At Home in Pleasant Valley

by Marta Perry

  Friend. The word echoed in his mind. He had thought he wanted to be Anna’s friend, but all at once he knew he wanted to be more than that. And the idea scared him half to death.

  • • •

  “No, no, Sarah.” Anna gently removed the toddler, who was trying to reach the squeezer they’d set up on the picnic table in the yard, ready to do a big batch of tomatoes. “That’s not for little ones. You and Gracie play with your ball.”

  She tossed the ball across the lawn and watched Sarah run after it, her sturdy little legs pumping. Gracie stood, waving both hands in the air as if she’d fly. Apparently deciding she could go faster crawling, she plopped onto her bottom and sped after her cousin.

  “These tomatoes probably look like a bucketful of red balls to them,” Myra said, pouring a pail of tomatoes into the hopper.

  Anna shoved the wooden plunger down and began turning the crank. “Wouldn’t they have a grand time with them? We once went to a tomato battle . . .” She let that sentence die out.

  “You and your friend?” Myra didn’t seem bothered by the mention of Anna’s life in the English world.

  Anna nodded, watching the tomato juice pour out of the squeezer into a bowl. “Jannie and some other friends. It was a tomato festival at the county fairgrounds.”

  Liz had gone. And Carl, the boy Anna had dated for a month or two before realizing they had nothing in common other than sitting beside each other in class. Pete had been there for a while, grumbling and complaining.

  Then he’d disappeared for an hour and come back, bright and talkative. She should have realized what that meant, but she’d been too naive, and was just glad that Pete wasn’t making Jannie miserable any longer.

  “And they threw tomatoes at each other?” Myra cleaned the next batch, hands moving quickly as she cut out any bad spots.

  “Ja.” Anna smiled, forcing thoughts of Pete and his drug use out of her mind. “Picture a game of eck ball, only with tomatoes.”

  Myra giggled. “That sounds like fun. Nobody seems to play eck ball much anymore.”

  Eck ball, or corner ball, was a uniquely Amish sport. “Maybe boys don’t like getting clobbered with that hard ball.”

  “You’d never get me doing it, that’s for certain-sure,” Myra said. She glanced at the tomato juice, seeming to measure the amount. “I was thinking I could cook down some sauce and make spaghetti when the family comes on Friday.”

  “I seem to recall everyone telling you that you weren’t supposed to fix a thing,” Anna said. “This is to be a chance for everyone to visit with Joseph, not to give you extra work.”

  “Ach, spaghetti is easy enough, and I know the children like it. Besides, it is Gracie’s first birthday we’re celebrating, so we have to make cake, too, ja?”

  Gracie’s birthday. Anna’s heart clutched at the thought. “I can’t believe she’ll be a year old already.”

  “I know what you mean. When Sarah turned one—” She stopped, swinging around as the back door opened. Daad appeared, supporting Joseph as he made his way slowly out onto the porch.

  “We thought we’d come out and watch you work,” Daadi said.

  Joseph nodded, pressing one hand against his ribs. “Got to make sure you’re doing it right.”

  “You’d best be careful, or I might come after you with these tomatoes.” Anna held up red-splashed hands.

  Joseph chuckled and then groaned, clutching his ribs tighter. “Ach, don’t make me laugh. It hurts too much.”

  “Then you’d best stay away from these two little girls.” She nodded to Sarah and Gracie, who were rolling across the grass like a pair of puppies. “They’re being a circus.”

  He smiled, his face looking less drawn every day, it seemed. “They make me feel gut.” He settled in the chair Myra held for him, looking up into her face and saying something soft that made her smile and touch his cheek despite the tomato stains on her hand.

  Anna’s heart squeezed. The love between Myra and Joseph seemed to grow stronger with this adversity over Joseph’s accident and with the waiting to hear the results of Myra’s amniocentesis.

  She had been waiting these past few days, too, and she wasn’t sure what she was waiting for. A sign, maybe. Stay? Or go?

