A Mother's Gift Read online

  “That was despicable,” Leah muttered. “She knew you’d have no way to wiggle out of raising another man’s child after you married her.”

  Jude sighed gratefully into Leah’s hair. “Frieda begged me to forgive her deception, so of course I did as our faith expects us to do, without letting on to anyone about her secret. Nobody said anything about the twins arriving full-term after we’d been married only six months.”

  “They figured the girls were yours, conceived before you’d married,” Leah muttered.

  Jude held her closer, thanking God for her understanding heart. “Several years and a few miscarriages later, everyone was delighted when Stevie came along,” he continued in a faraway voice. “Maybe I was too suspicious, but when I counted the months back to a time I’d been on the road with an auction company for a long while, the math didn’t work out in favor of my being his father, either.”

  Leah gasped. “How could she do that to you? Especially after you were already raising another man’s twins as your own?”

  “Here again, maybe my suspicions were playing me false,” Jude said with a shrug, “but Frieda didn’t seem the least bit upset about my leaving to accept that job. Three other Amish auctioneers and I were gone a couple of months, helping a bunch of Plain families in Ohio sell off their farms and relocate farther west, where land was more affordable. Frieda thought such a worthwhile cause deserved a little sacrifice on her part—and my parents were living here then, so it wasn’t as though I was leaving her to raise the girls alone.”

  Jude chided himself for stirring up the ghosts of old memories—speaking ill of his deceased wife—yet he wanted Leah to understand his emotional state. “Maybe I was partly to blame. Maybe I shouldn’t have been lured away by the exceptionally gut pay, knowing Frieda had succumbed to temptation before we’d married,” he admitted with a sigh. “Guess I’ll never know how it would’ve worked out had I stayed in Morning Star instead of traveling those months.”

  “Who was Stevie’s father?” Leah blurted out. “Was it the same man who’d sired the twins?”

  “The kids all resemble their mother, so I have no idea—and at this point, it doesn’t matter.” Jude was relieved that Leah had recovered from her low mood and was being so supportive. “I didn’t tell you these things to win your sympathy, sweetheart. I’m just realizing that I married Frieda in a rush of adolescent hormones, and I’ve married you because of a different need—without fully considering what sort of emotional support I should be providing to help you fit into my family.”

  “But it’s not your fault that Stevie and the girls don’t—”

  “Hear me out,” Jude said, gently pressing his finger to Leah’s lips. “I love you so much, sweetheart—I’ve known you and admired you for years,” he added, hoping his candor hadn’t disappointed her. “So now I’ve got to find a way to turn your disillusionment and heartache around by replacing my need with a love you can depend upon. A love that helps you more than it gratifies me.”

  Leah kissed his cheek. “I’ve always loved you, Jude,” she whispered. “I was only thirteen when you married Frieda, but even then, I knew nobody else would be the right husband for me—so I figured to remain a maidel. I didn’t care if I could cook or sew, because I thought I wouldn’t be leaving home. If I had it all to do over, I might’ve helped Mama in the kitchen more,” she added with a resigned sigh.

  Was that the squeak of a floorboard on the other side of the wall? Jude ignored it, determined to help Leah be a happier wife so his children couldn’t drive a wedge between them—or drive Leah away.

  “I love you for who you are, Leah. When I married you, I knew you’d never play me false,” he said, reveling in her warmth as she wrapped her arms around him. “Starting right now, I’m going to pay more attention to Alice and Adeline’s comings and goings and hold them responsible for helping you around the house. Will you believe that, sweetheart? Will you stay with me so we can work this out?”

  When he felt her body relaxing against his, Jude gave thanks for Leah’s willingness to try again.

  “I really want our marriage to be a happy one,” she stated, caressing his chest with her small, sturdy hand. “I knew it would take time and effort to become your kids’ new mother, and now I’m more realistic about what that means. You’re not the only one who didn’t listen when folks told you we’d have a long row to hoe, adjusting to the fit of our new family.”

