by Adina Senft
Elsie giggled, and the two of them laughed in response. “You’re so good with the young ones,” Erica said. “I see you at church with a crowd of the girls around you, and it always makes me smile.”
“It makes me smile, too. I don’t know what it is, or why they include me in their little news about flowers and birds’ nests and boys, but I love it.”
“That’s probably your secret.” Erica watched Elsie’s eyes close and made no move to take her, so Carrie settled in to enjoy the moment while she had it. “You said a minute ago that Joshua was like an overgrown teenager. Do you suppose that’s why he’s still in no hurry to find himself a wife?”
“I think it’s the opposite—why none of the girls of marrying age are looking at him for a husband.”
Erica raised her brows briefly in acknowledgment. “A woman wants to look to her man for safety and sound judgment. I’m not sure Joshua is a judge of much but a good time.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a good time, but sensible girls eventually settle down and look for a good man instead.”
Erica didn’t respond for a moment, and Carrie got the impression that she was working up to telling her something. Silence was the most fertile ground for confidences to grow in, so Carrie let it deepen.
“I think Lydia Zook might not be one of those sensible girls,” she said at last, in such a low tone that if the house hadn’t been utterly quiet, a person would have missed it.
“If she isn’t, she’s probably being pretty discreet.” How discreet, though, if people other than Carrie’s immediate circle were concerned about it already?
“Most girls would tell their parents if they were seeing someone, but Abe Zook doesn’t seem the kind who would welcome a girl’s confidences.”
That was an understatement.
“My youngest sister, Mariah, is in her buddy bunch with Sarah Grohl, and she says she’s been leaving the group volleyball games and outings and going for long walks and finding unnecessary errands in town and dressing in clothes you can see from a mile off. Goodness knows it’s hard to keep a secret in this district. I just get the feeling it’s because the boy isn’t suitable.”
Bright hair and reckless eyes, squashed into a buggy in a way that would embarrass most girls. Too much familiarity. It had been staring them in the face all this time. They hadn’t met Lydia on the road by accident. It had been carefully planned.
“It’s Joshua.”
Erica looked up with an expression that told Carrie this was what she’d deduced, too—and it wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear. She pulled one of the sofa pillows into her lap and hugged it as though, without the baby, she needed something to cuddle. “He’s twelve years older than she is—and about two centuries older in experience. The kind of experience that good husband material shouldn’t have.”
“He’s been baptized, though. Is she thinking of it?”
“I don’t know. I suppose we’ll see on Sunday. But she’s only begun Rumspringe. She doesn’t seem like the type to cut it short and join church so young. And there are other things. If I were Abe Zook, I’d be worried.”
“What things? What’s worrying you?” The echo of Susan’s voice sounded in her mind, asking her to talk to Lydia. Had Erica tried and failed, too?
“There are only six years between us, you know. It used to be that the young girls in Mariah’s group could come to me and talk about anything. But lately…” She sighed, put the pillow aside, and held her arms out. Gently, Carrie put Elsie into them.
“Lately?”
“I’ve seen Lydia walking on the county highway in the direction of Hill’s. The hired man has his own rooms in the barn there, did you know that? Joshua stays with his folks so the room doesn’t come out of his pay, but he still has the use of it. There’s a kitchen to make a cup of coffee, a bathroom to wash up in, and a furnished bedroom. So he told me once, when he first got the job.”
“You think they might be…?”
“I think that a sensible girl would not put herself in the way of temptation.”
And they’d already concluded that Lydia was not a sensible girl. “Erica, if you’ve tried to talk to her, and maybe if Mariah has tried, we’ve done all we can short of locking her in her room.”
“But no one has tried to talk to Joshua.”
That was true. “I could ask Melvin. They seem to get on fairly well.”
“I don’t think he would take correction from a man. That teenage-boy tendency would get in the way, nix?”
“Then who? Maybe Emma?”
“He is here in your yard during the day,” Erica said softly.
Carrie swayed back, her shoulders flat on the rear cushions of the couch. “Oh no. I’m done with meddling in people’s business. Lydia has probably already told him about my attempts to talk with her. He’ll think I’m a busybody—and he’ll be right.”
Erica subsided and began to coo at the baby, but Carrie could tell that her thoughts on the matter hadn’t changed one bit. And she was using the same tactic that had worked on her—a little silence went a long way.
* * *
By New Birth Sunday, when the congregation was streaming into Old Joe Yoder’s huge barn for the service that included the baptism, Carrie’s feelings hadn’t changed. She had no business talking to Lydia, or to Joshua Steiner either, about whom they courted or how.
But there was Lydia, whose reckless ways seemed to have triggered a “project” among the women of the community. Susan, Miriam, herself, Erica…well, that was how it was done, nix? When there was a problem to be solved—whether it was a quilt that needed to be stitched or a young woman who needed guidance—the community pitched in.
Carrie watched with interest as the folks who were taking the step of baptism filed into the front row. A number of young people had been taking instruction from the bishop for the past eighteen weeks—among them, she noticed, Sarah Grohl, who was in Lydia’s buddy bunch.
