Naomi’s Christmas (3 page)

“He won’t say a word.” Isaiah sounded confident. “Betty told him it was best to let
you think about their marriage and get used to the idea of moving out without him
pushing you.”

“And he agreed to that?” It didn’t sound like Daadi at all. Once he’d made up his
mind, he was like a rock.

“He did.” Isaiah grinned, blue eyes twinkling. “Seems like
Betty can manage him better than the rest of us put together. So don’t lose heart.
This is all going to turn out for the best, you’ll see.”

Naomi nodded as they started toward the house, not wanting to lay her burdens any
more heavily on Isaiah. But she doubted this situation could possibly turn out for
the best…for her, anyway.

Nathan
King slid the harness over the back of Coal, the sturdy pony standing patiently between
the shafts of the pony cart. He’d promised Joshua and Sadie a ride in the cart this
afternoon, and he’d best get at it. Days grew short in November here in Pleasant Valley.

His father moved out of the shadow of the barn door, glancing up at the weak sunlight.
“Giving the kinder a ride, ja? Are you sure you don’t want me to stay around to help
you with the milking?”

Nathan shook his head, feeling an inward pang at the stiffness with which Daad moved.
It was impossible to keep him from helping on the dairy farm, but Nathan tried to
spare his father as best he could.

“You go on home before Sarah is scolding me for keeping you late.” Since Daad was
living with Nathan’s sister, she could be tart with Nathan about Daad doing too much,
but he’d noticed she didn’t have any better luck getting Daad to slow down. “Isaiah
said he’d be back in time for evening milking.”

“They were having a birthday party for Naomi, ain’t so? I must remember to wish her
happiness.” Daad shook his head, the wind ruffling his beard, more gray now than brown.
“I
can’t see her without thinking of your Ada, that’s certain-sure. They were gut friends,
ain’t so?”

Nathan nodded, feeling his face stiffen. He didn’t like talking about Ada, not that
he ever stopped thinking about her.

He glimpsed movement from the corner of his eye, and his heart jolted.

“Joshua!” He snatched his small son from under the pony, where Joshua was reaching
for the harness strap. “What are you doing?” He held the boy close for a moment and
then set him on his feet. “You know better than to mess around the horses.”

“But I can help, Daadi. I watch you and Grossdaadi all the time. I know how to harness
Coal. She likes me.”

“Whether she likes you or not isn’t the point. You are too young to be harnessing
her.”

Nathan could sense his father’s gaze on him, no doubt disapproving. Joshua stared
at him with changeable hazel eyes so like Ada’s that it cut to the heart to see disappointment
in them. But keeping Joshua safe was more important than anyone’s approval.

“But, Daadi…”

“Go back to Grossmammi. I will bring the cart up to the house in a moment.”

Joshua pressed his lips together. Then he turned and walked back toward the farmhouse,
his small shoulders drooping.

“The boy is six already,” Daad commented. “When you were his age you were doing more
than harnessing a pony.”

Nathan’s jaw set. “He’s too young. When he’s older I’ll show him how.” He turned to
the patiently waiting pony and fastened the straps.

Daad put a hand on his shoulder. “Just because you lost Ada to an accident…”

“Don’t.” He was instantly sorry for the harshness of his tone, but he couldn’t help
it. He couldn’t listen again to someone telling him that it wasn’t his fault Ada died
trying to get the horses out of the blazing barn. Or telling him, as people seemed
to want to do, that after two years it was time he started living again.

He couldn’t get over Ada. He couldn’t undo the past. All he could do now was protect
the children she had given him with all his strength.

“I’m sorry, Daad.” His voice was tight.

“It’s all right. You must deal with grief as best you can.” Daad cleared his throat.
“Have you settled on who is to take care of the kinder when Ada’s mother is away?”

Worry settled on Nathan like a wet, heavy blanket. “Sarah will komm a couple of days
a week. She offered to have Joshua and Sadie stay with her every day, but I don’t
want them away from home so much. I’m still trying to find someone to watch them here
for the rest of the time.”

He could hardly fault Ada’s mother for going to help Ada’s middle sister with her
new baby, but how was he to get along without her? She’d cared for the kinder every
day of the past two years.

Realizing that his father was looking at him with concern, he shrugged. “I will find
someone. You best get on home. Isaiah will be here soon.”

