“The usual signs,” Naomi said dryly. “The secret looks you and Jacob exchange when you think no one’s looking. No coffee. The constant eating and the way you’ve been drinking milk at every meal—especially the drinking of glasses and glasses of milk. And you haven’t complained about that monthly visitor that has given you such trouble for ages now.”
“I see,” Mary Katherine said after a moment. “I had no idea you were so observant.”
Leah hugged her. “We’re happy for you.”
Naomi and Anna and Jamie gathered her in a group hug. “Us, too.”
“I don’t understand why you waited to tell us,” Jamie told her, finishing her coffee and setting her mug in the sink.
Mary Katherine shrugged. “I remember my mamm had several miscarriages. I just felt I wanted to wait until we were sure things were okay.”
Leah looped her arm around Mary Katherine’s waist and hugged her. “You’ll be just fine.” She glanced at the clock, then at everyone. “It’s that time. Are you all ready for the after-Christmas sale?”
Jamie took a deep breath and nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
The trees were stark and bare against the gray winter sky. A light snow fell, swirling through the branches and softening them, piling softly against the sharp edges of the tombstones.
Anna carefully picked her way along the path between the stones, noting new ones among the old ones. Up ahead she saw a particularly poignant grave—one that still made her sad—was the grave of Lina, a cousin of hers, who’d died just days after her tenth birthday from a buggy accident.
And just ahead, the simple, unadorned grave of her husband, Samuel.
The sight brought a pang of grief as it always did. She knelt in the snow and brushed the flakes that had accumulated in the letters carved into the stone with her gloved hand: “Husband.” Not “Husband” and “Father.” She regretted that almost as much as his death. How she’d longed to have a child with this man so full of life and laughter.
How she’d struggled with God’s will. Why give her the gift of this mann He’d set aside for her only to yank him back to heaven such a short time later?
Yes, heaven. That was where she knew Samuel dwelled now. She knew he was in a better place, but for so long she’d fought against that. She’d wanted him to be with her. She needed him to be with her.
Schur, she’d learned to live without him. She didn’t know how a person did that when her heart had been ripped out of her body, but somehow she’d learned to do without it.
Until a certain man and his little girl who’d been acting out because she missed her mother came along.
“I’ve been seeing this man,” Anna began. “You remember Gideon. I think it started because we both lost our spouses.”
She frowned. “Well, maybe a little. For me it began with a little girl who lost her mother. You see, I didn’t just lose you, Samuel. I lost that little girl and that little boy I always wanted to have with you when you died.”
She found herself telling Samuel about Sarah Rose, about how she misbehaved to get attention, but what a sweet child she was.
“Jenny said that she fell in love with Matthew’s kinner before she fell in love with him,” she told Samuel. “I fell in love with that little girl before I fell in love with Gideon.”
She looked up at the sky and watched snowflakes falling to the ground without a sound. She felt such peace here.
“Yes, I finally did what you insisted I must.” She sighed. “Remember, we never argued. Well, except when you wanted to be too protective. I did as you asked. I hope you’re happy. I didn’t care if I ever met someone else and fell in love.”
She frowned and wiped away more of the snow that had fallen on the gravestone. “You remember Gideon. You always liked him. He and Mary were like you and me. We were so involved with each other that we barely saw anyone else.” She sighed. “Maybe that was good. You and Mary are already gone. At least we had those years.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone moving in the cemetery. She looked up and realized that Gideon was walking between rows of headstones with Sarah Rose, who couldn’t be heard but was clearly chattering a mile a minute.
Then she caught sight of Anna, tugged on her father’s hand, and made him look in Anna’s direction. Gideon stared at her across the distance that separated them, his gaze serious. He bent his head to listen to Sarah Rose, and then he nodded.
Sarah Rose hurried across the cemetery, careful of stepping on a grave, and stopped in front of Anna. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“We came to give this to my mamm.” She held out a card she’d made, and Anna took it to study it. Sarah Rose had lettered “Happy Birthday” on a piece of folded construction paper and pasted some sparkly fake gems from the craft store on it.
