The Christmas Quilt: Quilts of Love Series (6 page)

But the frown on Rachel’s face—it seemed carved there.

Today she wore her customary gray dress and black apron. Did she ever wear anything else? And why? Was she still in mourning for her husband, who had passed three years ago?

All these thoughts flitted through Leah’s mind in the time it took Eli and Rachel to walk into the room. Rachel’s two boys tumbled in from the cold, but Leah barely had time to focus on them. Her attention was completely on Eli, who made no attempt to conceal his argument with Rachel.

“ ’Course I can read.” He took off his hat and knocked it against his pants leg, as if it had snow on it, which it didn’t. Eli was tall and had managed to keep fit though he had no fields to speak of, but rather a small garden. His light brown hair had a tinge of gray to it, and he sported no beard since he’d never been married. Around his eyes a few wrinkles were beginning to show, but who noticed? He had the kindest, bluest eyes Leah had ever seen.

“You seem confused.”

“I am confused.” He didn’t move out of the doorway, and Rachel had to nudge him a little so she could close the door.

She let out a sigh and shook her head. “I don’t have time for this. What exactly is your problem?”

“My problem is that you’ve doubled the cost of the toys I sell at the store. People won’t pay that much.”

“Of course they will. It’s ridiculous, but they will because it’s Amish woodwork. I’m running a business, Eli.” She stopped and looked around as if she were seeing the group for the first time. Everyone had fallen silent.

“I tell you they won’t, and I didn’t make those toys so they could sit on a shelf. I made them for children.”

“Eli, those are the prices I’ve decided on. Leave them in the store or take them somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“Not my problem.” Rachel turned around, searching the room for her boys, content when she saw them seated at the checkerboard.

“That’s all you have to say? It’s not your problem?” Eli’s voice rose in frustration.

“It’s not.”

Jacob cleared his throat and limped toward them. “Perhaps today isn’t the proper time to be discussing business matters—”

“One moment, Jacob.” Eli turned back to Rachel. “Bontrager never raised my prices without consulting me.”

“As you’re aware, Bontrager doesn’t own the store anymore. I own the store.”

“What if I take a smaller commission and you return the prices to what they were previously?”

Rachel closed her eyes. “I fail to see what difference it makes to you. Your profit will remain the same—”

“It does make a difference, because I tell you they won’t sell.”

“They will, and I needed to change my price structure for business purposes, which I don’t expect you to be able to understand.” Her hand came out and she dismissed him with a wave as she turned toward the main part of the room. “Trust me when I say
Englischers
will buy anything I hang a
Made by Amish
sign in front of. They’re even buying those horrid knitted booties Leah makes.”

Eli gaped at her, but Rachel didn’t notice. She was searching the room for Leah. “There you are. Leah, I need more of your knitted booties if you’ve managed to finish any.”

Leah’s mouth opened, though she was too stunned to say anything. Fortunately, she didn’t have to, because at that point Adam stepped forward.

6

W
hen Adam stepped forward, he knew it was a bad idea.

Samuel’s hand on his arm told him it was a bad idea. Then there was that tingling sensation on his scalp. His mother used to call that his good angel. Adam wasn’t so sure he had a good angel anymore, not the way things had been going.

But he was certain about one thing.

“There’s no need to insult Leah,” he said.

“Did I insult her?” Rachel looked at him in surprise.

“You did. You were rude to her a moment ago when you referred to her knitting as horrid. She works very hard on those booties you make a profit on, and if you don’t want them you should say so—”

“Oh my goodness.” Rachel threw up her hands in exasperation. “I believe I asked her for more.”

“You owe her an apology,” Adam insisted.

“For what?”

“For what you said to my
fraa
.”

Rachel clamped her mouth shut, but she did have the good grace to blush.

“Adam, perhaps you could allow me to have a word with my
schweschder.
”

Interesting that Samuel used that term. It had the desired effect, causing Adam to pull in a deep breath and step back.

He understood Rachel was Mary’s sister—she was Samuel’s sister-in-law, but that didn’t give her the right to come into the midst of their family and act rudely. It didn’t give her the right to disregard his wife’s feelings.

“Adam, let’s you and I step outside for a moment.” Jacob’s tone indicated it was an order, not a request, so Adam snatched his coat off the hook by the door, along with his hat, and stormed out ahead of his father. The last two things he saw before stepping out into the cold were Samuel leading Rachel into the front guest room and Leah standing in the kitchen.

