A Mother's Gift Page 19

  “I’m at my parents’ house, on the other side of Morning Star,” Natalie replied quickly. “I’m ready to be responsible for my baby. Honest.”

  Leah felt as though she might faint. She closed her eyes to lean against the kitchen counter, struggling to do the right thing. “When you brought Betsy here, you didn’t leave us any bottles or diapers or clothing. Do you have those things for her?” she asked. “Betsy’s been doing well—growing like a weed—on milk from my goats. What will you be feeding her?”

  “I’ve got a can of formula powder out in the car,” Natalie quickly assured her. “But hey, if you could give me some clothes and diapers and stuff, I could sure use them.”

  Adeline stared incredulously. “Leah, you can’t be serious!”

  “You know Natalie can’t take gut care of Betsy! She doesn’t even have clothes for her,” Alice chimed in, placing her fists on her hips. “Why should we let her take a poor, helpless baby—”

  “Because she’s Betsy’s mother, and a baby belongs with her mamm,” Leah put in, somehow managing not to burst into tears at the mere thought of what she had to do. “If—if you girls will help me pack the clothes and bottles, this will go easier. Faster.”

  Not waiting for their reply, Leah turned to go upstairs before she lost her nerve. Her heart was banging against her rib cage and the staircase blurred as her eyes filled with tears, but she knew Jude would make the same decision, even though he’d loved Betsy as his own child since her mysterious appearance.

  He’ll be devastated when he comes home and finds that Betsy’s gone, she thought as she entered the bedroom. Leah heard the twins speaking loudly and none too politely to Natalie downstairs in the kitchen, so she quickly emptied the drawers of the cloth diapers, onesies, and little dresses her mother had so lovingly sewn. She didn’t want Betsy to have time to get upset by the girls’ confrontational talk—and she knew she’d cave in with despair if she stopped to think about what she was doing. She found a big plastic bin in the hall closet and stuffed the clothes into it.

  Downstairs, Leah tucked as many baby bottles as would fit inside the bin and snapped its lid shut. She couldn’t look at Betsy in Natalie’s arms—didn’t dare ask to hold her one last time, for fear she’d be unable to let go of the little girl who’d so effortlessly filled her heart and her days this past month. And if Betsy sees me crying for her—or won’t release me to go with Natalie—we’ll all get more upset.

  “All right, Natalie, let’s go. Let’s get this over with,” Leah whispered as she hurried toward the door with the bin. Summoning every ounce of strength she had, she headed outside toward the run-down car, sensing she would regret this decision—would mourn this day—for the rest of her life.

  But she was doing the right thing. In the Bible story about the two women who’d each begged King Solomon for a disputed baby, hadn’t the baby’s real mother loved the child enough to give it up after the king had threatened to cut the child in half?

  Leah reached the car and flung open a back door so she could stuff the bin into the backseat. The car smelled musty and was littered with food wrappers, but that wasn’t her immediate concern. “Don’t leave yet,” she rasped as Natalie came along behind her with the baby. “I still have your basket. She—she can ride in it instead of bouncing around loose on the seat.”

  Somehow Leah made it to the house and then to the car again. As Natalie laid Betsy in the towel-lined basket, Leah felt as though this girl had just ripped her world to shreds. When the baby began to cry and reach for her, Leah turned away and held herself. “I—I wish you joy and God’s blessings as you raise your beautiful little girl,” she blurted out. “We love her more than you’ll ever know. Denki for sharing her with us.”

  Leah rushed back to the kitchen and fell into a chair—but the emotional toll of giving up baby Betsy propelled her to the bathroom, sick to her stomach. When she’d stopped vomiting, she stumbled weakly to her chair at the table again. The twins were so upset with her that they’d forgotten all about baking cookies.

  “This is just wrong, Leah,” Alice cried out. “Can’t you see that?”

  “Natalie has no clue about raising a baby!” Adeline added vehemently.

  Leah understood their criticisms, but she tried to help them understand her reasoning. “Natalie gave us such a gift, entrusting her baby to us—think about what a hard choice she made, and how tough her life’s been since she had a baby out of wedlock,” she insisted softly. “We’ve become a stronger family because Betsy was here, because we all wanted her to grow and be healthy. We need to keep Natalie and Betsy in our prayers, and be grateful for the time we had with Betsy. She pulled us together, girls.”

