Amish Brides

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  “I was wondering . . .” She folded her fingers into her apron, trying to find something to do with her hands except let them flutter about the air like crazy butterflies. “This is the last week of school, you know.”

  “Jah.”

  “Well, the children had such a good time with you the other day, I was thinking that maybe you could come to the end-of-school picnic on Friday.”

  “Friday?” he repeated.

  “Jah. Friday. That will still give you plenty of time to get the work done at Jess’s, right? Then you could play softball and eat with us. It’ll be a fun time. I mean, if you like that sort of thing.” And he seemed to. At least, he seemed to have a good time the other day.

  “Danki,” he said. “I would like that very much.” He grinned, flashing those dimples once more.

  Just friends, she reminded herself. Just friends.

  * * *

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?” Bernice asked, a couple of hours later.

  Once Abel had dropped her off at the house, Reba had hitched up her buggy and rode over to the dawdi haus Bernice shared with her cousin, Sarah.

  “I just need to borrow a dress.”

  Bernice stood in front of her closet, arms folded. She was a smart woman, and there was no fooling her. “The truth, please.”

  “I think I like him,” Reba said, with a wince. It was the second time she had admitted as much, and it hadn’t gotten any easier with repetition.

  “Like him? Or like him–like him?”

  Reba shook her head. “We’ve agreed to be friends. He just broke up with his fiancée.”

  “That really didn’t answer my question, you know.”

  “We’re friends,” Reba said. “That’s all.”

  “Then why are you pretending to be something you’re not?”

  “Who said that?” She said the words, but the pang in her stomach stretched its tentacles to the ends of her fingers.

  “Nobody needs to say anything. You’re not acting quite like yourself. You didn’t try to scare Jess even one time this afternoon. And you’re wearing gray.”

  “Maybe I feel it’s time to grow up. Stop pushing the envelope.”

  “Or maybe you think he’ll like you more if you conform.”

  Reba sighed. “I just don’t want him to think I’m a troublemaker.”

  “He won’t.”

  “His old district is so much more conservative than we tend to be.” And she liked to push all the rules as far as possible. It wasn’t a good combination. Not if she didn’t change something, and fast.

  “So this isn’t to snag his attention as a man.”

  “Pbfbth . . .” Reba blew out a breath and dismissed the thought with a flick of her hand. “No. Of course not.”

  Bernice studied her for just a moment, then she gestured toward her closet. “Take your pick.”

  * * *

  Reba took a step back and surveyed the contents of her closet. Every color in the rainbow was represented there, even yellow, the color of sunflowers. She had made them all, much to the chagrin of her family, and none of them were appropriate. At least her laundry was all caught up. Except now she didn’t want to wear any of them.

  She hung the dress she had borrowed from Bernice in the middle of her color wheel. The frack was blue, still pretty, but not nearly as bright as her own blue selections. With any luck, it would make her eyes appear bluer and her hair darker. Not that she wanted Abel to notice that. They were just friends, after all.

  “What are you doing?” Mamm came into her room carrying a stack of laundry.

  “Nothing.” She did her best to pull her face into an innocent expression.

  Mamm set the clothes on Reba’s bed. “Where’d you get that dress?”

  “That?” She waved a hand toward her closet. “I borrowed it from Bernice.”

  Her mother looked into the closet at the row of dresses hanging there, all clean and bright. “Jah?”

  “I wanted to see if I liked her . . . pattern . . . uh, better.”

  “Reba.” Mamm propped her hands on her hips.

  “Okay. I wanted something a little less . . . obvious to wear.”

  “For?”

  “Clothing?” The word came out as a question.

  Mamm scooted the clothes back, took a seat on the bed, and patted the space next to her.

  Reba hesitated for only a second, then joined her mother on the bed.

  “Would you like to tell me what’s going on?”

  Reba gave a quick shrug. “Nothing, really. I’m just thinking about changing my look. You know, toning it down a bit.”

