Keys of Heaven

by Adina Senft

  They crested a little rise, and below them could see the Peachey boys on the wide, sunny bank on the far side, casting lures into the water. Up- and downstream, boys who did not have the work of men to do gathered to exclaim over one another’s catches, clearly delighted to have something to bring to the supper table.

  The few seconds of watching the boys seemed to have given Linda a chance to organize her thoughts. “Thank you for thinking of me, Sarah, but Crist would never agree to move in with an Englisch man.”

  “He hasn’t fixed up the house with electricity. In many ways, he still lives according to his upbringing.”

  “But he is not Amish. We don’t even know him, and even if we did, we couldn’t be in fellowship with him.” She turned to take Sarah’s hands, her eyes gentle and earnest. “I appreciate your care for me, I really do. But you must turn your mind to your other patients. I—I do not want to move off Arlon and Ella’s place.”

  Disappointment and concern hit Sarah hard, right below her heart. “But Linda, surely you must want a home of your own. A baby—”

  “I’m content, Sarah. And so must you be.” With a squeeze, she released Sarah’s hands and began to climb down the bank to the creek. Sarah scrambled after her.

  “What if Henry were to offer his place to you?”

  “Why would he? He doesn’t know us.”

  “He would if I brought up the idea, and introduced you.”

  “Sarah.”

  “Ja? ”

  “Neh.”

  Sarah got a grip and reined in her galloping imagination as she reached the water. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m interfering in a matter that should only be between husband and wife. Please forgive me.”

  Linda smiled her forgiveness over her shoulder, and stepped out on a flat rock in the water, one of many that were scattered over a submerged gravel bank where the creek took the bend. This was how the boys got to the flat meadow on the other side, but it had been a long time since Sarah had crossed a creek by hopping from rock to rock.

  She made the last jump into the sedge and her sneaker slipped. With an exclamation, she teetered, and Linda turned just in time to grab her hand. “Careful!”

  They pulled each other up into the grassy meadow and Benny waved.

  “Aendi Linda! Sarah!”

  “How are they biting?” Linda called.

  “Gut—we’ll have fresh brook trout for supper.” He lifted the wriggling brown body he’d just unhooked from his line, and gaffed it with quick efficiency.

  “We’ve come to find herbs,” Sarah said. “Have you seen any mullein—the tall, spiky plant with the yellow flowers—that grows on the side of your hill?”

  “There’s lots in the back pasture.” He baited the hook and the line sang as he cast it out into the water again. “That’s where we found the buggy.”

  “Well, next time you go back there, you might pick me some in trade for your Aendi’s treatment.”

  “Happy to.” He grinned at her, and then his bobber dipped and he whipped his full attention back to landing another fish.

  “We’ll leave them to it,” she said, and then spotted Caleb and Eric upstream. “I’ll just go see my boy and then we’ll head back. I don’t think you should be out in this hot sun.”

  Linda rambled back to the water’s edge where the stepping-stones were, and Sarah made her way over to the younger boys. “Hallo. Any luck?”

  Caleb grinned. “Eric’s caught one and I’ve caught one.”

  “If you catch two more, I can fry them for supper with sliced potato chips.”

  “Really? We’ll eat these?” Eric said. “These ones we caught?”

  “We sure will. If God directed them to your hook, He clearly meant us to eat them.”

  “Or they just swam there by mistake.”

  She laughed. “Either way, we will not waste them. Do you have a ride home?”

  Caleb nodded, watching the water carefully all the while. “Benny said he’d give us a lift. I think he wants to go bug Priscilla after.”

  Poor Priscilla. Being energetically courted by Benny Peachey couldn’t be easy on a girl—especially if he didn’t seem to be able to recognize no when he saw it.

  Sarah recognized no. She just didn’t agree with it. For Linda’s sake, there had to be something she could do.

