Huckleberry Harvest (The Matchmakers of Huckleberry Hill Book 5)

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  Wayne poured himself a full glass and took a drink. “Gute lemonade,” he said. “Did you make it?”

  Mandy nodded. “I promised Dawdi I’d save some for Noah, but we ran out. I wanted to make sure he got his fair share.”

  Wayne scooted his chair closer to the table. “It’s very pleasant having you in our house, Mandy. It’s not often Noah invites girls over.”

  Noah got a funny look on his face. Was he blushing? “I never invite girls over, Dat.”

  Wayne propped his elbows on the table and stared at Mandy with a kind expression on his face, much like the one she often saw from her dawdi. “At any rate, I’m glad you’ve stopped knocking on our door and running away before we could open it.”

  Mandy tried to hide her confusion. Should she know what Noah’s dat was talking about? “Knocking on the door and running away?”

  Noah’s laughter rumbled in his chest. Soon it exploded from his mouth. He pulled the potato from his eye and laughed uncontrollably while Mandy and Wayne stared at him in amused silence. “Nae, Dat,” he was finally able to squeeze out of his mouth. “This isn’t that girl.”

  It only took Mandy a moment to realize who it was who had been knocking at Noah’s door and running away. Was there anything Kristina hadn’t done to try to win Noah’s heart?

  Wayne sprouted a good-natured smile. “We always knew it was her because we could hear her giggling as she ran away.”

  Mandy wasn’t sure why her face felt warm, except that maybe she was embarrassed for Kristina. Kristina never seemed to be embarrassed for herself.

  “She did it three or four times a week over the summer,” Wayne said. “Since August we ain’t heard a lot from her.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mandy murmured, feeling compelled to apologize on Kristina’s behalf. She was her best friend, after all. Didn’t she bear some of the responsibility?

  Wayne must have sensed her distress. He studied her face and patted her hand reassuringly. “Mind you, I don’t bear her no ill will. Noah’s a handsome boy. I don’t wonder that the girls get ferhoodled over him. This girl who knocks is probably head over heels in love with Noah. She just doesn’t know how else to express her affection.”

  “She . . . it’s not the best way. . . .” Mandy stuttered, not wanting to be disloyal to her best friend but believing that Wayne was being very forgiving of Kristina’s behavior when in reality she probably deserved a gute spanking.

  “Noah keeps to himself. The girls just don’t know what to do about that.” Wayne leaned back in his chair. “There’s another girl who sneaks over and spies on Noah from the shelter of the trees across the road.”

  Mortified, Mandy slapped her forehead as Noah chuckled softly. “Same girl, Dat.”

  Mandy couldn’t help it. A giggle escaped from her lips. Her best friend, the spy. She was soon laughing harder than Noah was.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Wayne asked, with more distress than was warranted.

  “Nae,” Mandy managed to say between giggles. “It’s just . . . that . . . Kristina is my best friend.”

  Wayne raised his eyebrows. “Ach. I’m sorry if I offended you.”

  “It wonders me how she ever gets her chores done, chasing Noah around all the time,” Mandy said.

  Noah studied her face, and his eyes smoldered with warmth. Her whole body seemed to tingle like a glass of bubbly soda. She had to look away.

  The giggling finally subsided, and to avoid Noah’s eyes, Mandy glanced at Noah’s fater as he took another drink of lemonade. He was not what she had imagined about a man who got drunk on a regular basis and gave his son dark, ugly bruises. She had expected him to be more like the man she’d met outside the bar on a cool autumn evening. Belligerent, unstable, and wicked beyond saving. This meek, gentle man sitting next to her wasn’t any of those things.

  She thought of Jesus’s admonition in Matthew: If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?

  Surely God had not given up on Noah’s dat. He still had time to turn his life back to God. And she still had time to help him. She formulated a plan before she stood from the table.

  Getting to her feet, she grinned at her hopeless patient. “Noah, your eye is never going to get better if you don’t keep that potato pressed to it.”

  He groaned, picked up a new slice of potato from the plate, and laid it over his eye. “I’m not going to get a lot of work done wearing a potato.”

