Jude swallowed hard, reminding himself that he was bound to see and hear more than he’d ever wanted to know during this conversation.
“Tinker Bell’s our mascot—our role model,” Adeline continued with a furtive chuckle. “She can fly—so she can leave whenever she wants to.”
“With just a wave of her wand, her pixie dust makes everything right again,” Alice added breezily. “Tink loves to have fun—and so do we. And to our way of thinking, you can call them frolics, but a bunch of women getting together to clean house or cook for hundreds of people coming to a wedding—”
“Or canning vegetables in a hot kitchen, or even spending a day hunched over a blasted quilt, gossiping,” Adeline interjected with a sneer.
“—is not our idea of fun or frolic,” Alice finished quickly. “There’s more to life than working all the time! All Amish women ever do is work.”
Leah sighed. She was no stranger to such observations, because she’d escaped what she’d perceived as women’s work by spending her time with Dat and the animals. True enough, raising livestock had been her livelihood, but even on cold, snowy days she’d considered barn chores a lot more fun than the canning, cleaning, and quilting the twins had just mentioned in such disgusted tones.
“When I was your age,” Leah began carefully, “I thought marriage would be the perfect answer to the problems I perceived in my life—”
“Hah! Who did you think would marry you?” Alice sassed.
“Jah,” Adeline put in with a laugh, “most guys probably thought of you as being one of them! More a man than a—”
“That’s enough of such talk!” Jude blurted out. “When did you become so crass? So insensitive to everyone else’s—” He sighed loudly when Leah rose from the table wearing a perplexed expression. How he wished he’d been able to quash the twins’ talk before they’d hurt her feelings again. “Honey, please sit down,” he pleaded. “I thank God every day that I recognized you for the fine woman you—”
“Don’t you hear it?” Leah demanded as she hurried toward the front room. “I think there’s a baby crying outside.”
Chapter 10
As Leah stepped outside, the backfiring of a car made her look down the lane in time to see a pair of red taillights turning onto the road. In the darkness, she saw a container near the edge of the porch, from which came the frantic wail of a baby—a sound that had always made her feel helpless and utterly inadequate. Other women had known since they were girls exactly what to do when a wee one cried, but Leah had grown up as a tomboy, without siblings. She was so unfamiliar with babies that she’d joked with her dat, saying she’d probably put the diaper on the wrong end—and then stab the poor thing with the safety pins as well.
Shivering in the predawn chill, Leah quickly grabbed the container—a big basket, it was—and carried the crying child inside. She hurried through the dark front room to set the basket on the kitchen table, where the lamps lit the twins’ amazed faces. Jude rose to shift the lanterns out of the way as the baby’s ear-splitting cries filled the room.
Leah could only stare at the poor little wiggling figure, wrapped in a worn blanket and wearing a tiny white cap. Jude must’ve read the barely disguised terror in her eyes, because he immediately scooped the infant from the basket and held it against his shoulder.
Adeline watched as he began to walk around the room and murmur comforting words, while Alice snatched a piece of paper from the laundry basket. “ ‘My name is Betsy and my mamm can’t keep me,’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘Will you please give me a loving home?’ ”
Leah’s heart lurched. “Who would abandon a poor, helpless baby on somebody’s porch—and then sneak away like a thief in the night?”
“A hungry baby, I suspect,” Jude put in as he swayed with the wee child. “What else is in the basket? Any bottles or formula?”
“Nope, just a few folded clothes,” Adeline replied as she lifted the items from the basket and placed them on the table. “We gave all the bottles and diapers and other baby stuff to mamm’s youngest sister a couple years ago, remember? Mamm said she was finished having babies.”
When a pained expression flickered over Jude’s face, Leah had a feeling Frieda had made her announcement—unusual for a Plain woman, unless she was ill—without giving Jude any say in the matter, or maybe without telling him beforehand. Her head was beginning to throb with the noise of the baby’s cries, so she went to the mudroom to put on a barn coat over her nightclothes. “I’ll get some fresh goat’s milk,” she said as she tied on her black bonnet. “It’s the best we can do until we figure out what else to feed her.”
The silence of the chilly night relieved Leah’s headache as she hurried out the back door toward the stable. If the girls and Jude think I’m running from that crying baby, well, so be it, she thought with an embarrassed grimace. The mother who abandoned Betsy must’ve been terribly desperate—and obviously had no idea how unprepared I am to deal with a wee one—when she dumped her off in a laundry basket and drove away. Her use of the word mamm seems Amish, yet I can’t think a Plain family wouldn’t care for such a sweet, wee baby. . . .
Once inside the stable door, Leah lit the lantern hanging on the wall. As she walked past dozing horses toward the pens of goats in the back, her thoughts cleared. Gertie and her new twins were settled in their straw, appearing peaceful and content, their eyes reflecting the lamplight as they glanced up at her. In the adjoining pen, the goats Leah raised for their meat roused from their sleep, watching her continue to the pen