  “And now Natalie’s tearing us apart!” Adeline put in angrily.

  Alice started for the door. “We’re going after her. We’ve got to make her see reason.”

  The slam of the back door made Leah wince. She admired the twins’ fierce need to retrieve Betsy—and it warmed her heart to see how far the girls had come since the baby’s arrival, when they’d wanted nothing to do with her. Yet she felt Natalie deserved a chance to raise her child. Natalie would make mistakes and some questionable decisions, no doubt. But what parent didn’t?

  Stevie was in the front room crying, but Leah didn’t yet have the strength to go comfort him. She sat holding her head in her hands, focused on the tabletop so she wouldn’t have to look at the empty swing where, mere moments ago, Betsy had been laughing and babbling at them. Such a happy, healthy baby. The light of their lives.

  I feel like these cards Stevie was playing with, Leah thought as tears ran down her cheeks. Scattered and strewn, as though my house—my life—is suddenly empty and has collapsed around me. What am I supposed to do now, Lord? And how can I possibly explain this to Jude?

  Chapter 20

  When Jude entered the kitchen late that afternoon, the atmosphere felt so dark and heavy that a thunderstorm might’ve ravaged the house and blown away all the usual signs of his family’s presence. The house was so quiet, he could hear the soft tick-tick-tick of the battery clock on the wall. Although he saw—and smelled—no sign that supper preparations might be under way, the kitchen was a mess. Utensils were strewn across the countertops and bowls of what appeared to be cookie dough sat near the oven. A couple of cookie sheets were covered with a dozen evenly spaced baked sugar cookies.

  Why did the girls leave in such a hurry? I’ve never known Stevie to leave cookies untouched—

  Jude sucked air. What if someone had gotten so ill—or injured—that Leah had rushed them to the hospital? Or had somebody . . . died?

  “Leah?” he called out as he passed through the kitchen. “Stevie? Anybody home?”

  He entered the front room and stopped. Leah sat on the sofa, holding Stevie in her lap. Her face was pale, and both of them looked dejected. Wrung out. The twins were nowhere in sight.

  Jude scowled. Where was Betsy?

  Leah glumly looked up at him. “We, um, got quite a shock this morning when . . . well, Betsy’s mother came and took her back.”

  The bottom dropped out of Jude’s heart. “Took her back? Who was it?” he asked, his mind in an uproar as he approached his wife and son. He sat down on the sturdy coffee table directly across from Leah, gently grasping Stevie’s leg.

  “The girls knew her from spending time at the pool hall,” Leah replied sadly. “It went against my better judgment, letting Natalie leave with Betsy—”

  “She didn’t even have no clothes for her!” Stevie chimed in forlornly.

  “—but how could I refuse her?” his wife continued with a shake of her head. “She wanted her child, and it wasn’t as though Betsy was actually ours—”

  “But we loved her,” Stevie protested with a hitch in his voice. “And now she’s gone.”

  Jude let out a loud sigh. He recalled how mystified they’d all been when the baby had appeared from out of nowhere a month ago. Now the mother in question had an identity—not that he
felt any better, sensing Leah’s reluctance to let Betsy go with her. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, because he could think of nothing else to say. “I wish I could’ve been here to help you—or to ask Natalie to reconsider.”

  “Would you have done anything different? We’ve always believed that babies belong with their mothers.” Leah’s stark sadness reflected her doubts, her longing for Betsy’s bubbly, sunny presence. “When Natalie said she could use some clothes and supplies I—I sent them along with her. I didn’t want to think about Betsy without her little dresses, or bottles to drink from, or—”

  Leah’s sudden sobs tore Jude to shreds. She cried so rarely, and the fact that nothing had gotten done since Betsy’s departure told him exactly how bereft and empty she felt. “I don’t see how you could’ve refused to let Betsy go with her mother,” he assured her. He listened for a moment, noting the stillness in the rest of the house. “Where are the girls? Maybe we should try to go about our usual evening chores. We’ll feel better if we’re all together to discuss this over supper.”

