To Love and to Cherish (34 page)

“Go home!” Aenti Louise shook a finger at the girls. “Your job is to take care of the little ones. Get them home. Put them to bed. Then get things ready. We’ll be along shortly.”

Neither Annie nor Catherine looked happy, but they each grabbed a twin’s hand and joined the knot of people putting on their coats and moving quietly toward the door.

“Need any help?” Sadie Plank called out as she tied a woolen bonnet over her kapp. “I can stay.”

“We’re fine.” Aenti Louise called back. “You should get home before the snow comes.”

Luke didn’t look fine. His face constricted with fear, he put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “We need to get her to the clinic.”

“Let me take a look and then we’ll have a better idea how much time we have.” Aenti Louise patted Leah’s damp cheek. “You’re doing fine. This is as good a place as any. We’ve got a fire, we can use coats to keep you warm. Check to see if you have any string, Emma, in case we need it, and scissors. If you have more of those sheets like the one you have hanging there, we can use those.”

Emma turned and nearly ran into Carl. He shifted from one foot to the other. “Can I do something to help?”

“Go home.” She brushed past him. “You can help by going home.”

His face reddened as if she’d slapped him. “You read the last letter.”

“Not now, Carl. Go home.” Let him read all he wanted into that statement. She wanted him to go home. To his wife and baby, if Karen would still have him. “We’ll talk later.”

Head down, she dashed to the storage cabinet where she kept all her supplies. Thomas stepped into her path. “May I help by taking your brothers and sisters home?”

“What about Eli and Rebecca?”

“They’ve already gone with Daed and Mudder.” His hands tightened around the hat in his hands. “I want to help you.”

His gentle tone unnerved her. Suddenly tearful, she nodded. “Ask Josiah how many he can get in the sleigh. I’m sure he would welcome splitting them up.”

He slapped the hat on his head. “Done.”

Emma grabbed the supplies she needed and hurtled across the room. Between Luke and Aenti Louise, they’d managed to help Leah to the “backstage” corner. Leah’s clamped teeth and stranglehold on Luke’s arm told Emma her sister-in-law suffered in the throes of another contraction. Again she thought of how it was when Mudder had Lillie and Mary. Emma had been so frightened, but Mudder kept saying everything was as it should be. All that pain to bring a life into the world. And for Mudder, two new lives. Bountiful, she had called it.

Emma handed the supplies to Aenti Louise, who barely looked up. “All right. All of you. Outside the sheets.”

His face strained with reluctance and worry, Luke did as she ordered. Aenti Louise let the sheet drop. Luke strode away. A moan from behind the sheet sent him rocketing back toward it.

“She’s done this before, remember?” Emma slipped between him and the hanging sheets. He stopped. “So has Aenti Louise, many, many times. Leah will be fine.”

After a few minutes, Aenti Louise brushed the sheet aside. Her wizened face concerned, she wiped her bent fingers on the washrag Emma had given her.

“Well, how is she? Do we move her?” Luke towered over his aunt. “Is the baby coming now?”

“Hush, a minute, will you?” Aenti Louise’s eyes narrowed. She paced about for a brief moment. “The baby’s not going to come on its own. It’s breech.”

Emma didn’t know that term, but Aenti Louise’s expression said it wasn’t good. “What does that mean?”

“The baby’s feet are first, instead of its head.”

“What do we do?”

“Not we, dearie. A doctor. A doctor knows how to turn the baby.” Aenti Louise snatched her coat from the hook on the wall. “Bank the fire. Let’s go. Luke, help us get her in the buggy. We’ll move her to your house. Then you go into town and get Doctor Miller. Quickly now!”

Emma did as she was told, but Luke stood frozen in the middle of the room. “Can he help her at home, or do we need an ambulance?”

Emma hated the look of terror on her brother’s face. He’d been through so much.

“The bishop’s house is in the opposite direction. We’ll lose too much time going to his house to call.” Aenti Louise tapped a finger on her cheek, her eyes narrowed. “Better to get Doctor Miller. His house is on the edge of town. Babies are born breech all the time. They just need a little more help. And so does the mother. If he thinks Leah needs to go to the hospital in Wichita, he’ll make that call. Now, let’s go. We’re wasting time.”

