The Beekeeper's Son (The Amish of Bee County Book 1) (13 page)

Rain. Sweet rain. She could almost taste it.

The wind grew stronger. The strings on her kapp fluttered. She lifted her face to air laden with humidity. It felt cooler, she was sure of it. A drop of rain splattered on her nose. She closed her eyes.

Please, Gott, let it rain.

Another big, fat drop landed on her lips. She laughed and opened her eyes.

Thank
You, Gott.

Rebekah stretched her arms over her head and lifted her hands to the sky. “Rain, rain,” she chanted.

Leila and Frannie and the little girls joined in. “Rain, rain.”

Caleb tumbled down from the dilapidated wagon he’d been pretending to drive and joined the chant.

Another gust of wind sent the lawn chair end over end. Caleb dashed after it, tackled it, and brought it back. Thunder rumbled. Lightning crackled. No one seemed to notice or care.

The rain came, a sprinkle at first, then harder. The older folks moved toward the house. Torn, Deborah looked back. Frannie, Rebekah, and Leila hopped up and down and shrieked with the sheer joy of it. She couldn’t help it. She raced toward them. They grabbed hands and ran in a circle, faces lifted to the heavens.

“Rain, rain, rain, I love rain,” Frannie shouted over the wind. “Gott is gut.”

“Gott is gut,” Hannah chanted.

“God gut,” Hazel lisped.

Deborah laughed and scooped up her little sister, now a bundle of wet clothes and hair that smelled of mud and sweat. “You are right, little one.”

Rain would mean a fresh growth of green grass and, more importantly, the crops would soak it up. The corn, the sugarcane,
the milo, and the vegetable gardens that stretched endlessly behind every house. They would have more produce to sell at the store and in town on Friday mornings.

She only had to look as far as John and Eve’s backyard to find something for which to be thankful. She would be thankful and content during the time she spent here. Even if she still intended to return home. Home where she had real friends.

“Let’s play tag.” She set Hazel on her stubby, little legs and pointed to Frannie. “You’re it.”

“Hide-and-seek. Hide-and-seek!” Hazel trundled after her. “I want hide-and-seek.”

“Next,” Deborah assured her.

For once, for one afternoon, they would play childish games until it was time to put childish things aside.

Still laughing at the comical way John and Eve had hippity-hopped to the back door, hands over their heads as if they might melt in the rain, Abigail grabbed a dish towel from the kitchen counter and wiped her face. They’d gone on to their room to change while Susan had declared she would take a quick nap if no one minded.

Abigail, on the other hand, felt more wide awake than she had in days. She also felt cooler than she had any day since their arrival in Bee County. Even the toothache that had plagued her recently seemed to subside. It didn’t matter where a person lived. Farmers loved rain, but especially in this place. Irrigation and greenhouses were good, but some old-fashioned rain was the best medicine for a dry land.

“Share that?”

She looked up to see Mordecai standing on the rag-piece rug by the back door, water dripping from his straw hat. He grinned despite his soggy beard and rain-spattered shirt and pants.

“Surely.”

She held out the towel. His fingers grazed hers as he took it. They were long and thin and callused. Everything about him shouted hard work, from the leathered skin of his face and spidery sun lines around his eyes to the broad muscles of his shoulders and biceps straining against a much washed, faded blue shirt.

The towel hid his expression for a few seconds, but when he handed it back, he smiled. “Much better.”

She nodded, not sure where to look.

“It’s good to see them act silly and have fun now and again.” He nodded toward the screen door. “Their laughter . . . it makes me feel . . .”

“Less sad.” She moved to stand where she could see out the window over the sink. The kinner whooped and dashed after each other in a muddy, wet game of tag, celebration in every dash and every skid. “Like Gott has not forgotten us.”

Mordecai’s startled expression made Abigail wish she’d held her tongue. He wiped his feet on the rug and leaned against the wall, hands folded over his broad chest. “Is that how you feel? Forgotten?”

