The Heart's Journey: Stitches in Time Series #2

by Barbara Cameron

  Another foray into the refrigerator yielded a jar of mayonnaise. She scooped a little out and smeared it across her face and nose. Maybe it wouldn’t do anything to cure the sunburn, but it surely felt nice and cold. She relaxed back into her chair and closed her eyes.

  That reminded her of an article she once read in a women’s magazine. Englischers liked to go for beauty treatments in spas and beauty shops. Often they put cucumber slices on their closed eyelids to reduce puffiness. She opened her eyes and picked up two slices, then closed them again and applied a slice over each eyelid. Well, the article was right. It felt nice and cool.

  “Midnight snack?” her grandmother asked.

  Her eyes snapped open and the cucumber slices went flying. “Grossmudder! You scared me.”

  Leah had her hand pressed to her chest. “You think you didn’t give me a fright when I walked in here and saw your face?”

  But Naomi saw her lips twitching. She grinned. “I guess I look a little silly.”

  “Ya, you look a lot silly,” Leah agreed, chuckling.

  “I couldn’t sleep. The sunburn really hurts.” She touched her cheek tentatively and winced, then went looking for the cucumber slices. After tossing them into the trash, she screwed the lid back on the mayonnaise and put the jar and the uncut portion of the cucumber back into the refrigerator.

  “Whose remedy is mayonnaise? Your mother’s?”

  “No. I just thought if it was cold it might help. After all, some women use cold cream.”

  Leah pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. “Not the same thing at all, kind. Wash your face and we’ll try what my mother used.”

  Naomi did as her grandmother requested and gently patted her skin with a kitchen towel. Though the material was a soft terry cloth, she still winced from the pain.

  “It got worse pretty quickly,” Leah said, examining it. “When we ate supper you looked a little pink but now you’re red as a rotrieb. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get sunburned.”

  “I told Nick that.”

  “Oh?”

  “He said I should put sunscreen on. I told him I never burned.”

  “Hmm. So he offered sunscreen and you didn’t take it?” She glanced at her grandmother, then away. “No.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hmm?”

  Leah shrugged. “Just wondered why you didn’t take it—the sunscreen. We are in Florida.”

  “That’s what Nick said. But it’s the same sun we have in Pennsylvania.” She paused. “Isn’t it?”

  Leah drew a bowl from a cupboard, filled it with water and ice, and then soaked some tea bags in it. “What did Nick say to that?”

  “What does it matter?” Naomi said, and heard the irritation in her voice. “Anyway, he was just being so … pushy about it. I might have listened to him if he hadn’t—” she stopped.

  “If he hadn’t made you think he was John imposing his will.”

  Naomi bit her lip. “Ya. Men!”

  “Sit down and tilt your head back,” Leah instructed, using her fingertips to squeeze excess water from several tea bags. “Naomi, he’s not John.”

  Naomi took a seat and let her head fall back onto the back of the chair. “I know. He’s the exact opposite,” she whispered, knowing she’d argued with him and generally not behaved like herself over it. “He’s going to say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

  “Nick’s not like that.” Her grandmother draped a tea bag across Naomi’s nose and applied several others to her cheeks and forehead. She stood back. “There, how does that feel?”

  “Better,” Naomi said, and her breath caused the tea bag tags to flutter and tickle her nose. “Oh my, if I looked silly before, I can’t imagine what I look like now.”

  Leah pulled open the bottom drawer of the stove and retrieved the lid to an aluminum pan. She held it in front of Naomi to use for a mirror. Naomi took one look and burst out laughing. The tea bags slid from her face, one of them slipping down the front of her chest to land inside the neckline of her nightgown.

  “Cold!” she cried, and quickly pulled it out. She leaned her head back again and reapplied the bags to her face.

  “This is gut,” she said, nearly swooning with relief. “You should go back to bed now. No need for you to lose sleep over my foolishness.”

  “I don’t mind,” Leah said, taking a seat beside her. “You’ve sat up with me when my ankle was troubling me.”

  “It was no trouble at all. That’s what families do. By the way, I got us some postcards today. Nick stopped at a gas station he said had everything for vacations. I thought we could send some to Mary Katherine and Anna and my parents tomorrow.”

  She moved a tea bag from one eyelid and checked the kitchen clock. “Well, today. I didn’t realize it was so late. Now, you really should go back to bed. I’m going there in a minute.”

  “I think I will,” Leah said.

  Naomi heard the scrape of her chair on the kitchen tile, felt her grandmother’s lips on her cheek when she kissed her good night, and heard her uncertain shuffle down the hall to her room.

  She knew from the one time she’d experienced sunburn that the next stage was little clear water-filled blisters, followed by peeling, and she wondered if she could avoid Nick for a few days.

  He was going to enjoy telling her “I told you so!” She just knew it. And she wouldn’t be able to blame him for it.

  She’d known he was right about the sunscreen. Something about the way he’d insisted that she use it had just gotten her back up. She’d never been that way before. But he’d just sounded like John for a moment and she’d felt compelled not to back down.

  Well, she’d just have to put up with him telling her that she’d been wrong and he’d been right. She wouldn’t even mind, if God would just take away the pain of the sunburn. Gathering the bags from her face, she dunked them in the ice water again, squeezed them, then reapplied them to her face.

  She felt something under her chin—something sticky. She rubbed at it and looked at it. Mayonnaise. She pulled a paper napkin from the holder on the table and wiped her chin clean.

