The Teacher's Bride Read online

  Ruby smiled. Yes, she would prove to herself and everyone else that she had finally matured into a responsible, sensible adult. They would no longer see her as a walking disaster, leaving chaos in her wake. It was time to introduce the new Ruby Glick to the world.

  Timothy grabbed a pitchfork and threw some straw into an empty stall. The horses were out in the pasture, which was a good thing, because they would have experienced a surprise straw shower. Never mind that he’d just put down fresh bedding that morning and he was creating a new mess to clean up.

  Patience walked in, but he ignored her. Finally, she said, “Timothy, you can’t turn Ruby away.”

  He jammed the pitchfork back into the straw. Patience might be right, but he didn’t want to acknowledge that fact. He didn’t have a good reason to turn away his sister, and deep down he didn’t want to. But he had enough to worry about right now. He’d just purchased a dozen more dairy cows, which brought his herd up to thirty. He had two small children and a spouse who was keeping plenty busy as a midwife because Birch Creek was experiencing a baby boom. He was on the school board, and a month ago the community decided to draw lots for a district minister. He’d been chosen, and now he had those duties to add to his plate.

  These were all good things. He was blessed, and he knew it. He and Patience were in a far better situation than when he first moved here after their wedding. At the time he’d been unsure about leaving Lancaster behind to live in a community with an unwelcoming bishop. But Patience wanted to stay in Birch Creek, and the land here was cheaper than in Lancaster, which allowed him to own his own farm instead of working for his father back home. Emmanuel Troyer, the former bishop, had left, and since Freemont Yoder had become the new bishop, Birch Creek and its various businesses had thrived.

  But he was overwhelmed at times, feeling pulled in different directions. Which was why Ruby showing up without warning had knocked him off-kilter. He didn’t need his troublemaker of a sister upending everything.

  “Stop ignoring me,” Patience snapped.

  That got his attention. He tossed the straw and leaned the pitchfork against the stall. “I’m sorry, lieb” He walked to her and brushed off a strand of straw that had landed on her kapp. “I’m confused, that’s all.”

  “About Ruby?”

  “Ya.” He loved his little sister, but sometimes he didn’t understand her. He’d tried to over the years, chalking up her troublemaking nature to immaturity. But that explanation went only so far. For some reason she courted disaster, even when she was trying to be helpful. He wondered what his parents thought about her coming here. Maybe it was their idea.

  “She’s a sweet maedel, Timothy. She’s also yer schwester. We don’t turn our backs on familye.”

  He looked at his wife. He’d met Patience almost seven years ago when she was visiting Lancaster, and he’d fallen in love the moment he saw her. Now he was more in love with her than ever, and her kindness was one of many reasons. “You’re right,” he said, touching one of the ribbons of her kapp. “She can stay. But only for a few days.”

  “She asked to stay indefinitely, remember?”

  “Don’t you wonder why?”

  “Ya, but it’s none of our business, even if she is staying with us. We need to respect her privacy.”

  He wasn’t going to win this. “Fine. She can stay as long as she wants. But I’m stating for the record that I warned you about her.”

  Patience scoffed. “You make her sound like a complete—”

  “Disaster?”

  “How can you talk about her that way?”

  Timothy blew out a breath. “Patience, when she and I were kinner. she burned down the barn.”

  Nodding, Patience said, “I remember you telling me that. You also said it was an accident. She knocked over a lit lantern. That can happen to anyone.”

  “Ya, but what I didn’t tell you was that it was our second barn burning.”

  Patience’s mouth dropped open. “You mean she burned down the first one too?”

  He nodded. “I know she doesn’t mean to, but she gets distracted.” Timothy remembered how distraught Ruby had been over both events. She was ten years old the first time, fourteen the second. None of the animals had been hurt, and the second barn was a little salvageable after the fire. “Stuff like that happens around her all the time. Trouble, bad luck—whatever you want to call it, it follows her like a starving stray dog.” Right now, he wasn’t prepared for whatever havoc his little sister might cause next. Not that he ever could be.

