Jacob's Return (28 page)

“There was no using. Only giving, by the both of us. Gentle and beautiful, it was, with no discomfort. Only joy. I feel no tenderness, no remorse. We will have last night for the rest of our lives.”

She saw his pain at her reminder that their life was not as they’d pretended in the dark of night. “Do you see my nightgown anywhere?” she asked to change the mood.

“Me get it,” Emma said, and scrambled off the bed to retrieve it, climbing quickly back up to hand it over, with a proud smile.

Rachel kissed her on the nose but she was shaken. “Thank you, love.” She looked at Jacob, not bothering to hide her shock. “They understand more than I thought. What will they make of this?”

“That it is as it should be. Surely you can see that.”

“If they remember in future years, when they understand more about—”

“They will be told how it has always been with us. They will know, from experience, the goodness in us, that we are not perfect, but strive to do better.”

“And we will do better. We must, Jacob.”

“Yes,” he said sadly. “We must.”

They heard a familiar creak, a footstep on the bottom-most stair.

Jacob jumped from the bed.

“Aaron?” Simon called. “Are you coming with me to feed Pokey?”

“Unkabear!” Aaron said, and ran to open the bedroom door before Jacob could stop him. Then Aaron bolted out and down the stairs.

Jacob got his pants on and picked up Emma faster than Rachel could catch her breath. Then he left and shut the door behind him, except that, after a minute, it opened on a long, mournful squeal.

Wide-eyed and heart-pounding, Rachel could see Jacob holding Emma at the top of the stairs, Simon speaking to Aaron as they ascended.

Snatching her gown from sight, she pulled the covers over her head. Naked, frightened, shame filled Rachel. She should have stayed in her own room last night.

She did not deserve forgiveness.

And Jacob did not deserve to suffer the consequences of her seduction.

* * * *

Jacob thought his pounding heart would escape his chest.

“You missed milking,” Simon said, Aaron in his arms, from the middle of the stairs, because Jacob made sure his brother could not move beyond him.

“Momly,” Emma called pointing toward the open door of his room. Jacob curled his hand over her pointing finger and kissed it. “We’re going to let Momly sleep.” He looked at his brother. “So close to her time, she must need rest, if she has not arisen yet.”

“Is she?” Simon raised a brow. “Close to her time?”

“I have never seen anyone bigger.” The beat of Jacob’s heart trebled when he realized Rachel was awfully big if her time was weeks away. Big enough to die in childbed, like Miriam.

“I should check on her,” Simon said, concern on his face. “It could be her time and she cannot rise.”

Simon’s swing from concern to anger and back troubled Jacob, because he could never tell which was real. “I’ll check on her,” he said.

“I’d like to remind you that I am her husband.”

“I’d like to remind you that only one of us has ever hurt her. I will check on her.”

“We will check together, then,” Simon said.

“Simon?” Levi called from the bottom of the stairs.

Years of discipline and respect had them both turning at their father’s commanding voice.

Jacob wondered how long he’d been standing there. “Simon, bring my grand-babies down to me and we will feed them breakfast. You have forfeited your rights, and you know it. Jacob will check to see Rachel is sleeping well, and then he will be right down. Won’t you, son?”

Jacob knew Simon was too embarrassed to have caught the command their father gave for him not to linger in the bedroom of a woman not his wife.
Ah, Datt
, he thought.
I do not deserve such trust
. He nodded. “Right down, Datt.”

After taking Emma, Simon glared. “Remember, brother, ‘The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.’”

“And you are the godly, Simon?”

“I am not the unrighteous.” He turned to go.

Jacob grabbed his arm. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Simon’s nostrils flared, but he remained silent. And as Jacob watched him go, another verse ran through head. ‘I will give to each of you as your works deserve.’ Then, and with some surprise, ‘I will put my trust in Him.’ And hope filled Jacob’s heart for the first time since the day he left.

Chapter 17

“Jacob! Jacob, help me!”

Jacob was pulled from a dreamless sleep. He leapt from his bed and ran to her room. “I’m here, Mudpie.”

