Love Inspired November 2013 #2 Read Online Free Page A

now sound asleep on Miriam’s porch with a full tummy.
    Grace fished a plastic fork out of a cup on the table, tasted Fannie’s macaroni salad and chuckled. “I’d love to have seen that preacher carrying you and the kitten across that beam,” she teased. And then she added, “Hmm, needs salt, I think.”
    â€œKeep your saltshaker away from my macaroni salad,” Fannie warned good-naturedly from across the room. “Roman has high blood pressure, and I’ve cut him off salt. If anyone wants it, they can add it at the table.”
    Grossmama rose out of her rocker and came over to the table where bowls of food for the men were laid out. “A little salt never hurt anyone,” she grumbled. “I’ve been eating salt all my life. Roman works hard. He never got high blood pressure from salt.” She peered suspiciously at the blue crockery bowl of macaroni salad. “What are those green things in there?”
    â€œOlives, Grossmama,” Anna explained. “Just a few for color. Would you like to taste it?” She offered her a saucer and a plastic fork. “And maybe a little of Ruth’s baked beans?”
    â€œJust a little,” Grossmama said. “You know I never want to be a bother.”
    Rebecca met Grace’s gaze and it was all the two of them could do not to smile. Grossmama, a widow, had come to live in Kent County when her health and mind had begun to fail. Never an easy woman to deal with, Grossmama still managed to voice her criticism of her daughter-in-law. Their grandmother could be critical and outspoken, but it didn’t keep any of them from feeling responsible for her or from loving her.
    A mother spent a lifetime caring for others. How could any person of faith fail to care for an elderly relative? And how could they consider placing one of their own in a nursing home for strangers to care for? Rebecca intimately knew the problems of pleasing and watching over her grandmother. She and her sister Leah had spent months in Ohio with her before the family had finally convinced her to give up her home and move East. Still, it was a wonder and a blessing to Rebecca and everyone else that Grossmama—who could be so difficult—had settled easily and comfortably into life with Anna. Sweet and capable Anna, the Yoder sisters felt, had “the touch.”
    Lydia carried a basket of still-warm-from-the-oven loaves of rye bread to the counter. She was a willowy middle-aged woman, the mother of fifteen children and a special friend of Mam’s. “I hope this will be enough,” she said. “I had another two loaves in the oven, but the boys made off with one and I needed another for our supper.”
    â€œThis should be fine,” Mam replied. “Rebecca, would you hand me that bread knife and the big cutting board? I’ll slice if you girls will start making sandwiches.”
    Lydia picked up the conversation she, Fannie and Mam had been having earlier, a conversation Rebecca hadn’t been able to stop herself from eavesdropping on, since it had concerned Caleb Wittner.
    â€œI don’t know what’s to be done. Mary won’t go back and neither will Lilly. I spoke to Saul’s Mary about her girl, Flo, but she’s already taken a regular job at Spence’s Market in Dover,” Fannie said. “Saul’s Mary said she imagined our new preacher would have to do his own laundry because not a single girl in the county will consider working for him now that he’s run Mary and Lilly off.”
    â€œWell, someone has to help him out,” Fannie said. She was Eli Lapp’s aunt by marriage, and so she was almost a distant relative of Caleb. Thus, she considered herself responsible for helping her new neighbor and preacher. She’d been watching his daughter off and on since Caleb had arrived, but what with her own children and tending the customer counter in the chair shop as well as