A Surprise for Lily Read online

  Lily looked down at her fried egg. So that’s where the fire truck was rushing to last night. Poor Beth! What a frightening experience it must have been—to watch your house burn down. How ghastly. What would the Raber family do without a house to live in? Lily put down her fork. She couldn’t eat another bite of her egg.

  David Yoder gulped down the rest of his coffee and left to go tell a few more families about the work frolic for the Rabers. Papa finished his breakfast, grabbed his hat and coat, and hurried outside to hitch Jim to the buggy. No work in the woodshop would go on today. Papa would spend the day helping the Rabers.

  Lily cleared the table and went upstairs to change her clothes for school. She wondered if Beth would even be at school today. What did you say to someone whose house burned down? Lily didn’t want to make her feel worse. Maybe Beth wouldn’t want to talk about it at all. Or maybe, if Lily didn’t ask her about it, Beth would think Lily didn’t care. Lily didn’t know what to say or not say.

  As Lily put her bonnet on, Mama handed her the lunch box and said, “Good friends lend listening ears. I think you’ll make a good listener.”

  It was astonishing how Mama seemed to know exactly what Lily was fretting over. “But what if Beth doesn’t want to talk?”

  Mama tied the ribbons under Lily’s chin. “I think you’ll be able to tell if Beth wants to talk or not.”

  When Lily arrived at school, she saw Beth standing by a window, a look on her face like she was staring without seeing anything. Lily removed her shawl and bonnet and hung them on a hook. Slowly she walked across the room. As she drew closer to Beth, she caught a whiff of a smoky smell. Beth was wearing someone’s borrowed clothes and she looked exhausted, like she hadn’t slept at all—her eyes were puffy from crying. Her face had a squinched-up expression.

  “Are you all right?” Lily asked in a hushed voice.

  Beth shook her head, tears starting all over again. “Lily, it was terrible! The fire was everywhere! It happened so fast. My brother Rueben ran over to the neighbor to call the fire trucks while Papa dumped water on the fire. Mama and I grabbed things and ran out of the house until Papa said we had to stay outside so we wouldn’t get hurt.”

  Lily rubbed circles on Beth’s back, hoping to comfort her. She was trying to be a good listener.

  “It took the fire truck such a long time to get there,” Beth said. “By the time it arrived, the house had collapsed in a heap. The firemen sprayed water on what was left of the house until the fire was completely out. A fireman carried me to his truck and let me sit inside where it was warm. I hadn’t even realized I was standing in the snow in my bare feet.”

  Lily looked down at Beth’s feet. She was wearing boots that were much too big for her.

  “These are my cousin’s old shoes.” She tugged on her dress sleeve. “And her clothes, too. All my clothes were burned up.”

  Lily couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have everything you cared about . . . gone. Just like that. She thought of her scrapbooks and her circle letters and the letters from Hannah that she kept in a special box. The closest she could get to imagining such loss was how she felt after Dozer chewed up Sally. Beth must be feeling one hundred times as bad.

  Beth wiped away her tears with her dress sleeve. “By the time the fire truck left, there was nothing but ashes. We saved a few things, like Mama’s sewing machine and a few pieces of clothing. Some dishes, too.” She gave a little half laugh. “I was so scared that I saved the stupidest things.”

  “Like what?” Lily asked.

  “I carried out the trash can and a box of onions,” Beth said. Then her face crumpled into tears and she covered it with her hands. “But I forgot all about Pete!”

  Oh no. Pete was a beautiful blue parakeet that lived in a pretty cage in Beth’s living room. Lily knew how fond Beth was of Pete. She had even taught him a few words. To think Beth had saved the trash can and not Pete. How awful! She must have been in a dreadful panic to forget her special pet.

  Would Lily remember Dozer if a fire swept through Whispering Pines? She hoped so, but after he had recently chewed up one of her favorite books, she wasn’t quite sure.

  After school, Lily helped Mama prepare stew for supper. “Lily, please go down to the basement and get some carrots,” Mama said. Lily wrinkled her nose. That could only mean that Mama was going to put carrots in the stew. Lily loved raw carrots but it was another thing entirely to eat a cooked carrot. They became mushy and squishy and disgusting. She took a bowl and went down to the basement. Mama kept the carrots in a barrel filled with cold sand so they stayed fresh. Lily dug through the sand until she grabbed half a dozen carrots.