He heard her harsh breath as he lit her bedside lamp.

Her quilt was thrown back. Clutching her robe, she rested her head on her pillow, but her slippered feet hung off the side, as if she’d begun to rise, but lay back down. Fear etched her features. “I think the baby is coming,” she said. “But it’s too soon, Jacob.”

Jacob’s heart raced, but he did not allow Rachel to see his fear. He nodded matter-of-factly, removed her slippers and raised her legs to the bed, then he took the robe from her stiff fingers. “I’ll get Esther and Hannah Bieler.” He drew the quilt over her and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back in no time.”

Rachel grabbed his arm. “Don’t leave me. Please. You’re the only one in this house who has delivered a baby. Oh, Jacob, suppose something goes wrong.”

He squeezed her hand. “Give me a minute to rouse Simon and send him for Hannah then. Once she sees you, she will know if we need to send for the English doctor, and if that’s what it takes, you will get him.”

“Simon will not approve.”

“He will want what is best for you.”

Rachel looked uncertain but nodded finally.

“How many pains did you have? Hannah will want to know.”

“Three, no four.”

How far apart?

“The first two came close together, the third, more than an hour after the second, but this one was strong, and I am so scared.”

Jacob brushed his lips against hers in the lightest of kisses, one meant to convey encouragement while hiding soul-deep fear. He cupped her cheek. “Ach, Rache. I would take the pain if I could.”

She turned her lips into his palm. “I know.”

Jacob returned from sending Simon off in a flurry of panicked activity and found Rachel sleeping. He sat forward in the chair, his elbows on his knees, and watched her for nearly an hour. When Esther arrived with Hannah Bieler, he motioned them from the room and followed them out. “She has been sleeping since I sent for you. Is that normal?”

Hannah smiled. “False labor, I think, but we should wake her and get her up to see if they start again, and we need to talk about what happened.

Near dawn, three hours later, a red-faced Rachel walked into the kitchen to find Jacob, Simon, and Levi sitting at the table drinking coffee. “Did Esther and Hannah leave?”

“I took them home,” Levi said.

“I guess I got more sleep than most of you did last night.” She lowered her bulk into her chair. “I am sorry,” she said staring out the window.

Levi chuckled and leaned over to squeeze her clasped hands. “It’s normal, what happened. Good practice.”

She knew Jacob would feel the same, so she looked at Simon. It was always difficult for him to keep his anger and frustration from showing, but this morning, he was even worse. She might have saved his pride if she’d given birth to this child last night. A child born in February, he could claim as his. Babies arrived late all the time.

An early birth might have kept peace. Still, Rachel was relieved her child could grow stronger before he came into the world.

Rachel had never given anyone an indication when her baby was due. Conception and birth were private and the women accepted her silence. ‘When a woman’s husband came to her nightly,’ Anna Yoder had commented with a twinkle in her eye, ‘who could tell when the child was conceived?’

Simon had not questioned the child’s paternity at first. He never doubted his ability to father a child. But her childless state must not have been her fault. Time was, she would have been happy to shout such knowledge, if only to keep him from badgering her with his painful charge of barrenness. But none of it mattered now.

Soon, Simon would be certain this child could not be his. Oh, he would be furious over her adultery, certainly, but inside, he would be more furious that she must realize, if she was not barren, he must be.

And she was afraid.

* * * *

As early spring settled on the land, the song of the bluebird drifted once again across the meadow. Cress began to grow in the run. Chickadees and sparrows built new nests.

No one loved these signs of earth’s renewal more than Rachel.

With unusual eagerness, she took on the annual March cleaning of the summer kitchen, to prepare the room for another season of hard use. As she worked, she imagined a cradle placed just there, in the corner, her child napping as she mixed scrapple or tossed slaw. Shot with energy, she scrubbed the four, huge iron kettles Jacob had lined up on the floor, while Aaron and Emma came behind her with dry rags to wipe the kettles dry — more or less.

Though temperatures began to creep back up toward warmer days, the nights still tended to freeze, and it was time to tap the maple trees. Rachel’s grandfather had told her the story of how the first Amish settlers had learned sugaring from the Indians, and after so many years, they still did it nearly the same way.

