by Emma Miller
Eve carried the silverware to the sink, and Tara took a step back to drop it straight into the sudsy water. “I would love to have gone until I was sixteen. I like to read. At least I used to.”
Levi began pushing chairs and benches under the table. “Ethan’s got lots of schoolbooks. If you want, I can ask him if we can borrow some. You just have to tell me what kind.”
“And that would be all right?” Eve asked her husband, surprised by how open he was to education—especially for women.
“Sure.” Levi carried an empty serving bowl stained with red sauce. “Okay if I steal my wife for a little while once we get everything off the table?” he asked his sister.
“Sure. Go now.” She glanced around the kitchen. “We’re practically done straightening up, and only one of us can wash at a time.”
Eve looked to Levi, not sure why he wanted to be alone with her. He hadn’t once since they arrived made an effort to spend time with just her. Not that she could blame him. She had been the one who had suggested it the day they had ice cream, and look how that had turned out. Then there had been the incident with Jacob earlier in the day. Eve was beginning to worry that maybe she and Levi just weren’t compatible. And then where did that leave them?
“Just us?” Eve asked.
He grinned wryly, reminding her of the man she had admired from afar before she changed both their lives forever with one bad decision. “If you’re willing, after my behavior today.”
Eve dried her hands on a dish towel. “Ya, I’ll swing with you,” she said, now excited and apprehensive at the same time. “But I... I should help Tara finish the dishes. Dry them and put them away.”
He shrugged. “Then we’ll do it together and then go outside.”
Tara giggled. “Eve, go with him. I can finish here.”
Levi headed for the door.
Eve looked at him, at Tara and then back at Levi again.
“Go!” Tara repeated, making a shooing motion. “You’re newlyweds. Mam says newlyweds need time together without family around.”
So Eve followed her husband through the house and out the front door, onto the front porch that she’d never seen anyone use since she’d arrived. Everyone came and went by the back porch, which was more accurately the side of the house. They sat in chairs there, too, sometimes while doing chores like snapping green beans.
“Nice evening,” Levi said as he sat down on the swing that was big enough for two or three. “Come on, sit down with me.” He patted the rattan seat.
Eve hesitated, suddenly nervous.
“Come on, Eve.” He patted the place beside him again. “I won’t bite, I promise. After the dressing-down you gave me today, I’m the one who ought to be afraid of you.”
She pressed her lips together and sat down on the swing. He gave it a push and she lifted her legs, enjoying the little rush she felt in her chest as they glided forward. The warm evening breeze tickled the pieces of hair that had fallen from the knot at the nape of her neck.
She looked at Levi. “I didn’t mean to dress you down.”
“Ya, you did,” he argued. “And I deserved it.”
Though they weren’t touching, they were close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body. She could smell the Ivory soap he’d used to wash up with before supper. And when she looked at him, he was smiling hesitantly. She liked his beard that was growing in; it made him even more handsome than he already was.
“So... I’ve been thinking on this matter. I took a walk after I apologized to Tara and Jacob, and I...prayed. I asked God to help me be the husband you deserve, Eve and...” He hesitated and then went on. “I was thinking about what you said about us needing to spend more time together. Because we don’t know each other very well. Because we didn’t court before we said our vows. And I agree with you. I just wasn’t sure how to go about it.”
Eve watched his face, trying to figure out where he was going with this conversation.
“But God answered my prayers,” he declared.
“He did?”
“Ya.” He gave the swing another push. “We didn’t get to court, so I think we need to court now.”
She knitted her brows. “What?”
He leaned back in the swing, sliding his arm across the back so that his fingertips brushed her shoulder. “I’d like to court you, Eve.”
She looked at him suspiciously. He wasn’t making sense. “But we’re married.”
“So better you court me than someone else, right?”
When Levi smiled at her the way he was smiling now, she felt a little light-headed and she smiled back shyly. “Okay.” She drew out the word. “How are we going to court?”
He rolled his shoulders back. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt the color of the blue dress she’d ruined escaping from Jemuel.
“We’re going to go on dates.” He gave a nod of confidence. “We’re going to get to know each other. Dates we arrange, not Rosemary,” he amended, referring to their trip to the dentist.
“Dates?” she asked, still not quite following.
“Like...” He held up his finger. “I ran into Sara Yoder yesterday at the grain store and she heard I’d married. She asked if you and I would be interested in chaperoning at a supper she’s having next weekend. With it being summer, she says it’s harder to get folks to help out.”
“Sara Yoder.” As Eve racked her brain, trying to remember who she was, she gazed out at the front yard. Someone had picked up the croquet mallets and balls and set them next to a tree, ready if anyone wanted to play. “Does she go to our church?” she asked.
“Ne, she lives over at Seven Poplars, which is a little north of here. She’s the matchmaker.”
“A matchmaker?” she asked. She had heard of matchmakers but had never met one. “In Kent County?”
“Ya, she came from out west a few years ago. She’s a cousin to Hannah Hartman. Hannah is married—”
“To the Amish veterinarian,” Eve interrupted excitedly. “I know who she is.”
