An Amish Gathering (Three Amish Novellas)

by Beth Wiseman

  “I know. But when I was trying to say something to Dr. Prato earlier and I was searching for the right word, she said for me to just say what was on my mind.”

  He looked away, not sure what to say. While he’d waited until he felt she was over the death of her sister, while he worried that she blamed him for not being able to save Lizzie, he hadn’t planned on what he’d say, what he’d do.

  Looking back at her, he nodded. “Good advice.” He hesitated, wary of blurting out his feelings and being rejected. “Five years ago I had started thinking about whether we could be more than friends,” he said carefully. “Then Lizzie died.”

  “And everything changed,” she whispered. “But why didn’t you say something before this?”

  “When? How? I felt it would be selfish of me. And you weren’t ready.”

  “No,” she said, sighing. “I wasn’t. Still might not be. Oh, Ben. So many years you wasted. You waited when you should have been looking at someone who could be there for you.”

  He touched her hand. “I wanted to be there for you, Rebecca.”

  “This is a lot to think about,” she told him, pressing the tips of her fingers to her temples. “When I was talking to Dr. Prato, she kept asking me questions about you.”

  “About me? Why? She doesn’t know me.”

  Rebecca smiled. “I was telling her how patient Mamm and Daed had been with me about grieving for Lizzie. And my sisters and brothers, of course, especially Marian. Then I said you had been, too, and suddenly Dr. Prato was asking all these questions about you, asking me why I thought you were hanging around so much. She said that was a lot of effort on your part, even for mei mamm’s meals. Told me maybe I needed to take another look at you and think about things.”

  Ben let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Well, I guess I’m glad your father asked me to drive you to your appointment today.”

  “Me too.”

  A car drove by, and a passenger looked out to gawk at them. Ben glanced at the darkening sky and picked up the reins to urge Ike back onto the road and toward home.

  “So where does this leave us?” he asked as silence stretched between them.

  Rebecca turned to him and took a deep breath. She didn’t think he was going to like her answer, but she needed to say it.

  Chapter Six

  REBECCA MADE TINY STITCHES IN THE SECTION OF QUILT before her. Outside it was cold, and snow was predicted for later in the day. But inside the Miller home there was a roaring fire in the fireplace, and it was time for talking and sewing. They drank cup after cup of tea and coffee and ate cookies while discussing everything from speculation about who was dating whom to when spring would arrive.

  Quilting was such good therapy, Rebecca thought, feeling content. There was something so reassuring about sitting around talking with friends and family, sewing patterns that had been passed down for generations, here in a home that had been in her family for more than a hundred years.

  She looked around the circle at her friends and family. Marian was helping her and Mamm to host the quilting frolic. The three of them had worked hard at redding-up the house and putting chairs in place. Little Annie wasn’t happy about having to go to school today instead of being here, but one day she’d be old enough to sit with the womenfolk in the circle.

  The Petersheim sisters were here today—well, they’d been Petersheims before three of them had gotten married this past fall. Rebecca couldn’t help thinking that they all glowed with happiness. New fraa Edna, expert seamstress, had laid out the design of the quilt they were working on today. Mary Carol had brought thumbprint cookies filled with the jam made from mouthwatering strawberries she’d grown in her garden and Kathleen had preserved.

  And Leah. Rebecca smiled as she watched Leah struggle with making tiny stitches and then laughingly give up and retreat to a corner to write in the notebook she carried as a constant companion. Leah wasn’t talented in the typical skills of an Amish woman—she’d nearly set the kich on fire more than once when she tried to cook. But Aaron, Leah’s new mann, insisted that she was the only fraa for him. Those who loved saw with different eyes than others, Rebecca thought.

  Amanda Graber was chatting with Leah. Amanda reminded Rebecca of Lizzie with her exuberance. But Amanda bustled around taking care of others, not worrying them with her risk taking.