  After a long pause Patience said, “She’s not a kinn or teenager anymore.”

  Timothy crossed his arms. “I realize she’s an adult now. I’m just not sure I can trust her.”

  Patience touched his beard, her beautiful brown eyes taking on that soft look he couldn’t resist. “What about grace, Timothy? Doesn’t yer schwester deserve some?”

  It wasn’t her expression that worked on him this time. It was her words. Ruby could be frustrating, and she’d made plenty of mistakes in her life. Haven’t we all? It wasn’t as if he was perfect, even though his mother often said he was close to it. “You never fussed, and you never broke the rules,” she would say, usually when Ruby was within earshot. He frowned. That had to be a pretty big burden for her to bear. “Ya,” he said, his distrust for his sister changing to compassion. “She does.”

  “That’s the Timothy I know.” She put her arms around his waist. “And love.”

  He gave her a half-grin. “There will have to be ground rules, even though she’s twenty.”

  “I think that’s fair.”

  “And she’ll have to find a job. She stays out of most trouble when she’s busy.”

  “She could help you around here.” When he stiffened, Patience laughed. “I’m kidding. I’m sure she can find work somewhere else.” She kissed him on the cheek and stepped out of his embrace. “The kinner should be up by now. I asked Ruby to watch them for me.”

  “Thank God we don’t have many breakables,” Timothy muttered.

  “I heard that.” Patience walked out of the barn.

  Timothy smiled and shook his head. He couldn’t resist that little dig. He swept up the mess he’d made, checked on the cows and horses in the pasture, and then went back to the house.

  When he walked into the living room, he saw Ruby sitting in the middle of the floor, playing with Tobias and Luke. Luke was in her lap chewing on a teething ring and Tobias was stacking wooden blocks into a short, crooked pile. When they toppled over Ruby clapped. “Yay, Tobias! You did it.”

  “It fell,” he said, sticking out his bottom lip.

  “Ya, but now you can build yer tower all over again. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  Tobias grinned and started stacking the blocks as if he hadn’t been pouting a few seconds before.

  Patience appeared at Timothy’s side. “She’s really gut with the kinner” she whispered.

  “Ya. She is.”

  Ruby looked up and smiled, and Timothy wondered if she’d heard them. He hoped she had. She deserved the compliment.

  Patience went to Ruby and picked up Luke, whose chubby hands were already stretched up and reaching for his mother. She cradled him against her hip and then reached out her hand to Tobias. “Let’s geh get a snack.” Tobias nodded and clambered to his feet, knocking over his blocks. The tower and Ruby forgotten in anticipation of a snack, he followed Patience and Luke into the kitchen.

  Ruby started putting the blocks in the small wooden crate where Patience kept them. “The buwe have grown since I last saw them,” she said, placing the last block in the bin and pushing it toward the coffee table. The crate knocked into a table leg, and a glass of iced tea on top toppled over. “Oh nee,” she said, rushing to upright it. She used the hem of her dress to wipe up the spill. “I’m sorry, Timothy.”

  He smiled a little as she frantically mopped up her mess, not surprised that she’d spilled something. She’d been here for over an hour, after all. “It�
�s all right, Ruby.”

  She got up and stood in front of him, and he was surprised the tea wasn’t dripping from the hem of her dress. “I’ll be more careful.”

  To her credit, when things did go wrong, she always tried to make them right. He realized he’d been too hard on her when she first arrived, and he needed to make amends for that. “We’re happy to have you stay with us as long as you want,” he said.

  Her eyes brightened. “Are you sure? You didn’t say that a little while ago.”

  “Because you surprised me,” he said, feeling a little bad that he might have hurt her feelings. “You know I don’t like surprises.”

  She nodded and looked up at him. “I should have told you I was coming ahead of time.”

