way to avoid hurting Leanna. He’d spent hours working on that letter to her, praying God would give him the right words. God hadn’t listened to that prayer, as He hadn’t so many others in the past year. Somehow, in the midst of his chaotic life, he’d lost his connection with God, and he wasn’t sure how to find it again.
“No, I should be the one saying ‘danki.’ If you didn’t have milch to sell, I don’t know where I could have found some.” He backed away a couple of steps.
“There are several people around here who sell it. If you want, I can give you their names and addresses. That way if you want to check prices or—”
“I’m sure you’re giving me a fair price, Leanna, and I won’t find any place more convenient than next door.”
“True.”
When she didn’t add anything else, he began to walk toward his gray-topped buggy. It’d been delivered that morning, and he had other errands before he headed home and continued unpacking enough so they could get through another day.
“Gabriel?” Leanna called.
Facing her, he asked, “Ja?”
“If it’s easier, your wife is welcome to komm and pick up the milch for your bopplin.”
It was his turn to flinch.
She must have seen because she hurried to say, “Gabriel, it’s okay. Tell her she and the kinder are welcome here anytime.”
“I can’t.” He kept emotion from his face and his voice as he added, “I can’t, because she’s dead.”
Leanna stood by the fence and watched Gabriel’s buggy drive out of sight along the curving road. She wasn’t sure how long she would have remained there, frozen in the warm sunshine, if Charity hadn’t voiced her impatience again.
Milking the rest of the goats took Leanna less than an hour, and she carried the milch into the house in two large pails. As she’d expected, her grossmammi was sitting at the comfortable kitchen table.
Grossmammi Inez looked up from her mending as Leanna walked past her to pour the milch into storage containers. Most of it went into the refrigerator to wait for customers to pick it up, but she kept some to freeze in plastic containers for when she made soap on Saturdays. She did that every other week, when a church Sunday didn’t follow, because she doubted anyone would want to sit for three hours beside her when she reeked of the fragrances she used in her soap mixtures.
“Are you still going to have enough milch to make soap?” her grossmammi said, halting to take a breath after every word.
“I may have to go to a schedule of making soap once a month.” She sealed the plastic containers and marked the date on them with a wide-tipped felt pen before putting them in the freezer. “I’ve been making soap since I started milking the goats this spring. I should have enough to set up a table at the farmers market for June and July.” She calculated in her head. “It’ll work out fine, though Gabriel wants to buy three pints every day.”
“With two bopplin, he’ll need that. Bopplin depend on milch when they’re young.”
“He said something about them eating some solid food.”
“How old are they?”
“I’d say from looking at Harley that they’re around six months, but I don’t know.” She put the buckets in the sink and began to rinse them so they’d be ready for milking the next day. Some people milked their goats twice a day, but she’d opted for once. That allowed her time to work and help her sisters take care of the house.
“Twins usually look younger than other bopplin. You and your sister needed some time to catch up.” Grossmammi Inez gave a half laugh that turned into a cough. “Not that you ever grew very tall.”
“Gabriel didn’t get married that long ago.”
“Bopplin come when they want, and twins are often raring to be born. You and Annie weren’t eight months in the womb before you decided you had to come out. Your mamm always said Annie dragged you with her because you’ve always had so much more patience than she does.”
Leaving the buckets by the sink to dry, Leanna looked across the kitchen to where Grossmammi Inez’s needle dipped in and out, mending a tear across the upper leg of a pair of her younger brother Kenny’s barn pants. Most of her brother’s work clothes were crisscrossed with repairs.
“Grossmammi?”
As she raised her eyes, her smile faded away. “Something is wrong, ain’t so? You look bothered, Leanna. Is it because Gabriel and his family have moved in next door?”
“Partly.” She couldn’t imagine being anything but honest with her grossmammi.
During Leanna’s childhood, Grossmammi Inez had taken them in twice. The first time had been following Leanna’s daed’s death, and then the kinder moved in again during the horrible days after her mamm and beloved stepfather were killed in a bus accident on their way to a wedding in Indiana. Not once had her grossmammi complained about having to raise a second family in the cramped dawdi haus attached to her son’s home.
“Then was iss letz?” asked the elderly woman.
“Grossmammi...” She wanted to say what was wrong was that two tiny bopplin would never know their mamm, but the words stuck in her throat. She’d never met Freda, whose family lived in another church district. Even so, sorrow surged through her at the thought of the bopplin growing up without their mamm. Crossing the room, she sat beside her grossmammi. She folded her hands on the table and drew in a steadying breath. As soon as she spoke the sad words, it would make them more real.
“Say what you must,” Grossmammi Inez urged. “Things are seldom made better by waiting.”
Leanna stumbled as she shared what Gabriel had told her before driving away. Tears burned her eyes, and she blinked them away. “He didn’t say when Freda died, but it couldn’t have been very long ago.”
Her grossmammi regarded her steadily before saying, “You know your feelings had nothing to do with God’s decision to bring Freda Miller to Him, ain’t so?”
“I know.” She stared at her clasped hands, not wanting to reveal how hearing Freda connected to Gabriel’s surname always sent a pulse of pain through her. She’d imagined herself as Leanna Miller so many times.
Why did the thought of Gabriel married to someone else remain painful? Leanna frowned. She shouldn’t be thinking of herself, only the bopplin. The poor woman was dead and her kinder were growing up without her.
“Are you upset because you think Gabriel Miller has come to Harmony Creek Hollow specifically to look for a wife to take care of his bopplin?”
Leanna’s