The ride home in the backseat of the buggy, holding Leah’s hand, seemed unreal. Darkness had fallen. The trees cast shadows on white crests of snow that glittered in the moonlight. No one spoke. The only sounds were the horse’s snorts, the crunch of the wheels against the snow, and Leah’s occasional half-suppressed groans. She tried so hard to be brave, but the bones in Emma’s fingers felt as if they would break in the stranglehold of her grip. Inhaling the scent of pine, Emma breathed through the pain. It seemed the least she could do.

Luke snapped the reins. The buggy lurched forward as they picked up speed. “Slow down!” Aenti Louise grabbed the seat and hung on. “I’d like to get your wife and baby there in one piece, if you please.”

The buggy slowed on the curve that led to the final stretch of road and their house. Emma breathed a sigh of relief. Home was better. They had pots and pans for heating water, lots of blankets, a nice bed, and all the baby things. Catherine and Annie would be there to help. A thought hit her like a boulder in a landslide, hurtling from above. She leaned close to her sister-in-law. “If it takes very long coming, your baby will be born on Christmas Day!”

Leah gripped her hand so hard Emma gritted her teeth to keep from crying out. “A new beginning. Child of God.” She gasped. “Maybe that’s why it hurts so much. Joy in the pain.”

Emma leaned closer to Luke’s broad back. “Hurry,” she whispered.

The buggy jolted forward.

Lights bore down on them. “Is that Josiah? Why is he headed out again?” Luke pulled on the reins. “Who is that?”

“It’s me. Thomas.” Thomas shielded his eyes from Luke’s headlights with his hand. “I can’t find Rebecca.”

E
mma couldn’t see Thomas’s expression in the harsh glare of the battery-operated headlights, but the fear in his hoarse voice reverberated between the side-by-side buggies. Leah moaned, shifted, and dropped Emma’s hand. Her breathing became even more ragged. Emma tried to focus on Thomas’s form, dark against the brilliant light. “I thought you said Rebecca went home with your mother and father.”

“It was a misunderstanding. They left, thinking she was with me.” The words came out jerky as if Thomas had to corral them one at a time. “If she’s not with you, she must still be at the school. You didn’t see her?”

“If we had, we would’ve brought her home with us.” Aenti Louise’s tart tone said she didn’t like wasting breath on stating the obvious. “You’d better get to the school and look for her. Emma, you go with him and open up the building. If she’s wandering about outside, you’ll need to warm her by the fire. Stoke it while Thomas searches for her. I’ll send Josiah after you, just in case you need to start a bigger search. Luke will go to Bliss Creek to fetch the doctor.”

Leave it to Aenti Louise to take charge in an emergency. She was the only woman in the Shirack clan who could get away with it. The chaos in Emma’s mind subsided. She patted Leah’s hand one last time, then switched buggies. Thomas had his buggy in motion the second
she stepped in. She jolted back, her arms flapped like a wild turkey. The door slapped shut and she plopped into the seat.

“Sorry.” He snapped the reins again. “I’m…sorry.”

“It’s all right. You must be worried sick.” Emma grabbed the door and held on tight. “Go as fast as you can without throwing me into the road.”

“It does no good to worry.” His harsh tone belied the words. He pulled up on the reins and the buggy slowed a little. “Worry is a sin.”

“You sound like Luke.”

“Your brother is a wise man.”

“Right now he’s a worried man.”

Thomas’s laugh sounded broken, but it still qualified as a laugh. She took refuge in the welcome sound. “What do you think happened? What does Eli say?”

“He says he didn’t see her after she played her part in the skit. He was too busy horsing around with the boys to pay any attention to his little sister.”

“It’s not Eli’s fault. He’s eight. He was just doing what boys do.”

“He has the responsibility of looking after her when I’m doing other things.”

