by Senft, Adina
“What do you mean, he thinks that God is shoving him toward you?” Carrie let their quilt fall to the table, as if she’d forgotten she was holding one end of it. “A man is supposed to run toward you, not wait to be shoved.”
“Carrie,” Amelia said softly, putting a hand on her arm. “Every man is different. Grant may not say romantic words, but his actions show that he cares for Emma.”
“That’s true,” Carrie conceded, watching Emma carefully. “I heard that young Kelvin wouldn’t let Mandy paint every room a different color in their new house. He said they all had to be white, or they’d stay unpainted.”
“I wouldn’t let her paint them all a different color, either,” Emma said. “Every time you made a new quilt, you’d have to repaint the bedroom to match. Either that or make them in the same colors, over and over.”
“Now you’re just being contrary.” Carrie stuck her tongue out. “Oh Emma, it’s just so wonderful that the man you’ve loved all these years is courting you!”
And then the poor quilt got abandoned on the table again as the three of them hugged each other for about the fifteenth time since Emma had broken the news. But honesty ran among them the way the river ran among the rocks in its bed, scouring the truth from between lumps of pride and reluctance and bringing it to the surface. She hadn’t wanted to bring her reservations up. It almost felt disloyal to Grant to speak them aloud. But if she couldn’t ask Carrie and Amelia, who could she ask? Karen? Not likely.
“Is it…do you think it’s strange that he hasn’t…kissed me yet?” She could hardly get the words out, but something inside her drove her to it. She had to know.
Amelia smoothed the first section of the quilt on the tabletop while Carrie busied herself rolling up the other end. The plan for today was to stencil the rest of the flowers on the fabric, but so far they’d barely managed to get it out of its bag and put it on the table.
“It’s not strange,” Amelia said slowly. “Many of our men find it hard to even talk about emotional things, never mind demonstrate how they feel. They’re more likely to make you a chair or bring home a set of silverware than they are to look deep into your eyes and vow everlasting adoration.”
“I don’t need adoration or silverware,” Emma said shortly. “But I would like my first kiss.”
“You’ve never been kissed?” Carrie blurted. “Ever?”
Emma gave her a look over the metal rims of her glasses. “You need a boyfriend first. And you know perfectly well I’ve never had one of those.”
“Oh. I—well, I thought—I mean, there are all those parlor games and band hops and places where…oh. You didn’t go to those, either, did you?”
Emma shook her head. “Now I’m glad that Grant will be my first. First kiss, first real date, first…” Oh dear. No, she couldn’t say that. It would mean she was taking the future for granted, and she would never, ever do that.
“First time in the bedroom with the door closed?” Amelia asked in a completely normal tone, as if she’d said Shall we start the stenciling here?
Emma’s face felt like it had caught on fire. “Ja,” she said in a voice not much more than a whisper.
“She’s blushing.” You could hear Carrie’s teasing whisper across the room. Across the house. Maybe even out in the yard at the end of the lane, where Eli was pacing out the foundation markers for the new shop with Grant and some of the men. “You don’t need to be shy about it, Emma. It’s a natural part of married life.”
“But I am not married, and you’re embarrassing me.”
“Leave her alone, Liewi,” Amelia chided. “You can tease her when she is engaged, not before.”
“All right.” Carrie gave Emma a squeeze and got out the pencils. “I still can’t imagine a man asking a woman if he can court her and not kissing her, though.”
Emma’s stomach sank. “Does he not want to kiss me?” And then her worst fear sprang out of her mouth like a hen frightened off its nest. “Is he only looking to see if I’ll make a good mother for his children, like Calvin?”
Amelia dropped her stencils. “Of course not. The two of you have known each other for years. You’re friends. He knows what kind of woman you are, and now he’s free to make his feelings public.”
