Love’s Journey Home (19 page)

Minutes later she made good on her words. Annie breathed a sigh of relief when the
farmhouse came into view with its clean white paint and green trim. Gabriel Gless,
wearing a tool belt and wielding a large hammer, stood at the top of a ladder leaning
against one wall. Annie scanned the roof. No Thomas.

The second the car slammed to a halt, Annie burst from the car. She turned to help
Emma slide out. “We’re here, schweschder, we’re here!”

Emma groaned in response. Her knees buckled and she sank to the ground. Annie pulled
her to her feet. “Oh no, you don’t. In the house you go. We’re almost there. Your
bed. The place where you want this bobbeli to enter the world. In your home.”

“For now. Our home for now.”

“Don’t think about that. Think about the bobbeli.” Annie helped her up the porch steps.
“Nothing else matters right now.”

Catherine slammed her door and ran around the car. “You must be Gabriel,” she hollered.
“Where’s Thomas?”

Gabriel stomped down the ladder and strode toward them. “Thomas has gone into town
for another pallet of shingles and more nails. Why? What’s the matter?”

Gabriel glanced from Emma to Annie to a third woman who looked to be Annie’s twin,
only dressed in Englisch clothes, car keys in her hand. They all wore the same horrified
expressions.

“Thomas is in town?” Annie shook her head so hard her prayer kapp slid back a little.
She slapped her hand on it. “This can’t be happening.”

“I have a cell phone. Fat lot of good it does me, since not one of the people I could
call has a phone.” The Englisch twin flashed the phone in one hand as if to show evidence
of her preparation. “We need to get Emma into the house. She’s in labor.”

“So I gathered.” Gabriel stomped up the porch steps in front of them and held open
the screen door. “I’ll ride into town and get Thomas.”

“In a buggy?” The woman shook her head. “I’ll go back in my car. It’s much faster.”

“Who are you, if I may ask?”

“She’s our sister, Catherine.” Annie spoke first.

Her tone was sharp, sharper than he liked to hear from a woman, but he would forgive
that. She suffered from duress, with Emma about to give birth. Gabriel had been through
this eight times. It never ceased to be a time fraught with a mixture of excitement,
anxiety, and then blessed relief. The implications of what Annie had said hit him
then. “Catherine.”

“Yes, Catherine.” Annie and Emma’s sister lifted her chin, her voice steady. “The
shunned sister.”

“Then you best go on back into town.”

“I want her here,” Emma gasped. She grabbed the door frame and held on with one hand.
“I need my sisters here.”

“She’ll be back with Thomas,” Gabriel assured her. Now was not the time to argue with
a woman about to give birth. Catherine could return, but she wouldn’t be allowed into
the house. “Go on. Take her in, Annie.”

This house didn’t belong to him, but Thomas had grown to be like a brother to him.
Gabriel didn’t want him to have trouble with the bishop, not on a day that should
be filled only with blessing. Annie did as she was told, and Gabriel looked back at
Catherine. “He’ll be at the hardware store. He can leave the horse and buggy with
Josiah. What about the midwife?”

“Helen was getting her, but it may be too late for that. She’s far along.”

“Then you best hurry. Get Thomas. He’ll want to be here for his fraa.”

“I will. And then I’ll go. I know I can’t stay.”

Gabriel studied the dust on his scarred, scuffed boots, then raised his gaze to meet
hers. “You can wait here, on the porch. Annie will want to share the news with you.
She’ll need you. As much as Emma.”

Her green eyes looked wet in the bright sunlight, but she nodded. “It’s hard to watch
others go on with life when your own seems to be standing still.”

He stiffened in spite of himself. What did she know? What had she heard? “You know
that from experience?”

“Nee, but you do, Gabriel Gless.”

“You don’t know me.” Heat burned its way across his neck and face. “We’ve never even
met.”

“I know of you.”

Women and their nattering. It pained him beyond measure that they’d chosen him and
his children as fodder for their incessant chatter. “Gossip is not a pastime one should
admit to or participate in. Even though you’ve left this life for the Englisch ways,
surely you remember that.”

“No gossip.” Catherine trotted around the car, her keys flashing in the sunlight.
“Only a friend listening to another speak from the heart.”

“What friend? What heart?”

She smiled for a brief second as she jerked open the car door. “Helen’s heart, of
course.”

The door slammed before he could respond. The car spun around, spraying dirt and gravel,
and sped out the driveway. Then he remembered to shut his mouth.

P
uffing, Helen raced up the porch steps behind Thomas. He pushed open the screen door
and rushed in, letting it slap at her. She grabbed it just in time. He’d barely spoken
since she’d stopped her buggy next to where he stood on the street outside Josiah’s
blacksmith shop. How could he be in Bliss Creek when his fraa had insisted on going
home to have her baby because that’s where her husband would be? He demanded she move
over and let him drive. The bone-rattling journey had left her breathless and shaken.
Inside he nearly collided with Gabriel, who stood at the bottom of the stairs.

“Is she all right?” Thomas demanded. “Is the bobbeli all right?” Gabriel stumbled
back and grabbed the staircase banister to steady himself. “The midwife arrived a
few minutes ago. I don’t know anything. What took you so long? I thought coming in
Catherine’s car would—”

“Catherine’s car?” Thomas brushed past Gabriel and headed for the stairs. “Helen found
me. I drove her buggy.”

