Naomi’s Christmas (18 page)

His voice cracked on the words, and he was ashamed at himself for showing so much
emotion. But Naomi returned the pressure of his hands with warm, quick sympathy.

“All right,” she said. “I will work it out with Paula and Hannah somehow. It will
be fine.”

He was suddenly very aware of the warmth of her touch, of her fingers pressing his.
He let go and shoved his chair back to stand.

“Gut,” he said, wondering where all this confusion he felt had come from. “Gut.”

A
re
you sure you don’t mind?” Naomi looked from the jars of honey she was stacking on
the counter to Paula, busy cleaning the bakery case at the end of the day.

“Ach, how many times must I tell you?” Paula was mock scolding. “I’m not saying we
won’t miss you around here, because we surely will. But you must go in the direction
you feel led.”

“I hope I am being led to the right thing.” Doubts had crept in, of course, once she
was away from the farm and had time to think. “I feel as if my life is being turned
upside down yet again. And what if Emma does recover enough to come back to the children?”

Paula paused, frowning a little. The sleeves of her print Mennonite dress had been
pushed up, and she was enveloped in the white apron she wore in the bakery.

“I try to put myself in Emma’s place,” she said. “We are about the same age, ain’t
so?”

Naomi nodded. Paula was certainly still very active. She’d resent it if anyone tried
to take over for her, although she was giving her niece more and more responsibility.

“A broken hip is serious business,” Paula said. “It will take time for her to recover,
and by then, she may have gotten accustomed to your watching the kinder.”

“That’s what Nathan thinks.” It was reassuring to hear Paula echo his thought, since
Paula wasn’t trying to persuade her to do something.

“We never know just how things are going to turn out, do we?” Paula shook her head.
“We just have to do what seems right at the time. And certainly it’s right to take
care of those motherless kinder. Who will do it better than their mother’s dearest
friend?”

“I hope so. It’s a big responsibility.”

“About that, I don’t have any doubts,” Paula declared. “You can give the kinder the
home life they need.”

“Aunt Paula is right.” Hannah, finished cleaning the small round tables, came to the
counter. Her attention was caught by the jars of honey. “You did some more of the
Christmas ones. They look so pretty.” She touched the bright red fabric. “They’ve
been selling very quickly.”

“I noticed.” Naomi had been surprised today to see how many jars had gone from the
bakery. “I’ll try to do some more in the next few days.” Struck by a sudden thought,
she looked at Paula. “That is, if you still want to sell them since I won’t be working
here any longer.”

“For sure I want to sell them,” Paula declared. “And there’s no need to rush out of
your room, either. You should wait
until everything is fixed up the way you want it in the grossdaadi house.”

“Denke, Paula. That will be Saturday, I think. Isaiah and Libby have been helping,
and Lovina says she’ll have Elijah bring some furniture over that day. And Nathan’s
father also brought some things he doesn’t have room for since he moved in with his
daughter. So they’ll all be helping on Saturday.”

“I wish it wasn’t such a busy day for the bakery, so that we could come and help,
too,” Hannah said. She reached up to tuck a strand of brown hair back under her kapp.
“We’ll stop out to see your place soon, though.” She hesitated. “Is there any furniture
from…from your childhood that will be coming?”

She shook her head, her throat tight. “Daad has not been talking to me. I guess that’s
better than being scolded all the time, but I wish…”

“I know.” Paula reached across the counter to clasp her hand, her normally cheerful
face serious for a moment. “You don’t want to be on bad terms with your own daad.
But you must give him time. He’ll come around.”

That was what she’d been praying, but she hadn’t seen any sign of it yet.

Paula put some leftover cookies and cupcakes into a bag. “You must take these to Joshua
and Sadie tomorrow.” Her tone was brisk as ever. “They’ll like a treat.”

“Every child likes a treat,” she said. “And some grown-ups, too.” She put the cookies
and cupcakes into the basket in which she’d carried the honey jars.

Hannah took off the extra apron she wore in the shop,
smoothing down her dress as she prepared to go home. Her son, Jamie, who had been
playing with blocks in the corner since the last customer left, came over to tug at
her skirt.

