A Promise for Miriam (3 page)

Was it pride that scraped against his heart each day? He couldn’t say.

He only knew he preferred solitude to company, especially since Hope died.

Hope.

That seemed ironic, even to him. She had been his hope, his life, his all, and now she was gone. Her death had happened so quickly—it reminded him of one of the
Englisch
freight trains barreling around the corner of some bend.

A big black iron thing he hadn’t seen coming. A monstrosity with the power to destroy his life.

Which wasn’t what the bishop had said, or his parents, or his brothers and sisters.

He slapped the reins and allowed his new horse, Chance, to move a bit faster over the snow-covered road. He’d left Indiana because he needed to be free of the looks of sympathy, the well-intentioned words, the interfering.

So he now had what he’d wished for—a new beginning with Grace.

If it meant days of backbreaking work, so much the better. Perhaps when he was exhausted, he would begin to sleep at night.

Chapter 2

G
race came home each afternoon with a note from her teacher.

Gabe took each note from the lunch box, read it, and threw it into the garbage to be burned when he disposed of the rest of the trash.

He didn’t answer them. How could he? What would he say?

By Thursday he’d quit reading them because they all said essentially the same thing. He took to removing the pieces of paper with the neat handwriting and putting them straight into the garbage can.

Grace watched with somber eyes, but she never said a word.

It was early in the evening on Friday when he heard a knock at the door. He’d just burned the bacon he was cooking for their dinner. Smoke hung in the air above the stove, and the eggs he’d attempted to fry sat in a congealed mess on the table.

Grace did not appear upset about the dinner. She was usually oblivious to such things. Curled up in the corner chair at the table, she was focused completely on the drawing on her tablet. Moments before he’d caught her staring out the window, as if something grand lay outside the dirty panes of the glass. All he could see were fields that needed work, surrounded by a fence that wouldn’t hold anything, adjacent to a yard that hadn’t been taken care of for years.

The drawing his daughter now sketched was something quite different. Perhaps she’d seen in those few moments before darkness fell what he’d imagined from the newspaper clipping he’d read in Indiana. “Hundred-acre farm, running creek, some woods, southwestern Wisconsin. Needs work but will produce for the right man. Small homestead on property.”

What she sketched was a snow-covered field with a new fence, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, a pony in the corner looking toward the woods in the distance. The building in the bottom right of the drawing could be their house, or it could be the barn. It was hard to tell because she wasn’t finished, and also because their house rather resembled the barn in its current state.

When the knock sounded, she didn’t look up, but a shadow passed over her face. Gabe gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile and set the plate of burned bacon on the table next to the eggs. “Probably a neighbor about that bull. He keeps finding his way out of the field.”

He didn’t think to let go of the spatula or take off the apron he’d been wearing to keep the grease off his work clothes.

The knock sounded again, and he hollered, “I’m coming. You don’t have to bang it down.”

He opened the door with a jerk, and Miriam King practically fell into his sitting room. She’d been about to knock a third time. When her small fist found no wood to knock on, it fell forward and her arm with it, which unbalanced her. Gabe reached out to stop her fall, nearly swatting her in the face with his spatula.

“Oh!” was the word that escaped her lips as she stumbled into the room.

He held on to her arms until she steadied herself, though he didn’t want to. By this point he realized what he was holding. He had absolutely no desire to be touching the soft dark-gray wool of her coat. He didn’t want the smell of her soap on his hands. He didn’t need to be looking down on the top of her
kapp
or see the jet black of her curls that were escaping from the bottom of her bun.

“Are you steady now?”

“Yes, of course. You startled me, was all.”

“You might try standing back after you knock on a door.” As he stepped away from her to wipe his hands on his pants, he found he was still wearing the apron. Realizing that embarrassed him, which served to irritate him more.

“Well, I wouldn’t have had to knock so many times if you’d answered the door in the first place.”

“I was cooking.” Gabe held up the spatula. “Took me a bit to make it to the door.”

Miriam pulled in a deep breath, stared up at the far corner of the ceiling for a moment, and then straightened her coat and pulled off her gloves. Finally she looked at him again. “I apologize. I seem to have caught you at a bad time.”

“We were about to eat dinner.”

“Perhaps you didn’t receive my notes.”

“I received them.”

“Then you knew I’d be stopping by this evening on my way home from school?”

Gabe scowled as he realized what she was referring to must have been in the last two notes, the two he hadn’t read. “Maybe you should come into the kitchen.”

He gestured to the adjoining room, the room that still had smoke settling over it. Walking in ahead of her, he cracked the window nearest to the stove.

“Was there a fire?” Miriam asked.

“No. I had a bit of a problem with the stove.” Gabe snatched the plate of burned bacon off of the table. “Could I offer you a cup of
kaffi
?”

“That would be
wunderbaar. Danki
.”

Miriam sat next to the little girl and looked at the tablet. “Were you drawing this, Grace?”

He watched the two of them out of the corner of his eye. His daughter seemed comfortable enough with the woman. Grace flipped through her tablet, showing her teacher some of her previous drawings. Miriam commented on each one, not speaking down to her as some adults did, but making specific comments about the details in her sketches.

