Leah's Choice

by Marta Perry

  And if lightning did happen to strike, well, that was God’s will, and the whole community would join in rebuilding. Perhaps that was part of His plan, too, teaching them to rely on one another, building community at the same time that they raised the barn.

  She followed the crowd into the kitchen, joining the group that would produce enough food to satisfy more than a hundred hungry folks come noon. The necessary chores, familiar to everyone, were quickly parceled out, just as they were outside among the men.

  Leah found herself paired with Rachel and Naomi to slice bread and make sandwiches. The three of them were soon deep in conversation as they sliced and spread and piled meat and cheese high.

  By ten, the food was ready as ready could be, and Leah’s head had started to ache with the constant chatter and clatter of pans.

  “I’m going to help take drinks out to the men.” She spread a linen tea towel over a tray of sandwiches. “Want to come?”

  “I’d best check on my young ones.” Rachel wiped her hands on a towel.

  “Ja, me also,” Naomi said. For a moment her eyes clouded, and Leah suspected she was mentally counting the hours until she’d have to get the children home and under the lights again. “Gut to see you both. We don’t get to visit often enough.” She gave them a quick hug and scurried off.

  Rachel stood motionless for a moment, watching her. “I wonder sometimes,” she said softly, for only Leah to hear. “I wonder if I would cope with such grace as Naomi does.”

  “You would,” Leah murmured. “You do.”

  Rachel looked startled for a moment, and then she nodded. “Ja. But having a brother go English is not as bad as if the grief were for my husband or my child. I think of her often.”

  Leah nodded. She knew that Rachel really meant she prayed for Naomi, just as she did.

  When Leah emerged from the house carrying a pitcher and paper cups, she had to blink at the scene that met her gaze. The ribs of the new barn rose toward the sky, the uprights pale and new-looking. They swarmed with men, busy as so many worker bees.

  In their black pants, colored shirts, and straw hats, they might have looked alike to someone else, but she picked out individual people easily. There was Daad, consulting with Ammon Esh, who had overseen every barn raising in the valley since before she could remember.

  Mahlon was up in the rafters, where he loved to be. Her breath caught as he walked along a beam as easily as strolling down the road. He’d always had a head for heights. He was the one called on when the kitten got too far up the tree or a kite was stuck in the branches.

  Levi, hammer in hand, pounded away steadily and methodically, as he did everything.

  Her brother Joseph wasn’t hard to find, since he was running the gas-powered winch that carried materials up to the top. Joseph’s talent with machinery was put to good use today.

  Daniel worked not far from him, frowning a little as he framed in a door. She looked for Matthew and found him with the crew of young boys who were fetching and carrying for the men. They learned as they watched, handed nails, and held boards. In a few years they’d be taking their places in the work crew.

  Was Elizabeth here today? She hadn’t seen her yet. The child worried her, especially after the incident at the rehearsal. She’d smoothed it over with Elizabeth, encouraging her to try again. Still, it worried her. Maybe she should have talked with Daniel about it, but she didn’t want to make too much of it.

  She waved at Naomi, who had joined the cluster of younger children, and carried her pitcher and paper cups toward the barn. She’d start with Joseph, since she hadn’t seen him in more than a week.

  “Leah.” His face lit when he saw her. “I wondered when you were going to remember your thirsty brother.”

  She gave him a quick hug. “Thirsty, indeed,” she teased. “Looks to me as if you have it easy here in the shade with your machine.”

  He grinned. “Daad always says, use your head and you won’t have to use your feet. Have you seen Myra yet?”

  “Not to talk to so far, but I’ll catch up with her soon.”

  There was a movement beside her, and she turned to find Matthew, staring at Joseph’s contraption with fascination.

  “Matthew.” She touched his shoulder. “Joseph, this is our new neighbor, Matthew Glick. Matthew, my brother Joseph.”

  Joseph nodded to the boy with his usual friendly smile. Matthew seemed almost too engrossed in the machinery to pay proper heed to the introductions.

  “Did you make that?” he asked.

  “I did. Are you interested in machinery?” Without waiting for the obvious answer, Joseph began describing how the winch worked, how he’d built it, and why it was an improvement over the last one.

  Knowing that once Joseph had started on his precious machinery he’d go on for ages, Leah left his cup of water for him and started working her way along the perimeter of the barn.

  In a few minutes she’d come to Daniel. “Water, Daniel?”

  He put down his tools and took the cup she held out. He drained it quickly, the strong muscles of his neck working.

  “Gut.” He handed her back the cup and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm, resettling his hat. “Though it might feel better to pour it over my head.”

  “I can give you another for that,” she offered.

  He shook his head, smiling, but then he seemed to sober as he glanced toward his son. “Is that another of your brothers?”

  “Joseph. He’s between me and Mahlon in age. He has the farm machinery shop.”

  Daniel’s face tightened with a concern she didn’t understand. “I hope Matthew isn’t being a pest.”

  “Not at all. Joseph loves to find someone as interested in machinery as he is.”

  “Matthew is that.” For some reason, that seemed to deepen his frown. Was he imagining his son deserting the farm to run a shop, like Joseph?