Leah, with a smile playing on her face.

Now what was she looking so pleased about? And how long had it been since he’d done anything to make her happy? She’d been stewing over their fight in the buggy since they’d arrived.

Adam made it to Samuel’s barn before he realized his dad was having trouble keeping up with his long, angry strides. Correction—Jacob wasn’t even attempting to keep up with him. As usual, Jacob went at his own pace.

He even paused to gaze up into the limbs of a forty-foot red maple to the east of Samuel’s barn.

“You’re going to freeze out here,
dat
. The weather’s turning. Come into the barn.”

Jacob appeared not to hear. He pointed up at the brilliant red and orange leaves with his cane. “Never ceases to amaze me, these colors.”

“It’s only a tree. Leaves turn every year.” Adam realized he sounded like a stubborn child, but he couldn’t stop himself. He’d worked on the handsaw until late into the night. It had not gone back together as easily as he’d predicted, especially after he’d broken one of the parts in the small engine. Fortunately, the part he’d picked up in town at the hardware store—the part he’d left at eight-thirty to purchase—had worked, once he’d finally put the machine back together correctly.

“True. You’re right, but the fact it happens every year doesn’t make it less of a miracle.” Jacob turned and looked at him then, raised an eyebrow, and joined him at the door to the barn. “Same is true with Leah’s
bopplin
, Son.
Kinner
are born every year, every day of every year, but it’s still a miracle they are—a true miracle of
Gotte
.”

“I know,
Dat
. Miracle—got it.” Adam walked over to an upended milking pail and sat on it. “I suspect that isn’t what you wanted to talk to me about.”

Jacob sat on the wooden crate next to him, so they were both staring down the length of Samuel’s barn. It wasn’t an overly large barn, and Samuel used a portion of it for seeing patients, so barely half of it contained animals. Adam could see everything was well tended though. The familiar smells and sounds eased some of the tension in his shoulders. How long had it taken Samuel to set things just so? How long had Samuel owned this place? And how had he survived the years alone, the years after Mary and his child had died?

A shiver passed through Adam’s heart, but he pushed it away. He focused instead on what had happened back in the house. “Rachel was in the wrong, and you know it.”

“
Ya
, maybe you’re right.”

“She shouldn’t have been rude. Leah is having a difficult enough time.”

“Why is that?”

Adam’s train of thought slammed to a stop. He’d been making a list of Rachel’s wrongs, ready to rattle them off to his father, ready to tick them off on the fingers of his left hand. “Why is what?”

“Why is Leah having a difficult time?”

“Let’s not make this about Leah.”

Jacob squinted at him and waited, resting his hand against the top of his cane and stretching his leg, his right leg that had never healed as well as the other, out in front of him.

“It’s not about Leah,” Adam repeated. “It’s about Rachel and her behavior.”

Silence settled around them, until Adam became aware of the horses in the stalls, the wind against the side of the barn, and the grumbling in his stomach.

Finally, he took off his hat and scrubbed his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what you want to talk to me about. I don’t even know why we’re out here when we could be inside eating Sunday dinner.”

Jacob nodded, as if that made sense. Slowly he moved his fingers down the length of his cane and studied the grain of the wood. When he began speaking, there was no condemnation in his voice, and perhaps that’s why Adam was able to listen to what he had to say.

“Everyone in your
schweschder’s
house knows that Rachel acted inappropriately, but maybe we don’t know why. Sometimes, Adam, a thing is broken in a person, much as the bone was broken in my leg. The doctors were able to fix my leg.” He tapped his shin with the cane, and something inside of Adam flinched.

He remembered too well the fear his father might not have survived the buggy accident and the deathly whiteness of Jacob’s face when they had found him in the snow that evening. Samuel had been the first to spy the twisted buggy, but Adam had joined them there as they’d waited for the ambulance. It had been a frightening time and perhaps when he’d first stepped into manhood.

“When a thing is broken inside a person, way down deep inside, it can become infected. It can affect everything else—like the infection in my leg affected my entire body. Like the dirt in the engines you fix affect the entire machine. Until the person allows the Lord to see their deepest needs, their deepest fears, they’re likely to limp along.” This time Jacob reached down and rubbed at his leg, and Adam wondered if it hurt. His father wasn’t one to complain, so he’d probably never know. “Fears and needs cause folks to limp along emotionally, much like my leg forces me to hobble.”

