Chapter 12
She didn’t need the wall calendar she’d failed to turn to know another Saturday had dawned. The sounds emanating through the open kitchen window told her that all on their own. Instead of the occasional giggles or squeals or sweet conversations between Lydia and Nettie that marked the pre-lunchtime hour for Dani most days, the audible joy that both intrigued and pained her was magnified by the presence of Luke and his two brothers.
There were chores to be done still, of course—a chicken to corral, mules to help hitch, tools to fetch from the barn—but yet, amid all of that, the Schlabach family still managed to have fun, to thoroughly enjoy one another’s company. Even the spring rain, beating a steady pattern on the front porch, seemed unable to dampen the lighthearted fun happening from the vicinity of the driveway, maybe the stretch of grass in front of the main house.
Pushing back from the table and the breakfast she’d been trying but failing to eat for nearly two hours, Dani stood and wandered over to the window and the shade she’d yet to open on another day. She slid two fingers between the side of the dark green fabric and the window’s edge and gaped a hole just big enough to see out without being seen. Sure enough, as the sounds had indicated, she spied three straw hats and one heart-shaped kapp bobbing up and down as the children who sported them hopped back and forth across a water-filled rut in the center of the driveway.
One by one they took their turn. First Luke, then David, then the youngest boy she knew only by name, and, finally, Nettie, her inability to jump as far as her brothers landing her inside the puddle and showering water onto the bottom edges of her pale blue dress and the pants of all three boys. Instead of chorusing watch out or some other equally gritted reprimand, Luke and the other boys laughed and squealed. Again and again they did the same thing with the same outcome, and each time the resulting laughter was as heartfelt and genuine as ever.
“Jump bigger, Nettie,” Luke advised each time the little girl stepped to the edge of the rut for her turn.
“Yah! Bigger! Bigger!” chimed the younger boys in near perfect unison.
Nettie’s kapped head would nod . . .
Her little bare feet would run in place for a moment . . .
She’d emulate the crouch Luke demonstrated each and every time . . .
And then she’d jump straight into the puddle, her answering squeal just barely audible over the belly laughs of her brothers.
Movement over by the barn stole Dani’s attention just long enough for her to realize Elijah was watching the whole encounter, a smile stretched across his bearded face. Seconds later, Lydia emerged from the barn, stood beside her husband for a few moments, and then, after a quick gesture toward the house, strode side by side with him toward the children.
Dani braced herself for the disappointed reactions she expected when the puddle jumping was brought to an end, but they never came. Nor did the puddle jumping stop. Instead, first Lydia, and then Elijah, joined in on the fun, their own clothes growing wetter and wetter with Nettie’s repeated attempts to perfect her jump.
Elijah demonstrated . . .
Luke demonstrated . . .
David demonstrated . . .
Mark demonstrated . . .
And when it appeared as if the child was simply too little to clear the puddle-filled rut, Lydia took her hand, waited for Nettie to bend her knees just so, and then, on the count of three, they jumped—and cleared—the puddle together, the feat drawing claps and smiles from Nettie’s father and brothers.
“I did it!” Nettie shouted, looking up at Lydia. “I did it, Mamm!”
“Yah! You did it!”
“Can I try again? By myself?”
Lydia and Elijah exchanged amused looks, with Elijah’s answer coming via a single nod of his hatted head.
Nettie ran around to the side of the rut she clearly saw as the starting line. She bent her knees . . . She fisted her little hands . . . And she pushed off the wet ground as her brothers stepped forward in the hope of getting wet once again. But, lo and behold, the little girl who now believed she could do it thanks to her mother cleared the puddle with nary a slip or a splash.
“I did it again! I did it again!”
Elijah and the boys gathered around the little girl while Lydia stayed just outside the group, her hands clasped together in quiet joy.
“I liked getting splashed,” Mark said.
“It is to rain for many hours,” Lydia said, glancing up at the sky and then back at her four children. “But now it is time to go inside and have lunch before the afternoon work is to be done.”
Luke looked up at his father. “Can I still help you and Uncle Caleb fix the fence?”
“Yah.”
“Me, too?” David asked. “I want to help, too!”
“Yah. There is much work to be done.”
“Can I feed the calf this time?” Mark looked from Elijah to Lydia and back. “I will not let him pull the bottle from my hand again.”
Elijah looked down at his youngest son. “You must hold it strong, Mark.”
“Yah. I will.”
“Then you may try again.” Bending down, Elijah tapped Nettie on the nose. “And what will you help Mamm with, wee one?”
“We can’t hang clothes in the rain . . .”
“ No. ”
“We can’t plant flowers in the rain . . .”
“Not really, no.”
“I could . . . I know!” Nettie rocked back on her heels. “I could sweep!”
