The Haven (13 page)

“She talked
to
me,” Sadie said quietly. “She never talked
with
me.”

Esther narrowed her eyes. “You could have offered up the truth. You never said a word.”

M.K. exchanged a glance with Uncle Hank. There was so much electricity charging the air, she wondered if she’d be hearing a thunderclap soon. The tension in the air practically sizzled.

Abraham lifted a hand. “You’re right, Sadie. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

Sadie reached out and covered his hand with hers, a silent offering. The baby let out a wail and Abraham glanced at him.

“Well, one problem is taken care of, yet we have another. What shall we do about this little one? Babies just don’t appear out of thin air.”

“This one did,” M.K. offered. “We think an angel brought him to Sadie.” Everyone sent startled glances in her direction, as if they’d forgotten she was there.

Abraham smiled. “Even a baby brought by an angel needs a family.”

“Two parents,” Esther added. “A real family. Children are a blessing and a responsibility. He’s not just a doll for you to play with, Mary Kate.”

Red heat swept through M.K. She forgot that she was a child and Esther an adult. She forgot it was the deacon who sat before her. She barely felt Fern’s fingers digging into her arm. “You can’t just take a baby and give him to this or that person like he’s no more than a stray dog!” She wasn’t exactly yelling, but she was very close.

“You Lapps have your hands more than full already,” Esther pointed out, her voice sounding shrill as a pennywhistle. She turned to her husband. “I can think of a few families who would welcome a child.”

M.K. was shocked. “But the angel brought him to us!”

Esther frowned at her.

She knew she was pushing it, but she couldn’t help herself. It wasn’t fair! “How about for the baby? What’s fair and reasonable for him? Or for the rest of us?” She was on the brink of bursting into tears. She looked up at Sadie, expecting to see her sobbing right along with her.

But she wasn’t. Sadie rose from her chair, standing tall and straight, calm and serene. “This baby does have a family,” Sadie said firmly. She bit on her lips, as if bracing herself. “There’s something else about this baby, something I haven’t wanted to say until I was sure.” She went over to the trunk that held her mother’s quilts and lifted it open. On top of the pile lay a yellow and blue crib quilt. She picked it up and brought it to her father.

“Your mother made that,” Amos said. “All of you babies slept under it.”

Sadie took a deep breath. “I think this baby belongs to Annie.” She turned to Abraham and Esther. “She’s the young Swartzentruber girl who lives with her grandfather.” As everyone started murmuring, she held up a hand. “Let me start at the beginning. It was really M.K. who gave me an idea. She suggested we find out who made the baby’s basket.”

M.K. beamed at that remark. Her detective skills were paying off.

“Until M.K. mentioned that, I had forgotten that Annie was a basketmaker. On a hunch, I went to visit her grandfather last Friday while M.K. was having that buggy race with Jimmy Fisher. He seemed pretty confused—at first he thought I was Annie. It seemed like he was waiting for her, but I could tell he lived there alone. I made some supper for him because he said he was hungry. I could tell that someone had been there pretty recently—there were some casseroles in the freezer with last week’s date on them—the day before I found the baby at the bus station. And I found this quilt, folded, in Annie’s bedroom. The dog I brought home—that’s our Lulu’s pup, all grown up.” Sadie took a deep breath. “I think it was Annie who saw me sleeping in the bus station and left the baby with me.” She lifted her eyes to look at her father. “She must have had the quilt because Menno had given it to her. He must have known about the baby. Do you remember how he told Julia he wanted to marry Annie? But then . . . he died. And Annie was left to have the baby alone. I think Annie left the baby with me because the father of the baby was Menno. Our Menno.”

Everything slowed. Fern stopped peeling carrots and froze. M.K. felt frightened by how quiet the room got, and she didn’t scare easily. She didn’t know how Sadie got through that brave speech without her voice breaking in two.

It was Uncle Hank who broke the ice. He rose to his feet and strode to Will, taking the baby out of his arms. Tears streaming down his face, he gazed lovingly at the baby. “THIS IS WONDERFUL NEWS! I knew there was something grand and glorious about this little one the very first time I laid eyes on him. God has given us a great gift, Amos. Our Menno has left us with a child.”

After Abraham and Esther’s buggy rolled out of the driveway, Amos stood for a moment looking up at the stars through the treetops. He tried to absorb all that had happened today and it felt mind-boggling. He felt a flood of feelings, at the top was sorrow over his Sadie. How could anyone accuse Sadie of such a sin? His soul told him to forgive, but his heart ached with the unfairness of the situation. And on the heels of those feelings came another, one of awe and wonder. There was this child in the house, one of his own. He lifted his head and saw that more and more stars were now visible in the bruised sky. A chilly breeze blew and a few night birds twittered.

“Heaven’s dazzling us with stars, like thousands of angels winking at us,” Fern said.

Amos jerked his head down. Where had she come from? She was as stealthy as a cat on the prowl.

“Did Abraham have anything else to say?”

Nosy. Fern was downright nosy. “He said he would write some letters to the Swartzentruber colony and see if he can find out how to locate Annie.” He kicked a dirt clod on the ground with his boot. “And he said that if I felt the need, it would be all right to have the baby’s blood tested. To make sure he’s a Lapp.”

“So what did you tell him?”

“I told him it wouldn’t matter what the results were. The baby is one of ours.”

She smiled at him, and he couldn’t help but smile back.

