Jacob's Return (4 page)

The candle’s flame wavered in the breeze from the door and a water droplet hit the zinc-lined sink with a dull ping.

“I’m glad you brought your babies home,” she said.

Jacob felt strangely uplifted by her welcome of his children. “When I saw them in your arms at service,” he said. “I knew they belonged there.”

“They make me feel worthy.”

At the desolation in Rachel’s voice, Jacob put his head in her lap again, wrapping his arms around her, clutching her gown in his fists at her back.

Rachel brushed the hair from his temple in slow, silken strokes, soothing him to his soul. “I have to go back upstairs.”

“In a minute,” he said.

But they stayed like that for a long time, until Rachel moved to stand. “We have to forget this happened, Jacob.”

“I know, Rache.”

Chapter 3

His first morning home, Jacob missed milking.

Datt would forgive. Simon would not.

Jacob wasn’t leaning toward forgiveness either, but with the transgressions he’d committed, he was the last to judge … Simon or any other man. Still, he would not let Simon hurt Rachel.

As he pulled a suspender over his shoulder, he heard her laughing downstairs and he could just imagine his children’s antics. Usually, before his eyes opened, they were calling, “Pa-pop,” but this morning, their cribs had been empty.

He looked out his window and shook his head. Up close, he could see that the farm was run-down. Well, he owed his Datt a few years of hard work. He could help turn it around; he even had money to put into it. But going downstairs, he wondered who would watch Aaron and Emma while he did. He shrugged. Datt probably knew of a widow who needed work.

Jacob stepped into the apple-scented kitchen to find Rachel with two sticky-faced monkeys on her lap, each holding a mangled piece of buttered cinnamon bread. Even with a purple bruise high on her cheek, she was beautiful.

“Morning, Mudpie.”

“Pie,” his children chorused.

“They can say my name, Jacob.” Her kapp sat askew, Aaron’s cinnamon fingerprints on one side, Emma sucking the kapp’s ribbon on the other. And more forbidden curls than usual escaped the headpiece to frame her face.

Her self-mocking grin belonged to the little girl offering a mudpie. Her eyes held the same sparkle. “I guess I don’t do this so good.”

“You know you’re really lost,” he said, “When they shove that mushy stuff into your mouth and you think it tastes good because it comes from them.”

“Ya. I know.”

Like old times, they laughed together. He reached for a child. She pulled them close. “Don’t you dare.”

They cuddled against her, loving it. Jacob gave up. “That your mama’s strudel on the stove? You make it good as her?”

“Ya, but how about some ham loaf and potatoes first?”

“Don’t eat such breakfasts any more, ‘cause I can’t cook and tend this pair. How’d you do it?”

“I didn’t yet. I have yet to warm yesterday’s supper.”

“All right. You choose. Feed, wash and dress these two, or cook breakfast for Simon and Datt.”

“And if I choose the babies? As if I wouldn’t.”

“Then I’ll cook.”

“Oh, ya? Can I watch?”

“See if you can and tend them. I took the easy job.”

Rachel put the twins in a washtub on the sideboard, getting wetter than them. Emma’s giggles made Jacob and Rachel laugh as hard as her, which is how Simon and his father found them.

Simon’s scowl could curdle milk, and Datt’s smile could for certain sweeten it.

Distracted, Aaron fell into the water and came up screaming.

Rachel almost cried too. Jacob nearly burned breakfast.

Datt laughed and took Aaron into his arms in a thick, warm towel, and sat him on his lap. For a big man, Datt could sure be gentle. Jacob wondered, not for the first time, where Simon got his disposition. So taken with wondering, he barely saw Aaron pick up Datt’s red-beet egg. Jacob couldn’t move the pan off the fire fast enough to stop him from taking a bite. It wasn’t that he couldn’t eat such things, but he usually didn’t like half of it. Then Aaron’s face scrunched up and....

“Arrgh!” Simon jumped up, chewed red egg all over his face.

Jacob stepped between his brother and his son, skidded on the hard-boiled mess, and knocked Simon off his feet. Simon knocked the door open as he fell, his head hitting the porch floor with a thud.