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with Abel Weaver, would it?”

  “No—maybe.”

  “Which is it?”

  “I invited him to the last-day-of-school picnic. I wanted something more . . . appropriate to wear.”

  “Because . . . ?”

  “I like him. And we’ve agreed to be friends. I just think that . . . that . . .”

  “That he would like you better if you were someone else?”

  “No.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I think it’s time to reinvent myself.”

  “Reinvent yourself?” Mamm frowned.

  “How many times have you told me to behave myself? Be a proper Amish woman so I can get a proper Amish husband?”

  “Is that what all this is about? Getting married?”

  Reba shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about it, jah. I mean, isn’t every Amish girl raised to get married?”

  “I suppose.” Mamm studied her with patient blue eyes. “But you shouldn’t compromise who you are.”

  “But . . .” There were a hundred things she could say to finish the thought, but none of them would come.

  Mamm patted her hand and stood. “But nothing. If it’s in God’s plan for you to get married, then He will send you someone. Someone who will not expect you to be anything other than who you are.”

  Reba stared after her as her mother left the room.

  “But what if Abel Weaver is my someone, and I’ve already blown it?”

  Chapter 7

  Really, what choice did he have?

  Abel had worked most of Monday morning painting the house and touching up his previous paint job on the carriage house and the barn.

  But there, sitting on the bench just to the right of the front door, were three red and white insulated coolers. Constance, Hope, and Lilly Ruth had left their lunches behind. What could he do but hook up his new horse and run them to the schoolhouse? Jess was at the auction. Abel couldn’t let the girls go hungry.

  Of course, it didn’t hurt that he would see Reba again. The weekend had been the best time he’d had in a long while. He had been wondering all morning if he would see her again before the end-of-school picnic.

  Now that Bernice was home, he was sure she would be the one taking care of Jess and the girls in the evening. He was even a little surprised that Bernice wasn’t there right then, cleaning on the house with five or six of her closest friends. But if he had learned anything from his cousins, it was that Amish women sometimes started cleaning two months before an event. Most likely, Bernice had been cleaning house since March.

  “Come on, girl,” he told the mare. “Let’s go deliver lunch and see what’s happening at the schoolhouse.”

  The playground was empty when he pulled into the packed gravel drive. The scholars must have still been inside finishing their lessons. He tethered his horse and hustled up the steps.

  “Abel!” The kids cried his name as he entered.

  “Scholars.” The one word from their teacher was heavy with warning.

  They all turned around and faced front again.

  “Reba, we should sing to him,” one of the girls said. Abel thought she was a fifth grader, but he wasn’t sure.

  It was a tradition to sing for visitors, but he had interrupted enough. “No, no, that’s all right. I just came to bring the Schmucker girls their lunches. T
hey accidentally left them on the porch.”

  Constance and Lilly Ruth shared a look that had Abel wondering if he had fallen into their trap once again.

  “You can leave them on the table by the door.” Reba seemed all business today. Sort of no-nonsense despite the watermelon-colored dress she wore.

  He frowned, surprised at himself for even noticing. But he noticed a lot of things where Reba was concerned. The first time he had seen her it had been hard to tell anything about her dress, seeing as how it had been covered with mud and grass. Then she’d put on a too-large dress of a somber gray. When they went to the auction, she’d had on bright green. Then gray, now bright pink. It was as if she couldn’t make up her mind who she was. The dark gray looked like something a still-grieving widow might wear, while he knew for a fact her bright dresses would have been a problem for his conservative bishop in Punxsutawney. So who was the real Reba Schmucker?

  He set the lunch coolers on the table, then started for the door.

  “Abel, stay,” Constance said.

  Her words were followed by a chorus of “Stay, Abel.”

  One stern word from their teacher, and the scholars fell silent once more, though he could hear a bit of rumbling underneath the quiet.

