The Amish Christmas Kitchen Read Free

“Forgive me then, sohn . I forget that it’s been only two years since Seth . . . and you . . .”
    Daniel quickly embraced his daed, then pulled away. “It’s all right, Daed. Look, I’d better get at those biscuits, okay?”
    His fater nodded, pulling his white store apron up to wipe his nose; Daniel patted his back, then walked away through the store to the back kitchen, mentally preparing the ingredients for angel biscuits to go with the fragrant venison stew his mamm was stirring over the woodstove.
    Daniel slipped off his coat and hat and hung them on the wooden pegs near the store’s entrance. He called out greetings to his numerous siblings, who were already seated around the table with a general air of expectation.
    â€œThe kinner be hungry tonight,” his mother observed as Daniel bent to kiss her plump cheek. “Can you whip up those angel biscuits of yours?”
    â€œSure, Mamm.”
    He’d learned to bake angel biscuits and a myriad of other things, mainly by trial and taste, when he was ten years auld . His mother had been on necessary bed rest with one of her pregnancies, and while his daed was busy at the store, it had fallen on Daniel, as the eldest child, to become “the mamm ” for a time.
    Now he rolled up his blue shirtsleeves as he grabbed the homemade soap and started to wash his hands at the pump sink. He was drying off on an old tea towel when he remembered something vital to his recipe.
    â€œI need my secret ingredient, Mamm. I’ll just run back into the store for a minute.”
    There was a flatteringly collective groan from the hungry kinner at the table, and Daniel had to smile. Then he wondered with a sudden shiver of warmth whether Clara Loftus might have any secret ingredients of her own....
    * * *
    Long after midnight, Clara sought the relative comfort of the wood-framed bed that she and Seth had once shared. Blinks was settled in her usual mound of quilts on the floor, gently snoring. “I’m glad you can sleep,” Clara whispered to the animal, then sighed heavily in the dimness of the moonlit room.
    Okay . . . okay, Gott . . . so having Daniel Kauffman appear on my front porch today was odd. It made me . . . unsettled.
    She glanced over at Seth’s feather pillow, the one she faithfully changed the case on every week, and gave it a sudden thump that oddly made her feel better for a moment. Then she laid her head down on her own pillow, closed her eyes resolutely, and drifted into fitful sleep.
    She dreamed that an angel with wings like ice stood beside her bed, bending with tender, luminescent fingers to gently stroke her forehead, stirring up memories and bringing back a past she didn’t want to face....
    â€œTry,” the angel urged in a voice that pulsed with white light. “Try to bear remembering.”
    * * *
    They wouldn’t let her see him, no matter how much she fought. She wanted to see all of him—crushed in two or not, he was still hers.... But not hers... Gott was bigger. Gott took and gave. She clawed through the red haze of the jumbled words, and then there was only green. Steady green eyes; determined, resolute . . . Marry me . . . I’ll care for you. . . . I know I can never be Seth . . . but . . . Nee . . . she screamed. Again and again until the words pounded like fists on the broad shoulders of the living man and he’d turned away—leaving her alone. Time and grief convulsed with thought and purpose like labor pains must be, and she cried out, seeing herself weeping, longing . . . needing . . . Let me see him once more . . . his green eyes. Marry me; marry him. . . . She grasped the cookie plate and tried to hold it steady, but her hand shook and she watched it fall, breaking in two....
    Clara awoke with a gasp, staring frantically into the shadowed darkness, feeling Blinks lick her hand. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and tried to slow the racing of her