When they’d become silent in the buggy, she’d known something was amiss.
But not this.
Putting her hand over her mouth before the sob bubbling up in her throat could escape, she turned away, not wanting them to see her reaction. “Kinder take everything at face value, so if someone told them not to laugh, they couldn’t guess it meant only at the...” She gulped back the rest of what she was going to say. She didn’t want to speak of their parents’ funeral and cause further distress. “How much do they know about what’s happened?”
He shrugged. “They attended the...the event.”
“Ja, I assumed that.” She was relieved he didn’t say funeral or the names of the deceased. It was further proof he cared deeply about the twins.
“Who can guess how much a young kind understands?” His mouth grew straight. “I’m an adult, and I find it hard to believe my friends are gone.”
“Are we going to eat?” called Andrew, again the spokesman for his siblings.
“Of course.” Hoping her smile didn’t look hideous, Clara slipped past Isaiah and went to get the casserole. “We don’t want supper to get cold, do we?”
She placed the casserole dish in the middle of the table. She reached to pull out an empty chair next to where the girls sat on red and blue booster seats, but moved to another at the sight of the stricken expressions on the twins’ faces. Nobody needed to explain the first chair was where their mamm used to sit.
Isaiah lifted Andrew out of his chair and moved him over one. Sitting between the two boys, he winked at them before bowing his head. Clara watched as the kinder folded their tiny hands on the table and lowered their eyes, as well. They had been well-taught by their parents. Looking from one to the next and at Isaiah, she closed her eyes and, after thanking God for their meal, prayed for Him to enter the Beachy twins’ hearts and ease their grief.
And Isaiah’s heart, too, she added when he cleared his throat to signal the time for silent grace was over.
The kinder dug into their meal with enthusiasm. Clara was sure it was delicious, because it’d smelled that way while heating. In her mouth, the meat and noodles tasted as dry and flavorless as the ashes on Isaiah’s forge would have. She saw Isaiah toying with his food as well before scraping it onto the boys’ plates when they asked for seconds.
He raised his eyes, and his gaze locked with hers across the table. In that instant, she knew what he was thinking. They needed to help the kinder. She agreed, but couldn’t ignore how uneasy she was that she and Isaiah were of a mind. It suggested a connection she wasn’t ready to make with a man again. She wasn’t sure when she would be.
Maybe never.
* * *
Isaiah smiled, hoping the youngsters wouldn’t guess he was forcing it. Kinder were experts at seeing through a ploy, so he tried to be honest with them. When Clara gave a slight nod, he hoped she shared his belief they had to help the twins laugh again.
He was astonished when she pushed back her chair and rose. She opened a cupboard and took down the chocolate cake Fannie Beiler had brought over yesterday. The Beilers lived next door to his mamm, and Fannie’s daughter Leah was married to his brother Ezra. He’d stashed the cake away so the kinder didn’t tease for it before they ate.
And then he forgot about it.
As Clara carried the cake to the table, the twins began squirming with anticipation of chocolate and peanut butter frosting. “Who wants a piece?”
“Me! Me! Me! Me!” echoed through the kitchen.
She smiled and took six small plates out of a lower cupboard. Setting them on the table, she cut the cake. She sliced four small servings and then put a plate in front of each kind. The piece she put in front of him was much bigger.
“Is that enough, Isaiah?” she asked. “Or do you want more?”
“How about if I say I want less?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t believe you.”
“And you’d be right.” He fought not to chuckle, not wanting to distress the twins again.
“Don’t wait for me,” she said. “Try it.”
The kinder needed no further urging. Within seconds, they were covered with chocolate crumbs and wearing broad smiles.
Though he was as eager as the twins to sample the cake, Isaiah waited for Clara to cut herself a small slice. He watched as she ate and glanced at the kinder, smiling at their silliness.
She was gut with them. He’d seen that from the moment she walked into his blacksmith shop and took control of the chaos. She had an intangible air of calm around her that seemed to draw the kinder’s attention so they listened to what she said.
And with her face not half-hidden beneath her bonnet, her hair rivaled the colors of the sunset. Somehow, her red strands weren’t garish but more a reflection of the glow that transformed her face when she smiled. Really smiled, not a lukewarm one aimed at hiding her true feelings.
“Wasn’t the cake gut?” Isaiah asked and was rewarded with four towheads bobbing together, though Ammon wasn’t as enthusiastic at first. The youngsters must be exhausted. “Next time we see Fannie Beiler, you must tell her how much you enjoyed this cake.”
“Yummy!” Nettie Mae said, patting her stomach. “Yummy in my tummy!”
A laugh, quickly squelched, came from where Clara sat beside the girls. She had her hand over her mouth and a horrified expression on her face.
He put hands on the boys’ shoulders to keep them from running away from the table again. Clara had slipped her arm around the girls and started to apologize to them.
“No, don’t say you’re sorry,” he hurried to say. “There’s nothing wrong with laughing, right?” He looked at the boys.
Andrew nodded. “Clara can laugh, I guess.”
“But not you?” she asked.
When the kinder remained silent, Isaiah pushed his plate away, though he hadn’t finished the delicious cake. He folded his arms on the table.
“God wants us to be happy,” he said as he looked from one young face to the next. “He loves it when we sing and when we pray together. Do you believe that?”
They nodded.
“And when we laugh together, too,” he added.
The boys ran into the front room. When Nancy let out a cry, Clara drew her arm back from the girls who chased after their brothers and huddled with them by the sofa.
He wanted to go and comfort them, but wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t tell them they should accept the hurts in their lives because God had a plan for them to be happy in the future. He couldn’t say that because he wasn’t sure he believed it himself any longer. Since he’d learned of Melvin’s and Esta’s deaths, the uneasiness that had begun inside him after Rose’s death had hardened his heart like iron taken from the forge. Every heartbeat hurt.