Naomi smiled. “I think Jamie knows when it is time to go home.”

Jamie smiled back at her. He took his finger out of his mouth and said, “William.”

“Daadi,” Hannah corrected. “William is Daadi now.”

“Daadi,” Jamie said, seeming contented.

It was gut to see that the little boy was adjusting to William Brand as his daad.
William was wonderful gut with children, of course, and Jamie had been too young even
to remember his own father.

“What are you thinking?” Hannah asked. She had a gift for discerning when a person
was holding something back. “Are you still concerned about raising someone else’s
kinder?”

“Not exactly.” That opinion of hers seemed something long ago and far away now. “It’s
not like caring for my brother’s young ones, where they’d always be turning to their
mammi. Joshua and Sadie don’t have a woman in their lives all the time without their
grossmammi.”

“They need you,” Hannah said. “But something is bothering you.”

She nodded. She could say things to Hannah and Paula that she couldn’t tell to her
own family. “I’m afraid that people are going to talk. Nathan doesn’t seem worried
about it, but I hate the thought.”

Paula planted her elbows on the counter. “Ja, well, there’s no doubt that folks do
too much talking about their neighbors’
business. So long as you know you’re doing the right thing, you can only ignore them.”

“That’s not so easy,” Hannah said, echoing Naomi’s thoughts. She smiled slightly.
“I know what it was like to be talked about when I started working with William on
his stammering.”

Hannah, who had gone to college for speech therapy before she married, had helped
William immeasurably.

“Well,” Naomi said, “if folks talked about you and William, you had the last laugh,
because you fell in love. That’s not going to happen in my situation.”

Hannah’s eyebrows lifted. “How can you be sure? Once he is seeing you every day, Nathan
may begin to have feelings for you. And you already do for him, don’t you?”

Flustered by the direct question, Naomi ducked her head, knowing her cheeks were flushing.
“I don’t. And anyway, even if I did, it would be useless.” She stared right at the
truth that stood in front of her like a barricade. “Nathan cannot love anyone else,
because he is still in love with Ada.”

“I
will be moving in, so I will be close to you every day. You don’t need to worry about
who is taking care of you.”

Naomi might have been saying those words to the kinder, but at the moment she was
addressing the bees. She was so used to talking to the bees when she worked around
the hives that she seldom thought about how it must sound to anyone else. Now that
the hives were here at Nathan’s, she might have to be a bit more careful in what she
said, though.

Still, no one was around right now. Libby had kindly come over to watch the children
while Naomi wrapped the hives for the winter, since Naomi knew Nathan wouldn’t want
them coming out here with her. And the men were off taking care of a broken fence
in one of the pastures, she thought.

She unrolled the black coverings that went around the hives to provide some needed
insulation for the cold weather. The pieces were already cut to fit, and they just
had to be stapled in place. Normally Isaiah helped her with this job, but she’d determined
to do it herself. No need for Nathan to think that both Esch family members he employed
were off doing something other than their work.

Not that Nathan would care, but still, she felt as if she ought to be a bit cautious
as they all figured out their places now that Naomi was here for good.

Naomi picked up the first piece of insulation, trying to hold it in place with one
hand while she got the stapler out with the other. “Now, don’t be alarmed at the sound
of the staple,” she said. “I will be finished soon, and you will like having the hive
a bit warmer, ain’t so?”

“I’m sure they will.” The voice spoke behind her, and she jerked, losing her grasp
on the insulation, which promptly rolled up around her arm.

“Ach, look what you have made me do,” she scolded, trying to hide her blush. “Nathan,
you must not creep up on someone who is working with bees.”

“I wasn’t creeping.” His voice was mild as he unwrapped the insulation from her sleeve.
“You were so busy talking to the bees that you didn’t hear me.”

She looked up at him, smiling a bit ruefully. “True enough.
I was just telling myself that I should be more careful in what I say to the bees,
just in case anyone was around. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m crazy.”

