Naomi’s Christmas (20 page)

No, not quite. She could hear voices upstairs. She moved toward the steps. It was
Lovina and Elijah. Maybe they hadn’t noticed the snow.

She’d better tell them so they didn’t get caught on slippery roads. She took a few
quiet steps up the stairs.

“…stop being so prickly about Naomi watching Nathan’s kinder instead of ours,” Lovina
said.

“You’d think her own kin would come first.” Elijah’s voice was a discontented rumble.

“Don’t you realize what caring for Nathan’s kinder might lead to? I think it’s very
likely that Nathan will end up marrying her.”

Silence for a moment. Naomi pressed her hand against her lips, trying to keep from
exclaiming.

Elijah burst out laughing. “Marry Naomi? Impossible.”

Holding her breath, Naomi backed soundlessly down the steps. She had to get away.
She couldn’t let them know she had heard. That would be the worst humiliation.

She made it to the kitchen and stood leaning against the sink, gripping it with both
hands. She couldn’t get their voices
out of her ears, and she wasn’t sure which of them had hurt her most.

“Let’s
try to get the paste on the paper, not on yourself.” Naomi wiped away a blob of paste
that Sadie had managed to get on the end of her nose. The children were busy working
on their Christmas cards at the kitchen table.

“Can we mail them as soon as we are done?” Joshua was finishing a card covered with
stars that was intended for his grossmammi.

“If the mailman hasn’t gone yet, we can walk out to the mailbox and send them.” Naomi
glanced out the window. The red flag was still up on the mailbox by the road.

Looking the other way, across the pasture, she could see both Isaiah’s place and hers.
Hers. Wasn’t it odd that the small grossdaadi house felt so much like home after such
a few days?

Maybe not so odd when she compared it with the time spent at Paula’s apartment. As
welcoming as Paula had been, Naomi had still felt like a guest there.

But comparing it to the house in which she’d grown up—that surely was strange. Still,
even though it belonged to Nathan, the little house was hers in a way that Daad’s
place had never been. She could sit up all night and read if she wanted, with no one
to tell her it was time for bed. Not that she would, when she had to be up early with
the children, but it was nice to have the freedom, even if she didn’t use it.

“How does this look, Naomi?” Sadie held up a card decorated
with the angel Naomi had helped her cut out. “Will Grossmammi like it?”

The angel was more than a little crooked, and some globs of paste had escaped around
its edges, but that would hardly matter to Emma.

“She will love it,” Naomi said, bending over to drop a kiss on Sadie’s hair. “Now
print your name here at the bottom, the way I showed you. Then she’ll know it’s from
you.”

Joshua darted a quick look at the card, and she suspected he was thinking that Grossmammi
would know even without the wobbly letters Sadie was printing. But he didn’t say it.

Naomi had noticed that quality in him any number of times. Unlike most slightly older
brothers, Joshua rarely teased his little sister. He seemed to have a naturally tender
heart.

She rounded the table to look at his card.
Merry Christmas from Joshua.
The printing was even, the English words spelled correctly. Joshua’s work was the
equal of any first grader’s, she felt sure.

And he wanted to learn. He’d blossomed under even the small efforts she’d made to
teach him, and his curiosity knew no bounds.

Joshua should be in school. The difficulty would be in convincing Nathan.

The door opened, letting a blast of cold air into the back hall and kitchen. Nathan
closed it quickly, stripping off his gloves.

“Brrr.” Sadie gave a dramatic shiver. “It’s awful cold. Do you think the bees are
all right? Don’t they get cold in the winter?”

“They’re safe in their hives,” Nathan said, heading for the coffee that was kept warm
on the stove.

“But they’re outside,” Sadie protested, sliding down from her chair, holding sticky
hands away from her dress.

Naomi caught Sadie and wiped her hands with a damp cloth. “In the cold weather, the
bees all cluster close around the queen. They’re snuggled up tightly, and they move
a little all the time to keep the hive warm. If you listen very closely, you can hear
them.”

“And the hives are wrapped in their winter blankets,” Nathan said, smiling at her.
“Remember when Naomi and I put the black coverings around the hives? That’s to keep
them warm.”

“I still think they’d like it better in the house.”

