Lifted Up by Angels Read Free

although there was no one around to overhear. “Sarah’s going to have a baby.” The little girl giggled. “Her stomach is fat. I saw my cat have kittens, so I know these things.”
    Leah suppressed a smile. “That’ll make you an aunt. And your mother a grandmother. And your oma a great-grandmother.”
    Rebekah’s eyes grew large. “I’ll be an aunt?”
    Leah stroked the child’s head, which was covered by a black prayer cap, and remembered how she used to long for a sister when she was growing up. “Yes, you will.”
    After looking over the chickens in Rebekah’s charge, Leah accompanied the girl to the house. They entered a spacious kitchen filled with the smells of baking bread, roasting meat, and simmering vegetables and gravies. A table, filled with mixing bowls and resembling a command center, stood in the center of the room. Cupboards reached to the ceiling along two walls, and a sink with a hand pump stood under a window. Leah saw Elizabeth toss wood into a large black cast-iron stove. The room was overly warm. Then she realized that the house had no electricity, so that meant, along with a woodstove for cooking, no air-conditioning or fans.
    “Rebekah, set the table, please,” Mrs. Longacre said.
    “What should I do?” Leah asked when Rebekah had scurried away.
    “Help me peel carrots,” Charity answered.
    Leah started scraping vegetables into the sink. “Ethan looks great,” she told Charity quietly. “Thanks for letting us be alone together.”
    “He’s been eager to see you.”
    Pleased, Leah said, “I wasn’t sure. I mean, I know I’m not the ideal girl for him to bring home to Mom and Dad.”
    “Our family has had English here before.”
    “Really? Who?”
    But Charity clamped her lips together, and bright spots of color appeared on her cheeks. “Forgive me. I should not have spoken of the past.”
    Leah knew they couldn’t talk freely with Charity’s mother and oma so close by, but she was puzzled. What did she mean? And why act so secretive about past dinner guests?
    In an hour the meal was ready, and Mrs. Longacre stepped out on the porch and clanged a large bell. “Calling the men in from the fields,” Charity explained.
    When the men arrived, Charity introduced her family. “You remember Papa and Ethan. And this is my grandfather, Opa, and my brother Simeon.”
    Leah smiled at the Amish men without meeting Ethan’s eyes. Mr. Longacre welcomed her, but his greeting seemed stiff and formal.
    In the dining room a long table with straight-backed chairs took up most of the floor space. No pictures hung on the walls, no rug covered the hardwood floor. A pull-down shade was the only decoration on the window. Serving dishes, heaped with food, garnished the bare tabletop.Mrs. Longacre hung an oil lamp from a low ceiling hook over the table and lit it with a long match.
    Mr. Longacre took his seat at the head of the table, and the other men sat to his right in descending order of age. Mrs. Longacre took a chair on his left, and then the girls sat, with Leah between Charity and Elizabeth. Baby Nathan’s high chair was wedged between the parents. Leah tried not to fidget.
    “We shall thank God,” Mr. Longacre said.
    The blessing was brief and spoken in both German and English. The men passed the bowls among themselves first, then to the women.
No “ladies first” rules here,
Leah thought. The meal was quiet, the only sounds being those of bowls scraping against wood and utensils striking plates. When a bowl was emptied, Charity or Elizabeth, taking turns, went to the kitchen and refilled it. Leah thought the food was good, but she was too nervous to really enjoy the meal. She sensed tension in the room and wondered if her presence was the cause of it.
    “Bud threw a shoe this afternoon,” Opa said at one point.
    “He’ll have to be taken to the blacksmith,” Mr. Longacre said.
    “I can take him tomorrow,” Ethan said.
    “You have other tasks,” his father replied.
    “I