  Noah’s dat finished his lemonade. “Will you stay for supper, Mandy? Noah makes gute sandwiches.”

  “Jah, I know he does,” she said, winking in Noah’s direction.

  He seemed to catch his breath and hold it.

  “Since Noah is hurt,” she said, “why don’t I make supper?”

  Noah stood up and marched to the fridge. “I can do it. You’re our guest.”

  “With one hand?” Mandy teased.

  He grinned. “If you can find me some tape, I’ll attach this potato to my head so I’ll have two good hands.”

  “You fed me on Saturday,” she said. “It’s my turn to feed you.”

  “You brought lemonade.”

  “I’m cooking supper.” Mandy scooted next to Noah and nudged him with her shoulder, pushing him away from the fridge and out of her path. He chuckled and cheerfully glided in the direction she nudged him. She was glad he cooperated. If he hadn’t wanted to move, she and a Clydesdale horse couldn’t have made him go anywhere.

  She opened the small fridge to see what they had on hand and flashed Noah a look of mock horror. The inside of the fridge was immaculately clean and astonishingly empty. Half a gallon of milk, a jar of horseradish sauce, some pickles, and a stick of butter sat in the door while six apples and a carton of eggs sat on the shelves.

  She slowly turned her head and looked at Noah with raised eyebrows. “I see that you don’t have steak.”

  Noah twisted his lips sheepishly. “I was going to go the store tonight.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I wouldn’t want you to starve.”

  “We don’t starve,” Wayne said. “Noah knows how to make yummasetti.”

  Mandy closed the fridge and leaned against the counter. “Let’s start with a list of what you do have. Do you have flour and salt?”

  “Jah,” Noah said, his eyes gleaming with amusement. “And we have sugar and horseradish.”

  “I saw the horseradish. Do you have yeast?”

  Noah looked through a few cupboards. “I don’t think so.”

  “Please tell me you have vinegar and baking powder. I think I will die and go to heaven if you have vinegar and baking powder.”

  “Then I hope we don’t have them. I don’t want you to die.”

  He chuckled as she rolled her eyes a second time. He rummaged through a few cupboards and, with a wide smile, pulled a gallon jug from under the sink. “Vinegar.”

  “Very gute,” she said, speaking to him as if he were a little boy who didn’t know how to follow directions. “Now do you know what baking powder looks like? It is a fine white powder usually in a white and blue tin.”

  It was his turn to roll his eyes. He pulled a bright orange box from the cupboard. “Here it is,” he said, as if he’d just discovered gold.

  “Nope,” she said. “That’s baking soda.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Jah, and if you want to truly be an expert cook, you’ve got to learn the difference or your quick breads will be ruined.”

  “I would be horrified if my quick breads were ruined.” He peered at the label on the soda box. “We couldn’t use this anyway. It expired in 1997.”

  Mandy took it from him and poured it down the sink. “It will help your sink smell better.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Since when do you go around smelling people’s sinks?”

  “It’s one of my hobbies.”

&n
bsp; He chuckled and continued his search through the cupboards. “Aha,” he exclaimed as he pulled out a small white tin labeled Baking Powder. He looked at the label. “It expired in—”

  Mandy held up her hand to shush him. “What I don’t know can’t hurt me. Now go sit by your dat and put another potato on your eye.”

  Mandy pushed her sleeves up. She didn’t have a lot to start with, but she could make do. After preheating the oven, she mixed up a quick batch of drop biscuits. While they baked, she decided to make an apple pie. Apple pie and biscuits wasn’t the most nutritious meal in the world, but she had an inkling that Noah liked pie. It would be good enough.

  They didn’t have a pie tin, so Mandy formed the crust onto a cookie sheet. It would be more of an apple tart, but hopefully it would taste good.

  Noah’s dat went back to his woodshop while the biscuits baked, and Noah fed Chester and tried to sweep with one hand while she made the pie-tart.

  Mandy pulled the biscuits out of the oven when they turned golden brown. Noah sniffed the air. “I don’t think anything made in this kitchen has ever smelled so gute.”

