Stevie lay absolutely still for several seconds. Rather than begging for his mother again, he stuck his thumb in his mouth—but at least he seemed to be listening.
“I know how you love animals, Stevie, and I was thinking these new kids could be yours, if you’ll take care of them,” Leah offered. “If you spend time around them starting today, when they’re newborns, they’ll get used to you—and they’ll be really happy to see you every time you go to the barn.”
A tiny smile flickered across his tear-splotched face.
“They’ll have their mamm to feed them her milk for a while,” Leah continued softly, “but you could be their human—you could give them water now and feed them after they’re weaned. And when the other kids are born over the next few weeks, they’ll want to be yours, too.”
Stevie’s body relaxed. “There’s two babies?” he asked in a voice hoarse from crying.
Leah closed her eyes, relieved that he was talking to her. “Jah, and they’re the cutest little goats you ever saw!” she replied, daring to step closer to the bed. “They’re cream-colored, with floppy brown ears and heads, and cream stripes down their noses.”
“Like the mama goat, jah? Like Gertie.” Stevie turned to face her, his eyes alight with interest.
“Jah, they look just like Gertie.” Leah paused, hoping she wasn’t rushing the boy in her eagerness to take him to the barn. “And you know what? You resemble your mama, too, Stevie. If you look in the mirror and see her there in your face, maybe you won’t miss her so much.”
Stevie’s brow furrowed as he considered this idea. “But I’m a boy and Mama was a girl.”
Leah shrugged, deciding not to mention that the twins also bore a close resemblance to their mother. No reason to remind Stevie that his sisters had upset him with their cruel words and then left him behind. “You have brown hair like hers, and your nose and eyes and skin are a lot like hers, too. If she’d been a little boy, she’d have looked just like you.”
Stevie studied her for a long moment. “How do you know about my mama?”
Leah’s heart stilled. For the first time, Jude’s little boy was holding a real conversation with her instead of going through the motions of dressing, eating, and other daily activities with responses that required little thought. “I used to see her at church, and at weddings and such,” she replied carefully, because Frieda Plank’s family had attended church in Cedar Creek—until Frieda had caught sight of Jude and began attending church in Morning Star instead. “And I’ve known your dat since I was a girl growing up in Cedar Creek. I saw him at auctions when he was just starting out as an auctioneer, when my dat and I took livestock to sale barns—”
“You went to sales? Like a boy?” Stevie demanded.
Was he going to judge her, or was he merely curious? Leah smiled at him full-on. She saw no point in pretending to be any different from what adults in the area had always known about her. “My dat didn’t have any sons—I was his only child—so I was his helper with the animals at home, and when we sold them, too,” she explained. “He was glad to have me along, because sometimes the goats and ducks and chickens went into the trailer—or out onto the sale barn floor—better for me than they did for Dat.”
“Oh. So that’s why you like animals so much.” Stevie let out a single laugh. “Did you get poop on your shoes? Alice and Adeline hate poop, so they don’t never wanna go into the barn with me and Dat. They pay me a quarter a week to clean out Minnie’s stall,” he added proudly.
Leah wasn’t surprised to hear this, although she thought Alice and Adeline could be more generous. “If you have animals, you have poop,” she replied with a shrug. “And sometimes you step in it, so you clean off your boots and go on, jah? You know how it is.”
Stevie nodded, brightening. “When you have people, you have poop, too—but not on the floor!”
Leah’s heart shimmered. Their subject matter wasn’t the most inspiring, but she didn’t care. Stevie was sitting up, smiling as he dangled his feet over the edge of the bed. His hair stuck up on one side and his rumpled blue shirt bunched out between his suspenders, yet the feeling of loneliness that usually hung around him like a cloud had lifted a bit. “Are we going out to see the baby goats, or would you like some breakfast first?” she asked. “You’re probably pretty hungry.”
“Goats first,” he replied as his feet hit the floor.
Leah decided against smoothing Stevie’s hair or trying to tuck in his shirt: he had accepted her for who she was, so she didn’t fuss over him. They went downstairs and into the mudroom to put on their barn boots, and as Stevie skipped across the yard toward the barn, Leah sighed in relief. At least one conversation had gone well today.
When she caught up to the boy, he was standing outside the goat pen, gazing in awe at the pair of little goats that were suckling their mother. He glanced at Leah, delight dancing in his blue eyes, placing his finger on his lips to signal her silence. Leah nodded, mimicking his action. She was pleased that he’d known better than to enter the pen or to make a lot of noise, which would’ve startled the kids and perhaps inspired the mother goat to charge at him as she protected her newborns.
After several minutes, Leah walked toward the other end of
