by Marta Perry
A glance at Jessie’s pallor was enough to tell Sally that Jessie had been overdoing it. She put the dishes on the counter and hurried to push her gently back into her chair. First Elizabeth, and now Jessie, driving her into situations she didn’t feel ready for.
“Ach, it’s that hot out today for October, ain’t so?” She talked to cover her concern. “Tires you out, I know. You just sit still, and I’ll get you a cool drink. Unless you want Caleb...”
“No, no, don’t tell Caleb.” Jessie sank back into her seat. “I don’t want anyone upset just because I’m a little tired. You won’t say anything, will you, Sally?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.” She was already pouring a glass of cold lemonade. “It seems to me you deserve some fussing over just now, but if you don’t want it, that’s fine with me.” She set the lemonade glass on the table in front of Jessie. “I can understand not wanting all the women clucking over you.”
“That’s it.” Jessie sipped the lemonade. “Goodness, I’m never sick. And I certain sure don’t want to make a fuss over something as natural as having a baby. But I confess, I do seem to need a little more rest than usual.”
“Well, you just sit there and relax. No need to talk, even.” Sally turned the water on and added detergent to the sink. “Pretend I’m not here.”
“Denke, Sally. Maybe I will.” She leaned back in the chair.
If she were the one expecting a baby, Sally rather thought she’d welcome a little extra fussing over. But Jessie was so determinedly practical and sensible. Sometimes Sally wondered if she was trying hard to be different from the flighty woman, now deceased, who’d been Caleb’s first wife.
She swished suds over a serving platter. If she were a bit wiser, maybe she could come up with something comforting to say. Once again, as with Elizabeth, she didn’t have the right words.
From the window over the sink, she had a good view of part of the backyard. It just so happened that it was the part that included Aaron. Well, at least here she could watch him without anyone noticing.
If he’d been at all ruffled by what had happened between them, it didn’t show. He was smiling at something his little niece had said, his face relaxing. So at least he could relax, when he tried. She’d begun to wonder if that forbidding expression was permanent. Something unpleasant must have put those lines in his face.
Aaron had always been appealing to the girls, maybe especially because they never knew where they were with him. Now he’d added a dangerous edge that ought to warn away any sensible woman. But women were seldom sensible about things like that.
“How is it going since Aaron got here?” she asked, impulse getting the better of her. “I’m sure it was a shock, even if a happy one.”
“Yah, that’s so.” Jessie moved her glass in slow circles on the tabletop, scarred with generations of use. She seemed intent on the pattern of moisture she made. “It’s wonderful gut he came home. Everybody feels that way.” She almost sounded as if she were arguing with herself.
Sally thought she knew why. Whatever else he might be, Aaron had never exactly been a peacemaker. He’d always been quick to flare up. His sojourn in the Englisch world might have taught him to control that, but somehow she didn’t think anyone could count on it.
“Still, it makes a difference, having an extra person in the house. Adds to your work, I’m sure.”
“That’s no matter,” Jessie said quickly, looking up. “I don’t grudge an instant of it, and besides, Onkel Zeb is so much help to me.” Her face crinkled. “As much help as having another woman in the house, though he wouldn’t want to hear me say so.”
Sally grinned. “He might not mind. He was pretty much mother and father to those boys after their mamm left.”
“That’s so.” She hesitated, but there was something in her expression that seemed wary. “I worry too much, I know.”
All at once Sally knew what it was that put that look in Jessie’s eyes. She was worried about Caleb. She must know that it had apparently been Aaron’s frequent clashes with Caleb that had led to his going away the first time.
And if the same thing happened again, would Aaron respond in the same way? Would he go away again, for good this time?
* * *
The picnic finally started to wind down, much to Aaron’s relief. He was growing tired of answering the same questions over and over. Or maybe tired of evading the answers. Obviously folks who had known him all his life thought they were entitled to hear about his time in the outside world, even if he wasn’t ready to talk about it.