  Jude kissed her until they forgot about the kids. As they succumbed to the pleasures of being a man and a woman, a committed husband and wife who were very much in love, he knew he’d been blessed beyond belief by Leah’s sweet, stalwart belief in him.

  Chapter 5

  Alice waved Adeline into their room and silently shut the door behind her. “Do you believe that—what he said about Mamm?” she whispered angrily.

  “And that he’s not really our father?” Adeline shot back. “Why was he telling her that, when we’re the ones who ought to know?”

  “I can’t believe Mamm wouldn’t have told us if Dat—or that man we’ve been calling Dat—wasn’t really our father. Mamm told us everything,” Alice added, crossing her arms hard across her chest. “What if it’s not true? What if he’s just saying that to Leah to make her feel sorry for him? Phooey! For a while there, I thought we’d be able to get rid of her. Scare her away.”

  “Puh! Dat’s hot for her body. He’ll never let her go.”

  “Gut thing it’s dark, so he can’t see how ugly she is.”

  The two of them stifled a fit of giggles as they scurried back into the double bed they’d shared since they were small girls. Their bedroom was on the north side of the house, always the coldest room in the winter, so it felt good to be back underneath the layers of quilts and blankets after their visit to the guest room, which shared a wall with the bedroom where their parents had always slept. Since Leah had arrived, Alice and Adeline had felt compelled to eavesdrop every now and again, even though they knew their curiosity was improper.

  Alice grimaced in the darkness. “What if they make a baby?”

  “What if Dat really isn’t our father?” Adeline said without missing a beat. “Think about what that could mean for us.”

  “Like, maybe we could find our real father and go live with him, instead of being stuck here with her?” Alice savored the way her disgusted sigh lingered in the chilly air. “Now that she’s ratted on us, Dat’s going to be on our case constantly. We only threw those chicken bones at her once, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Well, the second time it was pork chop bones,” Adeline recalled with a chuckle. “But we made our point. She knows we hate her guts and we want her gone.” She tucked the covers under her chin to stay warmer. “And if Dat’s not our real father, well, neither of them are our parents, so that means they have no say about where we go or what we do, jah? I mean, we’re sixteen—and we’re in rumspringa. They can’t touch us.”

  “Makes sense to me. But it was easier to get away when Mammi Margaret lived here,” Alice put in wistfully. “She’s old and clueless—”

  “And she was busy with Stevie, and the cooking, and the housework. The new wife doesn’t do any of that stuff, so she has too much time to spy on us from the barn and the animal pens.”

  “She’s where she belongs out there. Just another one of the goats.”

  The twins pondered their situation for a few moments before Adeline grabbed the wind-up alarm clock on the nightstand beside her. “Almost five o’clock,” she said. “Stevie’s going to be pounding on our door—”

  “I’m not getting out of bed until we have our plan in place,” Alice interrupted tersely. “If we don’t pack up and leave, we’re going to have to put up with Dat’s lecture while she squirms in her chair and can’t look us in the eye. Bwawk-bwawk-bwawk,” she squawked, bending her arms and flapping them beneath the covers.

  Adeline sighed. “Where would we go? None of our friends’ parents would allow us to live in their homes for more than
a day or two—and they’ll ask a gazillion questions before they send us back here.”

  “Why should we be the ones to leave?” Alice challenged, mostly because it felt good to ask belligerent questions. She let out another loud sigh. “But truth be told, it’s too cold to sleep out in the loft of the barn—unless Dexter and Phil are with us!” she added with a mischievous laugh.

  “Forget that. We don’t want them coming around here, because then Dat will know who they are,” Adeline pointed out. “He’ll lock us in our room until we have gray hair if he gets a look at them and sees how old they are.”

  “They’d take us to a motel to live, if we asked them.”

  “And how would we pay for that?” Adeline asked. “It would only be a matter of time before Dat or Uncle Jeremiah would come looking for—”

  “Shh!” Alice clapped her hand over Adeline’s mouth, listening to the footsteps in the hallway. The even, heavy tread of work boots meant it was Dat, heading downstairs to start the coffee and tend the horses. As always, the three bottom stairs squeaked beneath his weight. “If he hears us talking this way, we’ll be in big trouble.”

