by Marta Perry
“For certain sure I am.” Katie hurried to her mother for a hug and then turned to Louise, her next-younger sister. “I’m just surprised, is all. How could Louise tear herself away from Jonas?”
Something that might have been a snort came from Rhoda, but Louise acted as if she didn’t hear it. “Jonas agreed that it was my duty to help Mammi on the trip,” she said. “He’d never object to that, even if he doesn’t understand why you had to go so far away.”
Katie bit back the tart words on her tongue about Louise’s intended’s opinion. Jonas, the youngest son of a bishop, had a bit too much self-importance for Katie’s taste, but that was Louise’s concern, not hers.
“I’m sure Katie doesn’t care what Jonas—”
Katie interrupted whatever unwise words Rhoda was about to say with a quick, strong hug and a murmured hush in her ear. “It is ser gut to see all of you.”
She drew back, waving her hand to encompass the whole of her shop. “What do you think of it?”
Mamm took a few steps around, studying the layout as if comparing it to her own quilt shop back in Columbia County. “It’s not as big as I thought it would be.”
“There’s another room at the back that I can expand into,” Katie said. “This is enough for starting off, I think.”
“You could be right. The less you have, the easier it will be to . . .” Her mother stopped and then started again. “. . . to take care of.”
That wasn’t what she’d intended to say, Katie felt sure. The less there will be to get rid of when you come home again. That was the thought in her mother’s mind, wasn’t it?
Katie found she was clutching her arms around herself again and deliberately relaxed.
One year. That was how long she had to prove herself. Daadi had paid Bishop Mose for one year’s rent on the shop. At the end of that year, she should be able to sign her own lease.
Or go home in defeat and spend her life next door to Eli and Jessica, watching their growing family.
She cleared her throat. “How long are you . . . will you be able to stay?”
“Ach, chust ’til Friday. Louise is supposed to go to dinner with Jonas’s family on Saturday, so we must get back.” Mamm nodded toward the stairway that led up to the second floor. “Will you have room for us in your apartment?”
“We’ll make room.” Katie thought rapidly. Mamm would have her room, of course, and Louise and Rhoda could share the second bedroom. She’d sleep on the couch. “If you’re not comfortable, I’m sure Molly would be glad to have you stay with her.”
“No, no, this will be fine.” Mamm made shooing motions toward the other two. “Take your bags up now. Get settled. I want to speak to Katie.”
Mamm’s words sounded serious. If something was wrong at home—
Her sisters vanished up the stairs. Katie studied her mother’s face, trying to read the expression. Mammi, for some reason, was avoiding her eyes.
“Is something wrong?” she asked finally, when it seemed her mother wouldn’t speak.
“No, no, why would you think that?” Mammi made little sweeping gestures with her hands. “I chust think . . . that is, your daad and I have decided that Rhoda will stay here with you for a time.”
“Rhoda?” There was a faint squeak in Katie’s voice, and she tried to control it. “But why would you want Rhoda to do that? She has her job at the restaurant, and you’ll need her help with Louise getting married in the fall.”
And just as important, why would Mammi think Katie should take on the responsibility for a lively sixteen-year-old when she was trying to get a new business started on her own?
Her mother studied a row of spools with concentrated care. “She can be more help to you. As for that restaurant . . .” Mammi’s voice seemed to tighten. “We think it better that she not work there anymore.”
“I see.”
But Katie didn’t, not really. It was so unlike Mammi to let one of her chicks leave home without a fight, and Rhoda was only sixteen, just beginning her rumspringa.
Light began to dawn.
“Does this have something to do with Rhoda’s rumspringa?” Rhoda, with her quick mind and daring disposition, was probably destined to have a more tumultuous running-around time than either Katie or Louise had had.
Her mother turned toward her, fingers to her lips. “I’m not saying there’s anything really wrong. But Rhoda has got herself in some trouble.”
