Heart in Hand: Stitches in Time Series #3

by Barbara Cameron

  He met her eyes and she felt her heart race. “I think I can speak for my daughter in saying we’d love to.”

  The daughter in question grinned and returned to her essay, looking much happier.

  “I’m not sure what I have to offer,” Anna said, rising to look through her supplies.

  “Maybe Daedi can show you how to make macaroni and cheese.”

  “Sounds like a good idea, “Anna agreed, her gaze going to Gideon.

  “The dish, I mean. I know how to make it. Let me see if I have everything I need.”

  Sarah Rose made a production of jabbing her pencil in a final, big period on the essay paper. “Done!”

  It was business as usual at Stitches in Time a few days later.

  Except every time Anna glanced at Naomi she saw that her cousin wore a quiet smile as she worked on a quilt.

  Naomi looked up then and blinked at Anna. “What?”

  Anna laughed and shook her head. “I don’t think you’ve stopped smiling since you got married.”

  Her cousin’s smile grew wider. “You’re probably right. Nick’s been grumbling a bit, though. He thinks it’s a little strange that we don’t go on honeymoons.”

  “You’ll have to show him that staying home is better,” Mary Katherine said, and then she looked up and put her hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

  Leah gave her an arch look as she stood and put her sewing down on a nearby table. “But you thought it.”

  She started toward the back room and then, a few steps away, turned and fanned herself with her hand and grinned.

  The three of them looked at each other, and then they collapsed in giggles.

  Naomi knotted a thread and clipped it with scissors. “So, Anna, how was your date with Gideon?”

  “Date?” Mary Katherine looked up from her weaving. “You had a date? When did this happen? Why didn’t I know?”

  “Coffee,” Anna said. “It was coffee.”

  “Why didn’t I know about coffee?” Mary Katherine walked over to sit beside Anna in a chair in the circle before the fire. “When did you have coffee with Gideon?”

  “I feel like I’m back in schul,” Anna said, shaking her head. “Aren’t you both a little old to be teasing me like I have a new boyfriend?”

  “You should have seen the way they were looking at each other at the wedding,” Naomi told her cousin.

  Anna rolled her eyes.

  “You can’t blame us,” Mary Katherine told her. “You teased us unmercifully when we were dating Jacob and Nick. And nosy? Oh, my.”

  “If I was as nosy as you say—” she broke off as Mary Katherine shook her head.

  “Yes?” Naomi looked up from rethreading her needle. “Finish what you were going to say.”

  “I’d be wondering why Grandmother’s making a big fuss with lunch today.”

  Naomi looked at Mary Katherine. “I don’t think that’s what she was going to say.”

  “Sure it was. You know Anna’s always interested in her stomach.” Mary Katherine checked the clock and got up to walk across the room to lock the door and turn the sign to “Back in an Hour.”

  They filed into the back room and found it filled with the delicious scent of baked ham and scalloped potatoes.

  “What was all that I heard out there?” Leah asked as she set the ham on the table.

  “Naomi was teasing Anna,” Mary Katherine said, sneaking a sliver of ham.

  “I was not!” Naomi denied. “I just asked her about her having coffee with Gideon.”

  “Now the two of you need to stop teasing Anna,” their grandmother chided. “You’re sounding like teenagers again.”

  She tilted her head and studied Anna. “You had coffee with Gideon?”

  Anna started to protest that her grandmother was behaving no better than her cousins when they heard a knock on the shop door. Anna started for it, but her grandmother passed her the oven mitts in her hand. “You get the potatoes out. I’ll get the door.”

  “Ignore them and they’ll go away.”

  But Leah was hurrying out of the room.

  Mary Katherine took dishes from the cupboard. “Is she expecting someone?”

  “I don’t know any more than you do,” Naomi said.

  When it had been a few minutes and their grandmother hadn’t returned, Anna walked to the doorway and looked out into the shop.

  “Grandmother!” she gasped, and the mitts fell from her fingers.

  “What’s the matter? Is someone robbing her?”

  Her cousins pushed her out of the way, then stopped dead in their tracks and stared.

  She stood there just a few feet from the doorway, Henry’s arms encircling her waist. Lifting her chin, she smiled at them. “Henry and I have something to tell you.”

  11

  Married? You’re getting married?”

  Feeling as if someone had pulled the rug out from under her feet, Anna looked from her grandmother to Henry. “This is a surprise!”

  Leah smiled at him. “We’ve known each other since we were in school. He was even one of the attendants at my wedding to your grandfather.”

  “I guess we thought the two of you were just friends,” Mary Katherine said.

  Henry patted Leah’s hand lying on the table. “We were. We are. The best marriages start with friendship, don’t you think?”

  Anna had to agree with that and not just because that was what had happened between her and Samuel. You became friends with each other in school, went to singings and other activities, and started feeling deeper emotions, falling in love with each other.

  Leah helped herself to a slice of ham and passed the platter to Henry. Anna watched them smile and exchange a look of love. Well, she thought, they had certainly not shown this when I saw them together before.

  The platter came to Anna. She speared a small slice of meat and put it on her plate, then turned to pass it to Naomi.