But not Lydia. So did that mean she was not thinking of marrying Joshua? Not that a girl so young had to marry the boy she was dating. That would be unwise, especially if he had no means of supporting a wife yet. It would have been quite the surprise to see, anyway. A young woman joined church when she had matured enough to make the most important decision of her life—more important even than the man she would marry. Because earthly marriage ended at death, but the choice of Jesus as her eternal bridegroom lasted for all eternity.
There were one or two others in the front row as well…a man who had left the church at least a decade ago and gone out into the Englisch world had come back during the summer. His mother wept silent tears of joy on her bench near the front when she saw him walk in, head bowed and hands covering his face as a sign of his unworthiness.
The baptism always left Carrie feeling clean and joyful—as though the bishop were pouring the cup of water over her bare head, washing away her sins. But today, though her body sat quietly in her place toward the back of the barn—ahead of the Youngie, but behind the older women and the women with families—she felt her mind to be one step removed.
Or maybe it was her heart that stood at a distance, looking on instead of being involved. She was standing on a path that no one else had walked, and no one would walk if Melvin and Amelia and Mary Lapp all had their way. Everyone else in the Gmee trod the familiar paths, said the familiar things, sang these hymns and murmured prayers that generations of their families had before them. And here she was, all alone on her narrow road, pulling her courage around her and hoping it would keep her warm.
After the noon meal, she found Emma walking toward the pasture with one of Grant’s girls on either hand. “We’re going to see if the pond froze over last night,” Emma called gaily. “Come with us.”
“Are you planning to skate?” Carrie fell in beside seven-year-old Katie. “If it did freeze, you’ll be able to break it with your finger.”
“Nei,” Katie said, respectfully enough, but Carrie got the impression her intellig
ence had been found wanting. Nobody skated until Christmas, when a good three or four inches of ice on the ponds had been tested by someone’s Daed and his approval given. “We’re learning in school about animals hibernating. I want to see if the fish have gone into the mud, like Miss Hannah says.”
“You wouldn’t be able to see them,” Carrie said.
“I don’t think that’s the point,” Emma said as both girls let go of her hands and ran down the slope to the pond. The dried brown stalks of the cattails clattered in the wind being pushed toward them by the big clouds overhead. Even the blackbirds had deserted the pond, and gone where cheery summer birds went when the winds blew down from Canada. “Grant says the girls were a handful this morning, and I think they’re avoiding him.”
“A little too much wedding excitement?”
“Ja, I think so.” She turned to Carrie, her eyes sparkling from much more than the wind. “Only think, Carrie. By the time we meet for church again, I’ll be married.”
To which the only reply was a hug.
After a few moments, Carrie saw that the girls were beginning to tire of not finding sleepy fish in the crunchy mud at the edges of the pond. She would miss her opportunity if she didn’t take it now.
“Emma, can I ask you something?”
Emma raised a brow. “That is the most unnecessary question I’ve ever heard. This is me you’re talking to, remember?”
“And I’m glad of it.” She took her arm and hugged it close, the fringes of their shawls blowing together. “Have you heard anything of Joshua Steiner and Lydia Zook courting?”
She felt Emma’s body stiffen and knew the answer before Emma even spoke. “I haven’t. But you have, evidently.”
“I’ve seen them together, and I was talking to Erica, and to my sister Susan, and everyone seems to agree that there might be cause for worry there.”
“If there is, it’s Abe who must deal with it.”
“I don’t think he can. Not alone. I think it might just turn into a ‘project.’”
“Ah.” Emma watched the girls, who had discovered that if you tore the fluff out of the tops of the cattails, it would catch the wind and sail away by the handful.
“I just wondered if Joshua had spoken with you.” And if he has, if you told him about my private worries.
“I don’t talk much with Joshua anymore—nothing more than hello at church and when I see him on the road.”
Well, that seemed to answer one question. Relief trickled through Carrie. She should have known better than to doubt her friend. But there was still the other question.
“But could you talk with him about it? A man his age has no business courting a girl of sixteen, especially with his reputation. I’m surprised Abe hasn’t put a stop to it, if he knows.”
“Carrie.” Emma turned to face her, concern etched into her smooth skin. “I decided that Grant was the man for me when I was only a little older than Lydia. I would have thanked God on my knees if he had given me more than that one ride home from Singing.”
“But Grant is steady. Dependable. And he doesn’t have—”
“—a reputation. So you said. The truth is, Liewi, I don’t have time to go chasing after Joshua to give him a talking-to. With all the work there is to do in the next ten days, I’ll be lucky if I have a wedding. Do you know I haven’t even made my cape and apron yet?” Emma scraped an errant wisp of hair out of her eyes. “I’m so grateful that the cake, at least, is in your hands. That’s one thing I don’t have to think about.”
She needed to make it up to Emma for doubting her—even if Emma never knew it. “Let me make those for you as well, then. Bring them to quilting on Tuesday and I’ll have them back by Sunday.”
Emma wavered. “But I wanted to make my wedding clothes myself.”
“Who’s making Grant’s things?”
“Christina. They’re close, and she offered before I had a chance to.”
