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you.”
    Sara shot Roman a look that said, ‘shut your mouth,’ which, under any other circumstance, would make Adam want to gloat.
    “Ask Lizzie if you need anything while I’m gone,” Sara said, scowling at him, but her face softened as she bent to kiss Lizzie’s head, the smile she gave his oldest bright enough to rival the sun.
    “She’s a big help, is Lizzie.”  When Sara turned back to him, her smile vanished. “I’ve let you put me off long enough. I’ve been weak, but no more. Christmas is nearly here. You may as well practice.”
    “Adam Zuckerman,” Roman said with a grin. “Your eyes look—”
    “Mad,” Sara said as she passed Roman to leave the room.
    Roman chuckled. “Alive, I was going to say. They look alive.”  Then he too was gone.
    “You’re an old busybody, you know that, Roman Byler?” Adam shouted after him.
    “Ya, a busybody,” Roman countered from the kitchen. “But younger than you.”
    And before Adam could think of a response, the kitchen door slammed, then Roman’s carriage passed his window.
    Being alone with his children like this hurt worse than the pain in his limbs, though that was pretty bad too, cause Katie had taken to bouncing on her knees beside his broken leg.
    One thing the girls had in common right now, even Pris who’d turned to give him a scowl; they were staring at him as if he might want to have them for breakfast.
    So if he wanted them to fear him, why did he feel as if he was letting them down?
    Baby Hannah, who’d grown to be a wiggling handful in the past two months, took to demanding her breakfast in tones that Sara might be able to hear from the Sussman house. And when Adam looked to Lizzie for help, he saw something he had never noticed. She was a person — a little one, but with a knowledge beyond her years in those wide doe’s eyes of hers.
    He nodded at her, because for the life of him, he couldn’t speak beyond the lump in his throat. And Lizzie nodded back, just before she took the bottle that had slipped between him and the baby and plugged it into that noisy little mouth, cutting the sound mid-wail.
    “Thank you,” Adam said, but the words were such a croak, he had to nod again to make her understand. And her smile was so easy and so wide, that lump in his throat got bigger.
    “My’s hungry, Datt,” Katie said, and Lizzie, bless her, performed another miracle. She pulled a fassnacht from a cloth sack he’d just now noticed and gave it to Katie. “Doc Jordan calls these ‘dough nuts,’” Lizzie told him on a giggle. Then she handed one to Pris, who pulled her blanket close and turned her back on him to eat.
    As if the jolting statement that Sara had had the English doctor at her house hadn’t been made, his girls started eating their foolish breakfast, spreading crumbs over him and the bed, watching him all the while.
    When Katie held her fassnacht to his mouth, Adam stopped frowning. To say he was surprised was a mild account. He looked at Lizzie to see what he should do, and it was her turn to nod, so he took a bite. But all that did was make that lump downright impossible to swallow.
    For the life of him, Adam didn’t understand why he wanted both to throttle Spinster Sara Lapp and embrace her at one and the same time.
    The sound of Baby Hannah draining the bubbles from an empty lambing bottle brought him back to his impossible situation and he stared at the babe as if there might be an answer in that tiny flailing fist.
    Lizzie touched his arm, breaking the taut rope of unease holding him motionless. “Better burp her or she’s gonna be mighty cranky.”
    “If I knew how to do that,” Adam snapped, “I’d be your mother, not your—”
    Lizzie’s eyes filled and Adam clamped his mouth shut. He didn’t know if it was his fury or his mention of her mother, but Adam felt as if ... as if he’d crushed her fingers in a door. Yes, that’s exactly how she looked — betrayed — and in more pain than she could