by Adina Senft
The copse of trees lay in a fold in the hill, where an underground spring probably bubbled up, the water forming a runnel in the spring but completely invisible now except for the extra verdancy of the grass where it ran. The early afternoon air smelled fresh, scented with something sweet that turned out to be both the elderflowers on the big, bushy tree, and a wild rose growing not too far away.
Sarah realized too late that she’d forgotten to bring a bowl for the flowers. Even a paper sack would have done the job. Ach, never mind. God had given her two hands, and she’d just fill them with His bounty and be grateful that He had provided a good cure for colds right here on this sunny slope.
Someone hallooed her and she looked over her shoulder as she broke off a cluster of the creamy flowers. Her mouth dropped open and she snapped it shut as Silas Lapp ambled up the last part of the slope and joined her under the trees.
“I thought you were in the barn looking at the potbellied pigs,” she said, reaching for another cluster. With Amanda. Where had she gone?
“It’s nice and cool up here,” he said, though it was perfectly cool in the barn. Half of it was buried in the old-fashioned system that maintained a fairly constant temperature for the animals, summer and winter. “What are those?”
“These are elderflowers. We infuse them with other herbs to make a tea for colds and flu. These ones are for Ruth’s grandson.”
“Isn’t it just as simple to take a pill from the drugstore?”
“That depends on whether you can get to a drugstore. But a walk up the hill, now…that you can do anytime, and enjoy the gifts God has given us in nature while you’re at it.”
He smiled to acknowledge that she was right, and turned to look out at the view. This consisted of the Lehman farm, the seam of trees growing down the side of the hill, and a good portion of the next farm over, which had been planted in oats that waved like an ocean under the weight of the breeze.
“Is Amanda on her way up, too?” Sarah asked. “She might remember to bring something to carry these back in. Which is more than I did, I’m afraid.”
“Do you need help?” Immediately, he stepped past a stand of spindly wild plums, and cupped his hands around hers. “Let me take these for you.”
Warm hands, callused by hard work, the fingers shorter than either Michael’s or Henry’s, imprisoned both of hers, the clusters of elderflowers held between them like a bouquet.
Sarah jerked her hands out of his and the flowers fell into his palms.
Or they would have, if he hadn’t jerked his own back, clearly startled that she was startled. Instead, they fell on the ground, which was littered with last year’s leaves and stones and wild grass. Sarah knelt to pick them up, blushing.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting—”
“No, I’m the one who is sorry. That was forward of me. I thought—” He stopped.
She had all the flowers now. Never mind. She didn’t need anything to carry them in if she kept a good grip on the stems. Then his words and the way he’d cut them off penetrated.
“You thought what?” Straightening, she clutched the flowers with one hand while she looped her tied Kapp strings over her head with one finger so they hung down her back, out of the way.
“I didn’t think it would startle you, having a man touch your hand. After all, you have been married.”
It was a lucky thing she was standing on a level spot, or she might have tumbled backward down the hill in sheer surprise.
“It depends,” she said lamely. What was he trying to say?
“Depends on the man? Sarah, I enjoyed very much talking to you on the way over today. I hope you enjoyed it, too.”
“Well—yes, but—” He’d been talking to Amanda! Everything she’d said had been to help the Maedel out because she was so shy.
“Then perhaps we might talk again sometime. Alone together, I mean.”
Oh dear, this wasn’t right. He had got onto the wrong track, and it was up to her to steer him over to the right one.
“I talk too much sometimes. Amanda is very shy, but she has good things to say when she has a chance. She’s an interesting girl.”
“I’m sure she is.”
“You should talk to her more, Silas. You’d like her.”
“I do like her. But I like you, too. And how can you say a twenty-year-old girl is more interesting than you are, with your knowledge of plants and herbs?”
“I don’t know much. Just enough to be dangerous. That’s why I come to Ruth for lessons.”
“What I see more than that is a heart with a care for the people of God, and that’s more difficult to teach. I like that about you, Sarah. It tells me that you have a big capacity to love.”
Oh, no. That word could not come into the conversation under any circumstances.
“I love my family, certainly. My sons. And my husband, still.”
“Your husband?” he said gently. “Corinne tells me it has been five years.”
“Ja. Six, in the fall.”
“He was a good man.”
“The best.”
“But your youngest boy, I would think he needs a father.”
Oh, now, this really was forward. “He is close to his Daed, and he has several uncles close by to stand in that place for him.”
Silence fell, in which the breeze rustled in the grass and whispered restlessly in the leaves overhead. “Silas, I need to get these flowers down to Ruth before they wilt. I don’t want them to lose their essence.”
“Let me walk you back.”
But she made good and sure that her steps were faster than his. By the time she crossed the yard, he had fallen far enough behind that when Amanda came out of the house, there was nothing in her gaze as she met Sarah’s own but interest in the flowers and the cure they were making for little Elam.
She’d had a narrow escape. She’d have to remember not to put herself in a position where she was alone with him again.
She could not let people think she welcomed the attentions of a man who should be intended for Amanda.