“Trouble?” Mamm surely didn’t mean—
“No, no, not anything serious.” Color stained Mamm’s cheekbones. “Staying out later than she should, going off with some of the older girls to an Englisch party.”
“That’s not so bad,” Katie said, going a little weak at the knees at the thought of taking on the supervision of Rhoda.
Mamm pressed her lips together for an instant. “Never did I think a daughter of mine would be so rebellious. You and Louise were nothing like that when you were sixteen. Of course, Louise has always been serious, a perfect fit for Jonas. And you weren’t running around a lot because you and . . .”
Mamm let that trail off, but Katie knew the end of that sentence, too. You and Eli Hershberger were going to marry. Only it hadn’t turned out that way, and she’d had to watch while Eli married Jessica Stoltzfus.
She pushed those thoughts aside hurriedly. Best to concentrate on the current problem. “If Rhoda is misbehaving, wouldn’t it be best to have her at home, under your eye?”
Mamm shook her head decisively. “There’s Louise to think of. How will it look if Rhoda gets into trouble with her sister marrying the bishop’s son? Anyway, your daad and I agree that Rhoda is better off here, and you can use her help. I never thought you should live above the shop on your own, anyway. This way you’ll have company.”
She certainly would.
“Maybe we should talk about this some more,” she began. “If—”
“There’s nothing more to be said.” Mamm turned away, examining a bolt of fabric. “Anyway, least said, soonest mended. I had to tell you, but no one else needs to know why Rhoda is here.”
Katie leaned against a box of quilt batting, trying to settle her mind, and her ears caught a sound through the archway . . . the creak of a rocking chair.
Mammi was wrong. Somebody else already knew, because Caleb Brand was still in the shop next door.
“Are you sure you don’t want us to help you finish clearing up?” Katie’s mother paused at the door after the long opening day of the shop. “We can stay.”
But fatigue drew at Mamm’s face, and Katie patted her arm. “Ach, no, you and the girls go on to Molly’s. She’ll like fine to have a longer visit with you, and likely she has supper almost ready. I’ll be along soon, for sure. Molly lent me her buggy today.”
Mamm nodded, gesturing Louise and Rhoda out to where Jacob, Molly’s young husband, waited at the curb with their horse and buggy. Mamm started to follow and then turned back toward Katie.
“This was a gut beginning.” She closed the door before Katie could respond.
Katie stood at the window, watching as they moved off down the street, and then locked the door, pulling down the shade. Her opening day was over.
She leaned against the door for a moment, still holding the napkin and paper plate she’d intended to toss in the trash, and felt the tension seep out of her. She hadn’t realized how nervous she’d been about this day until now, when she was as boneless as one of the faceless rag dolls she’d displayed along a top shelf.
The opening had been gut, and she imagined Mamm had mixed feelings about saying so. Not that Mamm consciously wanted Katie to fail. She just wanted their lives to go along the way she’d envisioned them.
Maybe that was what Katie had wanted once, too, but that would never be. Only her tiredness let the tears form in her eyes at that thought, and she blinked them away. Eli was as gone from her future as if he’d died. And if she couldn’t stop loving him, at least here she wouldn’t have to see him and Jessica, happily ma
rried and living next door.
A lock snapped in the adjoining shop, and Katie looked through the archway to see Caleb closing up. He hadn’t acknowledged her presence except for a polite nod of greeting this morning, but she hadn’t forgotten what he might have, must have, heard Mamm say about Rhoda the day before.
He didn’t strike her as a man who’d gossip, but she couldn’t just leave it, ignoring the possibility. Not giving herself time to think, she walked quickly through the archway.
“I hope all the people coming and going today didn’t bother you. I’m sure it won’t normally be so busy.”
For a moment Caleb didn’t speak, the strong planes of his face resembling nothing so much as the wood he worked with. Even his eyes were like the wood—a deep, rich brown—as was his hair. The fact that he was beardless showed the unexpected cleft in his strong chin.
He shrugged, palms open. “It was not a problem. Did you have a gut opening?”
