by Kelly Long
The buwe shook his head thoughtfully. “You let us out early. She wasn’t at home. So I just went for a walk.”
Lilly glanced at her husband, trying to conceal her dismay. “Jacob, Seth, I’m sure Mrs. Beiler is bound to be concerned if she finds that Abel’s not at school or at home. We’d better get him back quickly.”
“No!” Abel said. “No. I’m getting my mamm presents for Valentine’s Day.” He opened a grubby palm and held three perfectly capped acorns up for their inspection. “I just need one more to have four.”
“Well, three seems just as good,” Seth remarked.
Abel shook his head, beginning to get upset. “I need four. It has to be even.”
Lilly looked at the two brothers and shook her head slightly. She knew from classroom experience of Abel’s need for the number of items to be even. “Abel likes things to be even when they can be—it comforts him somehow. Why don’t I cut over to Mrs. Beiler’s and let her know that Abel’s all right, and you two help Abel find another acorn and bring him along when he’s done.”
“Here’s an acorn—right as rain,” Jacob exclaimed, scooping up an uncapped acorn from the snowy ground.
Abel turned his pug nose up in disgust and shook his head. “No cap.”
“Oh.” Jacob inspected it. “You’re right.” He tossed the offending acorn into the woods.
“They’ve all got to be the same,” Lilly explained.
“Well, gut luck to us, then, finding a perfect acorn in the snow. The squirrels and chipmunks have probably gotten them all.” Seth scuffed a foot at the ground, peering at it as though it might magically produce the right acorn.
“I found three,” Abel pointed out.
“All right.” Jacob gave Lilly a tight squeeze. “You go on to Mrs. Beiler’s. We’ll be back with you shortly.”
“Jah,” Lilly muttered, still warm from his kisses. She nodded to Seth and hurried up the path.
Two hours later the sun began to sink in the afternoon sky, and the late winter day seemed damp and gloomy in the deep of the woods. They’d long left the trail in search of the perfect acorn. A fox skirted in front of them and darted into some dark evergreens. Jacob shook his head. “Abel, it’s going to get dark soon. We’ve got to go back. Your mamm will be worried.”
“No!” the boy yelled and darted off in the direction of the fox.
“Great, Jacob,” Seth said. “Now we have to find an acorn and the kid.”
“Come on. Quit whining. We have to move quickly. Not only can that boy outrun both of us, but I don’t know this side of the mountain as well as I might.”
They took off at a jog through the snow, calling the child’s name as they went, looking for his footprints. In the places where the snowmelt left bigger patches of dirt than snow, and the footsteps disappeared, Seth stopped to catch his breath. “Wait. We’d better split up. The light’s going to fade fast, and I don’t need another reason for his mother not to like me by getting him home after dark.”
Jacob raised a brow with a half smile. “Another reason?”
Seth shrugged. “All right. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever set eyes on, but I somehow have given her reason to hate me. Avoids me at all costs.”
“You’re imagining it.” Jacob waved away his words. He started diagonally to the left. “Come on. We’d better move. I’ll go this way.”
“I wish we had a light,” Seth complained, then began trotting off to the right.
“Abel!” Jacob’s voice echoed hollowly through the trees.
I should go out and look myself.” Grace Beiler stared out the kitchen window at the deepening dusk, and Lilly tried desperately to think of something else to distract the anxious mother.
She’d already run through every possible topic of conversation that she could come up with and truthfully had no explanation as to where the men and buwe could be. She, too, had expected them back by now. She stifled anxious thoughts of her own and glanced over the quilt top Grace was working on—one of many—that she sold to a distributor in Lancaster. It was laborious, tiring work, or so Lilly thought, and didn’t seem to suit the delicacy of Grace Beiler’s petite frame. Although she needed the work to support herself and her son, Lilly still considered that a woman like Grace should be cherished like fine porcelain by someone.
She dragged her wandering thoughts back to the moment. “Let’s make something to eat for when they get here. Did I tell you it’s Jacob’s birthday?”
