Hidden Life (9781455510863)

by Senft, Adina

  The state of the cupboards in the Miller household had improved in recent months. Since Melvin no longer had to depend on his skills as a farmer to earn his bread, the bread coming in these days not only had butter on it, but sometimes jam as well. Carrie was beginning to put on a little weight. Her figure might still be wand slim, but at least her collarbones and elbows didn’t stick out quite so gracelessly.

  The women of the district silently pitched in to help with the food when it was the Millers’ turn to host church. Today Carrie’s Buhnesupp was supplemented by a raft of pickled beets, dill pickles, cold sliced meat, canned peaches and cherries, jars of jam, and loaves of bread. No one would leave the Miller house hungry, but first everything had to be set out on the tables in the basement.

  One thing about their farmhouse—it was big. Too big for the two of them; as Carrie had once told them at one of their quilting frolics, the sound of emptiness where there should have been the squeals and laughter of children was the thing she found the hardest to bear. But maybe things would be different now that Melvin had steady work, even though it took him around the county talking to people. If Carrie could put on some weight, maybe her poor little body could stop worrying about its next meal and turn its attention to fertility. Some folks thought they should have moved back to Melvin’s home district, so that his extensive family could see them through, but that would have brought its own set of problems.

  Emma sent up a prayer of thanks that she was the daughter of Lena Stolzfus and not the daughter-in-law of Aleta Miller.

  No one would have expected Amelia to join the helpers today of all days, but she appeared at Emma’s elbow not five minutes later. “I thought you would be with Eli.” Emma took one plate of cold sliced ham from Amelia and a second from six-year-old Elam, who had carried it down the stairs with such care it might have been made of crystal. She set them out on a table that had no meat yet.

  “He’s gone out to the barn to talk with the men. One of Young Joe’s boys is moving back to Whinburg as a harness maker, and they’re all excited about having one so close. He’ll be scheduled for six months out from the sound of it.”

  “They’ll be back. Lunch is nearly ready.” She surveyed the table. “Everyone pitched in. It looks nice, doesn’t it? Denki, Elam, for bringing that ham. It’s exactly what this table needed.”

  “We’re going to have a new Daed,” Elam confided as Emma bent to hug him. “Bishop Daniel said it, right out loud in church.”

  “I heard him myself. And are you happy with that?” she asked gravely, as if the fate of the wedding hung on his answer.

  He considered the question with equal gravity. “I think so,” he said at last. “Eli made me a wooden horse, with legs that go back and forth.”

  “Did he?” Emma raised her eyebrows, impressed. “That’s a good sign in a Daed, I would say. And what did you make him?”

  Elam gazed at her, distress filling his eyes. “I didn’t make him anything.”

  “Just think how happy he would be to know you’re as glad he will be your Daed as he is that you will be his son.”

  Elam nodded, then looked up at Amelia with urgency in every line of his face. “Mamm, can I go to the barn? I have to ask Uncle Melvin if I can make something for Eli.”

  “On a Sunday?” Amelia shook her head. “Tomorrow after the washing is hung, and you’re home from school, I’ll take you to the shop and Uncle Melvin can help you. And if he’s not there, Brian will be. You know…” She paused, looking thoughtful. “Only yesterday Eli mentioned to me how much he needed a nice round drawer pull for his dresser. The top one fell off one day and he hasn’t seen it since.”

  “But I don’t know how to make a drawer pull.”

  Emma hugged him again. “You will after Uncle Melvin and Brian show you. I bet you could make a whole mountain of drawer pulls and sell them at a stand at the end of your lane. I bet the tourists would pay a dollar apiece for something you made.”

  Elam looked amazed and a little nervous at the prospect, and Amelia took his shoulders and turned him toward the stairs. “Go and find your brother and tell him it’s time to eat.”

  When he’d run upstairs, Amelia gave Emma a fond glance. “Someday you will make a wonderful mother. You’re always so encouraging, and you have wunderbaar ideas for the little ones.”

  “Melvin may not think so if he has a full day on Monday.”

