The Beekeeper's Son (The Amish of Bee County Book 1) (33 page)

Mordecai wasn’t eating. Most likely it had nothing to do with her. “Maybe he has a stomach bug.”

“It’s not his stomach that’s hurting him.”

“It sounds like the flu to me.”

“There’s only been one other time I’ve seen my bruder act like this.” Susan patted Theresa’s cheek with the wet washrag. “You’re doing fine, honey. And that was twenty-five years ago. I’m telling you, it’s his heart, not his stomach, giving him trouble. And there’s only one cure.”

“One cure?”

“Abigail Lantz, I know you’re not that dense.”

“Dense!”

“You broke it off with Stephen because you’re a smart woman. Now do what needs to be done so the rest of us can have some peace.”

Stephen had made it known to the entire community that she’d rejected his generous offer of marriage in November. Now he passed her at the Sunday service without speaking. Like a little boy denied a treat. “It’s not my place—”

“I reckon Mordecai opened the door first and he didn’t get the answer he wanted.”

The heat of the sun on her face in Progreso and the feel of Mordecai’s strong hand on her elbow assailed her. He had and
she’d stumbled. She’d been weak and fearful when love presented itself in a strange, foreign country. The way love always did. Abigail turned and trudged toward the door.

“And don’t forget the glass of water.”

She must’ve answered, but she didn’t remember. She marched down the hallway and out to the kitchen. Mordecai wasn’t there. She proceeded out the back door. He was perched far up on a ladder, hammer in hand, a nail teetering on his lower lip.

“Could you come down here?”

He pulled the nails from his mouth. “I’m almost done. We need to move Theresa to the basement. The storm’s coming faster than I expected.”

“The baby’s almost here.”

“We have to move her.” He slammed the hammer against the nail with more force than Abigail thought necessary. If he missed, he’d break a window. “There’s no time. It’s here.”

Rain spattered against the sheet of wood and caught Abigail in the cheek. A sudden, fierce gust of wind brought leaves and pebbles with it. The sweet perfume of wet earth and rain wafted around her. “I’ll tell Susan.”

“What did you come out here for?”

“Nothing, I just wanted—”

“It wasn’t nothing.”

“Susan said you hadn’t been eating.”

“And you’re worried about my health?” He clomped down the ladder and planted himself in front of her, the hammer swinging in one hand.

His scent of man mixed with wood enveloped her. She missed that smell. “My health is fine.”

“You look a little peaked.”

“So do you.” He dropped the hammer in a toolbox and snapped the lid shut with more force than necessary. “Naomi’s food doesn’t agree with you?”

“Naomi’s cooking is fine. My health is fine.”

“Then we have that in common.”

The rain came harder, bringing with it a wind that did nothing to cool Abigail’s face. Heat burned her cheeks. Her stomach roiled. “What about other things?”

“I already told you what I thought about . . . other things.”

And she turned him away. No wonder he was so bitter. “I was . . . mixed up. I had to do the right thing . . . with Stephen. Your timing was . . . off.”

Another gust of wind knocked her against the house. The skies opened and the rains came. Mordecai grabbed her arm and pushed her toward the door. “As yours is now. Get Susan. I’ll get Abram. He can carry his fraa down the stairs to the basement. Y’all bring what you need to finish up.”

Abigail struggled with the screen door. Mordecai shoved it open. The wind ripped it from the frame and sent it sailing. “Go, hurry!”

She did as she was told. By the time she reached the bedroom door, Abram raced down the hallway. “Is the bopli here? We need to get to the basement.”

“Nee, but soon—”

“Get her downstairs. Samuel, help him.” Mordecai jerked his head toward the basement door. “Abigail, gather up whatever you’ll need. We can put up sheets to make a place more . . . private down there.”

She scurried after Abram. She grabbed her basket and dropped Susan’s supplies on top of hers while Susan scrambled
for a pile of blankets and sheets. Abram scooped up Theresa, who wrapped her arms around her husband’s neck and buried her face in his chest, muffling ragged sobs.

They formed a single line, led by Mordecai, who held the kerosene lamp high. “Careful down the stairs, Abram. Watch your step.”

The basement’s still, dank air brushed Abigail’s face as she inhaled its musty scent. Like every other basement in the district, the shelves were lined with canned goods, jellies, jams, green beans, okra, tomatoes, venison, and more. A bounty that would hold them over for the long winter. It also held a blessed quiet out of the whistling wind, thunder, and pelting hail.