Chapter 12
When the men were backing the horses between the buggy rails later that afternoon, Sarah made sure that Amanda knew how much she wanted to visit with Zeke and Fannie on the way home.
“I may not get a good chance again,” she told her in Ruth’s compiling room, as she put packets of herbs and leaves in her small cooler and fitted the lid on top. “Especially if they go back to Mount Joy on Friday.”
“Ja, I heard Zeke tell Ruth that,” Amanda said, handing her a Mason jar full of the elderflower tea. “I hope you enjoy your trip home with them—though I’d enjoy mine much more if you came in your buggy with me. And…Silas.”
Something in Amanda’s tone—some deeper note that told her she was telling the truth and not just being nice—made Sarah look up.
Where was the calm Amanda who worked in the background seeing to other people’s comfort? Who saw the funny side of life and made quiet jokes that you got three seconds too late because sometimes they went over your head? The Amanda standing next to her at the table looked almost panicked.
“Mandy? Is everything all right?”
Color flooded into the girl’s face. “Oh, ja. I’m just being silly.”
“Silly is the last word I’d use to describe you. What’s wrong?”
“I—I don’t—” She gulped and tried again. “What am I going to say to him?”
“To whom?” As if she didn’t know. “Silas?”
Amanda nodded miserably. “He’s so nice, and so kind, and—and I feel like such a child when I’m around him.”
She cared. More than Sarah had realized up until now. This had gone past matchmaking and was in uncharted territory—where it was dangerous for people to meddle.
Guilt weaseled in under Sarah’s breastbone for allowing the ten minutes she and Silas had spent up on the hillside. Thank goodness she’d cut it short. If she’d had any inclinations that way—which she didn’t
—the pain in Amanda’s eyes would have put an end to them here and now.
“No one would ever say you were a child. That’s the last impression you want to give him, neh? ”
“But I can’t help it, Sarah. Whenever he’s around, I either fade into the wall or babble like a little Maedelin. No wonder he looks like he wants to pat me on the head half the time and avoid me the other half.”
“He doesn’t want to avoid you. No man in his right mind would.”
Amanda stepped closer, so that their shoulders touched and she could lower her voice. “You’ve been married. You’ve been through this before. What should I do?”
“Shouldn’t you be asking your mother these things, Liewi? ”
“There are fifteen miles of talking between me and my mother right now,” Amanda whispered, glancing over her shoulder as if Ruth or even Silas might step through the door to ask what was keeping them. “I need your help. If you won’t come in the buggy with me, then at least tell me what to say.”
She wouldn’t say come in the buggy with us because saying us would be presumptuous and proud. As far as Amanda was concerned, there was no us, no matter how much her family had been angling over the last couple of days to make it so.
“You could ask him about his family. About his brothers and sisters.”
“They’re Fannie’s cousins. I’ve met them before, at Old Christmas and at weddings.”
“But do you know which sibling he gets along with best? Why his sisters chose to marry the men they did? Where his brothers are farming and why they bought the land they did?”
“No,” Amanda said slowly. “I never thought of all that.”
“A woman who is interested in a man is interested in his family, because they are the people she will be spending her life with,” Sarah told her, also with an eye on the door. “And since he loves his family, he won’t have any difficulty talking about them, and it will say something good about you that you’re interested.”
“Is that what you talked about up on the hill?”
Sarah stopped herself from jerking around just in time, and picked up the cooler instead. “On the hill?”
“Ja, when you were getting the elderflowers. I watched him hike up there after you—I thought maybe he thought you were cutting down the whole tree, not just picking flower clusters off it.”
Sarah smiled, half in relief and half in appreciation of the picture. “I think he might be the sort of man who needs to get out in the fresh air once in a while, especially if there are a lot of relatives in the same room.”
“I’m like that, too. I wish he’d told me. We could have walked up there together.”
“I’m sure he would have enjoyed that. Now, kummscht du. They’ll be looking for us.”
In the hustle of saying good-bye and giving last-minute messages to those in their various households, Sarah felt very clever to find just enough time to climb into the back of the King buggy before Zeke and Fannie settled into the front.
“Three’s a crowd, nix? ” Zeke said as he shook the reins over Mercury’s back and the buggy jerked into motion.
“Warum? ” she asked pertly. “Do you want me to get out so you and Fannie can be alone?”
Zeke roared with laughter and even Fannie chuckled as they rolled down the gravel drive and out on the paved road. Behind them, through the open window in the back, Sarah could hear Dulcie’s clip-clop pick up its pace as the horse realized they were going home.
The grinding of the bare wheels on the asphalt made it impossible to hear the conversations of anyone but those who were in the buggy with her—which was fine. Amanda would tell her all about her trip home with Silas, and in the meantime, she wouldn’t look back to see if the two of them were talking. She’d do what she said she was going to do, and that was visit with Zeke and Fannie.
But Fannie had other ideas.
“So, Sarah, it has been good to see so much of you this visit.” She raised her voice a little above the sound of the wheels.
