DC03 - Though Mountains Fall by Dale Cramer

bishop are all in the same country at the same time.”
    The rare hint of sarcasm brought a smile to his face. “All right then. But we will wait for the bishop’s letter. If he says Jake must go to Ohio, then I will think about it.”
    Rachel was stunned speechless. Never in a million years could she have seen this coming. Clutching at the neckline of her dress she rose from the chair, turned her back to her father and started across the room on uncertain feet.
    “You’re welcome,” her father’s voice said from behind her.
    She stopped and looked back, making no effort to hide the tears of joy. “Thank you, Dat,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

    Nothing was the same for Rachel now that Miriam was gone. Leah moved into the vacant spot in the bed, balancing things out a bit. Now Ada, the oldest, and Barbara, the youngest, slept in one bed while the middle two girls slept in the other. Rachel loved her younger sister, but Leah was a flighty seventeen-year-old who liked to talk, and as Dat often said, people who talked all the time very seldom said anything.
    Rachel crawled into bed and lay awake for a long time, thinking, her mind running through endless possibilities. Shewas bursting to talk about it, but Miriam was gone and this was not something she could discuss with Leah.
    On Monday morning, though she had barely slept, she got up an hour before daylight to do chores and again felt Miriam’s absence. Leah helped with the milking, but she was not Miriam. Sometimes chattering took the place of working.
    When the chores were done Rachel went to the kitchen to help Mamm put breakfast on the table. Mamm was nearly as absent as Miriam and kept forgetting where she put things. If Leah talked too much, Mamm made up for it by not talking at all, staring out the back window for minutes at a time while the biscuits burned. When the family sat down to eat, Mamm took one look around the table and her sagging face melted even further.
    Since the carnage in the hacienda village, she had spoken very little, eaten almost nothing and never smiled. The color was gone from her cheeks, and she always looked as if she was about to cry.
    Not so many years ago, when all her children were still living and at home, there had been thirteen faces around Mamm’s table—a thriving, happy, noisy clan—and she was the center of her children’s lives. She had always laughed so easily, Rachel recalled, constantly entertained by her hearty brood. Now there were only five children left at home. During breakfast Mamm tilted her head and stared at the empty chairs as if they spoke to her.
    When the breakfast dishes were all washed and dried and put away Rachel helped her mother haul out the laundry and set up the washing machine on the back porch. A bone of contention with some of the Amish, the wringer machine was driven by a pulley, powered by a separate little gasoline engine that some said was “worldly.” Dat disagreed, and until a bishop told him otherwise he would let her use it.
    Mamm fed Caleb’s and Harvey’s work pants through the wringer in dark silence. The only time she said anything at all was when Rachel was helping hang dresses on the line and she rambled morosely about how there wasn’t nearly so much to wash as there once had been.
    Even Levi noticed it. Since Emma’s kitchen was still a wreck, he and Emma came over for supper that evening, and after dinner Levi and Caleb walked outside in the gathering dusk and leaned on the corral fence to talk. Rachel was taking clothes off the line right next to them and overheard part of the conversation.
    “Mamm’s not right,” Levi said. “She didn’t hardly eat a bite of supper.”
    Caleb put a foot up on the rail. “She’ll be fine. She’ll eat when she’s hungry.”
    “I can’t blame her for being upset, I guess, after all that’s happened lately. Dead bandits in the streets, a man hung, my barn burned.”
    Caleb picked at his teeth with a bit of straw as he watched