  “I’m sure Abel has more to do than hang out with us. And if we’re going to get our lessons finished on time, we need to stay on task.”

  A few aws went up, but they didn’t last long.

  As much as Abel would have liked to say that he didn’t have anything better to do than have lunch with the scholars and join in their game of softball once again, he needed to get back to the house and finish the last coat of paint.

  With a quick wave to the kids, he loped down the porch steps and into his waiting carriage.

  * * *

  That settled it. After the last scholar left that afternoon, Reba locked the schoolhouse and stomped down the stairs. It hadn’t even been two weeks, and she was already tired of the walking boot on her broken ankle. But even worse? Abel Weaver showing up in the middle of the day unexpectedly. How was she going to convince him she was different if he continually took her off guard?

  Thankfully, she had managed to convince her father she could drive her own buggy to school and back home again. That would surely save her having to explain to him why she wanted to go to the fabric store on a Monday afternoon. She might have borrowed a dress for Friday’s festivities, but if Abel was going to drop in willy-nilly, she had to have more than one appropriate dress in her closet. She had already told her mother that she was looking at a new pattern. What better way to try it out than to make a new dress? Tonight.

  An hour later Reba grabbed the sack of fabric from behind the seat and hurried toward the house. Her mare was in the barn and the carriage put away; now all she had to do was sew a dress. She skipped up the steps and through the front door.

  “Reba,” her mother called. “There you are.”

  “I, uh . . . jah.”

  “I was beginning to get worried about you.”

  Reba slipped off her shoe and held up the sack. “I had to stop by Zook’s and get some fabric.”

  Her mother used a dish towel to brush the flour off her apron. “You bought fabric? Today?”

  Reba nodded. “I thought I’d make myself a new dress tonight.” She waited for her mother to find fault with the idea.

  But Mamm just smiled. “A new dress would be very nice. Let me see.”

  Why was she so reluctant to hand the sack to her mother?

  Mamm peeked inside, then held up the fabric. “Oh.”

  Reba knew better than to ask if she liked the color. It was somewhere between a brown and burgundy. To Reba it was similar to a raisin and had about as much appeal. But at least it was more color than gray.

  “Did you pick this out yourself?”

  “Of course. It’ll look good with the black, jah?”

  It would be dark and drab, and her mother knew it.

  Mamm almost nodded. “Jah,” she said slowly. “Black would be okay on top of that.”

  “But it’s not a bad color? Right?”

  Her mother placed the fabric back in the sack and handed it back to Reba “No. It’s not a bad color. It just seems . . . different than what I would have expected you to buy.”

  “I’m reinventing myself, remember?”

  Her mother nodded. “I know that’s what you say. But perhaps you should give that some more thought.”

  “It’s time, don’t you think?” She couldn’t go around forever pushing the envelope to see how far she could go before she got into trouble. Everybody had to grow up some time or another.

  “I suppose,” Mamm said. “I just didn’t think you would go this far this fast.”

  Reba clutched the fabric to her chest and raised her chin in the air. “Well, I think it’s a magnificent color.” But the lie tasted bitter on her tongue.

  * * *

  “Give us a ride home?” Constance asked, the following afternoon.

  Reba had waited all day for a surprise visit from Abel Weaver. But he hadn’t come by.

  He didn’t have a reason to.

  Constance, Hope, and Lilly Ruth were brought to school by their dawdi. There were no forgotten lunches today. No appearance needed to be made at the schoolhouse. No last-day-of-school picnic. And then there was the little matter of him working at Jess’s house to get it ready for the wedding. Abel didn’t have time to just run into town and say hi to her. She should’ve realized that last night when she stayed up late sewing her new dress. But it was made now, and it didn’t look half bad. At least, she didn’t cringe when she looked at it.

  “If you take us by the house, you might get to see Abel,” Lilly Ruth said.

  Constance elbowed her in the ribs.

  “Ow,” Lilly Ruth said.

  “Girls.” Reba looked at each one of them in turn.

