LITMIR.BIZ

      Levi Swarey firmly grasped the hands of his four-year-old twins, Elizabeth and David, as they skipped along beside him on the way to his mother’s daadi haus across the lawn from his own home. Her death had hit him hard and he’d rarely been inside her house since she’d passed away in July. Afterward, the women from his church district had visited to collect her clothes for donation and give the place a good scrubbing down. They’d said they washed all the linens and stowed them away in the closet, so Levi figured that besides making up a bed there was little for him to do before Sadie moved in, but he wanted to double-check that she had everything she would need.

      “I can smell Groossmammi,” Elizabeth announced tearfully moments after they entered the empty house. “I want her to kumme back.”

      “Groossmammi can’t kumme back. She’s in heaven with the Lord and with Mamm,” David said solemnly, repeating the explanation Levi had given the children countless times since his mother died.

      Levi said, “Jah, and all three of them would want you to wilkom Sadie, so we need to make sure the daadi haus is cozy and clean. It looks pretty nice in here to me, what do you two think?”

      “There’s a big spiderweb in the corner.” David pointed to the wall above the thickly cushioned armchair. “Sadie might be afraid of spiders.”

      “That’s not a spiderweb. It’s a cow web,” his sister corrected him.

      “You’re right, it is a cobweb,” Levi agreed. “I’ll get the broom.” He headed toward the kitchen. The broom wasn’t hanging on its nail beside the refrigerator. Neither was it in the pantry, so he checked the bedroom, where he found it propped against the wall. He returned to the living room to discover David balanced on the back of the sofa. The boy jumped up and swiped at the cobweb with a doily he must have removed from an end table.

      “Absatz!” Levi shouted for him to stop as he lunged forward and grabbed his son from the sofa. “How many times have I told you not to climb on furniture?”

      David’s lower lip quivered and tears bubbled in his eyes. “I was only trying to help wilkom Sadie, Daed.”

      “And he took his shoes off so he wouldn’t get the couch dirty,” Elizabeth defended him.

      Levi picked David off the sofa and set him on the floor. Settling onto the cushion so he could be eye to eye with his son, Levi said, “I understand you wanted to help, but you could have fallen and broken your leg. And that would have broken my heart.”

      David’s expression was one of anxiety as much as contrition and Levi knew he was overreacting. Again. He couldn’t seem to help himself. As Levi sat there in his mother’s house, it was almost as if he could hear her scolding him, What happened to Leora was a baremlich thing, suh, but it’s time you started trusting the Lord.

      He did trust the Lord. But trusting the Lord didn’t relieve Levi of his responsibility to keep his children safe. He hadn’t been able to protect their mother—on the contrary, it was his carelessness that had led to her death when the children were toddlers. He wasn’t going to make that mistake with his children, no matter who thought he was overly protective.

      And plenty of people did, which was why he’d lost the four nannies he’d had since his mother passed away. Levi’s mother was the only person other than himself he trusted with their care, and he even caught himself looking over her shoulder, especially as the twins grew older and became more mobile.

      “I know you’re sorry,” he told David. “But remember the rhyme I taught you?”

      The twins duly chorused, “Keep safe and sound with both feet on the ground.”

      He insisted on this rule because of Leora’s accident three years ago. She had been cleaning the windows when she must have lost her balance. After falling and cracking her skull on the stone hearth behind her, she’d suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage and died. Although Levi’s mother had come to live in the daadi haus by the time, on that particular day she had been out of town. Leora and the children had been home alone. But the Lord had been merciful; a neighbor happened to stop by for tea and discovered Leora sprawled across the floor, a kettle screaming from the stove and the twins wailing in their cribs. Even now it horrified Levi to consider what else might have happened if no one had come by before then. He’d never forgiven himself for failing to return Leora’s stepladder to its spot in the pantry. He had used it the day before when he was trimming dead limbs from the apple tree at the back of the house and then he’d forgotten it there. Leora must not have wanted to leave the babies while they were napping, so instead of fetching the solid stepladder, she’d stood on a chair from the kitchen. Borrowing household items and not returning them was one of Levi’s habits that had nettled his wife to no end, but until then, he had never imagined his carelessness would result in tragedy. What kind of spouse was so thoughtless about his wife’s needs? Levi came to believe he hadn’t deserved to be a husband, and sometimes he wondered why the Lord had entrusted

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