  Lily washed and peeled carrots at the kitchen sink. She looked up and saw Jim pull Papa’s buggy into the driveway. She hurried to cut up the carrots and plop them into the simmering pot of hamburger, onions, and cut potatoes. She wanted to hear everything Papa had to say about cleaning up the Rabers’ house.

  Instead of going to the barn, Papa drove Jim right up to the house. Through the kitchen window, Lily saw Beth jump out of the buggy. She dropped the last carrot in the stew pot and ran to the door. “Beth! Come in!”

  Beth held up a rumpled brown paper bag. “Your father said it would be okay for me to sleep here until we get our new house.”

  Mama had come to the door when she heard Beth’s voice. “You’re more than welcome,” she said. “Lily will be happy to share her room with you.”

  How exciting! Now Lily wished they could have prepared a delicious supper since Beth was here. Her friend had enough things going wrong in her life without having to eat carrot-filled stew.

  Later that night, as the girls settled down to sleep in Lily’s bedroom, Lily heard Beth start to sniff as if she was getting a cold. She popped up from her nest bed on the floor. “Do you need a handkerchief?”

  When Beth turned to her, she burst into tears. “Oh Lily . . . it’s all my fault,” she sobbed.

  Lily jumped up on the bed to sit next to her. “What is?”

  “The fire! I burned down our house last night.”

  “But . . . how? Why would you do such a thing?”

  Beth wiped her tears. “I didn’t do it on purpose. As I was getting ready for bed, I lit my lamp, just like I always do. I shook the match to put it out, and the match head dropped and rolled under my dresser. I tried to look for it but couldn’t find it. I figured it had just gone out. So I got back in bed and wrote in my diary, just like I always do. Then I got sleepy and went to bed. Not much later, I woke up and smelled smoke. The match head hadn’t gone out and my dresser had caught on fire. Flames were licking at the walls. I jumped out of bed and ran down the hall, screaming to my parents and my brother to wake up because the house was burning down.”

  “Why didn’t you tell your parents about the match head?”

  “I couldn’t! There was so much confusion going on, and since then, I haven’t had a chance.” She hung her head. “Plus, I don’t know how.”

  “In the morning, let’s ask Papa,” Lily said. “He’ll know how to help.”

  It was still dark when Beth woke Lily. She had heard Papa’s footsteps go down the stairs. He was heading to the barn to do chores. Lily yawned and stretched, wondering if Beth had slept much at all. “Let’s go talk to Papa,” Lily said, grabbing a flashlight. “You’ll feel so much better afterward.” She knew that from personal experience. Trying to keep a secret from parents took a toll.

  The two girls tiptoed down the stairs and out to the barn. When Lily pulled the barn door open, Papa looked up in surprise. He had just started to feed Pansy. The big cow turned and looked at Lily and Beth, blinking and batting her big, thick eyelashes as if to ask why the girls were up so early, then she turned back to her trough, deciding the hay was more interesting.

  Lily grasped Beth’s hand firmly and walked over to Papa. “Beth has something she needs to tell you.”

  Papa kept tossing fistfuls of hay to Pansy, as if this was the most ordinary
way to pass the time—feeding a cow by lantern light with two little girls in their nightgowns. Lily squeezed Beth’s hand.

  “I burned my house down.” Beth’s voice was very small, almost a whisper.

  Papa’s expression revealed that he had not anticipated an announcement of that sort. “Go on.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Beth said. “I lit a match and it dropped under the dresser. I did look for it but couldn’t find it. Next thing I knew . . .” She threw her hands up in the air. “Whoosh! The whole house was burning down.” Beth gave Papa all the details, every one, because once she got started, she wanted to get it all out.

