The Rescued Read online

  “Here comes Joseph,” she said quickly. “And your onkel is walking over. I’ll call Levi and Paul—”

  “No need,” Isaac said, nodding toward the orchard, the apple trees bending with fruit that would be ready to pick soon. “Here they come now. Levi would never miss a milking time, that’s certain-sure.”

  If there was a tiny bit of pride in Isaac’s voice, she couldn’t blame him. At eight, their Levi seemed a natural-born farmer, having followed his daadi around since he could toddle. Paul, six, just wanted to do whatever his brother did. Even now, she spotted him running, trying to keep up with Levi’s longer legs as they raced down the slope from the orchard.

  Isaac took the porch steps in one long stride, glancing without speaking toward his brother as Joseph jumped from the scooter and let it topple over into the grass. Please, don’t scold him, Judith said silently. He’s here, isn’t he?

  And if Isaac took Joseph to task, the rest of them would be subjected to their glares at each other over the supper table.

  “You’re here. Let’s get the cows in.” There was an edge to Isaac’s voice, and she prayed Joseph wouldn’t flare up in response.

  Thankfully, Joseph just nodded and sprinted off toward the pasture gate. She could see Levi put on a burst of speed at the sight of him and smiled. Paul might want to be like Levi, but in turn, Levi tended to copy Joseph. A good thing, as long as he didn’t copy everything Joseph did.

  Thinking of Joseph, she remembered something she had to ask her husband. “Is Saturday all right for Joseph’s fourteenth birthday celebration? I want to be sure your cousins and onkel know.”

  Isaac seemed to freeze for an instant. And then he was moving. “Do what you want about it.” He slung the words over his shoulder and strode off without looking back.

  Judith tried not to let the hurt take over at his response. How could Isaac act as if Joseph’s birthday was no concern of his? Naturally they would have a family party for the boy, as they did every year, for everyone’s birthday. The relatives would find it wonderful strange if they didn’t.

  From the house behind her, Judith heard the thud of small feet on the stairs. At three, their Noah still needed a nap some days, and this had been one of them. She’d found him nearly asleep in his wagon and had carried him off to his bed, cherishing those moments when he’d clung to her like a little monkey. Sometimes she wished she could turn back the clock to a simpler time in their lives, when Noah was still a baby and Joseph was Isaac’s good right hand, looking up to him as the big brother he adored.

  Things had begun to change over the past year or two, so slowly at first that she had hardly noticed it happening, until she woke up to see that Isaac and Joseph were at odds most of the time, and more and more often she was the buffer between them, hurt by this estrangement separating those she loved.

  If only Isaac would talk to her about it—but he didn’t. He tightened his lips, put on a stoic face, and closed her off entirely from his inner feelings.

  When she’d dreamed of their married life, this isolation hadn’t been part of it. Surely married couples were supposed to share their feelings, their hurts, and their joys. Wasn’t that what two being made one meant?

  Isaac was a good man. They had a fine life on the family dairy farm, and they’d been blessed with Joseph and three healthy kinder of their own. Maybe that should be enough for her. Maybe she shouldn’t be longing for a closeness Isaac wasn’t willing to give.

  Noah came running, bursting through the screen door, already chattering away, as always. She lifted him in a quick hug, knowing he’d wiggle to be down and busy in an instant.

  She was blessed, she repeated to herself, hugging the warm, wriggly little body. But at times like this she began to wonder if the gossip had been right—the things folks said when Isaac married her so abruptly before she had even turned twenty.

  They’d said Isaac had needed to find a sensible, mature wife in a hurry when the aunt who’d taken care of Joseph had died. That he’d done what was expected of him and found a suitable girl to marry. That, as she’d heard his uncle say, he had settled down with Judith instead of chasing after romance and moonshine.

  Perhaps she was as guilty as Isaac was of keeping her inner life hidden, because that was the one thing she could never, never tell him.