  Her emotions had been all over the place. She hadn’t even realized until she sat in worship on Sunday morning that she’d been considering staying. Thinking about being Amish again, forever. Committing herself to bringing Gracie up Amish.

  Then had come that overheard nastiness, and she’d found it impossible to hang on to her emotions. Luckily no one had been there to see but Leah.

  Of course they’d all found out anyway. If you wanted to keep anything to yourself, you’d better not belong to an Amish family, where one person’s trouble or joy belonged to everyone.

  She should have been annoyed that Samuel, of all people, had been the one to speak to her about it. Should have been, but wasn’t. Samuel had been through this situation, so he knew. And he cared—cared enough to talk about his own deepest feelings to her.

  Since then, they hadn’t had a private conversation. They’d both been busy, constantly surrounded by other people. Still, if he’d wanted to, he could have found some excuse to be alone with her.

  She glanced across the lawn. With the workday over, Samuel had gone on to his second job, working the big gelding. They were in the ring now. By this time, the horse was following him around like a puppy dog.

  Daad gave her the next pail of tomatoes. “I thought I’d help you and let Myra have a break.”

  She nodded, watching as Joseph held out his arms to his small daughter. Myra bent over them, her hand moving, probably unconsciously, to stroke her belly.

  “Are they going to be all right?” Anna asked the question softly, turning to her father as if she were a small child again.

  “It will be as God wills.” Daad’s fingers closed over hers on the handle. “They will deal with whatever comes, with His help.”

  She nodded, tears stinging her eyes. Her emotions were just too close to the surface for comfort.

  Daadi busied himself with cleaning the next batch. “Little Gracie likes to watch Samuel with the horses, doesn’t she?”

  Anna nodded, a little surprised by the change of subject. “Samuel certainly has a gift for training horses. I never thought he’d have that skittish animal practically eating out of his hand.”

  “Samuel knows how to be slow and patient. The creatures sense that. After all the troubles with his daad running away and his mamm dying, he’s turned into a gut man.” Daadi glanced at her, his eyes bright with curiosity.

  She saw instantly what he was thinking, and she took a mental step back. Daadi would be only too ready to jump into pairing them up, just like everyone else in the community. Matchmaking was their favorite sport, far more popular than eck ball had ever been.

  “Daadi, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.” Something she should have done before this, probably. “About the family . . .” She paused, surprised that her throat had tightened up . . . “The family that I hit with the car.”

  That had been the determining factor that finally sent her over the fence. Driving an English friend’s car, coming upon the Amish buggy on the dark road . . . For months she hadn’t been able to remember any of it, and even now she remembered very little. But it had been the final straw in her rebellion, the thing that sent her careening into a world she had been ill-prepared for, for all her eighteen-year-old bravado.

  “Aaron Esch and his wife and kinder,” Daad said, seeming unsurprised. “Ja, what about them? They were shaken up, bruised a bit, but no one was seriously hurt. You knew that then.”

  She had known it, but only because Leah had told her. That should have been her first thought upon awakening in the hospital. Instead, she’d been wrapped up in her own concerns.
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  Glancing at Gracie leaning against Joseph’s knee, Anna realized that even though the past years had been difficult, maybe they’d knocked the selfishness out of her.

  “I never talked to them. I never told them how sorry I was. There must have been a lot of damage to their buggy, too.” She had just walked away, taking refuge with her English friends, and leaving her family to deal with the consequences.

  “I took care of having their buggy repaired. That was only right.” Daadi’s face was grave, not minimizing what had happened, but not accusing her either. “Those Englischers, the ones that owned the car, I heard they wanted to give Aaron money so he wouldn’t go to court, but naturally he wouldn’t take it.”

  Naturally. That wasn’t the Amish way, and they wouldn’t take money for following the Ordnung, the unwritten rules by which all the Amish agreed to live.

