“Blackie, Uncle Peter,” Thomas said, exasperated.
“I have some good news from Montgomery,” Peter shared, oblivious to the good news that had just been shared before he arrived. “Would you believe Noah is learning to read, already?”
“Doesn’t surprise me, he’s a bright young man,” Samuel said. It was no question that Samuel doted on the young quiet boy.
“Patty is doing wonderful as a nurse to the cranky old doctor, who isn’t quite so cranky anymore. She is even thinking of taking him up on his offer to put her through medical school.”
“That’s quite the turn of events,” Rebekah observed.
“It is.” Peter continued. “Turns out he was cranky because he was still grieving over a lost patient, the anniversary of which passed not long before we all arrived with Samuel in tow, when he took sick.”
Everyone paused in quiet reverence. Elnora stood beside her husband, and she’d walked up so quietly, that Rebekah didn’t even realize she’d come.
Peter sighed a big sigh. “It was the doc’s daughter that he lost. And he lost her in childbirth—both she and the child were lost. A little boy who was to be named Noah Abraham.”
Silence befell the lot of them.
“So when Patty and Noah arrived, both the same ages as his late daughter and grandson, he felt it was an answer to his prayer. Took them in as his family.”
“Thank you God,” Rebekah said aloud. “For all your blessings.” She looked around at the faces of the people who meant so much to her. “Thomas, come over here. Just a moment.”
“With everyone here...” Rebekah glanced at Joseph, but didn’t falter. “We have something to share with you.”
Elnora, Peter, Samuel, Thomas, and Mr. Williams looked on with wide, patient eyes.
“I’m pregnant.” She and Joseph grasped hands. “We’re going to have a baby!”
Never before had Gasthof Village heard such a happy whoop as it heard that day. “Oh, the rest of your brothers will be so excited when we tell them tonight at dinner,” Elnora cried.
At the sudden cacophony, thirteen little puff ball kittens took off in thirteen different directions.
Laughing, Rebekah hugged little Thomas. “Come on, let’s round up your babies.”
“Soon,” Joseph whispered, “we will have our own baby for Thomas to round up.” He handed her a little red kitten. “I love you, Mrs. Graber. Today, and forever.”
“And I you, Mr. Graber.”
“And Rebekah.” He handed her a gray striped kitten with wide green eyes. “Your dress really was something special. Unique. Just like you.”
“Just like us,” she corrected. “Just like us.”
REBEKAH’S CRADLE
Chapter One
I prayed for this child and the Lord has granted me what I asked of Him. -1 Samuel 1:27
Gasthof Village, Indiana Territory 1892
Buttercup, the cantankerous rooster that Rebekah’s doting little bruder Thomas insisted on gifting her and Joseph as a wedding present, crowed his trademark, pitiable crow as the Indiana sun peeked over the horizon. Buttercup was ornery enough to guard his flock of hens against any perceived threat, be it two-legged or four, but his crowing skills were severely lacking.
Rebekah stretched her arms over her head. Her eyelids were like stone and refused to open. “Joseph?” she murmured.
Her mann didn’t answer.
She patted his side of the bed and forced her eyes to open. The sheets beside her were cold. And empty.
“Someone’s up and gone with the sun,” she whispered. Rebekah dragged herself out of the small, handmade bed she shared with Joseph. The world pitched and rolled, and her head felt airy, as though a breeze could knock her over. She listed against the dresser that her dat, Samuel, had made for them.
“Oh my.” Rebekah’s hand went to her stomach and bile burned the back of her throat. “I must have picked up a stomach sickness.”
The roiling in her stomach bubbled as she felt her way down the stairs into the empty living room.
Still no Joseph.
She peeked into the kitchen and shivered in the morning’s coolness. Steam rose from the coffee pot and gray, morning light tinted the window behind the gauzy curtains that she and her mamm, Elnora, had made together. The curtain Elnora sewed hung straight and true, while Rebekah’s crooked hem hung oddly. She sniffed the coffee-scented air.
Joseph has been here. He made coffee. The trail is getting warmer…
She thought momentarily about pouring herself a cup, but another surge of nausea gave her pause. She hiccupped and leaned against the doorway.
Perhaps he is outside.
Rebekah picked her way down the front stairs. The dew from the yard was icy on her bare feet as she tip-toed to the barn. Sure enough, Joseph was there. Beside him, holding the lantern, was his new little shadow, Thomas. Her favorite little bruder had his own room at their house in addition to the one at their parents’ house. Since she and Joseph married, wherever Joseph went, Thomas went, too. If Joseph went to town, Thomas went to town. Thanks to their constant travels, or adventures as he and Joseph called them, Thomas was the only nine-year-old in Gasthof Village who knew every backroad and shortcut between Montgomery, Indiana and Gasthof Village.
“Gute morning, little bruder.” A smile flickered across Rebekah’s lips. “I might be wrong, but I thought you stayed the night with Mamm and Dat last night.”
Thomas grinned his gap-toothed grin at his schwester’s unexpected appearance. The lantern light illuminated his freckled, round face beneath his wide-brimmed straw hat.
“You are right, I did go home last night.”
Joseph, busy sanding a piece of wood that would be a chair at some point, raised his eyebrows and smiled.
Thomas continued. “Dat is still not feeling well, so I went to help Jeremiah make the wagon wheel delivery in Montgomery this morning. When we were done at the livery, I just took my secret trail back here. To my other home.”
Wait… Dat is sick?
The memory of the heart seizure that almost took Samuel’s life last year burst to the forefront of Rebekah’s mind. He had collapsed in front of Thomas and Rebekah as they helped him in the barn, only a short time before she and Joseph were to be married. The man who bought his wagon wheels worried when the delivery was tardy and came out to check on Samuel, and it was a good thing he did. He saved her father’s life.
Rebekah remembered how helpless and feeble Samuel had looked, lying in the Englischer doctor’s bed in Montgomery as she went by to check on him before leaving in the company of Joseph and Peter to go in search of Katie in New York City.
The memory of the leeches, attached to her father’s sick body by the Englischer doctor, made her stomach churn again. Saliva pooled in the back of her mouth, and she felt hot and cold, both at the same time.
“What is the matter with fater?” Rebekah’s voice came out much too high-pitched to be her own.