That was too much for Joshua. “Silly. It would be so warm in the house they’d think
it was spring, and they’d all come swarming out of the hive to sting you.” He wiggled
his fingers, buzzing to imitate the bees, and dived at his sister. Sadie ran, shrieking,
and he followed her.

Shaking her head, Naomi smiled back at Nathan. “And I was just thinking about how
gut he was, not teasing his sister like Elijah used to tease the smaller ones.”

“He is a gut boy.” Nathan looked toward the living room, maybe thinking he should
intervene, but the shrieks had turned to giggles.

“Very gut.” Naomi picked up the cards the children had made. “Look what a wonderful
neat job he did on this card for his grossmammi. Such fine printing,” she added.

She was tempted to speak directly to Nathan about putting
Joshua in school, but the memory of his earlier reaction stopped her. Maybe this was
a time when a roundabout way to the goal was better.

Nathan’s face softened as he looked at the cards. “Emma will be cheered up by these,
ain’t so?”

“I know she will. I’ll just get them in envelopes, and we will take a walk to the
mailbox.”

She went to the drawer to fetch an envelope. When she turned back, Nathan was looking
at the materials for her Christmas honey jars, still in the basket in which she’d
brought them that morning.

“You shouldn’t be entertaining the kinder all the time,” he said. “You have your own
work to do.” He held up a jar. “You should be getting these ready to go on sale.”

“I’ll work on the jars this afternoon.” She was a bit surprised. Some employers might
think that she should be working on the honey jars on her own time, not his. Like
Daad, for instance, who could always find work for what he considered idle hands.

Nathan touched one of the fabric circles. “Does the trimming really make them sell
better? I would think folks would buy because they want honey, not because of what
the jar looks like.”

“Just because something’s useful, that doesn’t mean it can’t be pretty, as well. And
Paula says that she can sell them about as fast as I can make them. To Englischers,
mainly, who give them as little Christmas gifts.”

“Women, probably,” Nathan said with a smile. “A man would not think of such a thing.”

“What? A gift, or the decoration?” They were talking easily, and she was grateful.
So often in the time since Ada’s death their conversation seemed overlaid with sorrow.

“Both, probably,” he admitted. “And that reminds me, if you think of anything Sadie
or Joshua might like for Christmas, will you tell me? Ada always took care of Christmas
presents, and I don’t have an idea in my head, I fear.”

Naomi nodded, glad that there hadn’t been a shadow in his face at the mention of Ada.
“I’ll think on it.” She slid one of the cards into an envelope. “I will want to go
to the Christmas program at the school on Friday. May I take Joshua and Sadie?”

He shrugged. “Guess I hadn’t heard much about it. Ja, take them, if you want.”

“Denke.” She tried to keep her smile to herself. Nathan might not have heard much
about the school’s Christmas program yet, but she suspected attending would whet Joshua’s
appetite, so Nathan would soon be hearing more than he wanted to about school.

Nathan
went through the doors at the hospital entrance, his stomach tightening almost as
automatically as the doors. Foolish. He should be over this reaction to the hospital
by now, after several visits to Emma.

Still, he hadn’t been in a hospital at all before the night he’d rushed here after
Ada’s accident. Nor since, until Emma’s fall. Maybe it wasn’t so odd that the very
sounds and smells of the place made him want to run the other way.

Clutching the tin of snickerdoodles the children had helped make, he got on the elevator.
It whisked him to the third floor almost before he could get his face composed in
a smile.

Remember, be cheerful,
Daad had cautioned him as he’d gone out to the waiting car for the trip to the hospital.
Daad must have thought he’d needed the reminder.

He pushed open the door, wondering how many of the community’s women he’d find there
today. Emma had had a steady stream of visitors since word had got out—mostly Amish,
but a few of her Englisch neighbors, as well.

But the hospital room wasn’t crowded today. Jessie was there, of course, and Katie
Brand from the quilt shop. His gaze went to the Englischer standing next to the bed.
A doctor, he supposed.

The man turned, and a jolt of recognition hit Nathan hard enough almost to make him
gasp. It was Seth—Seth Miller, Ada’s older brother, who had jumped the fence to the
Englisch world when he was just eighteen and never looked back.

“Nathan.” Seth eyed him warily. Waiting for a reaction? Or maybe having a negative
one of his own for his sister’s widower?

