She was gut with them. He’d seen that from the moment she walked into his blacksmith shop and took control of the chaos. She had an intangible air of calm around her that seemed to draw the kinder’s attention so they listened to what she said.
And with her face not half-hidden beneath her bonnet, her hair rivaled the colors of the sunset. Somehow, her red strands weren’t garish but more a reflection of the glow that transformed her face when she smiled. Really smiled, not a lukewarm one aimed at hiding her true feelings.
“Wasn’t the cake gut?” Isaiah asked and was rewarded with four towheads bobbing together, though Ammon wasn’t as enthusiastic at first. The youngsters must be exhausted. “Next time we see Fannie Beiler, you must tell her how much you enjoyed this cake.”
“Yummy!” Nettie Mae said, patting her stomach. “Yummy in my tummy!”
A laugh, quickly squelched, came from where Clara sat beside the girls. She had her hand over her mouth and a horrified expression on her face.
He put hands on the boys’ shoulders to keep them from running away from the table again. Clara had slipped her arm around the girls and started to apologize to them.
“No, don’t say you’re sorry,” he hurried to say. “There’s nothing wrong with laughing, right?” He looked at the boys.
Andrew nodded. “Clara can laugh, I guess.”
“But not you?” she asked.
When the kinder remained silent, Isaiah pushed his plate away, though he hadn’t finished the delicious cake. He folded his arms on the table.
“God wants us to be happy,” he said as he looked from one young face to the next. “He loves it when we sing and when we pray together. Do you believe that?”
They nodded.
“And when we laugh together, too,” he added.
The boys ran into the front room. When Nancy let out a cry, Clara drew her arm back from the girls who chased after their brothers and huddled with them by the sofa.
He wanted to go and comfort them, but wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t tell them they should accept the hurts in their lives because God had a plan for them to be happy in the future. He couldn’t say that because he wasn’t sure he believed it himself any longer. Since he’d learned of Melvin’s and Esta’s deaths, the uneasiness that had begun inside him after Rose’s death had hardened his heart like iron taken from the forge. Every heartbeat hurt.
He struggled with his faith more each day. He believed in God, but it wasn’t easy to accept a loving God would watch such grieving and do nothing. More than once, he’d considered seeking advice from his bishop, because he trusted Reuben Lapp as a man of God. But he knew what Reuben would say. Trust in God and be willing to accept the path God had given him to walk. Once he’d been happy to follow, but that was before Rose died from a severe asthma attack and then his friends’ lives came to an end, leaving behind hurt and bewildered kinder who couldn’t understand why the most important persons in their lives had gone away.
“Don’t push them,” Clara said from the other side of the table. “There’s got to be a way to persuade them it’s okay to laugh again like normal kids. I know there is.”
“I wish I could be as sure.”
When she stared at him, shocked a minister would speak so, he rose and went to the back door. He grasped his straw hat, put it on his head and said, “I’ve got to milk the cows. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
He didn’t give her time to answer. Striding across the yard to the big barn where the cows were waiting, he knew he needed to have an explanation for her when he returned.
He didn’t know what it would be.
When Isaiah came in after finishing the barn chores, the kitchen looked as neat as it had before supper. The room was empty, so he glanced toward the front room.
The twins were stretched out on the floor, coloring, while Clara sat on the sofa facing the wood stove and the rocking chair Melvin had bought for his wife when they first learned they were going to have a boppli. At that time, nobody had guessed Esta was carrying two bopplin.
He didn’t move as Andrew got up and went to show Clara the picture he’d been working on. While she listened to the boy’s excitement with the colors he’d chosen, she curved her hand across his narrow back, making a connection to the kind. Andrew was grinning when he dropped beside his sisters and brother. Clara returned to stitching a button on a shirt that must be from the pile of mending Esta kept in the front room.
It was the perfect domestic scene, one he’d believed he and Rose would one day share. The troubles they’d had in the first couple of months of their marriage had been behind them, and he’d been looking forward to building a family with her in the days before she died.
Alone.
Thinking of that single word was like swallowing a lit torch. There must have been a sign he’d missed, a wheezing sound when she breathed or a cough that went on and on or blueness around her lips. Something he should have seen and known not to go to work as if it were any other day. Something to tell him to stay home and comfort her and call 911.
He’d failed in his responsibility to her, and he couldn’t make the same mistake with these youngsters. He owed that to his friends who had trusted him with their precious kinder.
Crossing the kitchen, Isaiah was surprised when the kinder were so focused on their coloring that they didn’t raise their heads until Clara greeted him. She continued sewing, and he was astounded to see it was the shirt he’d lost a button on the other day.
“You don’t have to do my mending.” His voice sounded strained.
“I don’t mind. I like staying busy.” She looked at the kinder. “They’ve been coloring pictures for you.”
“For me?”
She nodded, and he saw Andrew was coloring a bright red cow while his twin was using the same shade for a tractor. Nancy had been working on a blue bird with most of the strokes inside the lines, but Nettie Mae’s page was covered with green with no regard for the picture of a dog in the middle of it. The little girl had her nose an inch from the coloring book.
When Nettie Mae paused to try to stifle a yawn, he had to wonder if she was half-asleep already. It had been a long day for the twins and an upsetting one, as well.
Clara stood and set his shirt on a table beside the sofa. “Time for baths.”
The youngsters groaned, but gathered their crayons and put them in the metal box. She snapped the lid closed and picked up their coloring books while the twins asked what he thought of their pictures.
His answers must have satisfied them, though he couldn’t recall a moment later what he’d said. His gaze remained on Clara as she set the books and crayon box on the lower shelf of a bookcase. The thin organdy of her kapp was warmed by her red hair. Every motion of her slender fingers seemed to be accompanied by unheard music.
When she turned, he didn’t shift his eyes quickly enough. She caught him watching her, and the faint pink in her cheeks vanished. Was that dismay in her eyes? Dismay and another stronger emotion, but he couldn’t discern what. As she had before, she lowered her eyes.
She remained on the other side of the room while she said, “Isaiah, I must get the kinder ready for bed.”
“I’ll give the boys their bath,” he said, trying to lighten the situation. “I’ll check behind all four ears.”
His hope the twins would forget themselves and giggle was dashed, because they had become silent again. Did they sense the tension in the room? They couldn’t know why. He didn’t.