by Senft, Adina
Instead I should have written while sitting in this quiet kitchen that will soon be the domain of my brothers’ wives. When I think of what this kitchen used to hold and what it holds now, the silence can be a dreadful thing. But in it at least I can hear myself think. Our conversation was so brief that you would not know I had spent three days working up to it. Or how much of my heart it took to say those words to you. But now that they are said, I must stand by them.
I suppose you think it is unreasonable of me to have these feelings when we hardly know one another. And yet something in your spirit calls to mine, and it seemed like this might be a good foundation for a friendship and maybe more. But despite that, I understand your worries, and I will not burden you with a hope that looks to sustain itself on next to nothing.
Forgive me if my clumsy words have hurt you again. Bringing you yet more pain is the last thing I want to do. I just wanted you to know that with me, hope may be skinny from its diet lately, but it’s still there.
I pray I will hear some good news of you when you come back from your adventures in Mexico.
Until then I am
Your friend,
Eli
“Mamm?” Matthew peered into her face. “Who is the letter from? Are you crying?”
Amelia blinked too late—a tear had already escaped. Maybe more than one. Next to her, Elam gazed up into her eyes, his lip wobbling. Any second he would burst into tears, just because something had upset her. She gathered him into a hug and then got up to give Matthew a reassuring squeeze from behind. Surreptitiously, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
“It was a sad letter, but I’m better now.”
“Did someone die?”
Her heart constricted at the thought that her little boy would connect sadness only with death. Death itself was no mystery. Every Amish child was taught practically from birth that it was a part of life, something that was in God’s keeping and not their own and therefore not to be feared. But all the same, it was a heavy stone to lay on a child so young.
“No, not someone. Something. Something worth grieving for.” She cleared the roughness from her throat. “But now who would like some hot chocolate before bed?”
“Christmas chocolate?” Matthew looked hopeful, the letter forgotten.
“No,” she said with mock sternness. “I’m sure you were bad sometime today, so it’s a powdered packet for you.”
“Noooooo!” Matthew put his hands around his throat and pretended to choke. “I’ll do anything, but not the powdered stuff ! Not when it’s nearly Christmas!”
Shaking off the blues for the boys’ sake, she put milk on to heat and got the block of chocolate down from the high shelf where she’d put it, out of the reach of eager fingers. She shaved off a quantity and stirred it into the milk. “Mammi made this for me and your aunts and uncles when we were small, as a special treat,” she told them. “It—”
“—tastes like Christmas,” the boys chorused.
You knew you were getting old when your children could repeat the ends of your stories by heart. But some of her fondest memories were of the whole family gathered around the table eating gingerbread cookies and mincemeat tarts, drinking Christmas chocolate that always tasted richer and more satisfying than any other drink.
She could give her boys the chocolate. But a father? Lots of brothers and sisters to share memories with? A safe haven to come to with a mother in it who had time to bake six different kinds of cookies for occasions like that?
Oh, Eli.
She had chased him away, hadn’t she? And with him she’d chased away the possibility of making any kind of memory at all.
Chapter 16
The next day dawned bright and crisp—so bright that it hurt Amelia’s eyes to look at the snowy fields. Fence posts wore fluffy white hats, and cardinals flitted in and out of the trees, flashing red as they hunted for the last of the berries hanging under crusts of white. The broad sky felt as blue as the ice in the ponds—just as impenetrable, just as cold—but the sun held the promise of warmth in the far-off spring.
If her senses told her true, more snow was on the way and a white Christmas next weekend was guaranteed. The boys would be delighted. The last day of school before the holiday break was next Friday, and already they were planning how they were going to spend Christmas Eve with their cousins, who were arriving from Mount Joy that day in a big van. Amelia would be glad to see her sister and brothers and their families, who would be divided up between the home farm, Christopher and Esther’s place, and her own. It would take her out of herself—and Mamm would be so distracted she wouldn’t have time to pay too much attention to her.