  He went to her and patted her shoulder awkwardly. While he was affectionate with his wife and children, he was usually reserved with the rest of his family. Their parents hadn’t been very demonstrative, and they were a quiet pair. Ruby and her bright, boisterous personality had always been a challenge for them to understand and accept. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Her grin grew wide. “I’m glad to be here. And you’ll see, Timothy. I’ve changed. I’m a better person now.” She tilted up her chin. “I can’t wait to prove it to you.”

  “Just promise me one thing,” he said, his tone turning serious.

  “Anything.”

  “Nee lanterns in the barn.” He didn’t want to bring that up, but he had to start the ground rules now.

  Regret flashed in her eyes, but then it was replaced by determination. “I promise. Yer barn is safe while I’m here.”

  Dear Lord. . . I hope so.

  “The dog ate mei homework.”

  Christian Ropp looked at the seven-year-old boy in front of him. He knew Malachi Chupp was lying. He also knew his parents, Jalon and Phoebe, would be horrified if they knew their son was telling a blatant fib to his teacher. Like the rest of the parents he’d met during the past month since he started teaching at the Birch Creek school, they were interested in their child’s total education, both academic and character. And right now Malachi’s character was in question.

  “I see.” Christian folded his hands on his desk. “Which dog ate it?”

  Malachi paled. “What?”

  “Which one of your dogs ate your homework?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “You don’t have any dogs, do you, Malachi?”

  The boy’s face turned red as he looked at the tips of his shoes. “Nee. I only have Blue. He’s a cat.”

  Christian glanced at the rest of the classroom. He was pleased to see the older students, who sat in the back, were still focused on their schoolwork. But the younger ones had started fidgeting in their seats, some of them leaning forward and listening, as if they couldn’t wait to see what kind of punishment Malachi would receive. But Christian didn’t dole out punishment. He administered correction.

  He glanced at his lesson plans. Reading Group B was scheduled to go to the front table in less than a minute, which meant Malachi would have to wait for his correction. However, Christian presumed the period Malachi spent worrying about consequences was sufficient motivation to put an end to the lying. “See me after school, Malachi.”

  Malachi barely lifted his head. His blue eyes were filled with remorse, another indication that this was unusual behavior for him. He nodded, shoulders slumped as he trudged back to his seat.

  Christian pushed back from his desk and stood. “Reading Group B, please come to the table.”

  Three six-year-old children climbed out of their chairs and went to the reading table, their reading books in hand. He didn’t group according to ability but to age, which was easier with the population of the school. He preferred to organize his students by skill level, but he was still learning what they could and couldn’t do. For now, grouping by age was the correct choice.

  The rest of the afternoon went smoothly, with only one disruption from one of the Bontrager boys. They made up a third of the school’s population. For the most part they were well behaved, but they were also boys, and they couldn’t seem to keep completely free from making a commotion. This time it was Nelson, who threw a paper wad at his brother Jesse right before dismissal.

  After he dismissed the rest of the students for the day, Christian motioned for Malachi and Nelson to come to his desk. Both boys dragged their feet as they made their way to the front of the room.

  “Nelson,” Christian said, handing him a dry erase marker, “please write I will not throw paper at my brother twenty times on the white board.”

  Nelson grimaced and nodded, taking the marker from Christian’s hand.

  Christian then turned his attention to Malachi. “Let’s go outside.”

  Malachi’s eyes widened, and he followed Christian out of the schoolhouse. They walked down the three steps and to a large oak tree several yards from the building. The weather was warm, but hints of fall came from the few yellow, red, and orange leaves scattered around the base of the tree. A buggy drove by at the same time a car zipped down the opposite side of the road.

  Knowing they were sufficiently out of Nelson’s earshot, Christian turned to Malachi. “Why did you lie to me about your homework?”

  Malachi kicked at one of the leaves. “Because I didn’t do it.”

  Christian frowned and looked down at the little boy. “You should always tell the truth, Malachi—”

  “But I didn’t want to get into trouble.”

