A Ready-Made Amish Family

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Chapter One (#ulink_11432d14-6acf-5a8e-8651-f8674276f169)

Paradise Springs

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

“You look like you could use help.”

When he heard the woman’s calm voice, Isaiah Stoltzfus wanted to shout out his thanks to God for sending someone when he’d lost complete control of the situation. One kind was using the bellows in his blacksmith’s shop to blow cold ashes everywhere, and two others clacked lengths of metal together like ancient knights holding sabers while a fourth kind sat on the stone floor and sobbed. In the past fifteen minutes, he’d learned the true meaning of being at his wits’ end. He’d never guessed four young kinder could make him want to throw his hands into the air and announce he was in over his head. He’d been sure the kinder would be interested in visiting his blacksmith shop, but he’d been wrong. After a single glance around the space, they’d been bored and looked for the mischief they seemed able to find anywhere. He needed to take them somewhere else and find a way to divert their energy.

As if he’d given voice to his thoughts, Nettie Mae, the sobbing three-year-old girl sitting on his left boot, pressed her head against his leg and said, “Wanna go home, Onkel Isaiah. Go home now.”

Before he could answer either Nettie Mae or the woman, a cloud of dust exploded out of his unlit forge. He sneezed and waved it away. The other three-year-old girl was pumping harder and harder until a wheezing warning sound came out of the leather bellows. He opened his mouth to tell Nettie Mae’s twin, Nancy, to stop before she broke something, but one of the five-year-old boys who’d been poking at each other with the metal staffs yelped in pain and began crying.

Isaiah took a lumbering step toward the boys, hobbled by Nettie Mae, who clung like a burr to his trousers. How could he have lost control over four preschoolers so quickly?

The task wasn’t one for a man who’d never had kinder of his own. Maybe if Rose hadn’t died soon after they married and they’d had a boppli, it would be easier to anticipate what the youngsters might do next. The Beachy kinder were active and inquisitive, but every time he thought about scolding them, he recalled how they’d lost their parents two weeks ago. He didn’t want to upset them more, yet somehow every situation escalated into pandemonium.

But the woman who had been a silhouette in the doorway didn’t seem to have the same qualms. Without a single word, she walked into his smithy as if she’d been there dozens of times. A flash of sunlight danced on her lush, red hair, which was pulled back beneath her black bonnet. Her brown eyes glanced in his direction before she focused on the kinder. She plucked the shafts out of the boys’ hands and scooped their sister off the cold forge in a single motion, scattering ashes across her own dark blue dress. Placing the metal bars on a nearby table, she settled Nancy on her hip and knelt in front of the boys.

“Where does it hurt?” she asked one twin—Andrew, Isaiah noted—as she wiped tears from his pudgy cheeks and almost dislodged his straw hat.

“Ouch,” the towhead said, pointing to his right thumb that was already bright red.

Isaiah watched in amazement as the woman cradled the little boy’s hand as she ran a fingertip along his thumb. When the kind flinched, she murmured something too low for Isaiah to hear, but Andrew must have understood because he nodded, his eyes wide and filled with more tears.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” the woman said in the same serene voice, but loud enough so Isaiah could hear. “And I suspect as soon as little minds are focused on other things, the bruise will be forgotten. However, just in case, we should watch it over the next couple of days.”

“We?” Isaiah asked, his voice rising on the single word.

“You are Isaiah Stoltzfus, aren’t you?” She looked at the youngsters, then him. No doubt she was thinking there couldn’t be another overwhelmed man with two sets of twins wrecking his smithy in Paradise Springs.

“Ja. Who are you?”

“Clara Ebersol.”

“You are Clara Ebersol?” He shouldn’t stare, but he couldn’t help himself.

As she set Nancy on the floor and came to her feet, he held out his hand to help her. She must not have seen it, because she didn’t take it. When she was standing, he was startled to realize he didn’t have to look down far to meet her gaze. She was, he noticed for the first time, very tall for an Amish woman, because he wasn’t a short man. None of the Stoltzfus brothers were, but her eyes were less than a handbreadth below his. She was also lovely—something he had already noticed—possessing a redhead’s porcelain complexion. Not a single freckle marred her cheeks or dappled her nose.

He forced his eyes to shift away, glad nobody else was there. If he as much as talked to a woman for more than a minute, someone mentioned she would make him a gut wife. Everyone seemed eager to get their widowed minister married. Finding him staring at Clara Ebersol would have given the district’s matchmakers cause to start sticking their well-meaning noses into his life again.

“Weren’t you expecting me?” Clara stroked Andrew’s hair, and the little boy leaned his head against her skirt. “Your brother Daniel learned I was looking for a job, and he asked me if I’d be willing to help you take care of these kinder. He said I’d find you here.” For the first time, her composure showed a faint crack as she looked at him again. “Didn’t he tell you?”

“Ja, he told me.”

