The Quilting Circle

by Amy Lillard

  Two weeks. It was a short turnaround, but a necessary one all the same. All the plans that Lavina had made for her October wedding were tossed to the side. There would be no bridesmaids, no long guest list, no big supper. It was sort of a punishment for her transgressions past, but as far as Tess was concerned the trade-off was worth it. Her sister was having a baby. A baby!

  “Are you excited?”

  “Of course I am. It’s what we’ve always dreamed of, jah?”

  Tess and Lavina were barely a year apart in age. They had grown up playing wedding games and house, doing all the things that other little Amish girls did: dreaming of who they would marry, how many children they would have, how big their farm would be. But Tess hadn’t gotten her farm. She hadn’t gotten her children, and that was something she wanted more than anything.

  Tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked them back, thankful her sister had called instead of coming to Wells Landing to deliver the news. She wouldn’t want to put a damper on Lavina’s exciting news with her own sadness. Of course it didn’t help that the rain had now begun to steadily pound against the roof of the barn.

  “Tess?” Lavina’s voice was soft and filled with concern.

  “I’m okay.” Of all people, her sister knew how hard this move had been on her and all the things she wanted from life.

  “I almost didn’t tell you. But how could I not? I hope you will come to the wedding.”

  They both knew that the wedding was less about celebration and more about correcting mistakes, but it didn’t seem to dampen Lavina’s spirits any. Why should it? She was having a baby. The church would forgive her, and she was marrying the man she loved. Joseph Miller had a big farm on the edge of Clarita. Sometimes he worked as an auctioneer. He was an all-around good guy from a great family in the area. Lavina had the good life, as they say.

  “Of course I’ll come to the wedding. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.” And that was the truth. But what did a girl do when the life she thought she was going to have wasn’t exactly the life that was handed her? Pray, she supposed. She was almost out of prayer. It seemed she said one so often these days that her words were running thin.

  She said her good-byes to Lavina, promising that she was okay and vowing to be at the wedding. Tess hung up the phone and stared at the receiver for a full minute, unable to move from her seat. What was a girl to do?

  She looked around her at the immaculate barn, the beautiful wood, the good strong horse they had to pull their buggy. Her house was nice, her husband provided, to the outsider she was sure it looked as if she had everything. She felt heavy and small wishing for more. And there was only one thing to do when thoughts like that arose. It was to pray. But she wasn’t certain God was listening anymore.

  Chapter Three

  Tess Smiley set the tray of sausage balls on the table set up just outside Eileen Brenneman’s kitchen. She was surprised that Eileen wanted to have the quilting circle meeting today. She had been through so much lately.

  Just then Eileen came out of the kitchen. She held a tray of oatmeal cookies in one hand, her mouth pinched with an emotion Tess couldn’t name. Disappointment maybe. Hurt, dejection. Maybe a combination of all three. Eileen had wanted a baby for so long. Tess had only been in Wells Landing for a few months, less than a year really, and even she knew of Eileen’s heart’s desire.

  “Hi, Eileen.” Tess tried to make her voice as cheerful as possible, when she herself had a host of issues and concerns. The Lord said love your neighbor as you love yourself, and she did her best to abide by that each day.

  “Good to see you, Tess.”

  Tess nodded, unsure of what to say next. The week before Eileen’s house had been filled with the sound of little girls’ laughter. The sound of family, of promise. But now the rooms were unusually quiet. Crystal and Brittany, the foster children that Eileen had taken in, had gone to live with their grandparents. Their father had died and their mother had slipped into drug addiction. With no one willing to care for the spunky girls, they had been fostered out. Eileen had been hoping to officially adopt them, then all these weeks later, the grandparents decided that they didn’t want the girls to be raised outside of the family. They had taken Brittany and Crystal back to Glenpool, on the other side of Tulsa. It wasn’t too far for Eileen to visit, but Tess was sure she had been discouraged from doing so.

