The Middlefield Family Collection

by Kathleen Fuller

  “Me and Mary Beth?” Sawyer said. “Nah. I always thought of her as a sister. And she’s had her sights set on Shetler for a long time.”

  “True.”

  “Speaking of someone who has her sights set . . .” Sawyer grinned and tilted his head toward Katherine Yoder as she approached. “Your girl is coming.”

  Johnny stepped away from the fence. “She’s not my maedel.”

  “She’d sure like to be.”

  Practically all of Middlefield knew that Katherine Yoder had a crush on Johnny Mullet. Sawyer teased Johnny about it mercilessly.

  “Nee. I’ll see you later.” Johnny poised to make a break for it.

  Sawyer grabbed his arm. “Chicken.”

  “Yep, that’s me.” His panicked eyes flitted in Katherine’s direction. He pulled away from Sawyer, made a clucking sound, and scurried away.

  Sawyer started to follow him, but Katherine had arrived.

  “Where did Johnny go?”

  He shrugged. It would be a lot easier if Johnny would just take care of Katherine himself. Why did he keep avoiding her? Whenever Katherine came around, Johnny bolted like a goat on a barbed wire fence. “You know how he is. Here one minute, gone the next. Guess he went inside.”

  “I’m sure it’s because he saw me coming.”

  Sawyer didn’t respond. They both knew the truth. If Mary Beth had been foolish for Christopher for the past five years, Katherine had loved Johnny twice as long.

  “Oh well.” Her tone was light, but her blue eyes reflected disappointment. “I guess I’ll talk to him later.” She walked away, the white ribbons of her kapp fluttering against her navy jacket.

  Sawyer shook his head and stuck his hands in the pockets of the black Sunday pants his adopted mother, Anna Byler, had made for him. What was wrong with Johnny? The guy had everything—a great family, a steady job working at a machine repair shop, and a pretty girl who thought the sun rose and set with him. Most of all, his friend had a secure sense of himself. He’d joined the church at seventeen without hesitation. So had Mary Beth, Christopher, and Katherine. None of them had a second thought about making a lifetime commitment to the Amish faith.

  Sawyer, on the other hand, was filled with second thoughts. And thirds. And fourths.

  He couldn’t seem to make up his mind. He enjoyed working with his adopted father, Lukas, in the family carpentry business, yet wondered if he shouldn’t go on to college. He’d had the chance to date Yankee girls in high school, but he never did. He ignored any attention from the Amish girls too. They were all nice. Friendly. Available. But he wouldn’t string them along. Not when he didn’t know what the future held.

  “She’s gone?”

  Sawyer turned to see Johnny behind him. “Yeah, she’s gone. Where did you disappear to?”

  “Other side of the barn.”

  “Look, man,” Sawyer said, “you need to do something about Katherine. You’re nineteen years old, not twelve. If you don’t like her, tell her so she can move on.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “Nee. It’s not.” Johnny’s brown eyes grew solemn. “Maybe you should consider taking your own advice.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not the only one who needs to deal with something. Unless you’re planning to spend the rest of your life seesawing between the Amish and Yankee worlds.”

  Sawyer grimaced. “It’s not that—”

  “Simple?” Suddenly Johnny grinned, as if the quick moment of seriousness never happened. “It’s mei schwester’s wedding. We should be inside celebrating. Or commiserating with the groom.”

  “They make such a nice couple,” Emma said.

  Adam moved closer and touched Emma’s back, letting his palm linger against her waist. “I know who else makes a gut couple.”

  His touch sent her nerves spiking. But she stepped away from him.

  His grin faded. “What’s wrong?”

  Emma glanced around the room, filled with people from their district, celebrating Mary Beth Mullet and Emma’s cousin Christopher’s wedding. She couldn’t talk about anything personal, not when anyone might overhear the conversation. Adam should know that. Just as he should have known not to touch her in such an intimate way in public. But Adam wasn’t a typical Amishman.

