The Saddle Maker's Son Read Online Free Page A

turned.
    “I wanted to say . . . the children, Lupe and Diego, they should stay here with us. We have room and plenty of food.”
    Levi pivoted and looked down at her. “That will be for the men to decide.”
    No equivocation there. “I know, but they’re only children, and they’re scared and in a country where they don’t know anyone.”
    “You have a heart for children.” His gaze rested somewhere beyond her shoulder. His lips twisted as if he were remembering something bitterly sweet. “Naturally as a teacher you would, even though you don’t have experience—”
    “With my own. Nee.” She scooped up the soggy cookies and deposited them on the plate. “That doesn’t make me blind to what a little girl and a little boy need.”
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    “If you call the authorities, they’ll send them to one of those holding places and then back to their country.”
    “They’ll get their hearing. It’s the law.”
    From a motherly perspective, that meant little. And Plain folks had their own book of rules. It didn’t always jibe with that of the Englischers. “They’ve come so far. A parent wouldn’t send them on such a long, dangerous journey for no reason.”
    “They can’t expect to come into this country without papers and make themselves at home.”
    “I doubt they expect any such thing. They’re children who did what their parents told them to do.”
    “It’s not for you to decide.”
    She wanted to say it wasn’t for him either, but then, he was a man, so he would have more say than she. Men always did. Which was fine, except when it came to kinner. “Since they’re here, you could leave them with us. We likely have more room than you do with such a large brood.”
    “The kinner have adopted them already. They’re teaching them English.” For the first time he smiled. The years fell away and he became Tobias’s twin for a split second. “Martha, Ida, and Nyla are like little mudders. I reckon it comes from taking care of Liam.”
    The smile fled. Susan caught a glimpse of raw pain before he shuttered it just as quickly. “They may pick up their share of Spanish as well. It might come in handy in this neck of the woods.”
    “But nine are so many.” While she had none. That fact had come to bother her more in recent years. She couldn’t say why, nor had she admitted it to another soul. Gott’s plan was not to be questioned. “Your beds are surely full.”
    “Catherine wanted more.”
    “Your fraa?”
    He nodded. “She always said there’s room for one more, isn’t there? Every time. A house full of kinner is a blessing.”
    “She was right.”
    “Nee, sometimes enough is enough.” His hands gripped his suspenders so hard his knuckles turned white. “I best get back. They’ll think I got lost.”
    “I’ll bring the kaffi.”
    One quick jerk of his head and he was gone. Yet Susan felt his palpable presence left behind. She shook her head. The man was so still and measured in his movements and his words. But when he opened his mouth and spoke, she felt a storm bearing down on her, the pressure burrowing to her bone and marrow.
    “Rubbish.” She said the word aloud. It came from one of the many novels she read every night in the endless quiet while the others slept. She checked them out from the library or bought them at garage sales in Beeville when she could. They were stacked in all the corners of her bedroom. Jane Eyre . The Hounds of the Baskervilles . The Scarlet Letter . The Raven . Little Women. Gone with the Wind. The Oregon Trail. Stories from across continents and countries she would never see. New words, words no one ever spoke around her, gave her pleasure, a secret pleasure she didn’t share with the others. They would think she was daft. This one exactly fit her strange reaction to Levi. “Rubbish, indeed.”

FOUR
    Men always made the decisions. Even when they weren’t the experts. Rebekah pressed her lips together to prevent those