Love’s Journey Home (32 page)

“And you have enough money to get to Indiana.”

“Enough.” He shrugged. “Phoebe…my…my girl…she helped. She sent me half. I had half.”

“Well, then.” Helen tried to think. He couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to his
daed. Without Gabriel having a chance to dissuade him. “I’ll pack you a lunch.”

Daniel snapped the suitcase shut and glanced around the room. Helen saw nothing in
his face to suggest he had any connection to it. He’d barely lived there a week. Just
passing through. He followed her down the stairs and into the kitchen without speaking.

There she made him a sandwich with thick slices of ham, cheese, and mustard on slabs
of homemade bread. Finally, when he’d demolished the first half of the sandwich and
gulped noisily through most of the milk she’d poured, Helen dared to try again. “How
old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

Old enough.

“You’ve been baptized?”

“Jah. Same as Phoebe. We were going to announce our marriage next winter when I’d
saved enough to build us a house on a few acres her daed was willing to give us. She’s
only seventeen. Her daed wanted her to wait another year.”

“What did your daed say?”

“He said we had to move.” Daniel’s voice didn’t betray his emotions, but his hands
shook as he lifted the glass to his mouth and drained the last of the milk. He sat
the glass down harder than necessary. “He said if we were meant to be, then Phoebe
could come out here when she was old enough.”

Helen wrapped another sandwich in plastic wrap and slid it into a baggie. She dropped
it in a brown paper bag along with two apples and a dozen cookies. As long as she
didn’t look directly at him, he seemed willing to talk to her. “Have a piece of pie
before you go.” She slid a wedge of pecan pie onto a saucer and laid it on the table
in front of him. “You can’t wait another year?”

“I can’t.” He looked up at her, his blue eyes fierce with emotion. He looked nothing
like Gabriel so he must be like his mother. His determination to have his own way—now
that surely came from his father. “I’m a man now. I’m ready to start a family with
the woman I’ve…” He swallowed. He pushed the plate away. “I’d best get going. Mr.
Carver said he’d take me to the station when he goes home for lunch. I don’t want
to miss the noon bus to Topeka.”

“You’ll go without saying goodbye?”

He wiped at his mouth and laid the napkin by the plate. “It’s better.”

“For whom?”

“You don’t know my daed.”

“I know what’s right.” And, truth be told, she didn’t want Gabriel to suffer this
pain. He’d suffered enough loss. She knew about the ache caused by these gaping voids.
“I know sons should honor their fathers.”

“I left him a note.”

“Not very brave.”

He stood, towering over her just as his father did. “He’ll be glad I did it this way.”

“Nee.”

“He doesn’t like goodbyes.”

“Who does?”

“He didn’t say goodbye to any of our friends and family in Dahlburg. He got in the
van and told the driver to leave. He never even looked out the window until we crossed
the line into Kansas.”

“You’re his son.”

“Jah. All the more reason.”

Helen shook her head as she watched him disappear through the kitchen doorway. Daniel
missed the woman he loved. Surely he missed his mother. Yet, in his youth, he couldn’t
see how his father must feel the same pain. Instead of drawing closer, he stepped
away because his father had been the one to stand between him and his girl. Phoebe.
Helen contemplated the empty doorway. As much as it would hurt Gabriel, Daniel needed
to go home. The woman he loved wasn’t dead, wasn’t beyond reach. She was alive and
waiting for him. Gabriel should be glad for that. He should be glad his son could
still have that happiness. Once he waded through the pain of the separation, surely
he would see that.

She padded through the house and slipped through the front door to the porch. “Take
care,” she called to him.

“Tell Daed Mr. Carver’s son will bring the horse back tonight.” Daniel snapped the
reins and the horse began a slow canter. “He’ll need a ride back to town.”

“I’ll tell him.” If he gave her a chance. “Any other messages?”

“Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him I’ll write. Tell him…tell him I’ll be fine.”

The other words remained unspoken, but Helen filled them in for the boy determined
to be a man.
Tell him I love him
.

