Before the week had passed, Clara knew her plan to avoid Isaiah until the twins’ family came for them was doomed to failure. They had to share meals and taking care of the kinder. When he closed the door connecting the main house to the dawdi haus, she remained as aware of him as if the walls had become transparent. And the twins talked about him. Their affection for him had not changed.
Nor had hers, and that was the problem. Too often, the remembered sensations of his lips on hers played through her mind. Those memories urged her to toss aside caution and risk her heart again.
Isaiah had been very clear—right from the beginning—he wasn’t ready to marry again. He’d been honest when he told her that his focus had to remain on his obligations. Even their wunderbaar kisses could not deter him from doing as he must. He couldn’t let his work at the forge slide, because too many local people depended on him to shoe their horses. He never would shirk his duties as a minister. Nor would he do less than everything he could to take care of the kinder.
Despite knowing that, she’d followed her heart to him. She’d been foolish with him as she’d been with Lonnie. More foolish, because she should have learned from her earlier mistakes. She could forgive her daed for his pride, but would Daed forgive her if he believed she’d destroyed another opportunity to marry well?
Hochmut. Her daed had too much of it; yet she would never change him. Isaiah was right.
She needed to concentrate on changing her heart, which refused to heed anything but its yearning for Isaiah. She needed to follow Isaiah’s lead and concentrate on something other than being in love with him. Looking around the house, she sighed. The floors were swept. The dishes were done. Dinner was ready to be cooked. The kinder were playing quietly upstairs. She’d weeded the garden that morning. She could start the laundry, but it was too late in the day for it to dry before night fell. Maybe reading would help. She hadn’t had time since she’d arrived, and she’d packed a book, planning to finish it while in Paradise Springs.
Going to her room, she edged around her bed. She picked up the book from the table where she’d stacked the few things she’d brought with her. She gasped when something fell out. An envelope. She recognized it, though she couldn’t recall putting the letter in the book.
Opening the envelope, she drew out the single page as she sat on the edge of her bed. She read the words she’d read dozens of time already. The letter was from Lonnie, the last one he’d written her to let her know he was sorry about how things had turned out. He confessed he’d believed he loved her, but he’d discovered what love was when he met the woman who became his wife. He’d never wanted to hurt Clara, but he had to follow his heart. Giving up the love he’d found and honoring his offer of marriage to Clara would have led to them being miserable the rest of their days.
She looked at the final paragraph. Her eyes filled with tears that blurred the words that she hadn’t truly understood until now:
Clara, I treasure the time we shared, and I hope some day we can view that time with smiles and know what we shared was part of our journey to true and lasting love. I wish for you what I’ve found. You deserve someone who will make you happy instead of just content.
Lowering the page to her lap, she whispered, “I’m sorry, Lonnie. I’ve been blaming you for what happened exactly as my daed blamed me. What happened was nobody’s fault. You fell in love with someone else. You couldn’t help what your heart wanted, and, if I’d cared about you as much as I should have, I would have been happy for you. And for me, because you’re right. I didn’t love you, and you didn’t love me enough.”
She closed her eyes. She could finally look beyond her wounded pride to the truth. But had she learned to listen to gut sense? No! If her rational side had its way, she wouldn’t be listening to her heart, which drew her to Isaiah.
Sounds came from the twins’ room, and she folded the letter and put it in its envelope. “Goodbye, Lonnie,” she whispered. “I hope you’re always as happy as you deserve to be.”
Clara didn’t have any more time to think about the letter and her realizations about herself because the kinder seemed more wound up than usual. They ate their afternoon snack so quickly she wondered if they even tasted the chocolate chip cookies. She was glad to shoo them outside to play while she cleaned up from their snack. But first she wanted to check on the mail and any messages on the answering machine. She’d been sure that they would have heard from the twins’ family by now.
No light blinked by the phone in the shack by the road, and the only mail was a blacksmithing supply catalog for Isaiah. She carried it to the house and put it on the kitchen table. Picking up the dishes left by the twins, she filled the sink with soapy water.
She used to put his mail beside where he sat in the living room in the evening, but now he rushed to the dawdi haus before the twins went to bed. She half expected him to take his plate and eat in the other part of the house one of these nights. The kinder had begun to ask why he wasn’t spending more time with them.
Everything they’d built for the twins was falling apart. The sooner the kinder’s family returned and could start the youngsters on their new life, the better it would be for everyone.
