Her eyes watered as the same sense of hilarity as that of the rooster incident returned. She bit her lip, but the more she tried to hold her laughter in, the funnier the entire scene became. With an unladylike snort, Rebekah gave in to the throes of a laughing jag once again.
Joseph turned to face her. “What’s so funny?”
Sure enough, his entire front, from his forehead to his chest, was spotted with floury globs.
Rebekah held her middle and leaned against the wall. Tears streaked her face and she was powerless to stop laughing.
He touched his face and examined his fingers. With a slow grin, he advanced toward her.
“Oh no you don’t, Joseph Graber.” Rebekah stepped backward along the wall, but a chair stood between her and the kitchen door. Her sides ached, and her cheeks hurt from smiling. She backed into a corner, completely at his mercy.
“Miss Stoll, you need a smidge here…” He tweaked the end of her nose with one buttery finger. “And a touch there.” Joseph dabbed her chin with his other floury hand.
Rebekah flailed her arms and protested through the giggles. The absurdity of the moment made the entire scene even more enjoyable. Joseph’s deep, throaty laughs harmonized with hers as they failed to make a delicious lunch.
After a moment, the laughter fizzled away and left a comfortable silence in its stead.
She gazed at his doughy face. Suddenly, he stiffened. “My cinnamon rolls!”
Rebekah watched as he donned Elnora’s pot-holders and pulled the delectable pastries from the oven.
How good they will taste after dinner. Rebekah licked her lips. But then again, anything cinnamon tastes good any time.
“Joseph Graber, you’re a cook? After all these years, I should have known that by now.” She dabbed her face with a hanky and feigned annoyance. “What am I going to do with you?”
He slid the hanky from her hand and stepped closer. Ever slow, he removed a blotch of flour from below her right eye. He continued to dab long after the flour was gone. “What are you going to do with me, Miss Stoll?”
The vulnerable feeling was back, heavy and hard, in the pit of her stomach. Rebekah gulped. It sounded awfully loud in the sudden quiet.
“Um…”
“Say you’ll attend the Spring Festival this weekend.”
Phew.
“Of course we’re attending.” The words tumbled forth much too quickly. “Our families always—”
“Sshh.”
Rebekah shut her mouth and tucked her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Say you’ll attend the Spring Festival,” Joseph repeated, “with me as your escort.”
Chapter Four
Thunder boomed outside Rebekah’s window with such intensity, the glass rattled in the frame. Still mostly asleep, she jumped and landed in a heap on the floor. Her waist-length blonde mane twisted in her fall and clung to her face like Peter’s bandana had clung to his neck.
With her heart pounding in her chest, Rebekah’s sleepy eyes flew wide open to view the world with adrenaline-charged vision. Something was wrong.
Bright flashes of lightning forced her to cover her eyes. Even then, she could feel the brief heat from the striking bolts on her skin.
Fear swelled within her. A torrent of rain hammered violently on her windows, demanding to be let in—or else.
“Halp!” A familiar voice echoed between the squalling sheets of rain. “Somebody. Halp!”
She stopped fighting with her hair and sat as still as a windmill on a breezeless day.
That’s Pa’s voice.
“Pa?”
In her dash to the window, she stubbed her baby toe on her unadorned dresser. The splintering pain ebbed as the sight unfolding outside met her eyes. “Pa!”
There stood Samuel, pumping water into a bucket so hard Rebekah feared he would break his arms. Then, he flung the half-full bucket at the monstrous yellow flames that roared skyward from their barn.
“Buttermilk!” The word ripped from her throat with such unanticipated force that her voice went sandpapery.
Her injured foot a distant memory, Rebekah hurtled past her parent’s bedroom, where all the little boys were probably cuddled in bed with their mother.
“Jeremiah! The barn—it’s on fire!” she yelled into the darkness of the house as she took the stairs two and three at a time.
Her oldest brother’s footsteps fell in behind her. “Let’s go.”
The pair reached the door at the same time. They flung it open so wide that it cracked against the strain of its hinges. Not bothering to turn and close it, they raced toward the barn. Rebekah hadn’t bothered to grab a covering and her rain-wet hair streamed out behind her like yellow ribbons from a maypole. It slapped her in the face when the wind whipped from a different direction.
She ground to a halt at the water pump and grabbed Jeremiah by his shoulders.
“You help Pa. I’m going in for the animals.”
Jeremiah began pumping ferociously for Samuel who, before that moment, hadn’t noticed that his two eldest children had come to his aid.
“Blitzschlag!” Samuel yelled in German. “Lightning struck the barn.”
***
The inside of their cozy barn was ablaze. Piles of the sweet-smelling hay, where Rebekah had hidden from her brothers on lazy fall afternoons, were engulfed by roaring, ravenous flames. The yoke her father had hewn by hand as a boy hung on a blackened overhead beam, charred and smoking. A rafter collapsed, shocking her back to her senses.
Cream and Butter, tied up in their stalls, pulled and reared against the ropes that had now become their enemy. Tiny Buttermilk bleated and mooed helplessly from behind her mother.
Rebekah yanked the knots that tethered Cream and Butter to free them. The eyes of her normally-docile cows were wild and terrified, but she grasped the lead ropes in her hands anyway and turned to lead them out.
She looked at the tiny calf which stood in the stall, frozen in fear. Their eyes met. I won’t leave you.
Turning her attention back to the task at hand, she sang the flapjack ingredients song loudly, partly to be heard over the roaring flame but mostly to keep both her and the frightened cattle calm.
Another flaming beam snapped and fell behind them. Butter, the milk cow, bellowed and reared. She danced a freakish dance on her hind legs before she jerked free and raced out of the barn and into the heart of the storm.
Rebekah stumbled with the force of Butter’s yank but couldn’t regain her balance. Before she could secure her hold on Cream’s rope, she fell in a sprawling heap in the mud.