Theresa groaned, then screamed. “Another one, another one. I’m sorry, it’s another one.”

Her screams echoed against the thick cement walls. Abram’s face blanched. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“Nobody needs to be sorry.” Susan set her lamp on a shelf and dusted off her hands. “It’s the natural course of things.”

“Esther, get the blankets down in the corner. We’ll make a nice little bed.” Abigail dropped her basket and grabbed a rolled-up rug from Esther’s stack. “Mordecai, can you nail sheets from the shelves to the wall?”

“Got it.”

A few minutes later they had a makeshift bed on the floor and a private, if not cozy, spot in the basement corner to deliver the baby. Not ideal, but women had been giving birth to babies for thousands of years in all sorts of places with little or no help.

Abram gently laid his fraa onto the blankets and backed away, his face, so like Mordecai’s, filled with concern and a bit of relief, possibly, that he could retreat to the other side of the
sheets. Theresa sank back on the makeshift bed, her breathing coming in sharp, hard gasps. “I need to push. I need to push.”

“Gut girl. That’s what we need now. That bopli will be here in a jiffy.” Abigail grabbed her knee. Susan took the other while Esther held her sister-in-law’s head against her chest, hands on her shoulders. “Push, Theresa, push. It’s time for your bopli to see the world.”

The basement, anyway. Abigail longed to know what was happening outside. As she encouraged and cajoled the frightened girl in front of her, she prayed her boy and girls were tucked safely away in Leroy’s basement. And Deborah. Stubborn, headstrong Deborah.
Please, Gott, don’t let her be swept away in this. Let her use the brain you gave her
.

The baby slipped into the world a scant few minutes later, his mouth open, his cry lusty and bewildered. Abigail grabbed a towel and laid him gently on Theresa’s lap while Susan dealt with the business of the cord and the afterbirth.

“You and Abram have yourself a fine baby boy.” With efficiency born of years of practice, Abigail wiped him down, cleaned his eyes, and examined him from head to toe. As perfect as only God could create. “He’s a big boy, all ten fingers and all ten toes. Has his daed’s nose.”

Mordecai’s nose.

Sobs mixed with hiccupping laughs, Theresa propped herself up, her face shiny with sweat and tears. “Abram,” she called. “Abram, come see your son.”

Abigail held up the sheet and slipped out as the new father slid past her, his face that sweet mixture of trepidation and elation she so often saw on men’s faces at this special moment in their lives. Jacob and Samuel clapped as they followed.

She let the sheet drop on the family reunion and turned to see Mordecai sitting on the fourth step, a pocketknife in one hand, a chunk of wood in the other. His face held a different note, one of nostalgia, happiness, melancholy, longing, all combined in a bittersweet song she recognized.

“It’s a boy.”

“I heard.”

“You don’t want to see your grandchild, your first grandson?”

“Jah, but I want Abram to have his moment first.” Mordecai gestured at the basement walls. “
Groossdaadis
take a backseat at these things. My turn will come.”

“I can imagine how it will be when my first grandbaby comes along.” She sank onto a rickety plastic lawn chair a few feet from where he sat. “I imagine I’ll be thinking of Timothy.”

“Jah.”

Mordecai slid the knife along the wood, slicing away a sliver this way, a sliver that way. Nothing about his posture indicated a desire to talk about his own feelings. Or his fraa.

Fine. “What are you making?”

“Hmm.” He held up the piece of wood and turned it back and forth in the flickering lantern light. “Looks to be a hund, I reckon.”

“You’re not sure?”

“The wood takes the shape it’s intended to have. Kind of like our lives.”

Maybe he could talk about his feelings in this roundabout way that most men had. She found herself holding her breath. Mordecai smoothed a scrap of wood away with his thumb. “You said you were confused. Do you still feel that way?”

“I was thinking . . . Everyone knows Phineas and Deborah
will marry as soon as they figure it out themselves.” Keeping her voice soft to match his muted tones, she stumbled to find the proper words to express these thoughts that had been heaving themselves around in her head since the day she’d told Stephen she couldn’t marry him. Thoughts that tried to find a path that would lead to a place where she could live and take care of her family until she knew her own feelings better. Until those feelings had a chance to take root and grow. “They may not know it yet, but it’s as plain as the big nose on your face—”

“My nose isn’t big.”

