help,” she said, taking a sassy tone with him. Rising to her feet again, she began traversing the beam toward him.

  “I told you to stay put!” Caleb had never been afraid of heights, but he was all too aware of the distance to the concrete floor and the possibility of serious injury or death if one or both of them fell. He stood cautiously, finding his balance, then stepped slowly toward her.

  “Go back,” she insisted. “I can do this.”

  “Ya, maybe you can,” he answered gruffly. “Or maybe you can’t, and I’ll have to scrape you up off my barn floor with a shovel.” He quickly closed the distance between them, reached out and swept her up in his arms.

  Chapter Two

  Caleb carried Rebecca to the end of the crossbeam and set her securely on the ladder. “You got your balance?”

  Her hands tightened on the rung and she found solid footing under her before answering. “I’m fine. I really could have managed the beam.” She slipped into the Pennsylvania Deitsch dialect that was their first language. “I wasn’t going to fall.” It wasn’t as if she hadn’t climbed the loft ladder in her father’s barn a thousand times without ever slipping. Nimbly, she made her way down the ladder to the barn floor and stepped aside to allow him to descend.

  “It didn’t look like you were managing. You nearly fell off before I got to you.”

  A sharp reply rose in Rebecca’s mind, but she pressed her lips together and swallowed it. Caleb Wittner’s coming to her rescue, or what he’d obviously believed was coming to her rescue, was almost... It was... Her lips softened into a smile. It was as romantic as a hero coming to the rescue of a maiden in a story. He’d thought she was in danger and he’d put himself in harm’s way to save her. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t really in danger. “Danke,” she murmured. “I’m sorry if I caused you trouble.”

  “You should be sorry.”

  His words were stern without being harsh. Caleb was obviously upset with her, but his was the voice of a take-charge and reasonable man. Somehow, even though he was scolding her, Rebecca found something pleasant and reassuring in his tone. He was almost a stranger, yet, oddly, she felt as though she could trust him.

  Meow.

  “Vas ist das?”

  “Ach.” In the excitement of having Caleb rescue her, she’d almost forgotten her whole reason for being in the barn in the first place. “It’s a katzenbaby,” she exclaimed as she drew the little creature out of the bodice of her dress. “A kitten,” she said, switching back to English and crooning softly to it. “Shh, shh, you’re safe now.” And to Caleb she said, “It’s tiny. Probably hasn’t had its eyes open long.”

  “A cat? You climbed up to the top of my barn in the dark for a katzen?”

  “A baby.” She kissed the top of the kitten’s head. It was as soft as duckling down. “I think the poor little thing has lost its mother. It was crying so loudly, I just couldn’t abandon it.” She raised the kitten to her cheek and heard the
crying change from a pitiful mewing to a purr. The kitten nuzzled against her and Rebecca felt the scratchy surface of a small tongue against her skin. “It must be hungry.”

  “Everyone has left for the night,” he said, ignoring the kitten. “What are you still doing here?”

  Rebecca sighed. “I forgot my schuhe. I’d taken off my sneakers while...” She sensed his impatience and finished her explanation in a rush of words. “I left my shoes under the tree when I went to serve the late meal. And when I came to fetch them, I heard the kitten in distress.” She cradled the little animal in her hands and it burrowed between her fingers. “Why do you think the mother cat moved the others and left this one behind?”

  “There are no cats here. I’ve no use for cats,” he said gruffly. “I have no idea how this one got in my loft.”

  Caleb’s English was excellent, although he did have a slightly different accent in Deitsch. She didn’t think she’d ever met anyone from Idaho. He was Eli’s cousin, but Eli had grown up in Pennsylvania.

  He loomed over her. “Come to the house. My daughter is in bed, but I’ll wake her, hitch up my horse and drive you home. Where do you live?”