  “Supper,” Leah said with a sigh. She shrugged. “Alice and Adeline thought I was absolutely wrong to let Natalie take Betsy—not to mention the clothes and supplies. I tried to talk them out of it, but they were determined to follow Natalie and get her to change her mind.”

  “Maybe they’ll bring Betsy home with ’em,” Stevie said with a hopeful smile.

  Jude patted the boy’s leg and stood up. “Whether they do or they don’t, we’ve got animals to feed, son,” he said gently. “And whatever happens, we can be sure God’s got a hand in it. Sometimes He—and the folks around us—do things we don’t understand, but we just have to keep on keeping on until we have a better answer.”

  Stevie rose from Leah’s lap and started for the barn, but he didn’t look convinced by what Jude had said. Truth be told, Jude wasn’t sure they would ever have a better answer, either. Manual labor would at least give him some motions to go through.

  After the chores, Jude went to the phone shanty and called for pizza delivery, a treat reserved for special occasions—or when the women in his life had spent the day in a hot kitchen running the canners. When he returned to the house and saw the depressed, defeated expression that lingered on Leah’s pale face, he went upstairs on a sad mission of mercy. He heard Alice and Adeline in their room and let go of his last shred of hope that Betsy might return.

  Jude choked up at the sight of a few little clothes left in the white dresser that doubled as a changing table. Leah was too blinded by tears to see them when she was whisking away the rest of Betsy’s clothing, he realized. He quickly tucked the tiny garments into the white wicker bassinet and carried it to the attic. After he’d placed the white dresser up there as well, he returned to the bedroom.

  The corner of the room appeared as starkly empty as he felt.

  After a moment, Jude thought he heard happy gurgling . . . could still imagine little hands reaching up to him from the bassinet. He suspected memories of Betsy would haunt them all for a long, long time.

  Amazing, how such tiny hands took such a big hold on our hearts in such a short time, he thought as he went downstairs to sit with Leah. Lord, You’ve got to help me comfort her. Maybe it would help if we knew another baby would soon be sleeping in that bassinet. . . .

  * * *

  On the following Monday, Leah worked at a stainless steel table outside the barn, cutting a large batch of butchered and plucked chickens into serving pieces. She had already finished with the ducks, which she’d left whole—except for removing their innards—and they were iced down in a big cooler. On the days when she prepared her birds to sell to the meat locker in Cedar Creek, she rose earlier than usual so the butchering was done by midmorning. After that, she would shower and take her coolers of poultry into town for Bishop Vernon’s nephew, Abner, to package and freeze—or to sell fresh in his butcher shop’s meat case.

  The mid-March dawn was chilly, and Leah’s breath rose as vapor that glowed in the light of her lantern. Ordinarily, these early mornings when she worked outside soothed her soul. On this particular day, focusing on her task kept her busy enough that Betsy’s absence remained a dull ache.

  It’s been three days since Natalie took her back. If I can just get through this morning, this day . . . my work will be my salvation.

  When Leah was milking her goats—or when she was dealing with the mess of butchering birds—she believed she was doing the work God had intended for her to carry out, for wasn’t she feeding people? She might not be a whiz in the kitchen, but she still provided food that would nourish the folks who bought her poultry and eggs.

  Leah glanced up to savor the pink ribbons of the sunrise. The light in the kitchen window told her the twins were cooking breakfast. Jude would soon be doing the horse chores and other work around the yard with Stevie before he went to the sale barn to call an auction this afternoon. Their days weren’t as full without Betsy’s presence, but Leah took solace from the way the Shetler household had found a flow, an orderly attempt at comfort, now that Alice and Adeline weren’t causing any trouble.

  Rifle fire shattered the stillness, one shot followed by several more.

  Momentarily stunned, Leah rinsed her hands in the basin and ran toward where the gunshots had come from. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but she had to be sure her cows and calves were—

  The roar of an engine and the squeal of tires made Leah run faster. She caught sight of a dark gray pickup truck fishtailing down the road as it sped away in a cloud of dust. English—probably men, she thought as she raced the last several yards to the enclosure where her calves were eating. What would they be doing on our road—shooting a gun—at this hour of the morning?