  All the while Anna kept thinking how she never expected her grandmother to get remarried. Why, she wasn’t elderly but she was . . . old. Her grandfather had died so many years ago.

  Scalloped potatoes and bread were passed around, and then they bent their heads in prayer.

  Anna chewed her ham and thought about how she and her grandmother now had more than being a widow in common—God seemed to be sending other men to them. He hadn’t set aside just one for them. She hadn’t been certain how she felt about dating Gideon, but now that she’d tried it, she was glad she had.

  “Are you planning on getting married this year?” Mary Katherine asked.

  Leah exchanged a look with Henry. “We’re not sure yet.”

  They aren’t sure after they’ve known each other so long? Anna wondered.

  “There’s no rush,” said Henry. “If Leah wants to wait, I’m fine with that.” He gazed at her, adoring. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  If—If—things progress with Gideon, it will be next autumn before we marry as well, Anna thought. She didn’t think he was the kind of man to behave so impulsively that he’d ask her to marry him this month. And certainly she didn’t see herself going from that panic about dating him to marrying him just weeks later.

  “Anna?”

  She blinked and looked into Naomi’s amused face. “What?”

  “I was just saying that this is such a wonderful surprise. I wonder if there’ll be any others this month?”

  “Well, no one can accuse you of being sub-tle,” Anna said, emphasizing the pronunciation of the word.

  Naomi didn’t take offense but instead just laughed and elbowed Anna the way they’d always done when they were young girls teasing each other. “That’s no answer.”

  “Okay. Here’s my answer: don’t look at me.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Their meal was full of conversation and good food and warmth on a cold day. They’d known Henry all their lives so once past her surprise, Anna felt comfortable with the news
and even wondered why she’d never thought of him as a possibility for a second husband for her grandmother.

  “Have you told anyone else?” Mary Katherine asked.

  Leah shook her head. “I wanted to tell you three first. Henry and I will be stopping by to see your parents later this afternoon.

  Finally, after a glance at the clock, Leah sighed, wiped her lips on her napkin, and set it beside her empty plate. “Back to work. We’ll have a busy afternoon with the holidays coming.”

  Leah turned to Henry. “I’m so glad you could come have lunch with us today.” She slipped her arm inside his and smiled up at him. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

  “Mary Katherine, if you and Anna don’t mind doing the dishes, I’ll go open up with Grandmother,” Naomi suggested.

  Anna saw the expression of disappointment flash across her grandmother’s face before it was quickly changed.

  “Naomi, we need your help in here,” Anna said quickly.

  “Three people are needed to help clean up lunch dishes?” she asked with disbelief, but she began clearing the table.

  Mary Katherine tilted her head in the direction of Leah and Henry as they left the room. She pursed her lips and mimed making kisses. Anna laughed.

  And her face froze as their grandmother walked back into the room.

  Leah lifted her brows. “What’s going on?”

  Biting back laughter, Anna turned to put dishes in the sink. “Mary Katherine was just telling us a story about when she and Jacob got engaged.”

  “Anna, I’m going to go out and get ready for class,” Mary Katherine said, backing out of the room. “If you and Naomi don’t mind doing the cleanup.”

  Leah stared after her for a moment, shook her head, and then reached for a roll of aluminum foil and wrapped up the leftover ham. “This’ll make some nice sandwiches for a soup and sandwich supper tonight.” She hummed a hymn while she finished putting the leftovers in the refrigerator.

  “You were looking thoughtful during lunch,” Naomi said the minute their grandmother left the room.

  “I seem to be missing a lot lately,” Anna said after a moment. “I didn’t pay attention when we talked about your wedding plans, and now I didn’t see this coming with Grandmother and Henry.”

  Naomi accepted the plate Anna handed her and began drying it with a dish towel. “Didn’t you notice that Mary Katherine and I were just as surprised?”

  Anna considered that. “No, I didn’t think you were.”

  “He’ll be a good mann for Grandmother,” Naomi said. “He always showed he loved his wife before she died. Both he and Grandmother have been alone for a long time. I think it’s wonderful that God has brought them together now.”

  She wiped the dish and put it away. “Love’s not just for the young.”

  Anna put her hands on her hips and pretended to glare. “What are you saying?”

  Naomi just threw her arms around her and hugged her. “You’re hardly old.”

  She’d been so impulsive, so in love with Samuel, that she’d married before Mary Katherine and Naomi. So then she’d become a young widow.

  Calling herself a widow made her feel old no matter how young anyone else thought she was. Everyone thought of widows as being women who lost their husbands after a long marriage. But life wasn’t like that. Husbands and wives died young as well as old. Samuel wasn’t the only proof of that or Gideon’s wife, Mary. There were other widows and widowers in the community.

  Calling herself a widow also made her feel lonely. Being alone didn’t automatically mean being lonely, but the word widow sure did. Most young women in her community went from their parents’ home to the one they’d share with their husband—sometimes with time spent with her husband’s parents while the newlyweds built their home. So living by yourself as a woman wasn’t done as often as she’d heard it was done in the Englisch community.

