Huckleberry Hill (6 page)

By the time they got home, Rachel was shivering violently, and within hours, she had developed the gravelly cough that could only mean croup. Lia would never forget how pale Rachel looked as they loaded her into the ambulance. Lia had never seen her parents so terrified.

Why didn’t you keep better watch over her?
Dat had accused just before he climbed into the ambulance. Rachel spent the next four days in the hospital, and Lia had spent the next four days praying for Rachel’s recovery and pleading for forgiveness for her carelessness. If Rachel died, it would have been her fault.

For the next month, Lia and Mamm had nursed Rachel back to health. Dat instructed Lia to keep Rachel happy at all costs. If Rachel got upset, she would cry and then scream, and her weak lungs couldn’t take the strain. When she didn’t get her way, she bawled until her lips turned blue, and Mamm agreed to anything Rachel wanted to keep her from making herself sicker.

Lia became the forgotten one, the girl whose mistake had almost cost the Shetlers their youngest child.

Mamm and Rachel chattered merrily about winter weddings while Lia silently cleared the dishes from the table. Rachel had stopped throwing tantrums years ago, but everything in the Shetler household still revolved around her.

Lia held her breath as unjustifiable sadness tore at her heart. Moses wasn’t interested in her and never would be, so why would she grieve if she lost him to Rachel? He had never been hers to lose. She had only really been acquainted with him for four weeks. Still, she didn’t know if she could bear his falling in love with her sister. And he would fall in love with Rachel. Beautiful, delicate Rachel was the perfect combination of coy and charming that attracted boys like honey. Moses’s reluctance could not withstand Rachel’s beauty.

Lia’s cheeks were dry of tears but she sensed the slightest tingle on her lips where Moses Zimmerman had kissed her good-bye.

 

 

Moses found Mammi and Dawdi in the barn tending to the batch of newly hatched chicks in their incubator. The fuzzy yellow balls peeped and shivered like a pan of popcorn popping on the stove. Mammi had her fist wrapped around a tiny chick, petting its head with her index finger. Dawdi fiddled with his new fan while humming “I Need No Mansions.”

“Can I help?” Moses said.

Mammi’s face lit up like a summer morning. “Moses, you are here mighty early yet.”

“Can you see what’s clogging up my fan?” Dawdi asked.

Moses could see Mammi watching him out of the corner of her eye. “Come to see Lia?” she asked. “The van driver told us he’d be back this way about this time today.”

Dawdi wiped off his greasy hands. “You told him three times already, Annie girl. He knows when Lia gets back.”

“That’s why he came early, isn’t it, Moses?”

Moses knelt on one knee to have a look at Dawdi’s fan. “I came early because the hair on the back of my neck twitched this morning, and I had a feeling Dawdi would need help with the fan. We don’t want the chicks to freeze to death.”

Mammi placed her chick into the sea of other chicks and propped her hands on her hips, looking very pleased with herself. “Oh, Moses, you are such a tease.”

Moses picked up a screwdriver from Dawdi’s box. He had promised Lia he’d help her stack those limbs, and he didn’t want her to think he’d forgotten, even over the long six days she’d been gone. If Mammi thought there was any other reason for him to show up at exactly the time they expected Lia, well, she could go on believing what she wanted.

It had been a week since Moses had momentarily lost his reason and kissed Lia right on the mouth. His brain ached for trying to figure out why he’d done such a thing. He’d never even kissed Barbara before.

The best he could come up with was that curiosity got the better of him. Her lips looked like full, blushing pink rose petals, and he had wanted to see how soft they were. But that he would lose his mind in a blaze of curiosity made absolutely no sense. She had looked so pretty that day, with unruly chestnut curls peeking out from under her kapp and the aftereffects of hot sauce tinting her cheeks. It had seemed so natural, so easy, and he had wanted to kiss her in the worst way. So he did.

Either that or his overdose of hot sauce made him woozy. Could he really be held responsible for his actions?

Moses wondered if Lia had already forgotten it happened or if he should apologize for his behavior. She didn’t seem embarrassed or angry. She’d probably laughed herself to sleep that night.

One thing was certain. He wouldn’t do that again. Hot sauce or no hot sauce, he would keep his head. Lia didn’t deserve false hope, and Moses had resolved to stay loyal to Barbara.