He laughed. “So Tara’s gossiping is good for something.”
“She wasn’t gossiping,” Eve said in her new sister’s defense. “She’s just trying to help me get to know people and how they’re related. And actually, it was Ginger who told me first.”
“Fair enough,” Levi answered. He pushed the swing again and they drifted backward. “Anyway, Sara is expecting a pretty good-sized crowd of young folks and she likes having a little help keeping an eye on everyone. Mostly the guys, to make sure everyone behaves as the bishops would expect.”
She nodded, touched that he would not only come up with such a plan but that he was willing to implement it. That he cared enough about the vow he had made to her to try to make things better between them. “I think I’d like to go to Sara Yoder’s. With you. On a date.”
“Good.” He glanced at her. “It’ll be fun. And we’ll get a chance to be together, away from here. Time to talk.”
“And... What other kinds of dates can we go on? Seeing as how we’re married.”
He shrugged. “We’ll just have to be creative. Like... I thought we could take the old rowboat over to the pond and paddle around. Maybe throw a fishing line in.”
“I’ve never been fishing,” she said, her interest piqued.
He drew back. “Never been fishing?”
“Ne, my brothers went sometimes, down to a creek near our place, but our dat didn’t think it was any place for a woman.”
“I’m not going to get into how your father and I disagree in matters, but I don’t see anything wrong with a female of any age fishing. Especially a wife fishing with her husband. So what do you say?”
“I’d like to do that, too. With you,” she added, feeling a little shy, but excited at the same time.
“It’s a date, then.”
Levi p
icked at a tiny tear in his pants and Eve made a mental note to repair it next time the pants went through the wash.
“But the thing about this,” Levi continued, “is that we can’t tell anyone that’s what we’re doing. That we’re courting. We don’t want them to be suspicious.”
“Because they think we knew each other before we married,” she said.
“Ya, I would assume they do, although truth be told—” he looked away “—I don’t know what my father is thinking these days. He’s barely talking to me.”
“I know he’s upset with you because he thinks you took liberties with me. Maybe you should tell him the truth?”
“Ne,” he answered firmly. “We agreed no one need know.”
“I’m sorry he jumped to that conclusion, Levi,” she told him gently.
He looked at her again, a sad smile on his face. “We both are. But today, taking my walk and praying, I realized that I need to concentrate on what I can change and put everything else in God’s hands. Because He always comes through for me.”
Chapter Eight
Levi made good on his promise. The following week, after a light supper of sandwiches and salads, Eve and Levi set out through the orchard alone on another date. The thermometer on the back porch read ninety degrees when they left, but there was a nice breeze and the sun, now low in the sky, felt good on Eve’s face. She hadn’t had a chance all day to get outside except when she’d taken scraps to the chicken house. She and Nettie and Tara had spent hours straightening up a room of the cellar and washing and organizing canning jars in anticipation of putting up tomatoes that were beginning to ripen in the garden.
Swinging a basket on her arm, she glanced up at her husband. There hadn’t been an overnight change in their relationship, but since their talk on the front porch swing, it was evident that Levi was going out of his way to get to know her better. With both of them so busy, it was hard to find time alone that wasn’t in their bedroom, but he was making an effort. The day before, they had walked the long lane together to get the mail and back, talking the whole way. And a few days before that, Levi had taken her with him to the feed mill to pick up grain in a wagon, and they’d stopped for ice cream cones at Byler’s store.
“I didn’t know there was a pond on the property,” Eve said, enjoying the feel of the warm grass under her bare feet as she walked beside Levi. “How did I not know there was a pond?”
He shifted two fishing poles on his shoulder. “I don’t know. I guess it didn’t come up. We’ve got a big piece of property. Dat and Rosemary ended up buying two farms side by side. There was no house on the smaller one, just an old house trailer and some chicken houses that were falling down. We bulldozed those over.”
“How big is the property?” she asked, hoping she wasn’t overstepping her bounds with such personal information about her in-laws. But if she was going to live here, if they were going to make their life together on his father’s property, it was only right she know.
“About three hundred acres.”
The number shocked Eve. Her father owned ten acres and sold meats at a farmers market to make ends meet. “That’s a lot of land,” she murmured.
He shrugged. “Not something we advertise.”
Obviously, she thought. To talk about owning such a vast piece of property, with no mortgage, would be hochmut...arrogant. Prideful, in the wrong way.
“Dat and Rosemary both sold their farms in upstate New York to buy it,” Levi continued. “They were set on having enough land to go around so that any of their children who wanted to make homes here could.”
Eve turned that information over in her head thoughtfully. It seemed like a vast amount of land, especially here in Delaware, where most of the farms were smaller than the ones in the Lancaster area. “So...did Benjamin already give each of you a piece of land?”
“Ne. It’s up to us to choose once we’re married. And ready to build.” He glanced at her. “I’m hoping that in a year’s time, I’ll have sold enough buggies to have the cash to break ground on our home.” He offered a smile that almost seemed bashful, which made her smile.
