Rebecca's Christmas Gift. Emma Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ off salt. If anyone wants it, they can add it at the table.”

      Grossmama rose out of her rocker and came over to the table where bowls of food for the men were laid out. “A little salt never hurt anyone,” she grumbled. “I’ve been eating salt all my life. Roman works hard. He never got high blood pressure from salt.” She peered suspiciously at the blue crockery bowl of macaroni salad. “What are those green things in there?”

      “Olives, Grossmama,” Anna explained. “Just a few for color. Would you like to taste it?” She offered her a saucer and a plastic fork. “And maybe a little of Ruth’s baked beans?”

      “Just a little,” Grossmama said. “You know I never want to be a bother.”

      Rebecca met Grace’s gaze and it was all the two of them could do not to smile. Grossmama, a widow, had come to live in Kent County when her health and mind had begun to fail. Never an easy woman to deal with, Grossmama still managed to voice her criticism of her daughter-in-law. Their grandmother could be critical and outspoken, but it didn’t keep any of them from feeling responsible for her or from loving her.

      A mother spent a lifetime caring for others. How could any person of faith fail to care for an elderly relative? And how could they consider placing one of their own in a nursing home for strangers to care for? Rebecca intimately knew the problems of pleasing and watching over her grandmother. She and her sister Leah had spent months in Ohio with her before the family had finally convinced her to give up her home and move East. Still, it was a wonder and a blessing to Rebecca and everyone else that Grossmama—who could be so difficult—had settled easily and comfortably into life with Anna. Sweet and capable Anna, the Yoder sisters felt, had “the touch.”

      Lydia carried a basket of still-warm-from-the-oven loaves of rye bread to the counter. She was a willowy middle-aged woman, the mother of fifteen children and a special friend of Mam’s. “I hope this will be enough,” she said. “I had another two loaves in the oven, but the boys made off with one and I needed another for our supper.”

      “This should be fine,” Mam replied. “Rebecca, would you hand me that bread knife and the big cutting board? I’ll slice if you girls will start making sandwiches.”

      Lydia picked up the conversation she, Fannie and Mam had been having earlier, a conversation Rebecca hadn’t been able to stop herself from eavesdropping on, since it had concerned Caleb Wittner.

      “I don’t know what’s to be done. Mary won’t go back and neither will Lilly. I spoke to Saul’s Mary about her girl, Flo, but she’s already taken a regular job at Spence’s Market in Dover,” Fannie said. “Saul’s Mary said she imagined our new preacher would have to do his own laundry because not a single girl in the county will consider working for him now that he’s run Mary and Lilly off.”

      “Well, someone has to help him out,” Fannie said. She was Eli Lapp’s aunt by marriage, and so she was almost a distant relative of Caleb. Thus, she considered herself responsible for helping her new neighbor and preacher. She’d been watching his daughter off and on since Caleb had arrived, but what with her own children and tending the customer counter in the chair shop as well as running the office there, Fannie had her hands full.

      Mam arched a brow wryly as she took a fork from the cup and had a taste of one of the salads on the table. “A handful that little one is. I’d take her myself, but she’s too young for school.” Mam was the teacher at the Seven Poplars schoolhouse. “My heart goes out to a motherless child.”

      “No excuse for allowing her to run wild,” Grossmama put in. “Train up a child the way they should go.” This was one of their grandmother’s good days, Rebecca decided. Other than asking where her dead son Jonas was, she’d said nothing amiss this morning. Jonas was Grossmama’s son, Mam’s husband and father to Rebecca and all her sisters. But although Dat had been dead for nearly five years, her grandmother had yet to accept it. Usually, Grossmama claimed that Dat was in the barn, milking the cows, although some days, she was certain that Anna’s husband Samuel was Jonas and this was his house and farm, not Samuel Mast’s.

      “Amelia needs someone who can devote time to her,” Fannie agreed. “I wish I could do more, but I tried having her in the office and...” She shook her head. “It just didn’t work out. For either of us.”

      Rebecca grabbed a fork and peered into a bowl of potato salad that had plenty of hard-boiled eggs and paprika, just the way she liked it. From what she’d heard from Mam, Amelia was a terror. Fannie had gone to call Roman to the phone and the little girl had spilled a glass of water on a pile of receipts, tried to cut up the new brochures and stapled everything in sight.

      “Caleb Wittner needs our help,” Mam said, handing Rebecca a small plate. “He can hardly support himself and his child, tend to church business and cook and clean for himself.”

      “You should get him a wife,” Grossmama said. “I’ll have a little of that, too.” She pointed to the coleslaw. “A preacher should have a wife.”

      Lydia and Mam exchanged glances and Mam’s lips twitched. She gave her mother-in-law a spoon of the coleslaw on her plate. “We can’t just get him a wife, Lovina.”

      “Either a housekeeper or a wife will do,” Fannie said. “But one way or another, this can’t wait. We have to find someone suitable.”

      “But who?” Anna asked. “Who would dare after the fuss he and his girl have caused?”

      “Maybe we should send Rebecca,” Grace suggested.

      Rebecca paused, a forkful of Anna’s potato salad halfway to her mouth. “Me?”

      Her mother looked up from the bowl she was re-covering with plastic wrap. “What did you say, Grace?”

      Miriam chuckled and looked slyly at Rebecca. “Grace thinks that Rebecca should go.”

      “To marry Caleb Wittner?” Grossmama demanded. “I didn’t hear any banns cried. My hearing’s not gone yet.”

      Anna glanced at Rebecca. “Would you consider it, Rebecca? After...” She rolled her eyes. “You know...the kitten incident.” Anna’s round face crinkled in a grin.

      Rebecca shrugged, then took a bite of potato salad. “Maybe. With only me and Susanna at home, and now that Anna has enough help, why shouldn’t I be earning money to help out?”

      “You can’t marry him without banns,” Grossmama insisted, waving her plastic fork. “Maybe that’s the way they do it where he comes from. Not here, and not in Ohio. And you are wrong to marry a preacher.”

      “Why?” Mam asked mildly. “Why couldn’t our Rebecca be a preacher’s wife?”

      “I didn’t agree to marry him,” Rebecca protested, deciding to try a little of the pasta salad at the end of the table. “I didn’t even say I’d take the job as housekeeper. Maybe.”

      “You should try it,” Anna suggested.

      Rebecca looked to her sister. “You think?” She hesitated. “I suppose I could try it.”

      “Gut. It’s settled, then,” Fannie pronounced, clapping her hands together.

      “Narrisch,” her grandmother snapped. “Rebecca can’t be a preacher’s wife.”

      “I’m СКАЧАТЬ