Anna felt her throat tighten as she studied the card. The printing was uneven, the jewels gaudy, the block lettering uneven. But the card showed such love.
She felt tears burn at the back of her eyelids, but she blinked them away and looked up to smile at Sarah Rose. “It’s beautiful.”
“Daedi says Mamm can see it up in heaven.”
“He’s right.” Anna looked up at Gideon and found him staring at her.
Sarah Rose grinned, revealing two missing teeth. “I’m going to go give it to her.” She looked to her father for permission and, when he nodded, ran off in the direction Anna knew Mary was buried.
“Beautiful afternoon,” Gideon said. He shoved his hands in his pockets and gazed around them, then looked back at her. “Aren’t you cold?”
Anna nodded. “A little.”
He bent and offered his hand to help her up. After a moment’s hesitation she took it and, when she rose, was glad for it. The cold ground she’d been sitting on had made her stiff and awkward. She stumbled when she took a step, and his hand tightened, steadying her.
“How come you’re holding Anna’s hand?” Sarah Rose asked, suddenly at their side.
“Your daedi was just helping me up,” Anna said quickly. She brushed the snow from her skirts. “I’d better be on my way.”
“We got hot stuff with us,” Sarah Rose piped up. “It was a special ’casion to come here. Want some?”
The corners of Gideon’s mouth quirked. “Special occasion. Coffee for me, hot chocolate for her. Why don’t you have some before you leave?”
Anna started to make an excuse but saw the expression in the child’s eyes—bright hope. It was Sarah Rose’s late mother’s birthday, and she wanted to share it. How can I leave? Anna asked herself.
“I’d like that,” she said and smiled when Sarah Rose slipped her mittened hand into hers. The three of them—Sarah Rose in the middle—walked to Gideon’s buggy.
They sat inside it, a quilt covering their legs, and Anna drank coffee from a plastic cup Gideon had brought in the picnic basket. A small handful of tiny marshmallows floated atop the hot chocolate Sarah Rose held. Anna sipped her coffee and felt something thaw in her a little.
“Well, some people say, ‘Thank goodness for Friday.’ I say, Thank goodness for the New Year.” Jamie set the take-out pizza box in the center of the table in the back room, threw herself into a chair, and sighed dramatically. “I had a real hoo doo here today.”
“A ‘hoo doo’?” Anna asked as she joined her at the table and opened the box. “Mmm, pepperoni.” She sat down, picked up a slice, and took a bite.
“You know, it’s someone who is so rude and obnoxious you want to say, ‘Who do you think you are?’ ”
Mary Katherine laughed. “You know you wouldn’t do that.”
“I guess I’m still not in the best of moods,” Jamie admitted. She looked at the spread of food on the table: pizza, dips and chips, soft drinks. Even cookies for dessert. “This doesn’t quite replace Girls’ Night Out. I so wish we could do one again.”
She looked at Mary Katherine and then Naomi. “You two had to go and get married. And Anna’s next.”
“We don’t know that,” Anna told her. She dug a taco chip into the spinach and artichoke dip.
Leaning over, Jamie opened up a drawer and pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil and began scribbling on it.
“What are you doing?” Naomi leaned forward to pick up her can of Diet Coke.
“Making a list.” Jamie chewed on the pencil. “We could still do it sometime.”
“And watch a movie and eat pizza and sleep over?”
“Sure we could,” Mary Katherine said. “The husbands could do without us one night.”
“That would be so great.” She scribbled on the pad some more. “I’m sorry to sound like I’m in such a bad mood.” She stopped. “It’s not been a good last few months. You know I had trouble with the college messing up my student loan. Steven dumped me. I tell you, I’m staying up late to make sure this year leaves for good.” She picked up her soft drink. “This is one year I’ll really be toasting a New Year.”
