Jo Ann - The Amish Bachelor's Baby

Annie rushed to her side. “Are you okay, Grossmammi ?”

“I guess I’m not as young as I used to be.” She glanced at the boppli , who dropped to his belly. “Chasing a young one is a task for someone with fewer years on her than me. So, what you are going to prove our Annie wrong about, Caleb?”

“That milking is a pleasant chore,” he replied, though he wondered how Inez had failed so fast.

Beside her chair, Annie looked worried, but she kept her voice light. “ That is something he’ll never prove to me. Grossmammi , I can finish up if you want to go to bed.”

He thought Inez would protest it was too early, but she didn’t. Coming to her feet, she said, “A gut idea. These old bones need extra rest to keep up with a boppli .” Before he could say he’d make other arrangements for Becky Sue, she added, “Caleb, we’re glad to have your cousin and her kind stay with us.” She wagged a gnarled finger at him. “Such things should go unsaid among neighbors, ain’t so?”

Again, as he bade Inez a gut nacht , he was discomfited at how the Wagler women seemed to gauge his thoughts.

At the very moment Inez closed the door to her bedroom beyond the kitchen, Joey began to crawl toward them on his belly. Caleb bent to pick up the little fellow, but froze when Joey let out a shriek. The boppli clenched his fists close to his sides as his face became a vivid red.

“What’s wrong?” Caleb asked as he reached again for the kind .

With a screech that rang in Caleb’s ears, Joey cringed away.

Annie scooped up the boppli and held him close as she murmured. Joey’s heartrending screams dissolved into soft, gulping sobs as he buried his face in her neck. She patted his back and made soothing sounds into his hair. When the boppli softened against her, she looked over his head toward Caleb.

Sympathy battled with dismay in her expressive eyes. Caleb had never guessed a mere look could convey such intense emotion. Or maybe it was as simple as the fact he felt sorry for the toddler, too.

Becky Sue burst into the kitchen, wearing a borrowed robe over a nightgown too short for her. Her hair was half-braided and her kapp was missing. “What’s wrong with Joey?”

“I think he’s overtired,” Annie said. “ Bopplin get strange notions in their heads when they’re Joey’s age. Some don’t like men. Others fear dogs or cats or tiny bugs.”

“Do you know why he’s scared of men?” Caleb didn’t want to admit how relieved he was Joey’s antipathy wasn’t aimed solely at him, because he’d always got along well with kinder .

Becky Sue shrugged. Or she tried to, but her shoulders must have been as stiff as his had been outside in the cold, because they curtailed the motion. Instead of answering him further, she hefted her son and walked away.

Caleb watched her climb the stairs at the front of the house and vanish along with the boppli . Her lack of answer told him plenty. She was hiding even more than he’d guessed.

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