  For lack of words, Tess reached out a hand and squeezed Eileen’s fingers. To her dismay, Eileen’s eyes filled with tears. Tess released her fingers as Eileen blinked to clear her vision.

  “Have you been to see Mariana?” Tess asked. She wasn’t sure that Mariana and her twin girls were a better topic, but it was all she could come up with.

  “I saw them yesterday.” Eileen gave a sad nod.

  Tess was hoping to get to see them this weekend, before they left the hospital. But with Jacob’s job, they just didn’t seem to have the time. He left in the morning exhausted and came home even more so.

  But it’s more than that.

  She pushed the nagging voice aside and concentrated on placing her platter in an artful arrangement.

  “Are those sausage balls?”

  Clara Rose Brenneman bustled out of the sewing room, plate in one hand and leash in the other. A golden retriever puppy trotted happily behind her, his pink tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth.

  “I made them myself.”

  Clara Rose stopped mid-reach. “Are they made with goat cheese?”

  “Of course.”

  “I see.” Clara Rose pulled her hand back slowly, as if the finger food was a snake about to strike.

  “You know, goat cheese is a lot better for you than regular cheese.”

  Clara Rose shook her head, her strings dancing with the motion. “That’s what you keep telling me.”

  “It’s true.” But she knew her words fell on deaf ears. “One day you’ll believe me.”

  Clara Rose filled her plate with ham and cheese pinwheels and the pickles Mariana had left for them.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Clara Rose turned a sweet shade of pink. “Jah. Hungry.”

  But Tess had a feeling her friend had a secret. It was written there in the color of her cheeks and the smile that graced her lips. And Tess had a feeling what it was too. But she couldn’t ask Clara Rose if she was having a baby. Not with Eileen’s loss so fresh in their minds.

  Clara Rose hummed a little song as she filled her plate, then she headed back into the sewing room, the puppy trotting happily in her wake.

  “Did you two come to quilt, or are you going to stand out here all day and chin-wag?” Verna stood at the large double-door opening of the bonus room Eileen used more for the quilting circle than she did for church.

  Tess turned to Eileen and mouthed, chin-wag?

  Eileen just shrugged. “We’ll be right there.”

  “So are we eating first?” Tess asked. Her hand hovered over the stack of paper plates as she waited for Eileen’s answer. Verna had already disappeared back into the sewing room.

  “Clara Rose came in starving and grabbed a plate first thing. Everyone else is waiting until we take a break. Though I don’t know how anyone can eat that much in this heat.”

  The weather outside was typical for Oklahoma in July. Temps were well into the nineties with heat indexes stretching above one hundred.

  Tess murmured something she hoped sounded like agreement. It wasn’t the heat that had her appetite down, just as she was sure it wasn’t for Eileen. And she didn’t want to complain.

  Together she and Eileen walked into the sewing room. It was their usual crowd minus Mariana Miller, who’d given birth to identical twin girls the week before, and Helen Ebersol, the bishop’s wife. Tess was pleased to see Emily Riehl there. Emily didn’t always make it, and her life had grown ever busier since she’d married Elam Riehl. His father had been kicked in the head by a milk cow a few years back and hadn’t been the same since.

  Tess never heard them com
plain about the hardships they had come through. Emily always had a smile on her face and Elam seemed to be a caring, loving husband. She could see it in his eyes every time he looked at Emily.

  Jacob used to look at her that way. Back before they got married. Back before they moved to Wells Landing. Back before a lot of things.

  “Tess?” Fannie Stoll laid one hand on her knee, drawing Tess’s attention out of her own thoughts. “Are you ready to sew?”

  “Jah. Of course.” She reached for her bag with the squares she had pieced together at home. Everyone except her and Clara Rose had theirs out and ready to begin stitching.

  Tess hurried to get herself together and began. They were making a Star Dahlia quilt. Not necessarily more difficult, but it did require a great deal of ornamental quilting. And Tess didn’t mind. She needed something to keep her mind off . . .

  Jacob.

  “So tell me again why you have the puppy with you?” Emily asked.

