The Healing (5 page)

Fannie was certainly relieved to hear that. “Think I’ll say hello to Abby while I’m here,” she said, moving toward the back of the store where the quilt shop was located. “Is she working today?”

“Jah,” Naomi said. “She came in early this morning.”

Fannie said good-bye to Hannah and hurried into the adjoining room, anxious to visit a few minutes with her daughter.

Pembroke, Kentucky

“According to the directions your brother sent us, we must be close to his place now,” Samuel’s driver, Stan Haman, said as he turned his van onto Pembroke Road.

“It’s right here.” Samuel motioned to his right where he saw a mailbox with Titus’s name and address on it. “We finally made it,” he said, turning in his seat to look at the kids.

The children stared wide eyed out the window.

When they pulled into the driveway covered with several inches of snow, a double-wide manufactured home came into view.

Stan had no sooner stopped the van, when Titus came out of the house, waving and smiling from ear to ear.

Samuel hopped out of the van and met Titus in the yard. After the long drive from Pennsylvania, it felt good to stretch his legs.

“It’s great seeing you.” Titus gave Samuel a hug. “Did you have a good trip?”

“It was slow because of the snow, and the kinner were fussy,” Samuel said, “but we made it safely at least.”

Titus opened the back door of the van, and the children scrambled out, squealing and running around in the snow. Their black Lab, Lucky, followed, barking and bounding at their heels.

“Guess I’d better get my horse, Socks, out of the trailer,” Samuel said, shaking out more kinks in his legs as he walked to the back of the van where the trailer was hitched. “Do you have an empty stall for him in your barn?”

Titus nodded. “There’s plenty of room, and I’m sure my horse, Lightning, will be glad for the company.”

Sometime later, when everything had been unloaded and Samuel’s driver had gone, Titus escorted everyone into the house and showed them around.

“I only have three bedrooms here,” he said, “so the boys will have to share a room with you, and the girls can have the third bedroom.”

“Guess that’s how it’ll have to be then,” Samuel said as they walked down the narrow hall and looked into each room. He hoped it wouldn’t be long before he could get a place of their own, but by living here, they’d not only have a roof over their heads, but he’d have Titus’s help with the kids—at least in the evenings when Titus wasn’t working. The question was who would watch them during the day once Samuel found a job?

Guess there’s a lot of things I didn’t think about before I decided to move, he thought as he watched the children play with two cats they’d discovered in the barn and brought into the house. Sure hope I didn’t make a mistake by coming here. Maybe I should have prayed about the move. But then, God doesn’t seem to be listening to me lately, so what would have been the use?

Samuel knew he shouldn’t let his thoughts go in that direction. They were here now, and as time went on, hopefully things would start falling into place. He’d just need to give it some time.

H
ave you called Mom and Dad yet?” Titus asked Samuel as they sat at the table, drinking coffee while the kids took the cats back to the barn.

“I suppose I should do that now. If I don’t call them soon, Mama Fannie will probably leave a string of messages on your voice mail.”

“She already has.” Titus smiled. “You know how Mom tends to worry. Nearly hounded me to death when I first moved to Kentucky.”

Samuel grunted as he forced himself to stand. He was bone-tired despite the fact that he hadn’t done much all day other than to haul their things into the house and put his horse in the barn. He hadn’t brought any of his household items or furniture along because he knew he wouldn’t have a place to put them right now. Besides, when he’d put his house up for sale, he’d advertised it as fully furnished. He didn’t want any of the furniture he and Elsie had chosen when they’d first gotten married. It would just be one more reminder that she was gone. So all he’d brought to Kentucky were his and the kids’ clothes, some of his tools, his horse and buggy, a box of toys for the kids, their troublesome dog, and a few personal things that had belonged to Elsie. He’d asked his sister Mary Ann to put Elsie’s things in a box because he hadn’t had the strength or the courage to sort through them. He knew he’d have to do it at some point, but not yet. Right now, he wasn’t even able to look at Elsie’s things.

“You okay?” Titus asked, bringing Samuel’s thoughts to a halt.

“Jah, sure. Why do you ask?”

“You said you were going out to the phone shanty to call Mom and Dad, but you’ve been standing there several minutes now, staring at the door.”

“I was thinking,” Samuel mumbled.

“About what you’re gonna say to Mom and Dad?”

Samuel shook his head. “That’s easy enough. I’m just going to tell ‘em we got here okay. I was thinking about other things.” He hurried out the door before Titus had a chance to question him further. He didn’t want to talk about his feelings, and he hoped Titus wouldn’t pry. He wanted the chance to start over and needed to concentrate on finding a way to earn a decent living so he could provide for his kids, because he wasn’t about to let Titus support them very long.

Samuel stepped behind the barn to the phone shanty Titus had shown him earlier. After he’d made a call to his folks and left a message, he dialed his brother Zach’s cell phone.

“Hey, Zach, it’s me, Samuel,” he said, when Zach’s voice mail came on. “Just wanted you to know that we made it to Titus’s okay. Talk to you soon.”

Samuel hung up the phone and trudged back through the slippery, wet snow toward the house. He was sort of glad he merely had to leave a message for his parents and brother. Right now, holding a conversation and answering a lot of questions would have drained him even more.

He’d only made it halfway there, when the two cats the kids had been playing with earlier darted out of the barn, followed by Lucky, who was hot on their heels. Hissing and meowing, the cats ran up the nearest tree. Lucky slid across the snow after them, bounced against the tree, and toppled over. He didn’t stay down long though. He leaped to his feet and started barking frantically as he pawed at the trunk of the tree.