Grace gestured lamely to the pantry. “I have a bread pudding shaped like a heart I was going to surprise Abel with—he loves the raisins.” Her voice caught for a moment. “Mrs. Wyse—Lilly. You needn’t wait with me. I know your own mamm is at home. Won’t she worry?”
“Anxious for me to be gone so that you can head out into the woods alone?”
The two women smiled at each other briefly.
“How did you know?” Grace asked.
“Teaching for a while. You get used to reading thoughts.”
Grace nodded and sank down to take up anxious rocking in a bentwood chair.
They were both silent when the quiet was suddenly broken by the deep voices of men outside. Grace flew to the kitchen door and flung it open to let Jacob and Seth enter. Seth was carrying Abel in his arms.
“What’s wrong? What happened to him?” Her voice was frantic as she tried to feel the child through the bulk of Seth’s arms.
“Played out. That’s all. Played us out too. He led us a merry chase up Keating Mountain. I thought we—”
“Put him down in here, in my bed, please.” She cut Seth off and hurried to open a door off the kitchen.
“All right.” There was a faint irony in Seth’s voice that made Lilly raise questioning eyes to Jacob’s face, but he just shrugged. Seth soon joined them and then Mrs. Beiler gently closed the door behind her.
“I must thank you.” Her voice was unsteady and she kept her eyes on Jacob’s face. She opened her palm and held it out for them to see. “He roused long enough to give me my Valentine—four acorns.”
“That’s four—an even number, with caps,” Seth noted lightly.
Grace skimmed a blank gaze over his face and then returned her look to Jacob and Lilly.
“Again. Thank you and thank you, Lilly. I couldn’t have waited without you. If . . . if you all don’t mind, I think I should go and sit by him in case he wakes or catches a chill.”
“Not at all. Please have a gut night.” Lilly smiled and embraced the woman, then caught up her cloak. Jacob reached to settle it about her shoulders.
Mrs. Beiler opened the back door. “Gut night.” The door closed with a quiet click.
Lilly surveyed Seth’s downturned mouth in the half light from the kitchen window.
“What did you do to her?” Jacob asked his brother, settling an arm around Lilly’s shoulders in the evening cold.
“I told you. Nothing.”
“I’m sure we’re all just tired,” Lilly said briskly, as if her point would explain Grace Beiler’s undoubted coldness toward Seth.
Seth shrugged. “Yeah, right. Let’s just go home.”
Lilly snuggled beneath her husband’s arm, flanked on her other side by Seth until they saw him off at the Wyse farm. She was sleepy but glad when the lights of home shown clear and bright across the fields.
CHAPTER 42
Snow kissing. Yeah, I heard you. That’s gut . . .” Seth’s voice drifted off in the stillness of the barn and Jacob rolled his eyes.
“I’m trying to get some advice here, bruder.”
“From your lecherous younger sibling? You’re wasting your time. Remember, I tried to steal your bride.”
“Why are you so down on yourself?” Jacob smoothed his hand across Thunder’s side.
“You mean my tortured, longing self?” Seth sprawled across a bale of hay, his chin on his chest.
“Jah, that self. The one that’s deciding to shut down because only one woman in a lifetime isn’t swayed by your char
m.”
“I’d rather go back to snow kissing.”
“Me too. I’m just not sure how to get there.”
“Jacob,” Seth groaned, lolling his head against a beam. “You are married! You know . . . marrriieeedd! Do what you want.”
“You’re no help. I think I went too fast and now I don’t know how to reach her without seeming like I just want to—”
“You make me sick.”
“Danki. Yet, I still have patience enough to tell you that you’d better get over yourself. You certainly aren’t going to win her by wallowing.”
“I don’t want to win her—or anybody else for that matter.”
“Okay. I’m going to go work with that colt now. I promised Tommy I’d give him some training time with me. Why don’t you go paint?” Jacob slid the barn door open.
“I can’t paint anymore. It doesn’t work,” Seth growled.
“Then you, my little bruder, are in deep trouble—heart trouble.” He shut the door before he could make out Seth’s furious response.
