Mending Hearts

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  He liked being chided by her. “Well, and she has blue eyes and curly blond hair.”

  She released an exaggerated sigh. “When she first came—you’ve heard her story, ain’t so?—she was tiny, with bones as delicate as a bird’s. I heard Mamm telling someone who compared us that, at her age, I was pudgy and maybe had a double chin.”

  He laughed loudly enough, heads turned down the table. “And you’re speaking to her?”

  Her smiles were . . . soft, not mocking as so many people’s were. That was one of her qualities that had always drawn him. He could trust that she would never make fun of him.

  “Oh, how could I argue with the truth?” she said. “I love to bake now. Then I loved to eat.”

  Hard to imagine that, when she was so slender but for her womanly curves. Along with her warmth, she was full of energy, all but crackling with it. Nothing placid about her, she was a woman who would work nonstop, quilting or mending when she did sit down. Since he’d had so much difficulty making himself slow down or wait a turn, it was natural he liked seeing her energy. Unlike him, though, she also had the patience to sit attentively for hours at worship. Some of the times his attention wandered from the service, he had surreptitiously watched her, wondering how she did it.

  Now, he enjoyed having the chance to talk to her, even if it wasn’t private. Katura was startled by their exchanges into giggles a couple of times, pressing her fingers to her mouth as if to restrain herself. He found himself glad that Abby was Miriam’s niece, not her daughter, and yet his chest tightened in a way that was both pleasurable and uncomfortable when he thought of her with her own kinder. He liked that idea too much.

  After Miriam all but held a squirming Abby down to wipe her face clean with a napkin, he leaned a little closer and murmured, “Should I sneak away before you decide to clean me up?”

  She looked startled, then laughed. “You never know, if you make a big enough mess.”

  As was often the case with this kind of meal, David ate more than he should, then loaded up his plate again with desserts. Mamm had made a huckleberry cobbler that was always one of his favorites, and he had to try Deborah Bowman’s rhubarb cake and, of course, one of Miriam’s cookies. All were delicious; Deborah was well known as a fine cook, but he had to suppress a groan of pleasure when he took a bite of the molasses cookie: thick, chewy, not too sweet.

  “If I thought I had room in here”—he patted his stomach—“I’d go grab eight or ten more of these.”

  She seemed pleased even as she teased him that he’d better be careful or he’d look like a snake that bulged with its last meal. But then she smiled. “You’re a lucky man, because all these leftovers are for you, and that includes the cookies. You’ll eat well for a few days.”

  “More blessed than lucky,” he said. “I haven’t even stocked the kitchen yet. Maybe I won’t bother, and will just hope everyone takes pity on me.”

  He was sorry when he’d scraped his plate clean and the women began clearing the table and wrapping leftovers. Holding Abby, Luke scooted closer on the bench.

  “You won’t have to change much in the house, will you? When I bought mine, I had to have the electrical wires removed along with the appliances. I’m still stripping wallpaper.” He looked rueful. “I may be doing that for another year or two. I had Elam nicely trained as an assistant, and now he claims to be too busy with his farm.”

  “I could spare a day or two to help with this stripping,” David said.

  Miriam brushed him as she reached for a serving dish. Her smile, so close, had his heart bouncing in his chest.

  “You might want to take back that offer. Elam claims it’s the worst job in the world.”

  It was all he could do to form words. “You haven’t helped?”

  Luke laughed. “Not once. I’d be hurt, except that whenever Miriam comes over, she insists on cooking.”

  “That’s a good trade-off,” David agreed, unable to tear his eyes away as she stacked dirty dashes.

  She chuckled. “You’re right. It is. In fact, Mamm and I were talking about stealing the rhubarb that’s in the garden here. It’s a fine patch, almost ready. We’d give it back to you, of course.”

  “My mother grows plenty of that.”

  “Ja, her cake is famous. But we can’t let yours go to waste, and I don’t suppose you know how to put up fruit.”

  He shook his head. “When I was a kind, Mamm would send me to the cellar to find her jars, a job I always hated because there’d be spiders, but that was the extent of my help.”

  “Oh, why am I just standing here talking?” Miriam collected her piles and departed in a swish of skirts.

  Looking after her, Luke said, “My sister is being such a help to Julia. Growing up in a city, she’s used to buying everything at the store. Gardening is new to her.”

  “I doubt Miriam has a lazy bone in her body, or is ever anything but generous.”

  “No.” Luke bent to set down his little girl. “Find your grossmammi, Abby. Your daadi must get back to work, too.”

  She clutched Luke’s pant leg in a tiny hand, but under his kind but firm gaze, sighed heavily and trudged over to Deborah.

  David swung one leg over the bench. “I don’t know if I can stand up.”

  “Komm, komm.” Luke had a twinkle in his eyes. “You can’t let all this help go to waste.”

  By the time the men finished building and installing cubbies for the hens and one full wall, two half walls, and the roof to keep them dry as well as stretching wire to protect them from predators, Miriam, her mamm, and Abby had left, as had the Kemps, who had a longer drive than anyone else. Mamm and Daad had brought two folding tables, now in their buggy, and the tables and chairs from the house had been put back. Only the benches waited to be returned to the stack in the barn.