“I like your nose, but that’s beside the point.”

Mordecai’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “You like—?”

“Let me finish.” If he didn’t stop interrupting, she would lose her courage altogether. “I was thinking if they marry, Phineas might consider having his new family with him in that house until . . .”

Now he chose not to interrupt? She faltered. “Until . . .”

He cocked his head, his gaze fastened to the wood in his hand, the knife still moving in deft strokes. “Until what?”

She drew a breath. Now or never. “Until we have a chance to get to know each other properly.”

His forehead wrinkled, but he kept whittling away at the wood. “You mean, like . . . court?”

She didn’t like that word. She wasn’t twenty and neither was he. “In a manner of speaking.”

“I’m no young whippersnapper with a two-seater and a hankering to shine a flashlight in a window.” Mordecai’s tone didn’t change, but he glanced her way, then ducked his head again. “I reckon you have your hands full too.”

“Jah, I have little ones who need my attention.” She forced herself to sit still despite the urge to squirm like a little girl. “Yet,
for me, there has to be a time for two people to know each other. I need to go slowly. I had that with Timothy, and if I’m ever to have what I had with him again, I need time. Time to know if we’re right for each other. Time for feelings to grow.”

“Agreed.”

“What?” After all the turmoil and the trepidation with Stephen, to have Mordecai capitulate so easily left her feeling like she’d been tossed from a capsized canoe into calm lake waters. “What did you say?”

“I said, I agree. The wait makes lieb all the more sweet.” His gaze met hers. He held out the piece of wood, now a puppy with a whip tail and a pointed nose. She took it. Their fingers brushed. He smiled. He had a smile that caught her and held her like a bee drawn to nectar. “We’ll take our time and we’ll figure it out. There’s no rush.”

“There’s not? We can’t keep living with Leroy and Naomi.”

“Have they complained?”

“Nee.”

“Do you want to stay here, in Texas, or do you want to go home?”

She hadn’t thought to go back to Tennessee, and since the brief time she’d lived in Mordecai’s house, she never considered moving to Missouri with her brother. Now she knew why. “This
is
home.”

A broad smile lighted his face. “Then stop worrying and trust Gott. He brought you here. You’re home. The place you lay your head has nothing to do with it.”

“How did you get so wise?”

“I don’t know about wise. I only know what I feel.”

Those feelings were written on his face, and they caused goose bumps to spring up on Abigail’s arms and heat to brush
across her cheeks. She swallowed, waiting for the batch of unruly puppies that had taken up residence in her stomach to settle. The road ahead no longer looked barren and deserted. She would not walk alone. Relief flooded her. Immediately followed by wonder. And uncertainty. Always the uncertainty. What came next?

She forced herself to look at Mordecai. Their gazes locked. No uncertainty lurked in that rugged face.

He stood and towered over her for a long second, his expression solemn now, his gaze piercing as if he’d peer into her heart, into her very soul. “No buying a farm.”

She craned her head, caught by the emotion in his startling blue-green eyes. “No buying a farm.”

“No Stephen.”

“No Stephen.”

Mordecai glanced toward the makeshift delivery room. Laughter and the sound of a baby fussing emanated from behind the sheets. He took her hand and tugged her to her feet. With his other hand, he slid his hat from his head and leaned down. “Gut.”

His kiss was soft but sure, the kiss of a man who knew what he wanted but didn’t take for granted that he could have it. It deepened with care taken and a kindness that made tears well and wet Abigail’s cheeks.

The hat fell to their feet. His hands came up and cupped her face. Her own fingers covered his without her realizing she’d lifted her hands from her sides. He held her there until her heart fluttered, then smoothed into a new, steady beat. Everything that came before melted into a distant past. The clock started ticking on her new life. And his.

Finally, he released her. “That’s gut, my sweet, sweet Abigail.”

Indeed, it was.

THIRTY-FOUR

Fat drops of rain cooling his face, Phineas studied the undulating masses of gray clouds from the small porch that welcomed visitors to his home. They moved fast, whipped by fierce winds that had come off the Gulf and made their way willy-nilly across the plains. The rain pelted the house in a steady
ping-ping
that sang of ponds filling and plants growing green and tall.