  Sometimes people in her community tried to get those who’d lost their spouse to look at another in a similar situation to remarry. It seemed like a good idea for widows and widowers to remarry. After all, if you’d been happily married, of course you’d want to be again. And with the shared experiences of marriage, you had many things in common.

  They finished the dishes, and Anna was hanging up the dish towel to dry when a she heard Naomi make a low sound of approval. She glanced at Naomi and then followed her gaze to the doorway.

  Gideon stood there, and when she looked at him, he smiled slowly at her.

  Naomi left the room, but Anna never saw her go.

  Gideon glanced around at the décor in the Italian restaurant he’d taken Anna to. There were framed posters of scenes of the Italian countryside on the walls, vases of big, fat sunflowers on the tables, and the aromas in the place were incredible.

  “How’s your chicken parmigiana?” she asked him.

  “Delicious. Your gnocchi?”

  “I love it. Reminds me of the little dumplings my mamm makes of leftover mashed potatoes. These taste like little potato and cheese pillows.”

  She sighed. “But we didn’t need to come to someplace so expensive. It’s crazy to charge the prices they do here.”

  “Is that why you chose the cheapest thing on the menu?” he asked quietly, setting his fork down on his plate. “There’s no need to worry about my wallet.”

  “I think we should go Dutch,” she said. “Isn’t that what people do these days?”

  “A modern woman, eh?”

  “It just seems fair,” she said, putting another gnocchi into her mouth.

  “Did you split checks when you and Samuel dated?”

  Her laugh was rueful. “We never went anywhere that cost us. We went to church stuff, singings, you know. You were there at those kinds of things with Mary.”

  “We got out for a special night now and then.”

  “Samuel and I were saving for our own house,” she said, her expression becoming faraway. “He wanted us to have our own place, not live with his parents or mine until could buy one. So he worked all the time. When he wasn’t doing that, he was building the house. You know the story. It seemed like everyone we knew came and helped with something.”

  Gideon nodded. “I was happy to help. Mary and I would have had to do the same thing if my parents hadn’t decided to sell us the farm and move into the dawdi haus of my brother’s place. They’re older than your parents, and Dat’s arthritis was getting too bad to take care of the farm.”

  He buttered a roll and took a bite. “Later they decided to move in with one of my brothers since they have a special needs child and they could use the help.”

  “Grace and Eli are living with his parents right now,” Anna said. “Working their fingers to the bone and wanting to put their roots down . . .” she trailed off, looking down at her plate.

  “But they have each other,” he said. “And they’ll value what they build together more, don’t you think?”

  “I guess.” She lifted her gaze. “If you get to live to enjoy it.” She set down her fork. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say something like that. It sounded bitter, and I’m not bitter anymore. Or angry at God.”

  “That’s good,” he said with a grin. “I’m sure He appreciates that.”

  She laughed and nodded. “Well, I was pretty angry that after all that waiting for marriage with Samuel, I got so few years with him.”

  “I don’t know anyone who isn’t angry at God after they lose someone they love.” He looked up as the waitress came to refill their coffee cups, thanked her, and waited for her to leave. “We don’t always understand God’s will but we just have to go on faith that He knows what He’s doing.”

  “True.” She straightened and smiled at him. “So let’s talk about something more pleasant. How’s Sarah Rose?”

  “She wasn’t happy she couldn’t come tonight.”

  “Maybe she could join us next time we go to a restaurant.”

  He studied her, liking the way she looked at him with a directness
that had always been a trait of hers even when she was a young girl. He didn’t know her as well as he wanted to yet and suspected that she wouldn’t be the calm woman Mary had been—even a little shy and reserved years after they’d been married.

  “Would you like there to be a next time, Anna?” He reached across the table to touch her fingertips with his.

  She nodded. “I like her. She reminds me a little of myself at that age.”

  “I think you’re right.” He considered what it might be like to live with two strong-willed females in the house. It might not be quiet and easy. But it would certainly be interesting.

  He thought he might like that a lot.

  “How about some dessert, folks?” the waitress returned to ask.

  “I saw brownie sundaes on the menu,” Gideon told Anna. “Isn’t that one of your favorites? You bring brownies to church a lot.”

  Surprised, she nodded.

  “We’ll both have one,” he said to the waitress.

  “One for the two of you?”

  “No, one for each of us,” he corrected.

  “Be right back with them,” she said and took their plates with her.

  “We could have shared one,” Anna said.

  “I don’t dare come between you and a brownie sundae,” he told her seriously. “I need all my fingers to do my work.”

  “I’m not quite that bad.”

  “I saw you get after Samuel for stealing a bite of your brownie once at a church lunch,” he said.

  She grinned. “I’m surprised that we’re seeing each other with what we know.”

  “What can you possibly know that’s negative about me?” he asked, pretending to be offended.

  “I heard about that incident when you and a couple of your friends sneaked off to drink a keg of beer during your rumschpringe.”

  “Got deathly sick and could never look at a beer again,” he said, laughing. “That was the extent of my wildness. I didn’t really want or like the beer. It was just something I think we thought we needed to do then.”

  Shared memories. They had so many of them growing up in their tight-knit community, bonds that came from attending school together, holding church services in each other’s homes, and having a common belief in hard work and putting God and family first.