“Suffer?” Alice blurted out incredulously. “Seems to me it was our mamm who suffered, because Dat didn’t love her. He was just faking it, once he discovered another man had fathered us!”
“My relationship with your mother—and with Leah—is none of your business,” Jude muttered, aware that his words were only adding fuel to the wildfire of emotions that had suddenly sucked all the air from the kitchen. “Seems you heard what you wanted to hear and ignored the rest, because I was crazy about your mamm when I married her—and I thought I was the man she loved as well. The issue here is that you two were eavesdropping, and—”
“No, the issue is that you’re not our father and she will never be our mother!” Alice snapped, again pointing at Leah.
Jude grasped his daughter’s offending hand, pressing it to the tabletop beneath his.
“Jah,” Adeline joined in quickly, “why should we have to hang around here so you can do your duty by raising us?”
Jude blinked. How had his world spun completely off its axis in a matter of seconds? On the other side of Leah, Stevie’s face crumpled.
“Stop bein’ so mean, girls,” the boy whimpered. “Dat loves us, and—”
“He’s not your father, either!” Alice interrupted with a nasty laugh. “This changes everything for us, Stevie. Our lives will never be the same.”
Utterly flummoxed, Jude smacked the tabletop with his hand. “That will be enough out of both of you,” he said in a strained whisper. “It’s one thing to be angry with me for the private conversation you eavesdropped on—”
“But it’s another thing altogether—sheer meanness—to upset Stevie,” Leah put in as she slipped her arm around the boy’s shaking shoulders. “He’s too young to understand what you’re saying—”
“Jah, he’s lucky,” Alice whispered vehemently. “We girls know exactly what you said, Dat, and we’ll never forgive you for it!”
Jude felt his control snap as he stood up, gazing sternly at his teenage daughters. Their betrayal crushed his heart, because he’d willingly raised them with all the love he possessed. It wasn’t their fault that their mother had deceived him. They were furious about the secret they’d overheard, but he couldn’t allow their indignation and anger to create chaos for Stevie and Leah—especially since he had to be away all day.
“Go to your room,” he said in the calmest tone he could muster. “When I come home this afternoon, we’ll continue this conversation after you’ve had a chance to consider the consequences of writing me off as your parent. We’ll also address the way you’ve mistreated Leah with your insolence. You knew it was wrong to listen to us on the other side of the wall—”
“Ah, but in the Bible, it says the truth will set you free,” Alice mocked as she rose stiffly from her chair.
“Jah, we’re free, all right,” Adeline chimed in as she followed her sister from the kitchen. “And rumspringa means we don’t have to say we’re sorry for what we do or say!”
Jude stared after the twins, aghast. He sat down again, fearing he might topple over if he didn’t have the chair beneath him. Stevie’s whimpers had become a wail, and as the little boy ran through the front room after his sisters, Jude didn’t have the fortitude to go after him. “What just happened here?” he asked, feeling dazed. “I—I’ve sometimes wondered if they were sneaking into the guest room, but . . .”
“Time to shift the bed to the other wall,” Leah suggested, shaking her head. “I’m sorry for those horrible things they said to you, Jude. They have no idea how their words have stabbed your heart. They talk tough, but where would they go if they decided to leave?”
Jude slumped, flummoxed. “I don’t know, but I suspect they’ll find a place that’ll make us pull out our hair trying to find them. Boys tend to fess up and take their punishment, but girls are sneaky—and my girls are going to claw and bite like cornered wild animals now.”
He gazed at the full bowls of food and the empty chairs at the table, clutching Leah’s sturdy hand. “Will you be all right today? If there was any way I could skip the livestock sale—”
“I don’t see that happening, what with you being the auctioneer, Jude,” Leah said gently. “I’m guessing Alice and Adeline are upstairs changing into their English clothes, and they’ll be out the door and down the lane not five minutes after you leave. That’ll give me a chance to spend time with Stevie today, to patch up the damage his sisters have done.”
Jude’s heart swelled. As he gazed at his wife, who was plain even by Plain standards, he was grateful for her steadfast love and common sense—even if the girls’ apparently habitual escapes upset him. “When Mamm lived here, she told me the girls behaved just fine for her,” he said with a sigh. “I’m starting to think she didn’t want to admit that she had so little control over them.”
Leah shrugged. “At least they cooked you a nice breakfast—”
“Trying to soften me up—and then they dropped their bomb,” Jude put in tersely. “I’ve lost my appetite, but I can’t sell livestock all day on an empty stomach.”
He spooned a large mound of hash browns onto his plate and handed the bowl to Leah. As he spread the fragrant fried potatoes and topped them with a layer of onions and green peppers, his thoughts raced in circles. “I should’ve shifted the bed to the outside wall when you first came here, Leah. Should’ve challenged the twins about sneaking into the adjoining room the first time I suspected they were eavesdropping, but I—” Jude gazed at Leah,