  What Leah saw stopped her heart. The four black-and-white calves cowered against the back side of the fence with Maisie, but the rest of her herd—except for Ike the bull, pastured farther from the road—lay dead on the ground. Within seconds she’d lost Erma, Patsy, and the six steers she’d planned to market in the next couple of months. Because she butchered animals for the meat market, she was no stranger to the sight of blood, but seeing the sudden, senseless slaughter of her cattle made her sick to her stomach. Clammy and sweating, she turned toward the bushes to vomit.

  “Leah, what happened?” Jude called out as he ran toward her. “I heard shots being fired and—”

  The twins, who’d jogged from the house alongside their dat, took one look and turned away from the pen, wide-eyed and pale. “Why would anyone want to shoot innocent cows?” Alice asked in a strained voice. “They weren’t bothering anybody—”

  “They couldn’t bother anybody,” Adeline protested. “And they had nowhere to run from whoever had the gun.”

  “Hey, what’s goin’ on?” Stevie hollered as he caught up to them. Jude quickly grabbed the boy, hoping to keep him from seeing the carnage around the calves’ enclosure, but when Stevie saw how upset Leah and the girls were, he squirmed out of his dat’s grasp.

  The boy could only gape before he turned to hide his face in Leah’s skirt. “Who woulda been mean enough to shoot our cows, Leah?” he demanded, his voice rising into a wail.

  Leah inhaled the chill morning air to settle herself before she stooped to embrace Stevie’s shaking body. “I’m sorry you had to see this, honey,” she said as she held him. “By the time I got here, all I saw was the back end of a big gray pickup truck racing down the road. I—I couldn’t read the license plate—”

  “English,” Jude muttered, glaring in the direction the truck had gone. “And cowardly bullies they were, too, figuring we Amish wouldn’t retaliate or report their crime. I have half a mind to call the sheriff anyway.”

  When Leah raised her head to question Jude’s judgment, she noticed that the twins were gazing at each other as though something rang a bell. “Girls, do you have any idea who might’ve been driving that truck?” she blurted. “It looked a lot like the one your English friends drive.”

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bsp; Alice immediately shook her head and started back to the house, while Adeline grabbed Stevie’s hand. “Let’s go in,” she hastily ordered the boy. “You’ll have nightmares if you keep looking at those poor cows.”

  “Jah, son, it’s best if you go in with the girls,” Jude agreed sadly. “Leah and I need to clean up this mess.”

  Leah sighed as she and Jude watched the kids return to the house. Suddenly chilly, she buttoned her barn coat. “Sure as you and I are standing here, Dexter and Phil shot my cattle,” she stated. “But we’ve got no proof.”

  “The look on Alice’s and Adeline’s faces is all the proof I need,” he muttered vehemently. “If this is those guys’ way of catching our attention—trying to get that cell phone back—well, I won’t let them get away with slaughtering your animals, Leah. That’s just wrong.”

  Jude stopped his ranting to look closely at her. “Are you all right—I mean, except for this shooting spree?” he asked as he slung an arm around her shoulders. “Ordinarily you’ve got a strong stomach.”

  Leah shrugged, bewildered. “I don’t know what came over me,” she said weakly. “I’m fine now, really. The sooner we clean up this mess, the better I’ll feel.”

  He nodded.

  Jude hurried toward the barn, and after a moment Leah followed him. “Guess we’ll be eating a lot of beef and veal for a while,” she remarked glumly. “Maybe Abner will be willing to sell some extra steaks and roasts. I’ll take some in when I deliver my ducks and chickens.”

  “I’m sorry this happened,” Jude said as they walked back to the pen. “I know you were counting on a nice check when you sold the six steers—which is why I plan to speak with Sheriff Banks instead of just forgiving and forgetting. And what if Stevie or the girls—or you—had been hit by bullets passing through the fence?”

  Leah’s eyebrows rose. Jude was feeling protective of her and the kids, but it wasn’t the Plain way to seek out English law enforcement to deal with vandalism or other troublesome incidents. “Why not discuss this with Jeremiah instead?” she asked. “What sort of information could you give to the sheriff that would help him locate those boys?”