Bitsy jiggled the shotgun in her arm. “You’ll always have me, baby sister. And my trusty shotgun.”
“After we’re married, we’ll probably be on the Honeybee Farm more than we’re not,” Dan said.
“It’s very hard to get rid of stray cats,” Bitsy said. “Like it or not, Dan and Luke are never going to be far away.”
Josiah wanted to speak up for himself. He’d be on the Honeybee Farm every day if Rose would have him. She didn’t even have to ask.
To his surprise and complete dismay, Rose buried her face in her hands and let out a heart-wrenching sob. “I’m such a burden.”
Josiah closed the distance between him and Rose in four long strides as if an invisible thread pulled him to her. He had no right and no reason except that he loved her better than his own soul and he couldn’t bear to see her suffer. Thank the gute Lord that Bitsy had more sense than he did. Before he could wrap his arms around Rose, Bitsy stepped between them and raised a warning eyebrow. Josiah backed away so fast, he probably left skid marks on the cement floor.
What had he been thinking?
Bitsy looked daggers at Josiah as she put her arm around Rose. “I’ll have none of that nonsense, baby sister. You’re not a burden to anyone. If anyone’s a burden on this farm, it’s me. You girls clean my bathrooms and tend my bees and bake up a storm in my kitchen. You might as well put me in a home for all the use I am.”
“That’s not true,” Rose said between sniffles. “You are everything to us, Aunt Bitsy, and you know it.”
“If they put you in a home,” Luke said, “who would take care of the cats?”
Bitsy narrowed her eyes. “It’s your fault I’ve got three cats, Luke Bontrager. I’ve half a mind to leave them at your house in the middle of the night.”
Luke didn’t seem impressed with the threat. “I live next door. They’d find their way back, especially if Rose is here. Those cats love Rose.”
“At least I’d be rid of the cats if you put me in a home.”
Luke showed all his teeth when he smiled. “We’d bring them to visit every day.”
“If it hadn’t been for you, Rose,” Poppy said. “Aunt B would have gotten rid of those cats a long time ago.”
Rose didn’t look happy, but she didn’t look as upset as she had a few minutes ago. “That’s not true. Aunt Bitsy loves those cats.”
Lily patted Rose on the arm. “I can’t believe you consider yourself a burden. You’re a better cook than any of us. We’re not half as good at the hives as you. The bees know you and would never dream of stinging you. And you can calm Queenie out of her orneriest moods. What would we do without you?”
“You can make anyone feel better, no matter how sad they are,” Josiah said.
Poppy smiled at Josiah. For a moment, he didn’t feel like he’d been quite so clumsy. “Jah,” she said. “And the chickens always lay better for you.”
Rose wiped her eyes, and Josiah saw a small grin playing at her lips. “Now you’re just being silly.”
What else could he say to make that smile gain in strength? “You were brave enough to come out here to investigate who sneaked into your barn,” he said.
Her face immediately lost any trace of happiness. Oy, anyhow, he shouldn’t throw caution to the wind like that. “I was too frightened to be left alone in the house.”
Poppy hooked her arm around Rose’s neck. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the buggy, Rose. Please don’t be mad at me.”
Rose’s tears returned. “Mad at you? I could never be mad at you. I’m frightened, and I wish I wasn’t.” She pulled a tissue from her apron pocket and dabbed at her tears. Eyeing Josiah, she nibbled on her bottom lip. “I’m sorry that you three had to come all the way out here just to protect my feelings.”
“I only live next door,” Luke said, with that gentleness to his voice he only used when talking to Rose.
“You don’t have to apologize,” Josiah said. “We wanted to help.” Truth be told, he’d rather be here than anywhere else.
Rose slumped as if the weight of the world had fallen on her shoulders. “Jah, I’m sure everybody wants to do their Christian duty. You’re all so kind, and I’m so weak.”
“Gotte gave you many gifts,” Bitsy said, a sharp scold evident in her voice, “but if He’d given you all the gifts, there wouldn’t be any left for the rest of us.”