  “I wish I could repay you for that. It must have been a lot—”

  Daadi stopped her with a hand on her arm. “There’s to be no talk of repaying between family, Anna. You are my child. Would you want little Gracie to repay you?”

  “Gracie hasn’t broken the law. Or broken her mother’s heart.” Her throat choked on the words.

  “Perhaps a mother’s heart is made to be broken, over and over,” he said gently. “That seems to make it stronger. As for the Esch family, if you want to ask their forgiveness, you can. Why don’t you mention it to Esther? They’re her second or third cousins, so she’d know how to talk to them.”

  “I will.” She’d forgotten that Mahlon’s wife was kin to the family. Asking their forgiveness wasn’t much, but it would go a little way toward clearing up the mess she’d made before she left.

  “And while we’re talking about cars . . .” Daad paused, studying her face. “I’m thinking it might be time for you to get rid of the car of yours that’s sitting in Joseph’s barn.”

  She could only stare at him, astonished at the strength of the negative feelings that rose in her at the words.

  She’d been thinking about staying, true. But to get rid of the car . . . maybe her reaction was telling her that she wasn’t ready for that at all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Anna walked along the road toward Rosemary’s house, two loaves of pumpkin bread in the basket on her arm, with a sense almost of having escaped. She ought to feel guilty for thinking that, but it had been so long since she’d been alone that she couldn’t seem to help it. She loved her family. She was grateful to them for taking her and Gracie in. Still, she couldn’t help the feeling of being slowly smothered.

  That was what she missed most about life in the English world. Not the presence of electricity at the flick of a switch or the ability to flip on the television and see what was happening in the world.

  No, what she missed was more basic than that. Independence. The ability to live her own life and think her own thoughts. Most of all, sometimes just to be alone.

  She turned in at Rosemary’s mailbox, walking down the gravel driveway toward the house. The loaves of pumpkin bread she carried were a thank-you from Myra, who’d been fretting that she hadn’t done anything to repay Rosemary for all the rides she’d given while Joseph was in the hospital.

  The drive rounded a stand of hemlocks and the house came into view. A long, stone one-story, it sat in an L-shape around a fieldstone courtyard furnished with a loveseat, chairs, and an umbrella-topped table. A gas grill snuggled against one of the walls, looking far more elaborate than most people’s stoves.

  When Anna reached the door, Rosemary pulled it open before she could ring the bell.

  “Anna, how nice! It’s good to see you. How’s Joseph doing? And Myra? Is the business going okay without him?” She took Anna’s arm, practically hauling her into the house.

  Smiling at the enthusiasm, Anna handed Rosemary the basket. “Some pumpkin bread from Myra, with all her gratitude for your kindness. And they’re well.” It took a moment to adjust to speaking English again, but then it seemed the most natural thing in the world. “Joseph is pretty antsy at not being able to do things, of course.”

  “Of course. Men are always terrible patients.” Rosemary headed for the back of the house, beckoning her. “Come into the family room and have some coffee. I’m dying to talk to you.”

  Anna followed her past a formal dining room and equally formal living room. “You have a lovely home.”

  Lovely, but the rooms were so perfect they didn’t look as if anyone used them.

  “It’s all right.” Rosemary seemed to dismiss the space. “We really live back here.”

  The hallway opened into a large family room where sunshine streamed through a skylight. The kitchen was in one corner, separated from the rest of the room by a counter. White leather couches formed a semicircle in front of a stone fireplace. The glass panels of French doors gave a view of a landscaped garden with a decorative pond in the center.

  Rosemary was in the kitchen, already pouring coffee into two mugs. “You will have coffee, won’t you? You just have to stay and visit.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Whether you were English or Amish, a cup of coffee was always a good excuse to sit and talk.

  “Over here.” Rosemary, carrying the mugs, led the way to a round table next to the doors.

  Anna joined her, inhaling the scent of the flavored coffee. “What a lovely garden.”