They lifted their drinks—Mary Katherine’s was a bottle of grape juice in deference to her pregnancy—and Jamie made a toast to the New Year being a good one.
Then she set her soft drink can down on the table and frowned.
“What’s the matter?” Naomi asked her.
“I’m just thinking of adding another resolution.” She studied her list, then looked up. “I’ve never heard any of you talk about making resolutions.”
“I barely know what they are,” Anna told her and shrugged. “I do sometimes pray to change how I think about something, but that’s not the same thing, is it?”
Jamie laughed and shook her head. “No. A lot of people make a resolution to lose weight, and they eat less and go to the gym. Then they lose their determination. Sometimes that starts about the end of January.”
“Why make resolutions then?” Mary Katherine asked.
“Every year you think it’ll be different,” Jamie told her.
“Do you want to share yours with us?”
Jamie smiled at Naomi’s question. “When I get them finished. You know Anna will just drive me crazy asking until I do.”
“I will not!” Anna protested. “I’ve been much better about that sort of thing the past few months.”
“She has,” Mary Katherine agreed, looking thoughtful. “I think true love has made Anna more mellow.”
Anna snorted. She glanced at her cousins, and they were laughing, too, and shaking their heads.
Mary Katherine was the first to stop laughing, and she sat there, regarding Anna with a sober face. “Seriously, you do seem different somehow lately.”
“True love,” Naomi teased. “It’s softened her.”
Rolling her eyes, Anna reached for another slice of pizza. “Maybe I’ve just matured a little.” She put the slice on her plate but didn’t eat it. “I know it hasn’t been easy sometimes to be around me while I’ve grieved over Samuel.”
Mary Katherine’s expression softened, and she reached across the table to touch Anna’s hand. “We love you. It hurt to watch you grieving. We never minded anything you said or did even when you lashed out. You hurt, so we hurt.”
Anna knew she didn’t dare take a bite of pizza. She’d never get it around the lump in her throat.
“You know we’re just teasing you because we love you.” Naomi got up to peek out the door when they heard the bell over it tinkle as someone came in. “It’s Grandmother.”
“I shudder to think how they’d be if they didn’t love me,” Anna told Jamie.
“I think it’s so neat that you guys are such good friends,” Jamie said. “Most of my cousins are scattered around the country. I’ve barely seen some of them, and there’s two I haven’t even met. Their families moved, and we never got together.”
Jamie reached for the cookie jar and pulled out an oatmeal raisin cookie. She looked at Mary Katherine and grinned. “I think I just got into a good mood.”
“All it took was one of my oatmeal raisin cookies?”
“That’s it.” Jamie looked around the table. “And having lunch with the three of you. Did you know there’s a saying that cousins are your first friends?”
“That’s true,” Naomi agreed.
“Everyone done with this?” Jamie asked. When they all nodded, she pulled a plastic container from a cupboard, filled it with the leftover pizza, and put it in the refrigerator.
“What are you guys whispering about behind my back?”
“We thought we’d see if you’d like to be our honorary cousin,” Mary Katherine told her.
Jamie’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, guys, that is so sweet.” She went around the table and hugged each of them. “Thank you.”
Anna accepted Jamie’s hug and watched her return to her seat.
“So, did you all have a nice lunch party?” Leah asked, walking in to put up her jacket and purse.
“The best,” Jamie told her. “I’m an honorary cousin.”
Leah smiled. “Well, that’s wonderful. Does that mean I get to call you my granddaughter?”
“Look at that,” Anna said, grinning. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jamie speechless.”
“Oh, stop,” Jamie finally managed to say. “My grandmothers died when I was young. I’ve always felt I missed out. I would love to have you as a grandmother!”
Leah leaned down to hug her. “I have a surprise for the four of you.” She reached into her purse, withdrew four envelopes, and passed them out.
“What’s this?” Naomi asked, frowning as she pulled out a check.