  Adeline let out a mirthless chuckle. “Let’s face it, if we really do leave, we’ll be in even bigger—oh, here she comes.”

  The twins lay absolutely still as the lighter sound of sneakers came down the hallway—and when the footsteps paused in front of their bedroom door, they sucked in their breath, wide-eyed. For seemingly endless moments, Leah just stood out there.

  When she finally moved on, Alice clutched Adeline’s hand. “That was close!” she whispered. “What do you think she was doing?”

  “Well, we know what we’re doing when we stand on the other side of the wall or the door, ain’t so?” she remarked. “We’d better get dressed and get downstairs. Let’s start cooking some hash browns and ham and eggs, with cheese sauce, for haystacks. Dat’s not as likely to get on our case if we make his favorite breakfast.”

  “He’s working that big sale over in New Haven today, jah?” Alice asked as she threw off the covers. “So he’ll have to scoot along, rather than hanging around to keep track of us.”

  As Adeline’s feet landed on the rag rug beside the bed, she smiled. “That’s right! See there—every cloud has a silver lining, and by the time the sun’s up we can be on our way out of here!”

  Chapter 6

  When Jude opened the mudroom door for Leah, the aromas of ham, onions, and other breakfast fixings made his stomach rumble. While they had fed the livestock and checked the twin goats that had been born during the night, they’d discussed the talk they planned to have with the twins over supper, when he returned from the large livestock auction he was working for most of the day. Jude was pleased that Leah was ready to stand with him if Alice and Adeline got sassy, and together they’d devised a list of chores he was going to present to the twins during breakfast. If the girls had enough time to taunt their stepmother and leave home to run with their friends, he’d reasoned, they needed more work around home to fill their hours.

  As Leah removed her work boots and slipped into her sneakers, she winked at him. “Breakfast smells really gut,” she called into the kitchen. “Denki for starting the cooking this morning, girls.”

  Jude noticed that Alice and Adeline were standing at the stove, stirring hash browns and scrambled eggs in skillets without looking at him or responding to Leah’s compliment—because they’re in yet another of their teenage moods, he surmised. As usual, they were dressed alike, and he became aware that their forest green cape dresses had grown snug enough to accentuate their slender waists and full breasts, to the point that their figures would draw more attention than Old Order modesty allowed.

  When did they mature into women? he wondered wistfully, even as he realized it was time to insist that they sew new clothing—before Bishop Jeremiah made the same observations. Jude considered his words carefully, to avoid ruffling the girls’ feathers. To Adeline and Alice, sewing was a necessary evil that ranked right up there with scrubbing floors and cleaning the bathrooms.

  “How about if we all head to the Cedar Creek Mercantile tomorrow?” he asked jovially, opening his arms to Stevie. “What with spring just around the corner, I bet you girls are ready for some new clothes—”

  “And I’m ready for some candy sticks, Dat!” his son exclaimed as he launched himself toward his father.

  Jude caught Stevie and hefted him toward the ceiling to make him laugh. “How did I know that?” he teased, reveling in the boy’s laughter. Stevie’s light brown hair was mussed and needed trimming and his shirt was untucked, bunched around his twisted suspenders, yet Jude was pleased that his son had taken on the task of dressing himself.

  “We’re getting low on feed for the chickens and horses, too,” Leah said as she took plates from the cabinet. “I’ll start a list of what we need to buy.”

  Alice and Adeline shared a look Jude couldn’t interpret, except to realize that they weren’t nearly as excited about a trip to the mercantile as they’d been when they were younger. Silently the twins filled serving bowls with hash browns, fried onions and green peppers, cubed ham, and cheese sauce—the makings for haystacks, his favorite breakfast because it was filling enough to get him through a busy livestock sale until the lunch break. When everyone was seated at the table, Jude bowed his head, leading their time of silent prayer.