His father’s belly laugh met Simon’s farm-yard cussing. Aaron, clapped. Of the girls, Jacob couldn’t tell who looked more shocked, Rachel or Emma. Rachel’s eyes widened and she laughed like the butchering season she was eight, and he’d pinned a pig’s tail to the seat of the preacher’s coat before sermon. Jacob couldn’t remember who was madder that day, his Datt at him for the doing, or Rache’s Pop at her for the laughing. But he could still remember her Pop’s face as he tried to get that pig’s tail off his coat.

Simon was none too happy with either of them, on that day or this one. He washed his face at the sink and slammed the towel on the counter. That too tickled Aaron. His father cleared his throat and gave Aaron a piece of potato bread. Rachel, her shoulders still shaking, went back to toweling Emma’s curls.

“Did you hurt yourself, Simon?” Datt asked.

“What happened to quiet breakfasts, I’d like to know?” Simon mumbled into his coffee.

A suspicious squeak came from the corner, and Jacob didn’t think it was Emma. He served Simon his breakfast.

“You should be farming, not doing women’s work,” Simon said.

Datt laid a hand on Simon’s arm. “Son, these babies got no mama; Jacob has to be both. He’s just giving Rachel a turn at the fun, right Jacob?”

“It is fun,” Rachel said.

“Because you have no children of your own,” Simon snapped.

His reproach renewed Jacob’s ire. “Simon, before I left home, you said Rachel had agreed to marry you.”

Simon took another bite. “As good as.”

“No!” Rachel said, surprising everyone, herself included, Jacob thought.

Simon watched her for a minute before he spoke. “It didn’t take you long to find someone to marry, Jacob.”

Jacob opened his mouth to deny it, but he stopped himself in time and regarded his father. “I forgive Simon. Rachel is his wife and I respect that.”

His father nodded, but after a quiet moment, he said, “Forgiveness is good between brothers. Interference is not.”

Simon had manipulated their lives, and they knew it, everyone except perhaps Simon.

Emma opened her arms and when Jacob took her, he knew he wouldn’t have her or Aaron, if not for Simon’s interference. Rachel, he saw, realized the same thing.

“God works in mysterious ways,” his Datt said.

Jacob touched Simon’s arm. “You ever show my children the kind of anger I’ve seen from you ...” He glanced at Rachel. “You hurt my children, I will hurt you.”

“Jacob,” his father chided.

Simon nodded once. “I am not easy with children, but I would not hurt them.”

Jacob took a relieved breath. “Emma, Aaron, meet your Uncle Simon.”

To their surprise, Aaron reached over and patted Simon’s grim face with a tiny hand. “Unk,” he said.

“Rachel, your kapp is filthy,” Simon snapped.

“Always a kind word,” Jacob muttered as he took his children upstairs, wondering why Datt had not noticed Rachel’s bruise.

“When you’re done playing nursemaid, we could use some help around the farm,” Simon yelled loud enough for him to hear. “Rachel is back to school tomorrow, so she can’t raise your English brats.”

“
Mein Gott
, Simon,” their father shouted. “Enough!”

Rachel was glad to hear the reprimand, but when Simon stood and slammed his napkin on the table, she jumped.

“Enough, you say, Datt. Well, I say enough too. I was ordained yesterday. Do you rejoice with me? No, you rejoice in your long-lost son’s return instead. I stayed behind, tended the farm, kept a roof over your head, cared for you when you were missing Mom — and missing Jacob too, if truth be told.

“I have remained by your side through many a hardship, but do you rejoice in my staying? No. Well, I say enough, too. Let him take over this farm, that favorite son of yours, let him slave from dawn till midnight clearing forty more acres like I did, sit up with sick cows, fight the blight and the drought. Then he’ll understand what I’ve done here. And so will you. But in Jacob’s hard work, unlike in mine, you will see prayer.”

Her angry husband took his straw hat from a peg by the door and slapped it against his thigh. “What I want to know Datt, is … Ach, never mind. I am going to market for nails. Shed roof needs fixing.”

The door shut with a thud. Simon spoke to Shep, their collie, just outside. And Rachel wondered how he could be gentle with animals, but not with people. She touched her father-in-law’s shoulder. “He doesn’t mean that, Levi.”

“He does. And he’s right. I have failed that boy.”

“We all have.”

