Working in the flowers did much to ease Emma’s worries. She was even considering inviting Danny to dinner when he straightened up, stretched his back, and motioned toward the barn.
“Any sign of your guest?”
“Nein, but the food was gone this morning.”
“Bedroll still there?”
“It is. I’m wondering if I should sneak up on him in the middle of the night so we can have a talk.”
“If he’s ready, that would work. If he’s not, he’d run, and this time you might not see him again.”
“I’m not sure I want to see him again. This mission of mercy is your idea.”
“We are to be peacemakers,” Mary Ann chimed in. “Full of mercy and good fruits.”
“Yes, Mamm. But—”
“I’ve been thinking.” Danny ran his fingers through his hair. He’d be needing another cut soon. Who did that for him? Most Amish men had their hair cut by their mother or sister or wife. Danny was that rare occurrence—an only child in an Amish home. He had none of those people in his life. He’d have to go to a barber and pay good money for what family would normally do. “It’s supposed to dip into the forties again tonight. Our lad didn’t have much of a bedroll.”
“He’s not our lad.”
“I have a nice sleeping bag at home. Never use it anymore.”
“You could offer him a room in your house.” She said the words in jest before she considered how they might sound.
Danny crossed his arms and stared at her. “You’re right. I do have an extra room.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Still need to catch him first.”
“He’s not a fish, Danny. He’s a boy with a family and some sort of past he needs to deal with.”
“I’ll go and fetch the sleeping bag. It’s a gut Englisch one, rated to zero degrees. He’ll be snug and warm in it.” The smile that covered his face was tough to interpret.
Emma wasn’t heartless.
She wanted to help the boy as much as anyone.
But why did Danny find such joy in it?
“Back in a few.”
He ambled off toward his house. Emma turned and spoke to Mary Ann. When she was confident that her mamm would be fine alone, she took off after him.
Danny looked mildly surprised when she called out to him. He stopped and waited for her to catch up.
“No need for you to walk all the way back,” she said, quickly nixing the idea of inviting him to dinner. It was nearly time to eat already, and she would be feeding three again since the boy in the barn would need dinner.
The boy in the barn. It sounded like a child’s story.
Why was Danny so focused on helping him?
Why was he convinced the boy needed more than a place to hide?
And what did he expect to happen next?
They were met at the porch by a large black Labrador.
“Emma, meet Shadow.”
Danny must have been training the pup, because he settled flat on the porch, raising his warm, dark eyes to study both of them.
“He won’t jump, but he will shake with you.”
“Shake?”
Shadow jumped to a sitting position, tail thumping a happy beat against the porch floor, and raised one paw, which Emma readily shook. She’d wanted a dog, had thought about it often in the last few months. The last one they’d had, Cocoa, had passed when the boys were in their teens. In the end she had decided it was too much work, and she didn’t want a dog knocking Mary Ann down.
“He’s so well trained.”
“We’re working on it. He still chews up the occasional shoe, but he’s coming along.”
“You did the training yourself?”
“Ya.”
“Where’d you learn how?”
He raised his eyes to the corner of the roof as he tried to remember. “Wisconsin. I was in a community called Pebble Creek, and the gentleman I stayed with trained hunting dogs. I learned a lot from him, though I had no need for it until I saw Shadow at the feed store a few weeks ago.”
Danny Eicher knew how to train dogs? She wondered what other things he had learned on his travels. As always, her thoughts circled back to the main question—could he be satisfied living in their little town?
Then Emma stepped into Danny’s house, the home that had been in his family for two generations, and she promptly forgot all of her questions.
CHAPTER FIVE
Emma had been in Danny’s home before, when he’d first come back.
She and Ben had gone over to welcome him, and she’d carried with her a plate of oatmeal cookies. That was over a year ago. She’d had no need to stop by since. Most days he found a reason to come to their house, though she still hadn’t figured the why that was tied to that.
“I guess you spend the majority of your day at your desk?” Emma worried her kapp strings. The thought of all those words, all the places that Danny had visited, overwhelmed her. Did he write about Shipshe? Did he include them in his articles?
“A good bit, yes.”
“Going through the notebooks?”
“Ya, I have a gut memory, but checking against my notes I find that I sometimes remember things differently than they actually happened. Reading what I wrote while I was there, it brings people and places into focus.”
The house was small since his parents only had the one child. Many Amish couples start with a home big enough for three or four and add on rooms as the family grows. Danny’s parents never had a need to add on, and the last time Emma had been in the house, it had needed updating.
She now stood in a home that looked as if it was recently built.
The paint was fresh, white trim and a light-beige color on the walls. Danny had taken out half of the furniture, so the rooms appeared larger. He’d also spent some time scrubbing and shining the wooden floors.
“I didn’t realize you’d been remodeling over here.”
Danny laughed as he put his hands on his hips and looked left, then right. “Let me show you the kitchen.”