Adam stood and began pacing. “So you’re saying I should allow her to talk to Leah that way, that I shouldn’t have defended my
fraa
.”

“
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”

“Rachel is neither deaf nor blind. You’re telling me to be kind to her, but the woman is bitter and I will not have her being rude to Leah. At the very least, given Leah’s condition, Rachel should treat her with respect—”

“Do you?”

Adam froze, midway to the wall of the barn, pivoted, and stared at his father. “What?”

“Do you treat Leah with respect?”

“Why would you ask me that?”

“It seems you’re quite worried about her when someone else acts unkindly, but perhaps you have forgotten your first job as her husband is to love her as Christ loved the church.” Jacob didn’t blink, didn’t back down.

For a moment, Adam thought the sadness in his father’s eyes might have something to do with his marriage, but that was crazy. It wasn’t as if Jacob could have heard their fighting
on the way over, or as if he could know they no longer slept to
gether. Surely those things were normal for a couple in their situation.

Had Leah talked to his father or mother?

And beneath that, quieter, the question his father asked echoed,
Did he treat Leah with respect
?

Reba bounded into the barn. “
Mamm
says the food is ready to eat if you two have finished out here.”

“I’m starved, and I imagine your
bruder
is too.” Jacob stood and smiled when Reba linked her arm through his.

He made it to the barn door before he turned and said, “You’re coming, right?”

Adam nodded, but he didn’t follow immediately. He needed a few minutes alone, and suddenly eating wasn’t the most important thing on his mind.

Annie waited as long as she could, but when her mother sent Reba to the barn to fetch Adam and her father, she knew it was time.

“I’ll go and check on Samuel and Rachel.”

Rebekah patted her arm. “
Gut
, dear. You tell them the food is ready.”

She would have knocked on the guest room door, but Samuel had left it ajar, so she pushed it open, clearing her throat to signal she was walking in. She didn’t want to interrupt a private moment between brother and sister-in-law. This was all so awkward. Before they were married, Samuel had shared with her that Rachel had suggested he move back to Ohio. Move there, marry her, and help to raise his nephews.

He might have done it too, out of a sense of obligation, but he’d fallen in love with the community nurse.

“Rachel, I want you to listen to me—”

But she wasn’t listening. She was standing with her back to him, looking out the window at the clouds pressing down over their pasture. He reached for her arm and turned her around, and that was when she noticed Annie had entered the room.

“Annie. Have you been listening for long?”

“
Nein
, Rachel. I haven’t.
Mamm
asked me to come and tell you the food is ready.”

“And so you decided to sneak in here and eavesdrop?”

Samuel let out a sigh of exasperation. His gaze met Annie’s and somehow she knew what he wanted. She crossed the room, and instead of joining him, she went to Rachel.

She stood close, but not too close. In the years since Rachel had moved to Mifflin County, Annie had attempted to befriend her. She had failed. Now it seemed to her that Rachel was acting like one of Reba’s animals—cornered and frightened. At the same time, the memory of the scene in the next room was fresh. She didn’t want anything to hurt or upset Leah or the babies she was carrying.

“Rachel, is there something you need? Something that Samuel and I can do for you? If the store isn’t making enough money, we’d be happy to—”

“To do what, Annie? Hold an auction for me? Make me your next charity case?” Rachel stiffened her spine. “That won’t be necessary,
danki
.”

“You are important to me, Rachel. I think you know that.” Samuel scrubbed his hand over his face, and it dawned on Annie how much weight he carried on his shoulders. They’d spoken of this as they lingered over their Bible study earlier. Samuel had confessed some days he did a better job than others of handing his burdens over to their Lord. They’d laughed at the time, admitting their failures. Now she understood that the failing, for both of them, could be a costly one.

“I will, we both will, gladly do what we can to help you—” Samuel paused and glanced toward the door. “As well as Zeke and Matthew.”

Annie noticed that Rachel closed her eyes at the mention of her boys.

“But there are others I care for as well. Annie, of course.” Their eyes met again, and Annie thought she felt the baby inside of her move. “As well as Annie’s family. Leah is young and at a vulnerable time in her pregnancy right now. I consider her to be my family as well as one of my patients.”

Samuel stepped closer and lowered his voice. “You will not speak rudely to her again. You will not devalue her in any way. If you have a difference of opinion with Eli, or any business matter that needs settling, you will save it—”