“That’s one of the good things about living on the acreage so close to Jacob and Corinne—Caleb and Simon and I walk over often to share meals and news and visits. I’m so glad you could come in the summer, when the evenings are longer and we have more time to enjoy our visit with you. It’s a shame Simon isn’t going to be home until the fall. He would have liked to have seen you, I know.”
“So you are not lonely?”
“Oh, no, never.”
Fannie directed a knowing look at her over her shoulder. “Never?”
Sarah knew what she meant, but such a thing could not be discussed in front of a man, even one’s husband. “Hardly ever. My days are full—now more than ever, what with learning from Ruth and having people come for remedies.”
“Not so full that you haven’t had time to talk to people—Silas, for instance.”
Amanda was the one talking to Silas, not her. “He is a very nice person.”
“And well situated, too. He owns his farm, and his family is close around him to help out when he needs it. But the one thing he needs, he doesn’t have. And time is marching on.”
“It’s in God’s hands, Fannie wife,” Zeke put in. “But I’d say he’s doing what he can to move things along.”
“I’m glad to see it, too. He’s not a man to put himself forward, is Silas. He’s modest, good to his parents, and works hard, just as a man should.”
In other words, he was the perfect candidate for Amanda. “Even though they are related, the connection is distant enough that it doesn’t matter,” Sarah agreed. “People marry shirttail cousins all the time.”
“But in this case, the connection is only by marriage,” Fannie replied.
“By marriage?” Sarah tried to work this out in her head. “I suppose it is—you’re her mother’s cousin, and Silas is your cousin…no, the relationship is there. Or is there something I’m missing?”
“Her mother—” Fannie stopped. “Who are you talking about?”
“Amanda, of course. Why do you think I wangled it so that they rode home alone together?”
Fannie’s mouth dropped open and she exchanged a glance with her husband, who grinned and shook his head. “You’ve been talking at cross-purposes, the two of you. Sarah, don’t you know that my wife has had her eye on you for Silas?”
Sarah’s whole face went slack with dismay before she got it under control. But it was too late. Fannie had already seen it.
Fannie cleared her throat. “It doesn’t matter who I have my eye on. It’s not up to me, it’s up to God. But I have to say that you two did seem to hit it off very well. And there have been opportunities where the two of you talked alone.”
“Completely accidental opportunities.”
“It didn’t look so accidental this afternoon, when he went up the hill after you.”
“He thought I might need a hand.” This was silly. They were building a romance out of nothing. Fannie should be focusing her considerable energy on Amanda, who would make Silas an excellent wife.
“That’s the kind of man he is,” Fannie said with satisfaction. “As I said—considerate, thoughtful, and on the lookout for chances to help, especially with a young widow who is also thoughtful and looking for ways to help.”
Silas must have been talking to them, because he’d said something similar up there on the hill. “I’m sure he’s not interested in me,” she said. “I—I’m not looking for—” Stop stammering. “I’m not interested in anyone new right now,” she said more firmly.
“But these things aren’t up to us, are they?” Fannie said. “If God has revealed to us His choice of mate, it’s up to us to be willing, isn’t that so?”
“Yes, but we must have a conviction, too,” Sarah countered. “The only conviction I’ve had is that I need to learn more about the healing path He has set me on, and that is taking all my time and thought. There is none to spare for—for men.”
Zeke chuckled. “I never met a woman who couldn’t make a
little time for a man. Or a lot. It’s funny how many things can be put aside when there’s courting to be done.”
Sarah thought a little guiltily of the evenings she’d spent walking over the hill to see Henry. But she’d always had a good reason—and there was no question of courtship there. In fact, if people had it in their minds that it was time for her to marry again, he was probably the safest person in the neighborhood for her to spend any time with.
“I had my time of courtship with Michael,” she said firmly. “That season of life is past, and once my boys are grown and on their own, I’ll be serving God’s people with my herbs and remedies.”
“Don’t rule a good man out, Sarah,” Fannie said in a tone that hinted she’d seen such things before.
“Oh, I haven’t—and if one comes by, I’ll point him in Amanda’s direction. She’s a wonderful girl—skilled in the kitchen and garden, gentle with the children, and faithful in her service to God. Silas would be foolish to overlook her.”
“She’s a little young for him, wouldn’t you say?” Fannie said.
“She’s twenty. He can’t be more than thirty.”
“He’s thirty-two.”
“Why has he never married, then?” It was a fair question. “Most men his age have a wife and three or four children by now.”
“He’s been establishing himself on the farm, and…” Zeke exchanged another glance with his wife, the kind that asked a question and received an answer in less than a second. “And it’s taken him this long to get over that girl.”
“Ah,” Sarah said. “Was he married before?”
“No, no,” Fannie assured her. “But they were to marry, five or six years ago. She kept him waiting almost two years, and then on their wedding day, as they were upstairs with the ministers, and all their family and friends downstairs waiting for the ceremony to begin—she told him she loved someone else. Someone she worked with at the restaurant. She married him a month later—though it was a much smaller affair. It was difficult to convince the out-of-state relatives to come back again so soon when half of them weren’t sure she’d go through with it.”
This was news to Sarah. “How awful for him. Was she seeing them both at once?”
