“Tomorrow,” Mamm said. “Tomorrow the roads should be good enough that everybody can come over.”
Another party, just what she didn’t want. No, that wasn’t exactly true. She wanted to spend time with her family, soaking it all in for safekeeping. Later, when she was back in Columbus and missing her family, she could remember these times and smile. But even though that’s what she wanted, it was still very overwhelming.
But the worst thought of all was that she would only have this week. After that she would have to face the reality of what was coming. Whether she wanted to or not.
* * *
Levi walked from the living room to the kitchen, looked around for a moment, then turned and walked back. He told himself he was checking on Puddles. The poor dog looked more miserable by the minute, and he figured it was only a matter of days, perhaps even hours, before she gave birth to those pups.
But the truth of the matter was he missed Tillie and Emmy.
His house seemed too big and too empty, and his footsteps seemed to echo when he wandered from room to room. Even with Mary gone he hadn’t done this. There was something lively about Tillie that seemed to light up everything when she was around. Maybe it was Emmy. He looked at the little fabric seat still sitting on the coffee table. He should have offered it to Tillie. He should take it to her right now.
He walked over to pick it up, then stopped himself. The police had said the roads were still pretty bad. And since most of them lived out where the roads weren’t paved, it was hard on the horse’s hooves to drag a carriage through the mud. He would have to wait. If the county held true to what they usually did, there would be graders out working on the roads probably no later than tomorrow. So maybe tomorrow afternoon he could take it to her.
Surely he could wait until then. Maybe Tuesday morning at the latest. He set the chair back down where it had previously been and walked back to the kitchen. How was it that Tillie had only been in his house for a couple of days, and yet she seemed to have left something in every room? Not necessarily her things. She had grabbed them all up when she left. But other things. Things that belonged to Emmy. Things Tillie had used for the baby. A burp cloth, a bib, a blanket, all these things were peppered throughout his house. More and more reminders that once again he had lost something special.
He shook his head at himself. He was making way more of this than he should. Regardless, he wanted to take the chair to her and maybe another bag of the diapers. He’d found one in the closet just after she left. It seemed Mary had things squirreled away all over. He supposed to her, not putting everything in the same place didn’t feel quite so much like overpreparing. But that was Mary. She was one of those preparing kind of people. She bought spring fabric on sale in the summer and saved it until the next year. She said she was thrifty. He had always just smiled at her words. He wished now that he had told her she was. There were a lot of things that he wished he could tell Mary, and more than anything right now he wished he could talk to her about Tillie.
That had to be the strangest thought to ever come into his mind. But Tillie had done more than just crash into his life on the night of an ice storm. She had brought him back to the now and given him the chance to start healing.
He could barely admit it to himself; there was no way he could say it out loud to her. But he wished he could tell them both, Mary and Tillie, how having a stranger in his house the week before Christmas had changed everything for him.
A knock sounded at his door, so unexpected that he nearly jumped from his own skin.
Maybe the police again? But he hadn’t heard a car. Truth be known, he had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts he hadn’t been listening for things like cars. Surely the person who arrived had come by buggy. But if they had, maybe that meant the roads weren’t so bad after all. He crossed to the door and opened it.
“It’s about time.” Mims stomped her feet on the rug outside, wiped them twice, then stepped into the house. “It’s freezing out there.” She hustled over to the fire while Levi still stood with the door open, his mouth the same.
“Is that a bike?”
Mims turned and gave him an innocent smile. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Please tell me you borrowed it from your neighbor,” Levi said.
“Sure,” Mims said. “Let’s go with that. I borrowed it from the neighbor so I could come and visit my brother. I wanted to check on you from the storm.”
“I’m fine.” He held his arms out to his sides as if to say, See? Then the thought hit him: he might not be able to talk to Mary, but here was his sister. His best friend. “It hasn’t always been as quiet though.”
Mims raised a dark brow in a questioning manner. “Jah? You have puppies now?” She abandoned her warm fire and rushed to the kitchen. He watched her shoulders slump as she spied Puddles, still round with