  Chapter 25

  Henry had to admire the kid—he didn’t give up, whether that meant trekking across the country or showing tricky bubbles who was boss.

  Once he’d learned how the kick wheel operated, Eric sat hunched over it, working a lump of clay into a round saucer shape, then into a cylinder. He’d already made three, but of course they were off center, or the walls were uneven, or they wobbled back into blobs before he could get the pressure of his hands right.

  But he didn’t give up.

  He kept pressing, and pulling, and trying, and trying again.

  They’d fallen into a rhythm during the first few days. Eric was up on Amish time, unlike Henry, so he’d do the milking with Caleb and then have breakfast, either with Sarah or at the Jacob Yoder place. From what Caleb said, Eric thought that Jacob Yoder was some human incarnation of an Old Testament prophet, and hardly had the courage to speak at all in the same room in case he got zapped by lightning.

  Henry would get up at seven, eat, and they’d meet in the studio for the morning’s lesson. While Eric practiced—rolling coils or slabs, or using the wheel—Henry would apply himself to his natural forms, experimenting with ideas or perfecting what he’d done the day before. He always answered questions, and when Eric got himself into a knot he couldn’t get out of, Henry was the one to start him over.

  Frustration at one’s inability was hard enough. He’d have plenty of mistakes to correct when he was on his own.

  Meanwhile, the cutout lantern had been trimmed, dried, and fired. Tomorrow, when the kiln was cool, they’d pull it out and see how it looked.

  The boys had gone fishing yesterday, and Henry had had a moment, wishing he’d gone with them and then enjoyed the dinner that Sarah had made out of their catch. But instead, he’d gone to Ginny’s.

  For the second evening in a row.

  As if their thoughts had connected across town, his cell phone rang and her name appeared on the screen.

  “Glutton for punishment, are you?”

  “I’m’a have to talk to you about this self-esteem problem you ex-Amish have,” she said with affection. “Are you coming over tonight?”

  “I don’t want to wear out my welcome.”

  “No chance of that. A girl can get addicted to actual conversation after all this time alone—and I’m not talking about post-divorce, either.”

  “Ginny, you have people there constantly, and when they’re gone, you have Priscilla and Kate. You’re never alone.”

  “Socializing for work is different from conversing for pleasure.”

  She had a point. And so later that day, after Eric had gone back to Sarah’s, he found himself wearing the river path a little deeper on his way over to the Inn. And not for the first time, reminding himself that he had a car and knew how to use it. He shouldn’t be squeamish about leaving it in the parking lot, no matter how late it got when he finally went home. Ginny might want to go to Strasburg or even Lancaster, to see a movie or enjoy a dinner out. Surely, deep down, he couldn’t really believe that anyone would care how long his car was parked over at her place?

  Paul and Barbara didn’t have much reason to come this way, and other than Sarah and the Yoders, they were the only people he really knew in this neighborhood.

  Sarah would never say anything. But she would think plenty.

  Is that the reason you leave your car at home? So she’ll think you’re home and not with Ginny?

  Sarah Yoder was nothing more than a friend—despite that odd moment the other night when she had done a very Amish thing and yielded the man’s place to him in dealing with Eric. It had been a very long time since he’d experienced that v
ery feminine submission—and since he’d left the church at nineteen, he hadn’t had a chance to experience it much to begin with.

  It had felt strange, and a little scary, as though she were thrusting him into a role he had no preparation for—that of parent. But the strange thing was, he had stepped into it naturally and with only the briefest of hesitations, as if he’d known instinctively that taking the lead in teaching a boy was indeed his place, and not hers.

  Not that he had much to offer in the parenting department. But he had Eric’s respect, and by supporting Sarah and showing her his respect in turn, his example would teach the worldly boy that she was the one he would have to listen to.

  Henry allowed himself a brief moment of amusement at what Eric’s parents would think of all this. But since they’d flown off on their own business and abdicated responsibility to him and Sarah, they couldn’t complain much, could they?