Emma released a long, cleansing breath. If she had the sense God gave a goose, she would have realized how he felt when he didn’t speak all those days he was working on the Daadi Haus and they had talked and laughed with his crew in her kitchen. He had let his eyes speak, which was all he had been free to do, and in her diffidence she hadn’t seen it.
“It’s only a matter of time before he asks you to marry him,” Amelia said. Well, she should know. She had had two men propose. “You’re not teenagers. There’s no reason to wait.”
“He did say he wanted a proper home again,” Emma said.
“And so do you, so there you are. As for the kissing,” Amelia went on, “some men are more conservative than others.”
“Unlike Melvin and me,” Carrie put in. “We kissed that first night in his buggy, and I’m not ashamed of it. After him, I didn’t want to kiss anybody else.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Emma’s tone was a little more schoolmarmish than she’d meant, so she softened it. “But you can see why I feel so…I mean, I have no experience to go on. How do I know what is normal from one man to another?”
“That’s why you have us.” Carrie handed her a marking pencil, and Emma leaned over a square. “Between us, we’ve kissed at least four men.”
With swift, sure strokes, a rose took shape in white wax. She moved on to the next one. “At least?”
“Well, there was one boy before Melvin, but he didn’t count. He was Englisch.”
Emma looked up in astonishment. All the years she’d known Carrie, and she’d never heard this. “You kissed an Englisch boy?”
Carrie shrugged. “It was Rumspringe, at a band hop. I think one of his friends dared him to kiss an Amish girl, and there I was at the soda cooler, getting a Coke.”
“What was it like?” Amelia looked amused.
“The Coke was fine, denki. Just you wait until Matthew wants to run around,” Carrie told her. “Then you won’t be smiling like that. And for your information, the kiss was nice, too. He was a good kisser, even if he was Englisch.”
Emma just shook her head. Carrie was so casual about it, as if kissing any boy who asked you was perfectly normal. For Emma, kissing one boy—man—was enough emotional torment for a lifetime.
Maybe she was just thinking about it too much. Another rose formed under her pencil. Amelia was right. Grant was a conservative man by nature as well as by training. She just needed to be patient, that was all. She could make him smile. She could feed his children, that was certain—they’d left nothing but crumbs in the picnic basket. She could tease him with impunity. Even six months ago, she would have thanked God rejoicing at such gifts. The fact that they were courting didn’t mean she could cast aside the small gifts and joys because she wanted bigger ones. God had provided in the small ways; He would provide in the larger ones as well.
Besides, maybe she could be the one to kiss him first.
Chapter 19
The news broke like a thunderclap over Whinburg Township, and Emma realized just how many people had believed that she had been destined to care for Mamm until the latter was called to be with God, and to care for Karen’s children until she herself was.
Her sister Karen being one of them.
Emma and Grant stood outside the home of one of Old Joe Yoder’s sons. Together. In public. It was a declaration of Grant’s intentions toward her, and a small crowd gathered around them after the service and before lunch. Some of the ladies, like Old Joe’s wife, Sarah, had left tact behind them decades ago.
“Well, you’ve proved me wrong, Emma Stolzfus,” she said in a voice that creaked like a rusty gate. “I thought you’d never get a man, and here you are with him and his children, too. I s’pose you’ll be announcing a
wedding sooner or later. I hope he makes you happier than he made Lavina.”
“Happiness is a gift from God,” Emma managed. Oh, please don’t let me blush on Grant’s behalf. What must he think?
“Tell me that again when you’ve been married six months.” And with that, Sarah moved the control on her electric wheelchair and trundled off.
“Don’t listen to her,” said Christina Yoder Hoff, who was Lavina’s sister and the one who had been caring most for the children after Lavina had left. “Some people see life through rose-colored glasses. Great-grandmother Sarah has forgotten where she left hers.” She hugged Emma. “I’m glad God has led Grant to you.”
Karen hovered on the edges of the crowd, smiling and nodding and generally taking modest credit for orchestrating the whole thing. When she finally got close enough to speak, she kept her voice low. “You certainly know how to make a spectacle, Emma. Why couldn’t you have kept things quiet and respectful, and simply let the bishop make an announcement in the fall like everyone else?”
