Chapter 10
As Leah stepped outside, the backfiring of a car made her look down the lane in time to see a pair of red taillights turning onto the road. In the darkness, she saw a container near the edge of the porch, from which came the frantic wail of a baby—a sound that had always made her feel helpless and utterly inadequate. Other women had known since they were girls exactly what to do when a wee one cried, but Leah had grown up as a tomboy, without siblings. She was so unfamiliar with babies that she’d joked with her dat, saying she’d probably put the diaper on the wrong end—and then stab the poor thing with the safety pins as well.
Shivering in the predawn chill, Leah quickly grabbed the container—a big basket, it was—and carried the crying child inside. She hurried through the dark front room to set the basket on the kitchen table, where the lamps lit the twins’ amazed faces. Jude rose to shift the lanterns out of the way as the baby’s ear-splitting cries filled the room.
Leah could only stare at the poor little wiggling figure, wrapped in a worn blanket and wearing a tiny white cap. Jude must’ve read the barely disguised terror in her eyes, because he immediately scooped the infant from the basket and held it against his shoulder.
Adeline watched as he began to walk around the room and murmur comforting words, while Alice snatched a piece of paper from the laundry basket. “ ‘My name is Betsy and my mamm can’t keep me,’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘Will you please give me a loving home?’ ”
Leah’s heart lurched. “Who would abandon a poor, helpless baby on somebody’s porch—and then sneak away like a thief in the night?”
“A hungry baby, I suspect,” Jude put in as he swayed with the wee child. “What else is in the basket? Any bottles or formula?”
“Nope, just a few folded clothes,” Adeline replied as she lifted the items from the basket and placed them on the table. “We gave all the bottles and diapers and other baby stuff to mamm’s youngest sister a couple years ago, remember? Mamm said she was finished having babies.”
When a pained expression flickered over Jude’s face, Leah had a feeling Frieda had made her announcement—unusual for a Plain woman, unless she was ill—without giving Jude any say in the matter, or maybe without telling him beforehand. Her head was beginning to throb with the noise of the baby’s cries, so she went to the mudroom to put on a barn coat over her nightclothes. “I’ll get some fresh goat’s milk,” she said as she tied on her black bonnet. “It’s the best we can do until we figure out what else to feed her.”
The silence of the chilly night relieved Leah’s headache as she hurried out the back door toward the stable. If the girls and Jude think I’m running from that crying baby, well, so be it, she thought with an embarrassed grimace. The mother who abandoned Betsy must’ve been terribly desperate—and obviously had no idea how unprepared I am to deal with a wee one—when she dumped her off in a laundry basket and drove away. Her use of the word mamm seems Amish, yet I can’t think a Plain family wouldn’t care for such a sweet, wee baby. . . .
Once inside the stable door, Leah lit the lantern hanging on the wall. As she walked past dozing horses toward the pens of goats in the back, her thoughts cleared. Gertie and her new twins were settled in their straw, appearing peaceful and content, their eyes reflecting the lamplight as they glanced up at her. In the adjoining pen, the goats Leah raised for their meat roused from their sleep, watching her continue to the pen where she kept the three milk goats.
Daisy, Tulip, and Buttercup rose slowly to their feet, assuming it was time for their morning milking. Leah quickly fastened Tulip into the milking stand, poured some feed into the attached trough, and grabbed a bucket. As the milk hit the metal in rhythmic spurts, she was keenly aware of how she could tend her animals without even thinking about it, yet she had no idea how to proceed with little Betsy—except that the poor abandoned baby needed food, diapers, and other supplies as soon as they could gather them. She felt confident about feeding Betsy goat’s milk diluted with some water, because she’d supplied milk for a couple of neighbor ladies who’d been unable to nurse their wee ones, but beyond that . . .
Why on earth did that woman leave Betsy here? She could’ve chosen any number of other homes in Morning Star where folks already had young kids and babies.
When she’d milked the three goats, Leah took a big plastic bottle and its nippled lid from the cabinet. She sighed, replacing it. Even though the bottle and lid had been sterilized between uses with orphaned lambs, she didn’t dare risk infecting Betsy by using her livestock equipment.
