The Christmas Courtship. Emma Miller
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.
Joshua looked up from where he was stacking wood in the wood box as his sister walked into the living room. He was on his knees beside the massive redbrick fireplace. With the cold snap, they’d been burning more wood than they would typically, and he wanted to be sure there was plenty for the evening. With their new guest in the house, he imagined that after supper, when the harness shop was closed and the animals settled for the night, the whole family would retire to the living room. Here, Rosemary and her daughters might knit or do some mending while Joshua, his father and brothers looked over seed catalogs or farm magazines. Tara would probably make popcorn, and they’d sit around together and talk. Someone might tell the family about an exciting or funny or sweet story about a customer at the harness shop. Someone else might relate the antics of one of the animals in the barnyard or news from their community. Occasionally their father