CHAPTER 2
“All the great bakers are men. . . .” Daniel almost laughed out loud when he recalled his words to Clara as he mounted the steps to the family store later that evening. Although he knew he was a good baker, primarily out of necessity since childhood, neither he nor his family had ever admitted the fact to anyone else. While some Amisch men might help out around the kitchen now and then, with firewood or fetching water, Daniel knew the idea of a man baking on a regular basis wouldn’t be widely accepted. And here I’ve proclaimed it on the mountaintop to Clara Loftus. . . .
But, I did get her . . . goat. He smiled grimly in the darkness. I certainly made a better impression on her today than I did two years ago.... Gott . . . I’m sorry, Seth. I haven’t cared for her in the way you wanted . . . . But you were right, auld friend. . . . She is beautiful. And tonight there’d been a snap of life in her large gray eyes that had transmitted itself like a wash of intimacy down the center of his back and he’d shivered beneath his heavy coat, feeling unaccountably pleasured.
He tried to put aside the remembered sensation as he opened the heavy white door and the familiar jangle of an overhead bell greeted him. His daed, Ben Kauffman, popped his large frame out from behind some shelving, obviously thinking it was some late customer.
“Ach, Dan . . . turn the CLOSED sign over, will you? I’ve got to finish stocking these jellies and then your mamm has supper going though she’s waiting on you to whip up some angel biscuits. Where have you been, sohn?”
Daniel turned the sign, though he knew his daed would open for anyone on the mountain, no matter the time, in the event of a sudden or urgent need. He walked across the wooden floor, knowing its creaks by heart, and automatically bent to help his fater finish stocking the jelly jars that bore homemade labels from several of the local women.
“I was up near the timberline, Daed. Having a bit of a walk.”
His father eyed him directly. “Ach . . . well, then, I hope you stopped by to cut Clara Loftus a load of firewood.”
Daniel felt a sudden tightness in his chest as he looked away. “Nee, Daed. I’ll not cut timber up near that spot again.”
His fater’s big brown eyes immediately welled with emotion as he reached out to touch Daniel’s shoulder. “Forgive me then, sohn. I forget that it’s been only two years since Seth . . . and you . . .”
Daniel quickly embraced his daed, then pulled away. “It’s all right, Daed. Look, I’d better get at those biscuits, okay?”
His fater nodded, pulling his white store apron up to wipe his nose; Daniel patted his back, then walked away through the store to the back kitchen, mentally preparing the ingredients for angel biscuits to go with the fragrant venison stew his mamm was stirring over the woodstove.
Daniel slipped off his coat and hat and hung them on the wooden pegs near the store’s entrance. He called out greetings to his numerous siblings, who were already seated around the table with a general air of expectation.
“The kinner be hungry tonight,” his mother observed as Daniel bent to kiss her plump cheek. “Can you whip up those angel biscuits of yours?”
“Sure, Mamm.”
He’d learned to bake angel biscuits and a myriad of other things, mainly by trial and taste, when he was ten years auld. His mother had been on necessary bed rest with one of her pregnancies, and while his daed was busy at the store, it had fallen on Daniel, as the eldest child, to become “the mamm” for a time.
Now he rolled up his blue shirtsleeves as he grabbed the homemade soap and started to wash his hands at the pump sink. He was drying off on an old tea towel when he remembered something vital to his recipe.
“I need my secret ingredient, Mamm. I’ll just run back into the store for a minute.”
There was a flatteringly collective groan from the hungry kinner at the table, and Daniel had to smile. Then he wondered with a sudden shiver of warmth whether Clara Loftus might have any secret ingredients of her own....
* * *
Long after midnight, Clara sought the relative comfort of the wood-framed bed that she and Seth had once shared. Blinks was settled in her usual mound of quilts on the floor, gently snoring. “I’m glad you can sleep,” Clara whispered to the animal, then sighed heavily in the dimness of the moonlit room.
Okay . . . okay, Gott . . . so having Daniel Kauffman appear on my front porch today was odd. It made me . . . unsettled.
She glanced over at Seth’s feather pillow, the one she faithfully changed the case on every week, and gave it a sudden thump that oddly made her feel better for a moment. Then she laid her head down on her own pillow, closed her eyes resolutely, and drifted into fitful sleep.
She dreamed that an angel with wings like ice stood beside her bed, bending with tender, luminescent fingers to gently stroke her forehead, stirring up memories and bringing back a past she didn’t want to face....
“Try,” the angel urged in a voice that pulsed with white light. “Try to bear remembering.”
