The Christmas Cradle (3 page)

“I stand a chance of coming up with a better idea if she's not riding along, getting upset,” Josiah explained further. “Her crying drives me straight up the wall.”

One of Ben's eyebrows rose. “Women also get
scared
when they're carryin'. Can't say as I blame them,” he remarked. “I've found it's best to kiss Miriam and say ‘yes, dear' a lot when she's in a mood, knowin' it'll pass. She does the same for me.”

Josiah almost wished Ben had lit into him with a lecture, because his show of patience and kindness was setting an example he didn't think he could follow with Lena. When it came to mothering skills and maturity, Magdalena Esh would never measure up to Miriam Hooley—

And where do
you
fall on the maturity scale?

Josiah smiled at Ben despite feeling as though he were wading in the river and might be swept away by an undertow of guilt at any moment. “
Denki
again for looking after me and my horse. I'll be back in a while.”

“Turn right onto the blacktop. The first road on your right'll eventually take ya past Morning Star,” Ben said. “You'll see the Higher Ground sign a little ways beyond that.”

“Ah. That explains the turn I missed in the snow last night.”

Ben's smile was warm and sincere. “I'll be waitin' to hear your account of Hiram's new town. Never been there myself.”

Josiah led his mare outside toward his buggy, again puzzled by how the Hooleys seemed intent upon avoiding Higher Ground. Wouldn't curiosity coax these folks to take a Sunday drive over that way, to see the colony their former bishop had established? The illustrated ads in
The Budget
made Higher Ground sound like a new Eden, a paradise for Plain folks—although he'd never seen mention of whether Knepp's new homes and business district were intended for Old Order Amish, New Order Mennonites, or sects that fell somewhere in between.

He hitched up the buggy and stroked his mare's neck. “Well, let's go see for ourselves, Dolly. Things are bound to look better in the light of day.”

Lena gazed forlornly out the Hooleys' picture window, watching Josiah drive off without her. The warm, comfortable bed had enveloped her, and she hadn't wakened until nearly seven o'clock. Josiah had left her alone in this big house to eat breakfast without him.

Embracing her baby, Lena hung her head. Why had her mother not told her what could happen when a boy knew a girl in the biblical sense? It seemed to be all her fault that a baby had resulted—and that her sin had separated her from her family. Before the baby had become obvious, her parents had shipped her off to Aunt Clara's, and her
mamm
's sister had all but forbidden her to be seen in public. When Josiah had succumbed to her pleas and brought her to Missouri with him on the spur of the moment, Lena had jumped at the chance for a fresh start. But now he obviously regretted his decision.

“Let's get some breakfast, punkin,” she murmured. “If it weren't for you, I'd have no reason to make it from one day to the next.”

Lena slipped into her coat and bonnet and started across the road toward the Sweet Seasons. She squinted in the sunshine of a bright, crisp morning that glistened with fresh snow. The ice-coated branches of the trees sparkled like diamonds. As she approached Miriam's café, aromas of frying bacon, hot coffee, and baking bread teased at her. A tinkling bell above the door welcomed her into a cozy little café she liked immediately. Most of the customers were Plain and male at this hour, which surprised her. Did none of these men have wives?

A young woman dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt strode toward her. “You must be Lena, and I'm Miriam's Rebecca,” she said as she gestured toward a table for two. “Sit with me! I'm ready for coffee and a sticky bun.”

Sit with me.
It was the invitation Lena's lonely heart longed for. Her pulse sped up as she took a seat at the table Rebecca had indicated.

Miriam poked her head through the kitchen door, smiling. “Fill a plate at the buffet table, or ya can order off the menu,” she encouraged. “Get whatever ya want, Lena. It's
gut
to see ya lookin' more rested.”

Lena returned Miriam's smile, her spirits lifting. The tables and chairs were sturdy, made in a rustic split-log design, and denim curtains were tied back at each window. Some of the fellows looked at her but then continued chatting with their friends, while a young waitress in a green cape dress circulated among them with a coffee carafe. When she saw Lena, she hurried over.

“I'm Rhoda Leitner,” she said as she filled Lena's mug with steaming coffee. “We met your Josiah earlier this morning. He'll have an interesting report when he gets back from Higher Ground. Cream?”

“
Jah
, please.” Lena warned herself not to fall for the way Miriam's daughter assumed Josiah would return—or that he was hers. She couldn't help smiling, however, when Rebecca came to the table with two huge sticky buns and a red-haired woman whose plaid Plain-style dress suggested she was a Mennonite.