Carrie nudged her. “You’ll be making his shirts and pants for the rest of your life, dear one. Let Christina make these and it will be the last thing any Yoder woman will do for him.”
“There is that,” Emma admitted.
“In the meantime, while the cake is baking, I can have your cape and apron done. Please.”
“All right.” Emma hugged her. “I’m so thankful for friends I can count on.”
Carrie hugged her back. And wondered whether, if the women of the community did not do something, poor, reckless Lydia would be able to say the same.
Chapter 12
Trailing cattail fluff, the little girls joined them and they began to climb the gentle slope back to the house. But before they walked out of the trees, Will and Kathryn Esch waved and walked toward them in a way that said, “We need to speak to you.”
“Run and find your Daed, now, girls, while I visit.” Emma squeezed their hands and they ran off, Kapp strings flying behind them. Carrie glanced curiously at Emma. Had that really been necessary?
“Emma,” Will said, settling his black broad-brimmed hat more firmly on his head. “It’s a blustery day for a walk.”
“It was also a long time for two little girls to sit,” Emma responded with a smile. “If I wear them out now, they’ll be willing to color in their books this afternoon without jumping around like a pair of grasshoppers.”
“Thinking like a mother already,” Kathryn said, but she did not smile. Instead, she gave Carrie an apologetic look. “We would like to speak to Emma privately, Carrie. I think I saw your man getting ready to go.”
Whether this was true or not, Carrie never found out, because Emma put a hand on her arm. “Carrie knows everything that goes on with me. She is free to stay if she wishes.”
Oh my. Oh my goodness. There was only one topic in the whole world about which this couple would want to speak to Emma.
They had found out about the correspondence-school packets. And now the fat was in the fire.
“Does she?” Will’s face was grave. “Then I wonder that she did not do one of two things when she learned that you have secretly been letting our son study high school subjects in your home. It is very strange to me that she would not have come to us, or at the very least, counseled you against this behavior.”
Carrie’s cheeks felt cold, her fingers nearly numb. Amelia and I did counsel her. But to say so would be disloyal. What could be said had already been said months ago. All she could do now was stand beside Emma and hope that they could both hold each other up.
“How did it come to light?” Emma asked. Carrie knew her well enough to know that that calm tone had not come easily.
Kathryn’s distress showed in her eyes, though her voice was steady. “Janelle Baum at the post office stopped Will when he was getting stamps, and asked him if a certain parcel had been misdirected. It was addressed to our Alvin, but care of the Grohl postal box. She found it very odd.”
That Janelle, getting people into trouble under the guise of being helpful.
Then again, if folks didn’t practice to deceive, they wouldn’t get into trouble, would they? There was no hope for Emma now. She had sown her tares with open hands; now it was time to reap them.
“When we opened it, we found his correspondence-school papers,” Will went on. “And when we asked him about it, the whole story came out. How you and he have been deceiving us for nearly two years.”
“I am very sorry you found out in this way,” Emma said.
“But not sorry enough to say no when he asked you to be part of this plan?” Will asked.
“Is that where he’s been going all this time when we thought he was courting Sarah Grohl?” Kathryn asked. “He has been studying at your place?” She rubbed her hands over and over, as if they were cold, too. “I cannot imagine Lena being a party to such a deception. Es wunnert mich.”
“Mamm knew nothing about it.” Emma leaped to her mother’s defense. “Alvin would come and use our kitchen table late at night, after she was asleep. I alone am responsible. Not her.�
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“What will happen to Alvin?” Carrie ventured, her voice hardly above a whisper.
“He has not joined church, but he is still living under my roof,” Will said. “I have told him that this will stop, or he will not be welcome anymore. There will be no more packets, and he will turn his hand to being a better apprentice at the buggy maker instead of filling his head with nonsensical Englisch ideas.”
“And he has agreed?” Emma asked.
Both parents looked at each other. Will’s jaw set. “He will see sense.”
He had not agreed. Carrie resisted the temptation to look at Emma, but she could imagine what she was thinking. Alvin was slender and studious. The kind who wore glasses and pored over books by lantern light, not the kind who could control a six-mule team or wrestle buggy parts together.
“I noticed that you were sorry we found out,” Will said, “but not so sorry you took part in this deception.”
“I can’t say that I am sorry.”
Carrie drew in a surprised breath. How could she not be?
“Alvin is a smart boy—far smarter than I was at his age. He wants to be more than a farmer or a buggy maker, Will. He wants to be an engineer or a scientist.”
“I know what my son wants better than anyone,” Will retorted. “Better than you. And if he does not understand the will of God for his life, at least I expect you would, even after your gallivanting around the country and taking up with people from New York.”
Emma began to speak, then bit back the words.
“Kathryn and I—we would like to hear that you repent of what you have done, and promise never to help him in this way again.”
After a moment, Emma said carefully, “Let us put this behind us. What’s done is done, and now it’s up to Alvin to choose his path with God’s help.”
“That sounds to me like no answer,” Kathryn said. “My husband has asked you to say that you are sorry for your actions.” She touched the shawl wrapping Emma’s arm. “You don’t want to live with this on your conscience, Emma, I’m sure.”
