From the doorway, Joseph turned back. His expression registered somewhere between hurt and bewildered. “You can trust me, Rebekah.” His voice was plain. “You can trust me to do the right thing, whether you are there to see it or not. Now. I’m going to walk Thomas home. Please stay in bed and take care of my fraa and our bopplin, a job that only you can do.”
Rebekah did as she was told, though it was not at all easy. As the day drew to an end and her stomach’s noises grew from gurgles to growls, her eyelids became heavier and heavier. She woke with a start, surprised to find her room cloaked in almost total darkness. Puddles of silver pockmarked the floor as the clouds moved across the moon. Carefully, she patted the bed. She was alone.
Did Joseph make it home?
She listened to the silence. Her breathing wasn’t the only one in the room. Rebekah sat upright as her heart pounded in her throat. Another cloud uncovered the whole of the moon and Joseph’s familiar figure was illuminated in the doorway. “Joseph?” she whispered. “Is that you?”
“I didn’t mean to wake you. Your dinner is there on the nightstand.”
Breathless, Rebekah cut him off. “What do you think you are doing? Standing there like that?” Her heart hammered so fiercely in her chest that she feared it would leap right out and bounce across the room.
“Watching you.” His teeth gleamed in the darkness as his lips pulled back into a smile.
“You scared me,” Rebekah said.
“I did not mean to scare you.” Joseph’s voice was sincere. “You were sleeping so soundly that I did not want to wake you up.”
In her sleep-heavy state, she was in no mood to be placated by niceties. Instead, she bristled. “So, you thought it best to stand in the doorway? Watching me because you thought I would get up and do something I was not supposed to be doing? The job that only I can do?”
“No.” Joseph’s gleaming grin faded. “Not at all. Watching you because I lieb you.” He strode across the room toward her but did not sit down.
Rebekah glowered at him. “I do not need watching.”
He fidgeted beside the bed as though he was unsure of what to do or what to say. “I apologize, Fraa. I am sorry I am so late. Your mater sent us home a couple of plates of what they had for dinner.” He uncovered the dish on the nightstand. The scent of liver and onions filled the room and her stomach turned over.
“Oh no—” She hiccupped into her hand. “Help—”
Joseph held the empty chamber pot under her chin just in time. She retched again and again. Joseph did not dare speak until she was done.
“I’ll take the dinner plate downstairs, so you don’t have to smell it.”
Rebekah swiped at her face with the back of her hand and nodded. “Thank you.”
“Would you like some bread and milk?”
Rebekah squeezed her eyes shut tight as her stomach made a strange noise that answered for her.
Joseph found her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I will take that to mean no,” he whispered. “I will be right back. When he returned, Rebekah had laid sideways across the bed.
“Well, now that you are awake, would you like to hear?”
Her voice was weak. “Hear what?”
“What I have been itching to tell you.” He eased himself down on the bed beside her. “How the walk to your parents’ house with Thomas went.”
“I am not sure.” She hiccupped. “Do I?”
Joseph took off his hat and tossed it across the room with an expert flip of his wrist. It landed in the chair. “May I lie down with you?”
“Mmhmm.”
Joseph situated himself beside his fraa. “Thomas was the star of the night. As we started for your parents’ house, the bear was there. It seemed as though she was waiting.”
Rebekah tried to clear her throat. “Did you take the buggy?”
“No.” Joseph shook his head. “If the bear had spooked Smiley, we might have found ourselves back in Canada before we got her calmed down.”
Rebekah nodded. “That makes sense.”
“So, Thomas and I began our trek down the path and I instructed him to just ignore her. He did as he was asked, however, the bear came with us.”
Rebekah cocked an eyebrow. “She did?”
Joseph nodded. “And you were right, there was nothing at all threatening about her presence. She acted more like a big farm dog.”
Rebekah placed her hand on his. “Then what?”
“Well as we walked on, she moved from behind us to ahead of us on the trail. We just kept going and she never looked our way, not once. Not even sideways. She just trudged on. Then, about halfway to your folks’ house, she turned off the trail and disappeared into the woods.”
Joseph’s hand was warm beneath hers. “How strange.”
“That is exactly what Thomas said.” He stroked her hand with his thumb. “Well, when she disappeared, we looked at each other and kept walking. But when we did not follow her, she came back and sat down in front of us. Some people may have taken that to be threatening I suppose, but I did not think she was threatening us. She did not whoof, she did not growl. She did not even make eye contact with us.”
“Was Thomas afraid?”
Joseph smiled at her. “What do you think?”
Rebekah returned it. “That is true. Silly question on my part. Of course, he was not afraid. Carry on.”
“Well, as we stood there with this giant mater black bear in our path, obviously blocking our way, I thought about you.”
Rebekah sucked in a breath, suddenly sheepish. “For making such a fuss?”
“Yes.” Joseph stopped stroking and gave her fingers a squeeze. “I remembered what you said. You know, about the look on her face. It was even more obvious close up.”
She exhaled the breath she did not realize she had been holding. “So, what did you do?”
Joseph shrugged. “We followed her.”
“Followed her?”
“Yes.”
Rebekah eased up. “Into the woods? With Thomas?”
“I was shocked, too.” He shook his head. “I did not sense we were in any danger, or I would not have gone, much less taken Thomas. Believe me.”
Rebekah relaxed a bit, but not much.