“Seth. This is a surprise.” He probably should say a wonderful-gut surprise, but he
wasn’t so sure.

Seth shook his head slightly. “I’m afraid I lost the dialect years ago,” he said.
“You’ll have to speak English if you want me to keep up.”

That merely served to emphasize the difference between the boy Nathan remembered and
the man who stood before him.

“No problem,” he said in English. “Emma.” He bent over
the bed to kiss her cheek. “You are feeling better today, ain’t so? You have some
color in your face.”

She nodded, her faded blue eyes shimmering with what were probably happy tears.

“Seth is here,” Jessie said. “My big brother has komm, so Mamm is glad.”

Nathan gave Jessie a cautious look, wondering how glad she was to see this brother
she probably barely remembered. She seemed…He sought for the word.
Reserved
, that was the word. For someone who normally wore her emotions on her sleeve, that
was unusual.

“Well, here is something else to make you happy.” He handed Emma the cookie tin. “Naomi
and the kinder made snickerdoodles. They sent them to you with their love.”

“Naomi?” Seth made the name a question.

“Naomi Esch,” Emma said. “You remember her, Seth. She was two years younger than you
and Ada’s best friend all their growing up years.”

“Yes, Naomi. Hard to believe she’s all grown up now.” Seth glanced at Nathan. “Are
you and she…” He gestured in a way that seemed to link Nathan with Naomi.

“Ach, no,” Emma replied before he could answer. “Naomi has just been taking care of
Joshua and Sadie since my accident.”

“That’s all,” Jessie added, with what seemed like unnecessary emphasis.

“You haven’t told me yet how your accident happened.” Seth drew a chair close to the
bed and sat down, his hand on Emma’s.

“Foolishness, that’s how,” Emma declared.

Her tale of climbing on a chair to reach the top shelf gave Nathan a moment to wonder
what on earth Seth Miller was doing here. When he’d left, folks had thought that he’d
be like so many young men, running off for a few months of adventure before coming
home, chastened, to take their place in the community again.

But Seth had been the exception. He’d left the area, and the family had seldom heard
from him. The occasional rumor had reached Nathan’s ears: that Seth was working out
west, that he’d gotten an education, that he’d done well for himself, or what the
world would call well, in any event.

Seth hadn’t returned for his sisters’ weddings or his father’s funeral. Or for Ada’s
funeral. He’d left all his responsibilities to other people. And now he was here.

Seth favored his father, or at least what Nathan remembered of him. Seth’s hair had
been light as corn-silk when he was a kid, but now it was more the color of wheat,
cut short in what Nathan supposed was the latest style. His clothing was casual, like
what the Englisch around here would wear—tan pants and a blue shirt. He looked smart
and prosperous and as different as possible from the boy who’d run off. Why are you
back? he thought again.

Jessie had drawn close to Nathan, and she seemed to be studying her brother with a
certain degree of caution.

“Did you know he was coming?” he asked under the flow of talk.

Jessie shook her head. “He just walked in. I didn’t even know Mamm had been in touch
with him.” Her face settled into discontented lines. “She should have told me.”

“I’m sure she would have, if she’d known he was coming,” he said, hoping to soothe
her. No point in letting Jessie get upset and make her mother uncomfortable.

“Ja, well, why didn’t you bring the kinder?” Jessie’s sudden switch to English and
to annoyance with him took Nathan off guard, and she said it loudly enough to draw
the attention of Emma and Seth, who looked at him questioningly.

“Well, I…I wanted to be sure Emma was ready to see them before I brought the two of
them tramping into a hospital room. You know how rambunctious Sadie can be when she’s
excited.”

“I’m glad you waited,” Emma said. “Not that I’m not eager to see them, but I want
to be up and looking more myself when they come. No sense in scaring them. They had
enough of that with seeing me lying on the kitchen floor.”

Nathan nodded, grateful. That was how he felt, as well. “You tell me when, and I will
bring them. Or Naomi will, if I can’t.”

“They are moving me over to the rehab building tomorrow,” Emma said. “It will be more
pleasant for the kinder to come there, ja? And it will be wonderful gut for Joshua
and Sadie to see their onkel.” She clasped Seth’s hand.