“You two are right, as usual.” She studied her mother, who aged considerably since her journey to New York to find Katie. The sun’s rays through the window highlighted her laugh lines that were now there, even when she wasn’t laughing. Her eyes, always so sparkling and happy, had dulled and now drooped at the sides. “I hope I’m as wise as you, when it’s Joseph and I sitting in our quilting room someday.”
Samuel reached over and took Elnora’s hand. Since she’d brought him home a week ago, he had rarely left his wife’s side. Something about that, as heartwarming as it was, was out of the ordinary and strange. It elicited an emotion deep down within her that she didn’t like. Mr. Williams’s words plagued her dreams nightly. Does Pa sense another heart seizure coming? Does Ma?
She shook her head free of the troublesome thoughts.
Outside in the hallway, Thomas, who wasn’t more than a foot away from Rebekah at any given time since she returned home, meowed loudly. Rebekah smiled and stepped out to watch as he played with his stuffed cat.
The tiny stuffed animal that Mrs. Cheng had hidden in the newehocker dresses, just for him, was just as much of a surprise for him as it was for her. As was the black silk dress she sent for her mother, that Rebekah knew nothing of. Elnora had widened her eyes, then put it away in a drawer. Whether she’d wear it for Rebekah’s wedding to Joseph remained to be seen.
The tiny cat for Thomas however, came with a handwritten note pinned to it, written hastily in broken English, had shocked her more than anything.
This was my son cat. I make for him as a new mom, many year ago. He loved it with all its hart. For Little Thomas. Who you love with your hart. Remember me fondly, Mrs. Cheng.
“Meow?” Rebekah asked as she perched on the top step. “Mrow mrow.”
“Hisssssssss!” Thomas held up his hand like a paw full of claws. “That means I’m a mad cat,” he whispered. “I was trying to nap, until you came meowing at me.”
Rebekah rolled her eyes and smiled. “Oh, I thought you were a mad cat because you found another mud puddle to get into.”
Thomas’s eyes widened and he peeked over his shoulder, into the quilting room where their parents sat, rocking together, hand in hand. “Shhh, Sissy. Nobody knows about my new secret mud puddle.”
A knock came at the door. “I’ll get it,” Rebekah called. “And you best stay far away from that mud puddle today,” she whispered. “It’s Uncle Peter’s baptism day...”
“Maybe,” Thomas corrected her.
“You’re right, maybe.” She held out her hand. “Here let me hold your paw—er...your hand. I’m still not too steady going down stairs.”
“Okay, Sissy,” he said, dutifully helping her down the stairs. “But I make no promises about the mud puddle. Cats don’t keep promises anyway.”
Rebekah thought about the big gray tomcat who swaggered in one winter morning and made his home in the barn. Once, during a massive windstorm, a nest of baby squirrels were blown out of a tree. Rebekah awoke to that cat, affectionately named Tommy by little Thomas, yowling his head off at the front door. At his feet, sopping wet from rain, was an infant squirrel. Rebekah thought Tommy had killed it and brought it to her, as he sometimes did with bunnies, until she picked it up. It was breathing.
As soon as it was safe in her hand, Tommy darted off into the driving rain and unrelenting wind, only to return a moment later with yet another baby squirrel. Sopping wet himself, Tommy didn’t stop until all five baby squirrels were safe, and very much alive, with Rebekah.
Though he was a barn cat and her mother warned her incessantly that he might pass her ringworms, she let the grizzled gray cat sleep in the house from then on, when he was of a mind to, of course. They’d had a time that winter, all bottle feeding the babies, since Tommy never produced the mother squirrel, who was probably lost to the storm itself. The babies survived, though, and thrived. Little Thomas still fed them, from time to time.
“Sometimes cats keep promises,” Rebekah reminded him. “Remember Tommy and the squirrels.”
“That’s true. But Tommy isn’t just a regular cat, Sissy. He’s human too, just like us.” He reached the door first and pulled it open. “Only smarter.”
Rebekah fully intended to see Joseph on the other side of the door, coming to escort her to the Wagler’s house for Sunday meeting. Or perhaps, even Peter. Who was there though, she didn’t expect at all.
“Good morning, Katie,” Rebekah forced a smile.
They’d passed Katie on the way home from Montgomery in the wagon a week ago, but when Peter pulled over to pick her up, she disappeared into the woods without a word. She hadn’t spoken the few times they’d crossed paths since coming home either. It seemed the few moments of familial bliss they’d shared in New York were all but forgotten for Katie, and that hurt Rebekah’s heart further. She couldn’t imagine the effect her stony silence had on Peter.
“Good morning Rebekah, Thomas.” She smiled down at the little Stoll. “I see you have a cat.”
“I do. His name is Tom. Like Tommy, only more grown up.”
Katie and Rebekah shared a look, and smiled.
“I’m glad you’re here. Would you like to walk with Thomas and me to the Wagler’s house? I’m hoping Peter shows up to be baptized...”
Rebekah bit her tongue. Katie’s face went from normal to downcast with such ferocity, Rebekah feared she may be having a heart seizure like her father. “Katie, I’m sorry if I—”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for, Rebekah,” Katie started. “But I would like to walk with you. If you don’t mind.”
“Of course I don’t.” She started out the door, and stopped short. “Can you run up and tell Ma and Pa that I’m walking over to the Wagler’s with Katie please?”
Thomas tucked his cat in his pants pocket and started up the stairs, but stopped short. He turned around, a terrified look in his eyes. “Do I ask them if I can come with you and Katie, Sissy?”
Rebekah didn’t bother to look to Katie for permission. She didn’t need it. “Of course, Thomas. You’re my little buddy. Where I go, you go.”
He grinned his gap-toothed grin. “You’re my best friend. Even if you are marrying Joseph Graber on December the third.”
Katie looked down, but Rebekah couldn’t help but chuckle as she stepped out on the porch and shut the door. “I missed that boy so.”
Katie forced a smile. “Thank you for coming to talk with me. I know I have not been a very good friend. Or anything else.”
“None of us are perfect, Katie.” Rebekah smiled. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Thomas dashed out the door and closed it behind him with a bang. “We are ready to run!”
“That’s his new saying,” Rebekah explained. “I am not quite sure where he got it from.”
Katie trudged along beside Rebekah as Thomas ran on ahead. “I have to apologize, for so many things.”
Rebekah wanted to interject and give Katie a list of things, a lifetime’s worth of things she could be sorry for, but she bit her tongue instead.
Today, I let her say her piece.
“I’ve been a bad friend. And an even worse future sister-in-law.” The path they were on was the same one that she and Joseph walked bare. It was also the one that Joseph brought her down to give her the birthday present, the hand carved fishing pole made from the branch of their tulip tree, that started their road to engagement. The pole still sat in her room, in the corner. And still smelled just as delightful as it did that day last year.
“I’ve been deceptive and manipulative. Shame on me. But nothing was worse than what I did in New York.”
Rebekah’s heart began to slap against the inside of her chest. The recent memory of Patty, speaking about the goings on in the tar paper shacks by the docks sparked to life in her mind. She never thought about it, but that was, in fact, where she found Katie. Inside one of those shacks...
“What happened?”
Katie looked at her with wide eyes. “I put all of you in danger. You got hurt, a lot, and it was all for my sake. I was incredibly unappreciative and selfish.”
That was a rather responsible answer.
“So it did not have anything to do with the tar-paper shacks on the docks, right?”
“Right.” Katie looked thoughtful. “I still don’t know what was so bad about them. I never did figure it out.”
“Me neither.” Rebekah laughed, a relieved laugh. “Truly I tell you, I wasn’t sure what you were going to say.”
