Christmas Cradles Read online

  A candle in the snow . . . Asa shook his head as his daed’s words echoed in his mind. He tried to relax against a pile of hay in the small barn, but the image of the nicely curved midwife danced before him like shadows thrown from a lantern. He couldn’t remember being so struck by a woman, not for years, not for a decade. It made him feel like a teenager again, and that, in itself, was something to pray about.

  Anna was dreaming. It was summer, incredibly hot, and she was debating the merits of removing her shoes and socks to dip her toes in Pine Creek. It would only make her want to swim, she decided, something that adult women were forbidden to do in her particular community, and yet she felt herself searching the bushes with a furtive glance. She was far enough away from any of the farms for anyone to see her, and her dark skirt was dreadfully warm. She fumbled with the waist, frustrated by the weight of something more than the skirt, when she heard her name being called in a low tone. She jumped, snapping her eyes open. She realized that she’d been in a deep sleep, buried under clothes, quilts, and her aunt’s cat, and that Asa Mast stood near the bed, holding up a kerosene lamp.

  “What’s the matter? Is it a case?” She flung back the covers and the cat and made to rise.

  “You sleep in your clothes?”

  “All midwives do,” she quipped fuzzily.

  “I never knew.”

  “Trade secret.”

  “Interesting.”

  Anna sank back down on the bed, trying to get her bearings.

  “Here . . . I brought you some hot chocolate.” He offered the mug and she took it with grateful hands. She loved chocolate.

  “Danki.”

  “You sleep like the dead. I tried hollering, but it didn’t work. I’m sorry to have startled you.”

  “No problem.”

  He smiled down at her. “Were you dreaming?”

  She burnt her tongue on the chocolate. “Hmm? What?”

  “You seemed all ruffled, like . . . I don’t know.”

  Ruffled? She put a hand to the mousy brown hair escaping her kapp and looked down at his mammoth boots. Honestly, the man would be hard to dress in proper clothes at his size. She found a knot in the back of her hair and pulled.

  “Here, don’t do that.” He put the lamp on the bureau and moved so fast she didn’t realize what he was doing. He pulled her hands down and quickly worked the knot loose with his long fingers, then stepped away. He cleared his throat, and Anna thought he seemed as surprised as she was by his actions.

  “Your hair’s as fine as corn silk,” he said, seeming to try to explain his impulsive movement. “Pulling on it won’t do any good.”

  She was mesmerized. Corn silk. No one had ever said anything as direct and complimentary about her before. And the way he touched her—as if she were a porcelain doll, not the hearty and capable woman she knew herself to be. There had to be a sin involved in this thinking, she considered, her thoughts muddled.

  “Danki . . . for helping me . . . my hair . . .”

  He nodded as a brief look of sadness crossed his face, but then he changed the subject. “The call’s out at the Loftuses’.”

  She wracked her brain. Deborah. Two weeks out from delivery. First baby. Probably lots of time, but you never could tell. She pulled on her cape and her bonnet and picked up her bag, which she’d prudently filled with supplies before she lay down. Asa went ahead of her down the narrow staircase, holding the light high. She glanced out a window, and in the faint moonlight she saw that the snow had picked up.

  “What time is it?” she asked, peering at her brooch-pin clock.

  “Nearly ten.”

  She nodded and yawned, then glanced around, trying to think if she’d forgotten anything. “We’d better go then.”

  “I’ve got the buggy pulled up. My horse, Dandy, doesn’t fuss much, no matter the weather.”

  A gust of wind nearly snapped the door out of his hand, and Anna had to catch her breath at the biting cold. She recognized more ice than snow in the air.

  “He must be a gut friend then,” she shouted. He nodded and flashed her a fast grin, and then the giant of a man swept her up and into the warm buggy.

  “How far to the Loftuses’?” she asked, attempting to break the intimate quiet of the buggy as they started off. She felt as though she and he were the only two alive in the world at that moment, insulated by the press of the weather.

  “Five miles, give or take.”