  Papa kept on putting hay in Pansy’s trough, nodding in all the right places to Beth’s story. When there was no more hay to toss, he walked over and put a hand on Beth’s shoulder. “That’s a very big burden for a little girl to carry, Beth. It was an accident. Accidents happen, all the time. No one will blame you, but keeping it a secret wasn’t the right thing to do. Even if you didn’t lie about it, you didn’t tell the truth, either. It’s always best to tell the truth. After school today, I’ll go with you over to where your parents are staying and you can tell them the story for yourself.” He picked up the lantern. “I’m sure they’ll understand. Don’t you worry yourself about it anymore.” As Papa walked to the feed room, the swinging lantern cast eerie shadows on the walls.

  As the girls went back to the house, Beth, Lily noticed, didn’t have that squinched-up expression any longer.

  Papa had answers for everything.

  17

  Lily Has an Almost-Sister

  Lily and Beth were eating their after-school snack at the kitchen table. Mama mentioned how low they were on bread for school lunches and started to pull out ingredients for bread making. Watching her, Lily hatched an idea. Papa had said to look for ways to help Mama while she was a part-time English teacher. “Can Beth and I bake bread all by ourselves?” she asked Mama. She looked at Beth and got a big smile in return. “We think we know how.”

  Mama’s face was a mix of That sounds like more work than help and Why not? The Why not? won. “I suppose you could give it a try. It would give me time to get some other things done this afternoon. I was going to make four loaves, so if you need help with measuring ingredients, just ask me.”

  How hard could it be? Lily had watched Mama make bread dozens of times. Making bread was easy. One cup of warm water, one teaspoon salt, one tablespoon sugar, and one tablespoon of butter for every loaf of bread. Easy. Today she would need four of each. And Beth could help with counting so they wouldn’t mix anything up. Beth was excellent at math. Just excellent.

  Mama went upstairs with baby Paul, and the girls got right to work on baking bread. After the butter had melted into the warm water, it was time to add the flour. One cup of flour for every loaf. Lily carefully measured two cups of flour into the bowl as Beth mixed. Then Lily sprinkled another cup of flour on top and Beth mixed it in. Then another. They counted each cup out loud so they wouldn’t mix anything up. As soon as the dough became too stiff to be stirred with a wooden spoon, it was time to knead it. Now the fun part could begin.

  Lily and Beth punched their fists into the dough, lifted it, turned it, then punched some more. They pretended the dough was the boys’ faces in the upper grades and punched down with even more vigor. It was still sticky, so they added more flour. They kept on punching and adding flour until they had a nice big ball of bread dough that was no longer sticky.

  Lily covered the bowl with a kitchen towel. She set the bowl in the warm corner of the sink beside the stove so the dough would rise faster. As she set the timer, she felt pleased with herself. She knew they could do it!

  “All done?” Mama asked when she passed the girls on the stairs. Lily and Beth were going upstairs to play in Lily’s room.

  “Yes, it was easy,” Lily said. “Can we make bread every week?”

  Mama smiled. “I don’t know about every week, but it would be nice if you could do it every once in a while.”

  It wasn’t long before Lily and Beth heard the timer ring. The girls ran downstairs and washed their hands. It was time to punch the bread dough down again. Lily lifted the towel off the bowl and looked at the bread dough. It still looked exactly the same as when she had covered it. She was puzzled.

  “Why didn’t the bread dough rise?” Beth asked. “We did everything right.”

  Mama crossed the kitchen and peered over the girls’ shoulders. “Did you remember to put the yeast in?”

  Yeast? Beth and Lily looked at each other, mouths opened to a big O. They had forgotten all about adding yeast. The bread dough was ruined.

  “Go throw it over the fence,” Mama said, not unkindly.

  Lily scooped the big ball of dough out of the bowl. Beth held the door open for her, and the girls went outside.

  Joseph and Dannie ran over to see what the girls were up to. “Another one of Lily’s kitchen DIS-AS-TAHs!” Joseph yelped, howling with laughter. Naturally, Dannie laughed, too.

  “Whatcha gonna do with it?” Joseph said.

  Lily scowled at him.

  “Your mama told us to pitch it over the fence,” Beth said. She was more patient with the boys than Lily, but then, she didn’t have any little brothers.

  “Pitch it to me first,” Joseph said.

