The Amish Bachelor's Baby. Jo Ann Brown

Penny by the scruff. The puppy wore a mournful expression when Annie shut her in the laundry room. She hoped Penny would calm down at the sight of her dish filled with kibble.

      Annie returned to the kitchen and looked around. A bolt of concern riveted her. Grossmammi Inez wasn’t in the rocking chair by the living room door. Her grossmammi had lived with them for a year after Annie’s daed died from a long illness. When Annie’s mamm married her late husband’s cousin and had two more kinder, Annie had used any excuse to visit her grossmammi.

      The elderly woman had taken them in a second time after Mamm and her second husband, a hardworking man who’d been a loving daed to his stepchildren, were killed in a bus accident when Kenny was a toddler. Though she couldn’t do as much as she once had, Grossmammi Inez supervised the kitchen she considered her domain.

      “She’s resting,” Leanna said before she shot a smile at Becky Sue and introduced herself.

      Annie nodded, glad her twin knew what was on her mind. However, her uneasiness didn’t ebb. Her grossmammi sometimes took a nap, but Annie couldn’t recall her ever staying in bed while meal preparations were underway.

      Her attention was drawn to her guests when Becky Sue asked, “You are twins, ain’t so?” The teenager stared, wide-eyed, at Leanna before facing Annie. “You look exactly alike.”

      Leanna said with a faint smile, “I’m a quarter inch taller.”

      “Really?”

      Leanna lifted her right foot. “Only when I’m wearing these sneakers.”

      Everyone, including Becky Sue, laughed, and Annie wanted to hug her twin for putting the girl at ease.

      “I’ve never met girl twins before,” Becky Sue said. “There were two pairs of boy twins in my school, but no girls.”

      “No?” Annie laughed again. “Well, now you have.”

      Before Becky Sue could reply, Annie’s younger sister, Juanita, edged around Leanna. She was a gangly fourteen-year-old who was already three inches taller than the twins and still growing, though Annie doubted she’d ever challenge Becky Sue’s height. Juanita’s light brown hair was so tightly curled it popped out around her kapp in hundreds of tiny coils. It was the bane of Juanita’s existence, and nothing she’d tried had straightened it enough to keep the strands in place.

      “Can I hold him?” Juanita held out her arms to the boppli.

      Annie smiled at her younger sister. Juanita wavered between being a kind herself and becoming a young woman. It was shocking to realize Becky Sue couldn’t have been much older than Juanita when she became pregnant. Annie’s sister hadn’t begun to attend youth events yet, preferring to spend time with girls her own age. They seemed more interested in besting the boys at sports than flirting.

      “This is my sister Juanita,” she explained to Becky Sue. “We’ve got two brothers, as well. Lyndon is married and lives next door, and Kenny, who’s twelve, should be out in the barn milking with him. You’ll meet him at supper.”

      Juanita cuddled Joey, who reached up to touch her face as he had Annie’s. Becky Sue took off her coat and hung it up by the door as she scanned the large kitchen with cabinets along one wall and the refrigerator and stove on another.

      Standing by the large table in the center, Annie smiled at her younger sister, who loved all young things. She delighted in taking care of the farm’s animals, other than Leanna’s goats and the dairy cows. She tended to the chickens, ducks and geese as well as the pigs and two sheep.

      When Joey began fussing, Annie urged her sisters to return to making supper while she took Becky Sue upstairs and got her and the boppli settled. The extra bed was in Annie’s room, but if Becky Sue was bothered by the arrangement, she didn’t mention it. Annie cleared out the deepest drawer in her dresser and folded a quilt in it. Tucking a sheet around the quilt, she added a small blanket on top to make a bed for Joey. She urged her guests to rest while she went to help her sisters finish supper.

      Annie asked Juanita to run next door to ask their sister-in-law if they could borrow some diapers and a couple of bottles for the boppli. Her younger sister was always happy for any excuse to visit her nephews and nieces.

      Leanna didn’t pause chopping vegetables for the stew simmering on the gas stove. Not that her twin would do any actual cooking. Juanita was already a more competent cook.

      Hanging up the coat she’d draped over the kitchen chair, Annie went to the stove and checked the beef stew. She halted, her fingers inches from the spoon, as she wondered if Caleb would be joining them for supper. He’d said something about coming over after he called Becky Sue’s parents.

      “We need to set extra plates on the table,” Annie said as she stirred the stew so it didn’t stick.

      “More than one?” Leanna looked up from the trio of carrots she had left to chop.

      “Caleb said he’d stop over.” Annie dropped her voice to a whisper to explain why he’d remained behind at the bakery. “It’ll be a gut opportunity for us to get to know him better.”

      Her twin set down the knife and walked away from the counter. Taking the broom from its corner, she began to sweep the kitchen floor. “Why were you at the bakery today?”

      “Caleb wants an assistant to help with getting it ready and to wait on customers when it opens. He asked me, though he thought he was asking you.” She told Leanna about the conversation by the goats’ pen. “If you’d like to take the job instead, I’m sure he’d agree.”

      Leanna stopped sweeping. “I’ve already got a job.”

      That was true. Leanna cleaned for several Englisch neighbors. She could have a house sparkling in less time than it took Annie to do a load of wash.

      “This would be different.” Her answer sounded lame even to Annie, but somehow she had to convince her sister to be honest about her feelings for Caleb.

      Leanna was generous and kind and, other than her inability to cook and bake, something that shouldn’t be as important to a man who owned a bakery, would make Caleb a wunderbaar wife. It was a fabulous plan, even if it broke Annie’s own heart.

      Frustration battered her. Why couldn’t those two see what was obvious to Annie? Leanna and Caleb could make each other happy as husband and wife. Of that, she was certain.

      Because you believe you would be happy with him as his wife.

      Annie wished her conscience would remain silent. It was true she’d imagined walking out with Caleb before she noticed how her sister reacted each time he was near.

      God, make me Your instrument in bringing happiness to Leanna, she prayed as she had so many times since her sister’s heart was broken.

      “It doesn’t matter,” Leanna said, “whether the job is different or not. I wouldn’t have time to work for Caleb. This morning, I agreed to clean Mrs. Duchamps’s house twice a week.”

      Annie recognized the name of one of the few Englischers who lived along the meandering creek. Mrs. Duchamps had worked at the bank in Salem most of her adult life as well as taking care of her late husband during the years when he was ill. Having no kinder of her own, it was no surprise Mrs. Duchamps had hired Leanna to help.

      “I didn’t know you were looking for more houses to clean.”

      Leanna smiled. “I enjoy the work, so why not? And we could use the money. Kenny is growing so fast it seems as if he needs new shoes every other month. This works out for the best because I wouldn’t want to work at Caleb’s bakery.” She began sweeping again. “Don’t you think it’s odd he wants to start a bakery at the same time he’s trying to keep his farm going?”

      “Not really.” Annie recalled the light beaming from his eyes when he spoke about