  She nodded, understanding “give or take” to mean anything from nearly another whole mile to less than a quarter of a mile farther. She watched him handle the reins with ease.

  “You cold, Doc?”

  She turned, surprised, when he addressed her so. No one back home could get past her being Anna Stolis, the eldest of three sisters, even though she had her training and had delivered babies as regular as rain for the past two years.

  “I’m not a doctor,” she said, feeling obliged to make this known.

  “Close enough for Miss Ruth to leave—that’s saying something. What’s your husband think about you being gone?”

  She started at his question. “I’m not married.”

  He grinned. “Me neither.”

  She gave a tentative smile back and then looked out the small side window. It occurred to her that she’d never once thought of herself as a pretty woman. Passable, yes, but too curvy in the bosom and hips to be of interest when other women were as slender as reeds. But here she was, sitting in a snowstorm with an unmarried man and a dependable horse, thinking for the first time in the twenty-six years of her life that she actually might be pretty.

  “Are you cold?” he asked again.

  “I’m okay.”

  He pulled a neatly folded Jacob’s Ladder patterned quilt from beneath the seat and began to spread it across her lap with one hand.

  “Ach, it’s beautiful.” She loved quilts as much as she loved hot chocolate, and she ran her gloved hands over the fine workmanship, apparent even in the half-light. The color-play of the triangles somehow made Anna feel comforted, soothed.

  “My grossmuder’s. She gave it to me last year before she died.”

  “Really?” Anna asked, knowing that quilts were usually left to female relatives.

  “Yep. Said I should carry it with me to—” He broke off, almost in confusion.

  “To what?” Anna couldn’t contain her curiosity.

  “Well, she said I should carry it with me in my buggy to warm the girls up. She was afraid I’d never . . . marry.” He stumbled over the last word.

  “Ach.”

  “I’m sorry—I’ve never told anyone that. I didn’t mean to be forward.”

  Anna’s heart warmed to him even as she blushed. “Please don’t mind. People tell me lots of things in my role as a midwife. . .”

  In actuality, her mind was alternating between the images of girls snuggling with Asa beneath the quilt and her curiosity as to why he hadn’t married yet. He was probably her age at least . . .

  “Twenty-eight.” He smiled.

  “Girls under the quilt?”

  He laughed, a sound that managed to tickle her spine.

  “Nee, I’m twenty-eight, and you’re the first girl to have ever used the quilt.”

  “I’m twenty-six,” she confessed.

  He nodded.

  She stared at his perfect profile, the dark edges of his hair standing out only a bit lighter than his hat. He’d called her a girl . . . a girl . . . who was long past marrying. She’d even taken to sitting with the married women during church meetings, and nobody seemed surprised. Girls got married at twenty or twenty-one, or sometimes twenty-two—but not twenty-six. And, if he was telling the truth, that she was the first female under this warming quilt . . . her mind spun with stars and dreams and things long forgotten.

  “Why haven’t you married?” she asked, deciding she had nothing to lose by being so bold. She’d be going home tomorrow and would never see him again.

  At first she thought she’d
offended him because he didn’t answer right away. But then he smiled and gave her a warm look and a sidelong glance that made her clutch her hands beneath his grandmother’s quilt.

  “I’m just picky, I guess.”

  She shook her head, feeling sleepy and spellbound. Surely he couldn’t be implying that he was being preferential in showing attention toward her.

  “Is that your only reason?” she asked, refusing to allow herself to give in to the pull of his words.

  A tightness seemed to come over his strong features, but then she decided she’d just imagined it when he gave an amiable shrug.

  “That and the fact that I’m not very good at being anything but myself. You don’t get to practice charm when you’re just a farmer and the hind ends of horses are all you see for half the year.”

  “What?”

  “Guess that didn’t come out right.” He chuckled, and she shifted on the seat, clapping a hand over her mouth to suppress a giggle. A giggle . . . she, Anna Stolis, Anna the serious, the studious, the stern even, was giggling.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you.” She took a breath. “I—I’ve just never met anyone like you.”