  Rebecca felt a pang of disappointment; she’d assumed he knew who she was. She supposed that it was too dark for Caleb to make out her face now. Still, she’d hoped that he’d taken enough notice of her in church or elsewhere in the daylight to recognize her by her voice. “I’m Rebecca. Rebecca Yoder. One of Eli’s wife’s sisters.”

  “Not the youngest one. What’s her name? The girl with the sweet smile. Susanna. Her, I remember. You must be the next oldest.” He took her arm and guided her carefully out of the building. “Watch your step,” he cautioned.

  The moon was just rising over the trees, but she still couldn’t see his face clearly. His fingers were warm but rough against her bare skin. For the first time, she felt uncertain and a little breathless. “I’m fine,” she said, pulling away from him.

  “Your mother will not be pleased that you didn’t leave with the others,” he said. “It’s not seemly for us to be alone after nightfall.”

  “I’m not so young that my mother expects me to be in the house by dark.” She wanted to tell him that he should know who she was, that she was a baptized member of his church and not a silly girl, but she didn’t. “Speak in haste, repent at leisure,” her grossmama always said.

  Honestly, she could understand how Caleb might have been startled to find an intruder in his barn after dark. And it was true that it was awkward, her being here after everyone else had already left. She wasn’t ready to judge him for being short with her.

  “It’s kind of you to offer,” she said, using a gentler voice. “But I don’t need you to take me home. And it would be foolish to get Amelia—” she let him know that she was familiar with his daughter’s name, even if he didn’t know hers “—to wake a sleeping child to drive me less than a mile. I’m quite capable of walking home.” She hesitated. “But what do I do about the kitten? Shall I take it with me or—”

  “Ya. Take the katzen. If it stays here, being so young, it will surely die.”

  “But if the mother returns for it and finds it gone—”

  “Rebecca, I said I haven’t seen a cat. Why someone didn’t find this kitten earlier when we were working on the loft floor, I don’t know. Now let me hitch my buggy. Eli would be—”

  “I told you, I don’t need your help,” she answered firmly. “Eli would agree with me, as would my mother.” With that, she turned her back on him and strode away across the field.

  “Rebecca, wait!” he called after her. “You’re being unreasonable.”

  “Good night, Caleb.” She kept walking. She’d be home before Mam wound the hall clock and have the kitten warm and fed in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

  * * *

  Caleb stared after the girl as she strode away. It wasn’t right that she should walk home alone in the dark. She should have listened to him. He was a man, older than she was and a preacher in her church. She should have shown him more respect.

  Rebecca Yoder had made a foolish choice to fetch the kitten and risk harm. Worse, she’d caused him to make the equally foolish decision to go out on that beam after her. He clenched his teeth, pushing back annoyance and the twinge of guilt that he felt. What if the young woman came to harm between here and her house? But what could he do? He couldn’t leave Amelia alone in the house to run after Rebecca. Not only would he be an irresponsible father, but he would look foolish.

  As foolish as he must have looked carrying that girl.

  The memory of walking the beam with Rebecca in his arms rose in his mind and he pushed it away. He hadn’t felt the softness of a woman’s touch for a long time. Had he been unnecessarily harsh with Rebecca because somewhere, deep inside, he’d been exhilarated by the experience?

  Caleb sighed. God’s ways were beyond the ability of men and women to understand. He hadn’t asked to be a leader of the church, and he certainly hadn’t wanted it.

  He hadn’t been here more than a few weeks and had attended only two regular church Sundays when one of the two preachers died and a new one had to be chosen from among the adult men. The Seven Poplars church used the Old Order tradition of choosing the new preacher by lot. A Bible verse was placed in a hymnal, and the hymnal was added to a pile of hymnals. Those men deemed eligible by the congregation had to, guided by God, choose a hymnal. The man who chose the book with the scripture inside became the new preacher, a position he would hold until death or infirmity prevented him from fulfilling the responsibility. To everyone’s surprise, the lot had fallen to him, a newcomer, something that had never happened before to anyone’s knowledge. If there was any way he could have refused, he would have. But short of moving away or giving up his faith and turning Mennonite, there was no alternative. The Lord had chosen him to serve, so serve he must.