  As if he had read her thoughts, Adam jerked his head toward the door. “I’ll get your coat.”

  “I’m not ready to leave.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll come back.”

  She followed. What was he thinking? He’d given her the space and time she’d asked for. Yet now he seemed different.

  He handed over her black coat and she slipped it on. They left the house, Adam striding to the row of buggies parked on the side of the Mullets’ yard. He stopped in front of one of them. Then he suddenly took her hand and pulled her behind it. “Don’t you want to get married?”

  His blunt question threw her off. She cast her gaze to the ground. “Adam, you promised we would take this slow.”

  He sighed and stepped away. “I know. It’s just that seeing Christopher and Mary Beth . . . Emma, you know how I feel about you.”

  Heat suffused her cheeks, ran through her body until she didn’t feel the nip of the winter air. The pain of the past still gnawed at her. She had trusted him once, and he had betrayed her.

  “You’re afraid,” he said.

  “And you’re a mind reader.”

  “I don’t have to read your mind. Your feelings are written all over your face.” He lowered his voice. “Your beautiful face.”

  When he looked at her like that, his hazel eyes filled with such love and promise, Emma couldn’t think. And in the past, not thinking had torn her heart in two.

  “I’m sorry. I’m pushing you and I said I wouldn’t.”

  She nodded. “I can’t give you what you want, Adam. At least not now.”

  “I know.” He stepped away. A cool breeze kicked up, rocking the bare branches on the trees surrounding the Mullets’ property. “It’s just that I’m ready to begin my life again.”

  “But you have. You’ve joined the church. You’ve reconciled with your family . . . and with God.”

  “I have,” he said. A ghost of a smile flitted across his face.

  “And I’ve decided that I want to join my daed and help him run the farm.”

  “But I thought you didn’t like farming.”

  “Things change. I’ve changed. Coming back home, surviving the accident, knowing that I belong here.” He lifted his hand toward her face, then pulled it back without touching her. “It’s hard for me to wait.”

  Emma finally smiled. He’d never been a patient man. “I need more time, Adam. I need to be sure about us, about—”

  “Me.” He nodded. “We better get back before we’re missed.”

  “Ya. I don’t want Grossmammi to be upset that we’re alone together.”

  Adam grinned. “I have a feeling she won’t be.”

  After the wedding, Adam took Emma and Leona home. Once they were inside, he went next door, put his horse up in the barn and his buggy underneath the covered shelter, and headed for the house. His parents had left the wedding early, right after the ceremony. It was unlike them to pass up an opportunity for fellowship with the community.

  But then, things hadn’t been the same with his parents since he’d returned to Middlefield two months ago.

  He’d tried to puzzle out what was wrong, especially with his mother. Was she sick? Still mired in grief over Mary Shetler’s death? They had been best friends, so that made sense. But even Emma and Leona had started to move past the pain of their mother and daughter-in-law’s passing. Why couldn’t his mamm do the same?

  He trudged to the pasture, certain to find his father there. It was past time he and his daed had a talk.

  His father was in his favorite spot, leaning against the split rail fence, staring out at the acres of pasture in front of him. For a moment Adam had the chanc
e to study his daed objectively. Norman Otto, the consummate Amishman. Deacon of the church. Helper of those in need. Strong. Stubborn. Unyielding.

  His father turned and saw him. “Need something?”

  “Just thought I’d join you.” During the spring and summer months, their herd of cows had eaten down the grass until there was little left but stubble. “They’ll be needing hay soon, ya?”

  His father nodded. “And feed. I’ve been buying it from the store, keeping it in the silo. Had to stop growing mei own feed corn when—”

  Adam’s mind finished the sentence: When you left.

  He swallowed down a lump of guilt. It was cheaper to grow feed than to purchase it. But he hadn’t been here to help.