He knew his daughter was a talented artist. He’d been told by many that she had a gift. But he understood that wasn’t what Miriam King was here to talk to him about.

He poured two cups of
kaffi
, steeled his spine, and walked resolutely to the table. Gabe had known when he took Grace to the school that this day was coming. He’d known when he’d decided to move to a new community that he’d have to explain.

Best to take his medicine and be done with it.

Somehow it didn’t help that he’d have to look into the unusual gray eyes of a beautiful young woman across his own kitchen table. Perhaps it would have been better to have this conversation five days ago, the first morning at the school.

But he hadn’t been ready then.

And he wasn’t ready now.

He brought milk, sugar, and spoons to the table and pulled out a chair, sitting across from Grace and beside Miriam. He knew that’s what Grace called her, because it’s what Grace wrote on her papers—Miriam or sometimes simply Teacher.

The look in the teacher’s eyes right now was one he could barely tolerate. It caused the old anger to flame up, and he had to swallow the hot
kaffi
in order to tamp it down, in order to distract himself so that he wouldn’t say words he might regret.

It wasn’t her fault. Pity was a natural enough reaction. Still, he’d seen it too many times. Pity was the one thing he couldn’t abide, and it was fairly pouring out of her.

And who was she to pity him? To pity them?

Miriam stared for a moment at the congealed eggs Gabriel Miller had left on the table. She honestly didn’t know where to begin. This was not, by far, her first home visit.

But it was quickly becoming the most uncomfortable.

She tried not to notice the water-stained paint on the walls or the lack of furniture in the room. The home was clean, and she gave him points for that, though of course it wasn’t her place to be handing out or deducting points at all.

Instead, she focused again on Grace, who gave her a gold star smile, and she drew courage.

“Why didn’t you tell me Grace doesn’t speak?”

Spinning the spoon in front of him, he finally said, “I meant to. I should have.”

“But…”

“But the children started coming in. I didn’t want to embarrass her.”

“Surely you knew they would find out.”

“
Ya
. I knew, but I thought maybe they wouldn’t find out the first day.”

Miriam put her hands in her lap. “And then?”

“Well, then I meant to come the second day, but…I became busy.”

“And you received my notes?”

Now a look of embarrassment replaced what might have been anger earlier. He and Grace shared a look, a small secret of some sort. Gabe ran his hand over the back of his neck and then admitted, “I did receive your notes, and I should have answered them, but honestly I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t.”

Miriam took a long drink of her
kaffi.

Grace looked at her and shrugged, same as she always did.

Gabe looked at her and shrugged.

The father and daughter reactions were so identical that Miriam didn’t know whether to laugh or scold them both. But if there was anything she’d learned in eight years, it was that scolding rarely worked.

Instead, glancing again at the congealed eggs, she had another idea.

“Would you mind terribly if I cooked dinner for you?”

“Say again?”

“I’m here and I’m hungry. I don’t suppose you were planning on eating that.”

“I can cook for my
dochder
.” Gabe sat up straighter, a defensive expression crossing his face.

“I’m sure you can cook for Grace, but apparently you were late in the fields or the barn and had some trouble. Perhaps we could do it together this once.”

Grace jumped out of her chair and ran across the kitchen to the mudroom. Miriam heard her open and close the icebox door. She came back into the room, her arms loaded with fresh bacon, eggs, and butter.

This time Miriam did laugh. “She may not speak, but she has strong opinions.”

“That she does,” Gabe agreed with a sigh.

An hour later they’d had a good dinner, though it wasn’t what Miriam was accustomed to eating in the evening. She supposed widowers were less particular about such things. It was obvious by this time that Gabe was raising Grace alone.

So what had happened to Mrs. Miller? She would ask her
mamm
when she arrived home, though as tight-lipped as Gabe was, it could be he’d told no one as of yet.

She said her good nights to Grace, who was on the floor of the nearly empty sitting room, looking over a reader she’d taken home from the school.

Gabe held a gas lantern to light their way as he walked her to her buggy. She had to try for answers one more time before leaving.

“How long has she been this way?”

“A long time.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“No reason. She could talk before. She’s chosen to stop.”

“Just like that? You just decide she’s okay?”

“I’ve known Gracie her entire life. I appreciate your concern, but it’s unfounded.”

“Unfounded?” Miriam felt her temper spark brighter than the stars lighting up the winter sky. “She is one of my students, and I have every right to be concerned.”

“She’s my
dochder.
I’ll see to her raising if you’ll see to her learning.”

“How am I to do that if she won’t speak?”

“Gracie will speak when she’s ready. Until then, teach her as best you can. Her mind works the same as before. Surely you’ve seen that she’s a bright girl.” Gabe helped her into her buggy, handed her the reins, and then took hold of the mare’s harness to turn her so she was facing down the lane.

But Miriam wasn’t ready to be dismissed.

She didn’t drop the flap that was rolled up over the driver’s side and fastened with two leather straps. As Gabe walked around to her side, she practically hung out of the buggy to continue their conversation. “Well, of course she’s bright, but—”