“But I shouldn’t have said the things I did. I should forgive him.”
Her mudder kissed her forehead. “It’ll come, dear one. It’ll come.” She rubbed her back. “Why don’t you put on a robe, go sit by the fire in the living room and dry your hair?”
“I think I’d rather just climb into bed.”
“Allrecht.”
“Mamm? Before you go, tell me the story again, the one about you and Daed.”
Her mudder laughed softly and gathered her into her arms like she was a little kind. “You always loved that story, you and your schweschders.” She fell silent for a moment and gently rocked Mary Elizabeth.
“Once upon a time there was this boy, this tall, handsome blond boy with the most beautiful gray eyes, who went to the same schul with me but he never really saw me. It was the last year of schul—I think we were about thirteen or fourteen. All the other maedels thought he was so handsome, too, but he didn’t seem interested in any of us. He was so serious about his studies, you see. He wanted to learn everything he could. At recess he’d even sit there on the sidelines and read these big books about farming while we were playing volleyball or just talking and laughing.
“And then one day this big dog came running on the playground outside the schul. I don’t know where he came from, but he ran into a group of us and all the maedels went running, screaming, and before I could run away the dog knocked me down and I thought he was going to bite me. Your daed chased him away and helped me up, and he pulled out a bandanna and wiped away my tears. And he looked at me, really looked at me. And we couldn’t stop looking at each other.”
“And one day when you were old enough he asked you to marry him.”
“He did. And we had three beautiful dochders and lived happily ever after.”
Mary Elizabeth smiled. How could she not believe in love after hearing that story all her life? “I love that story.”
Her mudder hugged her, and Mary Elizabeth inhaled the scent of lavender her mudder grew and liked to tuck into her dresser drawers.
“Sweet dreams, lieb. See you in the morning.”
She smiled. “See you in the morning. Tell Daed gut nacht.”
“I will.”
“And Mamm? Danki.”
Her mudder smiled and left the room. Mary Elizabeth climbed into her bed and pulled her quilt up around her shoulders. And slept.
3
A vase full of sunny daffodils sat on a nearby table, but it looked like Christmas in the Zook sewing room.
When you sewed authentic Amish quilts for a shop patronized by tourists visiting Paradise, Pennsylvania, you started sewing them days after the last Christmas and worked on them up until the week before the next one.
The Zook women didn’t mind. All of them loved working on the quilts whether they were traditional Amish quilts or more modern Christmas-themed ones.
Linda, their mudder, was humming a Christmas hymn to get them in a festive mood. Lavina and Rose Anna joined her but Mary Elizabeth wasn’t feeling particularly joyful today. Matter of fact, she thought it better suited her mood to work on an Old Maid’s Puzzle quilt. But they didn’t have an order to make one so for now, she needed to work on one of the quilts Leah had commissioned.
She watched Lavina sewing a quilt with big, bright scarlet poinsettias. Before she’d married David Stoltzfus, she’d sat with them sewing every day. Now that she had to run her own home she couldn’t always join them every day, but she managed three or four days a week.
Their sewing room was an explosion of color in fabric and yarn set on shelves her dat had built. He often chided them that they had enough fabric to start their own store but they knew he was teasing them—especially when he just built more shelves without being asked.
Each of them had chosen a Christmas quilt pattern. Mary Elizabeth stitched on the snowflake quilt, her mudder, a log cabin pattern with Christmas touches of holly leaves and berries, and Rose Anna cut pieces of fabric for a wall hanging with a family of snow people.
Mary Elizabeth found her thoughts wandering back to the conversation she’d had with Sam several days ago. She frowned as she remembered how she’d gotten so frustrated—nee, angry—that she’d gotten out of the truck and tried to walk back home. He’d followed her, trying to persuade her to get back into the truck. If it hadn’t been raining, if lightning hadn’t slashed across the sky, she’d never have gotten into his truck.