  He tilted back his black hat, the felt fabric rubbing against his short, rough hair. The doctors had shaved his head in order to stitch the long gash in his scalp. He could have died in that fire. No thanks to Mark King, he had survived, gotten off easy. Easier, at least, than poor Laura Stutzman.

  “Why are you really here?” his father asked.

  “Just wondering why you and Mamm left so early.”

  “Maybe I should be asking you why you stayed so late.”

  Adam frowned at the subtle accusation. He was tired of fighting his father, and yet he steeled himself for another argument. Old habits die hard.

  “I’m twenty-two. And it was a wedding. Everyone’s expected to stay afterward. How much trouble can someone get into at an Amish wedding, anyway?”

  “When it comes to you, plenty.”

  Adam bristled. Had their relationship come down to this?

  He thought once he rejoined the church and was accepted back into the community, his father would give him a break.

  Norman sighed and stared down at the fence rail. “Sorry.

  Didn’t mean that.”

  Adam shoved his hands into the pockets of his dress pants.

  “Is Mamm all right?”

  Daed straightened. He put both palms on the fence rail and curled his fingers around it. “She seems normal to me. If you’d been here these past two years, you would know your mother better.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “Maybe you need to hear it again.”

  Adam forced himself not to shake his head. Time to change the subject. “So I was thinking about helping you plant feed corn next year. It would save on buying the winter grain.”

  “I thought farming wasn’t gut enough for you.”

  He gripped the top rail of the fence. The hard wood bit into the skin of his palm. “I was wrong. I’ve missed it.”

  His father scratched his chin through his beard, still looking at the pasture in front of him. “You missed the hard work? The early hours, the sick cows, the unpredictable weather?”

  “Ya.” Wasn’t it enough to tell him he wanted to work for him again?

  “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Emma.” His father didn’t look at him. “Does that have something to do with it?”

  “This isn’t about Emma and me. It’s about us. Working together again.”

  “Because we were so successful at it the first time.”

  Adam pulled off his hat and gripped the brim tightly. “Daed, please. I’m really trying.”

  There was a long silence, then his father said, “I can’t promise anything right now.”

  Anything involving me. The unspoken words floated between them, souring the conversation. Again. Adam was done. “I’m going inside. To check on Mamm.”

  “You do that.”

  Adam left. He had so much to prove to everyone—Emma, his father, his mother. Especially God. He wasn’t sure he could do it. But he had made the commitment, and he would see it through.

  It would take time for those he loved to trust him again. But he was willing to work at it.

  He was willing to wait.

  CHAPTER 3

  “You’ve been quiet lately, sohn. Something on your mind?”

  Sawyer blew the sawdust off the top of the coffee table.

  Particles danced in the sunlight that beamed through the window of Byler and Sons.

  “No,” he said. He moved his palm against the wood, feeling the rough texture. He gripped the sanding block and ran it over the surface. The scratching sound filled the silence between him and his father.

  “Nothing you want to talk about, I take it.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.” He moved the sanding block faster, waiting for his father to go. It wasn’t like him to stop work in the middle of the day to chat. Lukas Byler ran the family business with precision, the same way he made his furniture, and the store had flourished since his father had retired several years ago.

  Finally Sawyer stopped sanding and looked at his father. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

  His dad looked at the ground, crossing his thick arms across his chest. “I’ve been trying to find the right time to say this.

  Guess there really isn’t a right time.”

  Sawyer dropped the block on the table. He glanced around the shop. His uncle Tobias, Lukas’s older brother and business partner, was in the back office. He steeled himself against a sudden rush of dread flowing over him like an icy waterfall. “What is it?”

  “Your mother and I wondered if you’ve come to any conclusion about the future.” He stroked his beard and looked up at Sawyer, who was several inches taller.

  He leaned against the work table. “I haven’t given it much thought.” It wasn’t the truth, of course. Lately his future—or lack of it—had been the only thing on his mind.

  “We don’t want to push you into making a decision. We never wanted you to be someone you’re not. If you want to quit the business and geh to college, we’ll support that.”

