Chapter 12
“I smell coffee,” Jude said as he held Leah close beneath the covers.
“Maybe we’ve died and gone to heaven, because I smell cinnamon rolls,” Leah teased. She squinted at the alarm clock on the nightstand. “It’s barely four-thirty. Mama and I made the roll dough last night and put it in the fridge. I insisted we could scramble eggs—cook something easy her first morning here—but bless her, she’s gotten up early enough to bake those rolls for our breakfast.”
“Maybe she had trouble sleeping in a strange place.”
Leah bussed Jude’s cheek and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “The least I can do is go downstairs and help her—and make sure she’s all right. After Dat passed, she took to sleeping in while I went out to tend the animals. I love having her here pampering us, but not at the expense of her getting enough rest.”
“You go ahead. I’ll see to Betsy,” Jude whispered.
Leah smiled as she reached for the dress she’d draped over the back of the rocking chair the previous evening. With her mother in the kitchen filling the house with the aromas of her cooking, and Jude being so considerate about caring for Betsy, life felt really good again—even if having a baby around required a new kind of patience. From years of practice, Leah dressed quickly in the darkness and wound her hair into a fat bun at the nape of her neck. When she’d determined that Betsy was still sleeping soundly in the bassinet, she slipped into the hallway with her shoes in her hand.
Leah padded downstairs and into the kitchen, cherishing the sight of her mother in the lamplight. “Mama, gut morning! When I asked you to cook for us, I didn’t mean you had to start in the wee hours,” she said lightly. “I hope you slept well?”
Mama opened the oven door and removed two pans of high, puffy cinnamon rolls. She appeared troubled, and didn’t reply until she’d set the pans on trivets to cool. “I slept fine until I heard activity in the twins’ room—and the rumble of a big truck that pulled in from the road. It’s a wonder they don’t fall to their death climbing down that tree in the dark.”
Leah sighed. The room she shared with Jude was on the opposite side of the house from the girls’ room, and she was so tired by evening that she slept too soundly to notice them slipping out. “So much for them obeying their dat’s order to stay at home,” she said as she slipped an arm around her mother. “I’m sorry they woke you. Oh my, but your cinnamon rolls smell gut.”
“You can stir up the frosting for them,” Mama instructed, pointing toward a slip of paper fixed to the refrigerator with a magnet. “I jotted the recipe for you. I wish it were as easy to write you a solution to Alice and Adeline’s dangerous behavior. Amish girls have been slipping out with their beaux since before I was born, but . . . well, it doesn’t feel as worrisome when girls meet boys who’re driving buggies rather than big, fancy trucks.”
Leah smiled at her mother’s sentiment. Plain boys have the same urges as English ones, she mused as she took milk and butter from the refrigerator to make the frosting. But she would feel better if Adeline and Alice were dating Amish boys, because Plain fellows were more likely to share the same values and sense of responsibility Jude’s girls had been raised with. Not that the twins’ values are shining through their current behavior.
After she’d mixed the frosting with the rotary beater—noting how lumpy it looked, compared to the frosting Mama always made—Leah went out to tend her animals. In the shadowy barn, while milking her goats by lantern light and feeding her ducks and chickens, she felt a sense of peace and predictability. It was such a blessing to work with animals that trusted her and were truly happy to see her. She found herself wishing such barnyard harmony could be cultivated in the house. Leah had hoped that her mother’s presence would inspire Alice and Adeline to be more tolerant and polite—at least for the first few days. Yet they continued to defy their dat’s decree about staying at home.
A loud rumble made Leah scurry to peer around the barn. A large pickup truck was pulling in off the road, forming a dark gray silhouette against the pale sky of dawn. Its taillights burned red and its headlights sliced the horizon. Before the truck came to a complete stop, the doors on the passenger side opened and were slammed shut. The twins cried out in harsh voices.
“Jah, we heard you—loud and clear!”
“Don’t come back until you’ve gotten over yourselves!”
Leah sucked in her breath, wondering if Alice and Adeline would be safely out of the way before the truck shot backward. Its tires spun and sent dust flying up in a cloud before the driver reached the road and drove off with a loud squeal of rubber. The twins grasped each other’s hands as they ran across the yard, their long hair streaming behind them. Their agitation was palpable even from a distance, so Leah felt compelled to set down her buckets of goat’s milk. She sprinted across the lawn to meet them. “Girls—wait!” she cried out. “Are you all right?”
The three of them reached the big maple tree beside the house at about the same time. Alice and Adeline were crying, yet they glared at her.
“What do you care if we’re all right?” one of them blurted.
“Jah, are you happy now, hearing that we’ve sent those guys packing?” her sister retorted.
