by Senft, Adina
“If anyone can save herself, it’s you,” Emma said, arching one eyebrow in her direction. “Just hope no one tells her he was at the shop. You’ll never hear the end of it.”
Wasn’t that the truth. “I knew I should have duct-taped Aaron King’s mouth before he left tonight.” She tried to snap her fingers in mock dismay, and they went numb. The snap turned into a feeble wave.
Oh, for goodness’ sake. To the phone shanty she would go on Wednesday, and no mistake. She’d take the first opening Dr. Shadle had, even if she had to close the shop. But first she had a wedding to get through.
Chapter 4
Mandy Lapp made a beautiful bride in her white organdy apron and cape over a new blue dress. And Mary Lapp made a happy mother-in-law as the groom and the last of her daughters said their vows to Bishop Daniel. Amelia wondered whether Mary would hire a teenage girl as a Maad to help with the gardening and housekeeping now that Mandy would have a home of her own. But then Mary was one of the most efficient women Amelia had ever met. She could probably keep up with both on her own—and take Saturdays off to relax on the porch and survey her kingdom.
It would be nice to hire one of the girls as a Maad. But what would Mamm say? She had firm opinions about a woman’s place, which would set her off on the subject of marrying again, and Amelia could not bear it. The very thought made her feel disloyal to Enoch, and it would hurt his parents dreadfully if they thought her eye was wandering before she’d even taken off her black.
The last verse of the hymn that brought the five-hour service to a close was the signal for the helpers to get up and make their way to the house to put the final touches on the food and begin bringing it out to the shed. Amelia remembered a time when, as a young wife, she would have been among them and, before that, as a teen girl, lingering around the Eck and admiring the pretty decorations, hoping a boy would notice her. But now her place was making sure Matthew didn’t stick a finger in the cakes to taste the frosting or Elam didn’t fall out of the haymow trying to keep up with the bigger boys’ games.
While the young men rearranged the benches and made a huge commotion setting up the tables, Mandy and her new husband went outside onto the lawn, where she was soon engulfed in a crowd of Youngie, all vying for her attention as she paired them off for dinner. The smart ones had written her in advance. The bashful ones had to get her attention now or find themselves sitting with their buddy bunch while the boy or girl each of them liked was taken by someone else. Of course, a boy’s special friend made good and sure she sat with him and no one else.
“Here I am,” Emma said quietly in her ear. “If Sarah Zook gets offended that I didn’t come to her wedding, I’ll send her to you.”
“It’s the bishop’s daughter,” Amelia murmured. “How could she be offended? Did both your folks come? Your mother? We could all sit together.”
“Pap has a hard time with this many. Church is one thing, but there have to be six hundred people here. Good thing the Lapps have a big shed.”
“With five daughters, Daniel Lapp probably started building it while they were still in school.”
To her relief, Emma smiled. “Nothing like planning ahead.”
“But your folks are well? Who’s looking after them?”
“Katherine and her family finally came for a visit. She was worse than you about pushing me out the door. Said it would look bad if our family wasn’t represented. Though how anyone would notice in this crowd is beyond me.”
“I’d notice.” Amelia squeezed her arm and took a firm grip on Elam’s little hand. On the other side of the shed, she saw Matthew wrap his arms around his Daadi’s waist and go with him. He’d be well looked after until the Zucker in the desserts took over, and then he’d go find his school friends, after which she didn’t hold out much hope for his good suit. “Come on. Let’s find a seat.”
The Ordnung in their district was lenient about seating arrangements at weddings. Instead of men on one side and women on the other, as it was during a normal meal after church, people mixed it up and families and friends sat together, relatives visiting and catching up on the news since the last wedding or funeral.
Perhaps this was why Amelia, Emma, and Elam found themselves sitting close to the enormous King connection. Maybe it was God’s hand, gently guiding them where they should go. Or maybe it was simply her instincts as a matchmaker. Whatever it was, Amelia looked up to see Eli Fischer taking the place next to Aaron King’s parents, directly across the table from her and Emma.