* * *
They wouldn’t let her see him, no matter how much she fought. She wanted to see all of him—crushed in two or not, he was still hers.... But not hers... Gott was bigger. Gott took and gave. She clawed through the red haze of the jumbled words, and then there was only green. Steady green eyes; determined, resolute . . . Marry me . . . I’ll care for you. . . . I know I can never be Seth . . . but . . . Nee . . . she screamed. Again and again until the words pounded like fists on the broad shoulders of the living man and he’d turned away—leaving her alone. Time and grief convulsed with thought and purpose like labor pains must be, and she cried out, seeing herself weeping, longing . . . needing . . . Let me see him once more . . . his green eyes. Marry me; marry him. . . . She grasped the cookie plate and tried to hold it steady, but her hand shook and she watched it fall, breaking in two....
Clara awoke with a gasp, staring frantically into the shadowed darkness, feeling Blinks lick her hand. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and tried to slow the racing of her heartbeat. A dream . . . only a dream . . . She pulled Seth’s pillow close for a moment, seeking any warmth in its pristine chill, then flung it from her to land with a soft thud across the room.
* * *
In the cool, moonlit confines of his narrow bed, Daniel was dreaming. He knew it on some level but he couldn’t wake....
Hot, chocolate-drizzled cookies overflowed from Clara’s hands as she reached out to him. He wanted to lick the sticky goodness that dripped between her slender fingers and twine his hands in her loose blond hair. “Clara is as shy as a doe . . . gotta take it slow.” Slow. But Daniel was hot and his mouth ached for a taste of her full lips. Seth’s wife . . . Seth’s wife . . . Entrusted, treasured, given . . . Mine. The word seared itself inside his eyelids, and he reached for her, intent on taking what she offered. But then a large goat blocked his way and Clara was suddenly distant and removed, half-turned from him. Absurd that a goat should stand between them. . . . He moved to push the animal away and fell on a patch of ice. Then he was a child again, making snow angels in rising biscuit dough....
He woke, sweating, and slipped on his pants. He needed a drink of water to banish the strangeness of his thoughts and crept quietly downstairs toward the kitchen.
“Can’t sleep, buwe?”
Daniel nearly jumped as he passed his grandfater’s bed in the dark living room.
“Da, you scared me to death. Are you all right?” Daniel moved through the shadows and turned a kerosene lamp up low as he blinked at his elder.
Sol Kauffman had once been a big bear of a man, but now, at nearly ninety-two, his frame had shrunk and his mind drifted between the past and the present with a lot of odd statements in between. But tonight, he looked at Daniel with seemingly lucid eyes and sat up as if wanting a midnight chat.
Daniel suppressed a sigh and sank into a nearby chair, sliding it close to the comfortable couch.
“You’ve been dreaming, sohn?”
Daniel smiled in surprise at the accurate assumption. “Jah.”
“Ach.” Sol reached a heavily veined hand to brush at his long white beard. “About a woman, no doubt.”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“Well, that be your problem, buwe. Yer afraid . . . of her?” The faded blue eyes seemed to search the heart beneath Daniel’s bare chest.
Daniel looked away. “Nee . . . she just . . . Well, it’s not an easy situation, Da.”
“Because of the promise you made to Seth Loftus that day in the wood?”
Daniel turned to stare at his grandfather and felt his heart begin to pound in his throat. I’ve never told a living soul what Seth asked of me the day he died—not even Clara. She just thought I was nar-risch . . . asking her to marry me so soon—after . . .
He cleared his throat. “Da, how do you . . . What are you talking about?”
Sol gave him a toothless smile. “You think I’m alone all nacht down here, sohn? Nee . . . when I cannot sleep, I talk with the angels. ’Twas an angel what told me about when Seth wuz dyin’ and him asking you to take his Clara in marriage . . . A heavy load to bear, I’m thinkin’ . . . a heavy load.”
Daniel wondered if he was still dreaming when he leaned closer to the auld man and touched his hand. “Da . . . did . . . did the angel tell you how I can keep my promise to Seth? Because Clara won’t have me, and . . .”
His grandfather startled with a jerk and a frown, his bushy white brows nearly meeting. “What? What’s that you say?”
“Clara Loftus, Da . . . the angel?” Daniel felt a surge of desperation.
“You woke me up for such foolishness as this? Turn the lamp down—it be the middle of the nacht!”
Daniel pulled back in confusion, then hastened to rise and turn down the lamp. He had no desire to wake his folks upstairs, but he wanted desperately to keep talking with his grandfather. Yet in moments, his da was snoring and Daniel stood with his fists clenched in the dark room, unbidden tears in his eyes. I’m going crazy, he decided . Truly crazy . . . Maybe I should go back to bed and pray....
But in his heart, he wondered if Gott would hear the prayers of a man who did not keep a promise that even the angels knew....