Lord, I hope You’re giving Jude and the twins some ideas about how to proceed from here, she prayed as she strode toward the house with her covered bucket of goat’s milk. When she stepped into the mudroom, Betsy’s cries sounded quieter. She saw the twins at the stove with a pan of boiling water.
“We found an eye dropper, and the girls are sterilizing it,” Jude explained. He was rubbing Betsy’s back as she rested against his shoulder. “After we’ve had breakfast and tended the animals, we’ll visit some neighbors to borrow diapers and such—and we’ll let Jeremiah know we have an abandoned baby.”
They make it sound so simple, Leah mused as she took off her barn coat and bonnet. “I have to pasteurize this milk—boil it and then cool it quickly with an ice bath,” she remarked. “Meanwhile, would some water make Betsy feel better?”
Jude smiled gently. He looked completely at ease handling the tiny baby, even as he picked up on Leah’s nervousness. “The girls have changed her diaper, so as soon as that eye dropper is cool enough, I’ll give Betsy some water, jah,” he said softly. “I can’t imagine why her mother would’ve dropped her off—let alone left her without even the basic necessities. She’s a sweet little thing. Probably no more than three months old, best I can tell.”
Leah swallowed hard. The tension that had hardened Jude’s face while he was squabbling with his daughters had disappeared, and he now appeared totally smitten by the tiny girl he was rocking from side to side. As his gaze met hers, Leah saw desire in his dark eyes—not sexual desire so much as the yearning to hold his own baby . . . a baby he’d fathered with her.
Leah had anticipated Jude’s wanting to start a second family, and despite her lack of experience with babies, she was eager to have his child—because she’d figured on having about nine months to prepare herself for motherhood. In the harried hours since the twins had confronted Jude about not being their birth father, Leah had fleetingly wondered if he was unable to father children, considering the long gap between the twins’ births and Stevie’s. That wasn’t a subject she wanted to ask him about, however—and now that baby Betsy had arrived so unexpectedly, they had more immediate issues to deal with.
The longer Jude gazes at me this way, the less anything else matters, Leah realized as her insides fluttered. Because the love she shared with him was so much more wonderful than what she’d imagined before the wedding, she knew she was truly a blessed woman—even if Alice and Adeline despised her. Jude will know what to do about Betsy. And maybe having a baby in the house will inspire the twins to behave more lovingly. More responsibly.
“What’s goin’ on? Who’s cryin’ so loud?” Stevie asked hoarsely.
Leah smiled at him. As he stood in the kitchen doorway, his thick brown hair stuck straight up on one side, and his short flannel pajama pants suggested that he’d grown a lot since someone—probably Margaret—had sewn them for him. “We got a surprise package this morning,” she explained. “The baby’s name is Betsy, and her mamm left her on our porch.”
Stevie’s eyes widened. “Her mamm just up and left her? In the middle of the night?”
Leah nodded as she got out the large pot she used to pasteurize her goat’s milk. “It makes me wonder, though, if Betsy’s mamm is Amish, because she drove off in a noisy car. I saw its taillights on the road just as I stepped outside.”
Alice’s and Adeline’s eyebrows rose as they stepped away from the stove and removed the eyedropper from the boiling water. “Odd,” one of them said, and the other echoed the sentiment.
Jude watched his daughters’ faces as he continued his walk with Betsy. “Any idea who might’ve been driving the car? One of your friends, maybe?” he asked. “If Jeremiah and I can reach Betsy’s mother—”
“Not a clue,” Alice insisted.
“Nobody we know,” Adeline put in quickly. “We’ll get our clothes changed and make breakfast, so we can round up some baby clothes from the neighbors.”
Stevie appeared fully awake, his face lighting up. “So we get to keep her?” he asked eagerly. “I wanna help take care of her! Can I, Leah? Please, can I?”