  “Melvin is like you. He’ll make time for Elam and his little project, never fear.”

  “Did Eli really lose a drawer pull?”

  “He did. If he had a cat, I’d say it might have batted it out of the room, but he doesn’t.”

  “It sounds like he’s not paying attention to what happens in his old life. Too busy looking forward to the new.”

  “He’s not the only one. And denkes for teaching my boy that it’s not what others do for us that makes us love them, but what we do for them.”

  Emma’s mind flashed to Grant, working on the Daadi Haus and making porches so solid they would last for fifty years. But that was silly. He had been paid for the job. It wasn’t the same thing at all. But the meals she had fed him and his crew? Ah, now, there was a labor of love. Luckily, she’d done it with no thought of any return, or she’d be even more hopeless than she was now.

  The men began to come in, and the women after them, separating themselves on either side of the room. After they’d said a silent grace, Emma moved between the tables with a pitcher of water, filling glasses and seeing that everyone had what he or she needed. She would eat afterward, along with Carrie and the other ladies acting as helpers today.

  And every moment, she was acutely aware of Grant Weaver sitting under the window at the end of one of the men’s tables. He kept an eye on his girls, even though they were being well looked after by their Yoder aunties. His little boy sat on his knee, a napkin tied around his neck, as he shared food from his father’s plate with chubby fingers.

  Emma refilled the pitcher and made her way down the aisle. A bar of sunlight fell through the window and illuminated father and son. Grant looked up, and she couldn’t help but smile at the picture the little boy made on his Daed’s knee, face happily smeared with bread and jam, with a bean from his soup stuck to one cheek. Grant’s gaze met hers, and the light struck his eyes just enough to make their color more brilliant against his tan skin and brown beard.

  And then he smiled, too.

  Emma had not seen him smile fully before. All those breakfasts across from him and she had never seen that light on his face, never seen the humor dancing around the edges of his lips. As Karen said, he had a hard row to hoe, and real, open smiles were probably more costly for him than other men. But oh, what a gift it was to her—a gift beyond price!

  “Emma.”

  Above the clatter of cutlery and conversation, his voice struck her heart like a gong.

  “Emma, the pitcher.”

  At that moment, one of the Yoder nephews laughed and leaned away from her, and she realized with a jolt that the pitcher had tipped and ice water was cascading down onto her skirt and the young man’s shirt.

  “Oh, my goodness, Myron, I’m so sorry.” She grabbed a napkin and began to dab at his shoulder and arm.

  “It’s no trouble, Emma,” he said, apparently not one bit concerned. “I didn’t get that spot during my bath last night anyway.”

  The men laughed and Emma couldn’t get away from there fast enough. Every time a man laughed during the rest of the meal, she was convinced it was because someone had told him about absentminded Emma Stolzfus, so busy mooning over a man’s smile that she’d poured a pitcher of water on Myron instead of in his glass.

  That smile had been costly, all right. If her pride had been money, she’d have paid a heavy price.

  And it would have been worth every cent.

  Chapter 15

  It took so little to feed a woman’s heart, even though in the long run—as with the doughnuts and pastries she loved—no growth or nourish
ment would come of it. And yet, during the next two weeks, as Emma threw herself into preparations for Amelia’s wedding, the vision of Grant and his little boy sustained her. Maybe it was the gut Gott reminding her that He provided moments of beauty and love to His children. Carrie and Amelia seemed to find these moments daily, but for Emma, it was harder. Was it because she was too practical? Or because she was too busy and self-absorbed?

  Maybe she should be like them, and open her heart a little more to the simpler gifts. That was a way to ward off disappointment, wasn’t it? Gratitude was a sure cure for a number of human failings.

  The Friday before the wedding, friends and neighbors descended on Amelia’s house for a work frolic. Her brothers and their wives all came—even the brother from Smicksburg who was set to move onto the home place sometime this year. Melvin and Carrie rolled into the yard with a buggy full of linens and carpentry tools, and David Yoder from her pallet shop came as well with a bucketful of paintbrushes.

