If Rachel had hoped to spend Saturday inside with Ida, teaching herself to crochet and writing in her journal, she was sadly mistaken.
“A cold front is blowing through tonight. I need you to help Caleb with this list of to-dos while the weather is good.”
This was presented to her as they were eating breakfast, and she’d made the mistake of glancing over at Caleb, who had rolled his eyes. So he wasn’t any happier about the day’s agenda than she was.
John didn’t seem to notice the tension in the air. “I’d help if I could, but I promised Big Atlee that I’d help him mend his barn’s south wall.”
“I could do that,” Caleb said.
“Nein. Help your mother. You know how she loves Christmas.”
“Big Atlee?” Rachel asked.
“Oh, ya. We have a Big Atlee—he’s bigger than Caleb even, and Little Atlee...”
“Who isn’t really little,” Ida pointed out.
“But smaller than Big Atlee, and then there’s Limping Atlee.”
“You actually call him Limping Atlee?”
“He doesn’t mind. Thinks it’s clever.” John smiled at her and drained his coffee cup. “You know how it is with the Amish—no need for new fancy names when old ones will do, even if it means having two or three in the same family.”
Rachel watched as Ida followed her husband into the mudroom. They spoke softy as he donned his jacket and hat, and then Ida stood on tiptoe to kiss him lightly on the lips. For a moment, his arms tightened around her waist, and a smile spread across her lips, and Ida looked like the young woman she must have once been.
“They’re romantic fools,” Caleb said, nodding toward his parents.
“I think it’s sweet.”
“Ya, until they forget and hold hands in public.”
Rachel might have thought that Caleb was being harsh, but his ears had turned red. Was he actually embarrassed that his parents sometimes showed their affection for one another? “What’s wrong with holding hands?”
“It’s just not what we do.”
“Is that so?”
“I love my parents, but they sometimes forget that others are watching. They also have a tendency to butt into other people’s business.”
She didn’t know how to answer that, so she stood to begin clearing the dishes.
“Meet me in the barn when you’re done,” he said, and then Caleb, too, was gone.
Rachel took her time with the washing and drying. By the time Ida came back in, she had the kitchen looking positively sparkly.
“Oh, dear, I didn’t mean for you to do all the work. I just wanted to walk John out to his buggy.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Twenty-eight years, and it’s been a journey, let me tell you. We’ve had our ups and downs, good years and bad.” Ida was looking out the window, watching John drive down the lane. When she turned back toward Rachel, her expression had become more serious. “Caleb gets his stubborn streak honestly, and it’s not from me. They are both good men, though. And I’ve never once doubted that John loved me. What more could a woman ask for?”
To remember her own name?
To go home for Christmas?
To know where home was?
But all those things sounded whiny in her head, so Rachel didn’t say them. Instead she scooped the to-do list off the table, stuck it in her apron pocket and snagged her borrowed coat from the hook in the mudroom.
“That’s going to be too hot, Rachel...though no doubt it will be perfect tomorrow.” Ida hurried back to her room and returned with a tattered jacket. “This old jacket will be better. I use it when I’m working outside sometimes.”
The sleeves were too long, the garment nearly reached to her knees and she could have wrapped it around herself twice. Instead of pointing out those things, Rachel thanked her, glanced in the small mirror in the bathroom to be sure her kapp was on straight and hurried out to the barn.
Caleb’s eyes widened when he saw her. “She gave you that to wear?”
“It’s a little big.”
“It belonged to my grossdaddi. It’s one of the few things of his that she kept.”
“Oh.”
Caleb shook his head, as if he didn’t stand a chance of ever understanding the ways of women. He’d already hooked the smaller buggy horse up to an open wagon, and he motioned for her to climb aboard.
Once she was settled beside him, he took off for the far southeast side of the property.
“The list says we’re to bring back cedar limbs, pinecones if we can find any, fall leaves, cattails and a small bale of hay.”
“Ya. It cheers her to make a holiday display that she leaves by the door.”
