A Promise for Miriam (9 page)

Grace scribbled a question on her tablet. “You don’t want Stanley?”

“I do want him. I like him very much.” Miriam ran one finger down the back of the little gray mouse as the children put away their school books and prepared the building for the long weekend—what would be at least a three-day break because the snowfall had increased throughout the afternoon. “But I’m afraid my dog wouldn’t like him very much. He would smell him. You know dogs have a keen sense of smell, right?”

Grace had been scuffing her toe against the floor, but when she heard this, she looked up in interest.

“Pepper doesn’t just smell well, he’s actually a hunting dog, which means he smells
very
well—almost as well as you draw.”

Grace smiled broadly now.

“Pepper isn’t allowed in the house, of course, but he’d smell Stanley, and he’d probably sit outside the door and howl so loud and so long that he would keep the entire family awake.”

Grace began to giggle, though she didn’t make any sound. She covered her mouth with her hand and her eyes almost squinted shut.

“I thought I might ask you to take care of Stanley for me, as a favor. Because you gave him to me, and he is my mouse now. I would appreciate it an awful lot.”

Grace’s eyes widened at the request, and Miriam pushed on.

“I have one more favor too. You know we’ve been practicing our Christmas music. I thought I might send home the words to these songs, and you could look at them and think of a way you could help us.”

Now the little girl’s expression turned to one of panic.

“I’m not asking you to sing, Grace. I’m only asking you to think of a way to help the other kids. They like you, and it would mean a lot to me if you would stand with them when they perform. I’m sure you can think of a way to participate.”

Miriam waited a few seconds, giving her a chance to say no. When she didn’t, Miriam added, “Okay? To both requests?”

Grace threw her arms around her teacher’s neck and then planted a kiss on her cheek. For a fleeting second, Miriam thought she heard an “umm-umm”—like the sound you make when you hug someone tight. Then the young girl was running to put on her coat, snuggling Stanley, in his box, safely inside.

Miriam and Esther were only a few minutes behind Eli’s buggy. They closed the school up tight before making their way through the rising snowdrifts—Miriam to her buggy, which the boys had hitched to her mare, and Esther to Joseph’s buggy, which was waiting.

He raised a hand to wave to Miriam, and then he leaned out the front of the open buggy. “Need me to follow you home?”

“No, thank you, Joseph. I’ll be fine.”

Nodding once, he turned to Esther, made sure the blanket was wrapped snuggly around her lap, and then giddy-upped to his gelding. The horse trotted off through the falling snow.

The scene was picture-perfect, but Miriam wasn’t fooled. The temperature was cold, and the snow was falling fast.

She would have liked to drop off another dinner at the Millers’, but at the rate the drifts were accumulating, Miriam knew she needed to drive straight to her parents’.

Something told her this storm was going to be worse than anything they had experienced in recent years. She climbed into her buggy and made sure the leather flap was closed beside her. It didn’t provide complete protection against the cold, but it helped. Wrapping her own blanket across her legs, she picked up the reins, murmured to Belle, and hurried toward home.

Gabe Miller would have to feed his own family.

No doubt he’d managed for the last several years, or however long it had been since Mrs. Miller had passed. For some reason that image bothered her more than the storm outside her buggy. She focused on pushing it away. The last thing she needed to do was involve herself personally in Gabe’s problems. Of course, she would fulfill her Christian duty—that was the right thing to do.

And her professional duty as Grace’s teacher. It was natural to care for her students.

Strictly Christian and professional. Not personal.

Maybe she could talk her dad into driving her over in the morning if the snow had stopped. Her mother always overcooked when there was a snowstorm. It would be neighborly to share some of the extra food with her newest pupil.

When Miriam woke Friday morning, the first thing she noticed was how quiet everything was. True, it was early. Try as she might on weekends, she couldn’t seem to sleep past her normal six a.m. Though the sun wouldn’t rise for another hour, when she went to her window to look out over the farm, there was enough light to see the miracle awaiting outside.

Enough for her to draw in a sharp breath and understand why she’d woken to that muted quiet.

An unmarred blanket of white stretched as far as the horizon and beyond—covering fields, trees, barns, and even Pebble Creek in the distance. It muffled the normal winter sounds of birds in the trees.

The morning wasn’t completely quiet, of course. Now that she stood with her nose pressed to the window, peering out at the storybook scene, she could see the redbirds hopping on the branches of the sugar maple tree outside her window. When they hopped, the snow would tumble from the branch, making a slight
swish
sound.

And then she heard something else. Something that had her grabbing her robe and making her way downstairs and outside to take care of her morning bathroom needs. It was the sound of the oven door closing, bringing with it the aroma of fresh cinnamon rolls.

Chapter 9

M
iriam was sidetracked.

She’d headed to the outhouse, as planned. On the way there, she’d had to stop to put on her boots, coat, scarf, and hat with earmuffs.

The outhouse itself wasn’t as cold as she’d feared. Her dad had built it with consideration for the Wisconsin winters—so he’d sheltered it from the north wind by building it on the south side of the house, behind the woodshed. In addition, he’d built an awning over the building which kept the majority of the snow off the structure. Lastly, he’d rigged it to receive some of the heat which vented from the big stove in the kitchen.

It was almost comfortable.