Samuel’s son, Leon, dashed across the yard hollering at the dog,
“Kumme
, Lucky!” He slapped the side of his leg a couple of times. “Come to me now!”

The dog kept barking as he crouched in front of the tree, looking up at the cats huddled together on a branch high above.

“I was gonna play with the
katze
till Lucky came along and scared the life outa ‘em,” Leon grumbled.

Samuel bent down and grabbed Lucky’s collar, but the dog growled and bared his teeth.

“Knock it off!” Samuel shouted. “You know better than that. Now come with me, you
dummkopp
hund.”

“Lucky ain’t stupid, Daadi. He’s a very
schmaert
dog,” Leon said, lifting his chin to look up at Samuel.

“He’s not too smart when he doesn’t do what he’s told.” Samuel pulled Lucky to his feet and continued slipping and sliding in the direction of the barn. He was almost there, when a horse and buggy rolled into the yard. He recognized Suzanne when she climbed down from the buggy, but he didn’t know the young, dark-haired woman with her.

When Esther stepped out of Suzanne’s buggy, she noticed a tall Amish man with light brown hair peeking out from under his dark blue stocking cap. He held onto the collar of a black Lab, thrashing about, kicking up snow with its back feet.

“That’s Titus’s brother, Samuel,” Suzanne said to Esther. “I’d introduce you, but he seems a little busy right now.”

Obviously struggling to gain control over the dog, Samuel leaned to the right, then to the left. With a sudden jerk, the dog pulled free, and Samuel fell, facedown in the snow. He came up, red-faced and hollering, “You dummkopp hund! I should have left you in Pennsylvania to fend for yourself!”

It was a comical sight, and Esther struggled not to laugh. She could tell by the way Suzanne’s face was contorted that she thought it was funny, too.

The young boy with sandy brown hair who stood nearby wasn’t laughing. He looked up at Samuel and said in a pathetic little voice, “Daadi, please don’t yell at Lucky. He just wants to be free to run.”

“Well, he’s not gonna be free. I’m puttin’ him away in the barn so he can’t terrorize those cats anymore!”

“Don’t think he means to hurt the katze,” the child said. “Think he just wants to play with ‘em.”

Ignoring the boy’s comment, Samuel chased after the dog, grabbed hold of its collar, and pulled the struggling animal to the barn.

Feeling the need to comfort the boy, who appeared to be on the verge of tears, Esther knelt in the snow beside him. “My name’s Esther. What’s yours?”

“Leon.” The child dropped his gaze to the ground. Was he shy or just upset about the dog and not wanting to let on?

“How old are you, Leon?” Esther asked.

“Six. I’m in the first grade at school.”

“Is Lucky your dog?”

Leon lifted his head and looked right at Esther. “Nope. He liked our mamm the best, but after she went to heaven, he started hangin’ around my daed.” Tears welled in Leon’s brown eyes, and he sniffed a couple of times. “’Course Daadi don’t like Lucky much. He don’t like much of anything since
Mammi
died.”

Esther’s heart went out to the boy. She was sure that he wasn’t just upset about the dog. He missed his mother and didn’t understand the reason for his dad’s behavior.

A few minutes later, Samuel reappeared—without the dog.

“It’s good to see you, Samuel,” Suzanne said, shaking his hand. “How was your trip?”

“It went okay.”

Suzanne motioned to Esther. “This is my friend Esther Beiler. We were on our way to the bakery but decided to stop here first and see if Titus wanted us to pick something up for him.”

Samuel barely glanced at Esther. Then with a quick, “Nice to meet you,” he tromped off toward the house.

“Maybe we picked a bad time to come,” Esther whispered to Suzanne.

Suzanne shrugged. “We’re here now, and I want to see Titus, so let’s go inside.” She looked down at Leon and held out her hand. “You’d better come with us. It’s too cold to be out here in the snow.”

When they stepped into the living room, Esther was surprised to see Titus sitting on the couch with two young girls, one with blond hair and one with brown hair, on either side of him. In his lap he held a small, blond-haired boy wearing diapers and a white T-shirt. Titus looked perfectly comfortable with the children.

He’ll make a good father someday, Esther thought, and Suzanne will be a good mother
.

“Did anything unusual happen outside?” Titus asked, looking at Suzanne. “When Samuel came in a few minutes ago, covered in snow, he tromped off to his room like he was really upset.”

Suzanne explained what had transpired with the dog and went on to say how angry Samuel had gotten.

“My
bruder’s
going through a rough time right now, so we’ll need to be patient with him,” Titus said.

Suzanne touched Leon’s shoulder as she nodded at the three children sitting with Titus. “We need to help his kinner adjust to their new surroundings, too.”

“Jah.” Titus looked at Esther. “Would you like to meet my nieces and nephews?”

She smiled. “I met Leon outside, but of course I’d like to meet his brother and sisters, too.”

“This is Marla.” Titus motioned to the girl on his left. “She’s eight years old, and here on my right is Penny. She’s four. Now this little guy here is Jared, and he’s two,” he said, placing his hand on the boy’s blond head.

Esther knelt on the floor in front of the couch, smiling up at the children.
“Mei naame
is Esther.”

The children nodded as they stared at her with curious expressions.

Esther stayed like that for several seconds then rose to her feet. Samuel’s children were obviously not comfortable around her yet. She’d always loved children and hoped she’d have the chance to get to know these four in the days ahead. But for now, not wanting to overwhelm them, the simple introduction would suffice.