Rose pressed her lips together and nodded. She obviously didn’t want to argue with Bitsy. “I think I’ll go to bed now,” she said, as if she were almost too weary to talk. She turned around, pushed the barn door open, and walked out.
Bitsy narrowed her eyes and looked from the boys to Poppy to Lily. “You five have really done it this time.”
The barn door creaked open again. Rose stood at the opening, her eyes dull with fear and sadness. “Lily, it wonders me if you would walk me to the house.”
Josiah held perfectly still as Lily put her arm around her sister and they walked out of the barn together. He struggled for breath. Rose was frightened and unhappy, and he ached to make everything all better for her.
If only she’d let him.
If only he knew how.
Chapter Six
Rose set the brake, slid out of the buggy, and picked up the cake in both hands as if she were holding a shield in front of her. She’d made a small cake because Josiah lived all by himself, but now she wondered if she should have made a bigger one. The coconut cake looked so insignificant sitting on the dinner plate. Much like Rose felt at this very moment.
Her pulse raced so fast she could have been a hummingbird in flight. How had she ever talked herself into thinking this was a gute idea? Josiah didn’t need a cake. She didn’t need to see the butterfly garden. They didn’t need to talk ever again.
She stood up straight and tall—which wasn’t all that impressive since she was only five feet three inches—but she had to talk herself into being brave. Aunt Bitsy said that if she wanted to overcome her fears, she should do things that frightened her. She’d come all this way to bring Josiah a cake. All she had to do was hand it to him and say good day. She didn’t have to stay for more than two minutes.
A week ago, Rose had just about decided that she didn’t need to overcome anything. She could be perfectly happy living out her days on Honeybee Farm, baking cookies and sewing quilts. But the night in the barn had changed her mind. Dan and Luke and Josiah had been willing to sacrifice sleep and time to make sure she never found out about the buggy. How selfish she was!
Her sisters suffered inconvenience after inconvenience for Rose’s benefit, and soon their husbands would be pulled into it as well. She couldn’t let them sacrifice themselves or their future families for her. It wasn’t fair of her to ask her sisters to give over their lives to Rose’s fears. She didn’t deserve it. She never had.
She was more determined than ever to overcome her fear of men. And her fear of talking to people. And her fear of troublemakers coming in the middle of the night and tipping over the honeybees. Aunt Bitsy said to pretend that she wasn’t frightened and soon she would begin to believe it, but it was hard to pretend when her knees knocked against each other and her hands trembled.
None of that mattered. She had to be more courageous if she didn’t want her sisters to end up resenting her.
She looked down at the cake. Josiah had come to the barn to help fix the buggy. He had driven her home one night and then walked all the way back to his own house. He’d been so concerned when he’d rescued her in the honey house too. She had embarrassed herself, but he hadn’t laughed at her or even lectured her for getting all worked up over nothing. He deserved a cake for that reason alone.
She tiptoed across the grass and climbed Josiah’s porch steps. The house looked like it had been painted recently and there were even some flowers growing in the bed below the window. Boys didn’t usually think about flowers.
Josiah had lived alone in the white clapboard house since his mamm had died four years ago. R
ose felt lonely just thinking about Josiah wandering through the empty rooms, longing for his parents’ company. They were both orphans, but at least Rose had Aunt Bitsy and her sisters.
Josiah’s sister, Suvilla, lived not a quarter mile down the road in the house her husband, Andrew, had built when they married. Suvie’s three children kept her busy, and Andrew and Josiah worked Josiah’s parents’ farm together. Josiah and Suvie were the only two siblings left in the family. They’d lost a little brother before Rose and her family moved onto Honeybee Farm.
Everybody had problems and heartaches. Rose had to remind herself often that she was not the only one, and it was self-centered to believe she was.
She knocked softly on the door, almost afraid that someone inside would hear her. If no one answered, she could leave the cake on the porch and never have to talk to Josiah again. A breeze rustled through the big maple in Josiah’s front yard, and she couldn’t hear any sound of movement from the house.