“Can we talk about this at home?” Emma smiled and shook hands with Erica Steiner.
“I can’t believe Mamm allowed it. If you’d come to John and me first, we could have talked some sense into you.”
“Karen, for once can you just be happy for me?”
“Well, I like that! Where would you be if not for John and me, I’d like to know?”
Emma smiled and acknowledged the introduction of someone whose name she forgot immediately. “Married to Calvin, most likely.”
Then, thankfully, Grant led her over to a host of cousins from the Weaver side, and Karen was forced to round up the children and take them into the house for lunch.
Emma tried not to feel guilty. Maybe they should have done as Karen had said, and seen each other discreetly over the summer so that the announcement could be made with all the others in October. That would have been the modest thing to do. But then she would have had no freedom to see and be seen with Grant all summer long. Maybe she didn’t deserve that happiness, but she wanted it.
For once, she wanted to enjoy something that Karen hadn’t had first. She wanted to bask in the pleasure of standing next to Grant. In the knowledge that he had chosen her and wasn’t afraid to say so in front of the whole Gmee. Was that so wrong?
By this time Christina Hoff had circled back around and now stood on Grant’s other side. “I think maybe it would be gut for Emma to take the children in for lunch, don’t you, Grant? She may as well get used to having children at the table.”
Emma looked from one to the other. “How have you done it before?”
“The children have been sitting with Lavina’s family while I eat with the men,” Grant said. “Christina and her sisters have been very loving and kind. Without them, I could not have managed.”
“I hope we’ll see as much of them as ever,” Christina said, smiling. “We’re their family, after all.”
“They’ll be very fortunate Kinner, then, with more than one family to love them,” Emma told her. It might be interesting at Thanksgiving and Christmas, she could tell right now. But she would not think of that. She would focus on happiness—and every time she moved and felt the steadiness of Grant’s shoulder touching hers, happiness wasn’t hard to find.
“You’re positively glowing,” Carrie whispered to her as they went in to lunch. “Courtship is a serious matter, and here you are smiling all over yourself.”
Emma bumped her, careful not to lose hold of little Sarah’s hand. “I can’t help it. Maybe in twenty years I’ll have learned some decorum.”
Carrie tried to keep her frown in place but her face just wasn’t built for it. “See that you do,” she said in her best imitation of Mary Lapp, and they both tried to smother their laughter as Carrie went to sit with her cousins.
“Poor Carrie Miller,” Christina said as she settled Zachary on her lap. Katie and Sarah sat between the two of them, and Emma tried not to notice that they minded Christina more than they did her. Oh, they were respectful enough, but it would take time for them all to get used to the idea that someday Emma might be Mamm while Christina would still be Aendi. “Poor? Why do you say that?” Emma asked.
“I remember when she and Melvin were married. They were so much in love.”
“They still are.”
“We expected she’d be a mother before their first anniversary, and here…” Christina’s voice trailed away. “Ach, well, it’s God’s will.”
Emma’s first instinct was to leap to Carrie’s defense. She was not poor. If a hardworking man’s love was riches, then Carrie was one of the wealthiest women in Whinburg. And as for God’s will…well, it was not for lack of prayer that their little family had not grown beyond two. It was just too bad that some people had to dwell on what God had not provided instead of on what He had.
Thankfully, the bishop stood to indicate they would say grace, and silence fell. When prayer was over, Emma helped Sarah spread peanut butter filling on her bread. Half of her wished the stuff hadn’t had the marshmallow topping added that all the Kinner loved. With her mouth glued shut from peanut butter, Emma wouldn’t be able to speak, no matter what the temptation. But for now, she would just have to rely on self-control.
After lunch and visiting, Grant suggested that she and Lena come by his house for a game of Scrabble.