Leah’s heart swelled at the boy’s generous offer before she poured the goat’s milk into the big pot on the stove. “I think that’s a fine idea, Stevie,” she replied softly. “But if we find Betsy’s mother, we might not be keeping her—”
“Jah, don’t get your heart set on having a little sister,” Adeline warned as she and Alice left the kitchen. “Babies really do belong with their mothers.”
As Leah exchanged a glance with Jude, she sensed he thought the twins might know more than they were saying. The tone of Adeline’s remark also suggested that she wasn’t keen on having Betsy around—but then, Jude’s girls had displayed a negative attitude about a lot of things.
“Get your clothes on, Stevie, and we’ll do the barn chores,” Jude suggested. “The work always goes faster when you help me, son.”
With a grin, Stevie took off through the front room. As his footsteps thundered in the stairwell, Jude approached Leah with Betsy. The baby had stopped crying and was resting comfortably on his broad shoulder. “Want to hold her, Leah?” he asked softly. “The only thing you need to be careful about is supporting her head with your hand—like this.”
Leah focused on clipping the candy thermometer to the side of her pot, momentarily flummoxed. When she saw how Jude was gently stretching Betsy along his forearm so her tiny head rested in his hand, she knew a new definition of strength. Her husband wasn’t much taller than she was, but he was muscled from working with livestock all his life—she’d watched him hang on to frenzied horses and cows that outweighed him two or three times over, with just a tether and his own powerful grip. Yet he’d never seemed stronger than at this moment, when he held Betsy’s life in his hands.
“Go ahead and hold her, honey. You won’t drop her.”
Leah exhaled nervously. Slowly she accepted Betsy, holding her the same way Jude had. “Oh my, she hardly weighs anything, compared to a fawn or a foal,” she murmured.
Jude stroked Betsy’s forehead, his fingertip following the rim of her knitted cap. “She’s so tiny and innocent,” he whispered, shaking his head sadly. “She knows she’s among strangers, and she might even sense that her mother has abandoned her. It’s up to us to give her our best until we can get to the bottom of her situation. I know she’ll be in gut hands while the girls and I borrow what we’ll need from the neighbors and visit with Jeremiah.”
Leah’s heart fluttered at the depth of his trust in her. “I—I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all any of us can do,” Jude said, kissing her cheek. “And for all we know, Betsy’s mamm feels she’s done her best by bringing her child here. Life can take some unexpected detours, so we shouldn’t judge a mother who’s desperate enough to entrust her precious child to strangers.”
Leah thought back to the brief note in the clothesbasket. “What if we’re not strangers? What if Betsy’s mother chose us because she knows us?”
Jude shrugged. “I can’t think of any women—or young girls—in our church district who’d be in such a predicament. That’s why I want to chat with Jeremiah. Sometimes he learns of these situations through the grapevine of bishops and preachers in other districts hereabouts, and he can put out the word about Betsy with those men, too. The fact that she used the word mamm in her note suggests she’s from a Plain community, even if she drove off in a car. We’ll figure it out.”
Jude wrapped an arm around Leah and placed his other hand beneath hers, enfolding her and little Betsy with his warmth. “At least that young woman understood the value of bringing her baby to be cared for by a family. No matter what my daughters seem to believe these days, only our love for God matters more than love for our family. I’m a blessed man because you’re my wife, Leah.”
When Stevie burst into the kitchen, dressed and ready to do chores, Jude placed Betsy in the laundry basket on top of her folded clothes. He slipped into his barn coat, kissed Leah’s cheek, and went outside with his son just as the milk began to bubble and steam.
Leah watched the thermometer. When the milk had reached one hundred sixty-one degrees and boiled for more than twenty seconds, she removed the pot from the stove. As she was pouring the milk into clean metal canisters, Alice and Adeline returned. Dressed in their matching purple cape dresses and white kapps, they cast wary glances at the baby in the laundry basket before taking a skillet and a large bowl from cabinets near the stove.
“I still think it’s odd that somebody would drop a baby here,” Adeline remarked with a shake of her head.
“Jah, who would do that?” Alice asked. She wrinkled her nose. “And who would want to drink goat’s milk? It smells awful.”