  “I know. And thanks—danki.” His adopted parents had never required him to live by the strict Amish Ordnung, only asked that he be respectful of their faith and, more importantly, respectful of the Lord. “I owe you both so much.”

  Lukas shook his head, his straw hat slipping a bit. He pressed on the crown, securing it in place. “You don’t owe us anything, Sawyer. You’re our sohn. You were from the day you started living with us, before we adopted you.” He smiled, his dark eyes shiny.

  Sawyer’s eyes burned. It wasn’t like his father to show emotion. “I wish I could tell you I want to join the church. Or that

  I want to go to college.” He sighed. “Some decision, any decision. But I just don’t know what I want to do. Isn’t that stupid?”

  “Nee. It’s not dumm. Not after what you’ve been through, losing your parents, living with us as a teenager, away from your friends. Many young people struggle with this choice even when they’ve lived all their lives as Amish. This decision, it’s not to be taken lightly. I’m glad you’re giving it a lot of thought and prayer.”

  Thought, yes. Prayer, not so much.

  A bell rang in the front of the shop, preventing Sawyer from saying anything else. Lukas nodded at him and headed to handle the customer. Sawyer turned, facing the rough table.

  By the time he finished it, the surface would be smooth as satin, without a single splinter or notch. But it would take time to get the wood to that point, where it would be a beautiful piece of furniture.

  Time, and lots of work.

  The aroma of roasted coffee beans filled the Shetler kitchen as Emma sliced the still-warm cherry pie. She handed a piece to Grossmammi, then one to her sister Clara. She met her sister’s eyes as she handed her the dessert. Clara smiled. She sat close to her husband, Peter. The tension between them, once so palpable to everyone, had eased.

  Grossmammi straightened her curved back as much as she could. “Emma, sit down so we can get started.” She met each of their gazes, resting on Emma’s last. “We haven’t had a familye meeting since the fire.”

  Peter turned pale. “I’m so sorry for what mei cousin did.”

  “You can’t take responsibility for Mark’s troubles.” Grossmammi
touched her coffee cup but didn’t pick it up. “Or his actions. Mark’s decisions are between him and God.”

  Emma thought about Laura, who had gone upstairs to her room right after supper. She was glad Laura couldn’t hear any of this. “Have you heard from him, Peter?”

  “Nee. I did write his parents and told them what happened.”

  Peter twirled the fork in his hand. “They didn’t seem surprised.

  I don’t want to say this, but it appears they’ve all but turned their backs on him.”

  “He’s in the bann?” Emma asked.

  “Not officially, since he hasn’t been home for months. But when—or if—he returns, he will be disciplined by the church.”

  “And by the law,” Clara added.

  “We don’t know that yet.” Peter laid his hand on her slender arm. “But remember what the police said. He committed arson. And he attempted to kill Adam and Laura. They will press charges if Mark ever comes back to Middlefield.”

  “And we would condemn him as well?” Grossmammi asked.

  “For what he did?” Clara gripped the edge of the table. “I think he should get the justice he deserves.”

  Leona took a sip of her kaffee. “God will dispense that justice.”

  “And until that time, we have to forgive him.” Clara’s mouth twisted into a frown of disgust.

  “Ya.” Grossmammi peered over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses. “We do.”

  Emma sighed. “Do we have to talk about Mark anymore?”

  Her grandmother shook her head. “Nee, he’s not our concern, other than praying he finds his way back onto God’s path.

  In the meantime we need to decide what to do about the workshop. Are we going to rebuild the fabric store?”

  They all looked at Clara. “We don’t have to. Peter has a gut job now, and I’ve started taking in sewing. I already have three orders for winter coats.” She looked at Emma. “Do you still want your shelter?”

  Emma’s mouth dropped open. At one time she’d wanted to convert the workshop and equip it to take in stray animals. But she had given in to Clara’s demand for a fabric store. “Are you sure?”