All three of them heard the van as it rattled up the lane. It needed a new muffler.

Mammi pointed out the door. “Lead the way, Moses. I want you to be the first to see her.”

Moses merely grinned and shook his head. “And you think I am the tease?”

They walked out of the barn together, Moses with his arm wrapped protectively around Mammi’s shoulders.

Roy Polter hopped out of his van and gave Felty a curt wave of his hand. Moses’s mamm would call Roy portly. He’d confessed to Moses that he had a weakness for cheese fries and donuts, and sitting in a van all day didn’t help his waistline. At age sixty-five, Roy had retired from his day job and now he drove Amish folks to weddings, funerals, and auctions all over Wisconsin. Roy sometimes delivered cheese to La Crosse for Moses when it was on his way.

“I brought her safe and sound,” Roy said as he slid the door open.

A short blonde hopped out of the van. She looked at Moses and put her hand to the nape of her neck to smooth an imaginary strand of hair. “Hi,” she said, studying him from top to bottom. Her eyes lit up, and she fluttered her long eyelashes. “Hel-lo,” she said, drawing the word out so long she had to take a deep breath afterward.

Why did the girls have to look at him like he was the next thing up for bid on the auction block? Moses stuck his head inside the van. Mattie and Noah Schrock and their daughter, Nan, sat in the backseat.

“
Gute maiya
, Moses,” Nan said. “How are you?”

“Fine,” Moses replied. He looked at the short girl standing next to him. “Where’s Lia?”

The girl sidled too close. “She’s not coming.”

By this time, Mammi and Dawdi had made their way around the side of the van. “Not coming?” Mammi said, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening to a frown.

The girl beamed from ear to ear. “I’m here instead,” she said, as if this were the best news they could have heard all day.

Moses stared at her in puzzlement. “Who are you?”

“I’m Rachel, Lia’s sister.”

“Where’s Lia?” Mammi asked.

“Dat thought it would be better if I came to Bonduel in Lia’s place.”

Mammi pasted a sweet, mildly concerned expression on her face, but Moses wasn’t fooled. Mammi was hopping mad. A vein in her temple pulsed wildly, she wrung her hands, and her voice cracked in about five different places when she spoke. “Your dat thought it would be better?”

Rachel leaned close to Mammi’s ear and lowered her voice, but Moses still heard every word. “He thinks I would be a more fitting choice,” she inclined her head toward Moses, “for a certain person. How could you have known that when you asked Lia to stay with you over the summer instead of me? Dat says we’ve got to make hay, and all that.”

Moses couldn’t conceal his astonishment. He stared at Rachel as his jaw fell to the ground. Mammi’s harmless scheming was nothing compared to Lia’s dat’s rudeness. Had he actually switched daughters because he thought Lia was an unlikely match and her sister a sure thing? The sheer audacity of such a suggestion left Moses breathless.

It seemed her dat moved his daughters around like pieces on a chessboard. Lia was the expendable one, and Rachel played the queen.

Well, Moses refused to be the pawn.

Mammi looked at Moses, and even with that sugary-sweet smile still hanging on her lips, her eyes flickered with fire. “What does Lia think about making hay?”

Rachel waved her hand around as if swatting a fly. “Oh, I don’t know, but she was in one of her moods when I left. She wouldn’t even come out to see me off. She can be so petty sometimes.”

Roy handed Rachel her bag from the back of the van. Moses promptly took it from her. He might not be happy about her being here, but he remembered his manners. Rachel gave him an approving look. “I must say, I had my doubts, but you are just as Lia described.”

Moses couldn’t say the same about Rachel. Lia had told him that her sister was pretty, that she had broken dozens of hearts over the years. She possessed stunningly beautiful features with round blue eyes and rosebud lips, and her silky golden hair surely attracted many suitors. But she was a puny thing who carried a self-satisfied air about her that Moses found unappealing. Any girl who took pleasure in hurting boys’ feelings was not worth his time.

“You’re even taller than Lia. I bet she liked that. She usually towers over everybody, like a sycamore.”

Roy said his good-byes to Mammi and Dawdi and drove away with his three remaining passengers.

Rachel watched the van disappear down the hill, breathed in the moist summer air, and clasped her hands together. “Will you show me to my room? I’ll sleep wherever Lia did. I don’t mind if it’s terribly small. My room at home ain’t much bigger than the washroom.”