The most words she’d heard from him in a row . . . that might be a hopeful sign. “Not bad. Lots of people came looking. No big sales, but most folks went away with something, if only a quilted pot holder.”
He gave a short nod, and turned away. Apparently that was all he had to say to her. But it wasn’t all she needed to say to him. If he told other people what Mamm had said about Rhoda, life here could be difficult for her sister before it even started.
“Paula Schatz brought me a whole tray of sweets from her bakery to celebrate the opening.” The Mennonite woman’s bakery, Katie had learned, was just a few doors down Pleasant Valley’s main street. “Can I persuade you to take some home to your family?”
“No. Denke,” he added, as if thinking he’d been rude. “My sister-in-law bakes enough for half the county as it is.” He glanced at the paper plate in her hand. “I shouldn’t think you’d want people eating around your quilts.”
“I had the food and drink in the back room. Most people were sensible enough to keep it there.” She shrugged. “It was worthwhile, I think. Serving something brings folks in and makes them feel wilkom. If they stay longer, they buy more, ain’t so?”
His brows, a darker brown than his eyes, drew down. “I’ve no need for such gimmicks. If people want something, they buy it, that’s all.”
She had to bite her tongue to keep from telling him how wrong he was. “If you have well-made products, buyers will find you. That’s true. But there are things you can do to draw people’s attention.”
His shop was a prime example, and her hands itched to rearrange things in a way that would highlight their beauty. That rocker, for instance, with the intricately turned spindles—it should be up front where the customer’s eye fell on it immediately. The whole space looked cluttered and unwelcoming to her eyes.
He shook his head in a way that dismissed both her and her sales ideas. “Your family ... have they gone home already, then?”
“Just to my cousin Molly’s for supper.” Here was an opening to find out what he’d heard about Rhoda, if she could see how best to use it. Did she dare ask such a forbidding personality to keep silent? “They’ll be going home tomorrow, except for my sister Rhoda. She’s staying to help me for a while.”
“I see.” Two words only. But he crossed his arms over his broad chest, and glanced down, not meeting her eyes.
She’d dealt with enough customers in her mother’s shop to read in his body language what he didn’t say. He’d heard, that was certain-sure.
She took a breath, murmuring a silent prayer for guidance. “Caleb, I think that you must have heard what my mother said about why Rhoda is staying here.”
His face tightened. “I don’t listen to what doesn’t concern me.”
“Sometimes you can’t help but hear something that wasn’t meant for your ears.” She’d gone this far. She may as well say all that she was thinking. “I just hope you will not repeat it.”
She’d thought his face couldn’t get any tighter, but apparently it could. There was no mistaking his expression now. Anger. He glared at her for a long moment.
“I’m not a blabbermaul.” He spun and walked away from her, shoulders stiff.
She let out her breath in a sigh. She’d have done better, it seemed, to keep her mouth closed.
CHAPTER TWO
Nancy, Caleb’s sister-in-law, put a wedge of dried-apple pie in front of him. As he’d told Katie Miller, his sister-in-law always had enough baked goods in the house to feed half the county.
Of course, those five boys she and his brother Andy had produced went through the cakes and pies in a hurry. The old farmhouse was as noisy now as it had been when he and Andy and their brothers were young, even though now Andy did the farming Daad had once done, and Mamm lived in the grossdaadi haus, the four-room house that he’d helped Daad and Andy build onto the side.
After Daad died, they’d decided Caleb should move into the second bedroom in the grossdaadi haus, so Mammi wasn’t alone there. That gave Andy’s kinder a little more space, too, though sometimes the farmhouse still felt as if it bulged at the seams.
Becky, Caleb’s sixteen-year-old niece and the only girl in the family, poured coffee in his mug.
“Denke, Becky. That’s plenty.”
She gave him her shy smile and moved on to the head of the table to pour a cup for her father. The boys had already been excused, dashing outside to finish their chores and toss a baseball around before the sun disappeared.