“I could never think that of you.” Nathan returned her smile. The cold had made his
cheeks rosy, and she could see the laughter lurking in his eyes.

Ach, well, she didn’t mind Nathan laughing at her if it brought him a little pleasure.

“It looks as if you need a bit of help.” He held up the strip of insulation. “Do you
want me to hold or staple?”

“Neither, denke. I can manage this myself.” She tried to take the strip from him,
but he held on easily.

“Naomi, I am certain-sure you can manage anything you set out to, but it will be faster
and easier to do this job with two people instead of one.”

Perhaps she needed a little lesson in humility about now. “You are right. Denke, Nathan.
Suppose I hold and you staple, since I know how the pieces fit on the hives.”

He nodded, picking up the stapler she had dropped. “I have seen the hives with their
black coverings in the winter, but I never looked very closely. Do you just wrap the
insulation around them?”

“Ja, that’s it.”

Moving quickly because her hands were getting cold, she wrapped the insulation around
the first hive, and was relieved to see that it fit perfectly with no torn edges.
Sometimes the winter was hard on the insulation, or it ripped when she took it off.

She overlapped the edges and held them. “Now you can staple it along the seam.”

“I’ll try not to get your fingers.” He bent over to run a neat row of staples down
the edges.

That didn’t surprise her. No matter what he was doing, Nathan seemed to work both
neatly and quickly. Like most farmers, he could turn his hand to almost any job of
carpentry or mending. She liked the way he understood what had to be done without
any fuss or needless explanations.

“Will you hold this at the bottom? It’s slipping a bit.”

She stooped down, their arms entangling as she tried to hold the insulation at such
an awkward angle. Her breath caught, and she was suddenly aware of Nathan’s cheek
next to hers, of the ruddiness of his skin and the fine wrinkles around his eyes.

She had to say something before Nathan realized she wasn’t breathing. “Is that okay?”
She managed to make the question sound fairly normal, she thought.

“Ja, that’s it.” Nathan straightened. Was it her imagination, or was his breathing
a bit out of rhythm as well?

Banishing the thought, she bent to pick up the next piece of insulation. Unfortunately,
he did the same, and they cracked heads. Since hers was protected by her bonnet, she
feared he’d gotten the worst of it.

“Ach, Nathan, I’m so sorry.”

“No problem.” He straightened, chuckling a little, his eyes warming as he looked at
her. “I was just trying to save you a bit of work. Never mind. We’ll soon get into
the rhythm of working together, ja?”

“Ja, of course.” She had to keep smiling, had to treat the moment as lightly as he
did.

But the truth was that her heart seemed to be taking a beating in the past few minutes.
Maybe it needed insulation more than the beehives did.

Nathan
double-checked the row of wooden pegs in the bedroom of the grossdaadi house, making
sure they were level. The past few days had been hectic, but he was determined that
the place would be ready for Naomi to move into on Saturday.

And once in, she would stay. That was the heart of the matter for him. Naomi needed
to be so satisfied with this situation that she wouldn’t think of leaving. So whatever
he needed to do to make that happen, he would.

Daad crossed the small landing at the top of the stairs from the other bedroom. “Almost
finished here?”

“Almost. Will you hold this steady while I screw it in?”

Nodding, Daad put his hands on the strip of wooden molding that held the pegs for
clothing. “Your great-aunt never used this small bedroom much, that I remember. Are
you thinking Naomi will have folks to stay?”

“She might.” Nathan checked the level again and began putting in the final screws.
“Her nieces and nephews maybe, or her sisters when they are here visiting.” He voiced
the thought that had been in his mind. “If Naomi feels this is her home, she’ll want
to stay.”

Daad eyed him. “You think the house will make the dif-ference?”

“Maybe not. But it is something I can make sure is right.” He glanced at his father.
What was in Daad’s mind?

Daad caught the look. His weathered face creased in a smile. “Ach, Nathan, you were
always the same. Deciding on doing something and then going after it with all your
strength. Maybe that comes of being the oldest and the only boy in the family.”

“Maybe it comes of the gut example my daad set for me.”