  Sisters Lydia King and Miriam Fisher worked well together cutting pieces of fabric for the quilt. Rebecca watched them and reflected on how they both had married men they’d known years before. Circumstances had separated the couples, but God’s will had drawn them together again for great happiness.

  As she sewed, Rebecca thought about her conversation with Ben on the drive home from her appointment with Dr. Prato. Now she knew how he felt about her. Had felt about her for years. But after she’d admitted she had feelings for him as well, she’d told him that she needed a little more time.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask, considering how long you’ve been waiting. But this is the first time I’ve had a chance to really think about it. The part of me that dreamed about the future, about how I felt about you, has been in cold storage,” Rebecca told Ben.

  When he glanced over, she took a deep breath and smiled at him.

  “Okay. I understand.” Ben had returned her smile, and the mood had been lighter, happier on the drive home.

  She pricked her finger and quickly glanced about to see if anyone had noticed her daydreaming.

  How could she have missed seeing how Ben felt about her? Even as lost in grief as she’d been at first, she should have known that his frequent appearance at the Miller kitchen table wasn’t due only to her mother’s cooking.

  Sometimes she’d wondered if Ben hung around so much because he felt guilty. He hadn’t been able to save Lizzie when she fell through the ice. No one had, not the other boys who’d tried to help, not the paramedics who’d arrived so quickly and tried to make her breathe. Not the doctors at the hospital.

  She still had to ask him what he’d meant when he said if she was going to blame anyone for Lizzie’s death, she should blame him. Even if she had trouble accepting Lizzie’s death as God’s will, it was time to stop reliving what she couldn’t change. It was time for Ben to stop blaming himself, too, if he was doing that.

  The door opened, and her father came in, stamping his feet on the mat. He took off his black felt hat and shook the snow from it before hanging it and his coat on a peg. Mamm rose and walked to the stove to pour him a cup of coffee. They spoke quietly for a moment and then he looked over and caught Rebecca’s eye. With a tilt of the head, he silently asked to speak to her.

  She got up and followed him into the hallway, wondering what was going on. When she stopped before him and he wouldn’t meet her eyes, her breath caught. Visions of tools running amuck, saws biting into flesh, blood spurting from arteries flashed before her eyes.

  “Ben? Did something happen to Ben?”

  “Whoa, nothing’s happened to Ben,” he said quickly.

  He glanced over at Naomi. “Rebecca, your mother told me I need to apologize to you.”

  “Apologize? For what?”

  “For telling Ben that you needed to go to your ‘head doc,’” he said. “It’s a family matter, and I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “I’m not ashamed of seeing Dr. Prato.”

  “No, I know you’re not. And your mother and I will always be indebted to her for helping you so much.”

  She looked up at him, at this man who had been such a rock for her, and she nodded. “I knew you were just teasing. I know you don’t think I’m crazy.”

  He hugged her. “Of course you’re not. You’re the most levelheaded young woman I know.”

  Rebecca hugged him back. “I don’t know about that. But I love you, and I’m not upset.”

  “Well, I guess I’d better be getting back to work. Now that we’ve talked.”

  “Amos? Is everything all right?” Naomi came to stand next
to him.

  “It’s fine,” Rebecca assured her. “Daed apologized like he said you wanted him to.”

  “I didn’t mean you had to do it right now, while we’re having the quilting!”

  Amos shrugged. “Best to apologize as soon as you know you’ve done wrong,” he said. “Besides, I think I was doing a little . . . interfering.”

  “Interfering?”

  Amos cleared his throat. “I—uh, well, I think I was trying to find out how Ben felt about Rebecca. If it bothered him that she was seeing Dr. Prato, he wasn’t the kind of mann that I wanted around our daughter.”

  “Amos!” Naomi stared at him, shocked. “I don’t think we should interfere—”

  “Ya.” He looked at Rebecca. “Sorry.”

  These things were supposed to take place in privacy. Some couples only told their parents of their engagement after they’d arranged for the banns to be read in church.

  But Rebecca could tell they were concerned, and she wanted to reassure them. “Ben just told me how he felt on the way home after I saw Dr. Prato,” she told them carefully.

