Stevie thought about what she’d said. “So you raise these cows to make money?”
“Jah, just like I raise my chickens and ducks and goats. If farmers are to make a living, they have to sell most of what they raise and eat the rest.”
Stevie’s face brightened with expectation as he looked up at Leah. “Will I get to help with your cows, too? Like I’m helpin’ with the goats now?”
Leah’s heart swelled and her eyes stung with sudden tears. “That would be awesome, Stevie,” she managed to whisper. “I’d love to have your help.”
He beamed at her, really looking her in the eye, and for a moment Leah was speechless. As they returned to the house after they finished the animal chores, she realized that her day had taken a very positive turn, considering the way Adeline and Alice had gotten the family off to such a difficult start. After three months of Stevie’s merely enduring her presence, Leah felt a first flicker of hope that she might have a real relationship with Jude’s son—if she could maintain the rapport they’d established this morning.
Chapter 7
Jude was eating his noon meal at the auction barn, so Leah made a simple lunch of grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. Stevie loved home-canned peaches, so she opened a quart jar of them—and wished their supply of fruits and vegetables, which either Frieda or Margaret had canned, wasn’t dwindling so quickly.
Although Leah had worked in Mama’s garden all her life, and had assisted with preparing their produce for canning, she hadn’t paid attention to the recipes her mother had used, or the time required for each canner load of jars, or any of the other pertinent details. Mama had been so grateful to her for taking the sterilized jars from the boiling water bath before they were filled, and then lifting the hot, heavy pressure canner from the stove burner when a batch was finished, she hadn’t insisted on Leah’s learning the finer points of preserving the produce that saw them through the winters.
I should ask Mama to can with me this summer, Leah thought as she bit into her gooey grilled cheese sandwich. It makes sense for us to preserve our produce together anyway, now that she lives alone.
When she glanced at the clock, however, thoughts about canning slipped away. Alice and Adeline had left home more than five hours earlier—which was a lot longer than they usually stayed away.
“The girls’re really missin’ out,” Stevie said as he chewed a big bite of his sandwich. “They love grilled cheese sandwiches with peaches.”
Leah smiled at him from across the kitchen table, a worm of worry curling in her stomach. “Where do you suppose they go?” she asked, fishing for information. “Do they have jobs that they haven’t told us about?”
Stevie shrugged. “I dunno. I kinda like it when they’re not around, makin’ me do their chores, and tellin’ me what to . . .” His expression clouded over. “Is it true that Dat’s not really my dat?”
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry you had to hear that,” Leah blurted as her heart rose into her throat. She didn’t want to lose him to the mournful mood that had so often shrouded his days—but she didn’t want to lie to him, either, because then he’d have to decide whether he believed his sisters, or her and Jude.
“Sometimes a child’s dat isn’t the man who fathered him—and sometimes women raise kids another mamm brought into the world,” Leah replied carefully. “I can think of a couple of other families in our district—Jimmy Nissley’s, and Sarah Beachy’s—that became blended when one of their birth parents died and the other parent remarried. So Jimmy has a new mamm and Sarah has a new dat, jah?”
Stevie nodded, yet he was still thinking about the ramifications of what his sisters had blurted out at breakfast. “So was Mama married to another man and he died, and then she married Dat? And then Mama died and Dat married you?”
Leah’s stomach tightened around the sandwich she’d just eaten. If Stevie could ask such a complicated yet logical string of questions, he was far from mentally deficient. How much information was she supposed to give a five-year-old about a tangled situation—especially when Jude wasn’t around? Ask your Dat came to mind, but it wasn’t a fair response to the little boy’s urgent question.
“Sometimes people make babies before they’re married,” she explained—and they make trouble for their families when they do, her thoughts taunted her. “If they’re lucky, those babies are born into a family with a man and a woman who love them anyway. No matter what Alice and Adeline said when they were upset this morning, your dat has always loved you, Stevie. He loves your sisters, too—even when they spout off like teakettles and say mean things that hurt his feelings.”
“He’s a gut dat,” Stevie whispered with a hitch in his voice. “He works really hard and he plays with me even when he’s busy.”
“He takes gut care of all of us,” Leah put in quickly. As she rose to gather their dishes, she came to a decision. Jude wouldn’t be home for a few more hours, and the longer the girls stayed away from home, the more potential they had for finding trouble they couldn’t get out of. “I think if your dat was here right now, he’d be getting worried about where Alice and Adeline have been since breakfast.”
“He’d go lookin’ for ’em,” Stevie said earnestly. His eyes widened with concern. “I should saddle up my pony and ride around town—”
“How about if we ride over to Uncle Jeremiah’s on Mose?” Leah interrupted him quickly. “You can visit with him and your Mammi Margaret while I look for your sisters.”
“Jah! Uncle Jeremiah will know what to do,” Stevie agreed enthusiastically. “He’s the bishop, so he knows everything.”
Leah smiled as she quickly rinsed their dishes and put the leftover peaches in the