  She stroked the surface of the study table again. Maybe the story of the woman who’d once owned it would have something to teach her. Could the stories of the past really reach out and touch her life today, or was that merely superstition on Grossmammi’s part? If it was true, she longed for the lesson that would assure her of Isaac’s love, but she couldn’t imagine how that might come.

  • • •

  On a dairy farm, milking time took plenty of hands. Isaac strode toward the tie-stall barn, catching up with Onkel Simon, who had cut across the field from his place next door. These days his uncle farmed only vegetables for the local produce auction, but he seemed to enjoy working with the dairy cows. Reminded him of when he was growing up, he always said.

  “Young Paul is getting to be a big help.” His uncle’s lean face creased in a smile as the boy hurried after the last of the black-and-white Holsteins.

  “His mamm doesn’t like him taking on too much yet.” Isaac couldn’t help smiling as well, liking the way his boys seemed to share his love for the big, placid animals. “But he’s following in Levi’s footsteps, that’s certain-sure.”

  The Holsteins knew, as well as they did, what the barn was for. They stood patiently at their usual ties to be cleaned and attached to the milking machines, and with the four of them working, it didn’t take long. Paul hovered on the sidelines, obviously eager to plunge right in, but Judith was right. His hands were still too small to handle the job.

  Isaac darted a glance toward Joseph, but the boy was doing his work deftly, even if his thoughts were elsewhere. He mulled over what Judith had said about her brothers at that age. Hard to believe, now that they were all grown men, but he supposed they’d gotten into plenty of foolishness when they were in their teens. He hadn’t had that luxury, and he hadn’t wanted it.

  His gaze caught his uncle leaning against Daisy, the oldest of the Holsteins. “Was ist letz? Is anything wrong, Onkel Simon?”

  “Ach, no.” Simon straightened. “Just having a word or two with old Daisy here. How is she treating the newcomers?”

  “She showed them who was boss right away, didn’t you, Daisy?” Isaac smiled, but his mind scurried after the decision he’d made to enlarge the herd. Forty cows was a fairly good size for an Amish dairy operation, but he’d decided to go to forty-five this year, thinking it would up the milk production so he’d be sure of fulfilling the new contract with the milk company.

  “Gut, gut.” His uncle patted the animal, and he gave Isaac an inquiring look. “Not worried about the contract, are you?”

  “No, not at all.” Isaac figured Simon knew that wasn’t entirely true, but he’d go along with it. “Everything’s going fine.”

  It was, wasn’t it? He could hear the milk hissing into the steel milk tank and the soft swish as the blade turned evenly, stirring it.

  Onkel Simon would also know how much money Isaac had sunk into the dairy farm over the years. It wasn’t easy to make an operation like this one successful, but Isaac had done what his daad would have wanted. And eventually the dairy farm would pass into Joseph’s hands, also as Daad had wanted.

  The comfortable sound of the blade in the milk tank halted, and Isaac froze, his breath catching. Before he could speak the blade had started again, the movement steady. Just a little glitch, maybe in the power from the diesel generator. Nothing to worry about.

  “You boys have it easier than we did when I was young.” Onkel Simon loved to reminisce, and Isaac thought it was good for the young ones to hear him.

  “You didn’t have milk machines, right, Onkel Simon?” Lev
i picked up the hint, responding quickly. “Or the big milk tank, either?”

  “That’s so, Levi. Many’s the morning I’d be leaning against the cow’s side trying to get my hands warm enough to do the milking.”

  “What did you do with the milk?” Paul asked. “Was it in buckets?”

  “Buckets, that’s right.” Onkel Simon smiled at him, pleased with their interest even though they’d no doubt heard the story before. “It’s a good sound, hearing the milk pour into the buckets, seeing it steam in the cold air on a winter morning.”

  “Tell about the dog,” Levi begged, as if his great-uncle’s tale were a favorite storybook.

  “Shep would sit right next to the cow with his eyes on me. He knew every once in a while I’d squirt the milk into his mouth. He didn’t want to be caught by surprise and have it hit his nose.”

  The boys giggled, as they were intended to. Not hearing anything from Joseph, Isaac glanced his way to find the boy leaning against a post, gaze fixed on space.