The afternoon passed in cleaning up Rachel and Isabelle, who still couldn’t keep ginger
ale and crackers in their stomachs. Helen considered putting them in the buggy and
taking them into the clinic, but it didn’t seem right without asking Gabriel first.
Instead, she busied herself by rummaging through the pantry for the ingredients and
making a chicken pot pie. The men would be hungry after a long day’s work and they
would still have chores to do when they returned to the farm.

Abigail and Mary Elizabeth had done a good job in the kitchen. Plenty of bread, cookies,
and pie to go with the main dish. Corn on the cob. Pickled beets. She considering
running out to the garden to pick some fresh tomatoes—if any of the plants had survived
the storm earlier in the month—but she decided against leaving the house. She didn’t
want the girls to wake up and find themselves alone, even for a minute.

After a few hours, Abigail appeared in the kitchen. Her gait was unsteady, but her
face seem less flushed. Helen fixed her some toast and tea. After a few bites, the
color returned to her face and her body seemed to droop less. “I should get supper
started.”

“I have a pot pie in the oven.” Helen took the plate from Abigail’s weak grip. “Back
to bed with you now.”

“I want to help with the babies.” She stood, swayed a little, sat back down. “I’m
just a little dizzy. It’ll pass.”

“Up to bed now.” Helen followed her up the stairs to make sure she didn’t come tumbling
down. “I’ll check on the girls. You rest.”

Rachel rolled over when Helen entered the room and immediately began to whimper. “Want
Mary Liz. Want Abby.”

“Mary Elizabeth is at the bakery. Abigail is sick, just like you are.”

The girl began to wail.

“Now, now, now.” Helen scooped her up and whisked her down the stairs. She didn’t
want Isabelle joining in the fray. She would just rock the girl a bit. “You’ll wake
up your sister and she needs her sleep.”

She settled into a rocking chair in the front room and tucked the sobbing girl’s head
against her chest. Her arms felt heavy and her legs weak. It had been a long day.
She sighed and leaned her head against the back of the chair and began to rock. They
could both use a good cry, but only the little one would get one.

W
iping at his face with a semi-clean handkerchief, Gabriel pounded across the yard
and up the steps to the back porch. He paused to wipe his work boots on the rug. The
first day at the shop had been successful—if success could be measured by the number
of farmers who’d passed through the door with repair jobs. Mostly small ones that
would earn him little fees, but it was a start. It felt good to be working at something
he knew how to do. Since leaving his own farm behind in Indiana, he’d felt a strange
void. Like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Or his feet. Where to put them.
They seemed unusually large and all thumbs and big toes. In the way. Work relieved
that feeling.

The girls being sick had marred an otherwise good day. He pushed through the door
and into the kitchen, anxious to make sure they were better. Helen seemed capable
of caring for them. She had three girls of her own, after all, and she’d done a good
job, fixing up his cut after the storm. Still, she was such a clumsy one, sometimes.
It might have been better to take them to the doctor and let Isaac handle the shop.
In the past, he’d never had these moments of uncertainty. Laura had known what to
do with the children. He’d relied on her for that. As a husband should do.

The soft sound of a woman’s voice—Helen’s voice—penetrated his reverie. She sang an
old hymn he recognized in a sort of sing-song, almost talking, almost praying sort
of voice. Inhaling the mouthwatering scent of something—chicken pot pie?—he crept
closer to the door, curious.

She sat in the rocking chair of his front room, little Rachel wrapped in her arms.
The girl seemed to be asleep, but still Helen rocked and sang in English and then
in Deitsch. With no one around and the late afternoon sun filtering through the green
blinds on the windows, her face seemed to relax from her customary anxious, eager
to please but not quite sure how expression. She looked as if she belonged exactly
where she sat. In a rocking chair, holding a baby, singing what might pass as a lullaby.
He stood transfixed by the sheer goodness of her presence. How could one miss it?
Because she managed to bury it the second his path crossed hers?