  “I know it’s greedy of me to ask,” she said, “but do you happen to have any jam?”

  He pumped his eyebrows up and down as if he had a great secret, and disappeared down the hall. Did he hide jam in the bathroom?

  Soon he reappeared, still pressing the potato to his eye and cradling two jars of jam in his arm, one purple and one orange. “This is huckleberry jam from your mammi,” he said, motioning to the first jar. “And this is apricot jam from a very spindly tree we have out back.”

  “Jam grows on trees?” she said.

  He nudged her with his elbow. “The bigger question is, does Noah know how to make jam? And the answer is, yes, I do.”

  “I’m astonished,” she said, putting her hand to her heart as if he had truly shocked her.

  “I know how to read directions. You can do anything if you just read the directions.”

  Mandy scooped the biscuits onto a plate with a fork and set the table while Noah fetched his dat from the woodshop. Noah and his dat didn’t own a matching set of plates, so she set the table with a white plate with pink flowers, a plain yellow one, and a light-blue plate with stripes and a small chip on the edge. She set the butter and jam on the table along with a bowl of olives from a can she’d located while rummaging through Noah’s cupboards.

  She paused before laying out the silverware. Was it rude to rummage through people’s cupboards?

  Probably.

  Noah and his dat couldn’t have been more pleased with their meager meal of drop biscuits, olives, lemonade, and apple pie. Noah ate like a starved man, and her heart did a little flip-flop every time he paused long enough to give her a warm look and a compliment about her cooking.

  Mandy cut herself a tiny slice of pie and watched with pleasure as Noah and his dat polished off almost the entire thing. Noah cleaned his plate, put down his fork, and picked up the cookie sheet. “Mandy, you should eat the last piece.”

  Knowing how much he loved it and how much of a sacrifice it must have been for him to offer it to her, she couldn’t help but be charmed by his kindness. “Nae, I wouldn’t dream of it. Finish it.”

  “Dat?” Noah said.

  “I am stuffed,” Wayne said, waving the cookie sheet away.

  Noah didn’t need more encouragement than that. He picked up the last piece like a slice of pizza and downed it in four bites. Mandy propped her chin in her hand and gazed at him. She couldn’t think of anything more pleasant than watching Noah enjoy her cooking. Unless it was watching Noah toss bales into the haymow.

  That was an extremely pleasant thought. A bolt of electricity skipped up her spine. No wonder Kristina liked to spy on him. Mandy could have watched Noah for hours without even taking time out for meals. She loved the fluid movement of his hands and arms as he worked with his tools, the solid arch of his back when he picked up a shovel, and the strong set of his jaw when he puzzled over a problem.

  Their arms nearly touched when Noah propped his elbows on the table. “Would it be rude if I licked my plate?”

  Mandy giggled. “I’m afraid so.”

  After lunch, Wayne ambled back to his workshop. He wanted to experiment with a new star basket template. Mandy wiped cupboards while Noah did up the dishes. She laughed when his eye-potato fell into the dishwater and he gave up on it altogether. It was too difficult to wash cups properly with one hand.

  They dried the dishes together while Noah, who didn’t like talking about his family, told her about the time that he and his brother Yost got chased by a moose.

  When the dishes were washed up, Noah stashed the three mismatched plates in the cupboard and set his dish towel on the counter. “Shall we have dessert?”

  “You’re almost out of sugar and the apples are gone. There’s nothing for dessert.”

  Curling one side of his mouth, Noah reached into her canvas bag on the counter and pulled out the bag of marshmallows. “Do you still want to burn down the house?”

  A smile leaped onto her face. “I forgot about those.”

  He picked up the lighter sitting next to the stove, held it near the burner, and turned on the gas. The burner lit with a hiss and a whoosh.

  She reached into the drawer and pulled out two forks. “Roasting sticks.”

  “Hmm,” he said, pursing his lips. “They’re not very long. I wouldn’t want to singe my finger hairs.”