She felt her cheeks grow warm at the thought of living alone with Levi. Right now, she was enjoying life in a big house full of family, a family who loved and respected each other. But with the subtle changes beginning to take place between her and Levi, she suspected that, with time, she would be ready for that next step in their married life. She didn’t consciously think about children, but she had the same dream every Amish woman had. She wanted a house full of them, and though she and Levi had not discussed the matter directly, she sensed he wanted the same thing.
“I figure we have time to choose the best spot,” Levi went on. “The property fronts on two roads, so we have the option to get a little farther away from the big house and have our own lane if that’s what we want.”
Eve nodded. “Plenty of time.” She looked up at him. “How many buggies do you think you can build in a year? I’m just wondering,” she added quickly. “It’s not that I’m not content in the big house. I love being a part of a family where everyone works together, gets along together. It’s only that I’m curious. I don’t know anything about buggy making.”
Levi tilted his head one way and then the other. “I figure the first buggy will take me the longest. I’ve constructed all of the parts lots of times, but only one buggy from start to finish, and that was a small, open two-seater. Jeb, who I worked for, was always building several buggies at a time. He taught Jehu and me how to do something on one buggy, and then we’d do it on the next on our own. My friend Jehu was the other apprentice. You ever meet him? Jehu Yutzy? From Ohio?”
She shook her head no, switching the basket from one hand to the other. It was beginning to get heavy. She’d packed them a little snack to share in the boat: sweet tea and mini lemon tarts she and Tara had baked.
“Nice guy. Anyway, we learned from Jeb Fisher, but also each other. Jehu’s hoping to have his own shop someday, but he doesn’t have a dat with the finances to help him get going like I do. He’ll have to work for someone else and save his money until he can buy the equipment and supplies. Because Dat started buggy making as a hobby, he’s collected the necessary tools.”
“It’s good of Benjamin to help you this way. To help us,” she added.
“I know, I know.” He sighed. “I remind myself of that every day and give thanks to God for his generosity. I just didn’t expect him to react the way he has to me marrying.”
Eve pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry. I know it’s my fault.”
Levi stopped, brushing his fingertips against her bare arm. It was so warm outside that she was wearing a short-sleeved dress, a second one Rosemary had made for her, this one in a peach color. Now she had two everyday dresses, so she always had a clean one when the other was in the wash.
“Eve, please don’t blame yourself,” Levi said. “Remember, I was the one who offered to marry you. You didn’t ask me. And no one forced me. It was my choice, and I don’t blame you. I would never blame you. This is between me and my vader. Oll recht?”
“Oll recht,” she repeated, gazing into his gray eyes that were becoming more familiar with each passing day.
He smiled down at her and then cocked his head. “Come on. We better get going. This is the best time of day for fishing, you know.”
They began walking again and fell into an easy conversation.
* * *
Half an hour later, Eve found herself seated on a wooden bench in a rowboat in the middle of a half-acre pond. Levi had explained to her that the state had helped folks dig them back in the 1960s for emergency water. They dotted the county, providing water so the volunteer fire companies could fight fires better in the rural areas. It was stocked with bass every few years and supported a whole host of animals like frogs and turtles and such. There was even evidence a beaver had tried t
o take up residence in the cattails on one edge, though Levi said it was long gone by the time they bought the farm.
Eve had already caught two bass. It had been fun to try her hand at fishing, but she’d felt so bad for the live grasshoppers they had used for bait that, after catching two fish, she’d had enough of the sport.
“Do you want to go back to the house?” Levi asked her as he slowly reeled in his line. He’d caught three fish. They had released all of them, as they often did, her husband explained.
She watched his red-and-white plastic bobber bob across the surface of the pond. She’d already reeled her line in, and her pole was lying in the bottom of the boat. She smiled at Levi, sitting in the bow, facing her. “Ne, not yet.” She folded her hands on her lap, enjoying the slight rocking of the boat. “It’s too nice out here. Unless you’re ready to go back,” she added, hoping he wasn’t.
He shook his head. “Nope, I’m enjoying sitting in the middle of a pond on a warm summer evening with my wife.”
He was smiling at her, and she couldn’t resist smiling back. When he looked at her the way he was looking at her now, she felt warm all over. And...safe. That was the best way to describe it.
Her whole life, she had lived by the whims of her unpredictable father. He had always provided food and heat and some form of clothing, but she had tiptoed around him, never knowing when he would lose his temper. Usually, he just threw things or hit a wall with a fist, but occasionally his hand met with one of his children’s faces. Or her mother’s. Her mother always had an excuse for his behavior, making it somehow seem all right, but now, living with Levi’s family, she knew that it wasn’t.
No, actually she’d realized that the morning she had come home after Jemuel had tried to attack her. When her father had not protected her from that horrible man, she saw him for the terribly flawed man he was.
Not that Levi wasn’t flawed. He was impatient sometimes. But she had never felt physically threatened by him. And now, as the days passed, she was beginning to feel more and more comfortable with her husband. Not only was she learning that she liked him but, in her heart of hearts, she knew he would always protect her. As he had the day he had offered to marry her.