  While the men organized a painting party for the house, chicken coop, and barn, the women divided into teams and tackled windows, floors, carpets, and furniture. If it had a surface, it was scrubbed and polished. If it had a nap, it was cleaned or washed. Smokey, Elam’s little gray cat, vanished through the back door when the brooms came out, and Emma didn’t see him for the rest of the day.

  What she did see, as she polished panes of glass in the upstairs bedroom with vinegar and newspaper, was Grant Weaver driving in about midmorning in the familiar spring wagon, loaded with his own tools and a few lengths of lumber. Not one of the ladies busy scrubbing floors and doing windows in the other bedrooms knew what it cost her to stay and finish what she was doing and not dash downstairs to ask Amelia what was going on. Surely he wasn’t going to break ground for the new workshop, and make a big mess at the front of the property before the wedding? That didn’t seem like him at all.

  She polished a little faster, though, and when she went into one of the other rooms to help the window washer there, she made sure it was one where she could look out and see the wagon parked next to the barn.

  Ah. Mystery solved. He was replacing a couple of boards on the north side, where the worst of the weather tended to wear on buildings. He would get the job done well before the painters finished with the house and moved on to the barn.

  She didn’t have much time for more than a glimpse, though. Ruth Lehman directed the work parties with the skill and keen eye of a traffic policeman—even Amelia meekly submitted to her mother’s firm suggestions, probably because it was safer to do what she said. It was a fine day, so at lunchtime Emma and Carrie set up tables outside on the lawn for the food that everyone had brought. Salads, fried chicken, thick slices of ham with pink-rimmed cinnamon apple slices, bread, rolls, and half a dozen different kinds of pickles disappeared as hungry helpers wolfed it down.

  “Denki for helping me serve,” Amelia whispered as she passed Emma with another tray of cut vegetables. “And don’t forget to eat—I’m saving the best of the desserts for you and me and Carrie.”

  “What would Eli say if he knew he didn’t get your best?” Emma teased.

  “The laborer is worthy of her hire,” Amelia shot back, and then she was off to the kitchen with two empty trays.

  “Watch out, here comes Emma with the water,” Joshua Steiner said from a seat just ahead of where she was pouring. “Anybody got an umbrella?”

  In the smattering of laughter, Emma’s face burned. Try as she might to keep her hand steady, some of the water slopped over the edges of the glass she was filling. Thank goodness they were out on the lawn. It hid a multitude of sins.

  “There’s no call to embarrass our sister, Joshua,” Grant Weaver said from across the table. Emma’s heart swelled with gratitude. Not only had he seen she was there, he had come to her defense as well.

  In public. This was a first.

  “Aw, Emma knows I don’t mean any harm.” As if to prove it, he held out his glass. “I’m just glad it’s not coffee.”

  Again, chuckles filled the air, but Emma had regained her composure. “I wouldn’t say any more, Joshua, since I’m the one with the cold water and you’re the one trapped in his seat.”

  Now the chuckles were a little louder, and she risked a quick glance at Grant. He was drinking from his own glass, but she could swear she saw the beginnings of a smile. All the same, she made quick work of the rest of the row, and pulled an empty tray to take it into the kitchen, where she could savor the moment in relative privacy.

  There she found Amelia, Carrie, and Ruth with their plates, leaning against the counters and eating during the lull while everyone had what they needed outside.

  “The house looks nice with a new coat of paint, Amelia. Is this for me?” She tucked into the full plate that waited on the kitchen table.

  “I can’t believe they have the house done already. The outbuildings will be finished by supper at this rate, and Eli and I can do the trim tomorrow.”

  “And you have your dress done? I didn’t see it anywhere while we were cleaning.”

  “It’s in the bedroom closet, in a plastic bag. I got it finished Wednesday night.”

  “Did you pick the blue or the purple?”

  “Blue. Purple is for the mourning I’m leaving behind. Besides, blue is a wedding color.”

