A Heart Made New (32 page)

David had prepared himself for this battle. He’d been getting this response from them ever since the second round of chemo started. He was done with chemo. Time to get back to work. “Not today, she doesn’t. I checked. No deliveries.”

“And no Annie.” Jonathan snorted. “She’s left Mudder high and dry until that Englischer’s trial is over. According to Luke, she got all tangled up in the girl’s affairs so he’s keeping her home.”

“You have a problem with showing charity to those in need?” David didn’t expect this from his own family. Maybe the others who didn’t know him as well, but not his brothers. “Maybe that’s something you should talk with one of the deacons about.”

“Actually, the deacons are the ones talking about it. Even the bishop mentioned something to Luke about it, from what I hear.” Timothy dropped the rake and came a few steps closer. His brother, older by almost ten years, was several inches taller and a good twenty-five pounds heavier. He glared down at David. “And don’t get cheeky with me, little bruder. My point is Annie has not been as reliable as we would like.”

“She was there when the robbery happened. She takes good care of Mudder—”

“Except when she’s busy taking care of the Englisch girl and her children.”

“We are called to help others, are we not?” David felt a little hypocritical, considering how he’d questioned Annie about the wisdom of her decision. “Especially women and children with no place to go and no one to help them.”

“Annie has the right instincts, but she’s showering affection on that little girl because she has none of her own. It’s time you made her your
fraa
and put an end to all this wishy-washy stuff.”

“Wishy-washy?” His brother had always been bossy, but he’d never tried to tell David whom to court or when. “I’ll not take any woman as my fraa until I know my cancer is gone for good. I won’t do that to Annie.”

“Mudder says the doctor told you your chances are very good. She doesn’t understand why you don’t have more faith.” Timothy crossed his arms over a thick chest. “Jonathan and I have discussed it, and we want you to have the acreage up yonder west of the wheat fields. It’s only a dozen acres, but it’ll suit you since you’ll be running the bakery. You can build a house there and take yourself a fraa. If not Annie, another.”

“Running the bakery?” David found himself stuttering. “Mudder runs the bakery. Neither of you is Daed. I’m of age. You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Mudder agrees. The time you’re spending with this Englisch girl worries her too.” Timothy turned his back on David and signaled at Jonathan to start the horses moving again. “She wants to retire to the
dawdi haus,
but she can’t because she’s worried about you.”

“She has no reason to worry. I’ll find my way on my own. I don’t need your messing in my business.”

“It’s all our business when the bishop starts asking questions.” Timothy started the loader again. “There’s also been a lot of talk about how much time you’re spending with that little Englisch girl. Folks think it’s a little…addled. The bishop is concerned. First we start working in town, then we start bringing the Englischers home with us. The influence is creeping into our kitchens and our living rooms.”

“The bishop already paid me a visit. He saw Kinsey and her mother. He saw a sick little girl trying to stay alive. He saw that riding a horse helps her do that.”

David stopped, trying to corral his anger. Couldn’t they see that the time he spent teaching Kinsey to ride healed him as much as her? He
didn’t know how to give voice to those things. Or whether they could understand them. Jonathan and Timothy had never been sick a day in their lives. They never said so, but he could see it in their eyes: they thought their baby brother was weak.

“The bishop didn’t object?” Timothy didn’t bother to hide his disbelief. “Are you sure?”

“He was satisfied. Now, I came to work. What do you want me to do? Shall I take a team and the mower over to the west forty and cut the alfalfa there? It’ll be ready for you to pick tomorrow afternoon.”

“Go back to the house.” Timothy looked so much like Daed, a wave of pain rolled over David. “Mudder said the doctor doesn’t want you working out in the sun. You might get dehydrated again. Go home. Or go to the bakery. But leave the lessons to the Englischers. They can teach their own.”

“I’m ready to work.”

“I understand you have time to fill. You want to work, but you can’t. You want to help, but you can’t. Not yet.” Timothy smiled as if to soften his words. “This isn’t your time. But it will come. When you’re better. Then you’ll work and you’ll marry.”