She knew it was childish of her, but she’d needed to work off her anger. Pacing her bedroom after she got home hadn’t helped.
He was never returning home. And he hadn’t asked her to follow him into the Englisch world.
It was time to think about seeing someone else. There was a singing this Sunday after church. She’d be going . . .
“Time for a break,” Linda announced. She stood and put her quilt down on her chair.
Rose Anna, always ready for a break, jumped up and followed her from the room.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Lavina asked her quietly.
“About a break?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I guess it’s no secret that Sam and I went for a drive to talk about us, is it? Or talk about how there isn’t an ‘us’?” Mary Elizabeth frowned as she set her quilt down.
Lavina shook her head and looked at her with a sympathetic expression.
“Well, too often people say they know how someone feels, but you really do know.” Mary Elizabeth said.
“When David left the community he was gone a year. It was a very long year.”
“At least he came back. Sam doesn’t want to. And that seems to be his last word on the subject.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Mary Elizabeth found herself blinking back tears. Determined not to cry, she took a deep breath and rose. “Well, now I know. So, I’ve decided I’m going to the singing on Sunday. I’m not moping another minute over Sam Stoltzfus.”
Lavina hugged her. “I’m happy for you if that’s what you want.”
“It wasn’t what I wanted, but it’s what I have to do.”
“Lavina? Mary Elizabeth? Are you coming down?” their mudder called.
“Be right there!” Lavina called back. She turned to Mary Elizabeth. “Do you want me to bring some tea up to you?”
Mary Elizabeth shook her head. “Mamm or Rose Anna would just ask what’s wrong. You won’t say anything?”
“Of course not.”
They went downstairs and Mary Elizabeth found to her delight that her grosseldres were joining them for tea and cookies in the kitchen. She’d missed them so much this past winter when they visited Pinecraft, Florida.
Miriam, her grossmudder, was scolding Abraham, her mann, for piling a half- dozen cookies on his plate. “You’ll spoil your supper,” she chided and she tried to look stern, but her blue eyes twinkled.
“Gut to see you, Grossmudder, Grossdaadi.” Mary Elizabeth leaned down to kiss the top of his snowy white head. She giggled as he drew her into a hug and rubbed his beard over her cheek. She’d always loved the way it tickled.
Bending, she kissed her grossmudder’s wrinkled cheek. “Don’t worry, Grossmudder. You know he’ll be hungry for supper when it’s time.”
Abraham bobbed his head. “Never missed a meal. Especially the ones my fraa cooked for me.” He gave Linda a fond look. “Not that you’re not a wunderbaar cook.”
She smiled as she poured tea. “You’d best say so since I’m cooking supper tonight.”
Mary Elizabeth took a seat at the table and watched her gross-eldres as they exchanged loving looks, pats on the hands resting on the table between them. What must it be like to love like that? she wondered. Love for so many years?
“Cookie?” Lavina asked, holding them in front of her to get her attention.
She took one. They were her favorites—her mamm’s oatmeal cookies with butterscotch morsels. Her mudder would ask her if she wasn’t feeling well if she didn’t eat one or two.
&
nbsp; But it tasted dry and bitter in her mouth.
As soon as she could, she escaped upstairs to the sewing room, claiming she had quilting class tomorrow and didn’t want to get behind. She was able to sit with her own depressing thoughts and sew for some time before the others joined her.
When she found herself sighing and feeling sorry for herself even after her schweschders and mudder joined her to sew, she gave herself a stern talking to.
She had a wonderful life whether or not she had a mann in it—or even someone dating her at the moment—a warm, wonderful family, a safe and secure home. And a job that was fun and endlessly creative. Every day she could stay in her home and be with people she loved and do something that paid well.
Time for her to do what she’d heard an Englisch friend say to herself once: “Get over yourself.”
So she sewed until she needed to stand and walk around a bit, and then she decided to help her mudder make supper. And after supper was eaten and dishes were washed, she turned to her mudder.
