“No, thanks. Your coffee was always strong enough to dissolve a horseshoe. I can’t stay, Joe. Please say you will take care of Leah for me. It’s only for a couple of days.”
“Think what you are asking. I have no experience with babies.”
“You raised me.”
“You were not in diapers.”
“Please, Joe. If you don’t keep her, I don’t know what I’ll do. I have everything she’ll need in a bag for you. I’ve even mixed a couple of bottles. Keep them in the fridge and warm them in a pan of hot water when you need them. That’s all you’ll have to do. If you run out, there’s powdered formula in here.” She set a pink-and-white diaper bag down by her feet.
“Hurry it up, Fan, or I’m going to leave without you.” Johnny’s snarling tone made her flinch. Joseph scowled at him. Johnny sank back behind the wheel muttering to himself.
Joseph shook his head. Why was she with such a fellow? “This is not a good idea, Fannie. You know I would help if I could.”
She moved close to him. “I’m desperate, Joe,” she whispered.
Glancing at the car, she kissed the baby’s forehead. “She will be safe with you. I won’t worry about her for a single minute. Please. I know this sounds crazy, but it’s what’s best for her.” She thrust the baby into his arms and hurried away.
Stunned, Joseph froze and then tried to give the baby back, but his sister was already getting in the car. “Fannie, wait!”
The moonlight showed her tear-streaked face and her hand pressed to the window as the car took off with a spray of gravel. He stood staring after it until the taillights disappeared.
“Don’t do this, sister. Come back,” he muttered into the darkness.
The baby started crying again.
Startled awake from a sound sleep, Anne tried to get her bearings. It took her a moment to realize someone was pounding on her front door downstairs.
She threw back the quilt and turned on the battery-operated lantern she kept on her nightstand. As a midwife, she was used to callers in the middle of the night, but only Rhonda Yoder was due soon. Anne lived so far away from them that the plan was for Rhonda’s husband to use the community telephone when she was needed. Anne carried a cell phone that had been approved by the bishop for use in emergencies. She checked it. No calls had come in.
After spending the previous day and night delivering Dora Stoltzfus’s first child, Anne was so tired it was hard to think straight. Maybe Dora or the baby was having trouble.
The knocking downstairs started again.
“I’m coming.” After covering her head with a white kerchief, she pulled on her floor-length pink robe, making sure her long brown braid was tucked inside.
She hurried down the stairs, opened the door and gazed with sleep-heavy eyes at the man standing on her front porch. She blinked twice to make sure she wasn’t dreaming and held the lantern higher. “Joseph?”
Why was her neighbor pounding on her door at two o’clock in the morning? He shifted a bundle he held in the crook of his arm. “I require your help, woman.”
That didn’t make any sense. Joseph was a confirmed bachelor who lived alone. “You need the services of a midwife?”
“That is why I’m here.” He spoke as if she were slow-witted. Maybe she was. What was going on?
It had been almost a week since she’d hit him with a tomato. This wasn’t his way of getting back at her, was it? Suddenly, the most probable answer occurred to her.
She reared back to glare at him. “Don’t tell me it’s for one of your goats. I’m not a vet, Joseph Lapp.”
She was ready to shut the door in his face. Joseph’s passion was his annoying goats. They were practically family to him. He preferred their company to that of his human neighbors. She often saw him walking in the pastures with the herd surrounding him. The frolicking baby kids were cute in the springtime, but it was the adults, Chester in particular, who saw her garden as a free salad bar.
“She’s sick and I don’t know what’s wrong.” The bundle Joseph held began whimpering. He lifted the corner of the blanket and uncovered a baby’s face.
Anne’s stared in openmouthed surprise. Her lantern highlighted the worry lines around his eyes as he looked at the infant he held. This wasn’t a prank. He wasn’t joking.
“Joseph, what are you doing with a bubbel? Where’s her mudder?” The babe looked to be only a few months old.
“Gone.”
“Gone where? Who is the mudder?” None of this made sense. Anne felt like she was caught in a bad dream.
“It’s Fannie’s child.”
“Fannie?”
“My sister.”
Anne had heard that Joseph’s sister had left the Amish years ago. It had broken his heart, or so everyone said. Anne wasn’t sure he had a heart to begin with.
“Can you help her?”
His terse question galvanized her into action. He had a sick child in his arms and he had come to her for help. She stepped away from the door. “Come in. How long has the babe been ill? Does she have a fever?”
Shouldering past Anne, he entered the house. “She has been fussy since her mother left her with me four nights ago, but it got worse this morning. No fever, but she throws up everything I’ve given her to drink. Tonight she wouldn’t stop crying. She has a rash now, too.”
The crying was more of a pitiful whimper. “Bring her into my office.”
Anne led the way to a small room off the kitchen where she met with her mothers-to-be for checkups and did well-baby exams on the infants as they grew. She quickly lit a pair of gas lanterns, bathing the space in light. She pulled her midwife kit, a large black leather satchel, off the changing table and said, “Put her down here.”
He did but he kept one hand on the baby in case she rolled over. At least he knew a little about babies. That was something of a surprise, too, in this night of surprises. His worry deepened the creases on his brow. Sympathy for him stirred inside her.
Joseph Lapp was a loner. He was a member of her Amish congregation, but he wasn’t close friends with anyone she knew about. When there was trouble in the community or someone in need, he came and did his part, but he never stayed to socialize, something that was as normal as breathing to most of the Amish she knew. He didn’t shun people. He just seemed to prefer being alone.
They had been neighbors for almost three years and this was the first time he had been inside her home. A big man, he stood six foot two, if not more, with broad shoulders and hammer-like fists. He towered over Anne and made the small room feel even smaller. She took hold of the baby and tried to ignore his overwhelming presence. He took a step back, thrust his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders as if he felt the tightness, too.
Anne quickly unwrapped and examined the little girl. The baby was thin and pale with dark hollows around her eyes. She looked like she didn’t feel good. “How old is she?”
“I don’t know for certain.”
This was stranger and stranger. “I would guess three or four months. She’s a little dehydrated and she is clearly in pain.” The baby kept drawing her knees up and whimpering every few minutes. The sides of her snug faded yellow sleeper were damp. It was a good sign. If the baby was wet, that meant she wasn’t seriously dehydrated.
“She needs changing,