Maple syrup was a gift from the forest, her
Grossdaudy
used to say. A gift the Amish settlers had accepted with thanks.

Two weeks ago, she and the twins had spent an afternoon gathering elderberry and alder branches, which were cut short, and their soft centers pushed out — hollowed, they made perfect spouts.

Today Jacob, Levi, and Simon were collecting the first filled buckets leaving empty ones in their places. In a little while, they would bring her the sap to boil. The Indians used to heat rocks and drop them, red-hot, into wooden vats of sap to make it boil, but in the Sauder house four huge, iron kettles would be filled and set to boiling.

“Pa-pop! The maypou, it comes, Momly,” Emma said as the flat-bed wagon stopped outside the door.

Aaron climbed up to the window and banged on the glass. “Unkabear!”

“Ach, Rache!” Jacob said stepping into the room, a bucket of sap in each hand. “Get up from there. I’ll fire the logs once we get the kettles in place. Move now. You’ve done too much already.”

Rachel took each twin by the hand and moved out of the way. Giving in to the heaviness of her body, she sat and took a child on each knee, her lap long-since claimed by another.

Jacob and Simon lifted the heavy round-bottomed kettles one by one and settled them into the circles cut from the top of the low iron stove.

She used those kettles for everything. Cold, she used them to mix slaw. During butchering, she mixed meat products to fill sausage skins. Other than the bake-oven outside, and the smoke-house beside it, no other household convenience was as well used. And at no other time did she enjoy their use more than at sugaring.

For two days, the scent of maple wafted through the house from potato cellar to attic beams.

Esther came Friday night to help Rachel filter, jar, and seal the syrup supply for the year, and to help prepare for their annual sugaring party.

“That batch ready?” Rachel asked.

Esther raised a spoon coated with boiled syrup, tip down, over the pan. “No,” she said. “It dribbles from the bottom of the spoon yet. Check the one in that kettle, Rache.”

“Ouch,” Rachel said, as she bent over the pan, and rubbed her back.

Esther looked concerned. “What’s the matter?”

“My back is sore from leaning over these kettles.” She grinned. “But my mouth is watering.” Dipping her spoon in the syrup, she held it over the vat, tip down, and just like magic, a thick layer of maple syrup began to fold itself from the top of the spoon, over and over as it made its way down the spoon’s bowl to apron off in one huge glob. “Perfect!”

Ezra Zook watched his daughters from just outside the summer kitchen door.

Esther made for Rachel’s kettle so fast, he almost chuckled. Rachel dipped the big, wooden spoon into the syrup to coat it and suspend it above the kettle. Each with a small spoon at the ready, giggling like they were six again, they waited. And as the thick, sweet mass parted with the wooden spoon, Rachel and Esther caught some of the bounty with their small spoons, amid cries of success.

Mouths pursed, they blew on their treats to cool them, and at exactly the same moment, they raised mischievous eyes … and spooned the sweetest syrup of the season into each other’s mouths.

“Mmm,” they said together, rolling their eyes and dissolving into giggles.

The Bishop laughed stepping into the room. “Twenty years I watch you two do that, and still it tickles me.”

Only one part of the tradition was missing this year, they all knew. Their mother’s annual scold.

Ezra blinked his eyes to clear them. “Ach! You two. A belly ache it giffs, the saltpeter,” he quoted his absent wife. “I tell you always, filter first, then taste.”

His daughters stepped into his arms. Sniffles he heard, so he held his own in check and kissed each forehead. “She is watching now, and she is smiling. So must we.” He forced a chuckle. “Ach. I cannot hold you so close, Rache. You are getting too fat.”

The girls stepped back, their smiles belying their tears, and wiped their cheeks with their hands.

Levi stepped into the room rubbing his hands together. “Kum, sugar on snow and dandelion wine we have, to celebrate spring and new beginnings.” He squeezed the Bishop’s arm as he passed. “And we remember, with smiles, those who have gone before us. Ya?”

Bishop Zook nodded.