“I suppose you, in your infinite wisdom, knew Abraham stopped by to talk to Sadie about this . . . this ridiculous gossip.”

She gave him a sweet look then, as if he were a naïve child. “Did you not notice how a few people treated Sadie at church yesterday? Like she might be contagious.”

No, he didn’t.

He had been so preoccupied with worry over his heart—convinced his body was starting to reject it—that he was hardly aware of anything yesterday. He couldn’t even say what the sermons were about. Or whom he sat next to for lunch. His body might have been at church, but his head was elsewhere. A blanket of guilt covered him. He had been so focused on himself that he hadn’t even thought about what might be going on in his daughter’s life. What kind of a father was that? “Surely not everyone treated her that way.”

“No, but it felt like everyone to Sadie. You know how sensitive she is. She felt as if she had to protect Menno.”

“I can’t bear the thought that anyone would think ill of Menno.” He wiped his face with his hands. “He’s not here to explain or defend himself, or even to confess.”

“Amos, Menno was God’s special child. No one will accuse him of anything.”

He sighed. “If some folks were so quick to accuse Sadie of sin, what will they be saying about Menno?” He glanced at her. “I know that’s why Sadie didn’t want to tell us about the crib quilt. Or who she thought was the baby’s father. Menno meant so much to her. She knows folks will talk.”

“If folks want to say hurtful things, that’s something God will have to deal with.” She put a hand on his arm. “There’s good in all of this, Amos.”

“Like what?”

“Just today, your doctor told you to talk about Menno, to get your grieving out. Maybe this little baby is part of God’s healing for you.” She looked down at the ground. “He even looks like Menno, with that thatch of unruly hair. Menno never did comb his hair.”

Remembering his son’s wild hair, a slight smile tugged at Amos’s lips. He felt a stone lifting from the pile weighing on his heart, shucking off into the newly plowed field. The tightness in his chest eased a bit.

“And did you see how Sadie stood up for the truth? Maybe God is using all of this gossip nonsense to help her become a strong woman.” Fern looked over at the house. “When I first arrived here, she was afraid of her own shadow. Today, I saw a girl become a woman.”

Amos mulled that thought over. It was true, what Fern said. Sadie was showing more backbone than he ever thought possible. He was grateful to Fern for those encouraging words, and tried to think of how to tell her that he appreciated it. That he appreciated
her
. That his feelings for her were growing in ways he had never, ever expected, that she filled his thoughts more and more each day. She turned to him and their eyes caught and held. Amos leaned closer, so close that the space between them felt intimate.
Something was happening.
His heart pounded like he was a seventeen-year-old boy again, an odd staccato that echoed in his ears. He cleared his throat.

“Fern, I find that I have grown rather fond of you,” Amos had intended to say, but for some reason the words came out as, “Fern, dinner was good.”

She tilted her head as if she hadn’t heard him correctly, then she squinted her eyes as if he might be sun-touched.

Dinner was good?
Dinner was good?
Nice work, Amos Lapp, he chided himself. Just what a woman wanted to hear.

But the moment had passed and Fern turned to leave. Over her shoulder, she tossed, “Amos Lapp, has it occurred to you that you’re a grandfather?”

Back at the house, M.K. took care of the baby while Sadie and Will gathered dishes from the table and set them in the sink to soak. Uncle Hank sank into his favorite chair by the woodstove. He was into a sack of pecans Sadie and M.K. had gathered last fall. In a litter of shells he was trying to pick out nutmeats. Sadie seemed to see for the first time how twisted and knobby his hands were. Arthritis had gotten to his joints, and he had pain he never spoke of. Tonight, Sadie thought, she would mix up a special tea to help him with the pain.

As Sadie went back and forth from the table to the kitchen, she was glad to see her legs were holding her up, solid and sure, though she prayed her trembling wasn’t still noticeable. She had never been so bold in all her life as she was tonight. She actually said some things she wanted to say. But the thing was, she wasn’t sure if it made things better or worse.

Sadie’s conversation with Abraham had ended on a sweet note, as he took her small hands in his large, calloused ones. “You’ve reminded me of an important quality of love today, Sadie Lapp,” he said. “Love believes the best in others.”

Sadie readily forgave Abraham. How could she not? Yet she couldn’t quite keep her hands from shaking. It occurred to Sadie that she had actually confronted Esther—one of the most intimidating women in their church. Some would say the most intimidating woman. Which proved to Sadie that she could confront people when push came to shove! That little epiphany made her day.

But all of those thoughts would need to be sifted through later, when she was alone. As for now, Will Stoltz was waiting for her to bandage his blistered hands. She filled a bowl of water for him to soak his hands, first, and ended up sloshing the bowl of water onto the table hard enough to spill some water on the floor. She wiped it up and fetched another clean towel from the hall closet, then poked her head around the edge of the doorjamb to find Will waiting for her in the kitchen, a patient look on his face. The very first time she saw Will she had the vague thought that he looked sad, but the second time she realized it was mainly the shape of his eyes. Everything else about him looked pleasant enough, handsome, but his eyes, even when he smiled, pulled down a little at the corners. His jawline was square, and his thick hair had just the slightest hint of a wave in it. Not fair! Not fair that a boy had such thick, wavy hair. She would have loved such hair.

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
Watch that line of thinking, Sadie Lapp,
she told herself.
Jealousy will only take you down wicked and twisted paths.
“Come to the table. After your hands soak for a while, I’ll put some healing salve on them.”