  When he shared some of this with Ginny, she just shook her head. “I never got the chance to raise a family,” she said, offering him a second rack of barbecued ribs that were better than anything he’d ever had in the Denver steakhouses. “But even I can’t imagine just dumping your kid on people you didn’t know hardly at all because it wasn’t convenient to come and get him. How does poor Eric feel?”

  “To be honest, I don’t think it bothers him all that much. I mean, he took off from Connecticut without a whole lot of concern for how his parents would feel when he came up missing, right?”

  “I suppose,” she admitted, and took the last of the salad, heaping it on her plate.

  She didn’t make it with nasturtiums, but it was still a really good salad, and he was enjoying it.

  “I guess that’s just how they are, as strange as it seems to us,” she said at last. “How does Sarah feel about her houseguest?”

  Hearing her name on Ginny’s tongue gave him a jolt. “She’s adjusting. You know how the Amish are about obedience. I don’t expect Eric has had a lot of practice at that.”

  “I’ll say. Mostly he just did his own thing when they were staying here.” She paused, and then said, “But aside from that, it’s classy of her to take him on.”

  “She offered.”

  “But he could have stayed with you.”

  He smiled at the thought. “We might have killed each other at the end of the first day. I haven’t had any experience with parenting—my sisters are still in the church, so I wouldn’t see much of them, and my brother died a few years ago. I send cards to my nieces and nephews on their birthdays, but other than that, I haven’t been around kids in years.”

  Her eyes softened, then she lowered her gaze to her salad. “Do you ever want a family?”

  “I’ve never given it any thought. After Allison—after she died—I pretty much concluded that family life wasn’t going to be my thing.”

  “But that was, what—ten years ago? Twelve?”

  Ten years, six months, and a few days. “Something like that.”

  “You could have found someone in that time.”

  He would have reached out to touch her hand, but he had barbecue sauce and coarse-ground pepper all over his fingers. So he let his gaze fill with affection and touch hers.

  “I think I might have.”

  “And what if I haven’t completely given up hope?”

  “Of having a family? I hope you haven’t. You’d make a fantastic mother.”

  Her dusky cheeks colored, and her lashes fell again. She was enchanting. He wanted to wash his hands and take her into his arms, but by the time he got back from the sink, the moment would have passed. So he said, “You might have to cut back on the innkeeping a little. Or at least share it with an assistant manager.”

  “Well, that’s the advantage of this line of work.” She recovered quickly. “Babies can sleep in the kitchen as well as their rooms. Toddlers can play in the study. And kids can certainly have a whale of a time on the hill and down in the creek. This is actually a pretty good place to bring up a passel of kids.”

  “You sound like you’ve given it some thought while you weren’t giving up hope.”

  “A woman does, you know, while she’s waiting for the right baby-daddy to come along.”

  What a crazy expression. “Is that slang? What does it mean?”

  “It’s what you call the father of your children if you’re not married to him.”

  A little frisson of alarm ran through him. “Oh, you’d want to be married to him.” He paused. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “I’ve been married, Henry. I liked it…but I like not being married, too. If children were involved, though, you’re probably right. Marriage would be the right thing to do, though when the divorce was going through, I swore never again.” She dipped a piece of her roll in the salad dressing. “What was that you said a second ago? About how you might have found someone? Did you mean that or are you just flirting with me?”

  He swallowed the last of his rib with difficulty. “Do I strike you as the flirting kind?”

  With a smile of acknowledgment, she pushed his water glass toward him and he drank. “No. It’s refreshing to talk with a man who says just what he thinks. No games, no stories, no sarcasm.”

  “I meant it.” This time he did get up, and on the way to the sink to wash his hands, he took both their plates. She followed with the salad bowl and the other serving dishes, and they both began clearing up the kitchen as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “See how easily we work together? And we’d talk all night if we got the chance. It’s been a long time, like I said. And kind of a miracle, really, to find a woman like you in a town this size.”