If...and it was a big if...he decided he wanted to stay, to become Amish again...well, that would mean kneeling in front of the whole church to confess his wrongs and ask forgiveness. The very thought made his stomach queasy.
He couldn’t. It was impossible. The Englisch world wouldn’t expect such a thing, but being Amish was to be different. To live by Scripture and the rules of the community. Impossible, he told himself again.
Aaron yanked himself out of his self-absorption and hurried to help Onkel Zeb. He and the two children were starting to take the tables down, and he reached them just in time to give his small nephew a helping hand.
The boy frowned. “I have it.”
“Sure you do,” he said easily. “But I’d best help, or Onkel Zeb might scold me for not doing my part.”
Timothy giggled. “He wouldn’t scold you.”
“Sure I would. He’s part of the family, ain’t so? When he was a boy like you, I had to scold him plenty.” Onkel Zeb hefted the table with surprising ease. He might have aged in appearance, but the strength of his lean, wiry body hadn’t changed.
The boy’s eyes grew wide. “Was he very naughty?”
“Yah, I was,” Aaron said. The child didn’t know the half of it. “Sometimes I’d think no one had noticed something I did, but Onkel Zeb always knew. Eyes in the back of his head, I guess.”
Timothy gave Onkel Zeb an awed look, and Zeb laughed, shaking his head. “It’s just an expression, Timothy. I don’t need an extra pair of eyes but I know young ones.”
Becky nodded, as if she’d had experiences of her own with Onkel Zeb. She shook the tablecloth out. “Shall I take this in to Mammi?”
At his nod, Becky ran toward the house, taking it for granted that she would help. Caleb’s young ones were being raised with a sense of responsibility, it seemed.
“Many hands make light work, yah?” Onkel Zeb said, as if he’d known what Aaron was thinking.
“Are we going to take the tables to the shed?” Timothy flexed his muscles. “I can help.”
“We’ll just stack them here and put them away later, I think,” Onkel Zeb said tactfully. “How about you help your sister clean off the other table? Then we’ll soon be done.”
Nodding, Timothy scampered off, and Aaron found himself smiling. “They’re gut kids. And Caleb is fortunate.”
“Yah, that’s so. Seems funny when you think that folks used to say that the King men weren’t destined for true love. Now Caleb is happily married and Daniel soon to follow.”
He’d forgotten that people had once talked that way. Well, his brothers had proved them wrong.
Onkel Zeb raised his eyebrows at Aaron. “And what about you? Is there no woman in your life?”
Aaron shrugged. “Not now.” He evaded his uncle’s gaze.
“But there was?” Zeb was gently persistent.
“There was.” Aaron swung a bench onto the stack of tables. “Not anymore.”
The words were enough to put a bad taste in his mouth. He’d thought Diana Lang cared about him. Turned out all she’d cared about was luring him away to train horses for her employer. It was actually kind of flattering, he supposed, that George Norton wanted his services as a trainer enough to go that far. But sulky racing was as competitive as any kind of racing, he guessed.
&n
bsp; Maybe he hadn’t actually been in love with Diana, but betrayal hurt anyway. To say nothing of humiliation.
Onkel Zeb had said nothing more, but he’d been studying Aaron’s face. And Aaron suspected he was coming to his own conclusions. He always did, as much by what Aaron didn’t say as by what he did say.
“Maybe you weren’t meant to marry an Englischer,” Onkel Zeb said at last. “Now that you’re home, you’d maybe find someone a lot more suitable as a wife.”
Was he thinking of Sally? Granted that his uncle had a gift for knowing what was going on in his nephews’ minds, he surely couldn’t think that. How could he know about that brief moment of attraction between him and Sally? No, he couldn’t.
“I’m a long way from that. I’m not thinking any farther than a visit right now. Just...don’t count on my staying. I don’t know that it’ll happen.”
Onkel Zeb didn’t seem perturbed. “Listen for God’s voice. He’ll make it clear, if you’ll only listen.”
