Gabriel's Bride (30 page)

“Rachel?”

At the sound of Mary Elizabeth’s voice, Rachel called down the stairs, “Up here.” She had been so excited to start the dress she hadn’t waited on Mary Elizabeth to show. Instead she’d thrown a batch of cookies in the oven to bake and ran up the stairs to work on the dress. She was proud of her plan to use one of Mary Elizabeth’s old dresses as a pattern. She had carefully laid the fabric and pattern on the bed and started to cut it out. A couple more snips and she’d be ready to start sewing it together and fitting it.

“What are you doing?” Mary Elizabeth asked.

Rachel spun around, her smile stretching her face. “I’m making you a dress.”

“Me?”

“
Jah. Kumm guck
.” She held up a piece she had already cut out. “I used one of your old dresses for a pattern.” As she said the words, another piece of fabric fell to the floor. This one wasn’t the blue of the fabric or the green of the dress pattern, but the vibrant red and orange of the quilt underneath.

It took several beats for Rachel to realize what had happened. “Oh, no.” She started picking up the pieces of pattern and fabric, searching the quilt underneath for damage. “Oh no, oh no, oh no.”

“
Was iss letz
?”

Rachel sank down on the bed holding the pieces of fabric in her hands. Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them back. Why was she so
dabbich
? Why couldn’t she do anything right?

“Rachel?”

Tears wouldn’t bring back her grandmother’s quilt. She sighed. “I cut the quilt top when I was cutting out your dress. She held up the scraps for Mary Elizabeth to see.

Mary Elizabeth blinked once, then started laughing.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Rachel scolded as her own laughter bubbled up inside her.

“You’re a worse Amish woman than I am.” Mary Elizabeth wiped the tears of mirth from her face.

Rachel sobered, pretending that she was offended by the words. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Trust me. Just ask Annie about me teaching her how to make chicken pot pie.”

Rachel grimaced. “That bad?”

Mary Elizabeth nodded. “What’s that smell?”

“The cookies!” Rachel jumped from the bed and raced down the stairs. Smoke had already filled the kitchen.

Mary Elizabeth threw open the windows and the back door as Rachel pulled the crispy black discs from the oven. They were still smoking when she tossed them out into the grass.

What else could go wrong today?

Joseph appeared around the side of the house, Samuel on his heels. “Look what we found.” In one hand he held a wriggling baby snake.

Rachel recoiled. “Joseph Fisher, get rid of that snake this instant.”

“It’s not poisonous. I don’t think.”

“You shouldn’t get close enough to them to find out. Now go.” She withheld her shiver of revulsion until he had released the snake at the edge of the woods.

Raising boys was certainly a challenge. At least snakes couldn’t jump.

She carried the blackened cookie sheet back to the house and laid it on the sink. It would take a
gut
scrubbing to get all the burn marks off of it. But that could wait until after dinner. Right now all she wanted to do was get back upstairs to work on Mary Elizabeth’s dress.

“Rachel, Rachel.
Guck, guck!
”

“
Ei, yi, yi!
What now?”

Simon raced in the front door, an old shoe box in his hands. “This came for you.”

“For me?”

“
Jah
, open it.”

“Who brought it?” she asked, shifting the box into one hand so she could pry the lid off with the other.

Simon danced around impatiently. “Just open it.”

“
Jah. Jah
.” She wedged the lid free and screamed.

Hundreds of grasshoppers leapt in the air.

Nay
, thousands, it seemed.

Rachel dropped the box in the living room floor, screaming like a banshee while she frantically brushed the horrible insects from her dress. Her face. Her hair. She ran out the front door, still screaming as she closed it behind her tight.

Breathing heavy, she managed to get all of the bugs off her and not have a heart attack at the same time. But there was no way she was going back into that house again. No way a’tall.

Two hours later, she was still on the front porch when Gabriel arrived home.

Gabriel could see something was wrong the minute he pulled his buggy to a stop in front of the house. His wife was sitting on the front porch looking more
strubbly
than usual.

“Rachel.” He gave her a nod of greeting, instinctively knowing something was wrong. It was written there in the rigid set of her shoulders, the brittle line of her lips.

“Gabriel.” She dipped her chin in return. “How was your morning?”

“
Gut, gut
.” He saw it for what it was: a polite introduction into whatever was bothering her.