“I thought you Montgomery Amish were conservative.” She didn’t mean to needle him, but somehow the words popped out of her mouth before she fully considered how they would sound.
“Oh, you won’t be finding a Christmas tree in our homes, that’s for certain.”
“Presents?”
“Simple, homemade things.” He glanced at her curiously. “You don’t remember any of this?”
“Not really. It’s as if...as if there’s simply a hole where my memories used to be. When I try hard to remember, when I actively focus on it, the headaches return.”
Caleb nodded as if that made sense. “Best not focus on it, then.”
“Easier said than done.”
But Caleb apparently didn’t hear that. He’d pulled the wagon to a stop at the edge of a stand of trees, and now spoke to the horse, set the brake and climbed out of the wagon. As an afterthought he reached into the back of the wagon and pulled out a handsaw and a basket.
He handed Rachel the basket and motioned toward the stand of trees.
She didn’t speak for a moment, then simply followed him, though she wondered where they were going. When they reached the middle of the grove, she understood. It was as if someone had carved out a spot—a secret garden of sorts. The area was cleared of trees, though she could only just see the bright blue sky above if she stood exactly in the middle. The trees surrounding them—cedar and pine and oak and birch—created a canopy that allowed the light to sift through.
“This is beautiful,” she said.
“One of Mamm’s favorite places. Toward the back are a couple of pine trees. If you’ll look for the pinecones, I’ll saw off a few cedar branches.”
Rachel’s anxiety slipped away under that umbrella of trees. She stopped worrying about finding a job and trying to remember her past. She breathed in deeply the scent of the pines and enjoyed the unseasonal warmness of the day. She sifted through the brown and red and copper-colored leaves, filling her basket with pinecones for Ida. She was thinking of that, of a holiday display by the front door in this Plain conservative home, when something shifted.
She saw only a flash of tan, then a copper color, and suddenly Caleb’s hands were on her arms, pulling her back and urging her to be silent.
She dropped the basket. Pinecones spilled across the leaves. She reached for them instinctively as she might have reached for a glass of water that was tipped off a table, but it was too late. Caleb’s voice in her ear again urged her to move back, and she was thinking of that—of how his voice caused goose bumps to cascade down her arms—when she saw the copperhead. It slithered through the leaves, its hourglass pattern blending nearly perfectly with the foliage around it.
Her breath caught in her throat, her heartbeat accelerated and adrenaline surged through her system.
“Are you okay?”
“Ya.”
“You’re sure?”
“How did you...?”
“I was reaching over you to get a pine bough for Mamm.”
“My mind was wandering, I guess...thinking of Christmas.”
“I saw it slither and...” Caleb seemed to suddenly realize that his hands were still on her arms. He took a step back. “I should have warned you.”
“Nein. I may have forgotten a few things...”
“Nearly everything.”
“...but I’m not stupid. I know that snakes sometimes come out on winter days—especially warm winter days and if their den is close to a sunny spot.”
Rachel shivered, realizing how close she’d been to it. Surely it wouldn’t have struck her, but it might have...if it had felt threatened, and she had been rooting around in its winter home.
She stepped closer to Caleb. “Danki.”
“For what?”
“For saving me...again.”
And there it was, that thing that had been between them since they’d first met, since five days earlier when Caleb had found her collapsed in the middle of the road. Gratitude swelled in her heart that he had saved her, and she realized the source for some of the friction between them.
She’d always considered herself to be someone who didn’t need saving.
She’d always been fiercely independent.
She wasn’t sure how she knew that about herself when she didn’t even know her own last name, but it felt right. Her stubbornness, her unwillingness to accept help, was all tied up in how she had ended up in this small community in southwest Indiana.
Two terrible, life-changing situations. She could have died the first time, been injured the second. She hadn’t been because Caleb had been there—both times.
A pained expression crossed Caleb’s face.
“You’re uncomfortable with that, aren’t you?”
“With what?” He picked up a stick, squatted and pushed it around the area where she’d been collecting pinecones, apparently checking for any additional snakes.