She would close the shop between Christmas and New Year’s, since business slowed more the closer they got to the holidays. How wonderful it would be to immerse herself in her family and forget everything but their fellowship and love.
It would be so busy she would have no time to think, and that would be a Christmas gift in itself. And if she was lucky, the gap left by her broken tooth would have healed enough to allow her to eat some of the good things on the table.
She decided to walk to work. Pulling on her snow boots and wrapping a shawl around herself under her black wool coat, she was as warm as she could be. And the deep brim of her away bonnet had the advantage of cutting down the brilliance of the sun reflecting off the snow as she walked.
What she really needed was a pair of those sunglasses. Wouldn’t it be funny to have some like she’d seen on the tourist women? If someone looked into her face under the bonnet brim, all they’d see would be a pair of big black lenses, like a housefly. For the first time in several days, Amelia smiled at herself. How shocked Mamm and Mary Lapp would be at her wayward thinking.
Ach, well. Like starlings, worldly thoughts came and went and did no harm. It was the ones that stayed and roosted in your mind, pulling up the seeds that God had planted, that you needed to look out for. Resolutely, she batted away the thought of Eli Fischer, so persistent it had become more of an ache, and focused on the beauty of the world that God had made.
Behind her she heard the brisk trot of a horse and tramped a little deeper into the snow on the shoulder to give the driver room. When the horse slowed, she turned to see who it was.
Melvin, wrapped in a knitted muffler up to his nose, waved one mittened hand. “Want a ride, boss?”
“Denki. It’s a surprise to see you out here.” She patted the horse’s nose as she went around to the passenger side and climbed in.
He waited until she got settled under the buggy blanket, then shook the reins over the horse’s back. “I figured with the weather so nice you might be walking, so I came around the long way.”
“That’s very kind. Your poor horse probably didn’t appreciate the extra two miles, though.”
“She’s a tough old girl. She likes the exercise. Keeps her from getting fat.” A quarter of a mile went by in comfortable silence. Then Melvin cleared his throat. “I wanted to talk to you anyway, so it wasn’t much of a coincidence. An accidentally-on-purpose one, maybe.”
Talk to her, in this much privacy? “If you’re wondering what to get Carrie for Christmas, she was looking at flannel sheets in the store a couple of weeks ago. The ones in the display, the five-ounce ones that are really warm.”
“That’s good to know. But it wasn’t what I had in mind.”
Oh, dear. His mother was coming for Christmas. Or he was going to make her a firm offer on the shop. Or…
Amelia stifled the questions and lifted her eyebrows instead, inviting him to go on.
“It’s about your friend Emma.”
Amelia blinked. That was the last thing she’d expected him to say. “What about her?”
He seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. “Now, I’m not one to pass on the gossip, so don’t take me wrong. But I’ve heard others talking. I thought you and Carrie might want to drop a hint to her that she’s causing speculation and encourage her to walk a little m
ore circumspectly.”
Drat this bonnet and its deep brim. Amelia twisted in her seat to stare at Melvin front-on. “What on earth are you talking about? Emma is the most circumspect woman I know.” She hardly stirred out of her house, for goodness’ sake. What could the gossips possibly do with that?
“It could just be she doesn’t have much experience and isn’t going about it in the usual way.”
“Going about what?” Amelia squashed the temptation to grab him by the shoulders and shake it out of him. “What experience?”
“With courting.”
Her mouth dropped open, but no sounds came out. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say except a parrotlike, “Who’s courting?”
“Emma Stolzfus. And Aaron King. Apparently.”
Amelia yanked at the strings of her black bonnet and pulled it off. She couldn’t possibly be hearing correctly. “What did you say?”
“The word is that Aaron is courting Emma. And people are talking. So the next time you three get together over your quilt, you might want to hint to her that she should be a little more discreet about it. You have to admit they make an unusual pair.”
