“Have more potato salad,” his mudder urged. “You look like you’ve lost weight.”
“Don’t fuss at the boy,” his dat muttered. “Maybe he’s not hungerich.”
Sam looked at him and their gazes locked. David had told Sam that their dat had changed a lot and he had to a large degree—Amos didn’t use to get through a day without shouting or ordering his sohns around. But there were times like now when he’d look up and find the old man scowling at him, his thick black brows beetling over his dark eyes, making him feel like a kind.
His mudder passed him the dish of baked beans and then the bowl filled with corn on the cob.
“I can’t eat more,” he protested.
“We’ll send some food home for you and John so you’ll have it for supper.”
“Maybe he likes Englisch food better,” Amos said. “Fancy restaurant food.”
“Hardly,” Sam said. He hadn’t been in a restaurant in ages. Well, he and Peter had gone to a pizza restaurant recently. But Peter had treated him. So he schur wasn’t spending money on fancy restaurants.
As he ate, he listened to the conversation around the big old kitchen table and thought how different the atmosphere was from when he lived here. His mudder had always chattered to lighten the mood, while his dat sat at the head of the table and glowered and been as unpleasant as possible.
Lavina seemed to fit in well with his family. His dat actually smiled at her and complimented her cooking. He was happy for her and not a bit jealous of her or David. But oh, how he wished a meal had been this pleasant. He never would have left if it had.
“Sam? Mary Elizabeth tells us Leah may have you and Peter help her with the renovations on her new shop.”
He glanced up and saw Mary Elizabeth watching him from her seat across the table.
“Ya. Peter’s working up a bid.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I should be going. I’m supposed to meet him to help him with it this afternoon.” He glanced at his bruder. “Don’t worry, I’ll still be helping you most Saturday mornings.”
“I appreciate the help, but if you need to work for Leah to earn some extra money I understand.”
“Family comes first,” Amos said bluntly.
“Here, Amos, have the first piece of pie,” Lavina said, handing him a plate.
How like his mudder Lavina seemed at that moment. Back when he lived at home his mudder was always trying to avert a blowup between his dat and one of his sohns.
Amos started to say something, and Lavina turned to Rose Anna. “Would you get the ice cream?”
“There’s ice cream?” Amos asked, clearly distracted from whatever he had been about to say.
“Ya,” Lavina beamed at him. “You know I always have ice cream for pie.”
“I’ll get it,” Rose Anna said, getting up and walking to the refrigerator.
Sam realized that it was the first time Rose Anna had said anything since they’d all taken seats at the table. He wondered if she missed John today . . .
He hadn’t liked making excuses for John not being here today to help. The fact was that John wasn’t sick. And when he got home they were going to have a serious talk.
He scraped up the last bite of potato salad, ate it, then wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Well, I’d better get going.”
His mudder jumped up and pulled plastic containers out of a cupboard. “Take some leftovers home for you and John for supper.”
Amos scowled but said nothing. Sam rose and put his plate and silverware in the sink.
Lavina sliced two pieces of pie. “Here, Waneta, give me a container so we can send home some of the pie.”
“Danki, Mamm, Lavina.”
Waneta handed him a bag loaded with plastic containers. “Tell John I hope he feels better. Call me if you need me. John always used to get terrible colds this time of year.”
“I will, Mamm. I’ll be here with him next Saturday.”
Or else, Sam thought.
He pulled up in the parking lot of the apartment complex just as Peter drove his buggy in.
“Hey, good timing!” he called as he walked over from the visitor parking space. “Whatcha got there?” he asked, gesturing at the bag in Sam’s arms.
“Leftovers for our supper tonight.”
“Great! When do we eat?”
Sam fumbled his key in the door lock.
Peter slapped him on his shoulder and chuckled. “Relax, I know you meant for you and John.”
He breathed a sigh of relief as he unlocked the door and walked inside. “I have some soft drinks in the refrigerator. Want one?”