  Constance and Lilly Ruth had eager, expectant looks on their faces as they waited for their aunt to decide about taking them home in the buggy.

  Hope, on the other hand, stood off to one side, arms crossed and a frown on her face. “We always walk home. We don’t need to go home in a buggy.”

  “Hush,” Constance said. “Why shouldn’t Reba take us home?”

  “You might get to see Abel,” Lilly Ruth said. This time she was quicker than Constance and stepped back as Constance sent her elbow sideways.

  Lilly Ruth stuck out her tongue. “And he smells good.”

  “Girls,” Reba said once again, but this time her tone didn’t have quite the bite it had earlier.

  Seeing Abel didn’t sound like such a bad idea after all. Especially since she had made this dress with him in mind. But there was a very good chance that he had already left Jess’s house, and he wouldn’t be there if she took the girls home. And really, how could she turn down those sweet faces?

  She hooked one arm toward her buggy. “Let’s go.”

  Constance and Lilly Ruth climbed into the back while Reba, after two attempts, managed to pull herself into the buggy and settled in the front with Hope.

  Reba was getting better. This morning it had taken four tries before she managed to push herself inside without help.

  She clicked the horses into motion and pointed the buggy toward her brother’s house.

  “I told them not to meddle,” Hope said. “But they’re doing it anyway.”

  “Hope,” Reba started gently. “It’s not nice to tattle.”

  “I know.” Hope’s frown deepened. “But they’re breaking their promise. Isn’t that worse?”

  “Some promises are easier than others to keep.” Boy, were they. Like the one where she promised herself not to worry about finding a husband? And she said she was going to trust God? So why couldn’t she just let God’s will be? Why did she have to make this new dress?

  Abel Weaver’s handsome face flashed in her mind. It was those dimples. She was sure of it. Dimples like that made girls do crazy things.

&nbs
p; “If you say so.” Hope did not look convinced.

  “I do,” Reba assured her.

  Hope continued to frown all the way to her house. Reba decided it was best to let her work through whatever was between her and her sisters. She might have told the girls not to meddle, but honestly, she felt as if she could use all the help she could get.

  She pulled the buggy into Jess’s drive, and her heart gave a hard pound at the sight of Abel Weaver’s buggy still parked there.

  “Are you coming in?” Constance asked, after Reba stopped the buggy.

  “Of course.”

  “I think Bernice has finished sewing our dresses. You can come look at them,” Lilly Ruth said.

  Reba would have rather gone to the barn to see what Abel was doing out there. She had a feeling he was done with his tasks inside the house.

  “That’s a fine idea.” She tethered the horse and followed the girls into the house.

  What a difference just a few months made. Jess’s place had never looked better. Not since Linda Grace had died. His first wife was a wonderful Amish woman and a very good mother. But after her passing, Jess had fallen onto hard times, doing his best to keep up with all of his farm chores and three little girls who missed their mother terribly. Housework became the last thing on his mind, until the house itself was close to a certifiable disaster.

  Now it fairly sparkled with cleanliness and love. Reba was happy for her brother and the joy he found with the beautiful schoolteacher. No one deserved such happiness more than he. But if she was being honest with herself, she was just a tiny bit jealous. Jess had managed to find two women to love. Why couldn’t she even find one man for herself?

  Bernice was nowhere to be found, and Reba could only imagine all the last-minute wedding preparations she was out making. Second marriages might happen off-season, but that didn’t mean they were any less of an affair. Amish families were big, their weddings even larger, and a happy union of two people was more than enough reason to celebrate.

  Lilly Ruth grabbed Reba’s hand and directed her toward the back bedroom. “Our dresses are back here.”

  Bernice had chosen a beautiful sea blue color for the wedding. The fabric was the same shade as the water off some exotic island in some faraway land that Reba had trouble even believing existed. But the color really was nothing short of beautiful, not too bright and definitely not the ugly color she had on.