A Simple Christmas Wish by Melody Carlson Page A

thought Aunt Miriam would come home someday.”
    “Oh.” Holly got a very sad look, then turned to Rachel. “Can I get in bed with you, Aunt Rachel?”
    “Sure.”
    Holly snuggled up to Rachel in a way that warmed Rachel’s heart and gave her hope.
    “I want to sleep with Aunt Rachel tonight,” she told Sarah. “If it’s okay.”
    Rachel stroked Holly’s hair, which had tumbled out of its bun. “It’s okay with me, Holly, but it will be pretty snug in this tiny bed.”
    “You can have my bed,” Sarah offered generously.
    “Thank you,” Rachel told her.
    After a while, Holly seemed to recover from her melancholic moment, but now she looked at Rachel hopefully. “Will you please put on the Amish dress, Aunt Rachel?”
    “Right now?”

    Holly eagerly agreed. “I want to see how you look.”
    Rachel sighed. “I don’t even know how to do it,” she said. “All the pins and everything.”
    “I’ll help you, Aunt Rachel,” Sarah said.
    Rachel was surprised that she’d called her “aunt.” “All right,” she agreed. “But it seems silly, since it’ll be bedtime in an hour or so anyway.”
    “Please,” Holly begged.
    So it was that Rachel allowed both Sarah and Holly to dress her up like an Amish woman. Once she had the dress on—although she knew she must look ridiculous—she had to admit that it wasn’t uncomfortable. Plus it fit.
    “Let’s go downstairs,” Holly suggested, “and show Aunt Lydia.”
    The last thing Rachel wanted to do was parade around in this outfit, but both Holly and Sarah looked so hopeful she couldn’t refuse them. However, she was somewhat surprised to find that Benjamin was down in the front room. He was talking to Daniel about Buttercup, and he sounded concerned that she hadn’t calved yet.
    “I want to give her until midnight,” Benjamin was saying. “After that . . . well, she might need some help.”
    “Ja.” Daniel slowly nodded. “We cannot let her go too long. It is one thing to lose the calf, but we do not want to lose the cow.”
    Benjamin looked up to see them standing at the foot of the stairs, listening to this conversation. “Oh!” He looked surprised. “Rachel, is that you?”
    “She’s wearing my mother’s old Amish clothes,” Holly proclaimed.

    “I spilled dishwater all over my clothes,” Rachel explained quickly.
    He nodded with a hard-to-read expression.
    “Is Buttercup going to be okay?” Rachel asked.
    Benjamin shrugged. “I hope so.”
    “Who’s Buttercup?” Holly asked with concern.
    Sarah quickly filled her in and then Holly begged to go out to the barn to see, and Daniel acted like it was perfectly fine.
    “Is it really okay?” Rachel asked Benjamin.
    “Sure. If she wants to.”
    “I want to—I want to,” Holly said eagerly. “I’ve never seen a calf being born before.”
    “I haven’t either.” Rachel tossed Benjamin a look now. “But I mean is it okay . . . as in, well, is Buttercup’s calf going to be okay ?”
    Benjamin gave her a look that showed he understood her meaning, then turned to Holly. “Here’s the deal, Holly. You can come out to watch for a while, but if I decide that Buttercup doesn’t need an audience, you can’t complain if I say it’s time to come back to the house. Do you understand?”
    She nodded somberly. “Yes. You mean if Buttercup is uncomfortable with too many people watching her, right?”
    He grinned. “ Ja. Right.”
    And so they bundled up, and Holly, Sarah, and Rachel followed Benjamin out to the barn, where they gathered around Buttercup, waiting for her miracle—at least Rachel hoped it would be a miracle—to begin.

9
    After more than an hour of waiting for poor Buttercup to calve, watching as the anxious cow lay down, then stood up, again and again, Rachel could tell the girls were getting restless. Holly seemed as interested in the calico barn cat Cookie as she was in seeing a birth. Seated on a straw bale, Holly had turned her full skirt into a snug cat