The Christmas Courtship

“It’s so beautiful,” Phoebe said softly, leaning down to hug Rosemary. She had intended to give her a quick squeeze, but Rosemary wrapped her arms tightly around Phoebe and she wouldn’t let her go.

“Everything is going to be okay,” Rosemary said quietly in her ear. “Not to worry. God has His plan for you. He has a plan for all of us. We have to be brave enough to be open to it,” she whispered.

Tears sprang to Phoebe’s eyes. She didn’t know if it was her cousin’s kind words, full of hope, or just the feeling of another human being’s touch that overwhelmed her with emotion. There was no hugging in her stepfather’s home. It had been too long since Phoebe had felt someone’s arms around her, and suddenly she felt as if she might break down in tears.

“There, there,” Rosemary murmured, patting Phoebe’s back.

Phoebe sniffed and drew back, pulling a handkerchief from her dress pocket. Embarrassed and not sure what to say, she dabbed at her eyes.

Just then, Tara stuck her head through the doorway. “Apple pie came out nice. I’m going to throw the sweet potato pies in now.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Dough for the rolls is rising already. Anything else you want me to do, Mam?”

Her back to Tara, Phoebe took a moment to dry her eyes and pull herself together.

“Sounds liked you have everything under control, dochtah.” Rosemary looked up at Phoebe from her perch on the couch. “Wait until you taste Tara’s apple pie. You’ll be wanting to set a piece aside for breakfast tomorrow. You met, Tara, ya?”

“Ya.” Phoebe glanced at Tara and nodded.

“I’m Nettie.” A slightly older girl came to the doorway, giving a shy wave. She was petite and blond, with her sister’s green eyes. In stocking feet, she was wearing a blue dress and a long canvas apron that appeared to be covered with splotches of paint. “The chest of drawers will need just one more coat when I finish this one, and then it will be done, Mam. New knobs and it will be perfect for Phoebe’s room.” She gave a cautious smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t get it done before you arrived. I had two orders for quilts I had to finish before I could start on the chest.”

“Nettie found an old chest of drawers at our local farmers market in Dover,” Rosemary explained. “Spence’s Bazaar is open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. We’ll take you this week. About anything you want can be bought there—food, produce and all sorts of junk.”

“It wasn’t junk,” Nettie protested, walking over to her mother. She lifted Rosemary’s foot in its black boot to readjust the pillow beneath it. Satisfied with the position of her mother’s foot, she turned to Phoebe. “I only paid seven dollars for the chest of drawers. Wait until you see it. A couple of repairs, a new coat of paint and the handles I found in our barn, and it’s beautiful.”

“Nettie likes strays,” Tara explained. “Stray cats, stray chests of drawers—”

“You were happy enough with that stray baking pan I bought for you for a dollar last week,” Nettie quipped.

Tara wrapped her arms around her waist. “True enough.” She glanced at her mother. “Tea, Mam? For you and Phoebe. I managed to hide a couple of gingerbread cookies from Joshua. He loves gingerbread cookies,” she explained to Phoebe. “I hardly have the tray out of the oven and he’s eaten half a dozen.”

“I’m fine until supper,” Phoebe said.

“Nonsense.” Rosemary shifted her position on the couch. Like her daughters, she was dressed in a calf-length dress, hers blue, and wearing a white prayer bonnet, the ties dangling. “I’m bored. Bring us some of those gingerbread cookies and a pot of mint tea. I gather my own mint and dry it. Makes an excellent tea.” She patted the couch indicating Phoebe should approach. “Sit.” She glanced up at Nettie as Tara headed for the kitchen. “Join us?”

Nettie eyed the wood-cased clock on the wall. It was handmade, as were the end tables. “Tempting, but—Oh, my, look who’s up!” She threw open her arms as another sister Phoebe had not yet met appeared in the doorway. She balanced a sleepy toddler on each hip. “Josiah.” Nettie took one of the little boys who was dressed identically to his father in denim trousers and a blue shirt with tiny leather suspenders. “There’s my Josiah.”

Rosemary put out her arms to take her son from Nettie. “Did you have a nice nap?”

“James was still trying to sleep, weren’t you?” the unidentified sister said to the little boy she was still holding. “But big brother Josiah wouldn’t let you.”

Phoebe saw at once that the little boys who were just over a year old were identical twins.

“You must be Phoebe,” the sister said with a smile.

All of Rosemary’s daughters were pretty, but this one may have been the prettiest of them all. She was a yellow blonde with the same Stutzman green eyes, but she had a perfect heart-shaped face, thick lashes and rosy cheeks.

“I’m Ginger. And this, in case you didn’t know,” she said, looking at the little boy in her arms, “is James. Right?” She tickled the little boy, who giggled. “Are you James?”

The sound of the child’s laughter struck Phoebe as sharply as if someone had plunged a shard of glass into her chest. “Would he come to me?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat. Suddenly she missed her little boy, her sweet son, so much that she physically felt their separation. She opened her arms to James. Her John-John was only two years older than the twins.

“Want to go to Phoebe?” Ginger asked her little brother. She passed him to Phoebe and the little boy gave no protest.

“There we go,” Phoebe murmured, pulling the little boy against her in a hug. He looked up at her with big brown eyes, his father’s eyes. “What a good boy,” she said softly, shifting him onto her hip.

“Joshua around?” Ginger asked her mother.