She knocked again, because Poppy would want to know that she had at least tried. Then she set the cake on the mat in front of the door and skipped off the porch. She had done her duty and wouldn’t have to talk to anybody. That was gute enough for today. She could try something extra brave next week.
Before she made it to her buggy, she halted in her tracks. Didn’t Josiah have a dog? What about raccoons and ants? She’d have to come again if Josiah’s cake got hauled off by a hungry fox. Besides, Josiah’s porch faced south. It wouldn’t take long for the frosting to melt in the sun.
Groaning, she tromped back up the steps and took her cake off the mat. She couldn’t just leave it. Josiah deserved a cake, no matter how uneasy she felt talking to him.
A honey-colored, floppy-eared hound dog came bounding around the corner of the house. Rose smiled. Josiah did have a dog, and she was beautiful.
The dog gave Rose a friendly bark, skipped up the porch steps, and nudged Rose’s knee with her nose. Rose balanced her cake in one hand and scratched the dog’s head with her other. “Hello, pretty dog. What’s your name?”
Even though she should have expected the master would follow the dog, she flinched slightly when Josiah strode around the corner. He caught sight of Rose, and his face lit up like a blinding firework, stealing her breath clean away.
“Rose,” he said, as if her name were his favorite word. He took off his hat and climbed up the porch. “You came.”
She couldn’t look into those blue eyes without feeling light-headed, so she turned her gaze to the dog and cleared her throat. “I love her color. Like a jar of honey.”
“I hope she didn’t scare you.”
“Of course not. She’s beautiful. How old is she?”
Josiah didn’t take his eyes from Rose. “She’s part bloodhound, part Labrador retriever. I got her right after my mamm died. She’s four years and a few weeks.”
Much more comfortable with the dog than with Josiah, Rose handed him the cake and knelt down beside his dog. She smoothed the dog’s ears between her fingers and rubbed her hand along its neck. “You pretty dog. Oh, you are the prettiest dog in the world.” She glanced up at Josiah, who seemed to be having a great deal of trouble prying his gaze from her face. “What’s her name?”
Josiah gave her an embarrassed smile. “Uh, Honey. I call her Honey.”
Rose didn’t know why her face felt warm all of a sudden. She wished he’d quit looking at her like that. “Honey? She’s the perfect color.” Rose pressed her cheek against Honey’s neck. “My family makes honey. We’re nearly related.” Honey yipped her agreement and licked Rose’s cheek. Josiah just stood there staring at her. Maybe she should tell him why she had come and find a polite way to leave before her heart took off down the road ahead of her.
She stood up and smoothed her hand down the front of her dress. “I’m sorry if I am bothering you. I wanted to come over now so there was no danger of it getting dark before I got home.” Ach, she shouldn’t have said that. No one needed to be reminded that in addition to all the other things she was afraid of, the dark made her anxious.
“You’re not bothering me.”
“I made you a cake to say thank you for being so nice the other day.”
He acted as if he’d never seen anything so wunderbarr as the cake in his hand. “Is it coconut?”
“Pineapple coconut.”
His smile couldn’t have gotten any wider. “This is . . . this is . . . I don’t deserve this. It was no trouble at all to unclog the sink.”
Did she even want to remind him? “Um, well. It’s not for the sink. It’s for driving me home from your sister’s and helping me at the honey house when I got so frightened about nothing.” She furrowed her brow when she realized she should have made a bigger cake. Josiah had done several things in just a few short days.
“Nothing? It wasn’t nothing. I mean, what I did was nothing. What you felt was understandable. It was more work to unclog the sink, and that was nothing too.”
Rose would never tell him who had really unclogged the sink. “Were you able to get your shirt clean?”
He grinned, and his gaze fell to the ground. “That rice stuck like glue. I gave up and asked Suvie to wash it. She told me to let it dry and the rice would brush right off.”
“Did it work?”
“Jah. Suvie knows how to clean anything.” He opened his front door and motioned for Rose to go in. “Do you want a piece of cake?”
“Ach, vell, I should go.”
His face fell like a soufflé in the oven. “Oh. Okay. Denki for the wonderful-gute cake.”