“Schur.” Peter followed him into the kitchen and watched him put the plastic containers inside the refrigerator. “Looks like you’ve got beer, too.”
“They’re not mine. They’re John’s. You can have one if you want.”
“Hey, you finally back?”
Sam turned to see John, still dressed in his t-shirt and pajama bottoms, leaning against the kitchen doorway. He yawned then rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Did you bring back food?”
“Do you think you deserve to eat it when you didn’t help?”
“I wasn’t feeling good.” His voice held a bit of a whine. He muttered a curse word as he banged his toe on a chair in the small kitchen.
Sam grabbed a soft drink for Peter and himself and slammed the door on the refrigerator. “Yeah, well, maybe next time you could party less on Friday night and help out on Saturday. I’m not making excuses for you again. And watch your language.”
He turned to Peter. “Let’s sit at the dining room table and go over the proposal.”
They settled at the small dinette table off the living room, and Peter spread out the papers he carried. “So, was Mary Elizabeth there at the farm today?”
“Yes, how’d you know?”
Peter popped the top on his soft drink. “I didn’t know for schur. I just remembered that you’d told me she’s there on Saturdays helping her sister while you help your bruder with the farm.”
“Yes, she was there today.”
Peter tapped his pencil on the table and regarded him thoughtfully. “If Leah hires us for the work it’s possible you’re going to come into contact with Mary Elizabeth even more. How are you going to feel about that?”
* * *
“Thanks for letting me come along today,” Rose Anna told Kate when she climbed into the back seat of her car the next day.
“You’re always welcome,” Kate told her. “The more the merrier.”
“Mary Elizabeth told me I’m never to tell anyone where the shelter’s located. So I won’t of course.”
“Thank you.”
Mary Elizabeth climbed into the front passenger seat and set the shopping bag she carried on the floor of the car. “Mamm said I could donate some of the quilting magazines we get. There are patterns in some of them for Christmas crafts.”
“Terrific! That’ll help a lot.” She glanced at Mary Elizabeth. “So how are the renovations going on Leah’s new shop?”
“She had Sam and Peter there the other day getting some measurements. I’m not sure when the work will start. She does seem to want to use them.”
“Not surprised. Sam built some bookcases for us. He did great work. Malcolm is a wonderful husband, but he’s not the best around the house. Last time he tried to put a new seat on the toilet he broke the toilet. Said the hinge wasn’t opening so he tapped it. With a metal hammer.”
Mary Elizabeth winced. “So he broke the plastic seat?”
“He cracked the base of the toilet. Do you know what a plumber charges to come out on the weekend?”
She tried not to laugh. “No, my daed is pretty handy.”
“I’d have teased him more, but I could see it embarrassed him. Men think they’re supposed to be good at stuff around the house.” She glanced at Mary Elizabeth as she turned into the driveway of the shelter. “It’s a guy thing.”
They were early, but as Mary Elizabeth climb
ed the stairs to the sewing room she could hear sewing machines whirring.
They walked in on a beehive of activity. Women sat at every machine, sewing. Others were cutting material at a table that had been set up. Several of the children sat coloring at a little table set someone had placed in the corner.
“Well, I see we have a lot of early birds,” Kate said, pausing just inside the room to grin.
“We’re all so excited to be sewing up things for Leah’s new shop,” Edna Mae said. “I’m making up some potholders out of the quilt blocks we’ve been doing.”
Mary Elizabeth went to an empty table, took the quilting magazines out of the shopping bag, and spread them out. “Kate, when you get a minute, look through some of these. I was thinking some of these holiday table runners would be quick to sew and sell for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They could be more affordable for shoppers than a quilt, too.”
Kate set her purse and tote bag down and walked over to flip through some of the magazines. “I think that’s a great idea. Ladies, could I have your attention for a moment?” She waited until the machines stopped and all eyes turned to her. “Mary Elizabeth brought quilting magazines in today. They have patterns for some things some of you might want to sew for Leah’s shop.”
