An Amish Match. Jo Ann Brown

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ appreciated staying out of the rain as she walked to Isaiah, her cousin’s widower. The young man who couldn’t yet be thirty looked as haggard as a man twice his age as he stared at the overturned earth. Some sound must have alerted him, because he turned to see her and his older brother coming toward him.

      Rebekah didn’t speak as she put her hand on Isaiah’s black sleeve. So many things she longed to say, because from everything she had heard the newlyweds had been deeply in love. They would have celebrated their first anniversary in November.

      All she could manage to say was, “I’m sorry, Isaiah. Rose will be missed.”

      “Danki, Rebekah.” He looked past her to his oldest brother. “Joshua?”

      “Rebekah’s umbrella broke,” Joshua said simply. “I’m walking her to her buggy. We’ll see you back at the house.”

      Isaiah nodded but said nothing more as he turned to look at the grave.

      Joshua gripped his brother’s shoulder in silent commiseration, then motioned for Rebekah to come with him. As soon as they were out of earshot of the remaining mourners, he said, “It was very kind. What you said to Isaiah.”

      “I don’t know if he really heard me or not. At Lloyd’s funeral, people talked to me but I didn’t hear much other than a buzz like a swarm of bees.”

      “I remember feeling that way, too, when my Matilda died.” He steered her around a puddle in the grass. “Even though we had warning as she sickened, nothing could ease my heart when she breathed her last.”

      “She was blessed to have you with her until the end.” She once had believed she and Lloyd could have such a love. Would she have been as caring if Lloyd had been ill instead of dying because he’d fallen from the hayloft in a drunken stupor?

      No! She wasn’t going to think about that awful moment again, a moment when only her faith had kept her from giving in to panic. The certainty that God would hold her up through the horrible days ahead had allowed her to move like a sleepwalker through the following month. Her son and the discovery she was pregnant again had pulled her back into life. Her kinder needed her, and she wouldn’t let them down any longer. It was important that nobody know the truth about Lloyd, because she didn’t want people watching Sammy, looking for signs that he was like his daed.

      “I know Rose’s death must be extra hard for you,” Joshua murmured beneath the steady thump of rain on his umbrella, “because it’s been barely half a year since you buried Lloyd. My Matilda has been gone for more than four years, and the grief hasn’t lessened. I’ve simply become accustomed to it, but the grief is still new for you.”

      She didn’t answer.

      He glanced down at her, his brown eyes shadowed, but his voice filled with compassion. “I know how much I miss Lloyd. He was my best friend from our first day of school. But nothing compares with losing a spouse, especially a gut man like Lloyd Burkholder.”

      “That’s true.” But, for her, mourning was not sad in the way Joshua described his own.

      Lloyd Burkholder had been a gut man...when he’d been sober. As he had never been drunk beyond their home, nobody knew about how a gut man became a cruel man as alcohol claimed him. The teasing about how she was clumsy, the excuse she gave for the bruises and her broken finger, hurt almost as much as his fist had.

      She put her hand over her distended belly. Lloyd would never be able to endanger their second kind as he had his first. Now she wouldn’t have to worry about doing everything she could to avoid inciting his rage, which he’d, more than once, aimed at their unborn kind the last time she was pregnant. Before Sammy was born, she’d been fearful Lloyd’s blows might have damaged their boppli. God had heard her desperate prayers because Sammy was perfect when he was born, and he was growing quickly and talking nonstop.

      Joshua started to say more, then closed his mouth. She understood. Too many sad memories stood between them, but there were gut ones, as well. She couldn’t deny that. On the days when Lloyd hadn’t been drunk, he had often taken her to visit Joshua and Matilda. Those summery Sunday afternoons spent on the porch of Joshua and Matilda’s comfortable white house while they’d enjoyed iced tea had been wunderbaar. They had ended when Matilda became ill and was diagnosed with brain cancer.

      A handful of gray buggies remained by the cemetery’s gate. The horses had their heads down as rain pelted them, and Rebekah guessed they were as eager to return to their dry stalls and a gut rubdown as Dolly, her black buggy horse, was.

      “Mamm!” Sammy’s squeal of delight sounded out of place in the cemetery.

      She whirled to see him running toward them. Every possible inch of him was wet, and his clothes were covered with mud. Laughter bubbled up from deep inside her. She struggled to keep it from bursting out.

      When she felt Joshua shake beside her, she discovered he was trying to restrain his own amusement. She looked quickly away. If their gazes met, even for a second, she might not be able to control her laughter.

      “Whoa!” Joshua said, stretching out a long arm to keep Sammy from throwing himself against Rebekah. “You don’t want to get your mamm dirty, do you?”

      “Dirty?” the toddler asked, puzzled.

      Deborah came to a stop right behind Sammy. “I tried to stop him.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “But he jumped into the puddle before I could.”

      Rebekah pulled a cloth out from beneath her cape. She’d pinned it there for an emergency like this. Wiping her son’s face, she gave the little girl a consoling smile. “Don’t worry. He does this sort of thing a lot. I hope he didn’t splash mud on you.”

      “He missed me.” The girl’s smile returned. “I learned how to move fast from being around Aenti Ruth’s kinder. I wish I could have been fast enough to keep him from jumping in the puddle in the first place.”

      “No one is faster than a boy who wants to play in the water.” Joshua surprised her by winking at Sammy. “Isn’t that right?”

      Her son’s smile vanished, and he edged closer to Rebekah. He kept her between Joshua and himself. Her yearning to laugh disappeared. Her son didn’t trust any man, and he had gut reason not to. His daed, the man he should have been able to trust most, could change from a jovial man to a brutal beast for no reason a toddler could comprehend.

      “Let’s get you in the buggy.” Joshua’s voice was strained, and his dark brown eyes narrowed as he clearly tried to understand why Sammy would shy away from him in such obvious fear.

      She wished she could explain, but she didn’t want to add to Joshua’s grief by telling him the truth about the man her husband truly had been.

      “Hold this,” he said as he ducked from under the umbrella. Motioning for his daughter to take Sammy’s hand again, he led them around the buggy. Rain struck him, but he paid no attention. He opened the door on the passenger side. “You probably want to put something on the seat to protect the fabric.”

      “Danki, Joshua. That’s a gut idea.” She stretched forward to spread the dirty cloth on the seat. She shouldn’t be surprised that he was concerned about the buggy, because he worked repairing and making buggies not far from his home in Paradise Springs. She stepped back while Joshua swung her son up into the carriage. If he noticed how Sammy stiffened, he didn’t say anything.

      Once СКАЧАТЬ