Oh, how she wished she could believe that! The thought of not seeing them every day cramped her heart. She couldn’t think about never spending time with Isaiah again. If she did, she wasn’t sure she could continue with their tacit agreement to pretend nothing had changed.
A motion caught her eye, and she looked out the window. A half scream burst from her throat when she saw smoke was curling out of the stable window. Fire!
She threw the dishcloth in the sink and raced out the back door. Where were the kinder? They’d been in the yard moments ago.
Screaming their names, she grabbed the garden hose. It was too short. It’d never reach the stable. She needed to call for help. But she couldn’t when she didn’t know where the twins were. She shrieked their names again, scraping her throat raw.
Andrew burst out of the gray cloud. He yelled for help. She grasped his shoulders and shook him to reach past his terror.
“Where are the others?” she asked.
He pointed at the stable.
“Go and call the fire department,” she ordered as she gave him a shove toward the phone shack. “Call 911! Tell the firemen to come right away. Can you do that?”
“Ja.” His voice trembled on the single word.
“Go!”
She ran to the stable. A single glance over her shoulder told her Andrew was speeding toward the end of the farm lane as fast as his legs could pump. She hoped he could do what she’d asked. If he couldn’t, she’d have to make the call herself.
After she made sure the kinder and her horse were out of the burning building.
The smoke met her at the door. Hot and smothering and as solid as a wall, it tried to drive her back from the fire’s domain. She pushed forward. Holding her hands over her nose and mouth, she scanned the stable. Thick smoke hid the ceiling and reached almost to the floor. She heard her horse moving in panic.
Clara lowered her hands enough to cry out, “Ammon!” Oh, dear Lord, let him be able to hear me! “Nancy! Nettie Mae! Where are you?”
She heard muffled sobs. The stall in front of her on her right side. Holding her apron over her nose and mouth, she ran in. She almost tripped over two small forms huddled in one corner beside a bale of hay.
“Clara!” they called together, jumping to their feet. Nancy and Nettie Mae!
“Is Ammon with you?”
The girls looked at each other but didn’t answer.
She knelt and grasped each one by the shoulder. Closer to the floor, the air wasn’t as thick with smoke. She sent up a grateful prayer as she repeated her question. When the girls hesitated, she hurried to say, “We need to get out of here.”
Rising, she pushed them ahead of her to the door. She shoved them out and gasped a deep breath of the fresher air. Again she asked them where Ammon was.
Both girls shrugged, their eyes wide with terror.
Telling them to go to the front porch and wait there, she turned to head back in. Where should she look? Flames were licking along the eaves. She wouldn’t have much time to find the little boy.
A small hand tugged her skirt before she could move. Nettie Mae!
“Ammon hiding, too,” the little girl said.
“Where?”
“He not mean to—”
“I know he’s sorry.” She didn’t have time for the kind to explain. “But where is he? Do you know?”
“He love Bella.”
Clara hoped she was translating the little girl’s cryptic statement. Ammon had gone to rescue her horse. If she was wrong, she wouldn’t have another chance. Even if she was right...
She told Nettie Mae to join her sister on the front porch. Hoping the kind obeyed, she ran into the smoky stable. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, but getting out alive with Ammon was going to be more difficult.
* * *
Isaiah heard a fire alarm rise to an ear-piercing pitch. It was the one belonging to the Paradise Springs Volunteer Fire Department in the center of the village. He dropped his hammer and yanked off his leather apron. He banked the embers on the forge, then raced around the building between him and the parking lot. He didn’t slow until he reached the road.
As he got there, the main fire engine zipped past, followed by trucks and cars driven by volunteer firefighters. A red pickup slowed long enough for him to hold out his hands to the three men in the back. Two plain and one Englischer, he saw as he swung up beside them. The truck took off after the fire engine before his feet touched the truck bed.
Dropping beside the men amid the piles of gear labeled PSVFD, he asked, “Where’s the fire? Is it a building?”
As one, they shrugged. The Englischer explained they’d been working nearby and reached the fire station in time to see the fire engine race out. They’d grabbed the rest of the turnout gear and jumped into the red pickup without asking questions.
Awkwardly each man found gear and pulled it over his clothes. Isaiah didn’t bother with boots, because he wore protective ones in the blacksmith shop, but he helped others find ones that fit.
A shrill screech came from behind the vehicle. A police car was catching up with them. Following it was an ambulance. His stomach clenched. His hopes that it was nothing but a grass fire were dashed. Was it a car accident?
