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СКАЧАТЬ This place is as dirty as a rainbow.”

      Hannah scowled at him. “Rainbows aren’t dirty. They’re pretty and clean.”

      He held his lantern higher. “Are they? Well, this place isn’t. It’s as dirty as a star.”

      “Stars aren’t dirty, Joshua. They twinkle.”

      “Then you tell me what is dirty.”

      “A pigpen.”

      “Yup, that is dirty, all right, but this place is worse than a pigpen. What else is dirty?”

      “Your face.”

      Mary choked on her laugh. Hannah was right. His face was covered in dirt. There were cobwebs on his clothes and bits of leaves and grass in his dark brown hair. It was then she realized how short his hair was. It wasn’t the style worn by Amish men. Joshua must still be in his rumspringa.

      Mary had left her running-around years behind a few short weeks after Hannah was born. She had been baptized into the Amish faith at the age of sixteen, the time when most Amish teens were just beginning to test the waters of the English world.

      Joshua seemed to notice she was staring at him. He rubbed a hand over his head in a self-conscious gesture and shook free some of the clinging grime.

      Mary looked away. She wiped down her sleeves and brushed off her bonnet, knowing she couldn’t look much better. Oddly, she wished she had a mirror to make sure her face was clean. It wasn’t like her to be concerned with her looks, but she did wonder what Joshua thought of her.

      That was silly. He would think she was a married woman with a child, and that was a good thing. She glanced at him again.

      He wiped his face with both hands but it didn’t do much good. He spoke to Hannah. “This isn’t dirt. It’s flour. I was going to bake a cake.”

      Hannah giggled at his silliness. “It is not flour.”

      “Okay, but this is a table and we need one.” He held his find aloft. The ancient rocker was missing a few spindles in the back, but the seat was intact.

      Hannah planted her hands on her hips. “That’s a chair.”

      “It’s a good thing I have you to help me shop. I’d never find the right stuff on my own. Let’s go look for a donkey.”

      Hannah giggled again. “Joshua, we don’t need a donkey in our house.”

      “We don’t? I’m so glad. I don’t know where it would sleep tonight.”

      His foolishness made Mary smile. He was distracting and entertaining Hannah. For that, she was grateful. Mary turned her attention to finding something to collect the rainwater. She had no idea how long they might be down here, but Hannah was sure to be thirsty soon.

      She found a metal tub hanging from a post near the center of the room. It had probably been a washtub at one time. Using her apron, she wiped it out and positioned it under the worst of the dripping. Next, she found an empty glass canning jar and rinsed it out the same way. She put it in the center of the tub. Once the jar was full, the overflow would accumulate in the tub and leave her something to wash with later.

      The plink, plink, plink of the water hitting the bottom of the jar was annoying, but they would be grateful for the bounty before morning. She refused to think they might be down here more than one night.

      Taking off her bonnet, she laid it aside. Then she held the cleanest corner of her apron under a neighboring drip until it was wet and unobtrusively used it to scrub her face.

      At the end of their shopping trip, Joshua and Hannah came back with two barely usable chairs, a small wooden crate for a third seat and another washtub with a hole in the side for a table, but no ax or tools. Joshua set the furniture up in their corner, allowing Hannah to arrange and rearrange them to her satisfaction in her imaginary house.

      While her daughter was busy, Mary spoke quietly to Joshua. “I will be fine until we are rescued, but Hannah will be hungry soon. Do you have anything to eat?”

      “Nothing. I’m sorry. Everything I have is out in my buggy in the barn. There are some cans and jars on the shelf back there. Want me to take a look?”

      “Nee, you’re doing a wonderful job keeping Hannah occupied. I’ll go look.” Normally leery of strangers, Mary didn’t feel her usual disquiet with Joshua. She assumed their current circumstances made him seem like less of a stranger and more like a friend in need.

      He pulled a candle stub from his pocket. “I found this along with a couple of others in a pan. It was the best one.” He lit it, dripped a small amount of wax on the overturned washtub and stuck the butt in it to hold the candle upright. Then he handed Mary the lantern.

      “Someone was probably saving them to melt down to reuse.” She didn’t have a mold to form a new candle, but she could make one by dipping a wick in the melted wax. A strip of cotton cloth from her apron or from her kapp ribbon would make an adequate wick. She would work on that before the lantern ran out of fuel. Sitting in the dark was the last thing she wanted to do.

      Hannah began jumping up and down. “I hear a siren. Do you hear it? It’s Papa Nick!”

      Mary’s spirits rose until the welcome sound faded away. Nick wasn’t coming for them. He had no idea where she was. It might not even have been him. How much damage had been done by the tornado? Were others in need of rescue?

      A few moments later, she heard the sound of another siren on the highway. Were they ambulances rushing to help people injured by the twister? She had been praying so hard for herself and for Hannah that she had forgotten about others in the area. This part of the county was dotted with English and Amish farms and businesses. How many had been destroyed? How many people had lost their lives? She prayed now for all the people she knew beyond the stone walls keeping her prisoner. It was the only thing she could do to help.

      Lifting the lantern, she moved across the crowded room to the shelves Joshua had indicated and searched through the contents. She glanced back to see him placing the tub as Hannah instructed in her imaginary house. The lantern flickered and Mary turned up the wick. She hated being trapped, but at least she didn’t have to face the situation alone.

      A dozen times in the next half hour the eerie wailing of sirens rose and fell as they passed by on the highway a quarter of a mile away from the house. Each time, Mary’s hopes sprang to life and then ebbed away with the sound. She met Joshua’s eyes. They both knew it was a bad sign.

      * * *

      Joshua noticed the growing look of concern on Mary’s face. It didn’t surprise him. He was concerned, too. He had no idea when rescue would come. Would anyone think to search an old house that had been abandoned for months? Why would they? He racked his brain for a way to signal that they were here, but came up empty. Someone would have to come close enough to hear them shouting.

      Hannah came to stand in front of him with her hands on her hips. “Joshua, we need a stove and a bed now. Take me shopping again.”

      She looked and sounded like a miniature version of her mother. He had to smile. “You are a bossy woman. Does your mother boss your daed that way?”

      Hannah СКАЧАТЬ