She could see some of the kitchen from where they stood in the sitting room, but she followed him eagerly.
“What would your mamm say?” Emma walked over to the new stove and ran her hand across the front panel. “Still gas, ya?”
“Sure. Of course. So is the fridge, but it’s one of the newer models.”
The appliances weren’t over-the-top. They were what a bachelor would need. He’d chosen well. Emma had looked at a refrigerator like his, but decided it was a bad use of their money since the one they had still worked.
“Writing must be paying well!” The words popped out of her mouth, and she immediately wished she could yank them back. It was none of her business how Danny Eicher managed to afford his home improvements.
“It pays all right, probably as well as farming. Mamm and Daed didn’t leave much as far as money in the bank, but they left the land, and it’s a good source of income.”
“You’re still leasing it to the Byler boy?”
“I am, though he’s hardly a boy. He turned twenty-two this year, and he’s a hard worker. I think he’ll do well farming. I know he’ll do better than I would. Never did have much experience planting or rotating crops, though I’ve learned enough about both in my travels. I do think I’m somewhat handy with a family vegetable garden.” He said the last with a wink.
Emma didn’t know what to think of that, but she suddenly wondered if it would look proper for her to be alone in Danny’s house with him. Her cheeks flushed at the thought, because it was ridiculous. They were well past the age when they needed to worry about chaperones.
“Well, you’ve done a gut job here. I think your parents would be proud.”
“I wish I’d come home and made improvements while they were both still alive.”
He’d crossed the room to stand next to her. Emma couldn’t resist. She reached out and rested her hand on his arm. “Your mamm wouldn’t have allowed new appliances in her
kitchen. Like Mary Ann, she was always a bit stubborn.”
The worry lines between his eyes vanished. “Ya. One Christmas I offered to paint the hall. You would have thought I’d suggested knocking a wall out. She informed me the hall was fine as it was, and if I was lacking for things to do, I could help her wash the baseboards.”
Emma walked to the doorway between the kitchen and the sitting room. The desk was neater than the last time she’d visited. Now the spiral notebooks were organized on a bookshelf, and the top of the desk was clean except for a gas lantern, a pad of paper, and a pen. Her curiosity was winning over her vow to not ask.
Danny watched Emma as her gaze darted back and forth across his work area. She worried her kapp strings as she stood there, something she only did when she was uncertain what to say or do next.
He’d known Emma so long, she seemed like an extension of himself. Now that he was home, he couldn’t quite understand how he’d survived without her all the years he’d spent traveling. Danny had left, with his father’s blessing, when he was seventeen. It had hurt him to leave Emma, but he’d known it was the right thing to do—for her sake. She deserved a normal Amish life, with a husband who stayed in one place. When he’d tried to explain that to her, after they’d been attending singings together for over a year, she’d listened with tears running down her face. He’d returned home occasionally for a holiday or because he was in the area researching, but he’d spent the majority of the past thirty-three years away. It seemed like a lifetime. He had never regretted that decision, but watching Emma, seeing her in his home, he also knew it had been the right time to return home.
“Do you still write every day?”
“Ya.”
“What do you plan to do with it?” She turned and studied him. She wasn’t being nosy. She wanted to know. “Do you expect to receive an Englisch contract to write a book?”
“Haven’t thought much on that.”
“If you did, would you—” The words died on her lips, and the vulnerable look in her eyes tore at his heart.
“I won’t be leaving again, Emma. I’m here to stay. This is home now.”
She nodded but didn’t respond.
“Right now I’m working with the Menno-Hoff. They offered me a grant to share some of the things I observed in my travels. It’s important that we record our history. I believe I can offer an accurate telling from the inside.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps it will help the next generation.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure I know why. I only know that I’m supposed to be doing it.”
She nodded as if she understood.
“Let me fetch that sleeping bag.”
He found it, then walked her back out to the porch.
“I wasn’t meaning to be nosy.”
“Of course not. Emma,”—he waited until she turned toward him—“you can ask me anything you want to know.”
Now the smile he was so accustomed to broke through. “You always knew what you wanted to do, Danny. Even at seventeen—all you were interested in was jotting down things in your notebook.”
“I was interested in you.” His pulse raced as that memory came back to him full force.
“When you were sixteen. At seventeen, you only had eyes for your books.”
“I suppose so.” The memory of what was lost, what they’d almost had together, sank between them, drawing some of the color from the day.
“Remember the time you were supposed to be checking on the goats your dat had? You were moving them from one pasture to the other—”
“And I left the gate open, the side gate, while I was writing a piece about a typical day in the life of an Amish lad.”
“The goats were in Mary Ann’s garden before we saw them.”
“Dat gave me extra chores for a week.”
Emma reached out and touched his arm, as she had in the kitchen. “You were doing what you were called to do. Your dat understood, and your mamm too.”
“Did you understand, Emma?”
She tore her gaze away, studying the setting sun and their two properties. “After a while I did. I led the life I was supposed to live, and so did you.”