“They don’t make any kind of pair! Emma and Aaron are not courting. Good heavens. That’s impossible.”
Unbidden, her memory flashed to the day Eli Fischer had given her a ride down this very road, the day he’d asked if he could come and help out around her place. Aaron King had been walking out here by himself. She’d thought then that it was a little odd for him to be on foot so far from home, but had dismissed it from her mind in light of the emotional events that had happened afterward.
No. Completely impossible. There had to be another explanation.
“That’s what Carrie says, too. If they’re not, they’re not.” Melvin sounded as though the subject was closed, but Amelia hadn’t gotten there yet.
“Of course they’re not. You should have listened to Carrie and not said another word.” Then, in her agitation, she backtracked. “Who on earth would say such a thing? Emma looks after her mother and hardly goes out except to Karen and John’s or to pick up medicines or groceries in town. How can that be construed as dating Aaron King?”
“I understand they’ve been seen together, late at night.”
That was courting behavior—if you misunderstood what you were looking at. “By whom?”
But, like gossip, that couldn’t be pinned down either. Melvin shrugged and made the turn off Edgeware Road onto the county highway for the half mile into town. “Too bad he doesn’t still work for you. We could embarrass the truth out of him.”
“Dating Emma Stolzfus would not be cause for embarrassment,” Amelia said a little stiffly. “Any man would be lucky to get her.” But Aaron was not a man yet. He hadn’t even joined church. And therein lay the cause for talk.
With a quick glance, Melvin said, “Of course. That wasn’t what I meant. Sorry. But boys that age are easy to tease. That’s all.”
With the determination of a woman behind a six-mule team, Amelia turned the conversation to their upcoming day of work, but inside, resolve was firming up in her mind. Something was causing people to worry this subject, the way chickens worried a piece of bread when they bit off more than they could swallow. And there was the proof of her own eyes: Aaron King had definitely been leaving the Stolzfus place, a package under his arm. Between her and Carrie, they would pry the truth out of Emma and settle these rumors once and for all.
Emma did not deserve to have people whispering about her and smiling behind their hands at the thought of an old maid and a teenage boy in a courting buggy. No. She and Carrie were her best friends, and they would protect her from that humiliation. They would have to be quick, though. If Amelia’s tooth was to come out Monday, it wasn’t likely she’d be able for much on Tuesday—including their quilting frolic.
“Melvin, are you and Carrie going to Karen and John’s on Friday night for the potluck?”
“I think Carrie mentioned something about it. It’s Lena’s seventy-fifth or some such?”
“Seventy-eighth. Emma will certainly be there. I’ll make sure we get a chance to speak to her before anyone starts asking awkward questions.”
Melvin nodded, drawing on the reins to slow for the light at the intersection.
“In the meantime, if anyone says anything about it, tell them it’s not true.”
“If it’s not true, it might be hard to speak to her,” Melvin pointed out.
“If people have seen them together, there’s a perfectly logical reason for it,” she said. “He might be looking for work. Emma could have hired him to do some painting. It’s just a shame that the first conclusion everyone comes to is courtship—and that they don’t stop with thinking, like they should.”
Melvin glanced at her with a quizzical look as he negotiated the turn into the Steiners’ storage yard and his horse headed straight for the stalls. “I’m sorry it upsets you.”
“It’s not your fault.” But it did upset her. Because as soon as she heard about it, the speculation would upset Emma. Amelia could only hope that she wouldn’t hear about it from anyone but her best friends, in privacy, the subject broached with love and concern.
Friday evening Elam hung on to her left hand—which couldn’t have done much to save him if he had slipped, but she needed her right to hold the box containing the casserole dish of scalloped potatoes for the get-together. Presents were unnecessary, but a potluck where her neighbors could do something concrete for her was both a way of saying happy birthday and providing just a little for the widow. Matthew led the way down the drive, which her brother Christopher had shoveled after he’d done Mamm and Daed’s. Normally they’d go over the fields to the Stolzfus home place, but Elam would never be able to fight his way through the unblemished drifts. And if he did, he’d arrive soaked to his chest, and she might as well hang a sign on him inviting every cold germ in the county to come and visit.