Lilly looked up from the projects she was grading at the kitchen table and wondered what time Jacob would get home. She sighed when she thought about how far he seemed to have drifted from her in the few days after their kisses on the trail. He seemed to be reserved and holding back for some reason, yet she knew he’d been intent in the woods. She wondered if she’d ever understand him and resisted the urge to bite her lip at the thought.
“Are you troubled about something?”
Lilly looked across the table into the sitting room where her mamm had been writing in her journal. It was still amazing to hear the warmth and tenderness that pervaded her mother’s tone when she spoke.
Lilly shrugged. “I don’t know. Danki for asking, Mamm.”
Her mother patted the chair next to hers. “Come here, will you? Let’s have a visit.”
Lilly went, pleased at the diversion of her thoughts; she sat down and smiled.
“I’ve been thinking, Lilly. We’ve never had—well, a woman-to-woman talk about what to expect as a married woman.”
Lilly raised a brow. “I think I understand the mechanics, Mamm.”
Her mother gave a false frown. “Saucy-mouthed girl. That’s not what I mean.”
“All right. I’m sorry. I have to confess that I don’t know what to expect from Jacob half the time.”
Her mother patted her hand. “That’s what I thought. I’d like you to read something from my journal, if you will.”
“Ach, I’d love to.” Lilly knew how important the journal was to her mother’s recovery and felt honored to be asked to share a part of it.
Her mother riffled through the pages a bit, then found a certain spot. “Here. Read from here to the bottom of the next page.”
Lilly took the notebook and thought how both familiar and foreign her mother’s handwriting was to her; it seemed such an intimate thing. Something she remembered from childhood yet hadn’t glimpsed in so long. She knew from teaching that handwriting revealed much about the personality of the writer. Her mother’s strongly formed loops and word endings were a reassurance that her strength and will were present and focused. She began to read.
I think I married Hiram too young—or at least, I was too young in my mind. I didn’t know half of what it meant to be a wife and mother when suddenly there was this sober, dark-haired baby girl staring up at me with all the trust in the world. I scarcely knew how to care for her. Oh, I understood the feeding and the diapering, but when she cried, it pierced my soul and scared me to death—especially when Hiram was out on a call. He always seemed to know how to comfort her better than I, and I found myself comforted just watching him hold her. But I also felt left behind. As though I were the one on the outside.
When we’d go to Meetings or frolics, I’d watch the other mothers with their babes and I’d wonder about the distance I felt from my daughter, though I held her close to my heart every chance I had. She didn’t resist me, but I never felt that I was sure enough, gut enough, to parent her with confidence. I didn’t know how to keep everything together—the running of the home, Hiram’s involvement with his work, and the ever-watching beautiful blue eyes of my baby maedel.
Suppose I failed her? Suppose I let her get hurt? When she started to crawl and bumped her head or walked and skinned her knee, I was riddled with guilt. I should have watched more closely, not let her have gone so far away from me.
And then . . . somehow, she was grown up, and Hiram was gone. I was still too young to deal with everything. And then my baby married—became a wife, will surely someday become a mother, and still, I am unsure of how to help her. What to do for her—to keep her safe. Should I tell her the truth—that marriage is sometimes filled with expectations that are never met, that the heart gets bruised but must go on? Should I tell her of the moments of joy, the intense pleasure of holding the hand of the one you love and wishing that time would stand still? What about the differences that arise—the petty arguments and fault finding that you wish would all be gone, never having been said. What about when your heart’s love takes ill and shrinks to some shadow of the person you knew. How do I tell her all of this and so much more? I love her . . . my Lilly. I told Hiram we must name her that, for I could think of no other flower so beautiful, and so delicate. She’s grown to match her name. But she is her own woman too. A special, wunderbaar woman. And for that, I am not too young to acknowledge and to be thankful to Derr Herr.