“Somewhere,” Rosemary responded, offering a little horse to Josiah from a basket of wooden toys beside the couch.

“Need me to watch the boys?” Ginger asked her mother.

“I should finish that coat of paint on the chest of drawers before supper.” Nettie tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “But I can stay and watch the boys.”

“You can both go about your business,” Rosemary insisted. “Phoebe and I can certainly handle two little boys. Can’t we?” she asked her son, and he climbed down from her lap, the unpainted toy still clutched in his tiny hand.

“Mam, the doctor was serious about staying off your foot for a couple more days,” Nettie warned. “Benjamin said—”

“Benjamin worries more than a grossmama.” Rosemary plucked another wood toy from behind the cushion on the couch. This one appeared to be a goat. “Phoebe’s here. She can give me a hand.”

“Ya,” Phoebe agreed, fighting tears. She missed her young son immensely, but somehow holding little James gave her comfort.

Spotting the toy in his mother’s hand, James wiggled in Phoebe’s arms and she reluctantly lowered him to his feet. “They walking yet?” she asked as she set him gently on his feet.

“Ya, since they were ten months,” Rosemary answered proudly. She waved Ginger and Nettie away. “Shoo. We’ll call you if we need you.”

Alone with Rosemary and the toddlers, Phoebe lowered herself to the polished, wide-plank wooden floor. “Would you like that goat, James? What a fine goat,” she cooed as he took it from his mother’s hand.

For a moment the two women were silent as they watched the boys play. The little ones jabbered to each other, but Phoebe could tell how close they were to speaking their first words. Her John-John had babbled the same way, practicing sounds before finding the words.

“You’re missing him?” Rosemary asked softly. “Your son?”

Her tone was so kind that again Phoebe had to struggle to contain her emotion. “Very much.”

“How old is he? It’s John, isn’t it?”

“Ya, John. But I call him John-John most of the time.” James dropped his toy goat, and Phoebe scooped it up and offered it to him, pretending to make it nibble on his chubby hand before she passed the toy to him. “He’s three now,” she said. It felt good to talk about him. About her cherished little boy that her family spent most of their time trying to ignore. Trying to pretend he didn’t exist.

“A happy child?” Rosemary pressed. “Easygoing?”

“Ya, and smart.” She looked up at her cousin, her eyes glistened. “And sweet. He’s already trying to be helpful. Just yesterday I was folding dishcloths and he wanted to help.” She chuckled at the memory. “He made a mess of it of course, but I let him try.”

“It’s the only way they learn,” Rosemary said, chuckling with her.

The women were both silent again for a moment, watching the boys play. Rosemary produced several more hand-carved wooden toys. They were unadorned with paint, but still beautiful and easily recognizable even to a child. There were two chickens, a cow and an animal that took Phoebe a moment to identify.

“Is that...is that a llama?” Phoebe asked, watching Josiah try to push the wooden animal beneath the pillow his mother rested her foot on.

“It’s an alpaca, a cousin of the llama.” Rosemary laughed. “Our vet, Albert Hartman, raises them. Lives over Seven Poplars way. Used to be Mennonite but now he’s Amish. Married to my friend Hannah. Anyway, Benjamin took the twins to see them a few weeks ago and our boys were fascinated. I’m just waiting for a trailer to pull up in the barnyard and for Benjamin to unload a herd of alpacas.”

Phoebe grinned at the idea.

“Apparently, they can be quite profitable,” Rosemary went on. “Or so Benjamin was telling me. I think he was trying to butter me up.”

This time, when the women fell into silence again, it was a comfortable one. All of Phoebe’s apprehensions about coming to Hickory Grove, her fears that her cousin and family would judge her for her past, were suddenly gone. For the first time in a very long time, she felt at peace. She felt God’s nearness and the belief that she was doing what He wanted her to do.

“I want you to know, Phoebe,” Rosemary said slowly, “that Benjamin and I think it was very brave of you to come here.” She met Phoebe’s gaze. “It was the right thing to do for your son.”

Phoebe gazed into her cousin’s green eyes. “It was kind of you to welcome me.” She hesitated. “Considering—”

“Considering what?” Rosemary asked, sounding annoyed with her. “You stumbled. Who of us hasn’t?”

Phoebe looked down at her hands folded in her lap. “It was more than a stumble. What I did was a sin.”

“Did you love the boy’s father?”

Phoebe was surprised by her cousin’s forthrightness, but she probably shouldn’t have been. Rosemary’s family, the environment she raised her family in, was so different than that of her own. “Ya,” Phoebe murmured, tears welling in her eyes, against her will. “I loved him, and he loved me. We had made plans to marry, John and I. He—” Her voice caught in her throat. She took a breath and went on. “He had put a deposit down on a farm. We were going to live near a creek,” she managed, remembering how happy she had been the day he had taken her in his wagon to see the property. “And then he...he died. A cave-in in his father’s silo.” She lifted her hands and let them fall into her lap. “And then I had John-John and that was that.”

“I understand what our preachers speak of, but don’t know that I believe that it’s ever a sin to love,” Rosemary said thoughtfully.

“Ne,” Phoebe argued, taking a toy sheep from the basket and offering it to James. “I sinned. We sinned.”

“And then you confessed before your bishop and your church,” Rosemary countered. “And no more need be said.”

Phoebe looked up and saw that Rosemary’s eyes were misty. And Phoebe knew in her heart of hearts that everything really was going to be all right.

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