“Not you,
Leibchen
. You endure and forgive, and I know it. Already, I fear Jacob knows it, too. Only Simon, I am ashamed to say, does not.” He squeezed her hand. “Enjoy those babies. They need a heart like yours. Jacob is good with them, his love shows in each task he performs for them, but he is only a man. They need your soft touch. Only, Rachel, Jacob is in need too. And you … it cannot be. You understand?”

“Yes, Levi,” she said. “I do. We both do.”

“
Goot
. Now, I go fill the manure spreader.” He inhaled deeply and patted his barrel chest. “A robust herald of spring I will spread o’er the land.”

* * * *

While Jacob helped Levi fertilize the cornfield, Rachel took Aaron and Emma to pick violets in the woods, then to chase butterflies by the brook. When they got tired, she spread Great Gramma Esther’s friendship quilt in the shade of a budding apple tree and lay down beside them.

Jacob missed his children and went looking for them. It was the first time since he’d had them that they’d been apart so long.

He found them asleep beside Rachel on an old quilt.

Emma had discarded her tiny white kapp — as usual — and lay curled around Aaron, her thumb in her mouth. Aaron was snuggled against Rachel, his hand on her breast.

Lucky boy.

He’d tried hard to forget Rachel. He went first to North Dakota where the government was giving away land to attract homesteaders, and got a hundred and sixty acres. He survived a tornado that destroyed his home, snows that near froze him to death, and a million grasshoppers that came and ate his corn. The hoppers were so thick, train wheels kept slipping, and Railroad workers had to throw sand down for traction.

Jacob gave up farming and went to the city. In Chicago he met Miriam working in a saloon. He stayed with her for a few weeks, decided he wanted something different, and went to Detroit. Then, one city after another, one job, one woman after another.

But he never did forget Rachel.

He’d corresponded with Miriam for a few months, then nothing. When he went back to look her up, he found an old woman in her house, raising her twins. His twins. Miriam had died giving them life, and he hadn’t even known they existed.

Jacob decided then that he was about as English as he could get. The woman willingly handed over the twins, along with the letter Miriam had left him.

He’d taken one look at Aaron and Emma and fallen in love, a love the depths of which, he hadn’t known possible … he just hadn’t known what to do with them. Only one way he knew to raise children: Amish, but he fought that knowledge for a while, knowing it would be torture seeing Rachel with Simon.

And it was agony, but not in the way he expected.

He’d decided last night that he’d watch over Rachel. What he witnessed, like the shaming, he could deal with. What he did not, like Rachel’s bruise, worried the blazes out of him.

Rachel Zook, of all people, deserved to be happy. She needed to laugh more.

Good idea.

Jacob plucked some grass and tossed it at her.

Rachel wiggled her nose, swatted air, and slept on. But Emma woke, gave him her lopsided grin and toddled over to fall in his lap. She planted drooly-wet kisses all over his face, making him laugh, but the two on the blanket slept on.

He tossed more grass.

Aaron cuddled closer to Rachel and she pulled him in. Emma giggled, her eyes filled with mischief as she plucked grass, roots, dirt and all, and went to drop it on them, but she tripped, landing, one foot on Aaron’s belly and both hands in Rachel’s face.

Aaron yelped. Rachel’s kapp fell off and her laugh floated up like a family of bobolinks gliding above the pasture. She lifted Emma and raised her high, making her giggle. Emma drooled like crazy, making Rachel laugh the more.

“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Jacob warned.

Rachel started to get up.

“Stay,” he said. “Play with them. It’s good for them.”
It’s wonderful to watch.

“Me too, Pie,” Aaron said. Rachel lay back down and raised him, getting a belly laugh. “Jacob! He laughs like you.”

Emma clamored to be tossed again. “Ah, sweetheart,” Rachel said. “I can’t wiggle you both. Come and play, Jacob.”

He lay on the blanket beside her, raised his daughter, and the twins got shaken in unison, giggling, screaming.

Shep came running over, his bark adding to the din.

Jacob was caught by the happiness in Rachel’s eyes. “Your eyes are as beautiful as ever,” he said.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Simon snapped.

Rachel scrambled to stand before her husband.

“Rachel, your kapp,” he shouted. “You shame me with such a display before my brother. And you shame me doubly when I come home to find Datt trying to cook his own dinner.”

Jacob picked up his frightened children. “You shame yourself with your treatment of your wife.”