If she were a giggling woman, she might have done so from sheer delight. But since she was not, she merely smiled and made the introductions instead.
She wanted to glance to her right to see if Emma showed the slightest sign of interest, but Daniel Lapp raised his hand and the crowd bowed their heads in a silent grace. And by the time the clatter of cutlery on plates and the passing of food began, it was too late. The moment that would have told her the truth before Emma’s diffidence covered it up had passed.
Ach, well. It was her duty to help her friend along if she possibly could. If it was God’s will that these two were marked out for one another, nothing she could do would stop it. If not, then at least she would have protected poor Eli from the girls looking at twenty-five with such horror that they’d accept a ride home after the wedding from anything in pants.
“So, Amelia Beiler,” Martin King began, passing her a bowl heaped with creamy white potatoes, “the rumors of your selling the pallet shop, are they true?”
Goodness. Since Eli was staying with the Martin Kings, she would have thought he’d have gone home and told them what was what. But on the other hand, it was good to know he could keep a conversation to himself.
Awkward for her at this moment, but good.
“I’m not sure yet,” she told Martin. She helped Elam to some potatoes and then took two. She loved them steamed like this, with good pork-roast gravy. “Until I find some other way to support myself and the boys, the answer will probably be no.”
“I could think of a way.” Martin laughed and gave Eli an elbow in the ribs.
Amelia could feel the blood seep into her cheeks. I will not blush. I will not let him see I have any idea what his silly joke is about.
“Are you in town for long, Eli?” Emma asked smoothly, passing him a huge bowl of mashed turnips, as golden as the butter melting on top of the mound.
“Not long. I’m here visiting Martin and his family, and I’m invited to not one but two weddings in Whinburg on Thursday. Quite a crop of those this year, isn’t there?”
“Lots of Youngie hereabouts.” Amelia’s admiration for Emma’s imperturbable calm rose to new heights. How could she keep from coloring up when everyone knew what a sore subject this was? Emma went on, “Whose weddings on Thursday? My sister and her husband went to Sarah Zook’s today, and we were going to go with them, but I told Amelia I’d help her with the children.”
“We?”
“My parents and I. They’re getting old, and Pap doesn’t do so well in crowds anymore.”
“Ah. Well, there’s Young Joe Yoder’s second-youngest boy and Old Joe Yoder’s last granddaughter before the great-grandkids started coming. My great-aunt married Old Joe’s brother, so you see I had to be invited.”
Again Amelia surprised herself by laughing. His eyes crinkled with good nature more than the prospect of the Yoder guest list, which could very well be double the size of the Lapps’. Old Joe had had eleven siblings, after all, and his wife had ten. No one, not even Old Joe, could keep track of the number of nieces, nephews, and grandchildren he had. But it explained, as Mamm often said, why you tripped over a Yoder every time you stepped out the door.
“How are you going to get to both?” Martin wanted to know.
“Easy. I go to the service for one and the supper for the other. That way each group thinks I was there the whole time and they just missed me in the crowd.”
“Until they get together and compare notes,” Martin’s
wife, Anna, pointed out. “You might be in trouble then.”
“Who is going to waste their time comparing notes about me?”
Anna just looked at him as if he were daft. Only every single woman on both sides of the connection, that was who. Amelia caught her eye, and they exchanged a smile. He might be clueless on that subject, but it showed his modesty, too.
Martin reached for a stick of celery from the jar in the center of the table. “Amelia, while you’re figuring out what to do, just remember one thing.”
Clearly he was not one of those folks who were sensitive to what a person wanted to talk about and what she’d rather avoid. Amelia resigned herself to listening until he was ready to change the subject—or Emma stepped in again and made him. “What’s that?”
“Well, among the rumors I hear was that you were entertaining an offer from an Englischer.”
“One of our customers asked about it.”
“You won’t go selling to someone outside our faith, will you?”
“Have you been talking to my mother?”