No, the main problem wasn’t walking to the outhouse or even around the mounds of pristine snow accumulating at an alarming rate. Though the snowfall had stopped momentarily, Miriam could tell by the lowness of the clouds and the weight with which they seemed to press down that more would be falling soon.

She had hurried into the outhouse and was on her way back to the kitchen, back to hot
kaffi
and her
mamm
’s warm cinnamon rolls when she was sidetracked.

Pepper’s bark pealed across the morning, bright and clear, like the sound of the
Englischer
’s church bell. Glancing toward the barn, she saw the dog jumping up and down as if he had treed a prize animal after a long hunt.

What in the world?

His yapping grew more urgent with each leap.

Miriam gazed longingly toward the house as she turned and trudged along the path to the barn her dad and brother had already made in the snow. Simon lived with their older brother, David, because his place was closer to town and Simon’s job. He tried to come home most weekends to help their parents. She was relieved he’d made it before the storm closed in on them.

Now what was wrong with her dog?

Pepper didn’t usually tree an animal unless he was set on its smell. At the moment his silky brown ears were bouncing with each jump, his bark pronounced as he went up into the air. Each time he popped up, he gained a good height of two to three feet.

When he saw that he’d earned Miriam’s attention, he ran toward her and then shot back toward the tree near the barn. He continued sprinting back and forth—tree, Miriam, tree, Miriam, tree, Miriam.

My, but he was excited.

If he had treed a squirrel or a coon, it would faint from fear before she could pull him away.

“What is it, Pepper? What have you found, boy?”

Once Miriam was standing under the tree, Pepper flopped at her feet, a whine escaping from his throat as he waited for her to set things right.

She stared up and into the branches, looking for eyes or ears, but she saw only snow.

Then she couldn’t see snow because it was in her eyes.

Pepper barked once as she wiped it away, and that was when she heard a tiny
meow.

Stormy, Grace’s kitten, had somehow escaped the barn and scampered up the tree.

“How did you get up there?”

Pulling her coat more tightly around her, Miriam began to carefully climb the tree. Even in her boots it wasn’t that hard. She’d climbed it a hundred times as a child.

She had made it to the middle limb and grabbed Stormy, earning herself a nice scratch across the back of the hand in the process, when her dad walked out of the barn.

“Aren’t you a bit old to be playing in trees?” He stood beside Pepper, a smile plastered across his face. Both of them looked up at her as if they were expecting an answer.

“It’s the kitten’s fault.”

“
Ya
?”

“I couldn’t leave her up here.”

“Why’s that?”

“She would freeze.”

“She found her way up there. Chances are she would find her way down.”

“Oh,
dat.
It’s not so simple.”

“Why not?”

Miriam clutched Stormy inside her robe. She could feel the kitten shaking as she made her way back down and out of the tree. She reached for her dad’s hand as she jumped from the final limb, landing in the soft snow.

Suddenly, she didn’t feel so cold as she stood there, holding her father’s hand with the cat purring against her and Pepper pressed against her legs. As she surveyed their home, it occurred to her that it looked like an illustration out of one of the children’s storybooks—wrapped in snow and only two weeks before Christmas. It almost seemed as if it were a picture-perfect morning—except for the scratch bleeding on her hand, which was a small price to pay for Stormy’s safety.

Hot
kaffi
and a warm breakfast, and she’d forget the scratch.

The scratch and her rumbling stomach.

Her dad must have been thinking the same thing.

“How ’bout we put that little guy back in his stall and head inside?”

“Do you think Pepper chased him out?”

“I doubt it.” They walked together to the back stall of the barn. When Miriam placed the kitten down beside the mother cat, she began licking him immediately. “I suspect the stall door didn’t latch tight when your
bruder
brought in that pan of milk.”

“Pan of milk?” Miriam peered over at the foil pan as Joshua nudged her out and toward the house. Pepper curled up in front of the stall door like some sort of sentry. “I’ve never known Simon to care whether a barn cat had milk or not.”

“Could be I sent him in with it,” her dad admitted.

“You?” she linked her arm through his.

“
Ya
, well. It being cold and all. Say, tell me about your week at school.”

“Now you’re changing the subject.”

When her father grunted, she let it slide.

“The children were good, except for the middle-grade boys who thought it would be fun to put snowballs in the girls’ mittens at the end of lunch. Within an hour the snow melted and water was everywhere.”

“Did you make them clean it up?”

“Yes, I did, and they had to write apology letters.”

“
Gut
girl.”

“The three days off will do everyone good.”

“Storm could be bad.” Joshua reached for the back door to the kitchen, pulled it open, and let her enter first.

“How bad?” Miriam stopped in the mudroom. Her stomach was telling her to move on, but suddenly her mind was filled with images of Gabe Miller and his dilapidated barn.

“Worst we’ve had in ten, maybe twelve years.”

Miriam slowly unwound the scarf around her neck and placed it on her hook under the window.

“Worried about someone in particular?”

“Gabe—I mean, Grace.”

“He knows how to contact us if he needs anything.” Joshua smiled at her, the expression wrinkling the skin around his eyes. “And if I’m not mistaken, that’s your
mamm
’s cinnamon rolls I smell. They weren’t ready when I went out an hour ago, but I’ll bet they’re toasty brown and piping hot now.”