An Uncommon Grace Read Online Free Page A

balance.
    Levi had never felt so helpless or as useless. Give him a saw and a hammer, and he could create a fine table or build a sturdy house. Give him a young black ash tree from thenorth side of the hill, and he could turn it into work baskets that would last for generations. Give him a hoe and a plow, and he could feed a family. But standing here over his wounded mother was so alien to him that he was practically paralyzed by the enormity of it.
    “What can I do?”
    Grace’s green eyes flashed as she twisted the tourniquet tighter. “Pray!”
    Instead of praying, he slammed his fist against the wall, welcoming the pain. From afar off he heard the ambulance siren as he silently cursed the Englisch person who had brought this terrible evil to his family.

chapter T WO
    “D o you want me to ride with your mother to the hospital?” Grace asked as the ambulance siren wailed closer. “Or do you want to?”
    Levi was torn. He hated to leave his mother completely in the hands of strangers, but he knew Maam would not want him to leave his little siblings frightened and alone.
    “There are Kinner to care for.”
    “Kinner?”
    “Children.”
    “You have children?” Grace pressed his mother’s balled-up apron tighter against the bullet wound in her side.
    “Two little Bruders and a sister. They are hiding in the barn. I cannot leave them alone.”
    “It would be best if I went with her anyway. Some EMTs are great, some . . . not so great.”
    “Please, then.” His voice broke. “Go with her.”
    The ambulance was now so close that he wondered if the noise would make Angel Dancer bolt and run. He had not taken the time to secure her reins.
    “Does your mother have any allergies?” Grace shouted.
    “I don’t think so.”
    “How old is she?”
    “Forty-one.” It gave him a small bit of comfort to have one correct answer to give. Nothing else in his life seemed to have an answer right now.
    The siren stopped abruptly. He heard voices down below, and Grace answering them. He heard footsteps on the stairwell and then he watched as two men expertly loaded his mother onto a stretcher, rejecting his attempt to help.
    He grasped the porch railing as the ambulance bumped across the yard, its lights flashing. It was nearly impossible to believe that this terrible thing was happening. Not on a brilliant day like today when the sun was shining so brightly. Not on a day like today while a yellow warbler sat singing his cheerful song from the top of the wild cherry tree.
    The driver flipped the siren on as they drove away. Levi watched until the ambulance was no longer visible, wondering if he would ever see his mother alive again.
    Levi knew that his yard would soon fill with police cars. He knew that a second ambulance and crew would probably be sent for his stepfather’s body. But before he spoke to anyone else, before he dealt with one more thing, he needed to get to the children huddled in the barn and try to comfort them.
    As he strode to the barn, he wondered—just how did one go about telling a four-, eight-, and ten-year-old that their father had been murdered? How did one also break it to them that their mother’s life was hanging by a thread?
    He passed Angel Dancer cropping grass in their front yard, grabbed her reins, and took her with him into the barn. He secured her to an inner post and then climbed the ladder to the huge hayloft.
    The children were not there.
    For a moment, he panicked. Had the man who had killedhis stepfather done something with the children while he was riding for help? Had the evil that had entered his home been lurking in the barn while he watched the lights of the ambulance recede?
    Then he noticed a small pile of hay in the farthest corner shift slightly.
    “Is the bad man gone, Bruder ?” Ten-year-old Albert popped out from beneath the hay. His face was sticky with tears. Bits of chaff clung to his skin.
    The children had been hiding by burrowing into the hay like little field