  He swallowed, his throat working. “Well, like I said—you’re the first one under that quilt.”

  She savored her surprise at his response, not even caring when the snow picked up. A dim light shining in the distance alerted them to the turn, and he swung the horse with ease. He drove down the short lane, stopped the buggy, then jumped out to come around and help her. He lifted her down as though she were weightless, then grabbed her arm and her bag, steering her to the porch in the thickening snowfall.

  “Step!” he hollered when they’d reached the porch, and she did.

  They piled in through the front door as an anxious Amish man opened it, his light hair and fine blond beard betraying his youth and concern.

  “Miss Stolis? Your aunt told us before that it might be you. I’m John.” His voice quivered a bit.

  He shook her hand, then Asa’s. “Asa? Your father is ill, I heard today?”

  “Jah, making tough weather of it, but he’ll pull through. Danki. How is Deborah?”

  Anna glimpsed the anxiety in John’s face as he took her wet cape and hung it on a hook behind the door. “I’m not sure . . . We hosted the family here, but then everyone left early because of the storm. Deborah seemed fine, but then she started feeling sick and her contractions started.”

  “It will be all right, John. You’ll see. I’ll just go and put the horse up.” Asa excused himself and went back out into the swirl of snow.

  “First pregnancies are always difficult to gauge. Has she been having regular contractions?” Anna slipped off her boots and gathered up her bag.

  “Jah . . . they were six minutes apart . . . but . . . that’s not all. She’s in here.” He led the way to the master bedroom as Anna registered his vague comment. Concerns were already swirling through her mind when she heard the cough followed by a faint groan from the woman in the bed.

  “Hi Deborah, I’m Anna, Ruth Stolis’s niece. I’ve delivered a lot of babies, so you’re in good hands.” She entered the bedroom with deliberate cheerfulness, talking as she walked, and glanced around at the variety of inhalers and prescription wrappers on the carved wooden bureau. “Do you have asthma?”

  Deborah was pale and obviously between hard contractions. “Jah.” She coughed.

  Anna got out her stethoscope and approached the comfortably piled bed, a fixed expression of encouragement on her lips.

  Chapter Two

  Asa led his horse into the Loftuses’ warm barn and turned up another kerosene lamp. He stared at the small, glowing flame for a moment and thought about Anna Stolis’s generous red lips and the flash of her smile. She’d appeared from behind Ruth Stolis’s door like some sparkling thing, the catch of sunlight on a white splash of creek water, or the freshly washed windows of home in the springtime. But in the few minutes of knowing her, she’d also managed to bring back all of the hurt and pain he thought he was good at hiding—even what he thought he was over. But it was there, raw and open and aching until he had to bend his head against the warmth of Dandy’s side to regain control. And even then the memory of his intoxicating rumschringe—deceptive in power and poignancy, like dandelion wine on a hot day—forced images of Jennifer back into his head and heart.

  Jennifer and her incomparable beauty, her way of smiling and making others serve her, her whispered words and his desperate desire to do anything she wanted, no matter the cost. His horse shifted and he lifted his head, wiping the damp sleeve of his coat across his face as he realized he’d wasted precious moments when the midwife might need help inside.

  He made his way back out into the storm and considered what everyone else had told him over the last few years—that he was going to end up an old bachelor. He’d come to rather believe it, he supposed, and viewed the girls at meetings or hymn sings with a detached interest. Truth was, he’d rather go fishing than spend time with any of the ladies of his community, but maybe that was because Derr Herr had never allowed anyone like Anna Stolis to cause him to think beyond his own hidden self.

  He stomped his snowy feet on the porch and opened the door. It was quiet inside the house except for the sound of the wood burner popping. He slipped off his boots and placed them on the mat by the door, then hung up his heavy coat and took off his hat. He felt like he was intruding somehow and wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He padded over to a rocking chair near the stove and eased his large frame into the carved wooden seat. He jumped up a moment later though, when a door opened and Anna walked briskly from a room off the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked in a low voice, searching the tense lines of her face.