Please don’t let it be that, God. The twins were too fragile to deal with more funerals.
He heard a curse and a prayer. He looked at the other men, not sure which had said which. Then he noticed where the truck was turning and looked along the familiar road to see a plume of smoke rising in malevolent blackness less than a half mile away.
He started to stand to see better. He was grabbed and pulled down.
“It’s the Beachys’!” someone shouted.
He shook off the hands but didn’t stand. He couldn’t risk his life. Not when Clara and the twins could be in danger. Groaning, he hid his face in his hands.
Don’t let me to be too late again! Let me be there in time this time!
The prayer played over and over in his mind as he raised his head to see the fire engine race past the house. He sent up a quick prayer of thanksgiving. He saw motion on the front porch. One...two...three... Where was Ammon? And where was Clara?
He knew the answer when he saw flames stretching out a stable window. Clara was wherever Ammon was. If the boy was in the stable, she’d be there, too.
Help us, Lord! Don’t let me be too late. Not this time. Not for them.
The pickup squealed to a halt, and Isaiah jumped out. He heard buggy wheels clattering behind him as help arrived from neighboring farms. Orders were being shouted in every direction as the firemen hooked a hose to the pumper and ran another line toward the pond beyond the big barn.
Isaiah ran toward the stable. He heard shouts behind him, but he didn’t stop. If Clara and the boy were inside, they didn’t have time to wait for the firemen to finish getting their hoses ready. Suddenly the oft-heard jest that the Paradise Springs Volunteer Fire Department had never failed to save a foundation was no longer funny. Things could be replaced but not people.
That was a lesson he’d learned over and over, and he didn’t want to be taught it again today.
“Clara! Ammon!” he shouted as he pushed through the smoke trying to force him back.
The flames roared like a tormented beast from the far end of the building. If a spark flew to the main barn, that could be destroyed, too. He hoped the cows had the sense to move away. The chickens would be hiding closer to the house.
But Clara wouldn’t go to safety until the kinder did.
He shouted their names to his right.
No response.
He drew in a deep breath to shout them again, then began coughing as the smoke choked him with its gray, cloudy fingers.
A hand grasped his.
Clara!
He didn’t know if he said it aloud or not, but he pulled her toward him. His arm went around her slender waist. He could feel her straining to breathe.
“Ammon?” he shouted over the ear-shattering crackle. This blistering beast was nothing like the fire he controlled on his forge.
“Out.”
“I didn’t see him.”
“He’s out.”
“Then let’s get out, too!”
“Bella!” she choked, pulling away from him.
Or at least he thought she said that. The swirling smoke swallowed her before she’d gone more than a couple of steps. He followed, glad he could turn away from the most vicious heat.
He heard her horse before he could see Clara and Bella through the smoke. The horse was pushing against the stall, seeking any way out—though, he knew, if the door was open, Bella might not flee. Thick smoke mixed with fear scorched a horse’s brain, making it impossible for one to escape.
Grabbing a smoking blanket off a stall door, he dunked it in the watering trough. He heaved it over Bella and grabbed her mane. She tried to pull away, but he shouted for her to come with him. Pulling her out, he looked for Clara.
He couldn’t see. Anything. The smoke was growing blacker by the second, and his eyes burned as if twin pyres had been lit in them. He groped for the other stall. The crackling of the fire had become a roar that swallowed his shout.
He bumped into something soft. Clara! Coughing and gagging, she leaned against the stall door.
He seized Clara by the waist and tugged on Bella. Bending his head as if he strode through a storm wind, he gulped in the cooler air toward the floor while he rushed toward the door. He herded her before him. Bella followed, shying on every step.
Overhead something creaked. Were the rafters failing? If the roof collapsed, they’d be crushed.
Then fresh air filled his lungs. He started to cough, but kept moving forward. Water sprayed over them. It was aimed at the stable, but the mist was icy cold after the inferno inside. Shouts came from every direction, but he couldn’t sort them out. Bella pulled away and galloped around the house and out of sight.
Small forms ran toward him and Clara, who leaned more heavily on him with each step. Arms reached out to catch the youngsters before they could get too close to the fire. He hurried Clara toward the twins.
They threw their arms around him and Clara. As he released her to hug them, she collapsed to the ground and didn’t move. The twins shrieked in terror.
He wanted to as well, fearing, once again, he’d been too late. He dropped to his knees beside her and moaned, “Don’t leave me, Clara. Lord, don’t take her, too. Please.”