“You’re uncomfortable with saving me, that’s what.” She laughed out loud—part nervousness and part relief. It wasn’t that Caleb hated her, it was that he was what the romance books would call a reluctant hero. “You’re not responsible for me, you know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Some cultures believe that if you save someone’s life, then you’re responsible for them from that point on.”
“I’ve never heard that before.”
“It makes a certain sense. If you’d saved a horse or a dog, then you’d take it home and care for it. Right?”
“Maybe.”
She kneeled beside him in the leaves, certain that he’d scared any other snakes away. “But I’m not a horse or a dog.”
He purposely scooted a little to the left, away from her.
“I’m a woman.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But that doesn’t mean you’re responsible for me, Caleb.” She reached out and pushed him, catching him unaware. Losing his balance, he plopped into the leaves and looked at her as if she’d lost what was left of her mind.
And yet that felt right, too—the teasing and the laughter.
Instead of explaining the thoughts that were tumbling through her mind, she resumed picking up the pinecones, this time humming as she did so.
Caleb didn’t know what had come over Rachel.
He’d nearly had a heart attack when he’d seen the copperhead slithering inches from her hand, and then he’d reacted on instinct, pulling her away and urging her to be quiet.
Which she had, at first, but when she had realized what had happened, she’d looked up at him with such gratitude that Caleb had felt like he was drowning in her warm brown eyes. And then she’d begun talking about saving people and responsibility. While he was still trying to follow her train of thought, she’d begun to laugh.
He didn’t have a clue as to why women acted the way they did, and he vowed—not for the first time—to give up trying.
“Do we have enough items?” Rachel had shed the jacket that was his grossdaddi’s and set it across the seat of the wagon.
“Items?”
“For your mamm, for her decorations.”
“Oh. Ya. I guess so.” But there was one more thing on the list that he was holding, so he helped Rachel climb up into the wagon, jogged around to the other side and joined her, then called out to the mare.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“Does it include snakes?”
“Nein.”
“Bears?”
“No bears here that I know of.”
“Maybe a hive of Africanized bees?”
He glanced over at her and found her smiling mischievously.
“You’re a strange person, did you know that?”
“Caleb Wittmer, what would make you say such a thing?”
“You were nearly bitten by a venomous snake less than ten minutes ago, and now you’re making jokes?”
Rachel pulled her kapp strings forward and ran her fingers up and down the length of the fabric. “I wasn’t, though, just like I didn’t perish in the snow. I guess Gotte isn’t through with me yet.”
“I suppose not.”
Caleb had fallen into the habit of thinking of Rachel as young and immature, but he realized now that nothing was further from the truth. It was only that sometimes she would get that faraway expression, and he would assume she was lost in childish daydreams. In other words he’d judged her and done so too harshly. That was something he’d be needing to pray about, something he’d need to ask forgiveness for.
“No time like the present,” he muttered.
“What’s that?”
“I was just thinking that I needed to apologize to you, and there’s no time like the present.” He pulled off his hat and resettled it on his head. “Not something I much enjoy doing.”
“And what do you have to apologize for? Saving me?”
“Nein. Judging you.”
Rachel waited. She didn’t jump in. She didn’t make it any easier for him.
“I shouldn’t have offered you my advice about getting a job. I should have known that you would already be thinking about that.”
She studied him a minute, and then she began to laugh.
“Something funny about that?”
“Only that I did need a little push. It’s not that I wasn’t going to look, but I thought I’d wake up the day after you found me or the day after that and remember everything. What was the use in looking for a job when I wouldn’t be staying? Why look for employment when I’d soon have my old life back?”
“It has only been a week.”
“And yet, I don’t remember much more with each passing day. It doesn’t look as if I’ll be traipsing home anytime soon.”
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out that way.”
“You helped me see that I need to accept my situation, as it is, until it changes.”
Caleb nodded as if he agreed, but in truth he was simply relieved that she wasn’t still angry with him.
Her forehead wrinkled and she stared out across him, at the field they were passing. “I did speak to the bishop.”
“Ya?”
