“Twins usually look younger than other bopplin. You and your sister needed some time to catch up.” Grossmammi Inez gave a half laugh that turned into a cough. “Not that you ever grew very tall.”
“Gabriel didn’t get married that long ago.”
“Bopplin come when they want, and twins are often raring to be born. You and Annie weren’t eight months in the womb before you decided you had to come out. Your mamm always said Annie dragged you with her because you’ve always had so much more patience than she does.”
Leaving the buckets by the sink to dry, Leanna looked across the kitchen to where Grossmammi Inez’s needle dipped in and out, mending a tear across the upper leg of a pair of her younger brother Kenny’s barn pants. Most of her brother’s work clothes were crisscrossed with repairs.
“Grossmammi?”
As she raised her eyes, her smile faded away. “Something is wrong, ain’t so? You look bothered, Leanna. Is it because Gabriel and his family have moved in next door?”
“Partly.” She couldn’t imagine being anything but honest with her grossmammi.
During Leanna’s childhood, Grossmammi Inez had taken them in twice. The first time had been following Leanna’s daed’s death, and then the kinder moved in again during the horrible days after her mamm and beloved stepfather were killed in a bus accident on their way to a wedding in Indiana. Not once had her grossmammi complained about having to raise a second family in the cramped dawdi haus attached to her son’s home.
“Then was iss letz?” asked the elderly woman.
“Grossmammi...” She wanted to say what was wrong was that two tiny bopplin would never know their mamm, but the words stuck in her throat. She’d never met Freda, whose family lived in another church district. Even so, sorrow surged through her at the thought of the bopplin growing up without their mamm. Crossing the room, she sat beside her grossmammi. She folded her hands on the table and drew in a steadying breath. As soon as she spoke the sad words, it would make them more real.
“Say what you must,” Grossmammi Inez urged. “Things are seldom made better by waiting.”
Leanna stumbled as she shared what Gabriel had told her before driving away. Tears burned her eyes, and she blinked them away. “He didn’t say when Freda died, but it couldn’t have been very long ago.”
Her grossmammi regarded her steadily before saying, “You know your feelings had nothing to do with God’s decision to bring Freda Miller to Him, ain’t so?”
“I know.” She stared at her clasped hands, not wanting to reveal how hearing Freda connected to Gabriel’s surname always sent a pulse of pain through her. She’d imagined herself as Leanna Miller so many times.
Why did the thought of Gabriel married to someone else remain painful? Leanna frowned. She shouldn’t be thinking of herself, only the bopplin. The poor woman was dead and her kinder were growing up without her.
“Are you upset because you think Gabriel Miller has come to Harmony Creek Hollow specifically to look for a wife to take care of his bopplin?”
Leanna’s head snapped up at the sound of her sister’s voice coming from the back door. Trust Annie, her identical twin, to get right to the heart of the matter. Her twin never hesitated to say what was on her mind.
Deciding to be—for once—equally blunt, Leanna asked, “How long have you been eavesdropping?”
“Long enough to find out who moved into the empty house next door.” Annie stooped to give Grossmammi Inez a hug. “I came in to pick up a different pair of shoes.” She pointed to her paint-stained ones. “I put the wrong ones on when I left for the bakery this morning. Before I go, though, you haven’t answered my question, Leanna. Are you worried Gabriel Miller is here solely to find a wife to take care of his bopplin?”
Being false with her twin would be like lying to herself.
“Ja.”
She watched as Annie and their grossmammi exchanged a glance, but couldn’t read what message they shared.
Getting up, she hugged them. She retrieved her milch buckets from the sink and took them out to the shed before hitching the horse to their buggy. Today was her day to clean Mrs. Duchamps’s house, and she needed to hurry or she’d be late.
The questions her family had asked were a wake-up call. She must not let the lingering longings of her heart betray her more than Gabriel had.
* * *
What was he doing wrong?
Gabriel looked from the handwritten recipe on the battered wooden counter to the ingredients he’d gathered to make formula for the twins. Realizing he’d missed a step, he added two tablespoons of unflavored gelatin. As he stirred the pot, he frowned. Something wasn’t right. The color was off, and it was getting too thick too fast. He tried a sip. It tasted as it was supposed to, which was without a lot of flavor. He guessed, once they sampled this mixture, the twins would be more eager to eat solid foods.
A quick glance across the crowded kitchen reassured him the bopplin were playing on the blanket he’d found at the bottom of a box marked “kitchen” and “pots and pans.” Friends had helped them pack, and he guessed one person had filled the box and taped it closed before another person labeled it. Bath supplies had been discovered in a box marked “pillows.” True, there had been one small pillow in it, but the majority of the box had been stuffed with shampoo, toothpaste and the myriad items the bopplin required, including extra diaper pins.
The house, which would need his and his twin’s skills to renovate, was stuffed with boxes. He and Michael had brought the barest essentials with them, including their tools. However, two bopplin didn’t travel without box after box of supplies and toys and clothing.
He should be grateful the boxes covered up the deep scratches in the uneven wood floors. Other boxes were set to keep the kinder from reaching chipped walls and floor molding. An old house could be filled with lead paint.
Eventually, it would become a wunderbaar family home, because the rooms were spacious. Large windows welcomed the sunlight. There were three bathrooms, one on the first floor and two more upstairs amid the six bedrooms. One toilet upstairs had plumbing problems, but the water had been turned off before damaging the floors or ceilings. Some furniture had been left behind by the previous owners, but, other than the kitchen table and chairs, it needed to be carted to the landfill because it reeked of mold and rot.
Gabriel paused stirring the formula as Heidi began to clap two blocks together and gave him a grin. Her new tooth glittered like a tiny pearl. Beside her, Harley lay on his back, his right hand holding a teething biscuit while his other hand gripped his left toes. He rocked and giggled when his sister did. With their red hair and faint beginnings of freckles across their noses, they looked like a pair of Englisch dolls. Their big brown eyes displayed every emotion without any censoring.
Had he ever been that open with others?
It seemed impossible after the tragedies of the past couple of years.
“What a schtinke,” said his brother, Michael, as he walked into the kitchen through the maze of unpacked or half-unpacked boxes. Pausing to wave to the bopplin, who giggled, he added, “I hope it tastes better than it smells, or the kids won’t drink it.”
“I sampled a bit of it, and it doesn’t