“Lena, this is Nora Landwehr. She runs the Simple Gifts shop in the big barn up the road,” Rebecca said. “Nora's engaged to that gorgeous guy who can't keep his eyes off her—Luke Hooley. He's Ben's younger brother, and he runs the mill that sits on the river.”

“It's so nice to meet you, Lena,” Nora said as she pulled a chair up to their table. She had a sparkle in her hazel eyes as she leaned closer. “We've not told Miriam yet, but I'm having a baby shower at my place next Friday evening. I sure hope you'll come. It'll be a great way to meet the ladies around here—and a lot of them are close to your age, too.”

“But keep this under your
kapp
,” Rebecca insisted in a whisper. “If anybody deserves a surprise party, it's Mamma.”

“You've got that right,” Nora agreed with a grin that lit up her freckled face. “Willow Ridge would be just another ho-hum little town if it weren't for Miriam's nudging us all toward our dreams. She's everybody's other mother!”

“I—I'd love to come,” Lena replied. For the first time in weeks she felt a genuine smile on her face. “Awfully nice of you to ask, considering you don't even know me.”

“
Yet
,” Nora insisted, grasping Lena's wrist. “Trust me, if these people welcomed
me
back, they're the best folks you could ever hope to meet.” She turned and wiggled her fingers at a handsome fellow across the room. “Better get back to Luke. This is the only time we'll see each other until we close our shops this evening.”

Lena cut into her sticky bun, watching Nora chat with everyone as she returned to her table. “How could anyone not want such a happy, thoughtful woman in Willow Ridge?”

Rebecca smiled, attacking her own pastry with her fork. “Nora had to leave town when she was sixteen and pregnant—and
then
she left the baby on her brother and sister-in-law's front porch for them to raise while she lived with an English husband, whom she divorced last year,” she explained in a gossipy rush. “
Then
she bought Hiram Knepp's place—the priciest house in town—and came back to reunite with her daughter and her parents, after being away for sixteen years.”

Lena's fork stopped in front of her open mouth. “Oh, my.”

“Uh-huh. But she's reconciled with her daughter and her family,” Rebecca went on. “Now she and Millie are engaged to Ben's two younger brothers. Top that!”

Lena giggled. “I don't think I can.”

“See what I'm saying? No matter how badly you've messed up your life,” Rebecca insisted, “you can consider yourself forgiven here. Mamma believes Jesus wipes our slates clean, and nobody—not even Nora's strict old preacher of a dad—can hold a grudge in this town. So relax. You're in.”

Rebecca's earnest words sounded too good to be true, yet Lena clung to the hope they gave her. “Wow,” she murmured.

“Picture me with spiky black hair, black fingernails, a lot of metal and piercings—and an attitude to match,” Rebecca continued with a nod. “That's how I looked when I showed up here, after my English mom died and I'd found out she and Dad weren't my birth parents. I wanted nothing to do with Miriam and her Old Order faith, but I was her long-lost daughter and she refused to let me go. You can't tell that woman
no
, so you might as well accept the love she's offering.”

This wasn't Sunday, yet Rebecca's words moved Lena more than any sermon. Jesus's love suddenly felt
real—
something present-day folks could rely upon instead of just a story from centuries ago. It was the same unconditional love Lena had felt when she and Josiah had been eating the supper Miriam had cooked last night. Miriam and Ben had known they weren't married—and probably weren't suited to be—yet she'd sensed no judgment or disgust. She and Josiah had received love instead of lectures.

“This all feels too
gut
to be true,” Lena murmured as she took another bite of the delicious sticky bun.

Rebecca chuckled. “I know exactly how you feel. I figured Miriam for a goody-goody when I first met her,” she went on. “But my mother is the most genuine person I know—a doer instead of a talker. Mamma saw through my hard-core attitude and appearance to the lonely, confused young woman I was inside.”

Lena nodded, hanging on Rebecca's every word. What would it be like to have a mother who loved you as completely—as fiercely—as Miriam had loved her lost daughter?

“I hate to think about what might've become of me had she not welcomed me back,” Rebecca went on. “She was a widow then, getting the Sweet Seasons going while she was planning my sister Rachel's wedding. Hiram Knepp was harassing her, insisting she needed to marry him, so we were all glad when Ben Hooley showed up from Lancaster County. It was love at first sight for them.”

Lena sensed Rebecca, like the Hooleys, was advising her to steer clear of this Hiram character. And she longed to believe that a true, romantic love like the one Ben and Miriam shared would someday be hers.

“Here's an egg and some bacon to get your day off to a
gut
start,” Miriam said as she interrupted Lena's woolgathering. “And since ya offered to help, I've got some veggies that need scrubbin' for the lunch menu—but not until you've cleaned your plate.”