  “A farmer has to know how to take care of his equipment as well as his animals,” she said.

  “Ja.” He picked up his hammer and turned back to the door frame.

  Well, that was that. Her conversations with Daniel always seemed to end in frustration, if not outright annoyance. And yet she couldn’t help being drawn to him, which made no sense at all.

  By the time she returned from the barn, tables were being set up under the trees. She joined her sister-in-law Myra in covering them with tablecloths.

  “I saw you talking with Daniel Glick,” Myra said as the tablecloth billowed between them. “Nice to have a new neighbor who is so helpful. And single and good-looking, too.”

  Leah pulled her end of the cloth down sharply. Apparently the matchmaking had reached further than she’d thought.

  “He’s very nice,” she said flatly. “And how are you? It’s hard to believe, it is, that you and Joseph have been wed six months already. It seems yesterday that you were getting back from your wedding trip.”

  “It seems that way to me, too,” Myra said, a flush coming up in her fair skin. “Being married is wonderful gut, Leah.”

  The implication that she should try it wasn’t lost on Leah. She’d expected shy, sweet Myra, who always seemed a bit in awe of her schoolteacher sister-in-law, to refrain from joining the matchmaking.

  “When you find the right person it is,” Leah said firmly. “You and Joseph are so gut together that it makes work light.”

  “We are that.” The flush deepened, but at least she was distracted from marrying off Leah. “I’m not telling anyone else yet, but I wanted to tell you. I think, I pray, I might be pregnant.”

  Leah went quickly to put her arms around Myra. “That would make us all so happy.”

  “Don’t tell,” Myra cautioned. “I want to wait until I’m sure. But keeping it in today just seemed too hard—I had to tell someone or I’d burst.”

  “I won’t say anything,” Leah assured her. She hugged her again.

  Surely that wasn’t a tinge of envy she felt, was it? That would be wrong, and foolish
besides.

  “I just—” Myra hesitated, then seemed to gather up her courage to go on. “You are always so kind, Leah. You make me feel welcome in the family. I wish for you the happiness I feel, and Daniel seems so right for you. Especially since—”

  She stopped, but Leah thought she could fill in the rest of that sentence. Especially since Johnny Kile had come back to the valley, making everyone fear that he might lure her away.

  “I’m happy as I am,” she said, turning away. “Now I think it’s time to start getting the food ready to come out.”

  But she couldn’t ignore the feeling, as she walked toward the kitchen, that gazes followed her, then turned to Daniel as folks wondered and speculated and wanted to make something happen that wouldn’t be.

  She loved her community—loved the closeness, the mutual support, the love of God and each other that made them strong—but at moments like this, she almost wished they didn’t care so much.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Da Herr sei mit du. God be with you.” Verena Stoltzfus stood in the kitchen doorway, waving good-bye to another buggy-load of folks headed for home. She turned back to Leah, who was up to her elbows in hot, soapy water at the sink.

  “Leah, it’s kind of you to stay, but are you sure you don’t want to go along home already?”

  “I’m fine, Verena. Barbara and Mamm took the children home, so I’m free to stay as long as you need help.” She waved a soapy hand.

  Verena heaved what might have been a sigh of relief. “I’ll go and bring the rest of the crockery in from the table, then.”

  The screen door banged behind her, and the farmhouse kitchen filled with quiet after the hustle and bustle of the afternoon. The day was winding down, though she could still hear the occasional shout of a child from the kickball game in the backyard.

  She looked out the window over the sink. A fine new barn stood where there’d once been nothing but charred timbers. It was complete down to the coat of red paint that was probably still wet in places. Even as she watched, the oldest Stoltzfus boy led the cows in for the evening milking.

  Many of the women had left, ready to get their children settled for the night. Some of the men lingered, though, a cluster of them standing looking at their handiwork, or maybe rehashing the building of it, others sitting on the grass, gossiping.

  She concentrated on washing the large platter with its design of hearts and birds. By her count, five people had commented to her today on what a fine man Daniel Glick was. Three others, bolder, had come right out and said she’d be a gut mother to his kinder.

  It had been a long afternoon.

  The door swung open with a rattle of dishes on a tray. She glanced over, prepared to see Verena. She didn’t. It was Daniel.

  He stopped, probably startled by the glare she sent his way, and then he crossed the room and set the tray carefully on the table.

  “Verena sent me in for a basket of leftovers she’d fixed for the family.”

  She felt sure that wasn’t Verena’s only reason. She nodded toward the basket, waiting on the dry sink. “It’s there.”

  Daniel made no move to pick it up. Instead, he walked over to stand next to her. “Have I done something to offend you, Teacher Leah?”

  It wasn’t fair to take her frustrations out on Daniel. “No. But I see that they’re still at it.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “At what?”

  “Matchmaking.” She snapped out the word. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

  He braced his hands on the counter next to her, his expression more amused than offended. “No, I can’t say I have.”

  “Didn’t you wonder why Verena sent you into the kitchen for the basket, instead of carrying it out to you, which would be much more natural?” She blew out an exasperated breath. “She wants to get us alone together, and she decided this would do it.”