  David found his mamm surveying his kitchen cupboards.

  Hearing him, she glanced over her shoulder. “Just making a list of what you need. Hiram didn’t mind dish towels with holes in them.” She held one up so that David could see how tattered it was. “Stubborn alter.” An old man.

  Ja, Hiram was that.

  David kissed her cheek. “He kept his tools in good shape. Who cares about a dish towel, as long as it’s clean?”

  “Any woman with pride!” she chided him.

  “You do know that Onkel Hiram and I had something in common, don’t you?”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “We are men.”

  “Oh, you.”

  He easily dodged the towel she snapped at him, and went out to help Daad and Luke catch and harness their horses.

  After everyone had left, he brought Dexter and Nellie into the barn, giving all three horses grain and checking their water before he walked back to the house.

  Now that it was silent, he became aware of how alone he was. He hadn’t settled into considering this home. Out in the world, he’d lived in apartments so small, the kitchen might be two steps from the bed. His last years, working at the stable, he’d bunked in a shared room with several other men and been fine with that.

  Now . . . this house was home, very likely for the rest of his life. It would take him time to become accustomed to having so much space, the nearest neighbor close to half a mile as the crow flies instead of playing a television too loud one thin wall away.

  Although he was tired from a hard day’s work, he also felt restless, not ready to sit down and read. He was almost sorry he didn’t have to cook a meal for himself, or make up his own bed. Probably Mamm and the other women wouldn’t have unpacked his duffel bag, but that wouldn’t take more than a minute. He didn’t own much—just clothes and books. Mamm had his Englisch clothes, those that weren’t too worn, already bundled up to drop off at a thrift store in town. Taking them away from him right away was probably another way for her to feel confident he wouldn’t leave aga
in.

  He wandered, getting the feel of each room, letting his thoughts drift. As happened too often, they returned to Levi, as if pulled by a powerful magnet. More specifically, at the moment, it was Esther he tried to understand.

  Levi had never had much to say about his daad, having been only eight when he was killed. David remembered him, of course, but not well. David and Levi had been walking home from school that day when they heard loud, scary explosions coming from near home. David had heard cans of kerosene explode in a barn fire once. This was like that. The two boys had run, but were corralled before they reached the head of Levi’s driveway by neighbors, including David’s parents.

  Just as well, he thought now. It turned out that some Englisch boys had set off firecrackers and even cherry bombs in the woods on the far side of the Schwartz farm. Later, he heard that it looked like Perry had been working a field when the racket began, and had gone to his team’s heads to soothe them when they panicked. Maybe the firecrackers had been followed by one of those huge booms, because they’d trampled him and dragged the disc harrow right over him. David heard Daad that night quietly telling Mamm it was hard to tell whether huge hooves or sharp discs had killed him.

  The police had talked to the Englisch boys’ parents, but they hadn’t really been breaking the law. As little as David had ever wanted to farm, he remembered that, for months, he’d insisted on accompanying his father whenever he took the horses out to a field, even if he was only pulling a plow or hay baler. It took a long time for David to quit picturing what the dead man must have looked like, and thinking that if he and Levi had gotten back to the Schwartz farm a little sooner, they might have been out in the field to help Levi’s daad with the horses so that he didn’t die.

  Now . . . now he had seen an equal horror. Esther must have seen both her husband’s body and her son’s. She’d never been the kind of mother his own was, but with the hazy memory of a boy, he thought she’d been softer, more welcoming, before Perry’s terrible death.

  David knew more about Esther than he should, because Levi had told him things his own parents hadn’t known or hid from him. As Levi got older, he’d understood his mother had had at least a couple of miscarriages, maybe more. Had she railed at God? David asked himself. He also had to wonder if she’d resented the idea of replacing the daughters she felt cheated of with Miriam.

  Miriam had never had eyes for anyone but Levi. As far as David knew, the only person who might have guessed how he envied his best friend, his brother in all but name, was Levi’s mamm. He couldn’t be sure even of that; Esther had a sour way about her, seeming determined to find flaws in everyone. Had she ever wholeheartedly approved of anyone? Her husband, maybe; who knew?

  He wouldn’t take offense at her sharpness, but instead understand it. Ja, he had a lot to do here, but tomorrow or the next day, he’d take on more repairs at her place. Last week, when he’d made it over there Friday to put in a couple of hours of labor, she hadn’t emerged from her house.

  David had no doubt at all that the Bowmans, and Miriam in particular, still visited her, brought her food and fresh produce, made sure she received invitations to gatherings. Nobody in their church district would leave Esther alone, even if she tried to keep to herself and deny help, but she had the greatest claim on him, whether she knew that or not.

  Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in the power of your hand to do so.

  No, he would not let his own pain keep him from helping her.

  Chapter Six

  Thursday, Miriam was scheduled to work only a half day, so she drove herself to town. Daad had gone with Luke, allowing her to take their mare, Polly. Mamm needed their second horse to drive herself to visit Miriam’s older sister, Rose, and her brood of three kinder. Miriam now had her own small buggy, as Mamm did, so she didn’t need to take the large family sedan adequate to carry a dining room table and chairs or buffet or desk. Buying that third buggy, just for her, had been Daad’s silent acknowledgment that Miriam would remain a spinster, a working woman who still lived at home. That happened about the same time her mother quit pointing out single men, Miriam thought now.