  “What about you? How do you feel?” her mother wanted to know.

  “What, is Rebecca sick again?” Marian asked as she stepped into the hallway. She peered at her sister. “You didn’t say you weren’t feeling well.”

  Rebecca threw up her hands. “Enough!” she said, laughing. “This has gotten completely out of hand.”

  Standing on tiptoe, she kissed her father’s cheek, then her mother’s and her sister’s. “I love you all, and I’m going back to the quilting. Everyone must be wondering what kind of hosts we are!”

  When she returned to the living room, Rebecca found needles poised in midair and everyone looking curiously at her.

  “Daed needed something,” she told them.

  Rebecca picked up her needle and began making small, meticulous stitches. There was silence for a long moment, then the other women went back to stitching. Sarah Fisher began talking about Katie Ann, her toddler, and asking advice about teething problems, and suddenly there was chattering around the quilt frame as the mothers in the group gave advice.

  Rebecca glanced over and gave Sarah a grateful smile. Sarah smiled back. She knows what it’s like to be the object of concern because of a loss.

  Yes, Rebecca thought, it was good to sit here sewing on familiar patterns while she thought about the change that had suddenly presented itself in the pattern of her own life. She had much to think about, but nothing had to be decided in a day. She’d take things slowly and carefully to make sure that Ben was as right for her as he thought she was for him.

  “Something wrong?”

  Amos looked over. “What?”

  Ben planted his hands on his hips and looked at his boss. “You’ve been watching me all morning.”

  Shaking his head, Rebecca’s father ran his measuring tape along a wall in the Greenstein kitchen. “You must be imagining it.”

  Ben watched Amos jot some numbers down on a pad of paper. “No, I’m not. Is there something you don’t like about the way I’m doing the job today?”

  “’Course not.”

  “Then it’s about Rebecca and me.”

  Amos looked up. “Is there a Rebecca and you?”

  “That should be between us at this point, don’t you think?” Ben said it respectfully, but he felt his heart beating hard in his chest while Amos regarded him, his bushy black eyebrows drawn together in a frown.

  “You’re right,” the other man conceded after a long moment.

  When he muttered something beneath his breath as he turned back to his measuring tape, Ben’s ears perked up. “What did you say?”

  “You’d think you’d be grateful to me,” Amos told him, sounding a little irritable. He let the metal measuring tape snap back into its container. “After all I’ve done to put the two of you together.”

  Ben leaned against the counter behind him. “Are you saying you’ve been playing matchmaker?”

  “Why do you think you get invited for supper so often? I do have enough mouths to feed.”

  But although he sounded like he was growling, Ben saw the corners of the other man’s mouth quirk up into a grin. “Why, you’re as bad as my daed, trying to push us together,” he said at last.

  “Even sent you to town with her that day when she could have driven herself. Girl knows how to drive a buggy better than you.”

  Letting the joking insult slide—at least, he thought Amos was joking; he didn’t think anyone knew he’d had that little accident with the chicken last year—Ben thought about what he’d said. “So you didn’t really need those supplies at the hardware store?”

  Amos shrugged. “They could have delivered them.”

  “Why, you—I don’t know what to say.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t have said what I did that day. About Rebecca seeing a ‘head doc.’ Naomi made me apologize to Rebecca for that. But I knew it’d get your curiosity up. Thought you’d either stick with her, or it’d finally make you run.”

  Ben stood straighter. “I don’t run,” he said quietly. “If I did, I’d have decided not to wait like I have.”

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but she knows how I feel now. I’m giving her a little time to think things over.”

  “Don’t let her take too long,” Amos said gruffly. “Enough water under the bridge.”

  “She’s not the kind of person who’d treat my feelings lightly.”

  Amos gave Ben a long, measuring look and nodded, then he turned back to his work.

