Her hands still shook as she broke three eggs into a bowl and poured them into the hot oil. Crackling and popping, the eggs fried but were forgotten when the troublesome renter awkwardly maneuvered his way through the kitchen door, lost his balance and tripped over his own feet. He lay sprawled on the worn tile floor. Facedown. Not moving.
“Herr Graber!” Molly stepped over his crutch and kneeled at his side. The morning headlines flashed through her mind. Man Killed by Abusive Landlady. “Please be all right.” She shook his shoulder.
Nothing.
She shook it again, harder this time.
“If you’d stop trying to break my shoulder, I might be able to get up.”
Molly stamped her foot, angrier than she’d been since he’d called her a thief earlier. Why did this man bring out the worst in her? “You scared me. Why didn’t you say something, let me know you weren’t dead? I thought...”
He leaned up on one elbow. “Did you seriously think I was dead? It would take a lot more than a spill to kill me, Miss Ziegler.”
She gathered her skirt around her and scooted away, not sure what kind of mood he was in, but stayed close enough, just in case he needed help getting back on his feet.
His green eyes darted her way and then over to his fallen crutches. “Your mother seemed normal enough when I signed in last night. I wonder if she knows how you treat her guests when she’s not around.”
“I take offense to that remark, Herr Graber. I in no way harmed you. Well...here in the kitchen I didn’t. I was busy cooking your breakfast, and you fell over your own big feet.” He wore scarred, laced-up boots, the kind bikers favored. Maybe that was how he’d hurt himself. A nasty bike spill, and now he was in pain and taking his misery out on her.
“You’re right. I did fall over my own feet. That’s what cripples do.” He leaned heavily on a single crutch and pushed his way to his feet, his face contorting with pain.
“Ach, you’re no cripple,” she said, standing.
“What would you know about being crippled?”
He’d crossed the line. Molly lifted her skirt an inch and showed him the built-up shoe on her right foot. “I think I know a lot about being crippled.”
He flushed, his forehead creased in dismay. He moved to straighten, and groaned.
A wave of sympathy washed over her. He had to be suffering. She’d almost been a teenager when she’d fallen out of a tree and broke her leg, damaging the growth plate. Her pain had been excruciating, but she got around fine now. He looked pale with pain. No wonder his mood was dark. “Can I help—”
He lifted his hand to warn her off. “Nee. I’m perfectly capable of getting myself up. I’ve had plenty of practice.”
He rose and towered over her. He had to be at least six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a slim waist.
The smell of burning eggs reached Molly’s nose. She gasped as she turned and saw smoke rising from the overheated frying pan. “Your eggs! Now look what you’ve made me do.” She pulled the pan off the burner and then turned back, ready to do verbal battle with the wretched man.
Unsteady on his feet, Isaac Graber hobbled across the kitchen floor and stepped out the back door, waving gray smoke out of his face as he shut it behind him with a slam.
A gust of wind accompanied Ulla Ziegler through the back door. She hurried into the kitchen, the folds of her once-clean apron smeared with mud and brimming with a load of gritty brown potatoes and freshly pulled carrots. Fat rain drops spattered against the kitchen window.
Finishing the last of the breakfast dishes, Molly stopped mid-swipe. To her amazement her stout little mother, who slipped and slid through the door, managed to make it across the room without dropping one potato.
Molly’s brow rose in agitation. Her mamm’s plain black shoes had left a trail of gooey brown mud across the recently mopped linoleum floor. Naturally her mother made no apologies for the added work.
Wiping her hands dry, Molly couldn’t help but smirk. The sudden morning shower had turned her mamm’s wooly gray hair into a wild riot of curls around her untidy, limp prayer kapp.
A natural trader, the older woman was blessed with the gift of bartering and had bragged at breakfast about the promise of ten pounds of freshly dug potatoes from old Chicken John, a local chicken farmer, for six jars of their newly canned peaches. Molly had a feeling the old farmer had more than peaches on his mind when it came to her mother. She’d noticed the way the widower looked at her, not that Ulla gave the man much encouragement. Her mamm seemed satisfied with being a widow with no man to tell her what to do.
Isaac Graber came back into the house moments after Ulla, the wind catching the door and slamming it again as he fell into the closest kitchen chair. The renter jerked a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped rain from his pale face.
Sniffing, Ulla took in a long, noisy breath and coughed on the kitchen’s putrid air. She dumped the potatoes into a wicker basket in the corner of the big kitchen and twirled.
“What’d you burn, dochder?” She jerked a dish towel off its peg and pressed it to her lips. Her watering blue-eyed gaze sliced from Molly, who stood transfixed in front of the cast iron sink, to the smoldering frying pan floating in a sea of sudsy dishwater.
Molly shrugged. She would not lie. She wanted to, but she’d never been good at weaving believable tales. Best to tell the truth. “The eggs got away from me.”
She waited for her mother’s reaction, her gaze slanting Isaac Graber’s way, daring him to deny the truth of her words. Had he had a chance to tell her mamm about what had happened this morning? She looked at the bump on his forehead and then glanced away. If her mamm made a fuss, she surely wouldn’t get to the singing practice on time.
Ulla looked in the kitchen trash and made a face, her full lips turned down at the corners. “You know it’s a sin to waste good food. That dog hanging around out back would have eaten those, burned or not.”
Ulla began to flap the dish towel around the room, propelling the smoke toward the slightly opened kitchen window.
“Molly didn’t forget the eggs, Mrs. Ziegler.” Isaac smiled and flashed his straight, white teeth. His green eyes sparkled with sincerity. “She helped me get off the floor when I tripped over my own big feet. The eggs paid the price for her efforts. Isn’t that right, Molly?”
Why was he taking up for her? She put her hands on her hips and looked him over. Pale and slender, he reclined in the old kitchen chair as calm as could be, his crutches leaning against the wall behind him. He smiled at her and her stomach flip-flopped. She went back to scrubbing the frying pan’s scorched bottom. Seconds later she glanced back up at him and caught him staring at her. What was he up to?
She’d expected him to be full of tales and gretzing to her mamm about this morning, and there he sat, being nice, even generous of heart. The man kept her off-kilter, and she wasn’t having any of it. “Ya, like he said, Mamm. He fell and I helped him up.”
One of Ulla’s gray brows spiked. She mumbled, “Ya, well. No matter. It’s gut you were here to help.”
Molly’s gaze drifted from her mamm’s suspicious expression back to Isaac’s calm grin. He had the nicest smile.
Ulla opened the cupboard door and asked, “You two want kaffi?”
“Ya.” Molly nodded and went back to scrubbing