The children came running back at that point, so Aaron didn’t have to come up with an answer. Good thing, since he didn’t have one.
“We’re all finished,” Becky announced.
“Gut job. Work is easy because everyone in the family does his or her share, ain’t so?”
Aaron didn’t know if that was aimed at him or not, but he figured he ought to make an effort. “Think I’ll go see if Caleb will let me help with the milking. I believe I remember enough to be useful.”
“Yah, you don’t forget the things you learned as a boy.” His uncle seemed pleased.
“I’ll go with you, Onkel Aaron.” Timothy grabbed his hand. “Sometimes I get to help a little. Daadi says when I’m bigger I can take over. How big do you think I’ll have to be?”
“However big your daadi says,” he replied. He wasn’t going to start an argument by offering an opinion if he could help it.
Timothy didn’t seem upset at the nonanswer. Maybe he hadn’t expected anything else. He skipped alongside Aaron, chattering about the dairy herd and how he might have a calf to raise all by himself in the spring.
A nice kid. Caleb had done a fine job with his two, despite the problems caused by his first wife. They seemed to consider Jessie their mammi now, and maybe they didn’t even remember much else. From what he’d seen so far, they couldn’t ask for someone better. Jessie loved them and took care of them as if they were her own.
How different might his life have been if their father had remarried after they’d learned that their mother had died? But it probably was too late then. He’d already withdrawn from life when she left.
It was impossible to guess how different things might have been. Anyway, they’d had Onkel Zeb, and they’d gotten along all right, hadn’t they?
Caleb might have suffered the most, he saw now that he looked at it from an adult viewpoint. He’d not only lost his mother and found his father unreachable, but he’d taken over responsibility for the dairy farm long before he’d normally have been expected to.
Aaron had never thought of feeling sorry for the big brother who’d bossed him around and always seemed so sure of himself. Funny that coming back was changing his ideas about a lot of things.
“Timothy? What are you doing?” Caleb’s voice had an edge to it when he turned around and saw them together, and the sympathy Aaron had been feeling vanished.
Timothy didn’t seem to notice, because he trotted to his father. “I brought Onkel Aaron to help with the milking, Daadi. He says he remembers how to do it.”
“He does, does he?” Caleb patted his head. “We’ll have to see if he really does, ain’t so?”
Timothy grinned, maybe seeing it as a joke. But Aaron didn’t like the measuring way Caleb was looking at him. More, he didn’t think it had anything to do with whether or not he could help with the milking.
Caleb hadn’t liked seeing his son chattering away to his renegade brother. Well, if that was how he felt about it, then it didn’t matter how many times Caleb said he was welcome here, because Aaron would know it wasn’t true. Bitterness took another bite out of his heart.
* * *
Sally walked home from school on Monday afternoon, with Becky and young Lige Mast skipping alongside her. Lige’s older cousins were ahead of them, girls with their heads together, sharing secrets. The boys kicked stones as they went along, playing some game of their own.
Some things never changed. Sally smiled. This little parade of scholars might just as easily have been her, her brothers and sisters, the King boys, and the other neighboring kids, all walking along this same road years ago. As they came to each lane, a few would peel off for home. She glanced at the youngest two walking beside her.
“Don’t forget to show your mammi the star you got on your spelling paper, Becky. And Lige, your mammi will be so pleased with the autumn picture you made.” Lige had adjusted well to his new life, but he was still a little shy, and she tried always to give him a little extra reassurance.
“I’ll show her first thing, Teacher Sally.” Becky was looking pleased with herself. “Timothy says he wants to start school so he can get stars on his papers, too.”
“I’m sure he will.” She hoped so, anyway. Becky was a natural scholar with a love for reading that helped with her schoolwork. Sally would have to find out what young Timothy did well, so she could encourage him.
Lige didn’t speak, but he smiled as he looked at the picture he held in careful hands.
“Look, there’s Onkel Aaron,” Becky exclaimed.