“Isaiah is here now,” a voice announced, and Isaiah Esch walked toward them with his
long, loping stride. With his lanky body and wide grin, Isaiah still looked like the
boy he’d
been when he first came to work for Nathan instead of the married man he was now.

Daad nodded to him. “You had a gut birthday party for your sister, ja? Give her my
best wishes when you see her again.”

“Ja, denke, I will.” Isaiah still smiled, but Nathan thought he detected something
at odds with the smile in Isaiah’s normally open face.

“I will be off now,” Daad said. “No need to make Sarah fuss more than she already
does.”

He walked toward his buggy horse. Nathan knew better than to offer to help him. Daad
resented any implication that he couldn’t do what he’d always done.

Nathan turned toward Isaiah. “Was ist letz?”
What’s wrong?
He knew Isaiah well enough to realize when something wasn’t right.

“Ach, you’re not going to believe it.” Isaiah patted the pony absently. “It’s my daad.
He’s going to marry Betty Shutz. Can you imagine? Announced it right in the middle
of Naomi’s birthday party.”

Somehow the timing of the announcement didn’t surprise Nathan as much as it seemed
to have Isaiah. Sam Esch had always struck him as someone who put his own wants ahead
of everyone else’s.

“So Betty said yes to him. Well, if anyone can handle him, she can.”

Isaiah blinked at this way of looking at his news. “Ja, you might be right about that.
But it doesn’t help Naomi much.”

“No, I suppose not.” It hadn’t occurred to him how this change would affect Naomi,
and it should have. “Maybe it will
be all right. With Betty taking over the house and your daad, Naomi will have more
time for her job and her beehives.”

“If only,” Isaiah said, the Englisch phrase a hangover from his rumspringa years.
“Daad expects Naomi to move out. He acted like it was all set without even asking
her. He said she should move in with Elijah and Lovina to help with the kinder. And
he’d even set up for someone to buy the beehives.”

A vague idea drifted through Nathan’s thoughts. “And will she?”

Isaiah shook his head, his expression one of surprise. “She says not. Says she’ll
decide for herself what she’s going to do. Mind, it’s how I’d have felt if Daad did
this to me, but I didn’t expect it from Naomi. Nobody did.” He grinned. “Least of
all Daad.”

“I can imagine.” Sam wasn’t used to his children refusing his ideas. “So what is Naomi
going to do, then?”

“She says the first thing is to find a place for her beehives. Then she’ll worry about
herself.” Isaiah’s forehead wrinkled.

“She can’t keep them at your daad’s place?” Surely not even Sam would be that unkind
just because Naomi didn’t like his plans for her life.

“Apparently Betty’s allergic to bee stings. Not that she’d be likely to get stung,
not with honey bees, unless she poked a stick in the hives. But there it is. Naomi
has to move the hives.” Isaiah came to a stop and looked at Nathan. Expectantly.

So that was where this conversation had been headed. Isaiah hoped he would offer to
have Naomi’s beehives here.

Well, why not? He had plenty of available land, and the beehives wouldn’t have to
be close to the house. The only
deterrent was that he would be brought into closer contact with Naomi, with her inevitable
reminders of Ada.

Still, as he’d thought when Daad had mentioned something about their friendship, he
didn’t stop thinking about his Ada anyway. And Naomi…the whole valley knew how gut
Naomi was with children. He made a quick decision.

“Have Naomi stop by to talk to me about it. Maybe we can find a solution to that part
of her problem, at least.”

In fact, maybe he’d found a way to solve both of their problems.

Naomi
discovered that her stomach was tied up in knots when she drove her buggy up the
lane to Nathan’s place the next day. The lane was both wide and well-kept, since the
milk truck came in to pick up milk from the dairy operation. Nathan had made a thriving
business from his dairy farm, but Ada wasn’t here to share it with him.

Thoughts of Ada and Nathan plummeted her right back to an incident she tried to hide,
blocking even her own memory of it.

She’d been sixteen, of an age to start her rumspringa years, but shy and uncertain,
unlike Ada, who hadn’t been able to stop talking about it.