Gabriel’s expression changed in an instant. Concern fled, replaced by something that
looked like embarrassment. His ruddy cheeks darkened even more. Helen forced herself
to nod at him, knowing her own face had turned the color of tomatoes. “It was happenstance.
I had been watching the bakery for Annie, but then Mary Elizabeth and Mark both returned
so I left them to take care of the customers. I wanted to—”

A half-muffled scream reverberated overhead.

Thomas bolted up the stairs and out of sight.

“Sounds as if things are progressing.” Helen couldn’t help herself. Tears welled and
trickled down her cheeks. “The baby will be here soon.”

Gabriel looked as if he wanted to be anywhere in the world except standing there with
her. His gaze lingered on the staircase and then came to rest on Helen. The whites
of his enormous brown eyes were red.

“Gabriel, are you—”

He brushed past her and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“There’s work to be done.” His voice sounded gruff and strained. “You’d think no one
around here had ever had a baby before. No sense standing around gawking.”

“I’m not gawking. And things were a little tense because Emma was in town and then
Thomas wasn’t…” Stung by his tone, she pushed through the screen door and followed
him on to the porch. “I’m here to help.”

“Then you could go to the kitchen instead of standing there with your jaw flapping.
Help Abigail get supper. Everyone will be hungry once things settle down.”

“What is wrong with you?” She couldn’t help herself. She folded her arms across her
chest and glared at his back. “It’s not necessary to be so rude.”

He whirled and flashed her a glare. It almost sounded like he growled, but he didn’t
speak. After a moment, he swiveled and strode to the ladder, which he scrambled up
in a manner that seemed less than safe in Helen’s estimation. With any luck, he’d
fall. Horrified at her own terrible thoughts, Helen sank into a hickory rocker and
slapped both hands to her face. Gabriel Gless brought out the worst in her, the absolute
worst.
God, forgive me. Please forgive me
.

The sound of an engine forced her to raise her head. Catherine returning. Poor Catherine.
Hovering on the edge. Not belonging, but not able to tear herself away completely.
Perhaps there was hope. Despite the trappings, the clothes, the car, the camera, the
education, might there still be hope? Hope never ceased to exist.

“How is she?” Catherine hollered as she slammed the car door and trotted toward the
house. “I couldn’t find Thomas, but Josiah said he left with you, so I figured…”

“Still in labor.” Helen nodded toward the other rocking chair. “Sit a spell with me.
Annie will come down soon to tell us how things are going.”

Catherine flopped into the chair and fanned her face with long, thin fingers. “I don’t
know about you, but I’m exhausted. I’d forgotten how hard it is to get anything done
without telephones and electricity and you know, basic necessities.”

“We have all we need.” Helen didn’t believe Catherine had forgotten anything. “You
had a car, yet it was me who found Thomas in the buggy and brought him here.”

“Luck.”

“We don’t believe in luck.” Helen wanted to point out Catherine didn’t either, but
that was the old Catherine, the one who no longer existed, sucked up in the world.
“God provides.”

“For some.”

“You don’t believe anymore?” The thought made Helen sad. “You’ve lost your faith?”

“I can’t have children.” Catherine held both hands palms up as if to say that proved
her point without any doubt. “God didn’t provide for me.”

“Is that why you were taking photographs of the girls?”

“What?” Catherine looked startled, then guilty. “I didn’t…I mean…”

“I saw you. As we passed in the buggy, you were taking pictures of them when they
were picking apples up by the road. Did you ask Gabriel and Thomas for permission?
No, because they wouldn’t have allowed it.”

Catherine plucked at her skirt. She sighed and stared out at the road. “I took their
pictures because they are beautiful and sweet and innocent and I love them. I don’t
even know them, but I love them.”

“God gave you another role in life, Catherine.” Helen felt herself relent, even though
she knew what Catherine had done was wrong. The girl was mixed up, Helen had no doubt
of that. She wandered around lost. That made Helen sad. “Take what He gives you and
be happy. It’s what He expects.”

“As a student? I don’t see why I couldn’t have both.”

“You had a dream of getting an education and having a profession. God gave you what
you thought you wanted.” Helen watched the emotions play on the other woman’s face.
“Yet you still long to be a wife and a mother to babies like the one being born upstairs
right now.”

“Jah.” Catherine’s lapse into
Deutsch
said it all. She longed for her old life—Helen was sure of it. Catherine patted Helen’s
hand. “And so do you.”

Gabriel contemplated the two women sitting on the porch. Everything about their posture
said they weren’t enjoying a pleasant visit. He’d left the hammer in the house. He
needed to retrieve it, but he didn’t want to interrupt the conversation. No, he didn’t
want any part of it. The Shirack sisters, they talked too much, said too much, probed
too much. Helen Crouch talked too much, period. It wasn’t his way. It wasn’t the Plain
way. For the Shiracks, he blamed the loss of their parents at a time when they needed
the discipline and direction provided by a father and a mother. Luke and Leah Shirack
had done what they could, but there was no substitute, as he well knew. And likely
Helen was born talking full tilt. Why did she make him feel so mean?