The distance was too short to bother with hitching up the horse, and anyway, the exercise was good for them.
As long as she didn’t drop the casserole.
When they arrived at the big farm, Karen met them at the door. “Willkumm, Amelia. Hallo, you big boys. You grow two inches every time I see you. Here, let me take that box. Oh, scalloped potatoes. Mamm loves those. Let’s put them in the oven to stay warm.”
Amelia nodded over her shoulder, undoing Elam’s coat buttons and toeing off her boots at the same time. She ran her shawl through the sleeves of her coat and handed it and the boys’ coats to one of Karen’s girls. That way she’d be able to tell which was hers when it came time to go. Every woman knitted or crocheted her shawl with a pattern as individual as she was—all plain, of course, but some did a nice bit of openwork trim above the fringe, and some knitted and purled in a certain way. Their coats were pretty similar, but a woman could pick her own shawl out of a heap on the bed without too much difficulty.
In some congregations the Ordnung was so strict that it regulated the width of the pleats in a woman’s sleeve caps and where the brim of her Kapp could fall on her ears, not to mention how deep the hem could be on her skirt. The knitting pattern a woman used in her shawl was probably a matter of equal obedience in those places. But not, fortunately, in Whinburg, where Bishop Daniel and the elders had more important things to think about.
Matthew disappeared upstairs to the room of Karen’s youngest boy, who was also eight, allowing Elam to tag along. Amelia made her way into the living room, where a small crowd was gathered around Lena.
“Hallich Geburtsdaag,” she called from the edge of the group, earning a smile from the little lady.
“Denki, Amelia. If you’re looking for her, Emma went back to the Daadi Haus to get my six-o’clock medicine.”
Perfect. She looked around for Carrie but couldn’t see her in the crowded room. “Are Melvin and Carrie here?” she asked Erica, the wife of one of Old Joe Yoder’s many nephews, who cradled a baby in her arms.
&nb
sp; “Haven’t seen them, but it’s early yet.”
Hmm. Melvin and David had left the shop at three, when she had locked up and gone over to wish the Steiner boys a merry Christmas. Had they dropped in to visit someone on the way over? Or had something awful happened, like maybe they’d hit a patch of ice and the buggy had gone into the ditch?
No. She couldn’t think that way. As Erica had said, it was early yet.
As she visited and laughed with the other well-wishers, she kept an eagle eye out for Emma’s return, but she was certainly taking her time. Young Erica slipped out onto the back porch, where some of the men were, and when she reappeared in the kitchen, she had her husband, Josh, in tow.
Suddenly Amelia remembered what Brian Steiner had said about one of Old Joe’s nephews being interested in the shop. Oh, dear. She needed to talk to Emma, not fend off questions about property values and annual income. But she was trapped against the bookcase by a cluster of older ladies who were determined to give their best wishes to Lena on her birthday and who were as immovable as so many rocks.
“Amelia,” Josh Yoder greeted her. “Wie geht’s on this snowy evening?”
“Gut, denki.” There was no escaping now. Well, Carrie wasn’t here yet anyway. Amelia would wait until she could grab her, and then they’d corner Emma together. “And you? You’re brave, bringing the little one out so young.”
“He was so bundled up we could hardly find him to show him to Lena,” Erica said shyly. “Amelia, we wanted to ask you—I mean, we heard that—”
“We heard that your shop was coming up for sale,” Josh said, to his wife’s evident relief. “If so, I’d be interested. Have you got a solid offer?”
Half a dozen people stood within arm’s reach, all of them with ears. “Ja,” she said slowly. “Perhaps we could talk about this another time? It’s Lena’s day, and—”