Ada had been everything Naomi wasn’t…pretty, lively, full of laughter and eager about
life. But it was Naomi whom Nathan had approached that Sunday after worship; Naomi
who’d heard Nathan asking if he could take her home from the singing that night. She
had looked into his golden brown
eyes and felt herself sinking into their depths. She would have done anything to be
able to say yes.

But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t be going to the singing. She’d be staying at home to
take care of the young ones, and so she’d had to say no.

Nathan had taken Ada home from the singing that night, and they’d tumbled into love
with a suddenness that made it seem inevitable. Certainly Ada had never had any doubts.

She had confided in Naomi, of course. They were best friends. And Naomi had suppressed
whatever envy she’d felt and encouraged her friend. When the time came, she’d been
the one to help Ada’s mother with the wedding, she’d been one of Ada’s side-sitters,
what the world would call a bridesmaid, and she’d rejoiced when Ada started her new
life with Nathan.

It was as it should be, Naomi reminded herself now, stopping the buggy horse at the
hitching rail by the back porch of the farmhouse. Nathan loved Ada with single-minded
devotion and still did, even two years after her death.

Other people thought Nathan should move on, that he should marry again and give his
kinder a mammi, but he wouldn’t. Naomi understood that. Nathan would never betray
his first love.

Naomi slid down from the buggy seat, shaking her skirt to straighten it, and turned
toward the porch to discover Nathan and Ada’s two children standing there, watching
her.

“Joshua. Sadie. I am ser happy to see you.” She bent to give each of them a hug, her
heart touched as always by their resemblance to Ada. Joshua had hazel eyes just like
his mother’s,
while Sadie, almost five now, had her pert, lively expression, with a smile always
tugging at her lips.

“How are the bees?” Sadie held on to her for an extra second. “Did you bring us some
honey?”

“You shouldn’t ask,” Joshua chided. Then he darted a glance at Naomi, eyeing the basket
she carried.

She laughed, and he grinned back, knowing she’d caught him. “For sure I brought you
some honey. I would not forget you.” She handed the basket to Joshua. “Do you think
that’s enough?”

He peered at the three jars of amber honey. “For a while,” he said, making her laugh
again. “Daadi says he will be out in a minute, and we should keep you company.”

“I can’t think of any better company,” she said. She sat on the top step, and the
children sat on either side of her, Joshua holding the precious basket of honey jars
on his lap.

“So what have you been doing? Do you have your sled ready for the first snow?”

Joshua nodded, studying the sky earnestly. “I wish it would snow. Do you think it
will soon?”

“Well, November is a little early to get much snow,” she said, careful not to promise
what she couldn’t deliver. “But it is gut to be ready for when it comes.”

Sadie leaned against her. “Grossmammi says I am ready for a saucer all my own this
year.”

“If Grossmammi says it, it must be so,” Naomi said. She put her arm around the little
girl, irresistibly reminded of sitting on the back step, heads together with Ada,
exchanging secrets.

“Grossmammi
is going on a trip,” Joshua informed her. “She is going to stay with Aunt Elizabeth
for a while, and she says we must be very gut while she is away.” He sat a little
straighter, as if accepting that responsibility, making her think how like Nathan
he was in temperament.

“I don’t know why she has to go away.” Sadie sounded a bit fretful. “I want her to
stay here.”

Naomi knew why Ada’s mother was headed for Ohio. Elizabeth, Ada’s next younger sister,
was about to have her first baby after several years of trying. Naturally she’d want
her mamm there.

“Maybe your aunt needs her for a little while,” she suggested. “It would be wonderful
kind of you to share Grossmammi with her, ain’t so?”

“I guess,” Sadie said, her voice filled with reluctance. She nuzzled against Naomi’s
coat. “But we need her more.”

Naomi smiled, even as her heart winced. For sure, Ada’s kinder needed her mamm. Emma
Miller had been the constant in their lives since Ada died.

“While she’s away, you can write her a letter, and the postman will take it all the
way to Aunt Elizabeth’s house in Ohio,” she said.

“But I can’t write yet,” Sadie protested, even as Joshua nodded at the idea.

“You can draw a picture for her,” Naomi said. “I’ll tell you what. While Grossmammi
is away, I’ll come over one day and help you make a picture and a letter to send her.
All right?”

“Promise?” Joshua studied her face, as if measuring whether this grown-up could be
trusted to do what she said.