Mammi still had that smile painted on her face. If she kept it in place much longer, it would dry like that, and she might never be able to wipe it off. “Rebecca—”

“Rachel.”

“Rachel, would you mind very much waiting for us in the house?” When Rachel paused, no doubt trying to guess what they were up to, Mammi motioned toward the front porch as if Rachel might not know the way.

“Um, I don’t mind. If Moses could carry my bag and show me to my room—”

Mammi yanked the bag from Moses’s fingers faster than he could say “ouch” and handed it to Rachel, who cradled it with both arms as if it weighed a hundred pounds. “I would appreciate it if you would take it in yourself.”

Rachel pursed her lips and batted her baby blue eyes. “Which room?”

“Wait for us in the kitchen,” Mammi said. Moses admired the way Mammi could pepper her sweet tone with the hint of a scolding.

Rachel lifted her nose slightly in the air, gifted them with a momentary smile, and shuffled to the house, dragging her bag behind her.

Mammi took Dawdi’s arm. “Let’s walk behind the barn where no one will hear me howl in frustration.”

Dawdi and Mammi led the way. When they got out of sight of the house, Mammi didn’t waste her breath. “If Owen Shetler thinks he can pull that with me, he’s got another thing coming.”

“As sure as rain, I’m going to miss that girl,” Dawdi said. “A sweeter thing never come up our hill.”

Mammi turned on Dawdi as if he had let his dentures fall down the well. “Felty, how can you say that? As if we’ll never see Lia again! I refuse to give her up that easy.”

Moses had to admire how fast Dawdi could change his tune. He squared his shoulders and wrapped an arm around Mammi. “Of course we’re going to do something about it. How could Lia’s dat send us a daughter we didn’t ask for? What do you think, Moses?”

Secure that Dawdi was on her side, Mammi quit pacing and sat on the bench near the garden plot. “If I didn’t care about sparing that girl’s feelings, I’d send her packing back to Wautoma in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. I mean for Moses to marry Lia, not her sister.”

This would not be a good time to object to Mammi’s interfering in his life. Moses wanted Lia back too, and not because he enjoyed her company. He simply felt better knowing that Mammi and Dawdi weren’t on Huckleberry Hill all by themselves. Besides, Sarah planned on Lia’s help delivering babies.

“They’ve convinced the poor girl that she is unworthy of any young man’s love,” Mammi said.

“What do you think, Moses?” Dawdi said. “Lia don’t seem unhappy.”

“Not our Lia,” Mammi said. “She’s been blessed with a sunshiny disposition. Happiness springs from her like water from a brook. But we can’t let Lia believe for one moment that we don’t want her back or that we don’t care who we get. She’s our girl. She needs to know where she stands with us.”

Moses suddenly comprehended the full weight of what Mammi said. She was more perceptive than he gave her credit for. If Mammi and Dawdi let Rachel stay, Lia would feel the sting of it forever. He wouldn’t want to see her hurt like that.

“What do you think, Moses?” Dawdi said.

Mammi waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, what young man knows his own heart?”

Felty thumbed his suspenders. “Annie, I’m asking Moses. Lia is his bride, not yours.”

Moses coughed. He had to put a stop to this. “Lia is not my bride. I barely know her.”

Mammi nodded. “We brought her here so you could become acquainted.”

Moses affectionately placed his palm on Mammi’s cheek. “I’m not looking to marry. I don’t fit into your neatly arranged rows, Mammi. You can’t plan my future as if you were knitting a sweater.”

Mammi raised her eyebrows and looked shocked at the very thought. “Of course I can.”

Moses was forced to chuckle at Mammi’s determination. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. Giving in, he sank to the bench next to Mammi. “If we shame Rachel by sending her back, her dat might take offense and refuse to let Lia return.”

Mammi stood and paced again. “Sometimes I wish I’d never given up cussing.”

“I never heard you cuss ever,” Felty said.

“On days like today, I wish I did.”

Moses rubbed his chin. “What if we asked for Lia back and let Rachel stay? It wouldn’t hurt to have two girls helping here.”

Mammi perked up and clapped her hands. “Moses, you are so smart. When Rachel sees that your heart is set on Lia, maybe she will get bored and go back to Wautoma without being asked.”