Free Dakota Dawn by Lauraine Snelling

I’ll nurse him in the middle of the night.” She chuckled softly. “God certainly knew what He was doing when He created mothers and babies. This one is such a love.” She trailed a finger across the baby’s closed fist. Her sigh seemed to come from deep within her heart. “I love babies so.” She kissed the baby’s cheek and looked up. “Here, you hold him for a while and I’ll get the supper going.”
    Nora accepted the bundled infant and settled him into her arms, like Ingeborg had done in her arms. She watched the baby’s eyelids flutter and the perfect little mouth pucker and relax. “He is so beautiful.” How could one do anything but whisper in the face of such a miracle?
    Several hours later, she felt the same awe but only more so when she got the baby to take a bottle. While he fussed at first, he finally sucked on the nipple and settled down to feed. Nora felt like she had climbed the highest mountain near the farm at home.
    Sometime later, in the middle of the darkest night, Nora awoke to the sniffling and tears of Kaaren, crying for her mother. Nora gathered the sobbing child into her arms. With hands of love, she brushed the straggles of hair from Kaaren’s face and wiped away the tears.
    “I . . . uh . . . want . . . my . . . ma. Why doesn’t she come?”
    Nora murmured responses in her own language, wishing she could say the things in her heart to this grieving child. Ingeborg had told her that her mother had gone to be with Jesus. That she was not coming back. But how could such a little one understand that?
    Softly, so she would not wake Mary, Nora began to sing. “Jesus loves me . . .” As the words and love in the song crept into that silent night, she felt the child relax against her shoulder. Jerky, leftover sobs that racked the small body tore at Nora’s heart. “Yes, Jesus loves me . . .” She finished the song on a whisper and removed her arm from under Kaaren’s neck.
    “Heavenly Father, comfort this family,” she prayed. “Bring back the love they’ve lost and, if You want me to care for them, please find a way. Amen.”
    Forgotten were the tears of the night as the two girls bounced up to greet the sun sparkling around the feathery frost patterns on the windowpane. They ran, giggling, down the stairs, leaving Nora to stretch and twist her body from one side to the other in the softness of the deep feather ticking. When she heard a baby crying, she leaped from the bed, put on her wrapper, and made her way downstairs.
    Ingeborg was jostling James on her hip while warming a bottle for Peder, who was crying in Mary’s arms in the rocker.
    “And a good morning to you, too,” Nora said with a laugh while relieving Mary of her squalling bundle.
    “Good. Now I can take care of this one,” Ingeborg sank gratefully into the other rocker. “He thinks his mother should drop everything the minute he cries. What a spoiled little boy.”
    Nora tested the warmth of the bottled milk on one of her wrists and then sat down to begin the feeding. Peder fussed a bit, not quite willing to take the bottle. “Come now. We did this beautifully last night. Ingeborg isn’t going to be here to feed you anymore.”
    Peder looked up at her as if he understood every word she had said. When she prodded his closed lips with the nipple again, he took it and began to suck like she might take it away before he could fill himself.
    Nora chuckled. What a precious baby. And smart, too, she could already tell.
    “Mary, you set the table. We’ll have mush as soon as I finish here, so put the cinnamon and cream on the table.”
    “Where’s Pa?” Mary asked as she handed the bowls, one at a time, to Grace and Kaaren.
    “Starting the furnace at the church. Then he’s planning to work more on his sermon. I told him it was too cold over there and that he should come home to finish.”
    “And?” Nora set the chair rocking.
    “And he’s over there in the cold because he says he can’t work