  “—even if it means you’ll get into trouble. Because you lied, you have committed two infractions—first not doing your homework and then the lie.”

  “What’s an infraction?”

  “A violation of the rules. You broke the rules,” he added, making sure Malachi understood exactly what he had done. While he didn’t want to water down his vocabulary, since he fully thought exposing his students to uncommon words was a vital part of his communication with them, he didn’t want to be too esoteric.

  “I know.” Malachi looked down at the ground again. “I’m sorry.”

  “You are a bright student. I don’t understand why you didn’t do the work. You would have gotten everything correct.”

  “I don’t like homework,” Malachi muttered, kicking at another leaf. “It’s boring.”

  Christian balked. Although he knew he shouldn’t take a seven-year-old’s critique to heart, he couldn’t completely ignore it. He spent hours preparing lessons to make sure the activities were educationally stimulating. During his school years and beyond, he couldn’t wait to learn. Even now he enjoyed nothing more than reading a good book and expanding his intellectual horizons. “Boring,” he mumbled. “You think my homework assignments are boring.”

  Malachi looked straight at him. “You said to tell the truth.”

  Hoisted on his own petard. He should have expected that from Malachi. He wasn’t giving him empty encouragement when he said the boy was smart. He was highly intelligent. “That I did,” Christian admitted, setting aside his own ego—which he should have done in the first place—and focusing on the problem at hand. “Now, to address your consequences.”

  “What are those?”

  “When you do something against the rules, you have consequences. That’s part of discipline.”

  “I don’t want discipline,” he said, a flicker of fear in his eyes. “I want to geh home.”

  Now the boy was being overly honest. Perhaps a lesson for the whole class on when it was appropriate to speak and when one should be kept silent was in order. “After Nelson is finished, you will clean the classroom.”

  “The whole thing?”

  “Yes. The whole thing.”

  Malachi glanced away, but relief was evident on his face. “Okay,” he muttered.

  Once that was settled, they went back to the schoolhouse. As soon as they stepped foot inside, Nelson ran toward them. Behind him was a slanted, and rather messy, list of sentences. The last line was nearly illegible, but Christian decided n
ot to comment on it.

  “Ready to geh, Malachi?” Malachi usually walked home with the Bontragers since the families were related by marriage and lived close to each other.

  “I have to clean up the classroom.” Malachi stuck out his lower lip.

  “I can help you do that,” Nelson said.

  Christian shook his head. “Malachi must do this himself. You may wait outside on the playground for him.”

  Nelson gave Malachi a look, and Malachi nodded. After Nelson left, Christian graded papers while Malachi took out the trash, wiped all the white boards, straightened the desks, and swept the floor. The entire process took twenty minutes. “That’s enough, Malachi,” Christian said, taking the broom from him. “You may go home now.”

  Christian had just finished speaking when Malachi dashed out the door. The open window near his desk faced the playground, and Christian could hear him and Nelson talking loudly outside. “That took a long time,” Nelson said.

  “Ya. It wasn’t any fun, neither. I’m never going to lie to the teacher again.”

  Christian managed a small smile. He glanced over the room, noticing right away what Malachi had missed during his cleaning. Imperfection was to be expected. He was a slight boy, a little shorter than average height, and he couldn’t be expected to dust the top of the tall bookshelf or to reach the corner of the white board to erase the day and date. He also hadn’t cleaned up the line of dust left behind by the dustpan. But overall, his effort was acceptable.

  Christian finished sweeping the floor and cleaning the board, and then he straightened a row of the desks that were still out of alignment. He hung the broom and dustpan on the pegs near the front of the schoolroom and returned to his desk to finish grading papers. This part of teaching could get a bit tedious some days. But for each paper, he made sure to look at each answer, make a few notations for correction, and write an encouraging word or two before recording the grade in his grade book. An hour had passed by the time he finished grading. Then he moved on to his lesson plans, which he scheduled out at least three weeks in advance.