  Ben didn’t need reminding. He knew how long he’d been waiting. Even this space they were standing in was a reminder. It had gone on the market just last year, and Ben had thought about buying it. He knew he would get married eventually, even if Rebecca didn’t want him, and the place had been a good price because it needed a lot of repair—just the kind he and his friends and family could do in the evenings and on Saturdays.

  But he’d waited, and the house had sold. Well, there’d be another. And if things went the way he hoped with Rebecca, they’d find it—or build it—together.

  He and Amos worked together companionably, talking little for the rest of the afternoon. When quitting time came, they loaded their tools in the buggy and climbed inside.

  “Staying for supper?” Amos asked casually.

  “Not tonight,” Ben told him. “I’m giving Rebecca a little time to think. A little time,” he repeated before the other man could speak. “And, Amos, you’ll have one less mouth to feed tonight.”

  Amos chuckled as he lifted the reins and got the buggy moving.

  Rebecca was about to enter the kitchen when she heard her parents talking. Thinking it might be a private conversation, she hesitated.

  “Ben’s not staying for supper? You didn’t scare him away, did you?” Naomi asked.

  “Of course not. He says he’s giving Rebecca a little time to think.” He caught her look. “I told him not to give her too long.”

  Rebecca’s eyebrows went up. Well, that’s interesting, she thought. She knew her parents liked Ben, that he was the kind of person Daed wanted working for him. But interfering in Ben’s relationship with her?

  She stepped into the room. “Are you taking sides?”

  “Eavesdropping?” her mother asked mildly.

  “No, I was just walking in and I heard my name.”

  Her father reddened. He glanced at his wife, then back at Rebecca. “What I meant was, your mother and I know that Ben has been interested in you for a long time. If he sees you’re not feeling the same way, he shouldn’t keep waiting.”

  “But I didn’t know that he was interested until now. I thought he just looked at me as a friend.”

  “She took Lizzie’s death hard, Amos,” Naomi reminded him.

  “She wasn’t thinking about boys. Unlike another young woman in the house,” she muttered.

  Rebecca tried not to smile. She’d noticed
Marian was already showing interest in the opposite sex—and not just Ben. She walked over to the stove and looked into the simmering pot. “Mmm, tomato soup. Perfect on a cold night. How can I help?”

  “Amos, here’s your coffee,” Naomi said, handing him the mug she’d just poured.

  “I’ve got some paperwork to do. Call me when supper’s ready,” he said and left the room.

  Rebecca could have sworn she saw the two of them exchange a look. In her opinion, there was suddenly too much interest in what was going on—or not going on—between her and Ben.

  “Why don’t you slice some bread so we can make grilled cheese sandwiches to go with the soup? I baked brownies for dessert. That should be plenty.”

  Nodding, Rebecca began slicing bread, then turned to slicing cheese. Her mother spread butter on the bread, stacked slices with cheese, and set several sandwiches sizzling on the grill pan on the gas stove.

  Naomi gave the sandwiches her attention. “I don’t want you to feel pressured by what your father said,” she offered, breaking the silence and looking up at Rebecca. “Ben chose not to reveal his feelings to you before this, but that doesn’t mean you’re obliged to suddenly conform to his plans for a life together.”

  “He’s not pressuring me.”

  “Good. I’ve seen how he feels about you, but the fact that you haven’t tells me that you weren’t ready . . . or that you don’t see him as the man you want to marry someday.”

  “I think marrying him would make Daed happy.”

  “And that should be the least of your concerns,” her mother told her tartly. “You’re the one who’ll live with him for a very long time.” She glanced in the direction of the den where Amos had retreated to do his paperwork. “I want you to be as happy with your marriage as I’ve been.”

  Rebecca hugged her mother, and they stood there for a long moment. “I love you, Mamm.”

  “I love you, too, liebchen.”

  “What’s burning?” Marian asked as she walked into the kitchen.

  Naomi spun around. Tsk-tsking, she used a spatula to lift the sandwiches from the grill onto a plate.

  “The pigs will have these for breakfast,” she said with a rueful laugh. “Rebecca, cut some more bread and cheese, please.”