No matter how uncomfortable she felt, how could she bear to disappoint him? “I . . . do you still want to show me the butterfly garden?”
He gave her a doubtful look. “Only if you want to see it.”
“I do.”
His face cracked into a smile. He disappeared into the house and came back without the cake and with a bottle of water. He handed the water to Rose. “It’s wonderful hot.”
He stepped off the porch and reached out to help her down the steps. She didn’t know whether to be pleased that he was concerned for her safety or embarrassed that he thought she couldn’t take care of herself. She couldn’t take care of herself, but she was trying to pretend. Either way, the touch of his hand sent a tendril of warmth sliding up her arm and made her feel as if she just might lose her balance. It was probably a gute thing she was holding on to him. But if he hadn’t been touching her, she wouldn’t feel so ferhoodled.
Nothing seemed to make sense with Josiah so close.
Honey the dog followed Rose down the steps.
“It’s a little bit of a walk to Suvie’s house,” Josiah said. “I don’t want you to get tired. Do you want to take the buggy?”
“Only a quarter mile or so. I can see her laundry hanging on the line.”
“Andrew and I put up that clothesline for her. But mostly Andrew. I held the tools. I’m a better farmer than I am a fixer.”
“You helped Aunt Bitsy with her sink.”
“So maybe there’s hope for me,” he said.
They strolled along the dirt road with Honey tagging along after them. Josiah pointed out potholes and cracks that Rose was to be careful not to trip over. Her mind raced for something clever or interesting to say, but she was too nervous to think of anything. He kept glancing in her direction as they walked, but he didn’t act disappointed that she wasn’t chattering away.
“Are you tired?” he said, when they were about halfway through their five-minute walk. “Because we can rest if you need to.”
Again, Rose didn’t know whether to be pleased he took such care, or embarrassed that he thought she couldn’t walk a quarter mile without a rest. It made her all the more determined to show him she wasn’t a scaredy-cat and that he didn’t need to make her his project. But easier said than done. “I’m fine, denki,” she said.
Who knew being brave was so much work?
Suvie and the children were nowhere to be seen as
Josiah led Rose around to the back of Suvie’s olive-green house. Suvie’s yard was surrounded by a white picket fence that opened up to a grape arbor at the back. Josiah led Rose around the outside of the picket fence and into a thicket of bushes and trees on the east side of the property. “Here,” he said, holding out his hand. Rose hesitated as her pulse coursed like a raging river. Lily and Poppy hadn’t said anything about having to hold Josiah’s hand. She wouldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it.
Josiah tilted his head to coax her to look at him and gave her an open smile. “I don’t want you to trip. The weeds get thick before we reach the clearing.”
Reluctantly, Rose reached out and let him take her hand, hoping he wouldn’t sense her trembling.
Josiah tugged her along the lightly worn path, occasionally looking back and smiling at her, but mostly keeping his eyes on the trail ahead. He hadn’t been exaggerating. The path was rough and bumpy, and more than once Rose nearly tripped on a protruding root or fallen branch. Heedless of the thick undergrowth or the poky bushes on either side, Honey trotted beside Rose. Rose reached out and grabbed onto Honey’s collar with her free hand. Honey yipped and kept walking as if she were Rose’s guide dog.
It didn’t take long before they reached a small clearing, where the sunlight filtered through the trees and purple flowering bushes and other plants grew in a maze pattern Rose couldn’t make sense of. Josiah let go of her hand. The meadow seemed to be alive with dozens of monarch butterflies as well as honeybees flitting about the flowers.
“What do you think?” he said, eyeing her with a barely contained smile.
“It’s beautiful.” She stepped into the clearing and ran her hand across the top of a purple flowering bush. “Miss Molly.”
Josiah’s smile grew wider. “Suvie planted all of this the first year they were married.”
Rose buried her nose in a purple bloom. “Verbena. Bees like this one too.”
Josiah nodded. “I don’t know what most of the plants are called, but I helped Suvie plant milkweed. She says that’s the most important. Look over here.”
Like a Bee to Honey Page 8