“I didn’t mean to question Gott’s will.” She stuttered in her race to retract the words. Mordecai would tell Leroy and Leroy would tell Stephen. She wasn’t the stout believer her intended thought she was. “I know He has a plan for me and my kinner, for all of us.”

“I’m not the bishop. You don’t have to pretend with me.”

She wasn’t pretending. Not exactly. “I try hard to be patient and wait to see how the plan unfolds.”

“But you’re only human.”

Abigail wanted a different conversation with this man she barely knew. Light, easy, simple. “Would you like some sweet tea?”

“Nee. What makes you think I’m sad?”

“Sometimes, when you think no one will notice, you look like I feel when I wake up in the morning and—”

“And remember your husband is dead.”

“Jah. Timothy.”

“My fraa was a good woman, but she’s been gone twelve years.”

“As was my husband.” She glanced down at her hands gripping the sink. Her knuckles were white. She loosened her grip. “He’s been gone more than two.”

“The days of his life were complete.”

“Jah, and mine are not.” He would understand the sentiment behind those words. How strange and sad it seemed that the days of her life had not coincided with those of the man she loved. “Still, it’s Gott’s will.”

“Gott’s will.”

Thunder rolled in a deep, continuous sound like a train chugging along a track. The rumble filled the air between them. Mordecai cocked his head, his blue-green eyes contemplating something behind Abigail’s shoulder. “Time moves on.”

“It does.” She found herself holding her breath for some reason.

He smiled again and years fell away from his face. “What do you say? Let’s play in the rain.”

“What?”

“Come on. I figure it’s Gott’s way of offering us a good bath. I won’t even have to take one later.”

“But—”

“Nee. No buts.”

He opened the screen door and jerked his head. “Last one to the horse trough and back is a monkey’s uncle.”

No one wanted to be a monkey’s uncle—whatever that was—at any age. Feeling lighter than she had in months, Abigail darted past him, pounded down the two wooden steps, and let the wind carry her across the yard. Rain soaked her kapp, her hair, her face, and her dress. She glanced back, Mordecai followed. The wind knocked off his hat and sent it flying. Chortling, he chased it down.

She raced toward the horse trough, dress flapping behind her, hands planted on her kapp to keep it in place. Her feet hit a soft patch and went out from under her. She flapped her arms, skidded, and did a whirly turnaround in the mud, smacking into Mordecai.

His booming laugh told her no harm done. He dodged around her and pounded toward the horse trough. The kinner howled with laughter.

“It’s a race. It’s a race!” Leila darted across the yard, her muddy dress entangled around her legs. “To the trough!”

All the kinner joined in, laughing and shrieking. Hannah slipped and fell in the mud. She lay on her back, laughing, until Frannie dragged her to her feet. They both went down in a heap.

Mordecai slapped a hand on the trough, now full of muddy water, and trotted back toward the house. Caleb planted himself in the man’s path. Mordecai zigged and zagged, lost his footing, went to his knees, then crawled around Caleb, who staggered forward, hand on his chest, gasping for air in his laughter.

“All y’all are crazy!” John’s voice boomed from the open
kitchen window. “You’re making a big mess of yourselves in that mud hole out there.”

“The rain will wash it off.” Mordecai paused by the back step, panting. “A little rainwater, a little laughter, both are good for the soul.”

“So is quiet contemplation and an early bedtime.” John’s face disappeared from the window.

“Guess we should call it a day.” Mordecai stretched and strolled toward Abigail as if he weren’t covered with mud and wet to the bone. His face still shone with laughter. “Wouldn’t want to outstay our welcome.”

“You haven’t.” Abigail shut her mouth. This wasn’t her house and Mordecai hadn’t come to visit her. To her surprise, she didn’t want him to leave. “I mean, it was fun.”

“Yeah, it was fun.” Rebekah wiped at her face, leaving a trail of mud across her check. “You run fast for an old . . .”

“Rebekah!” Abigail hastened to amend her daughter’s statement. “You run fast, period.”

Mordecai threw his head back and laughed, a deep belly laugh. “I’m no spring chicken, but I can still catch my kinner and turn them over my knee, if need be.”