Danny nodded, but he didn’t like the period she put on that observation.
There was still plenty of light to see the area between his place and hers. In truth, the Eicher property had always been the better of the two lots. His house was set back from the road a good space. The northwest section had a small pond where her boys had spent many an evening fishing. It was shielded from the street by a stand of white elms. They were seven, maybe eight feet tall. Beyond the pond was a low spot that ran the length of their property line. An optimist would call it a creek, but water ran in it only once or twice a year. Even with all the rain they’d had, it was muddy but not wet. Long ago his parents had put a wooden walk across a four-foot portion, which provided easy passing from one place to the other.
What he could see now, what he hadn’t realized but had been suspecting, was that Mary Ann’s garden had practically grown to the property line.
“Indiana evenings are a pretty sight.” Danny’s voice was low. Shadow’s tale thumped against the porch floor, and Emma clasped her arms around the sleeping bag.
“Your neighbor is on the verge of encroaching upon your property.”
His laughter filled the night, joined the songbirds, and caused Shadow to bound down the porch steps.
“I’d be happy to walk you back home.”
“Don’t be silly. There’s no need.”
Danny hadn’t been thinking about whether she needed someone to walk her home. He’d simply wanted to prolong their time together. He stepped away, flustered and unable to remember what they had been talking about.
“Thanks for taking the sleeping bag to him. I wish he’d picked my barn instead of yours.”
“Danny, we need to talk to this boy. I’ll take your sleeping bag, and I’ll leave it for him, but I’m going back out there later tonight. He’s going to tell me what his situation is.”
Instead of arguing with her, Danny reached down and patted the top of Shadow’s head. The dog looked sublimely happy. Affection could do that.
“What time?”
“Thought I’d set my alarm for midnight.”
“Okay.” He nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll meet you on your back porch.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s because of me you’re providing lodging, and now food, to the boy. I don’t blame you for wanting to call the bishop that first night. What with you and Mary Ann being over there alone—”
“This isn’t about us being alone. It’s about what’s right for the boy. If he runs from us again tonight, I’ll go straight to the bishop in the morning.”
Danny’s shoulders slumped, but a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Mary Ann thinks we’re supposed to minister to the boy.”
“She told you that too?”
“While you were inside fetching her a glass of water.”
“She brought the subject up at dinner as well. Seems she recognizes something special in this boy, or perhaps she thinks it would be a gut way for us to give back to the community. Either way, in a few hours we’ll see if she’s right. We’ll see if he’s willing to let us help him.”
Without another word, Emma turned and walked back across Danny’s property, skirted the pond, and stepped onto the small wooden walkway over the low point. Suddenly she stopped and clutched the sleeping bag to her chest. He was about to start after her, to make sure she was all right, when a flock of birds rose from the garden as one, flapping their wings and catching a draft to carry them out into the night. Danny’s heart knocked against his ribs, and he chided himself for worrying over her. Emma Hochstetter was a capable woman, and she’d been taking care of herself all the years he’d been gone.
That wasn’t quite right though. She’d had Ben and Eldon then. Last spring, as the green beans were climbing and twining throu
gh the trellis he’d helped Ben build, her father-in-law had died. He was nearly ninety, and he’d been sick for over a year. His passing was a great loss, but not unexpected. Six weeks later she found Ben in the barn, near the horses he loved so much. Her husband, and Danny’s friend, had suffered a fatal heart attack.
Not to say the entire year had been all gloom and doom. God sprinkled in a few blessings as well, perhaps to assure Emma and Danny He had not turned away.
All of Emma’s children—Edna, Esther, Eunice, Harold, and Henry—were happily married. And her oldest granddaughter, named Mary Ann after her two great-grandmothers, had been baptized into the church. Three more grandchildren had been born, which brought Emma’s total to twelve. Each was a bright spot in her life, even little Thomas, who was quite the mischief-maker at age four. Danny enjoyed watching them at the Sunday socials. Having a grandchild was something he would never experience. These days, he understood more fully than ever what things he had sacrificed to follow his dream.
CHAPTER SIX
Emma was lying on her side with her eyes wide open, waiting.
As she waited, she remembered things from the evening and prayed about the worries that weighed on her heart.
When she’d left Danny’s, crossed the bridge, and walked through the garden, she’d looked up and seen Mary Ann in the kitchen, silhouetted against the window by the gas lantern on the table. Mary Ann might be old and increasingly frail, but Emma still considered her to be her parent in the faith. If she said they were to minister to the boy, then Emma would take her word that it was to be so. The fact that Mary Ann and Danny both felt that way confirmed that God had a purpose in what was happening.
But something more was flitting through her heart.
Emma thought of their garden, pictured it in her mind, and considered the idea of a sanctuary. What did that mean? Was it so complicated, or was it merely a place where people could rest? A place where they could heal?
Where Healing Blooms Page 3