“We’ve had quite a time here.” She looked off toward the pasture, her expression as far away as the grazing cows. “I burned the cookies.”

He scratched his head just under the line of his hat band, then settled it back in place. What way did that make today’s cookies different than yesterday’s? “It’s okay.”

She nodded. “I can’t go in the house. We are infested with grasshoppers.”

So that’s what this was all about. She had seen a grasshopper in the house and was now afraid. “If’n you saw a grasshopper, I’m sure it’s gone by now.”

She shook her head, then closed her eyes and shuddered. “
Ach
, there was more than one.”

“How do know this, Rachel Fisher?” He hid his smile. He was growing accustomed to her name on his lips.

“Because Simon gave me a shoebox full of them. I opened it . . . and now they are everywhere in the house.” Despite her aversion to all things that jumped, she managed to say the words with barely a tremble in her voice.

“The
buwe
did this.”

“They’ve been . . . testing me ever since I moved in.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She shrugged. “Little things. Stains on the laundry, dirt in the house, a box with a frog in it. Just little things.”

He’d been so bent on adjusting to Rachel that he hadn’t noticed all that was transpiring in his house. “I’ll go talk to them.”

She stood and placed one hand on his arm. “
Nay
. Don’t.”

“They should not be treating you this way.”

“Do you think they will like me any more if they are punished for this?”

He stopped, propped his hands on his hips, and exhaled. “
Nay
, but you are my wife now. They should treat you with courtesy and respect.”

She looked up at him, searching his face with those big eyes. “How do you expect them to treat me as such when you don’t?”

Her words cut like a hot knife through butter, quick and searing. “I never meant to show you disrespect.”

“I know. It’s just the situation we find ourselves in.”

He gave a quick nod.

“I was aware when I walked into this marriage, that you still harbored feelings for your wife.”

“Rachel, I—”

She raised a hand to stop the flow of his words. “Please. Let me finish.”

He exhaled, trying to dispel the pent-up emotions bubbling inside him.

“Your sons do not know, and they are afraid of losing their mother.”

“They’ve already lost her.”

Rachel’s lips trembled and a sad little smile appeared. “
Nay
, they have not. You have kept her alive and well in your own way.”

“I—”

“I am not criticizing.” She shook her head. “Nor am I willing to ignore the truth.”

“What would you have me to do?”

She got that faraway look again, and he had to resist the urge to see what was so intriguing on the horizon. “You’ll find a time to tell them how you feel about their mother and also about this marriage. When it comes, just promise me that you will take it. For their sakes.”

She had been chased out of her house by the one thing she feared the most. What could he do but agree? “
Jah
, then. I will.”

“What did you do?”

Simon cringed as Matthew cornered him in the barn.

“
Nix, nix
.” Yet he felt a stirring in his heart at the lie. “I gave her a shoebox full of grasshoppers.”

“That is why she left to spend the night with
grossmammi
and
grossdaadi
?”

“I guess,
jah
.”

Matthew visibly relaxed, and Simon breathed a sigh of relief. His brother was not above twisting his ear if he felt it would keep him in line. “Why would you do that when you know she is afraid of things that hop?”

Simon stared at his feet. “It was just a joke.”

“Joke or not, she is gone for the night. Now it is up to you to make sure she comes back tomorrow.”

He jerked his head up to stare at his brother in disbelief. “But—”

“
Nay
. Tomorrow. She comes back, or I will tell
Dat
about all the jokes you have played on her.”

The next evening, Gabriel looked around the table at his wife and his children. All were there, except Mary Elizabeth, but she had at least returned home, back with the Plain people where she belonged.

His dinner was cooked fine without a burnt taste or the smell of scorched in the air. The
haus
was clean, and his wife even looked a little more presentable this eve.

He and Matthew had rounded up all the grasshoppers and had Simon take them far into the pasture before releasing them. Simon had apologized to Rachel, and the world had settled down.

For the first time since marrying Rachel, his world seemed to be going along right smooth. Annie’s baby was fine and healthy, his
mudder
still cancer free, and soon Zane Carson would marry Katie Rose.

Life was
gut.

Maybe this was one of those moments that Rachel was talking about. A perfect moment that could not be shaken by a little truth.

But he couldn’t risk the peace that had descended on them. He’d talk to the
buwe
later. Right now he wanted to say a prayer of thanks and savor the moment.