  Lily tossed the dough to him. Joseph caught it and pitched it back to Dannie. He tossed it to Beth who tossed it to Lily. She liked how the dough felt—like a big, soft rubber ball. She caught it and pitched it back to Joseph. Finally she had a cooking mistake that was fun!

  “Girls!” Mama called from the kitchen door. “Come in and help me start supper.”

  Lily pitched the dough over the fence. Dozer sniffed at the dough and took a bite. Lily wished she would have had time to see how he liked her yeastless dough, but Mama needed her. Both her and Beth.

  Lily loved having Beth stay with her. Everything was double the fun, even the kitchen DIS-AS-TAHs. It was just the way Lily imagined having a sister would be. Beth was Lily’s almost-sister.

  On Saturday, the whole church had plans to gather at the Rabers’ and rebuild their house. On Friday evening, Lily and Beth helped Mama do all the usual Saturday cleaning so they would be ready to leave first thing in the morning.

  Right after breakfast, the Lapp family plus Beth piled into the buggy. Dannie sat on the front seat, squeezed between Papa and Mama and Paul, so that Beth could fit in the back with Joseph and Lily.

  As Jim clip-clopped down the road, Lily asked Papa why a house took so long to build. “It took a little less than a week to build the schoolhouse,” she said. “Most of a barn can be built in a day.”

  “Houses are a little different,” Papa said. “They’re much bigger than a schoolhouse and not nearly as simple as a barn. It takes time to do everything right. Once it’s completed, though, Beth will have a very nice new home.”

  As Papa turned Jim into the Rabers’ driveway, Lily saw all kinds of people scurrying around the property like bees around a hive. The house looked like a skeleton made up of two-by-fours and a roof. It needed walls and windows and doors to become a home. And love.

  Papa strapped his tool belt around his waist and disappeared into a cluster of men. The air was filled with the sounds of hammers hitting nails and men shouting orders to each other. The women gathered in the buggy shed to prepare lunch on little kerosene stoves. Along one wall of the shed were pieces of furniture and stacks of boxes.

  “What’s in the boxes?” Lily asked. They looked so interesting.

  “They’re filled with things people gave us to replace what we lost in the fire,” Beth said.

  Wouldn’t it be fun to snoop through all those boxes? Lily would like to see what people donated to Beth’s family, but she knew better than to suggest such a thing. Plus, Ida Kauffman was standing nearby.

  All day long, people worked hard. By the time the sun started to set, the walls were up and windows and doors filled the gaping holes. But
Lily could see that there was still a lot of work to be done before it became a home.

  Later that evening, Lily woke to the sound of voices downstairs. She went down to get a drink of water. Papa and Mama were still up, sitting at the kitchen table and talking. When they saw her, their conversation stopped abruptly, which made Lily all the more curious. What had they been talking about? She went right to the cupboard and reached for a glass.

  “Lily,” Papa said, “everyone is helping the Rabers since they lost nearly everything they had.”

  Lily nodded. It was nice that people were helping Beth’s family. She filled up the glass with water and took a sip.

  “So Mama and I thought it would be nice if you chose something special to give to Beth.”

  Mid-gulp, Lily started to sputter and cough. She thought it was wonderful that everyone was helping Beth, but she didn’t want to give up one of her own special things. If she had to, she could buy something new to give to Beth. Something new would be easier to give than something she loved. Lily put the glass of water down. “Beth liked Pete best.”

  “Who was Pete?” Mama asked.

  “Pete was Beth’s pet parakeet,” Lily said. “I could buy her a new parakeet.” She hoped Papa might offer to give her the money to buy it because she had very little money. Zero, in fact.

  “We’ll give that some thought,” Papa said. “But for now I want you to go back to bed. Think long and hard about something you already have that you can give to Beth.”

  Lily trudged upstairs. Beth was sound asleep as Lily climbed into the nest bed she had made on the floor. She lay there for a long time, trying to think of something she wouldn’t mind parting with. The problem was that she loved everything she had.

  It dawned on Lily that Beth had loved her own things just as much.

  Lily changed her mind. She would give Beth a candy bowl. No, no. She would do better than that. She would give Beth her very favorite candy bowl. It was a small way of letting Beth know she cared.