He looked a little surprised. “No, not lately. Why, did she tell you the same thing?”
“In almost the same words.”
“Then she’s a wise woman. No sense bringing in the Englisch here when an Amish man could do the job better.”
“He just inquired, Martin. There’s no harm in that.”
“The harm is in putting ideas in your head to look outside the fold for a buyer. You know what happens when we do that.”
We get more money for our shop, that’s what. The Amish were a frugal people, herself included. If she were a buyer, she’d want the best value she could get. But the view from the seller’s side of the fence was different. “I’m not looking anywhere. I haven’t given any thought—or hardly any—to selling at all.”
“Just be sure you don’t sell to an outsider.” Martin nodded his head at his plate. “You’d be disobeying God’s will. Remember, the children of Israel ceased to prosper when they looked outside the tabernacle to the gods of the land.”
Bernard Burke would probably be embarrassed to death that Martin King considered him a god of the land. “I’m not looking outside the tabernacle, Martin.” Amelia glanced at Emma in a silent plea: Help me change the subject.
“Here, Martin, try some of these pickled beets.” Emma handed him a plate piled high. “I put them up a couple of weeks ago—a new recipe with a bit of spice to it. If you like them, I can give it to Anna.”
“Denki.” Martin took the beets and shoveled some onto his plate. “Eli?”
Eli Fischer took some and handed the plate across to Amelia. He had no sooner let it go than her arm went numb all the way to the elbow, her fingers lost their strength, and she dropped the plate with a crash. It flipped over and landed in the mashed potatoes, staining them fuchsia, and beets and juice arced over half a dozen people, ruining shirts and prayer coverings alike.
Amelia wanted to crawl under the table and burst into tears. “I am so sorry. Oh, Emma, your Kapp. Please forgive me.”
“Mamm, look at the potatoes. They’re purple!” Elam dragged the bowl over and dug another one out.
Amelia, practically weeping with mortification, grabbed as many napkins as she could find and tried to dab the stains off Emma’s Kapp and Eli’s shirt, while Anna reached for more at another table and went to work on her husband’s vest. “Lucky thing he wore his purple shirt today,” she said. “People will just think he’s sweating.”
“That’s right.” Martin’s humor seemed to be unaffected by his sudden baptism with pickle juice. “Eating’s hot work.”
Eli’s shirt felt warm from his body heat, and Amelia realized at just about the same time he did that she was pressing a handful of napkins to the chest of a near stranger. He took the napkins from her, and she sat, a fresh wave of crimson flooding her cheeks. He must think she was the most forward, reckless woman in the whole settlement.
“I’m so sorry, everyone. If you bring your things over to our place, I’ll launder them for you tomorrow and bring them back.”
“No harm done.” Emma grinned at her, wearing her fuchsia-and-white Kapp like a crown of diamonds and rubies. “I have others, and if I didn’t, I’d make one. Don’t go boiling and bleaching on my account.”
“If I boil water for one, I may as well do two,” Anna said comfortably. “Don’t you worry about it. Accidents happen, and rubber fingers happen to everyone.”
“It’s my fault anyway,” Eli told her. “The plate was heavy. I should have made sure you had hold of it before I let go.”
Their kindness cooled her humiliation a little, but it didn’t help that all the way through dessert, and afterward while everyone was visiting, every time she turned around, she saw Eli, behaving as though nothing were odd about wearing a fuchsia-and-white shirt.
What a kind man. Amelia searched the crowd for Emma. It was time to get those two together and talking.
Daed had had a horse once that never came when he called it. He finally had to stable it the day before he needed to go anywhere in the buggy, because invariably the horse would make sure it was eating in the farthest reaches of the field whenever he needed to go to town.
Emma was being like that today.