“So, the new quilt shop opened up today, I hear.” Nancy sat down across from him, her hazel eyes bright with curiosity. “Did a gut lot of folks come?”
“Seemed like plenty of people to me. All women, of course.” It felt as if he could still hear them buzzing in his ears. He put his mug down on the pine table, next to the scar he’d put in the smooth edge with his front tooth when he was nine or ten and he and Andy had been wrestling at the table. Daad had punished both of them impartially, as he recalled.
“What is Katie Miller like?” his mother asked, pushing aside the wedge of pie Nancy had put in front of her, causing Nancy and Andy to exchange worried glances. Mammi had eaten like a bird since Daad’s death last fall.
“You’ve seen her at worship,” Caleb said, since the question seemed directed at him.
“Ja, I know what she looks like, but I haven’t talked to her. It takes some courage to start up a business all on your own, I’d say.”
He tried to sort his thoughts. It wasn’t Katie’s fault that he disliked having her shop right next to his. On the other hand, it was her fault that she’d acted as if he were a blabbermaul who couldn’t wait to spread gossip about her sister, putting his back up.
To be fair, Katie might not know much about him. Not enough to be aware of all the gossip that swirled around him over Mattie Weaver’s pregnancy, although if she didn’t, someone would tell her soon enough.
No, he wasn’t likely to inflict the pain of being the object of gossip on someone else.
“Well?” Mamm prompted. “What’s she like? And what’s the shop like?”
Mamm hadn’t shown this much interest in anything in months. That was a gut sign, wasn’t it? He’d have to do his best to encourage her, even if it meant talking about Katie Miller.
“She’s a nice enough woman. Sort of opinionated, I’d say.”
Nancy chuckled. “She’ll have to be, to make a success of a new business.”
“Ja, maybe.” Katie’s words still rankled, but Caleb tried to dismiss them and think of something to entertain his mamm. “You’d never know the shop was the same place, with all the quilts and bolts of fabric and rows of thread all over the place. Lot more colorful than the hardware store was. Attracts women, like I said.”
Andy frowned. “Is that likely to be a problem for you, having a place like that next door?”
“I’m bound to say I thought the hardware store was a better fit.” Caleb shrugged, scooping into the pie. “But the building belongs to Bishop Mose. He can do what he wants with it.”
&n
bsp; “So she has a lot of quilting fabric,” Mamm said. “You know, maybe I should think of starting a new quilt.”
“That sounds wonderful gut, Mamm Naomi. Why don’t we take a ride into town and see what she has?” Nancy seized on Mamm’s flicker of interest with her characteristic energy. They’d all of them been trying to find ways to bring Mamm out of her shell these past few months.
“Maybe,” Mamm said.
“Tomorrow,” Nancy prompted, never one to let grass grow under her feet. “We can go in tomorrow, and maybe take Becky to—” She stopped suddenly, glancing at Andy.
Something was not being said, it seemed. “Take Becky to what?” Caleb asked. He glanced at his niece, to find her staring down at her hands.
“We were thinking,” Nancy said, obviously speaking for his brother, too. “Maybe you could use our Rebecca in the shop a few hours a week. It’d be gut for her to have a job outside the house, and you could stand to have someone clean up the shop for you and wait on customers so you can work. Besides, maybe it’ll help her get over being so shy with people.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a little quiet,” his mother said, reaching out to pat Becky’s hand. “I’d rather have our Becky the way she is than as bold as some of the girls are these days.”
“She needs to learn not to give in to being shy.” Nancy, who didn’t have a bit of shyness in her robust nature, was talking about Becky as if she weren’t sitting there. And the girl seemed to shrink in the chair, stirring Caleb’s heart. Becky might look like Nancy, with her round face and hazel eyes, but she was totally different in personality. And as well-meaning as Nancy was, she didn’t understand her only daughter.
He’d like fine to have Becky working for him, if it would help her. It would help him, too, letting him escape to the privacy of his workshop while someone else dealt with the customers.
