Read Online Meek and Mild by Olivia Newport - Free Book Online Page A

and he heard her suck in breath. “The bleeding and the fever—childbirth terrifies me.”
    Andrew slid along the bench and put an arm around her shoulders. “I won’t say it’s not frightening. After all, I am not the one who would have to endure it.”
    She leaned her head against him. “I know. Women have babies all the time. The Beachys have fourteen children and nothing has ever gone wrong. Children are a blessing.”
    “But you’re still frightened.”
    Andrew felt the reluctant nod of her head against his chest.
    “Look up again,” he said, and she did. “Can anything be more unknown than what lies beyond the planets? Yet you know God is there.”
    He listened to her breath, out and in, out and in.
    “I promise to think more about it.” Clara raised her face to him.
    Andrew ducked his head down to meet her lips. She didn’t pull away. He knew she wouldn’t. The yielding welcome made him heady.
    The clatter of a moving buggy pulled Andrew out of the kiss. With Clara still in his arms, he leaned back into the shadow of his own buggy. When the buggy passed, they let out their breath together. Clara leaned away.

    Clara woke the next morning, as she always did, to the sounds of Rhoda moving through the house and into the kitchen to prepare the family’s breakfast. She rose to wash and dress with the efficiency of lifelong habit and reached the kitchen in time to see Rhoda whisking eggs in a bowl. The oven was heating.
    “Good morning,” Clara said. “Shall I make biscuits?”
    “Good morning,” Rhoda said. “Thank you, but no. We have corn bread left from yesterday.”
    Clara looked around the kitchen for something else she could do and settled on straightening the dish towel that hung from a hook. Surely Rhoda would allow that.
    “Did you have a nice time at the Singing?” Rhoda poured the eggs into an oblong earthenware baking dish layered with cheese.
    “Very nice.”
    “Who brought you home?”
    “Andrew Raber.”
    “Oh? He’s a nice man.”
    “Yes, he is.”
    “He’s brought you home before, hasn’t he?”
    “Several times.” Every time , Clara thought. For two years .
    Rhoda slid the casserole dish into the oven. “I don’t hear you speak of him.”
    Rhoda moved swiftly from the oven to the counter where the leftover corn bread was wrapped in a worn flour sack. She unwrapped it with one hand while reaching for a knife with the other and slicing the bread into thick chunks.
    “I could do that,” Clara said. “Are you planning to fry the bread?”
    “I can manage.” Rhoda wiped the knife clean, put it away, and arranged the bread on a platter. “Andrew Raber? Are the two of you…?”
    When Clara was younger, the time she spent with Rhoda in the kitchen before breakfast was an opportunity to talk about whatever might pass through her mind. It was one of the reasons Clara rose in the mornings as soon as she heard her stepmother’s movements. Watching Rhoda now, Clara could not be certain if Rhoda asked about Andrew as she might have in their old rhythms or because she wished for Clara to find another home.
    Words about Andrew would not form. Instead, Clara said, “I’ll get Mari up and dressed in time for breakfast.”
    “I can do that,” Rhoda said. She put the egg bowl in the sink, wiped her hands on her apron, and left the room.
    Clara decided she could at least set the table and took six plates from the shelf. She looked up when she heard footsteps with a distinct shuffle that identified them as belonging to Hannah.
    “ Mamm told me to set the table for breakfast,” Hannah said.
    “I was just about to do it.”
    “ Mamm said I was to do it.”
    “We’ll do it together, then.” Clara smiled.
    Insistence grew in Hannah’s tone. “But Mamm said I must do it.”
    Clara released her hold on the plates. The girl was simply trying to obey her mother. Whatever changes might come in Clara’s relationship with Rhoda should have nothing to do with a six-year-old