“Do they need be?” Deborah, who leaned against the horse trough with her face lifted to the sky, rain running down her pink cheeks, posed the question. “Phineas must be a handful.”

“Never once have I taken that boy to the woodshed.” The smile on Mordecai’s face died. “Sometimes I wish he would be more . . . Anyway . . . his brothers make up for it. I better get Susan and get home.”

He looked down at his muddy boots and pants. “Maybe you better get her.”

Abigail squeezed her apron together, wringing it out as she trudged back to the house. “I’m surprised she didn’t hear all the ruckus.”

“I did.” A huge smile on her face, Susan pushed through the screen door and hopped down the steps, everything about her clean and dry. She popped up a black umbrella. “You were having so much fun, I was jealous.” She beamed at Abigail. “I haven’t heard Mordecai laugh like that in a very long time.”

Something in her tone made Abigail’s cheeks grow hot. She brushed past Susan. “I enjoyed your visit. Me and the girls will be up on Tuesday for the quilting frolic.”

“Gut
.
We’ll see you then.”

Abigail found she couldn’t look at Mordecai. What had been simple fun a few moments before now took on a whole new context. Through the eyes of others. What would Stephen say? Was frolicking in the rain like a child with a grown man improper?

Mordecai winked as he walked by. Apparently he didn’t think so. With a wave, Abigail lifted her chin and stalked into the house, head held high.

Her ribs and cheeks hurt from laughing. She’d like to have that kind of ache more often.

THIRTEEN

Deborah jerked awake and sat up. She fought with the sheet tangled around her legs as she forced open gritty eyes, trying to see what had startled her from a fitful doze. She never slept deeply—not since Daed died.

Rain pounded the tin roof overhead and danced through the open window on the other side of the room, driven in by a wind so fierce it made the curtain stand at attention. Thunder crashed. Lightning crackled low to the ground, lighting up the window so she could see the live oak branches bending to the ground in a long, illuminated stretch. Air smelling of wet earth and leaves inundated the room.

The storm had been over when she went to bed, tired, damp, but as close to being content as she had been since coming here. It had returned under cover of darkness. She shivered at the sudden, wide-awake sensation that something or someone had shaken her from a dream. Had she been dreaming? She couldn’t remember.

Nee. Nee. Fragments of the old nightmare—the one where the clods of dirt showered down on the casket that held Daed
captive even though he still breathed—wouldn’t have disappeared so quickly into the dark night.

Thunder. Just thunder. Another storm on top of the earlier one. God knew they needed the rain in a bad way. The thunder must’ve awakened her.

Wiggling, she leaned against her lumpy pillow, damp with sweat, and endeavored to get comfortable. Frannie mumbled in her sleep and flung out her arm so hard her hand slapped Deborah in the chest. She shoved her cousin’s arm back in her direction. “Hey, watch it.”

Frannie rolled over so the schtinkich of her night breath blew in Deborah’s face. Sighing, Deborah scooted closer to the edge of the bed. Any farther and she’d fall on the floor. She might be more comfortable there than in a bed shared with three other girls. She closed her eyes and inhaled, trying to grasp fleeting sleep before it disappeared completely as it had so many nights since their arrival in Bee County.

She wrinkled her nose. The fresh rain scent of a few seconds earlier had been replaced by another distinct odor. She inhaled again, sudden fear replacing her earlier irritation.

Smoke. She smelled smoke.

“Frannie, Frannie, wake up!” She grabbed Frannie’s arm and shook her. “Wake up. I smell smoke.”

Muttering something unintelligible, Frannie rolled to her other side and threw her arm over Rebekah.

Deborah shot from the bed and grabbed her housecoat. “Frannie, Rebekah, Leila! Get up, get up. I smell smoke.”

Leila sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Smoke? Didn’t you bank the fire in the stove?”

“I did. I think lightning struck the house. Something woke me up and now I smell smoke.”

“Hannah, Hazel, wake up!” It took Leila all of two seconds to slip from the bed and bend over the girls sleeping next to her. She scooped Hazel up in one arm and little Hannah in the other. “Where’s it coming from?”