A Ready-Made Amish Family

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“I appreciate that.”

Standing, he held out his arms. “Let me take him.”

As Isaiah leaned toward her, Clara realized her mistake. When he lifted Ammon out of her arms, Isaiah’s face was a finger’s breadth from hers. She held her breath and kept her eyes lowered while they made the transfer. Isaiah’s work-roughened fingers brushed against her skin, sending heat along it.

As soon as he took Ammon upstairs, she pushed out of the rocker. She gripped the top of it, her knuckles turning white, as she fought for equilibrium. She couldn’t react like this every time a casual touch brought her into contact with Isaiah. She gripped the chair and was trying to slow her heart’s frenzied rhythm when he came back down the stairs.

Her hope that Isaiah wouldn’t notice her bleached fingers was dashed when he said, “I’m sorry, Clara, for Marlin asking you if you’re walking out with someone. He can’t seem to help himself sticking his nose into matters he believes are his responsibility.”

“That’s a deacon’s job,” she said, not wanting to speak of how she scurried away like a frightened rabbit in a hedgerow.

“This deacon’s job seems to be focused on finding me another wife.” With the cockeyed grin Isaiah seemed to wear whenever he was trying to be self-deprecating, he sighed. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t figure on being the subject of matchmaking when you took this job.”

“I don’t like matchmaking.”

“I agree. One hundred percent.”

She appreciated his blunt answer and that he hadn’t asked her to explain her comment. She didn’t want to tell him that she was too well acquainted with matchmaking and the heartbreak it could cause.

“Clara, don’t worry. We’ll ignore everyone’s matchmaking.” He walked toward the door to the dawdi haus before facing her again. “In a way, we should be grateful to Marlin for bringing the subject out in the open, so neither of us has to act like we need to hide something.”

“Ja,” she said, as he urged her to try to have a gut night’s sleep.

He closed the door, and she heard the lock slide into place. She reached for her flashlight. Her fingers trembled as she picked it up and turned off the lamp. She hadn’t been honest with Isaiah. She already was hiding something from him. The way her heart took a lilting leap whenever he touched her.

“You can jump about all you want,” she whispered to her traitorous heart while she climbed the stairs. “There’s nothing you or anyone else can do to change my mind. I won’t be made a fool of by another man. Not ever again.”

Chapter Four (#ulink_528122b4-a777-5bb8-a491-fbad0c1c594a)

As the sun rose the next morning, Isaiah finished his second cup of kaffi and put the empty cup beside his plate with a regretful sigh. Clara brewed kaffi strong, as he liked it when he had a long day ahead of him. He’d already finished milking the cows and let them out in the meadow as well as feeding the chickens and the horses. He wanted to finish the final upright for a double gate ordered by an Englisch horse breeder in Maryland. He needed to make a few curled pieces and a half dozen twisted lengths to complete the pattern. When the gates were finished, they would be shipped to the man’s farm to be hung on either side of a driveway. A truck was collecting it at the end of next week.

With Clara’s arrival, he should be able to finish the job on time. He couldn’t let her delicious French toast tempt him to have another serving and linger at the table with her and the Beachy twins. The kinder were eating their second servings, dripping maple syrup and melted butter on the oilcloth Clara had spread across the table before serving breakfast. Seeing Nettie Mae dipping her fingers in the syrup and then licking them, he smiled. She caught him looking at her and grinned.

“Yummy, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yummy, yummy, yummy in my tummy, tummy, tummy.”

“Is that your new saying, Nettie Mae?”

“Ja. Yummy in my tummy.” She turned the phrase into a little song.

“I see happy faces. What did I miss?” Clara asked as she brought a new stack of steaming, eggy toast from the stove. She set the platter next to him.

“Nettie Mae said the toast is yummy in her tummy,” Isaiah replied. “And she’s singing about it.”

“And a fun tune it is, too. More kaffi?”

He pushed back his chair and stood. “Danki, but I need to get to work.”

“Do you come home for dinner at midday?” Clara asked, sitting where she had the night before.