“You go, Emma,” her mother said. “If you could drop me off at home, I think I would like to rest this afternoon.”
“Are you feeling well, Mamm?”
“As well as ever. But playing chaperone is for folks like your sister. I don’t think you need me watching over you. The children will do well enough for that.”
“A chaperone? At my age?”
“Sixteen or sixty, a single woman in a man’s house who isn’t paid to clean it will cause talk. There will be one or two who think I should mind your business for you, but I’m too tired. Take me home.”
After she saw Lena settled in her chair with Family Life, she flapped the reins over her horse’s back and sipped the pleasure out of the ride over to Grant’s house.
I am going to his home because he has invited me. I have every right to be there. And it seems he even wants me to be the mistress of it.
Dear Lord, thank you for such gifts.
The board was already set up on the kitchen table when she arrived, and while Grant led her horse to the field, she found the kettle and put it on for tea.
“Where do you keep the teabags?” she asked Katie.
“I don’t know. Daed drinks coffee.”
“Then I’ll make coffee.”
“Only in the morning, though. He says it’s too expensive to drink the rest of the time.”
“Ah. Then should we have milk?”
“We finished it all at breakfast. Aendi Christina will bring it when she comes tomorrow.”
It was clear she was going to need to be very economical indeed. “There’s nothing like a refreshing glass of water, anyway, is there?”
She and Sarah played Grant and Katie…and won the game. “We didn’t have a chance, taking on a writer,” he told Katie as she scooped up the tiles.
“I know my vocabulary words,” she protested. “There were just all kinds I didn’t know this time.”
“Next time it will be words I don’t know,” Emma said. “Vocabulary is one thing that can always grow, no matter how old you are.”
“Aendi Christina says you’re very old to be courting,” Sarah informed her.
Grant pulled the little girl against him. “Aendi Christina is mistaken. Emma is the perfect age for me to court, because I am so old.” His voice cracked as he mimicked an old man’s voice and tickled her ribs. She giggled and wriggled away. “It’s time for Zachary to say good night. Take him upstairs and then find something to do while Emma and I talk. We’ll all have prayers together before you go to bed.”
“Can I read my new library book?”
“I hope so, otherwise why am I sending you to scho
ol?”
“Daaaaaaed.”
Smiling, Emma watched the two girls lead Zachary upstairs between them, his chubby legs managing one riser at a time. When she turned back to the table, she found Grant gazing at her.
“I apologize for my sister-in-law saying things like that, especially in front of the children.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t heard before—or will again. I’m not ashamed of having waited for you. I’d have waited ten years more if that was what it took.” She felt a little brazen saying it, but if a woman couldn’t be honest with her own man, then something was out of place.
“Still, she should not have said it, particularly in front of Katie. That little Maedsche never misses a thing.”
“Never mind what others say. It’s what we say between us that’s important.”
“There has not been so much laughter at our table in a long time. Thank you for that, Emma.” He paused a moment. “You have really been waiting so long for me?”
Only the warmth in his eyes gave her the courage to say, “Since I was eighteen. I tried to stop—when you and Lavina were married and so happy, I almost did stop. But when she left and I saw you trying to make a life on your own, trying to be both father and mother to your children…ach, it was hard. I wanted so much to offer a shoulder to share that burden, but…of course I could not.”
“My dearest wish was to find a faithful woman. And here you were, all this time. I thank the gut Gott for Tyler West and his big mouth.”
Emma found laughter bubbling up behind her tears—tears for the years they had not had together, and laughter for the years that they would. “He gave me a talking-to as well. He said I was too busy looking at all the reasons why you and I couldn’t be, and not the reasons why we could.”
“It seems we have each been blind where the other is concerned.”
“But no more.” She smiled into his eyes.
“No more,” he echoed.
She couldn’t take her eyes from his. The air in the kitchen seemed to thicken, and her face felt hot. Possibility—hope—anticipation—all of it seemed to flicker across the few feet separating them.