Then she laughed as she had to move quickly out of the way when several of the women jumped up and rushed over to pick up a magazine and take it back to their seats.
“I thought this issue was a good one,” Mary Elizabeth said, flipping pages. “See, this fabric is a panel with holiday images and inspirational sayings about believing in hope and dreams and harmony and family and giving. Then you add some simple quilt blocks around it and you have a pretty wall hanging. You can also divide up the panels into smaller sections, make some small wall hangings.”
“We should order some of those fabric panels,” Kate said thoughtfully. “Let me go back to my friends who’ve donated money to the quilting class and I’ll see what I can get us.”
“We might have some more fabric we can donate.”
“And Leah said she’ll see what she can contribute. I think we’ll be fine.”
“You know what they say about quilters,” Mary Elizabeth said with a grin. “We can make a lot out of scraps.”
Kate rolled her eyes and groaned. “I can’t believe you said that.” She stared at Mary Elizabeth, looking serious. “Are you going to be okay going to Leah’s when Sam’s working there? I heard she’s hiring Sam and Peter to renovate the shop.”
“Wow, word gets around faster than the Amish grapevine. I hadn’t heard it was definite. They were doing up an estimate for her.”
“Leah and I talked last night.”
Mary Elizabeth shrugged and walked over to where she’d set her purse and tote bag down on a table.
“I don’t expect to see him that often. Besides, I bump into him sometimes at Lavina’s house. You have to expect such when you live in a small community.”
But she hadn’t seen so much of Sam in a long time . . . that is, until his bruder David had married Lavina and David’s bruders came to help with planting.
She was saved from more questions when Kate was called over to help one of the women with a problem with her sewing machine.
Rose Anna walked around seeming to enjoy what was going on—especially when she saw Ellie sewing on another little quilt for her doll. She crouched down and talked with the girl about her quilt for a few minutes before getting up and wandering around to admire the women working on their individual projects.
Mary Elizabeth did her own walking around to see if anyone needed help and then settled down into a chair at the front of the room next to Kate. She pulled a quilt she was working on from her tote and began sewing, but she found it hard to concentrate. She set the quilt down and just stared at the women sewing.
“Something wrong?”
She turned to Kate. “No, something’s right. Things are so different from the time I first came here. Some of the women looked depressed, nervous. Had bruises on their faces. The kids looked scared. Now everyone looks so happy, and the kids have lost that scared look.”
“Leah has them excited about sewing for her new shop.” Kate set her own work down and smiled as she looked around the room.
“She has a lot to do with it,” Mary Elizabeth said slowly. “But if you hadn’t volunteered your time here, there couldn’t have been a quilting class at all.”
Kate shrugged. “It was nothing. I enjoy being here with women who love to quilt.”
“I think you know a lot about hochmut. About humility,” she told her.
And it gave her an idea for a way for all of them to thank Kate.
6
Mary Elizabeth?” Rose Anna appeared in the doorway of the sewing room.
“Rose Anna. Are you ever going to join us this morning?” Linda asked, a hint of censure in her voice.
“In just a minute, Mamm. Mary Elizabeth, Ben Miller is here.”
“Here?” She stood. “I wasn’t expecting him.” She set her quilt aside, stood, and shook the wrinkles from her skirt.
They walked to the stairs, but before Mary Elizabeth could descend, Rose Anna put her hand on her arm. “I’m sorry I teased you the other day.”
“When? You tease me a lot.”
“I’m trying to apologize.” Rose Anna pouted.
“Allrecht. I accept your apology.”
“You don’t know why.”
Mary Elizabeth blew out a breath. “Ben is waiting at the door.”
“I’m apologizing for teasing you that you have a new boyfriend.”
She studied her younger schweschder. “Rose Anna, Sam overheard you.”
“He said so?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t spoken to him. But he came in right after you said it. And he was so quiet at the table. I think maybe it’d be gut if you apologized to him.”
