Free The Christmas Quilt: Quilts of Love Series by Vannetta Chapman

wall, noting when ten minutes would be up.
    A large sink was positioned under the south wall with a cold-water faucet. Next she went through the process of filling both washtubs with rinse water using a small bucket. One she added fabric softener to and the other she added bleach to. By the time she had both of the washtubs ready, the ten minutes were up and she began running the sheets through the wringer and into the first tub of rinse water.
    It took several times through to work all the soap out, but in the end their sheets smelled fresh. This was her third and final load for the day. The first two loads sat by the door, waiting for her to carry them outside.
    After she’d moved the sheets to her basket, she wrapped up in her coat and scarf and carried the basket outside. In the summer, she would have combined all three loads into one basket, but Samuel had cautioned her about carrying lighter loads—because of the baby. She didn’t think wet laundry weighed so much, but caution was a good thing.
    As she walked over to the clothesline, the sun was fighting through the high clouds, and she was certain everything would be dry by afternoon. She could hang things in the basement, but preferred the freshness of laundry hung outside.
    She was pinning the second sheet to the line when Samuel appeared at her side. “Ready for me to dump your rinse water?”
    “ Ya . How do you always know when I’m done with a load?”
    She smiled and slapped at his hand as he reached for the other end of the sheets. “Don’t think about it, Samuel. Those sheets took me thirty minutes to clean. Let me see your hands.”
    “Maybe I’ll empty that water for you,” he said with a wink.
    “ Danki ,” she called after him.
    He waved as he moved toward the basement. Watching Samuel dump out the water from her washtubs, then stack them back inside the basement, Annie wanted to make him something special for lunch.
    And she wanted Leah and Adam to experience the home life she had. She wanted life to always be like this.
    It would seem that Adam was feeling he couldn’t measure up as a father. And Leah felt unloved or unlovable as a wife. What were they going to do with those two? Or maybe, as Samuel had suggested, it wasn’t their place to do anything.
    Maybe they were to pray and be the best family they could be. She continued pinning the sheets as her mind replayed their conversation from the night before, after everyone had left, when she heard a buggy approaching. Peeking around the sheets, she saw her sister, Charity, smiling and waving from her buggy.
    Samuel came back out of the barn to see to her buggy, and Charity met her at the basement door as she was going back for the other two loads of laundry.
    “Let me help you with that.”
    “I’m sure you didn’t come to help me hang clothes,” Annie teased.
    “Actually I did. I was hoping to make it here before you finished.” She ducked inside with Annie and they both came out carrying a basket. They had the rest of the clothes hung in five minutes.
    Annie enjoyed watching Charity. She hadn’t changed at all in the last three years. Still slightly round and still completely beautiful. She seemed to grow more like their mother every day, both in how she looked and in her temperament. Annie was expecting an announcement that Charity and David Hostetler were to be married, but so far nothing.
    Maybe today.
    Maybe it was what Charity had come to talk to her about.
    They hurried into the kitchen, out of the cold.
    “Tell me the real reason you stopped by.” Annie began pulling out the leftover stew from a few days before and put water on the stove so she could make them a hot drink.
    “I did want to help you with the laundry. I would have been here earlier, but Reba’s clothing was a real mess. You wouldn’t believe what her dresses look like after a day at the vet clinic.”
    “Worse than the barn?”
    “ Ya. Much worse.”
    Annie thought back to the evening she had helped