Lilly looked up with tears in her eyes. “Ach, Mamm.” She slipped from her chair to kneel at her mother’s feet, laying her head in the warm lap and feeling the comfort of gentle hands brushing at the hair against the nape of her neck. “I never knew”—she sobbed—“that you thought all that.”
“I should have told you,” her mother whispered. “But I can tell you now. And I can tell you that I know you’ve been struggling here and there with Jacob. I’ve prayed for you. I’ll keep on praying. You will have a gut marriage, a gut life. And I . . . I love you so much.”
“Oh, I love you too, Mamm.” Lilly clung to her mother and felt a peace that touched the deepest shadows in her soul. She felt whole and renewed and ready to face life as Jacob’s wife.
A sudden knock on the back kitchen door made her look up, startled, and she rose. She gave her mother a quick hug and quickly wiped away her tears. Then she went to open the door, wondering who might be calling so near to suppertime.
It was Alice, looking at her with suppressed excitement on her merry face. “Lilly, I have an idea. You have to come with me into Lockport right now.”
CHAPTER 43
Lilly’s mother waved them off without question, with a promise to get Jacob his supper and the instruction to have a gut time.
Lilly stared at her friend as Alice urged the Planks’ horse to pick up speed. “All right. What’s this about?”
Alice glanced at her with an excited smile. “Okay, you know how you’ve been saying that Jacob has become distant and everything?”
“Jah.”
“Well, I’ve got a plan to get him undistant.”
“I don’t think that’s a real word.”
Alice laughed. “You do not like surprises and you’re not going to like my plan. But we’re going to do it.”
“What is it?” Lilly asked with both apprehension and interest, thinking of the birthday kissing gift they’d come up with together.
“We’re going to Emily’s Mystery.”
“What?”
“Emily’s Mystery. It’s this store in Lockport that sells—”
“I know what it is.” Lilly laughed, shocked. “But what could I possibly do there?”
“Buy something to entice your husband. It’s my treat, by the way. Think of it as an extra wedding present.”
“Alice Plank! You have got to be narrish. What would Jacob say if he knew?”
“Nothing.” Alice smiled smugly. “He won’t say anything, but he might do something.”
Lilly stu
died her friend and shook her head. “You just want to see what it’s like in there, don’t you?”
Alice slapped the reins and shrugged. “Maybe. What’s wrong with that?”
Once Lilly got over the electric feeling that she was going to be struck by lightning the moment she crossed the store’s threshold, she found herself in awe of the beauty of the undergarments and lingerie on display.
Lace and pastel trims were not what Amish women in their community usually wore—although, Lilly had to wonder, with a suppressed giggle, how was one to know that as a rule for certain anyway? She glanced at Alice, who boldly studied the mannequins with interest.
“I think I could sew some of these,” her friend mused aloud, and Lilly wanted to shush her as the saleswoman came toward them.
“Ladies, good afternoon. Looking for something special?”
Lilly studied the woman covertly, admiring the carefree swing of her hair, but could find no words to offer in response. Alice, however, seemed to have no such problem.
“Yes. She’s newly married and needs something to . . . make her husband happy.”
Lilly wanted to crawl under one of the silk-covered tables.
“Hmmm . . . okay. I have to tell you that I’m surprised at the number of Amish who have come in here to shop lately,” the salesgirl said as she studied Lilly, her head tilted to one side.
“Really?” Alice asked with interest.
“Mmmm-hmmm. Even a guy was in here not too long ago—with his mom or something.” The woman smiled at the remembrance. “He was hot too, for an Amish man—tall, dark hair . . .”
Lilly and Alice exchanged glances and the woman went on. “So, what did you have in mind?”
Lilly shrugged lamely. “I . . . uh . . .”
“Is he a leg man?”
“A leg man?”
“Yeah. A man who especially likes women’s legs. I’ve got some silk stockings in pale pink with the cutest little rosettes at the top. But I don’t suppose you’ve got any heels to wear with them.” She frowned down at Lilly’s old-fashioned, sensible shoes.
“She needs a gown, maybe,” Alice said, reaching to finger a blue lace confection with a plunging neckline and a satin waist tie.