“While I was in town yesterday. He’s going to help me find a job.”
“That’s gut.”
“I think so, since it’s true that ‘Amish women work hard...at least most of them do.’”
Caleb winced to hear his own words quoted back to him, but at least she’d been listening. It was important for every member of a household to contribute to the well-being of that household. Maybe she was realizing that. He certainly didn’t want to bring it up—it would only seem like he was lecturing her again. Fortunately, they were at the pond, and he could change the subject.
“This is a gut fishing spot in the summer.” He called out to the horse to stop and set the brake on the wagon.
“I didn’t know you had a pond.”
“Sometimes Mamm packs a picnic and brings it down here on warm days.” It struck him that Rachel wouldn’t care about that. She almost certainly wouldn’t still be here by the time summer rolled around.
“So what are we here to find? I can’t remember what else is on there.” She tried to snag his mamm’s list out of his hand, but he held it out of her reach, causing her to laugh more and nearly fall into his lap. He had no idea why he was acting like a youngie, but it felt nice to relax and enjoy the afternoon. He hopped out of the wagon, pulled a rake and a pair of garden shears from the back of the wagon, and began walking along the edge of the pond.
“We need cattails,” he said.
“Not real cattails.”
“Nein. The kind that grow around a pond, like those.” He pointed to a tall stand of bulrushes. As they moved closer to the edge of the pond, he said, “Watch where you put your feet. You wouldn’t want to sink in that mud.”
“Native Americans used cattails to make mats and baskets.”
“Is that so?”
“Ya, and the head can be dipped in oil and used as a torch.”
Caleb turned to stare at her quizzically.
“I have no idea how I knew that.” Instead of becoming gloomy over that realization, she smiled and gestured toward the tall weeds with brown cigar-shaped heads. “How are we supposed to reach them?”
Caleb held up the rake.
“Ah.”
Rachel was happy to point out the tallest, prettiest cattails, as she continued to regale him with trivia.
The lower parts of the leaves could be used in salads.
Young cattails could be roasted.
Pollen of the cattail could be added to pancakes.
“Maybe you were a botanist before.”
“Ya, because there are a lot of female Amish botanists.”
The banter between them felt light and comfortable. The afternoon was warm, and it was hard for Caleb to wrap his mind around the fact that earlier that week she might have perished in the snow, but it was true. Indiana weather was like that—fickle.
What if he hadn’t been mending that particular section of fence on Monday as she walked down the road?
What if she’d arrived at that spot an hour later, after he’d already gone?
For the first time since that fateful morning, Caleb was grateful that he had found her, that Gotte had brought Rachel into their lives. She might not be there for long. Regardless of what his friends Gabriel and Beth thought, he was neither jealous of her presence nor interested in her in a romantic way.
But perhaps they could be friends, for as long as she was there. A month or a year from now, he’d look back and laugh at the strange woman who had plopped into their lives.
As they finished pulling the cattails from around the pond, he kept thinking of the way her arms had felt under his hands, of the look in her eyes as she’d gazed up at him, then at the snake, and then back at him. It was as if the defensive Rachel, the one that made him feel like a cat rubbed the wrong way, had vanished, and instead he’d found himself staring at a woman he hadn’t met yet.
He continued to steal glances at her as they loaded their items on the wagon, then he directed the horse back toward the house.
“You can quit looking at me that way.”
“Which way?”
“As if I might disappear before your eyes.”
“You gave me a scare, I won’t deny it.”
“My brother was bitten by a copperhead once.” She didn’t seem to realize she was remembering. A smile wreathed her face, and she held her head back, basking in the warmth of the sun. “He said it hurt worse than the time that he broke his leg. He didn’t want to go to the doctor, but Mamm insisted. The doctor said it was probably a juvenile snake, considering the bite marks. Ethan said if that was a juvenile he never wanted to cross a full-grown adult. Did you know that the length of their fangs is directly proportional to the length of the snake? So the longer—”
“Rachel.”
“Ya?”
“You just said your bruder’s name.”
“I did?”