  “And the white cape and apron are with it?” Ruth asked. “Lucky thing they accommodate all sizes. After two children and ten years, they will still fit.”

  Color burned into Amelia’s cheeks. “I made a new cape and apron, Mamm, out of fresh organdy. I’m not using the ones from my wedding to Enoch.”

  Ruth shook her head. “It’s a waste of money. Those things have only been used once, and I know for a fact they haven’t so much as a water spot on them. Mostly because you hardly ate anything that day.”

  “We have all new clothes to be married in, Mamm,” Amelia said quietly. “Eli is content to live in a house another man provided, but I want to come to him in clothes no other man has seen when we say our vows.”

  “Hmph. It’s wasteful, that’s what. What are you going to do with the first set?”

  “They’re in my cedar chest, and they’ll stay there. Whoever buries me can choose whichever ones they like; I’ll be in no position to argue about it.”

  Ruth sniffed and attacked her macaroni casserole with vigor. There was nothing she could say; everyone knew that the bridal couple’s clothes were all new when they were married—even, Emma supposed, the second time around. Only Ruth Lehman would pinch a penny so thin that it would break tradition.

  She cleaned her plate with relish. “That was wonderful gut, Amelia. Thank you for saving me some.”

  “Only the best for meine Freind.” Amelia’s smile flashed. “We took a little of everything before we sent the plates out. And look what I have for dessert. Orange poppyseed cake with orange cream cheese frosting. Your favorite.”

  Emma groaned. “Now I wish I hadn’t eaten that macaroni and cheese. You’re going to make me fat.”

  “You’ve worked hard enough today to wear off any calories in advance,” Carrie told her. “Come and have some, quick, and then we can take the plates out. I’ve started the coffee so it should be ready in a minute.”

  On the stove, the big coffeepot gurgled as if it agreed. Amelia’s orange poppyseed cake was enough to make you wish you could take things with you to heaven. Emma savored every bite, and then laid three trays of squares, cookies, and sliced cake across her arms, going out the door sideways as Carrie held it for her.

  After everyone had finished dessert, she took a moment to breathe outside and visit a little before she went back in to help with the dishes. When someone came up on her left, she turned, expecting to find one of the other helpers.

  Instead, Joshua Steiner smiled at her. “No hard feelings about my little joke, I hope?”

  “I think the joke was on you in the end.”

  “I should be used to that.” A hummingbird hovered over
them, as if trying to figure out if there was any sweetness there, and they watched its zooming path into the trees. “I was hoping to run into you.”

  “You know where I live, Joshua. You could just come for a visit.”

  “I think Calvin might get a little upset if I did that. I missed the boat, didn’t I?”

  “There is no boat. We’re just friends, the same as you and me.”

  “But friends want to be together. I haven’t seen you and Calvin within ten feet of each other all day. I almost wonder if the rumors are wrong.”

  “Rumors usually are. But you and I are together now, visiting as friends will.”

  “No doubt causing more rumors.”

  “Which is worse—gossiping, or behaving in a way that provokes it?”

  He grinned, and she realized he hadn’t taken her seriously. “I had no idea talking to you was so dangerous to the spirits of my brothers and sisters. But I guess someone has to keep them exercised.”

  “Joshua, will you be sensible? I’m beginning to think that’s all you want me for—to get people talking so they don’t realize what you’re really up to.”

  The humor drained from his face. “What do you think I’m up to?”

  “I hope you’re up to the standard God expects from all His children.”

  Across the lawn, little Katie and Sarah Weaver carried Zachary between them like a hammock slung between two trees. The little boy shrieked, half fearful and half laughing, as he tried to see where they were going.

  “If I’m up to anything, it’s trying to get your attention for more than the space of a lecture. Would you like to go for a ride this evening?”

  His bluntness surprised an equally blunt reply out of her. “Nei.”

  It took him a second to recover. “Why not? Do you have another date?”

  “Joshua, I can’t just drop everything when you crook your finger. I have dinner to get for Mamm and work to do.”

  He gazed at her for a long moment. “This isn’t going to happen, is it?”