  “Not bad,” Rosemary said. “But it doesn’t really fit here.” She shrugged. “We thought we wanted to live in the country, but then we built a house and put in a garden you could find in the suburbs of any big city. Weird, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe so.” Anna hadn’t been thinking that, but now that Rosemary had pointed it out, she realized that what she said was true. The house and garden were a contradiction in the middle of farmland.

  “So tell me.” Rosemary leaned toward her across the table. “I’ve been hearing about you coming back after, what was it . . . three years away?”

  “About that.” Apparently it was too much to hope that the English, at least, wouldn’t be interested.

  “Why come back after that long? Because of the baby, I suppose.” She answered her own question.

  “Yes, because of Gracie.” That was true, though not for the reason most people seemed to think.

  “So this story that the baby is actually the child of a friend—is that true?”

  Anna felt reasonably sure her mouth was agape.

  Rosemary laughed. “That’s me, tactless to the end. Sorry about that, but I figure if you want to know something, you ought to come right out and ask.”

  Anna found she was returning the smile. The words had been said in such a friendly tone that it was impossible to take offense. Rosemary reminded her of Liz . . . forthright and honest.

  “I don’t mind telling you. Yes, Gracie really is the daughter of a close friend who died shortly after she was born. There wasn’t any other family.”

  “Sad. But the baby has ended up with plenty of relatives now, right?”

  “Right.”

  “We built this big house thinking we’d have babies to fill it.” Rosemary’s eyes were shadowed. “It hasn’t happened. Not yet, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry.” She wanted to ask what the doctors said about Rosemary’s chances of getting pregnant, since she wanted it so much, but she barely knew Rosemary, despite the woman’s quick friendliness.

  “No sense in brooding about it. That’s what my husband says.” She waved her hand, as if trying to dismiss the subject. “You must have found it tough, getting used to the real world after growing up Amish. How on earth did you manage all alone?”

  “I had some English friends who helped at first.” They’d soon fallen away, though. They weren’t family. “Even so, I wasn’t nearly as prepared as I thought I was. Getting a job, finding a place to live, getting my GED—all of it was new.”

&nb
sp; Funny, that no one else had asked that. Her family seemed to consider her life out there a blank page. Samuel, who knew what it was like more than anyone, had only talked about the adjustment of returning.

  “Rough.” Rosemary took a gulp of her coffee. “Was any of it what you expected? Was it worth it?”

  She considered. “The independence was great. Just being able to decide things for myself was so different from anything I was used to.”

  “Yeah, but there are downsides to that—like not having anyone care if something happens to you.” Rosemary sounded as if she understood that personally.

  Anna nodded. That had been the worst of it. “I made friends, eventually. People who became like family to me.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m talking too much about myself. Tell me about you. Where are you from?”

  That was always a safe question in the outside world. People always seemed to be from someplace other than where they were. If you asked an Amishman that question, he’d look at you blankly.

  “Originally Los Angeles.” She shrugged. “My husband changed jobs a lot at first. Always onward and upward. You know how that is. We saw this area when we were driving to Pittsburgh for a job interview. He had this vision that we’d settle down in the country, live close to nature, and he’d quit working so hard, but he never will.” She lifted her hands in a giving-up gesture. “He’s gone most of the time. Truth is, I’m bored.”

  That was how Anna had always felt as a teenager, bored out of her mind by the sameness of life here. Now—well, now she didn’t have time to be bored. Amish or English, she didn’t have time for that, not with a child to raise.

  “So tell me.” Rosemary’s curiosity apparently wasn’t slaked yet. “Are you really going to stay?”

  The blunt question gave her pause. She thought about her reaction to Daad’s comment about getting rid of the car.

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. She glanced at the clock. “I should be getting back.”

  “Do you have to?” Rosemary shook her head. “Well, sure, you’ve got stuff to do, I know. That’s the Amish. Always busy. Maybe if I didn’t have electricity, I wouldn’t be bored.” She smiled, standing when Anna did. “Listen, come back any time. Whenever you want to feel like an Englischer again.”