As they pulled into the yard of the Miller farm Lydia Yoder came rushing out the door wiping her hands on her apron. She looked excited and nervous. “Real goot to see you Anne Pine!”

“How’s Katie?” said Anne reaching into the box of the pickup for her medical bag.

“She’s doin fine for her first time,” said Lydia sneaking glances at Ava who remained sitting in the truck. Anne had no time for introductions and rushed off in her no nonsense way straight into the farmhouse with Lydia following.

Now what do I do, wondered Ava. She did a slow visual inspection of the farmstead. It was a handsome property. The house was plain, looked sturdy and well maintained. The barn was weather burned and in need of paint. It was huge, no it was majestic! Ava admired it’s lines and proportions. As she studied it she wondered how anybody safely climbed a ladder to those great heights with paint bucket and brush in hand.

Suddenly two young girls around eight or nine years old burst out the back door. The same one Anne Pine had disappeared through a couple minutes ago. Their dresses where identical but in different colors. One blue the other green. On their heads they wore an odd shaped white cap. They looked up at Ava shyly as they slowly approached the truck.

“Anne Pine said for us to show you around the farm while Katie pushes for her baby,” said the one in blue. The girls were entrancing with their hair pulled back tight and pinned up under those little lace caps. There was something so settled about them. Their presence, and Ava didn’t mean their physical presence, although that had something to do with it, radiated sureness. Ava hadn’t ever recalled sensing this kind of essence in the children she’d met in the past. Could growing up in the country make that much difference? Having lived in cities her entire life she wouldn’t know.

“Jah,” said the bolder of the two, “Would you like to see the kittens?”

Ava smiled. “Sure, I’d love to.”

Ava got out of the truck. She was still dressed in her skin tight jogging suit. The girls stood unmoving staring at her strange attire. Self-consciousness broke over Ava like sweat on skin. She couldn’t stand to be stared at. She took off towards the barn, “Are they in the barn?”

The girls scurried after her like two young chicks, “Jah, they are  in the barn .”

Ava and the two girls kneeled on the hay each cupping a fuzz ball kitten in their hands. The anxious mother, overly thin from nursing her litter, brushed back and forth against Ava‘s thigh as though imploring Ava to not hurt her baby.

Massive doors, opened wide at either end of the barn, allowed a cool draft of air to be drawn gently through the building. High overhead pigeons roosted on the beams, their cooing echoing through the hay maw.

“Ru - u - th! Re-bec-ca!” hollered Lydia from the back porch of the house. “Come quick now. Baby’s almost here!” Spontaneously the two girls attention shifted. Abandoning the kittens, they scurried to the ladder totally forgetting Ava. Just before she disappeared from sight the one dressed in blue turned to Ava, “I’m going to be a hendi (auntie)!” she said proudly.

Ava sat down on the hay and watched for the two little girls to reappear in the yard below. Seconds later, there they were, racing each other to the house. Such unbridled joy, thought Ava.

Unbridled joy. Ava couldn’t ever remember experiencing it as a child. She was beginning to feel something akin to it that first night she and Chris met. Something felt so right between them. That is until Kate Hagan appeared at their table and promptly set her sights on Chris!