Although Leah once again suspected the twins knew more about this situation than they were telling her, she decided not to press for ideas about who Betsy’s mother might be. “It does smell a little gamy, compared to cow’s milk,” she agreed. “But I know a lot of babies who’ve thrived on it when their mothers couldn’t feed them breast milk. It’ll smell better after it cools.”
Leah carried the canisters to the sink in the mudroom. She fetched a large bag of ice cubes from the deep freeze and arranged the ice around the canisters so the milk would cool quickly. Betsy was beginning to fuss, and the girls were focused on frying bacon and mixing biscuits, so Leah went to stand beside the laundry basket. The baby’s face was pink and puckered as she let out a squawk. Her flailing limbs were so tiny and thin compared to other infants’ that Leah wondered if the poor thing had been neglected and underfed.
“Just pick her up!” Adeline challenged from the stove. “Don’t let her start bawling again.”
“Jah, she’s a little kid—not a rabid dog that’ll bite you,” Alice chided as she rolled out biscuit dough. “Don’t tell me you’ve never handled a baby.”
Leah lifted Betsy tentatively and rested the baby against her shoulder. It occurred to her that the girls would’ve been about eleven when Stevie had come along—old enough to help Frieda with his care, even though they showed no interest in this abandoned child. She walked into the mudroom to test the temperature of the goat’s milk, but also to hide her red-faced embarrassment. How did Jude’s girls home in so effortlessly on her weaknesses? Why did they delight in making her feel lacking as a woman—and so unwelcome in their home?
The milk was at a drinkable temperature, but how much did a baby drink at one time? Lacking a bottle, Leah returned to the kitchen and poured some milk into a cereal bowl. No doubt the twins knew a better way to feed a baby, but they were making a point of ignoring her while they cooked, so she didn’t ask their advice. She picked up the eyedropper, but had second thoughts about using it. What if Betsy sucked hard enough to break the glass?
Carefully cradling the baby in her arm, Leah took a spoon and a towel from the kitchen drawers and then retreated to the unlit front room and the comfort of Jude’s cozy corduroy recliner. She set the bowl of milk on the nearby table. Why did the simple act of feeding a baby require so much thought and effort?
You poor thing, having to put up with my clumsiness, Leah thought as she positioned Betsy in the crook of her arm. We both wish your mamm was taking care of you, don’t we?
When Betsy gazed at her, so tiny and trusting, Leah’s heart melted. Somehow she spooned a small amount of milk into the baby’s mouth without spilling it, and when Betsy gulped it eagerly, Leah kept feeding her slowly and methodically. The aromas of bacon, biscuits, and percolating coffee drifted from the kitchen, but it was Jude’s masculine scent in the chair’s corduroy that kept Leah centered and calm. After a while she heard the mudroom door close behind Jude and Stevie. The daily routine was going on around her, yet Leah sat mesmerized, watching Betsy’s bow-shaped lips and eager swallowing.
Stevie approached the recliner slowly, his eyes wide. “She was really hungry, huh?” he whispered.
“Jah, she’s finally slowing down and getting sleepy,” Leah replied. She smiled at the boy as he gazed at the baby’s closing eyes. “Did you wash your hands? We have to be very clean around Betsy.”
“Jah!” Stevie held up his hands, smiling. His mood grew more serious as he gazed at the baby, who was drifting off in Leah’s arms. “Her mamm left her, just like mine did,” he said sadly, stroking the knit hat. “We gotta take gut care of Betsy and be her family now, ain’t so? She really needs us.”
Leah blinked back tears. Stevie’s heartfelt words—and the way Betsy was now breathing deeply, so peacefully—convinced her that God had brought this helpless, innocent child to them to soothe their frazzled souls. Just when Leah had been at wit’s end, wondering how to endure Adeline’s and Alice’s disrespect, a baby had arrived to remind them that the members of the Shetler family depended upon one another, just as all of God’s children looked to Him for support and guidance.
When I’m feeling anxious, God, remind me that You’re in charge and taking care of us, Leah prayed quickly. Bless us all as we try to do what’s best for this precious baby.