He was better. Or he would be if they’d stop babying him.

“Let me work.” He hated the begging note in his voice. It had come to this. “I need to get back to work.”

“No.”

Jonathan stopped the team again. The loader grinded to a halt. “Get down.” Timothy’s tone said the discussion had ended. “Go home.”

David hopped down. He turned and looked back. The flatbed was already moving forward. Both brothers waved, Jonathan without turning around. They’d made up their minds about his future and they expected him to get on board or get left behind. He wished he could. He prayed he could.

C
arrying the cake, a knife dangling precariously from one hand, Annie paraded through the dining room to the table where the whole family sat, expectant looks on their faces. She could get there without dropping anything. The days of forced retirement from the bakery had one upside—she’d had plenty of time to work on Mark’s birthday dinner. Plain children didn’t expect a lot on their birthdays, but it was a special day, nevertheless. Without Mudder there to direct the preparations, Annie and Leah had to work extra hard to make sure the traditions were observed. And it had taken Annie’s mind off the trial. And David.

David. Her mind slid over those two syllables and kept right on going. No looking back. She lifted her chin.
Happy. Content. Peaceful. Blessed. Accepting of God’s plan.
She chanted the words silently as she made it to the dining room without a mishap and slipped the two-layer carrot cake with cream cheese frosting onto the table in front of Mark. “Ta-dah! Happy birthday, bruder!”

“Cake! Cake! Want cake.” Gracie clapped her hands and squealed. “Me, me!”

Charisma grabbed the little girl’s chubby hands just in time to keep her from dipping her fingers in the frosting. Dark circles around her eyes and her cranky tone said the uncertainty caused by the trial
invaded Charisma’s sleep even more than it did Annie’s. “You wait your turn.”

Annie patted Gracie’s curly mop and turned to Mark. “It’s your favorite.” She nudged Mark’s shoulder and smiled across the table at Emma. Emma grinned back. Her little bump was just beginning to show, but her face glowed with happiness. Annie felt no twinge of envy. Her sister had waited a long time. She would be a wonderful mother. It was such a treat to have her and Thomas, along with Lillie, Mary, and Thomas’s children here for the celebration. And
Aenti
Louise. She didn’t get out much anymore, but today Josiah had gone to fetch her and bring her to the celebration. She sat between the twins, her gnarled hands resting on the table, a grin on her face that said she too wanted cake and lots of it.

If only Catherine were sitting next to them. No, another thought she must discard. God’s plan.

“I added extra cream cheese to the frosting and a little more cinnamon than usual.” She grabbed a clean saucer and set it next to the cake. Mark would get the first and biggest slice. “It’s very tasty, if I do say so myself.”

Mark’s face reddened. He ducked his head. “You don’t have to make a fuss. Everybody has a birthday once a year.”

“What’s the fun in that?” Josiah pushed aside a plate that had been heaped with Mark’s favorite foods—sausage, green beans, mashed potatoes, brown gravy, macaroni and cheese, and Annie’s special hot rolls—only a few minutes earlier. “This way we all get cake and ice cream. Besides, you only turn twelve once.”

“I’d like to have two birthdays a year.”
Aenti
Louise cackled. She snagged her own saucer and held it up, her wrinkled face gleeful. “Or three or four, if it means homemade ice cream.”

“We made the ice cream,” Lillie piped up. “I turned the crank all afternoon.”

“I helped,” Mary put in. “I put in the rock salt.”

“Fine, everyone helped.” Leah’s tone was only mildly disapproving for a change. “Happy birthday, Mark.”

She handed him a small package. His face brick red now, Mark ripped it open. “New suspenders.” He grinned. “I guess you noticed mine keep falling down. The elastic is worn out.”

Charisma gave Annie a puzzled look. Annie shrugged. What did Charisma expect? Video games? Maybe one of those fancy iPods she saw the Englisch teenagers listening to when they were supposed to be studying in the library? Annie pushed her package across the table. “Open this one next. It’s from Emma, Josiah, and me.”