When Daniel had stopped at the Beachys’ house on his way home a couple of nights ago, he’d been pleased to tell Isaiah that he’d found someone to help take care of the twins. Isaiah had been grateful when Daniel had said he’d talked to Clara Ebersol himself, and she seemed perfect for the job. Arrangements had been made for her to meet Isaiah at the smithy today, because he’d hoped to finish a few tasks. But what Daniel had failed to mention—and Isaiah had never thought to ask about—was that Clara Ebersol was not a well-experienced grossmammi who’d already raised a household of kinder. She was a lovely young woman. Was his brother, who’d recently fallen in love and found a family, matchmaking? That was the only reason Isaiah could think of why his brother hadn’t mentioned Clara’s age. If he had to guess, Isaiah would say she must be close to his thirty years.

Or had Daniel told him?

Isaiah wasn’t sure he could recall anything during the past two weeks accurately. Maybe if he got a gut night’s sleep, he’d be able to think. Every thought had to battle against the appalling memories of his friends’ funeral playing over and over through his mind, refusing to be forgotten.

Reaching into the pocket of her black apron, Clara drew out four lollipops. The twins focused on her hand.

“I’ve got a red, an orange, a yellow and a green.” She raised her head and asked, “Do they know their colors?”

Again Isaiah wasn’t quick enough to answer, as Ammon, usually the quietest one, shouted, “Want that one!” He pointed to the red lollipop.

She squatted again and made sure each kind got the lollipop he or she wanted. Taking the cellophane off each piece of candy, she led the two sets of twins out of the smithy. She looked around, unsure where to have them eat their suckers.

The space between the long, low building that housed the Stoltzfus Family Shops and Isaiah’s smithy was more cramped with each passing day. His brother Joshua’s buggy shop was outgrowing its space. Last week, Joshua and his two older sons had spent hours setting up a canopy where buggies could be parked out of the weather until Joshua had time to fix them.

“How about over there?” he asked, pointing to the back step of the grocery store his brother Amos ran.

“Perfect.” Motioning for the kinder to follow, she waited for each of them to select a spot on the concrete step. Once they were settled, the girls on one side and the boys on the other by unspoken consent, their tears and mischief were momentarily forgotten.

“Let’s talk,” he said, motioning for her to come back to him.

She hesitated, then walked to where he stood by the smithy’s door. For a second, he wondered if she preferred the kinder’s company to his. Telling himself not to be foolish, because she didn’t know any of them, he recognized he wasn’t in any condition to make judgments. He was so tired he had trouble stringing more than three words together.

Quietly so her voice wouldn’t reach the kinder, Clara said, “Your brother Daniel told me that they’re orphans. That’s terribly sad.”

He nodded, words sticking in his tight throat. It had been only two weeks ago that he’d been roused out of bed in the middle of the night and learned his best friend Melvin Beachy had been killed along with Melvin’s wife, Esta. They’d been traveling in an Englisch friend’s truck coming home from an auction when something went wrong. The truck had gone through a guardrail and rolled, killing all three and leaving four small kinder without parents.

Nobody had been prepared for their deaths, but the whole community came together to help with the funeral. In the past two weeks, he hadn’t made a single meal for the Beachy twins, because at least one person dropped by each day with casseroles and pies and fresh bread. As they had when his wife had died.

“I heard one of the girls call you ‘onkel,’” Clara went on when he didn’t answer.

Relieved to be jerked out of his grim thoughts, he nodded again. “It’s an honorary title. Their daed was my best friend, so the twins grew up with me around.” He was surprised how gut it felt to talk about Melvin instead of avoiding any mention of either him or Esta as he had since their funeral. His family had been trying to tiptoe around the subject. Their efforts not to upset him were a constant reminder of what he’d lost. “Melvin asked me, after the girls were born, to be the kinder’s guardian in case something happened to him and Esta.”

“They don’t have any other family?”

“There are Melvin’s parents and Esta’s sister. But they are out of the country, working with Mennonite missions. The kinder’s grandparents, Melvin’s parents, are in Ghana, and Esta’s sister is in Chile. It’ll take at least a month before they can return to Paradise Springs. Maybe longer for their aenti because a recent earthquake along the Chilean coast tore up many of the roads in the area where she’s serving.”

She smiled. “So you have become their temporary daed.”

He wished he could smile, but grief weighed too heavily for his lips. “I moved into their house to take care of them until someone from their real family gets here. I figured it’d be easier for them than moving to my house.”

He didn’t add that disaster had followed disaster while he tried to keep up with the young and confused kinder who didn’t understand why their parents had failed to come home as they’d promised. It hadn’t taken more than a couple of days for Isaiah to realize he couldn’t oversee them and run his blacksmithing business and fulfill his duties as a minister in the district. Neighbors and his family had been helping with the chores on the farm and in the house. Now that Clara was going to be at the house, she would tend to those jobs, and he could work in the barn without having the kinder out there with him. Keeping an eye on the little kids while trying to milk the family’s dozen cows had been close to impossible.

“I should get to know them.” She walked to the kinder and knelt in front of them.

Isaiah stayed where he was. The soft murmur of her voice drifted to him, but not her words. She seemed uncomfortable with him. If that was so, why had she taken the job? Again, he chided himself. He was in no condition to judge anyone or anything. If she could calm the kinder with such ease, then why would he care if she’d rather spend time with the twins?

But he did.

You’re not thinking clearly. Be glad you’ve got help. And he was. Hoping he didn’t fall asleep on his feet, he turned to the smithy and the task of cleaning the mess the youngsters had made.