  “Joseph! There’s work to be done instead of daydreaming.” His voice was sharp, and Joseph jerked upright, giving his brother a look filled with resentment. He turned away to begin detaching the cows that were done.

  “Ach, Isaac, there’s no need to be so sharp with the boy,” his uncle said quietly. “All teenage boys are dreamers at that age.”

  “I wasn’t.” He clamped his lips together, regretting the words and the tone. Onkel Simon didn’t speak, but he had to be thinking, as Isaac was, of a farmhouse blazing up like a torch against the dark sky, of the pain . . .

  Isaac shut the image away. He couldn’t think about it, couldn’t talk about it.

  His uncle respected the silence for a long moment, and when he spoke, his voice was soft. “Are you so sure it’s the right thing, training Joseph to take over the dairy farm?”

  “It was what my father wanted.” That ended the discussion as far as Isaac was concerned.

  “He wanted what he thought was going to be best at the time,” Onkel Simon said. “He thought he’d have you established on a farm of your own, and that when he was ready to retire to the grossdaadi haus he would build next to the farmhouse, Joseph would be old enough to take over this place. If he’d lived—”

  “He didn’t.” The words were harsh in Isaac’s throat. Daad didn’t, and Mamm didn’t, and the girls didn’t. Only he and Joseph were left, and he had to carry out what had been his father’s wishes. “I have to do what Daad would have done.”

  Onkel Simon looked as if he were about to say more, but instead he closed his mouth and shook his head slowly.

  Much as Isaac loved and respected his uncle, he had to decide this for himself. Joseph was his responsibility, just as Judith and the boys were. He had failed to save his family, but he wouldn’t—he couldn’t—fail at fulfilling his father’s dreams.

  • • •

  “With school starting in a couple of weeks, your kinder must be getting as excited as mine are, ain’t so?” Rebecca Fisher, Judith’s widowed cousin, set a warm pan of apple crisp on the table between Judith and their grandmother in her tidy kitchen.

  “Always a happy time for the kinder. And for their mammis, too, I sometimes think.” Grossmammi smiled and began to dish up the apple crisp while Rebecca poured coffee.

  “Paul especially,” Judith said, thinking of her middle son’s excitement. “He’s been marking off the days on the calendar, trying to make school come faster.” She had brought Paul and Noah with her on this afternoon visit to her cousin, but Levi had wanted to stay home and help with some new fencing. Her kinder were outside now, engrossed in some game with Rebecca’s two.

  Judith had been delighted to find Grossmammi here when she arrived. Since Elizabeth Lapp had moved in with her son, Rebecca’s daad, on the farm next door to Rebecca’s place, they were seeing much more of her. And their grandmother seemed happier, too. Much as she’d hated to leave the house where she had spent all of her married life, it had become too much for her to care for, and Rebecca’s parents had been wonderful glad to have her with them.

  “Fall is a time of new beginnings, just like spring is.” Grossmammi put cream into her coffee and then poured a bit over her apple crisp. “Especially for Rebecca and Matthew.” She sent a twinkling glance toward Rebecca.

  “For sure?” Happiness bubbled up in Judith. “Have you and Matt set a date?”

  Rebecca nodded, her normally serene oval face glowing with happiness. “Don’t tell anyone,” she cautioned. “But we’re planning on the last Thursday in October for the wedding.”

  “Ach, that’s wonderful gut news.” Judith rounded the table to hug her cousin. Along with their cousin Barbie, they were the only women in their generation of the Lapp family, and that made them as close as sisters in some ways. “See how wrong you were to think you’d never love again?”

  “I knew you’d tease me about that,” Rebecca said, returning the hug with a strong clasp. “At least you’re not as bad as Barbie. If she’s not teasing me, she’s kidding Matt, threatening to spill the beans to everyone.”

  “Everyone will know anyway,” Judith said. Sometimes she thought people in their close-knit Amish community knew too much about each other, but that was a part of being Amish. “Even though we’ll all pretend not to have noticed anything about the two of you right up to the Sunday the wedding is published in church.”

