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the oven, then go upstairs and work on her quilt.”
    “ Wunderbaar . How long does the food need to cook?”
    “It’s chicken. I’ll set it for about two hours.” Annie went to the gas-powered refrigerator and began foraging around in it, but as Samuel crossed the kitchen to head out the front door, she had to call out to him.
    It wasn’t their way to speak of feelings openly. It was enough to work beside each other every day. But after this, after so close a brush with death, she felt a strong need to express what was pushing up against her heart, against her baby.
    He stopped, his hand on the door, an expression of surprise on his face.
    Her eyes met his as she cradled the chicken casserole in her arms. “I love you, Samuel.”
    “And I love you, Annie.”

    Thirty minutes later, she was upstairs sitting in what she thought of as her sewing room. The top floor of her and Samuel’s house had the staircase coming up through the middle section, surrounded by three bedrooms and a bath. He’d purchased it years ago from an Amish farmer who had a growing family—there were four bedrooms, including the one downstairs. There were also two bathrooms—one upstairs, one downstairs. Annie realized many Amish still used outhouses. Leah’s family had recently moved to Wisconsin and some of the communities there didn’t allow indoor bathrooms. She’d always had indoor facilities and thought it would be a big adjustment to use the outdoor ones—though, of course, theirs was nothing like the Englisch . The water came out slowly when you turned it on and sometimes there wasn’t as much hot water as she would have liked, but it was still better than an outhouse!
    Their bedroom faced the north, with windows peering out over the yard and the lane. Annie loved the view. She adored waking up each morning and imagining what might be in store, what might be coming down the lane. The bedroom next to theirs, the one with the windows facing east, she had decided to make into their nursery. Although she planned to keep her infant in a cradle in their room for the first month, she didn’t intend to keep her there for long.
    It didn’t take Englisch training to convince her of the need for babies to be in their own bedrooms. Her mother had been quite free with advice! “Parents need privacy, Annie. You keep your infant close until her feedings are down to once a night, then put her in her own room at night. You’ll hear her if she cries, and you and Samuel will still have your time for intimacy.”
    Annie smiled at the memory as she laid out her material for Leah’s quilt. The third bedroom, the one across from theirs and with a small window facing south, had seemed perfect for a sewing room. She’d argued they might need it for another baby, but Samuel had said, “One year at a time, Annie.”
    So he and Adam had carried the heavy treadle machine up the stairs, and he’d made her a fine table for laying out her patterns and cloth.
    The pattern. She’d set her heart on a nine-patch crib quilt. Her mother had made an all-hearts naive crib quilt for the other twin. That pattern called for three squares across, four rows down, and hearts appliquéd in every other square. Annie had seen it last week, and she wanted to complement the traditional Amish colors her mother had used.
    In fact, remembering the pattern her mother had chosen, and studying the pattern in front of her, she thought it might be nice to put a heart somewhere in the quilt she was making and she did happen to have a template for a heart appliqué.
    Her nine-patch pattern called for her to alternate a Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Sam in each square. Perhaps she could adjust her pattern so that she could place a heart in one of the squares, then it would coordinate with what her mother had sewn. After all, she was following a pattern, but more than that, she was making something special for her niece, or maybe her nephew.
    She smiled at the thought.
    And her mind darted