  She walked toward him, and he was surprised that he had to resist the urge to look at the sweetly curving swells and sway of her body. He concentrated instead on her expression. She reached his side, and he had to bend from his much greater height to hear her whisper. Her breath smelled like summer, and her gray eyes, with their tangle of lashes, held his steadily.

  “She has asthma, but I think it’s gotten worse because she’s caught the flu too. Her regular medication isn’t getting her breath where it needs to be. I have a small portable tank of oxygen in my bag; I think that should help. Once the baby comes, I’ll give Deborah a steroid shot, which should also help, but I don’t want to worry John about it now. I told him to sit with her. The baby should come anytime. John suggested a few poultices might work to clear her chest, so I wondered if you’d help him brew up some things. They can’t hurt and might help; that way I can focus on Deborah and the baby.”

  Asa nodded, then caught her arm gently when she turned away. “You’re a good doc.”

  She flushed. “Danki.”

  He watched the fabric of her skirt swish against the end table as she walked back to the bedroom, then pulled himself up to start on his task. John emerged a few moments later from the bedroom, his blond hair rather on end and his eyes dazed.

  Asa approached him the way he would a riled-up horse and laid a hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

  “Doc says we should make up those poultices for Deborah’s breathing. I know a few remedies from taking care of Daed in the past. Can you show me where things are?”

  “Jah.” John nodded. “I’ll be glad of something to do. We’ve got a cabinet of herbal medicines stocked, but maybe we should have gone to the hospital . . . I should have suggested that.”

  “Should haves are worthless in life, I’ve always believed,” Asa said. “You just keep moving forward into what the Lord gives you.” The words convicted him even as he spoke, as he realized he had spent years doing the exact opposite.

  “You are right, Asa. Danki.”

  The two men soon had multiple kettles on the boil full of wild cherry bark, honey, and melted horehound candy. Ground mustard, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, allspice, and lard were also brewing, and John was b
eginning to look more relaxed. Asa glanced now and then at the closed door of the master bedroom and prayed that all was going well for the Doc and her patients.

  Anna ignored the abrupt sound of a branch scratching the window and concentrated on the pale face of the woman in the bed. Deborah’s reddish brown curls had all but escaped her kapp, and her traditional long-sleeved white nightdress was damp with perspiration. Anna slid a long plastic drape beneath her and arranged it to fall over the bottom edge of the bed. Then she opened packages of large, flat, absorbent pads and arranged these as well. As she expected, Deborah’s water broke after the next few contractions.

  The young woman instinctively gasped at the rush of fluid.

  “It’s all right, Deborah. Your water’s broken, and I have a feeling that things are going to move fast now. You’re doing great! Do you want me to get John?”

  Deborah shook her head as she inhaled from the oxygen cannulas. “Nee, not yet—he gets sick to his stomach, even at calvings.” Her faint smile melted into a grimace as she arched against another pain.

  Anna strained with her. “Hold my hands. Let me carry the pain with you, just like Derr Herr does, jah?”

  Deborah gasped. “Jah, you are right.” She regained some composure after a moment. “Do you have children of your own?”

  Anna shook her head. “Nee, so I don’t know quite how you feel, but I can imagine.”

  It was a question that she was asked often. Each time she answered, she had to remind herself that the Lord had blessed her with the chance to serve others and to see new life come into his world. But there was one part of her that longed for a husband and children of her own. Sometimes the most elated moments in her practice were also the loneliest, when the new baby came and she watched the mother take it to her breast. It was like there were two Annas—the professional and the woman . . . or the girl, as Asa Mast had called her.

  Deborah’s sharp cry brought her back to the moment. Realizing that the contractions were becoming more intense, she glanced around the cozy bedroom, with its simple, carved cradle, seeking a distraction for Deborah’s mind, when she noticed the Turkey Tracks patterned quilt hanging on a display frame near the bureau. The wide, feathered patterns in each square did indeed resemble turkey tracks, but Anna knew another story about the quilt.