  “It’s for Gabe Allen Lambert.”

  “Titus’s brother?”

  Clara Rose nodded. “He’s been building doghouses for the English. Obie wanted to gift him a dog since they’re working together. That way if someone comes to look at doghouses and they want another pet . . .” Her words trailed off.

  “Has anyone heard from Zeb?” Eileen asked. Even in her time of sorrow, she was thinking of others.

  Tess looked up just in time to see a shadow of sadness pass across Clara Rose’s face. Tess knew that Obie had been hoping that his twin brother would come back from Pinecraft to attend their wedding, but he hadn’t showed. Zeb and Obie were as close as brothers could be. And she made a mental note to say a prayer for Zeb tonight. Something was happening down in Florida, but no one could say exactly what. The spring and summer months were far too busy to abandon their farm chores and head south. But she couldn’t say that early fall was any better.

  “Paul says he’ll come home when it’s time for him to come home, but I know that Obie worries.”

  “Worry comes to nothing,” Verna said shortly.

  That was true and several heads bobbed in agreement, but how did a person stop worrying? Tess worried all the time. She worried about her family and living so far away from them. She worried about Jacob. He didn’t seem very happy these days. She looked around at the faces of her friends. They all seemed as happy as women could be. With the exception of Eileen.

  “You’re awful quiet, Tess.” Verna pinned her with her sharp blue stare. That was the thing about Verna. She could see straight through a person and had no hesitation about voicing her observations.

  “Tess is always quiet,” Clara Rose countered.

  “I believe I said awful quiet. There’s a difference.”

  “There’s nothing wrong, if that’s what you’re asking.” Could she have sounded any guiltier? “I mean, nothing’s wrong.”

  And that was the crux of the matter. What truly was wrong in her life? She had a roof over her head and a husband who worked night and day to care for her, but her life still didn’t seem to be turning out the way she had thought it would.

  “Uh-huh.” Verna peered at Tess over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses, then looked back to her stitches.

  The puppy, having decided that no one was going to give him any more attention, curled up at Clara Rose’s feet and laid his head on the toes of her shoes.

  “I’ll be glad when Mariana can come again,” Fannie mused. Her needle stilled as she surveyed the group. “You think she’ll come back, don’t you?”

  Eileen shrugged. “It’s hard to say. I mean, she will have a lot to do with two babies at her age. And it’s not like Reuben will be at home all day to help her.”

  Mariana had discovered she was pregnant just before her husband died from cancer. His best friend Reuben Wiesel had promised to take care of Mariana, a promise that almost ruined their own budding romance. Now the two were planning to get married sometime in the fall. Still, Reuben checked on Mariana every day. Such a sweet ending for what could have been a tragic story.

  “I’m happy for her,” Clara Rose said. She had finally finished her early snack and had settled down to quilt.

  “Are you going to tell us what has you glowing like a firefly?” Verna turned her all-knowing stare to her granddaughter.

  Clara Rose blushed again, dropping her hands into her lap. “I’m going to have a baby.”

  Murmurs of good wishes and joy went up around the room. Normally they didn’t talk so much about having babies and such, but Tess knew that the quilting circle had become so close in the years they had been sewing together. The group had become more like sisters than Tess even felt toward her own siblings.

  She reached out and captured Clara Rose’s fingers, giving them a little squeeze. “I’m so happy for you.” And she was, but there was a part of her that was also so incredibly sad.

  Like her sisters before her, and her friends and neighbors, she had been raised to be a wife and mother. She had gotten the wife thing down. She could cook with the best of them. She kept a fine house and did everything in her power to have her laundry on the line bright and early. She raised a couple of goats in her tiny backyard and made goat cheese along with soaps and lotions and such to help bring in a little more money. Everything she earned went into the cookie jar over the stove, destined for the down payment they so desperately needed.