“That would be good.”
“And . . .” She looked up at Lydia, clasped her little hands under her chin, and rose up on the tips of her muddy feet. “I could help punch the dough.”
“Dough for what?”
“For Mamm’s bread!”
“I like bread,” Elijah said, his tone playfully serious.
“And I could shake the butter, like this!” Nettie said, her earnest demonstration kicking off another series of giggles from her brothers.
Elijah’s eyebrow lifted in mock seriousness. “Cinnamon butter?”
“Yah!”
“That is a very good thing for you to do with Mamm.” Elijah straightened to his full height and herded his children onto the porch. “Let us go inside and eat. All that jumping has made me hungry.”
Shifting forward so her forehead rested against the window’s edge, Dani watched Lydia and her family head inside, their cohesiveness stirring an ache-filled smile to her lips. Oh how she longed for a chance to jump across puddles in the rain with Jeff and Maggie and Spencer and Ava the way Lydia and her crew had just done . . . Yet standing there, looking out at the now-deserted puddle that had been the center of so much fun for the Amish family, she knew it was something she, herself, would have walked right by, her thoughts, her focus, on getting lunch on the table or checking off another item on her list. And if Maggie, Spencer, and Ava had been unable to resist the pull, she’d have shooed them away from such a messy activity. After all, dirtying clothes meant having to get dressed and maybe even bathed again, something that didn’t work when there was a schedule to uphold.
But Lydia didn’t have to worry about that. There were no soccer or baseball games to rush off to. No scouts or music lessons to squeeze into her day. Just school, chores, and jumping puddles.
Dani’s view of the puddle grew blurry as her thoughts rewound through the weeks leading up to the accident. For Maggie, there had been Favorite Character Day at school, a flurry of birthday parties to attend for various classmates, and a recital. For Spencer, there were swim lessons, playdates, and a smattering of party invites, too.
Had it been busy? Sure. When wasn’t it? But there had been smiles and—
She shook herself back to the present and stared out at the puddle. Maggie and Spencer and Ava laughed. In fact, Ava was known around the neighborhood and the kids’ school as Little Miss Smiley.
But when had Dani’s kids laughed the way Lydia’s just had? When did they just get to lose themselves in being kids without her urging them onward to the next thing, the next place, the next have-to?
They didn’t . . .
“Because I didn’t let them,” she whispered against the screen. Then, through clenched teeth, she said it again, each successive word more anger filled than the one before. “I. Didn’t. Let. Them.”
It wasn’t that Lydia didn’t have to fill her kids’ every moment. She chose not to. She chose, instead, to leave the gaps open for exploration, for conversation, for bonding, and, yes, for laughter.
Drawing her hand to her abdomen, Dani imagined the puddle-jumping scene as it had been. Only this time, instead of the Schlabach six, it was the Parker five—soon to be six.
Movement just beyond the puddle lifted her misty gaze to the now-familiar man lumbering on foot toward the main house. As seemed to be the norm, Caleb was dressed in a long-sleeved flannel shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. In his left hand was a decent-sized toolbox, and in his right was what appeared to be keys to his truck. The same cowboy hat he’d worn the previous day was perched forward on his head, the generous brim helping to keep the now-driving rain off his face.
As he came up on the puddle, he stopped, surveyed the myriad of muddy footprints covering the surrounding area, and, cracking a grin, continued on toward the front porch. Midway to the steps, he stopped and turned his sights in her direction. Slowly, deliberately, he cocked his head just enough to afford himself an uninhibited view of the grossdawdy house before narrowing his attention on the very window from which she was peeking back at him. Like a finger on the receiving end of an unexpected electrical charge, Dani jumped back so hard and so fast she was powerless to stop the edge of the shade from smacking back into place against the glass.
Her breath held, she prayed for him to keep walking, to go up the steps into Lydia’s house, to bypass his obvious need to try to fix something that could never be fixed, never be talked through, never truly understood. She remained, frozen in place, listening for anything resembling footfalls outside her window, a knock on her front door, a—
Sure enough, the distinct sound of approaching footfalls on the other side of the window wafted around the closed shade, stopped, and then retreated into silence once again. Closing her eyes, she made a silent count to twenty and then, when the next sound she heard was the creak of Lydia’s screen door opening and closing, she reclaimed her spot at the window, her gaze falling on the cream-colored business card tucked into a minuscule gap between the screen and the wall. Printed across the front, in an attractive black font:
Finely Crafted Birdhouses
Elijah Schlabach
Blue Ball, PA
Underneath the preprinted lines, in rain-soaked ink, were Caleb’s name and phone number. Beneath that, but still handwritten, was a four-word sentence that looked as if it had been added in haste:
I’m a good listener.