“I heard one of the girls call you ‘onkel,’” Clara went on when he didn’t answer.
Relieved to be jerked out of his grim thoughts, he nodded again. “It’s an honorary title. Their daed was my best friend, so the twins grew up with me around.” He was surprised how gut it felt to talk about Melvin instead of avoiding any mention of either him or Esta as he had since their funeral. His family had been trying to tiptoe around the subject. Their efforts not to upset him were a constant reminder of what he’d lost. “Melvin asked me, after the girls were born, to be the kinder’s guardian in case something happened to him and Esta.”
“They don’t have any other family?”
“There are Melvin’s parents and Esta’s sister. But they are out of the country, working with Mennonite missions. The kinder’s grandparents, Melvin’s parents, are in Ghana, and Esta’s sister is in Chile. It’ll take at least a month before they can return to Paradise Springs. Maybe longer for their aenti because a recent earthquake along the Chilean coast tore up many of the roads in the area where she’s serving.”
She smiled. “So you have become their temporary daed.”
He wished he could smile, but grief weighed too heavily for his lips. “I moved into their house to take care of them until someone from their real family gets here. I figured it’d be easier for them than moving to my house.”
He didn’t add that disaster had followed disaster while he tried to keep up with the young and confused kinder who didn’t understand why their parents had failed to come home as they’d promised. It hadn’t taken more than a couple of days for Isaiah to realize he couldn’t oversee them and run his blacksmithing business and fulfill his duties as a minister in the district. Neighbors and his family had been helping with the chores on the farm and in the house. Now that Clara was going to be at the house, she would tend to those jobs, and he could work in the barn without having the kinder out there with him. Keeping an eye on the little kids while trying to milk the family’s dozen cows had been close to impossible.
“I should get to know them.” She walked to the kinder and knelt in front of them.
Isaiah stayed where he was. The soft murmur of her voice drifted to him, but not her words. She seemed uncomfortable with him. If that was so, why had she taken the job? Again, he chided himself. He was in no condition to judge anyone or anything. If she could calm the kinder with such ease, then why would he care if she’d rather spend time with the twins?
But he did.
You’re not thinking clearly. Be glad you’ve got help. And he was. Hoping he didn’t fall asleep on his feet, he turned to the smithy and the task of cleaning the mess the youngsters had made.
* * *
Clara looked from the kinder who were enjoying their lollipops to Isaiah Stoltzfus as he walked with slow, heavy steps into the blacksmith’s shop. The man was exhausted. He carried a massive burden of fatigue on his shoulders, and, if the half-circles under his eyes got any darker, he would look as if he were part raccoon. She guessed that when he wasn’t so tired he was a gut-looking man. His brother had mentioned Isaiah was a widower. The beard he had started when he married remained thin in spots, or maybe its white-blond hair was so fine it was invisible at some places along his jaw. Above his snowy brows, the hair dropping over his forehead was several shades darker, a color she’d heard someone describe as tawny.
He seemed like a nice guy, but nice guys weren’t always what they seemed. She’d learned that the hardest way. She didn’t intend to make the mistake again.
Not getting too close or too involved was her plan. She would help him with the twins, and when their aenti or grandparents returned, she’d leave with a smile and her last paycheck. By then, maybe she would have figured out what she wanted to do in the future. It wasn’t going to revolve around a man, especially a gut-looking one who could twist her heart around his little finger and break it.
A sharp crunch drew Clara’s attention to the kinder. The two sets of twins looked enough alike to be quads. They had pale blond hair, the girls’ crooked braids barely containing their baby fine tresses that floated like bits of fog. Another crunch came, and she realized one boy was chewing on his lollipop.
“Are those candies gut?” she asked, already seeing differences between the two boys. The boy with the injured finger had a cowlick that lifted a narrow section of his bangs off his forehead, and the other one had darker freckles.
“Ja,” said one of the girls.
“I am Clara.” She smiled as she took the empty sticks held out to her. “What are your names?”
The wrong question because the kinder all spoke at once. It took her a few moments to sort out that Andrew was the boy with the bruised finger and the other boy was Ammon. The toddler who had been climbing on the forge was Nancy, and her twin was named Nettie Mae.
She led them to a rain barrel at the end of the building and washed their hands and faces. Each one must have given the others a taste of his or her lollipop, because their cheeks had become a crazy quilt of red, orange, yellow and green. She cleaned them as best she could, getting off most of the stickiness.
As she did, first one kind, then the next began to yawn. She wondered if they were sleeping any better than Isaiah was. Or maybe they needed a nap.
Clara felt like a mother duck leading her ducklings as she walked to the blacksmith shop. A light breeze rocked the sign by the door that read Blacksmith. Peeking past the door, she saw Isaiah checking the bellows, running his fingers along the ribs. Did he fear Nancy’s enthusiasm had damaged them?
Though she didn’t say anything and the kinder remained silent, he looked up. He attempted a smile, and she realized what a strain it must be when he’d lost two dear friends.
“Is it all right?” she asked. When his forehead threaded with bafflement, she added, “The bellows?”
“They seem to be, but I won’t know until I fire the forge.”
“If it’s okay with you, I’ll take the twins home while you do what you need to here.”
“I should show you where—”
“I think I can find my way around a plain kitchen,” she said. She didn’t want him to think she was eager to go, though she was. The fact she’d noticed how handsome he was had alarms ringing in her head. After all, her former fiancé, Lonnie Wickey, had been nice to look at, too.
“I’m sure you can,” he said after she’d urged the kinder to get in her buggy. “But you should know the pilot light on the stove and the oven isn’t working. Do you know how to light one?”
“Ja. Our old stove was like that.” She lifted Nettie Mae, the littlest one, into the buggy. “Did you have something planned for supper?”
“We’ve been eating whatever is in the fridge. I appreciate you coming to help, Clara.” He glanced at where the kinder were climbing into her buggy and claiming seats. “Can you stay until their grandparents or their aenti get here?”
“I can stay for as long as you need me to help with the kinder.” She didn’t add she was glad to get away from her daed, who found fault with everything she did. As he had for as long as she could remember. Doing a gut job for Isaiah could be the thing to prove to Daed she wasn’t as flighty and irresponsible as he thought. She had been as a kind, but she’d grown up. Her daed didn’t seem to realize that.
“Gut.” His breath came out in a long sigh, and she realized he was more stressed than she’d thought. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll finish some things here and get to the farm in a couple of hours. You don’t have to worry about milking the cows. I’ll do that after supper.”
“Take your time. I know you haven’t had much of it.”
He