  A baby right now would only take money away from that fund. And she knew that her sisters would chastise her for her English way of thinking, but she had to have a reason for their lack of a child. Clara Rose and Obie had only been married a few months, and already she was with child. Tess and Jacob had been married for going on three years. She knew that God had a plan for everything, but she wished she knew when He planned for her to have a family. She wanted to ask Jacob how he felt about it, but he had become so stern lately, working all sorts of weird hours. He seemed to pour himself into his job, leaving no room for anything else, including her. What happened to the dream of moving to Wells Landing and buying some farmland?

  But she knew. They needed money, which meant living in a house without much property and Jacob working for an English company until they could save up enough to buy a piece of land of their own. But sometimes even that dream, much like her dream of family, seemed as far away as the stars.

  * * *

  “Tess? Is that you?”

  She walked into the house just after three. “You’re home?” What was Jacob doing at the house during work hours?

  He came around the corner and into the kitchen as she shut the door behind her. All at once she was slammed with just how handsome he was. Rusty chestnut hair and eyes so blue as to rival the summer sky. His beard was neat and full and she loved the sight of it. To her it represented the pledge they had made to love one another. Yet it was the frown on his face that commanded her attention.

  “The neighbor called me at work. Your goats got out again.”

  Her stomach sank. Just the disappointed tone of his voice was enough to turn her heart over in her chest. “And you had to come put them back up.”

  He nodded. She could tell that he was angry. “Those goats are more trouble than they’re worth.”

  “But the money from the cheese—”

  “Doesn’t come close to the wages I lose when I have to come home from work early and put them back in their pen.”

  “They haven’t gotten out that many times.” She nearly slapped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late; she had already said the words.

  “They’ve gotten out plenty. They take your time away from the chores you need to be doing and they eat up more than their milk brings in money to replace.”

  Something snapped inside Tess. She worked hard. She did everything she had been asked to do. She lived her life in a godly manner, and yet, He seemed to pass her over. She might not be able to do anything about God’s plan, but she surely could alter her husband’s. “What are you saying, Jacob?”

  “I�
�ve got a man coming by tomorrow to look at the goats. I want them out of here by the end of the week even if I have to give them away.”

  Her mouth fell open. “You can’t sell my goats.”

  “I surely can. They are on my property, and as the head of this family, I can get rid of them if I see fit.”

  “But . . . but . . .” She couldn’t find the words she wanted. The goats had become like the children she hadn’t been able to have. She loved their weird eyes and scratchy fur on their long, sweet faces. “That’s not fair.”

  “What’s not fair is me having to leave work to come home and chase them around in one-hundred-degree heat.”

  She stiffened her spine. “You are not going to sell my goats.” Just saying the words went against everything she had been taught about being a good wife to her husband. The man was the head of the household. But Jacob was being completely unreasonable.

  “I can, and I will.” He started toward the door as if he had said what he needed to say and wasn’t hanging around to see if she had any feelings on the matter.

  That was the problem. The realization came to her like the clouds opening up and the sun shining down after a long rain. He didn’t care about her feelings. He didn’t care about her goats. He didn’t care how hard she worked. Nothing.

  She stopped in her tracks as he made his way to the door. She was unable to move as he pushed out of the screen door and into the bright and happy Oklahoma sunshine.

  But she wasn’t happy. And she hadn’t been in a long time. She was tired of Jacob coming home too exhausted to have a conversation with her but not too tired to scroll on the Internet on his company-provided smartphone. She was tired of him being surly and stomping around the house like an angry giant with a score to settle. Amish didn’t settle scores; they turned to God. But Tess wasn’t sure God was listening to them anymore. How had it gotten to this? How had it turned from simple inconvenience to outright arguing? And what could she do about it?

  She eased down at the kitchen table as the tractor engine started outside.

  Nothing. There was nothing she could do about it. Jacob Smiley was as stubborn as God made them. He had made up his mind. He was getting rid of her goats, and he hadn’t given her feelings even half a thought. She might not be able to divorce him—wasn’t even sure if that was even a consideration if she could—but that didn’t mean she had to live under the same roof with a man who had already forgotten the vows they had exchanged.