“I’ve been since...” He glanced at the kinder who were too intent on their French toast to pay attention to the conversation.

“I can move the main meal to the evening if it’s easier for you.”

“I appreciate that. Once the forge is at the right temperature, I don’t want to cool it down and have to wait to reheat it again. I appreciate your flexibility, Clara.”

She shrugged off his compliment. “Anything else I should know about your work schedule?”

“Usually I am done around four. That allows me time to milk the cows and get cleaned up before the evening meal.”

“I’ll have dinner ready around six.”

“Gut.” He stamped down the thought that Clara had avoided joining them at the table until he got up to leave. That wasn’t fair to her. She’d been busy preparing breakfast and trying to stay ahead of four enthusiastic youngsters who seemed to have bottomless stomachs. But he couldn’t ignore how, when he looked at her, it was as if he faced a closed door.

“Will you need a lunch packed for today?”

He motioned for her to stay where she was. “I’ll get something at Amos’s store today. You finish your breakfast before it’s cold.”

Going to the door, he took his straw hat off the peg above the low row where smaller hats and bonnets waited for the kinder. He put it on his head and reached for the doorknob.

“Onkel Isaiah!” cried Nancy as she jumped up.

Her booster seat slid forward, pushing her toward the table. Her elbow hit her plate, and everything seemed to move in slow motion. The plate flipped into the air, spraying maple syrup everywhere. Her unfinished slice of toast struck her glass and knocked it into her sister’s. Both glasses bounced and rolled onto Andrew’s plate before coming to a stop in the middle of Ammon’s. More syrup and melted butter flew across the table.

Clara grabbed the boys’ glasses and kept them from falling over and spilling more milk on the table. The kinder tried to help, but ended up with more food on them and across the chairs. A plate fell off the table and clattered on the floor. It landed upside down, one corner of toast peeking out from beneath it.

Silence settled on the kitchen as they stared at the mess. He heard a muffled sound and glanced at Clara. She was biting her lower lip to keep from laughing.

“Now I understand how the kitchen could get messy in a single day,” she said. “Maybe I should have put the oilcloth on the floor instead of on the table.”

Isaiah had to put his hand over his mouth to stifle his laugh. The kinder were smiling, but exchanging the uneasy looks he realized were their way of reminding each other not to laugh. He lost any desire to give into the humor of the situation. There was nothing funny when four little kids refused to let themselves act as kinder should.

Who’d told them not to laugh? Once he found out, he was going to have that person explain to the twins he or she had made a big mistake. It was gut for them to laugh. They needed to express their happy emotions as well as their sad ones.

But they aren’t showing those either. That thought unsettled him more. How could he have failed to notice? Caught up in the day-to-day struggle to balance taking care of them with his work at the forge, he’d been too focused on each passing minute to look at the bigger picture.

Hanging his hat on the peg, he ran to the sink and grabbed the dishrag. He wet it, wrung it out and began pushing the puddles of syrup from the edge of the table. The cloth became a sticky mess within seconds. Tossing it into the sink, he grabbed the roll of paper towels.

“Komm, and let’s get cleaned up.” Clara motioned for the kinder to follow her toward the bathroom.

Placing paper towels over the puddle of milk and syrup, Isaiah started to dab it up.

“Leave it,” Clara said. “We’ll clean it once there are a few less layers of syrup on us.”

“Let me get started so no more hits the floor.”

“Danki.” Her smile warmed him more than another cup of her delicious kaffi. Before he could smile back, she’d turned to the wide-eyed twins. “Pick up your plates and put them in the sink on your way to the bathroom. Don’t touch anything else!”

The abashed kinder obeyed without a peep, astonishing Isaiah anew. They’d done as he asked, though not always as he’d hoped. And the results had often been another disaster on top of the one he was trying to get put to rights.

Isaiah went to work cleaning the table and the floor while he listened to Clara helping the twins wash in the bathroom. Later, when the youngsters were in bed and couldn’t hear, he needed to ask her how she persuaded them to obey her.