  The laughter just seemed to bubble out of her mouth. “Well, I do have another idea, but Mammi might not approve.”

  “I wouldn’t want to do anything to upset your mammi.”

  Mandy reached clear into the bottom of her bag and pulled out a ball of blue yarn with two knitting needles sticking out of it. “Mammi insists I carry these everywhere. If I go places where I have to sit and wait, she wants me to knit pot holders.”

  “For all your boyfriends?”

  Mandy cuffed him on the shoulder.

  “Ouch,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “That was completely uncalled for.”

  “Jah, okay, you’re right, but our pot holder supply is very low. Sometimes I’m tempted to pick a boy just so I don’t have to knit any more pot holders.”

  A shadow passed across his face, but it was so fleeting that Mandy wondered if she had really seen it. “Surely your mammi knows that all those boys don’t need pot holders as an encouragement to date you. Your freckles are encouragement enough.” The way he looked at her, as if he found it impossible to take his eyes off those freckles, made her knees a little weak.

  For a moment she forgot where she was and just stared into his eyes. If he weren’t so handsome, she would have been able to think of something clever and amusing to say in return. But nothing was coming to her.

  Instead, she did what any girl with her wits about her would do. She gave a little cough, as if something tickled her throat, and changed the subject. “These knitting needles would make great roasting sticks.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched, and he slid the needles from her ball of yarn. “But your mammi might have a heart attack if she knew?”

  “It would be the same as if we used your flathead screwdriver to open a can of paint.”

  “The one with the keystone tip?”

  “Jah.”

  He winced. “We should use the forks. I don’t need my finger hairs.”

  Mandy giggled. “Let’s see what else we can find.”

  She and Noah rummaged through the drawers. “There’s not much here,” she said. “You might own twenty different kinds of wrenches, but you don’t even have a ladle or a turkey baster.”

  “Twenty-seven,” he said.

  “Twenty-seven what?”

  “Twenty-seven different kinds of wrenches.”

  “Look at these,” she said, pulling a carving fork and a long metal utensil from the bottom drawer. The utensil that she didn’t recognize looked like a very long safety pin with no clasp at the
top. She held it up for him to look at.

  “That’s a kabob skewer,” Noah said.

  “What is a kabob skewer, and why do you have one in your bottom drawer?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “And why do you have a kabob skewer but don’t own a spatula?”

  He shrugged and chuckled. “I was going to buy a spatula but some locking-jaw pliers caught my eye.”

  She shook her head in exasperation. “You are incorrigible.”

  He pulled two marshmallows out of the bag. She skewered the carving fork into one of them, and he used the kabob skewer for his marshmallow. She didn’t know what a kabob skewer was, but it was the perfect size for roasting marshmallows over the stove flame.

  They stood close to each other and watched as their marshmallows slowly turned golden brown. Mandy savored the feel of Noah’s strong arm brushing up against hers. She felt so bad for Noah and his dat. Noah didn’t like to talk about his family, but Mandy thought she might be able to help them fix their difficult situation. But would he be open to her help? He hadn’t been before.

  “Noah,” she said, turning her marshmallow around and around so it cooked evenly. “Have you ever thought about getting your dat some help?”

  She felt him stiffen beside her. “He doesn’t want help.”

  Knowing what a touchy subject this was for him, she probably should have stopped right there, but she knew she could help if he would just listen. She forged on. “There are places he can go. Places where they help people overcome their addictions.”

  His knuckles turned white around the carving fork. “If my dat went into one of those places, how long before the whole community knew about it? My shame would be ten times worse than it is right now.”

  “Noah, this is your community. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  He shoved his marshmallow too close to the fire, and it burst into flames. Without flinching, he flung the fork and burning marshmallow into the sink and turned on the water. “I have everything to be ashamed of.”

  Her mouth felt dry as dust. She didn’t want to upset him, but if he’d just listen . . . she knew she was right. She laid her golden brown marshmallow on the counter next to the stove. “A counselor might be able to come to your house. Your dat wouldn’t even have to go anywhere. If you just talked to somebody. Just looked at your options.”