“Would you mind if I took some fabric in to donate to the shelter tomorrow?”
“Nee, that’s fine.”
“Got enough of it,” her dat muttered as he ate a second piece of pie. Then he glanced up and grinned.
She’d started volunteering at a shelter for battered women along with Lavina months ago and thought at the time she was doing it for others. But along the way she wondered if she was supposed to learn that life wasn’t supposed to be just about yourself.
After she gathered enough fabric to stuff a shopping bag, she carried it downstairs and left it by the front door so she wouldn’t forget it when Kate came to pick her up the next day.
She was used to making something beautiful out of little scraps of fabric sewn together with care and attention and imagination. It was time to look at her life that way.
* * *
No one could make you feel more like a jerk than a woman. Not your boss, not your mudder or dat.
No one.
In a foul mood, Sam hammered a nail into the wooden window frame, glad he had something to vent his temper on. He had feelings for Mary Elizabeth. It seemed like he always had. But like his two bruders, he’d left the Amish community when they felt they just couldn’t handle the way their dat treated them.
He should have known that once Lavina, his new sister-in-law, had persuaded his bruder, David, to return home that Mary Elizabeth would start thinking that he should, too.
Were all women born romantics?
He hadn’t been able to return to the Amish community as David had. Maybe it was wrong not to forgive his dat for the way things had been between them, but that was the way it was. When he returned for Christmas he saw that his dat had changed a lot, but there was still a problem between them, one that a visit didn’t fix especially when Amos acted stiff and wary of him and John. They’d been back a number of times since then helping on the farm on Saturdays, and he and John hadn’t felt any lessening of the tension.
Schur, their dat didn’t shout at them or belittle their efforts at farming the way he used to. And he treated their mudder better than he had before.
But there was still this prickly reserve . . .
So that left Sam with his apartment he shared with John, the youngest bruder, and the job he’d worked for more than a year now with an Englisch construction company. He didn’t mind not being given the farm as David had. After all, David had returned home and put up with their dat’s unpleasant behavior while he underwent chemotherapy. Neither of his bruders had.
Sam wasn’t sure how much of Amos’s change in behavior had been realizing God had given him a second chance or how much David had forged a new relationship with him. But David deserved the farm. He’d always loved it.
Sure, he was lonely sometimes. He missed Mary Elizabeth, his friends, his church. John had been enjoying the time away from their dat, had viewed it as his rumschpringe. Several times Sam had found John partying with his friends in their apartment and had worried over his drinking and dating women who seemed . . . rather forward compared to the women in the Amish community.
Although, Mary Elizabeth was not a traditional sort of Amish maedel. She’d always been more confident, more outspoken than other women. He’d liked that. Too often the maedels pretended to be everything they thought the man they were interested in wanted. They deferred to him to the point that they weren’t themselves.
He didn’t want someone who did that. He’d seen his mudder spend her life so desperate for her mann’s love that she’d accepted treatment that wasn’t gut for her. Maybe now she’d gotten the kind of marriage she’d hoped for. Maybe he didn’t have to worry that Amos behaved harshly to her. Or worse, raised his hand when no one was around to see.
Sam was so lost in his thoughts it took a moment to realize that a shadow had fallen over the window in front of him.
“Time for lunch.”
“Right. Thanks.”
The job foreman looked at what Sam had done, nodded with satisfaction, and moved on.
He walked out of the house they’d been working on for the past two months. They were making gut progress. He’d parked his truck under the shade of a nearby tree. He let down the tailgate and sat on it with his lunch box.
“Hey, how are things going?” Peter asked him. He hopped up on the makeshift seat.
“Pretty good. Nearly finished with the windows. You?”
“We have another day on the roof.” Peter looked up, shading his eyes from the sun. “Weather should hold up.”
Tall and lanky, Peter took off his straw hat and wiped his forehead with a bandanna.