“What were you doing? Talking to Helen?” The words slipped out before Emma could stop them. Contrition filled her immediately. The last thing Thomas needed right now was recrimination. Especially from her. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Despite all that must be going through his mind at that moment, Thomas managed a fleeting smile. “You’re jealous. That’s a good sign.”

“I am not jealous.” Emma stopped for a second. She gripped the arm of the seat tighter. “We’ll talk about this another time.”

“Yes. We will.”

Nothing.

Thomas saw nothing of Rebecca along the dark, shadow-pitted road that led to the school. Barren tree branches whipped and danced along
the edges, casting bizarre shadows in the light of slivers of moonlight that came and went as clouds scudded overhead. The thought of her walking alone in the dark in the frigid cold of night ripped a hole in his heart.

Why hadn’t he talked to both children about staying in one place if they were ever separated? Because he never expected it to happen. They were always together. Rare were the moments when family didn’t surround them. He’d made sure of that since Joanna’s death.

Now, his gaze set upon another woman, he’d lost sight of the need for vigilance. Guilt and remorse stuck together like stone and mortar inside him. With the evening sun long gone, the temperatures would continue to dive. If Rebecca were wandering around lost, she wouldn’t last long.
God, please don’t let that be the case. Give her refuge. Take me to her
.

Thomas turned off the headlights so his eyes would adjust to the dark. He scanned the roadside. “Do you see anything on that side?”

Emma shook her head. “Nothing. Slow down. We have to keep looking.”

He tugged on the reins, and the horse slowed to a walk. Thomas strained to hear. The only sounds were his ragged breathing, Emma’s light and quick, and an occasional hoot of an owl. A wet snowflake smacked him in the eye. Another brushed his cheek. Snow. The snowstorm that had been threatening all afternoon announced itself with a few icy early arrivals.

“No. No! Rebecca, where are you?” Calling to her in the thick of the night in the middle of the road seemed all the more desperate. “Answer me, daughter!”

Emma touched his coat sleeve. Her hand withdrew. He wanted it back, but he didn’t dare say so. Even in a moment so fraught with emotion, decorum had to be maintained. He would never do anything to place her in a position that could be disrespected. Her features were hidden by the dark and her thick, woolen bonnet, but her breathing came more rapidly. “We’ll find her.” Hope and faith cloaked the words. “You know we will. Surely, she’s between here and the school.”

“I’m trying to hope that she thought to stay at the school, knowing
I would realize my mistake and come for her.” He clucked and slapped the reins. The horse picked up its pace again. “But Rebecca is always so sure she’s all grown-up. She wouldn’t think twice about starting out on her own. She’s independent.”

“She’s smart and you’ve taught her well.”

“Not about this I didn’t. I didn’t tell her.” He clamped his mouth shut for a few seconds, afraid an unmanly sob would slip out. “She’s only six years old, after all.”

They rode in silence. Thomas worked to regain his composure. When he was sure no emotion would escape with the words, he posed the question. “Did you look to see that everyone was gone before you locked up the building?”

Emma brushed wet flakes from her lap with gloved fingers. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember.” Her voice cracked. “I can’t remember even if I locked the door. Sometimes I don’t. But I was so wrapped up in helping with Leah, I don’t even remember what I did.”

“If she was outside and everyone left, she could still get into the building.” A small ray of hope. “That’s good.”

“I’m just not sure.”

“You didn’t know.”

They were silent then for the remaining mile, except to call her name now and again. His heart pounding harder than when he plowed the land behind a team of horses, Thomas flapped the reins. They were getting closer.

The schoolhouse came into view. The windows were dark, forlorn. Nothing indicated that a bright, busy-as-a-bee six-year-old occupied it. He bit his upper lip to keep from crying out.
God, You have Joanna. Please don’t take Rebecca just because I failed to watch over her
.

He replayed the sudden end of the pageant and Leah’s distress. He’d been focused on Emma, more concerned about helping her than keeping track of his own little girl. He bowed his head.

“It’s not your fault.”

“She’s my child, my responsibility. Instead of watching over her, I was watching you.”