“Bonuses,” Leah announced. “We had a very good year.”
“Wow! Oh wow! This’ll cover my last semester tuition. I think you’re the fairy godmother,” Jamie exclaimed. She jumped up and hugged Leah, then did a little happy dance.
They heard a knock on the shop door.
“I’ll get that,” Jamie said. “Suddenly I’m in a really good mood!”
“I imagine if I said we’re going to close a half hour early that mood would get even better,” Leah mused, her eyes alight with mischief.
“Wow! Double wow!” She stopped in front of Leah, gave her a smacking kiss on her cheek, and fairly danced out of the room.
“This is going in savings,” Mary Katherine said, tucking the check into a pocket of her dress. “It’ll help pay for the hospital if I decide to have the baby there.”
“I need to talk with Nick. See if we should put it in the bank or in the business he bought.” She looked down at the check, then up at them. “It was expensive for him to buy Abe Harshberger’s tour company. I thought it was a big sacrifice for him to stop driving a van, but he looks so happy taking tourists around in a buggy. Maybe it was a good decision after all.”
“It’s not just his work that makes him happy,” Leah told her, setting the teakettle on the stove. “It’s you and the church he joined.” She turned to Anna. “And what will you do with your bonus?”
“I don’t know.” Anna fingered the check. “I don’t need anything.”
Leah walked over and hugged her. “Of course you don’t. You’ve always had everything, even when you thought you didn’t. He’s watched over you and seen to that.”
Anna didn’t have to ask who her grandmother meant. She knew the He her grandmother referred to was God. She’d forgotten sometimes when she was angry at Him after Samuel died, in her pain of losing the man she loved more than anything.
But now she was beginning to see that God had sent someone else to her, someone who loved her, someone who wanted to walk the path of life with her.
What else could she possibly need?
15
Gideon had always considered himself a patient man.
After all, the work he did required him to take a tiny seed and nurture it for months, hoping that God would help him with a fruitful harvest. The longer that he did the work the more he trusted that God worked with him and all would be well.
But lately, he noticed a growing restlessness in himself. He was so used to working
hard, and winter was a time of rest—not just for the fields, but the farmer himself. But after weeks of doing maintenance on equipment in the barn, building new bookshelves for Sarah Rose, and taking care of assorted other winter projects, Gideon still had pent-up energy and wanted to be outside.
There was a change in the weather. He noticed it the moment he stepped outside. Long experience had him scanning the sky—lightening a little earlier each day. He stood there, listening to a whippoorwill call. Some said there would be no frost after you heard a whipporwill. Avid birders—and many of his friends in the community were—said so. He only knew that he’d seen a flock of Canadian geese fly north the day before, and that was a sure sign, one he knew to be true.
Oh, and the reappearance of his elderly neighbor who was just home from Pinecraft, Florida. Snowbird, he thought, and smiled. The man said his arthritic old bones couldn’t take Pennsylvania winters any longer and so he basked in the Florida sunshine with his wife.
Gideon bent to scoop up a handful of the rich earth beneath his feet. He sniffed it, formed a ball with it to test its texture, then let it drift through his fingers.
“Are you playing in the dirt?” Sarah Rose said behind him.
He turned and saw her nightgown peeking out from under the hem of her coat. Rubbing his hands together, he reached for her. “I’m going to get some dirt on you, little one!”
Sarah Rose shrieked and backed up, but when she tried to run, one slipper got caught in a muddy patch and she landed on her fanny. Laughing, she held out her arms. “Help me up!”
He bent and let her climb on his back like the little limber monkey that she was and began walking the fields with her. She looped her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek to his. “Are we gonna go see Anna today?”
“Ya,” he said, watching where he was going. He knew the fields like the back of his hand, but you never knew what could have dropped or blown into them overnight. And he had precious cargo hanging on his back.
“What are we gonna do?”
“What would you like to do?”
Heart in Hand: Stitches in Time Series #3 Page 16
