Read Online A Promise for Miriam by Vannetta Chapman - Free Book Online

it,” Gabe said, when she would have taken her seat without finishing their conversation.
    Rather than share her secret with the others, Grace stepped closer to him, close enough that he could smell the children’s shampoo he’d bought for her at the general store.
    “Show me,” he said.
    With a pronounced frown, she unbuttoned the top of her coat, revealing Stanley’s box.
    “Why—”
    She stopped him with a finger to his lips and then quickly rebuttoned her coat and ran to her seat.
    “Heavy snow coming,” Eli noted.
    “Heard it could be up to twelve inches.”
    “ Ya , I heard the same. That would be a lot for us, especially if it fell all at once and so early in the winter.”
    Gabe nodded and stepped away from the buggy’s door, but Eli didn’t shut it. Instead, he looked toward him, and then he leaned forward and glanced past him to where the roof of his barn was just barely visible. “If you need help bedding your animals down until you have time to repair the barn, I could come back after I drop the kinner off.”
    Gabe stared out at the snow piling up on the ground. It was a beautiful sight now, at less than an inch. If it continued to fall all day and into the night, he wouldn’t be thinking it looked so nice.
    “I appreciate the offer, but I’m sure you have your own place to tend to.”
    “I do, but I wouldn’t volunteer the time if I couldn’t afford to give it.”
    Gabe knew he should accept the man’s help. Maybe it was pride, stubbornness, or the fact that he didn’t yet know how to judge when he was in over his head, but he raised his hand and waved goodbye to Grace. “We’ll be all right, but danki .”
    Something passed between the two men then.
    Gabe wasn’t sure what it was. Perhaps a moment of raw honesty. All he knew was that he had to turn away from the look in Eli’s eyes and turn back toward his barn, which was even now falling in on his animals. Back toward his day of work and the cold, burnt oatmeal on his stove.
    He hadn’t come here to make friends, and he was determined he didn’t need them.
    He’d find a way to do this on his own.
    Somehow he’d become convinced it was better for Grace and better for him this way—alone and independent.
    At this point, he doubted he’d ever feel different.

Chapter 8
    M iriam and Esther allowed the children to play outside for twenty minutes after they had eaten their lunch.
    “Do you remember the time your bruder Noah ambushed the Stutzman twins on the way home?”
    “Remember?” Miriam gazed outside at the snow, the children, and the fun they were having, and suddenly it seemed she was seven years old again. Seven years old and riding home in the buggy with her brother. “Noah made us all help with his snowball stockpile. It took us three afternoons because we had to do it on the way home and still get there in time to do our chores. We thought he was narrisch when he’d piled up more than two hundred and fifty snowballs.”
    “That many?” Esther laughed so hard some of the younger children who had chosen to stay inside and play checkers turned to look at her in surprise. “Did you actually count them?”
    “He made me. He said he wouldn’t build a new pen for my puppies unless I helped him. My job was to count while the others made snowballs. We were like the furniture factory over on the interstate, only we specialized in snow!”
    “Why was he after the twins?”
    “I didn’t find that out for years. They had bested him the summer before…that time it was buckets of water, set up for when he walked out of the barn. He’d, um, been spending some time in there with a certain young lady.”
    “Oh, my. So it was revenge?”
    “Of a sort,” Miriam said, not adding that the young lady was now her brother’s wife. “When the twins came walking around the corner, they didn’t stand a chance. Back then their parents owned a farm that was less than a mile from here, so they often walked. He had my other brothers