  Caleb looked up at his house, barely visible in the darkness, and came to a halt. He had come to Seven Poplars in the belief that God had led him here. He believed that God had a purpose for him, as He did for all men. What that purpose was, he didn’t know, but for the first time since he’d arrived, he felt a calm fall over him. Everyone had said that, with time, the ache he felt in his heart for the loss of his wife would ease, that he would find contentment again.

  As he stood there gazing toward his new house—toward his new life—it seemed to Caleb that a weight gradually lifted from his shoulders. “All over a kitten,” he murmured aloud, smiling in spite of himself. “More nerve than common sense, that girl.” He shook his head, and his wry smile became a chuckle. “If the other females in my new church are as headstrong and unpredictable as she is, heaven help me.”

  * * *

  The following morning, Rebecca and her sisters Miriam, Ruth and Grace walked across the pasture to their sister Anna’s house on the neighboring farm. Mam, Grace and Susanna were already there, as they had driven over in the buggy after breakfast. Also present in Anna’s sunny kitchen were Cousin Dorcas, their grandmother Lovina—who lived with Anna and her husband, Samuel—and neighbors Lydia Beachy and Fannie Byler. Fortunately, Anna’s home was large enough to provide ample space for all the women and a noisy assortment of small children, including Anna’s baby, Rose, and Ruth’s twins, the youngest children, who’d been born in midsummer.

  The women were in the kitchen preparing a noonday meal for the men working on Caleb’s barn, and Rebecca had just finished quietly relaying the story of her new kitten’s rescue to her sisters.

  Rebecca had spent most of the night awake, trying to feed the kitten goat’s milk from a medicine dropper with little success. But this morning, Miriam had solved the problem by tucking the orphan into the middle of a pile of nursing kittens on her back porch. The mother cat didn’t seem to mind the visitor, so Rebecca’s kitten was now sound asleep on Miriam’s porch with a full
tummy.

  Grace fished a plastic fork out of a cup on the table, tasted Fannie’s macaroni salad and chuckled. “I’d love to have seen that preacher carrying you and the kitten across that beam,” she teased. And then she added, “Hmm, needs salt, I think.”

  “Keep your saltshaker away from my macaroni salad,” Fannie warned good-naturedly from across the room. “Roman has high blood pressure, and I’ve cut him off salt. If anyone wants it, they can add it at the table.”

  Grossmama rose out of her rocker and came over to the table where bowls of food for the men were laid out. “A little salt never hurt anyone,” she grumbled. “I’ve been eating salt all my life. Roman works hard. He never got high blood pressure from salt.” She peered suspiciously at the blue crockery bowl of macaroni salad. “What are those green things in there?”

  “Olives, Grossmama,” Anna explained. “Just a few for color. Would you like to taste it?” She offered her a saucer and a plastic fork. “And maybe a little of Ruth’s baked beans?”

  “Just a little,” Grossmama said. “You know I never want to be a bother.”

  Rebecca met Grace’s gaze and it was all the two of them could do not to smile. Grossmama, a widow, had come to live in Kent County when her health and mind had begun to fail. Never an easy woman to deal with, Grossmama still managed to voice her criticism of her daughter-in-law. Their grandmother could be critical and outspoken, but it didn’t keep any of them from feeling responsible for her or from loving her.

  A mother spent a lifetime caring for others. How could any person of faith fail to care for an elderly relative? And how could they consider placing one of their own in a nursing home for strangers to care for? Rebecca intimately knew the problems of pleasing and watching over her grandmother. She and her sister Leah had spent months in Ohio with her before the family had finally convinced her to give up her home and move East. Still, it was a wonder and a blessing to Rebecca and everyone else that Grossmama—who could be so difficult—had settled easily and comfortably into life with Anna. Sweet and capable Anna, the Yoder sisters felt, had “the touch.”