  Lord, You know what’s going on and I hope You’ll give me words that will guide my daughters back to being the lovable, helpful girls they were before Frieda passed. Comfort their young hearts as You give Leah the patience to be a mother my kids will come to love. We trust You to provide for—

  One of the twins cleared her throat much more loudly than was necessary, ending the table grace—usurping the privilege that was his, as the man of the house. Jude raised his head and felt nailed by identical pairs of icy blue eyes . . . eyes so reminiscent of Frieda’s that he was momentarily taken aback. “What’s so important that you’ve cut short our table grace?” he asked, carefully controlling his irritation.

  Alice glowered, pointing across the table at Leah. “Why did you tell her that you’re not our father, yet you’ve never told us?” she demanded angrily.

  Jude’s heart stopped. As his mind scrambled for an answer, he realized that he had indeed heard a floorboard creak in the wee hours. How much of his and Leah’s conversation had the girls heard?

  “Why have you lied to us about who we really are?” Adeline drilled him bitterly. “You didn’t even love Mamm—did you?”

  Seated at his left, Leah had gone pale, yet her eyebrows rose resolutely. “So you do sneak into the guest room and listen at the wall,” she remarked, crossing her arms. “You know, my dat used to tell me that if I went sneaking around, poking my nose where it didn’t belong, I might learn things that hurt my feelings—and I deserved to suffer from whatever I’d overheard.”

  “Suffer?” Alice blurted out incredulously. “Seems to me it was our mamm who suffered, because Dat didn’t love her. He was just faking it, once he discovered another man had fathered us!”

  “My relationship with your mother—and with Leah—is none of your business,” Jude muttered, aware that his words were only adding fuel to the wildfire of emotions that had suddenly sucked all the air from the kitchen. “Seems you heard what you wanted to hear and ignored the rest, because I was crazy about your mamm when I married her—and I thought I was the man she loved as well. The issue here is that you two were eavesdropping, and—”

  “No, the issue is that you’re not our father and she will never be our mother!” Alice snapped, again pointing at Leah.

  Jude grasped his daughter’s offending hand, pressing it to the tabletop beneath his.

  “Jah,” Adeline joined in quickly, “why should we have to hang around here so you can do your duty by raising us?”

  Jude blinked. How had his world spun completely off its axis in a matter of seconds? On the other side of Leah, Stevie’s face crumple
d.

  “Stop bein’ so mean, girls,” the boy whimpered. “Dat loves us, and—”

  “He’s not your father, either!” Alice interrupted with a nasty laugh. “This changes everything for us, Stevie. Our lives will never be the same.”

  Utterly flummoxed, Jude smacked the tabletop with his hand. “That will be enough out of both of you,” he said in a strained whisper. “It’s one thing to be angry with me for the private conversation you eavesdropped on—”

  “But it’s another thing altogether—sheer meanness—to upset Stevie,” Leah put in as she slipped her arm around the boy’s shaking shoulders. “He’s too young to understand what you’re saying—”

  “Jah, he’s lucky,” Alice whispered vehemently. “We girls know exactly what you said, Dat, and we’ll never forgive you for it!”

  Jude felt his control snap as he stood up, gazing sternly at his teenage daughters. Their betrayal crushed his heart, because he’d willingly raised them with all the love he possessed. It wasn’t their fault that their mother had deceived him. They were furious about the secret they’d overheard, but he couldn’t allow their indignation and anger to create chaos for Stevie and Leah—especially since he had to be away all day.

  “Go to your room,” he said in the calmest tone he could muster. “When I come home this afternoon, we’ll continue this conversation after you’ve had a chance to consider the consequences of writing me off as your parent. We’ll also address the way you’ve mistreated Leah with your insolence. You knew it was wrong to listen to us on the other side of the wall—”

  “Ah, but in the Bible, it says the truth will set you free,” Alice mocked as she rose stiffly from her chair.

  “Jah, we’re free, all right,” Adeline chimed in as she followed her sister from the kitchen. “And rumspringa means we don’t have to say we’re sorry for what we do or say!”