Sally’s stomach was suddenly full of butterflies. Aaron leaned against the fence post at the end of her lane, looking as relaxed as if he intended to be there all afternoon. It didn’t seem fair that he was so at ease when she felt as jittery as she had on her first day of school.
She watched him exchange greetings with the group of older kids, but he didn’t move. He hadn’t been waiting for them.
Lige ran ahead to go the rest of the way with his cousins, leaving her and Becky to come up to Aaron by themselves.
“Aaron. Are you waiting to walk Becky home from school?” she asked, reminding herself that she wasn’t a giddy teenager any longer.
“Not Becky,” he said, straightening. “It would be a pleasure, for sure, but I have other business today.” He smiled at Becky, who grinned back.
“No?”
“No. I’m waiting to walk you home from school, Teacher Sally.” It was said in his teasing voice, the one that had seemed lost since he’d been away. “Just like I used to.”
“You never walked me home from school,” she retorted, hanging on to her composure. “You let me tag along behind you and the other big boys, that’s all.”
“Well, then, it’s time I started, ain’t so?”
If he was trying to put her out of countenance, he was succeeding. She hoped she wasn’t blushing.
Becky giggled. “You should carry her books, Onkel Aaron.”
“I knew I was missing something.” Before she could react, he’d taken her armload of books. He bent, picking up a faded duffel bag from the long grass. “Shall we go?”
He was trying to tease her, and if she reacted, he’d have succeeded. So she just nodded goodbye to Becky and started down the lane, very aware of Aaron matching steps with her.
When they’d gone a few yards she glanced back to see that Becky was skipping down the King lane, probably eager to repeat her news to the rest of the family.
She turned back to Aaron abruptly. “Enough teasing. Becky is out of sight, so you can give me my books back.”
“I don’t think so.” He held them at arm’s length, deliberately daring her to grab them.
She couldn’t, because if she did, she risked touching him again. And given what had happened the last time, she wasn’t about to take the chance.
“Fine. Carry them if you want to,” s
he said. “But you should know that my sister-in-law is watching from the window.”
That sobered him fast enough. He handed the books over. “Does she have binoculars or something?”
“Just a highly developed interest in everyone’s affairs.” She knew why now, but she couldn’t say so to Aaron. Elizabeth was trying to fill up the hole in her heart where a baby should be. “She means well.”
“If you say so.” His voice held doubt. “Anyway, I have a good reason for being here...a first session with Star.”
“Ach, that’s wonderful gut.” She’d wondered if he’d try to get out of it, but apparently not. “I’ll have to run in the house to change my shoes and leave my books. Then I’ll get Star from the barn.”
She hurried on ahead to the house. Aaron was the answer to all her problems with the horse—she just knew it. Any other reasons for her pleasure in seeing him she’d push down and ignore. At least Aaron had understood why her own buggy horse was important to her, and he wouldn’t let her down.
Sally raced into the house, parrying Elizabeth’s questions, and hurried upstairs to change out of her school shoes and into the pair she wore in the barn. Then she ran down again, half-afraid he’d get bored and leave if she weren’t quick.
No fear of that, she found when she got outside. Aaron had already brought Star out and turned him into the paddock outside the barn. When Sally reached him, he was pulling things out of the duffel bag.
“A lunge line?” she questioned. “Don’t you want to harness him up?”
“Nope.” He picked up a lunging halter and propped a lunge whip against the rail fence.
“But it’s with the buggy that he misbehaves. What’s the point of working him on the lunge line?”
Aaron planted his fists on his hips and looked at her with that frozen expression. “Did you or did you not ask me to train this animal?” He waited for her response, and she knew what it had to be.
“Okay. Yah, I asked you. You’re the expert. We’ll do it your way.”
“Gut.” He relented, his face relaxing a bit. “If I want to fix Star’s problems, I have to go back to the beginning and find out where he went wrong. It might seem like a waste of time to you, but it’s necessary. You understand?”
