The Rescued by Marta Perry Read Free Book Online Page B

hair, smoothed neatly back, would be filled with waves when she let it down at night, and her oval face was as serene as if she hadn’t a thing in the world to worry about.
    Isaac’s train of thought stumbled. Why would she worry? But he knew she did, about Joseph, about the boys, about him, most likely. She wanted everyone to be happy, and sometimes that must seem like an impossible task.
    â€œA fine meal, Isaac.” Onkel Simon clapped him on the back. He was followed by his oldest boy, Lige, a few years older than Isaac himself. He and Lige were nearly as close as brothers, as much time as they’d spent together growing up.
    â€œYou’d best tell Judith that,” he said. “I didn’t do much except see that the boys set up chairs. She always makes a fuss over birthdays.”
    â€œAll women do, ain’t so?” Lige said. “You should have heard the fuss about it when our James turned sixteen. You’d think no one had ever had a rumspringa before.”
    â€œRumspringa means letting go of the reins a bit,” Onkel Simon pointed out. “No mammi ever thinks it’s time for letting her chicks out of her sight.”
    Isaac’s throat clenched. His mother hadn’t been there to see what happened after he turned sixteen, because that was the night she died.
    â€œMammi might have been right at that.” Lige leaned against the fence post, tilting his hat to shield his eyes from the setting sun. Lige had his father’s lean face and blue eyes, but his reddishbrown hair came from his mother. “That boy hasn’t given us a moment’s peace lately. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
    â€œLike you didn’t do any such thing when you were his age,” Isaac said. “Seems to me I remember a boy who about drove his mamm crazy because his haircut wasn’t as stylish as he wanted it to be.”
    Lige grinned. “I guess. But at least I wasn’t asking for a cell phone.”
    â€œOnly because they didn’t have them back then,” Isaac retorted.
    â€œAch, it’s natural enough for a teenage boy,” Onkel Simon said. “Seems to me every teenager I see is talking away on one of those things.”
    â€œThat’s exactly why I don’t want him to have one. Of course he says that every single kid in his rumspringa gang has one except him.” Lige sounded as if his son was giving him as hard a time as he’d once given Onkel Simon.
    â€œHe’ll settle down when he’s ready to join the church.” Isaac wasn’t sure how comforting that was, with five or six years, most likely, before young James came to that point. “We all did.”
    â€œYou just wait until Joseph is ready to start his rumspringa,” Lige warned. “He’s fourteen already, and the years fly by fast. One minute they’re sitting on your knee and the next you have to look up to talk to them. Remember how you felt at that age—”
    Lige stopped abruptly, as if realizing a moment too late that he was on rocky territory.
    Isaac felt his face freeze as he sought for words. “I should go help—”
    Onkel Simon put a firm hand on his arm. “Lige didn’t mean anything.”
    â€œI know.” He made as if to pull his arm away, but his uncle didn’t seem to be finished yet.
    â€œYou have a new home now.” Onkel Simon nodded toward the farmhouse. “A happy home, and it was built on the foundation of the home that used to be there. That’s a wonderful gut way to use the past, Isaac. Not to forget, not to cling to. But to make a foundation for what’s to come.”
    Onkel Simon meant well. Isaac knew it. But he also knew he couldn’t talk about it, especially not today of all days.
    â€œDenke.” He pulled free without looking at his uncle’s weathered face. “I must say good-bye to Judith’s grandmother. I see they’re almost