  The announcement of forthcoming weddings in worship was a high point in the Amish year, coming as it did after the fall communion. All the couples who were being married would be absent from church on publishing Sunday, staying home to have a quiet meal together. It was another of the many traditions that bound them as a community, like a coverlet tightly woven of many strands to make it warm and strong.

  “At least by then the farm-stay visitors will be slowing down,” Rebecca said. “Once the weather turns, not many people will want to come. We’ll have plenty of time for our wedding visits.”

  Rebecca had reopened the house to Englisch visitors this summer, with help from Barbie and the rest of the family. It hadn’t been easy to do it without her husband, but Rebecca had surprised a lot of people by her strength. And now she would have a new husband to help her, too, come October.

  It was the custom for the newly married couple to spend the weekends after the wedding visiting family and friends together. The fact that Rebecca had been married before and had two kinder wouldn’t alter that tradition. Matt must be introduced to her family and friends as her spouse.

  “If you need me to watch the children for you, or help with the wedding arrangements, or anything at all . . .”

  “Ach, I know that.” Rebecca leaned across the table to clasp Judith’s hands, her green eyes filled with laughter. “Who else would I call on but my dear cousins? I don’t want Mamm and Daad to do too much, especially with Daad still recovering from his heart attack. But I knew I could count on you. And I certain-sure want you to be the side-sitters for my wedding, you and Barbie.”

  Judith blinked back a tear or two. “I would be so happy. And Barbie, too, I’m sure.”

  Knowing their younger cousin as she did, she suspected she’d have to keep a close eye on Barbie to be certain she wasn’t planning any jokes. Pert, lively, and a bit of a rebel, Barbie delighted in introducing something different into the traditional. Judith would probably need to remind Barbie several times that the newehocker, or side-sitter, was there to support the bride, not to unnerve her.

  “We’ve decided that Matthew will move in here,” Rebecca went on, her mind obviously on her intended, not on her cousins. “He’s not needed as much at his aunt and uncle’s now that his cousin has come home, and since his furniture business is here, that makes the most sense.”

  It had been the defection of Matt’s cousin to the Englisch world that had brought Matthew home to Brook Hill, Pennsylvania, from his life out west. In turn
, Matt had gone after Isaiah and brought him back to those who loved him. And through Matt’s return, Rebecca had found a second chance to love and be loved. God did work in mysterious ways.

  Judith glanced at her grandmother to find her faded blue eyes reflecting back the shared happiness. Grossmammi, with her plump little figure and her face wrinkled like one of last season’s apples, always seemed to know what people were thinking.

  “Ach, where is my mind?” Grossmammi exclaimed. “I brought something for you, Judith. And I don’t remember—”

  “Is this it?” Rebecca reached into the basket on the table and pulled out a small key, suspended from a faded cord.

  “That’s it.” The worry on Grossmammi’s face smoothed out. “Here is the key to the drawers on the desk I gave you. Once I remembered whose desk it had been, I knew I had the key somewhere.”

  Judith took the small, tarnished key, and a little wave of anticipation moved through her. “Denke. Who did the study table belong to? Someone I know?”

  Grossmammi shook her head. “I don’t think so. Her name was Mattie Lapp, and that was back when the family hadn’t left Lancaster County yet. Her kinder would have done their schoolwork around that table.”

  Mattie Lapp. Judith turned the name over in her mind, trying to remember any story Grossmammi had told them about someone named Mattie. But nothing came to mind.

  “Do you remember her?” she asked.

  “A little,” Grossmammi said. “She was enough older than me that we didn’t meet often, and she was in a different church district.” Grossmammi’s forehead creased in a frown. “Those were difficult days for the Amish with children because of all the changes in the schools—that I do remember.”

  Judith’s thoughts slipped immediately to Joseph. “Sometimes I think all days are difficult when the kinder hit their teen years.”

  “Boys especially reach an age when they’re likely to cause problems.” Grossmammi’s wise gaze rested on Judith’s face. “Like Joseph, ain’t so?”