Leah was relieved that they stayed on the ground rather than clambering up the tree, because their vision was surely blurred by their tears. “What happened that made everyone so angry?” she asked in a concerned voice.
“None of your business!”
“It’s all Dat’s fault, for taking our cell phone!”
“Well, see, it’s not our phone—”
“And Dex—the guy who’s paying the phone bill,” the twin nearest Leah amended quickly, “is really mad that he can’t call us or text us.”
“So of course he wants the phone back.”
“And we don’t know where it is! Dat has it!”
Leah could anticipate her response being shot down, but she gave it anyway. “Seems the simplest thing would be to tell your dat whom he should return the phone to, and where this young man lives,” she said.
“Right, like that’s going to happen!”
“How stupid do you think we are? No way are we telling Dat where to take that phone!”
Leah smiled, shrugging as she went toward the back door of the house. “The next simplest thing would be for that young man to stop paying the bill—to shut off service to the phone. Ain’t so?”
The twins jogged in front of her, their faces turning deep pink with exasperation.
“You think this is really funny, don’t you, Leah?”
“Jah, and next you’re going to say that it’d be better if we never saw those guys again, anyway—that we should go back to being gut little Amish girls who don’t raise their voices or give their family any trouble!”
Leah stopped with her hand on the doorknob to look at them. She still had trouble telling them apart, and she couldn’t deny that they were attractive—downright enticing in their tight jeans and tops, with their long brown hair falling loose around their pretty faces and shapely bodies. Although she didn’t wish they were ugly, she realized that her plainer appearance during her teen years—her lackadaisical attitude toward the way she’d dressed, and her tomboyish activities—had probably kept her away from temptation and compromising situations.
“I’m very concerned about the places you go with those boys, and the lack of respect they show you—and your lack of respect for yourselves,” Leah said quietly. “The last thing I want is for you to get caught carrying babies those English boys won’t claim, and whom you’re not ready to raise as unmarried teenagers. Have you learned nothing from the desperation of the young woman who abandoned Betsy at our doorstep?”
Alice and Adeline sneered, their faces identical masks of disdain.
“What gives you any right to preach at us?”
“You’re not our mamm, so we don’t have to listen to you.”
With a sigh, Leah opened the door for them. As the twins hurried past her in a huff, she chided herself for believing she could make a difference in their attitudes, their lives. Even so, she’d felt compelled to drive home the reality they might be facing if they continued on their current collision course. Wearily Leah returned to the barn for the buckets of goat’s milk she’d left there.
When Leah stepped into the kitchen, Betsy was wiggling in her carrier basket, which sat on the kitchen table. Leah’s mother gazed at her sadly from her place at the stove. “My word, but those girls can suck the life out of a room with their negative attitudes,” Mama said as she turned the sizzling strips of bacon in the skillet. “I had no idea their situation had escalated to such an extreme. It’s a sad example of what happens when our young people pick up nasty habits from the English—not that English folks are all bad.”
Leah set her buckets on the mudroom floor and removed her barn coat. “I could be wrong, but I suspect the boys in the truck are drawn to Alice and Adeline more because it’s a novelty to date Amish girls than because they really care for them,” she mused aloud. “And the twins enjoy playing with fire, partly to defy their dat . . . and maybe as a reaction to me as well. I have no idea how to fix this situation.”
Mama concentrated on removing the bacon from the skillet to a platter covered with paper towels. “The twins remind me of this grease, so hot and unpredictable they might burn us—or themselves—without warning,” she remarked. “Truth be told, I wonder if they have thoughts about jumping the fence. I’ve never known Plain girls to speak and behave so rudely.”
Leah sighed as she poured the goat’s milk into a large soup kettle and lit the burner beneath it. “Stevie has overheard them say they want to leave the Amish faith. Alice and Adeline think our way of life is all work and drudgery,” she added as she clipped the candy thermometer to the side of the pan. “I really wonder if they’ll settle down enough to help you sew our new clothes—so don’t take it personally if they’re nowhere to be found when you’re ready to start.”
Mama chuckled softly. “Well, after all these years I’ve gotten used to sewing by myself—don’t take it personally, dear,” she quipped quickly.
Leah laughed, grateful for her mother’s sense of humor. She went to the table and lifted Betsy from her basket. Was it her imagination, or did the baby flap her arms and make excited little noises because she was happy to see Leah?
“Often when I’m working alone, I have the chance to sort things through in my mind, and to pray over situations that trouble me,” Mama continued in a pensive tone. “Something tells me it’ll be easier to talk with God and listen for His suggestions if Adeline and Alice aren’t in the sewing room because they have to be instead of because they want to be.”