  “My ex would say it was God’s will.”

  He believed in God, he supposed, but not the God he’d grown up with—that watchful, frightening being who cared so deeply about the widths of hat brims and the shapes of buggies and the truth of every thought that flitted through a boy’s mind.

  “I’m not sure God concerns himself with bringing people together, though my mother would have said the same as your ex. She always told my sisters that God had a specific man in mind for them, and the only way to know who he would be was to pray. It always seemed to me that was a risky way of going about finding your mate. What if you got it wrong? What if you misinterpreted a sign?” He took the dishcloth from her and wiped down the counter. “Just one of many things that didn’t add up for me.”

  “So you don’t think you’ll ever go back?” Her sure movements in restoring her domain to order stopped as she turned to him. “You’re Englisch for life now?”

  He dried his hands and took her into his arms. “I have many more reasons to stay than to go back,” he told her, and that was the end of the talking.

  Chapter 26

  Mamm opened Priscilla’s bedroom door and leaned in. “You’re just going to have to tell him the truth, Liewi.”

  Pris had dashed upstairs to hide in her room when Benny Peachey’s awful buggy had come rattling down the lane after supper, and now he was outside visiting with Dat, who for some inexplicable reason had not sent him packing.

  “I have,” Priscilla moaned. “I’ve told him that I’m writing to Joe, but he doesn’t seem to get it. Can’t you ask Dat to tell him to go?”

  “To hear the two of them, you’d think Benny had come to see him.” Mamm twitched the quilt straight, though there was hardly enough room for the two of them in Pris’s little bedroom. “Here’s an idea. How about we go out and sit together on the porch swing, and if Benny wants to speak with you, he can, and I’ll be there to help if you need me.”

  Relief swept through her. “I’ve had enough of being alone with boys. Joe was the only one who felt like a friend. I can’t figure out what Benny wants, and as for Justin—”

  Too late, she snapped her mouth shut.

  “Justin? That Englisch boy?” her mother said carefully.

  Priscilla thought fast. She didn’t want her mother to worry about someone she would probably never see again. “Ja
, the one from the Inn—the older brother of that boy who ran away and is staying with Sarah Yoder.”

  “It was his parents who thought you were stealing. Were you alone with him? Was it all right, Liewi? ”

  Mamm looked so worried that Priscilla got up off the bed and hugged her. “Ja, it was all right. He thought he deserved the attention of every girl in the county, and when he didn’t get it—well, I was never really alone with him. And he’s gone now anyway. It doesn’t matter.”

  Her mother gave her a squeeze and released her. “But Benny is not gone. Come downstairs and we’ll take out some lemonade and cookies and have a nice visit.”

  When they came out onto the porch, they found Benny’s horse tied up and he and Dat talking easily, Benny on the step and Dat in the wicker chair beside the door. Mamm put the laden tray on the little table between the chair and the swing, and offered Benny some lemonade and cookies.

  “What brings you out this way?” she asked as he took them.

  “I came to see Priscilla…and you folks.” He bit into a lemon shortbread cookie with relish. “These are real good.”

  “That’s good of you,” Mamm said. “Especially when we’ll see you on Sunday. How are your folks?”

  “Mamm and Dat are well. Dat and Crist are up to something these days—but we don’t know what. They went to Whinburg to get a crate to pack something up in. Me and Leon think they finally hit on something that works, and they’re sending it away to someone who wants to buy it.”

  Priscilla usually didn’t pay much attention to what the Peacheys did over there in their woods and unkempt fields. “What do you mean, something that works?”

  “Aw, they make stuff in our barn. Inventions—you know, like if you wanted to make your stove run on solar power.”

  “Why would we do that?” Mamm wondered aloud. “It works just fine on propane.”

  “But some things don’t. And Dat and Crist like to tinker until they do. That’s why I think whatever went in that crate must work.”