Her hand lifted and she smoothed Rachel’s hair from her cheek with a gentle touch.
“Poor baby, you’re just tuckered out, aren’t you?” she whispered. “Being sick takes
all the spunk right out of a person. You must look like your mudder. I don’t see your
daed in those cheeks and that blond hair. She must have been lovely. You are so sweet.
Pretty is as pretty does, of course. Not that the boys will be running after you,
poor sweet thing.”

So she knew what he had only begun to accept. Rachel, like Isabelle, would never be
a wife and mother. Gabriel hadn’t taken her to the doctor yet, but he knew. He’d known
before the conversation with Catherine. Before her insistence that he face facts.
Rachel would always have the mind of a child. Isabelle had an innocence and a sweet
disposition. She loved to pick flowers and chase hummingbirds and pet kittens. She
loved to sing and play hopscotch and jump rope. She would always love those things.
Gabriel had no doubt Rachel would be exactly the same.

A sob caught in his throat and he stuffed it back to the heart of its origin. God
had blessed this family with two special little girls. Gabriel didn’t know how he
would bring them up, but he would. Without Laura, the task seemed endless and insurmountable,
but it wasn’t. It wouldn’t be.

Helen sighed and rocked some more. The wooden floor creaked under the chair. Her head
drooped and he thought maybe she’d gone to sleep as well, but the soft singing resumed
for a few seconds.

The scent he’d enjoyed a few seconds ago seemed different now. He sniffed. A little
burnt? Grimacing, he started forward. “I…”

Helen jumped up from the chair, her eyes wide, her mouth open. To her credit, she
didn’t drop Rachel in her fright. “Gabriel! You scared me! Why didn’t you say something?
How long have you been standing there?”

“Hush, you’ll wake the baby.”

“The poor thing is exhausted from vomiting and taking repeated baths…”

“I think whatever you’re baking is burning.” He put up both of his hands, palms out,
to try to stem the flow. “I just came in. I saw you there…”

“Jah, well.” She trotted across the room and held the sleeping child out to him. “Could
you take her while I check on your supper?”

“You didn’t need to start supper. Mary Elizabeth will be here any minute. Isaac intended
to stop at the bakery to pick her up on his way out of town.”

“We’re here. Hi, Helen.” Mary Elizabeth slipped through the front door at that very
moment. “How is she? Isaac told me the girls were sick. Let me take her.”

“Better not. Not if you want to go back to work at the bakery tomorrow,” Helen objected
before Mary Elizabeth could reach them. “Wash up and I’ll check on the chicken pot
pie. Your daed seems to think it’s burning.”

“I know when I smell burned pie crust.” For some reason, he felt a need to defend
himself. He cradled his youngest daughter against his chest, pleased that she didn’t
feel as hot as she had that morning. Her cheeks were rosy, but not burning. She stuck
a thumb in her mouth and snuggled closer. His throat tightened. He cleared it and
followed Helen into the kitchen. “I’ll run her upstairs. Then I best take care of
chores.”

“You best eat first. While it’s hot.” Helen pulled a steaming pot pie from the oven
and sat it carefully on a thick pile of potholders made by Laura many years earlier.
“I set the table. There’s bread, applesauce, pickled beets, corn on the cob, and some
pecan pie. That should fill you up.”

“You’re not staying for supper?” Isaac tromped through the backdoor and eased a bushel
of peaches onto the floor next to the sink. “Did you invite her to stay, Daed? After
all, she took care of the girls all day and that couldn’t have been much fun.”

No one generally gave much thought to whether childcare or other women’s work was
fun, but Gabriel knew what Isaac was getting at. He should’ve asked her. It would’ve
been the neighborly thing to do. “Jah, of course, you must stay.”

“I have to get home. My mudder doesn’t see well and she lets the girls get away with
a little too much for my liking…” Her voice trailed off. “Anyway.”

Thinking, no doubt, that he would be judging her parenting skills once again.

“You made the pot pie, you should have some.”