As busy as any of the Lapp women, she pitched in and helped with the cleanup. Of course Amelia couldn’t very well stop her when both arms were loaded down with plates and serving bowls. And when the last of the dishes were done, she and Carrie and several of the other young wives wiped down the benches and tables, making sure everything was clean before they went into the wagon for the families hosting weddings on Thursday. In fact, Carrie and Emma chattered as they worked, making Amelia wish she had let Carrie know her matchmaking plan well in advance. She’d been so taken up with the pallet shop that it hadn’t even occurred to her.
With a sigh she left them to it and went in search of Matthew and Elam. Daed and Mamm would be getting ready to go soon. The boys weren’t anywhere in the barn, so as she crossed the yard, she kept an ear out for the sounds of play. It hadn’t snowed yet, but the ditches were running now, and boys and water attracted each other like magnets.
She kept up a rhythmic rubbing of her left arm as she walked. Surely sometime this afternoon the feeling would come back into it. She couldn’t even wiggle her fingers, so numb it was. Maybe it was a good thing she’d closed the shop today. Trying to manage everything one-handed would have been impossible. Perhaps a good night’s sleep would relax the arm and get the blood flowing past the pinched nerve. On the way home, she’d ask Mamm for a packet of Kamille for tea to help her sleep. At least she knew that worked. That mustard poultice had done nothing more than make her hands stink.
The boys were not in the house. Nor were they in the chicken house, and they wouldn’t have gone into someone else’s equipment shed or into the granaries. Amelia walked a little faster. All the buggies had been drawn up in neat rows by the older boys in one of Daniel Lapp’s fields. Matthew was reaching the age where he wanted to drive, and buggies and horses were a source of fascination. Were he and Elam out here, clambering in and out of the young men’s courting buggies to see who had installed a fancy sound system or stuck some new combination of red and yellow reflectors on the back?
Sure enough, she could see short legs and small black hats bobbing as the little boys ran hither and yon. There was Matthew at the head of the pack, with Elam doing his best to keep up. Her steps slowed, then stopped altogether as Eli Fischer stepped out from between two buggies.
“Hello again.”
He had not yet changed his shirt. Oh, dear. Maybe he had only the one with him on this visit. “Have you had to explain to a hundred people what happened to your clothes?”
“At least. Maybe two hundred. And I told them all that Amelia Beiler flung a plate of beet pickles at me.”
For one frozen second—and because it was exactly what she’d feared—she thought he was serious. And then those eyes crinkled and she
realized he was pulling her leg. “Did you say what you did to deserve it?”
His smile broadened. “It depends. To the men I say I offered you too low a price for the shop. To the women I say I was getting fresh and you put me in my place.”
She laughed. “Eli Fischer, how can you tell such lies?” But she couldn’t help it. The picture of her flinging a plate of pickles at a man for undercutting her sale price was just too funny. Especially when she didn’t even have a sale price to cut in any direction. As for the fresh part, that was so out of the question she didn’t even stoop to acknowledge it.
“Actually, if anyone was so concerned as to ask, I just told them I was wearing the price of my own clumsiness.”
“I’m sorry you have to do any such thing.”
“Is that arm all right?” He dropped his gaze, and she realized she was still rubbing the arm up and down, up and down, while they spoke. “Does it pain you?”
“It’s a pinched nerve, I think. I’m seeing the chiro this week”—I hope—“and it will be set right. Nothing to worry about.”
“Are you able to hitch up? Do you want some help?”
Again so kind. “Denki, but no. The boys and I came with my parents, Isaac and Ruth Lehman. I think they’re getting ready to go, so I came out here to find my two rascals.”
“There was a pack of them hounding young Aaron King.” Eli turned to point toward a gray buggy at the end of a row, where six or seven of Matthew’s little gang were crowding in to look. “Apparently he has had his buggy upholstered in burgundy velvet and has an on-board battery to power the speakers for his sound system.”
“My word.” No wonder the little boys were agog. “And I’ll bet he’s not playing hymns on it either.”
“Likely not. I’m a bit surprised at Martin King for allowing it. He never did anything like that when we were rumspringing together.”
“Anna’s had a fancier upbringing. Isn’t she from up around Mount Joy?”