“
Denki
so much,” Lena replied gratefully. “You and your girls are taking such
gut
care of me, I don't know how to act!”

When Lena went into the kitchen, she immediately sensed an industrious cheerfulness. Miriam's partner, Naomi Brenneman, stood at the stove combining cooked hamburger and onions with a mixture of tomatoes and beans to make a chili that already smelled heavenly. Naomi's teenage daughter, Hannah, was slicing pies at the back counter to replenish the glass bakery case.

“If ya could scrub these spuds,” Miriam said, pointing toward a large bag of russets, “we'll have loaded baked potatoes on the lunch menu.”

Lena sat on a small chair beside a dishpan of warm water, a stiff-bristled brush, and a vegetable peeler. She set to work, chatting with Rhoda and Rebecca as well as the two Brennemans. Her thoughts wandered briefly back to Bloomfield. If she were there, she'd be cooking or cleaning alongside her tight-lipped aunt—

Lena blinked. It was a harsh thought, but it was true. She felt happier here among these busy women than she'd been in months. She scrubbed the large potatoes with renewed energy, knowing her efforts were appreciated. What a difference that made!

 

 

Josiah spotted the stone slab with
HIGHER GROUND
carved in large letters and slowed Dolly's pace. Although the sign reminded him of fancy gravestones he'd seen in English cemeteries, it made an impressive statement.

As his mare drew him slowly into town, they passed a bank, a diner, and a few other shops—built of brick and all in a row, rather than situated on the owners' properties—with a concrete sidewalk in front of them. “They've got power poles for electricity, so this can't be an Amish colony. What do you think of that, Dolly?” Josiah murmured.

His horse tossed her head as they passed parked cars as well as horse-drawn buggies tied to hitching rails. Outside the white schoolhouse, kids were playing tag in their coats, hats, and bonnets. Josiah sensed a progressive optimism in the people on the street and as he gazed up the snow-covered hillside at the new houses built in rows. The plots of ground were much smaller than the usual acreage a Plain family owned, yet it made sense: men who didn't farm for a living didn't need a lot of land. Instinct told him that the large house perched on the top of the hill belonged to Hiram Knepp—but he didn't drive up there to introduce himself.

Instead, Josiah hitched Dolly to the post at the bank building and strolled to the diner. It seemed like a good idea to order something and observe how the place was run. After a Mennonite waitress in a polka-dot dress brought his cherry pie and coffee, Josiah studied the red vinyl booths and the black-and-white checkerboard floor. A jukebox filled the place with the twang of country music and the waitresses walked in time to the catchy beat—something he'd never seen in a Plain town.

Josiah sighed. His coffee was lukewarm and his sister put a lot more cherries in her pie. He left a five-dollar bill and went outside again.

Over the phone, Hiram had raved about how his supper club would have uniformed waiters serving upscale food on tables draped in white tablecloths with linen napkins, but Josiah knew better than to compare Hiram's new place to this diner—or to the community halls and park pavilions where he and Savilla usually catered.

His pulse thrummed as he thought about bringing his cookers to Higher Ground, where everything looked brand new and well organized. One of the houses had a
FOR RENT
sign in the window, and he knew Lena and Savilla would be excited about living so close to where they could do their shopping. No one could say he wasn't taking good care of Lena if he moved her into such a place and began working for Hiram Knepp.

That evening, however, as Josiah ate supper with Ben, Miriam, and Rebecca, Lena shot him down before he'd even finished describing Higher Ground.

“I'm staying in Willow Ridge,” she informed him. “From everything these folks have told me about Hiram Knepp, he's trouble—and I don't need any more trouble in my life.”

Josiah's face went hot. “How can you decide that without even going there?” he demanded. “Higher Ground's a progressive town—and I found a brand-new house that's for rent. You're expecting me to give you and the baby a home, yet now that I have an opportunity to provide for you, you're refusing to—”

“What did the supper club look like?” Miriam interrupted with a curious smile. “How does it compare to the Sweet Seasons, as far as how many folks it'll seat?”

“Did it match what Hiram told ya over the phone?” Ben asked. “Sounds like a great place for ya to cook, if it measures up to what ya were expectin'.”

Josiah exhaled impatiently. At least the Hooleys were asking pertinent questions instead of blowing him off. “I had pie and coffee at the diner—which was bigger than your place, Miriam, but the pie wasn't wonderful,” he replied. “The supper club must be in the planning stages. I didn't see any new construction, or any buildings where a restaurant would be.”

Ben stroked his light brown beard. “These snowy November days aren't the best time for pourin' concrete foundations, so—”