They bent their heads and said a prayer of thanks. Sam might have left the community, but he hadn’t forgotten the way he’d been raised.
“How’s Sadie?” he asked Peter as he unwrapped his sandwich.
“Gut, but she’s pushing to get married.” Peter unwrapped his sandwich but didn’t immediately bite into it. He sat there looking at it.
“What’s the matter? You love ham and cheese.”
“Lost my appetite.” He looked at Sam. “Why is it maedels are so interested in rushing to get married?”
Sam thought of Mary Elizabeth. He shook his head. “They’re ahead of us in a lot of ways. Schul. Thinking of marriage. Of having kinner. They’re raised that way.”
He bit into his own deli turkey sandwich. “They don’t do the crazy risky stuff we do,” he said with a full mouth.
“I think jumping into marriage too soon is pretty risky. I mean, there’s no divorce.” He shuddered.
“True. The gut thing is that we know the maedels pretty well growing up with them. It’s not like the Englisch who don’t often know the one they’re marrying as long.”
Peter nodded. “You’ve got a point.” He ripped open a bag of chips and offered it to Sam.
He took a handful and munched thoughtfully. “Mary Elizabeth and I had a talk the other day. She wants me to come back home. And she wants the same thing as Sadie. She didn’t say November specifically, but I know it’s on her mind.”
With a sigh, he took another bite of his sandwich. “I don’t want this repeated but the Zook schweschders have been interested in the Stoltzfus bruders for some time.”
“Ya?” Peter dug out more chips and chewed them. “One’s been caught so far.”
Sam winced. “I wouldn’t call it caught.”
“What would you call it?”
He had him there. “Well, David is very happy. Marriage is fine for some. I’m just not ready yet.”
“Me, either.”
“I’m happy single.”
“Me, too.”
Sam finished his sandwich and opened a baggie of store-bought cookies. He offered it to Peter, but he shook his head. “Mamm made brownies. She sent one along for you.”
He brightened. “Ya? I always liked your mudder.”
“She likes you, too.” He finished his sandwich, tucked the wrapping in his lunchbox, and brought o
ut the brownies. He handed one to Sam and bit into the other.
The foreman stopped in front of them. “Man, you guys always have the best lunches.”
Peter held out the plastic baggie containing another brownie. The foreman took it with a grin, thanked him, and moved on.
“Brownnoser,” Sam muttered.
Peter laughed. “You’re just jealous.”
“Ya.”
“You know, I don’t have any reason to brownnose the boss. I’m thinking of starting my own business.”
“Really?”
Peter nodded. “It’s time.”
Sam thought about that. Peter was two years older than him.
“I want to work for myself, not someone else,” Peter told him. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about the same thing.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“So what do you think? Want to join me?”
“Join you?”
Peter nodded and pulled a bottle of iced tea from his lunch box. “Think about it. We can talk some more tomorrow.”
Sam nodded and pulled out his bottle of lemonade. “Maybe you can bring some more of those brownies.”
“Wouldn’t that be considered brownnosing?”
“Not unless you’re making me boss.”
Peter laughed and clapped him on the back. “Partners, Sam. Partners.”
* * *
“What’s in the bags?” Kate asked Mary Elizabeth when she picked her up the next day.
“Mamm said we could donate some extra fabric. Lavina’ll be here in a minute.”
“No hurry.” Kate drummed her fingers on the steering wheel.
Mary Elizabeth studied her. She’d known Kate, an Englisch police officer, for several years but she’d never seen her in a state of . . . suppressed excitement like today.
“Are you okay?”
Mary Elizabeth looked at Kate. She was a petite woman with enormous energy, only perhaps ten years older than her, but she had eyes that looked like they’d seen so much. Mary Elizabeth supposed that was because before she was a police officer she’d been in the military. She worked, took care of her two young children and her husband, and still found time to start then run a quilt class at a local women’s shelter.
Seasons in Paradise Page 3