“Ethan.” They repeated it together.
They rode in silence, until Caleb pulled the mare to a stop beside the front porch. “Another piece of the puzzle.”
“Lots of folks named Ethan,” she said, staring up at him again, looking at him as if he’d hung the moon.
He pulled on the collar of his work shirt, which felt suddenly tight. They were one step closer to finding Rachel’s family. One step closer to his life returning to normal. He couldn’t fathom why that didn’t feel as good as he had imagined it would.
Rachel wasn’t too surprised when Caleb hurried away, claiming he’d remembered work to do in the barn. She helped Ida to unload the hay bales, cedar branches, pinecones and cattails.
“My son ran off like a beagle chasing a jackrabbit. Any idea what that’s about?”
So Rachel described their encounter with the snake and recounted how Caleb had saved her...again. She didn’t mention how it had felt to have his arms around her. It was an awkward thing to say to a guy’s mother, and besides, she didn’t know what it meant. She didn’t understand the myriad of emotions still clouding her thoughts!
Ida had plopped down into one of the rockers and was staring at her with her mouth hanging open.
“What? Did my kapp fall off?” Rachel reached up and checked her head. Everything seemed all right.
“I should have told you.”
“About?”
“The snakes.”
“Oh. That.”
“Yes, that. I just sent you out there, traipsing through the woods.”
“I’m not a child, Ida.”
“I didn’t even think to tell you to watch out for snakes. It’s unseasonably warm today, and with the cold front due tonight...all of the animals are acting crazy. I saw one of the alpacas standing in the water trough.”
“It’s not your fault, and I wasn’t hurt.”
“Because of Caleb’s quick thinking. I guess the Lord was watching over you, child...both times that Caleb saved you.”
Rachel didn’t know what to say to that, so she helped Ida set the small bales of hay in a haphazard pile beside the door and cover them with cedar branches, pinecones and leaves. The cattails propped up behind it all in old milking cans added a nice touch. It did look festive. More of an autumn display than Christmas, but at least it cheered up the place.
They’d finished with the decorations and gone inside to work on dinner when Rachel remembered to tell Ida about her brother.
“And his name is Ethan?”
“Ya, I guess so.”
“That’s gut, Rachel. It’s gut that you’re starting to remember.”
“But it’s taking so long. I’d hoped that I would be home by Christmas.” She glanced up from the potato casserole she was mixing in time to see a look of regret pass over Ida’s face.
The dear woman plastered on a smile and said, “If that’s your heart’s desire, that is what we’ll pray for—that you can be home by Christmas.”
“Ida, I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful.”
“And you’re not, only homesick I suspect.”
Rachel wiped her hands on a dish towel, then walked over to Ida, stood in front of her and waited for her to raise her eyes.
“I will never forget what you’ve done for me. How you’ve taken me in and given me a home. Treated me like family.”
Ida leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, then, claiming that her allergies were bothering her, she hurried from the room. Rachel couldn’t remember Ida ever mentioning allergies. She had a feeling that the tears in her eyes were caused by something else entirely, and she realized in that moment that wanting something and getting it were two entirely different things.
She wanted to be reunited with her family.
Caleb wanted her gone, or at least she’d thought that he did. Didn’t he? Certainly his life had been simpler before he’d found her on the road.
But receiving what they wanted would hurt Ida. For whatever reason, she enjoyed having Rachel around. Perhaps her life had been rather lonely, with only the one son. Perhaps she was enjoying the idea of having a daughter.
That thought caused Rachel’s hands to freeze over the sliced potatoes that she was dotting with paprika. Did Ida consider her a daughter? Was that possible in less than a week?
The more she thought of it, the more certain she was. She only had to look at the jacket hung over the back of the kitchen chair, the jacket Ida had insisted she wear outside, the jacket that belonged to her father.
Rachel added pats of butter to the potatoes, sprinkled Parmesan cheese across the top and popped the dish into the oven. She would find her family, but she wouldn’t forget Ida or her kindness. She vowed then and there that they would be friends for life.