  She had a huge basket filled with food to drop off for David. Mamm was apparently convinced he’d starve to death without continuing contributions from her and other neighbors.

  It was true that he’d likely reached the end of the leftovers from Monday’s feast, although Miriam suspected his own mother would be sure to keep him supplied. But nobody said no to Deborah Bowman, especially her own children, so Polly clopped only a short distance down the road before obediently turning in to David’s driveway.

  She saw him long before she’d reached the barnyard, in the act of harnessing his onkel’s gelding. David strode to meet her, his expression changing to concern.

  “Miriam, is something wrong?”

  She reined in Polly, who nickered a greeting to the gelding. “No, I’m an errand girl today. Mamm is certain that by evening you’ll be growing faint with hunger.”

  He’d come close enough to be able to touch her. As he glanced past her at the basket on the seat beside her, amusement crinkled the skin beside his eyes. “I’ve been ordered to stop at home every time I’m nearby to pick up supplies.”

  She gestured. “Is that where you’re going?”

  The amusement vanished when he grimaced. “Ja, because I intend to do some work for Esther today.”

  “Oh. That’s good of you.”

  Lines formed on his forehead. “I was there again Tuesday. I’m surprised to see how much work her house and garden need. Surely other church members have helped her, a widow on her own.”

  “Esther often drives them away,” Miriam said frankly. “She claims that, without having to do the farming, she’s fine. They should be taking care of their families, not wasting good working hours ‘prettying up’ her yard or house.”

  “It’s not ‘prettying up’ to keep the house siding from rotting!” he exclaimed. “The roof looks bad enough, I wonder if she didn’t have leaks this winter.”

  “Oh, no,” she said softly, guilt balling in her stomach. “I should have tried harder.”

  “You should not be climbing on anyone’s roof,” David said sternly. “Or on tall ladders to work on siding.”

  “I could have—”

  His expression was repressive enough to stiffen her back.

  Lifting her chin, she retorted, “Didn’t we agree that I’m capable of anything I feel the need to do?”

  The trace of returning amusement was almost as annoying as having him look at her like a parent reproving a child.

  “I don’t recall it being phrased that way. Being strong and capable doesn’t mean you should do work that would endanger you.”

  “Men fall from roofs, too.”

  “Ja, foolish ones. But you can’t deny that men are usually stronger.”

  She couldn’t deny that he was. Being suddenly so aware of the breadth of his shoulders and the muscular brown forearms bared by rolled-up shirtsleeves, Miriam feared she was blushing. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been conscious of a man’s physical features.

  When Levi was alive, of course . . . but he’d still been thin, not having achieved a man’s bulk. This . . . was different.

  “I don’t want to climb onto the roof, anyway,” she admitted. “I just don’t like—”

  “That what women can do with their lives is so restricted among us,” David said slowly.

  Disconcerted, she said, “I . . . hadn’t thought of it that way.” Yet that wasn’t quite true. Wasn’t she aware every day that she’d failed to meet the expectations laid on her to marry and bear children? It was as if something was wrong with her that she’d taken a different path. As if she was to be pitied because she was broken.

  David stepped closer, concern in his clear eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn
’t have said that. Out there, I heard people talking that way.”

  She made herself meet his gaze when she told him, “No, I’d rather you said what you’re thinking. And . . . you’re not wrong. You just made me realize that I push against limitations other Amish women accept without question. And yet I still live at home, and my work is acceptable for a woman, so I haven’t really rebelled.”

  “The way I did?”

  “What else would you call taking off?”

  He hesitated before he said, “It was mostly guilt, but not entirely. I thought I didn’t belong here. I never really did, you know.”

  “No.” What on earth was he talking about? “Compared to Levi, you were so steady. Mature.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Don’t you mean old?”

  She made a face at him, even as she felt heat rising in her cheeks again. “I was seventeen the last time I saw you. A girl.”

  “Ja, I was well aware.”

  What did that mean?

  But he sighed. “I was fighting against so much. Not wanting to be a farmer, like my daad hoped, but hating to disappoint my parents. I struggled in school. Struggled with everything, it seemed.”

  Miriam stared at him in shock. “I . . . had no idea.”

  “Why would you? You didn’t know me.” For a moment, David looked almost hostile.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, hoping he understood what she was really apologizing for.

  He rolled his shoulders and looked away. “It doesn’t matter. We were talking about you, not me. Not feeling contented with what the Leit expect from women.”

  “I don’t know if it’s that, exactly.”

  “Isn’t not marrying your way of rebelling?” He immediately frowned and took a step back. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not my business.”

  Shocked to realize how much this unexpectedly honest exchange had meant to her, Miriam said, “You know part of the reason I didn’t.”

  “You couldn’t care enough for any man but Levi.” Tone clipped now, his observation was just that, his indifference apparent. “I shouldn’t stand around and talk when I have so much to do. Let me get the basket.” He started around her buggy.