His enthusiasm apparent in the way he clawed through the paper, Mark obliged. “Oh, wow,” he breathed, his eyes huge. “A baseball mitt.”

“And a new ball.” Josiah pulled the shiny white gem from his pocket and threw it gently across the table. “Think quick.”

With a big guffaw, Mark caught the toss. “This is great. We can play after the prayer service.”

Amid much chatter and laughter, he made his way through several more small packages—colored pencils and a thick pad of drawing paper to go with them, a new hat, a board game, a comb, a candy bar, and homemade cards from the twins.
Aenti
Louise gave him a history of the Plain people. Annie knew he wouldn’t appreciate it now as much as he would later, when he was older. Just as she had when
Aenti
Louise had given her one on her twelfth birthday.

“I didn’t expect all this,” he said, smoothing his hand over the leather of the mitt. “It’s almost like Mudder and Daed…when they were here.”

The chatter ceased for a moment. Annie let the memories roll over her of so many birthdays for herself, her brothers and sisters, and then Daed every July fifth and Mudder on December second. Sweet times.

Luke clamped a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “That’s as it should be.”

“Later I’ll show you how to oil the mitt so the leather stays soft,” Josiah offered. “After chores, we can have a game of catch.”

“We want to play,” Lillie and Mary said in unison.

“Me too, me too!” Gracie crowed.

Everyone laughed.

“Right now it’s time for cake and ice cream.” Glad for the diversion,
Annie let the bittersweet moment go. She wanted to play baseball too, but she could imagine the look on Leah’s face. At her age…never going to get a husband…undignified…” The ice cream is melting,” she said. “Emma, why don’t you do the honors?”

Emma picked up the knife and guided it through the first cut. The smile on her face faded and the knife slipped from her hand and clattered on the table. She looked puzzled for a second. “I think…” She grimaced and hunched over, her hands on her stomach. “Thomas…”

In a second less than it took Annie to round the table, Thomas made it to Emma’s side. “What is it?”

“Something’s not right,” Emma whispered, her eyes wet with tears. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“Maybe you should lie down.” Thomas helped her to rise. “It’s been a long day.”

Annie had never heard that tone from any man. Soft, so full of affection and concern. Thomas spoke so little, but when he did he made it count.

Silence had a stranglehold on all of them as Thomas helped Emma from the bench. She made it halfway across the room, then doubled over, gasping. “No, no!” She grabbed Thomas around the waist. “It can’t be. It feels like the baby is…it’s pain like the baby’s coming. We have to make it stop.”

Thomas glanced around the room, his eyes glazed with fear. His gaze met Annie’s. She rushed forward, Leah, Josiah, and Luke on her heels. “We need to get her to the clinic.”

“
Aenti
Louise?” Annie turned to the woman who had delivered hundreds of babies in her lifetime.

“He’s right, child.”
Aenti
Louise held up hands so gnarled she could no longer straighten her fingers. “I couldn’t deliver a baby now and it’s a doctor she’s needing, not a midwife.”

“Should we call an ambulance?”

“By the time we get to Bishop Kelp’s to make the call, we could drive to town,” Josiah pointed out. “I’ll hitch up the wagon. Leah, get some blankets. She can lie down in the back.”

“I’ll ride with her.” Annie slid an arm under Emma’s shoulder. “Here we go, schweschder, one step at a time.”

Everyone moved, the cake abandoned, ice cream melting, and presents strewn haphazardly across the table. Annie’s gaze caught Charisma’s. The woman stood, Luke David in her arms, staring. “Charisma, can you help Aenti Louise take care of the little ones while we get Emma into the wagon?”

“I can’t believe there’s not one cell phone around here…not one. This is what happens when you live like this.” Charisma shifted Luke David to one arm and took Gracie’s hand. “If I had gas, I could drive you in the van.”

“They’ll get there fine in the wagon.”
Aenti
Louise picked up little Esther, the last baby she’d delivered in a lifetime of midwifery, and patted her back. “This is the way our grandfathers lived; it’s the way our grandchildren will live.”