  There was definitely a twinkle in his blue eyes now. “So we are. It’s not such a bad thing, is it, to talk with me for a moment?”

  She set the platter down carefully. “I seem to remember that our conversations often end up in disagreement.”

  “That’s one way to get to know someone.”

  He was close to her, so close that the sleeve of his blue work shirt brushed her arm. He smelled of soap and good, honest work, and his hands were strong where they pressed against the counter.

  She drew her hands from the soapy water and dried them, using the movement to put a few more inches between them. “It’s gut to know our neighbors,” she said. “It’s the idea that other people are trying to push us together that bothers me.”

  He turned so that he was facing her more fully, the deep blue of his gaze searching her face. “I can see that it does, but why? It amuses them, but it doesn’t affect us.”

  “I don’t like folks talking about me, wondering if I’m thinking of . . .” She stopped, not liking where that sentence was going.

  His brow furrowed a little. “Perhaps their thoughts are running that way because John Kile has come back to the valley, not because of me.”

  She wanted to deny it, but that would be foolish when they both knew it to be true. “No one needs to worry about that. What was between John and me was over a long time ago. It’s just a memory.”

  “Memories can be powerful things.” He said that as if he spoke from personal experience, and she wondered again about his wife.

  “I am not affected by having John here.”

  “Yet you’re volunteering at the clinic where he’s working.”

  “I see him sometimes. But only in a working way, not even as friends.” She hesitated, wondering why she was saying this to Daniel, of all people, a virtual stranger.

  Maybe that was why. He didn’t speak, and the moment stretched out.

  Finally she let out her breath, trying to ease the tension that gripped her shoulders. “I don’t even know him any longer. I have no intention of marrying, and if I did, it wouldn’t be to him.”

  Daniel’s gaze searched her face again, seeming to penetrate to her very soul, and she read nothing but kindness there. “This determination of yours not to wed—is it caused by John Kile’s leaving?”

  “Not by his leaving. By what it told me about myself.”

  She wanted the words back, but it was too late. They hung there in the air between them—the thing she hated to admit, even to herself.

  She couldn’t look at his face, so she focused on his hands instead, tightening on the edge of the counter. It was a long moment until he spoke.

  “Leah.” He touched her hand, a featherlight touch that was gone in an instant but that brought her startled gaze to his face. “I haven’t known you for very long. But I can’t imagine that whatever happened between you could possibly cause anyone to think ill of you. Or would cause you to think ill of yourself.”

  Her throat tightened at his perception, and it was a moment before she could speak. Maybe that was just as well. It was past time to get the conversation off her personal business.

  “You are very kind, Daniel. Denke.” She cleared her throat, trying to get control of her voice, which had gone suddenly soft. “Enough about my maidal state. You and your children are at least half the reason for this spate of matchmaking, you know.”

  He nodded, as if recognizing the barrier she’d chosen to put up. “True enough. A widower with young children is assumed to be in need of a wife.”

  There was something behind the light words, but she wasn’t sure what it was. “You don’t feel that way?”

  He didn’t move, and at first she thought he would ignore the question. But then he spoke.

  “For a long time, I thought that I wouldn’t marry again. Now—well, maybe the brethren are right that my children need a mother.”

  He frowned, and shutters seemed to close over the blue eyes that had been so warm and caring a moment ago.

  “But if I wed again, there’s one thing I’m sure of. The marriage will be based on common sense and shared need
s. Not on love.”

  Daniel leaned against the smooth warmth of the cow’s side, hands moving automatically in the milking rhythm. He’d been doing this since he was younger than Matthew, and sometimes he thought he could do it in his sleep. But he always found it comforting.

  He glanced over toward his son, milking at the next stanchion. He couldn’t see the boy’s face—only his legs, spread out on the milking stool, and the movement of his hands.

  “Gut job,” he said. He glanced at the barn cats, lined up at each animal in anticipation. He aimed a squirt at the nearest cat, and she caught it deftly. “Give the cats a drink now already.”

  “I always miss,” Matthew said, but then he aimed and squirted. The cat, surprised, took some of the milk on its face, but it quickly cleaned it off with a long pink tongue.

  “Your aim is getting better.” Daniel glanced down at the milk foaming into the bucket. “Next year we can add to our herd. Elizabeth will be big enough to help then.”

  “We’ll need a bigger tank, ja,” Matthew said.

  It was satisfying, talking about the future of the farm with his son. It was something he’d once thought was robbed of him forever.

  “We’ve been working on our program for the end-of-school picnic. Will you be there, Daadi?”

  His heart seemed to clench that his boy had to even ask the question. “Certain sure,” he said quickly. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  That was one of the remnants of their time apart—that hesitation Matthew had to take it for granted that his father would be there. Daniel couldn’t wonder at that, though every day he prayed it would soon be a thing of the past.

  A year ago, he hadn’t known what his children had done at the end of the school year. He hadn’t known where they were or what they were feeling. Were they well? Did they cry for him? Had they forgotten him? The questions had haunted him for so long. But no more.

  “What are you doing for the program?”