Rose Anna frowned. “Well, I didn’t know he was eavesdropping.”
“He wasn’t. He was just coming in from the fields. Now, I need to go see Ben.”
She went downstairs and found him sitting in a rocker on the front porch. He held his wide-brimmed straw hat in his hands, and the gentle early summer breeze blew his hair, the color of ripened wheat, around his head.
“Guder mariye.”
He stood and smiled at her. “Guder mariye. I thought I’d stop by and see if I could take you to lunch or for a ride or something. I know it’s kind of last minute. I’d have called you, but I don’t have your cell phone number.” He held his out. “Maybe you’d give it to me?”
“I don’t own one. I can give you the number of the home phone in the shanty.”
“Allrecht.” He punched in the number when she gave it to him. “It’s my first cell phone. The bishop back in my district didn’t approve.”
“Ours does for business and emergencies,” she told him as she took a seat in the rocking chair next to his. “We have more businesses and tourism here in Lancaster, less farming since land’s gotten expensive. So the bishop realized cell phones were a necessity.”
He gazed out at the fields where they could see her dat working. “It’s a nice life, farming. My youngest bruder inherited the family farm, so I apprenticed with a carpenter who was a family friend. Then my onkel asked me to join him here.”
“So what are you doing not working this morning?”
“My onkel’s giving me a few days to get settled in.”
“He’s a kind man. I think you’ll like working with him. And living here in Paradise.”
“Me, too.” He met her gaze directly. “So, Mary Elizabeth. Will you forgive me for stopping by without notice hoping you’d be free today?”
She smiled. “Well, maybe this once. I do happen to be free. Why don’t you come back at eleven-thirty?”
“That would be fine.”
He stood when she did. “And Mary Elizabeth?”
“Ya?”
“Be thinking where you’d like to eat since I don’
t know the area.”
“I will.”
He donned his hat and strolled away. She went inside and walked upstairs feeling lighter than she had for a long time. He was interested in her, and that was a heady feeling. Her emotions had taken a beating with Sam leaving her and then his not wanting to renew their relationship when he had to return occasionally to help David with the farm. Sam didn’t want her . . . well, it seemed another man might, and she was ready to move on.
The moment she walked into the sewing room Rose Anna’s gaze shot to hers. “So, what did Ben want?”
“We’re going to lunch.”
“You don’t seem excited. I’d be excited,” Rose Anna told her. “Ben’s so cute.”
“It’s best not to judge a man—anyone really—just on his looks,” their mudder told her, looking at her over the top of her reading glasses.
“Well, it’s nice to have someone cute to look at,” Rose Anna said, unrepentant. “And he does seem nice. Not broody and self-centered like Sam.”
“Sam’s not self-centered,” Mary Elizabeth said, coming to his defense.
“Maybe not as bad as John. I heard he’s having a fine time on his rumschpringe.” She frowned and stabbed her needle into the quilt she was sewing.
Mary Elizabeth felt her heart go out to Rose Anna. She wasn’t just the youngest, she was the most romantic and the one whose heart was the most easily bruised. She might have enjoyed flirting with another young man at the singing, but it was obvious she was upset about John.
“Maybe he’ll get it out of his system,” she told her schweschder. “Young men seem to need rumschpringe more than we women. And he schur didn’t have much fun growing up with his dat the way Amos used to be. If he had, he might never have felt like he had to leave.”
“Well, Amos is different now. I don’t see why Sam and John can’t come back now like David did,” Rose Anna said stubbornly.
“Amos and David resolved their differences,” Lavina said quietly. “It took them some time, remember? Sam and John haven’t done that yet with their dat.”
She hesitated, then took a deep breath. “Amos has changed a lot, but I think he feels Sam and John haven’t met him halfway.” She sighed and shook her head. “But I shouldn’t speak for him. He hasn’t said that directly. It’s just what I’m sensing.”
Seasons in Paradise Page 6