  Her grandmother’s words when she’d walked into the kitchen came back to her. She got to her feet and looked into the refrigerator again.

  Suddenly she felt like a midnight snack.

  Nick regarded Naomi and shook his head. “Your nose looks like a strawberry.”

  Naomi rolled her eyes. “I know. Don’t rub it in.”

  “If only you’d done that.”

  “What?”

  “Rubbed in some sunscreen the other day.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Go ahead. Say, ‘I told you so.’”

  He sighed and leaned against the doorjamb. “Naomi, I would never do that.”

  She stared at him, searching his face for something—he didn’t know what. “Grossmudder said that,” she admitted finally.

  “But you still thought I might.” He watched as a reluctant smile tugged at her lips.

  She nodded.

  He stepped closer and touched the back of his hand to her cheek. His eyes widened when she flinched. “Easy. I’m not going to hurt you. I just wanted to make sure you don’t have a fever.”

  “I have a sunburn, not a fever.”

  Peering into her eyes, he saw that they were bright, not glassy. “Some people get sun poisoning from a bad burn.”

  She touched her nose and it felt less tender. “Well, I don’t have sun poisoning, whatever that is. Just a simple sunburn.”

  “Nothing simple about sunburn. Or anything else,” he muttered, troubled by the way she’d pulled back from him.

  Nick heard female laughter from inside the house. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have dropped by. You have company.”

  “I’d invite you in, but we’re quilting.”

  Nick backed away from the door, holding up his hands. “No, thanks.”

  “There are men who quilt.”

  “I’m sure. I’m just not one of them.” />
  He turned to walk away and heard her call his name.

  “Did you have a reason to come by?”

  He’d heard the wistfulness in her voice when he mentioned fishing. “Yeah. Thought I’d see if you wanted to go fishing for a couple of hours. But I guess not, since you’re sunburned.”

  Her bottom lip thrust out. “I love to fish.”

  He jerked his head in the direction of the house. “You love to quilt.”

  “I can do that anytime,” she said. “You know how long it’s going to be before we’re going to get to fish again in Pennsylvania? They’re all wearing little overcoats right now.”

  He laughed. “Well, that’s an image I’ve never thought of before.”

  “I’ll cover up.”

  He looked at her dress—a Plain dress with a high, modest neckline, cape, long sleeves, and skirt past her knees—and weighed his words. “You were pretty covered up the other day.”

  She stamped her foot and glared at him. “You know what I mean. I’ll wear a hat and put some stuff on my nose.”

  “I’ll find you something,” he told her. “Go back inside and get out of the sun. What time shall I come back?”

  “Two.”

  “Okay.” He watched her walk back toward the house, a spring in her step. Who knew just offering to take her fishing would make her that happy?

  Naomi stitched on a section of quilt and tried not to watch the clock on the wall.

  “So wonderful to get your help with the quilts for the auction for Haiti,” Ida said as she threaded her needle.

  She smiled up at Naomi as she set a cup of tea on the table for her. “I can’t wait for you to attend after all the quilts you and the women in your area have donated.”

  “We had such fun making them,” Naomi said. “When I was younger I thought it was kind of strange that people who lived in such a warm climate needed quilts. I didn’t know back then that the quilts were sold to people here and the money got sent to Haiti to feed and shelter and clothe those who needed it.”

  Naomi remembered being at the quilting where the Trip around the World quilt had been sewn for the Haiti auction and Jenny had said she wondered where it would end up. She couldn’t stop herself from smiling as she remembered seeing how curious Jenny, a former Englisch television reporter, could be.

  That day, Jenny had watched a friend’s child crawl under the quilting frame. Jenny had followed. Her feet and the child’s had stuck out from under the frame as the two watched the needles dipping in and out of the fabric.

  Naomi’s thoughts wandered back to Jenny at home in a Pennsylvania farmhouse, a far cry from the New York City apartment where she lived before becoming Amish in order to marry Matthew Bontrager.

  She heard more about the Amish becoming Englisch than the Englisch like Jenny—and Chris Marlowe—becoming Amish. But right now, thinking about how she felt about Nick, she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be Englisch.

  The thought lingered for only a moment. When she was twenty-one, she’d joined the church and never looked back. The Englisch world held no appeal for her. She loved her church, her family, her community.

  Both she and Nick went back and forth between their two worlds, but at the end of the day they each went to their own. It was where they belonged.

  Naomi got up and filled the teakettle for about the dozenth time, and as she did, she gazed at the little bowl of shells sitting on the shelf above the sink. She’d found them on the beach and tucked them into her pocket to take home. They weren’t fancy. Some of their edges had been broken as the surf tossed them up on the sand. She didn’t care. They’d be a reminder of her time here.

  Who would have imagined a vacation place where you could walk outside in the morning and pluck an orange for your breakfast juice? Where you could meet other Plain folk from all around the country in one place?

  And instead of being in Paradise watching her grandmother—always such a cheerful, encouraging influence on her life and that of her cousins—become more and more depressed as she contemplated another dreary Pennsylvania winter, she could see her laughing and talking with the quilting circle now.

  She closed her eyes and spoke a silent prayer for His plan for her grandmother. The shrill whistle of the teakettle startled her and she reached quickly to lift it from the stove.

  “Need any help?” her grandmother asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  She’d found a pretty teapot in the cupboard and scrubbed it earlier. Now she brewed some orange spiced tea she’d made from the oranges in the front yard and walked around filling empty tea cups.

  “So how are the wedding plans coming along?” Ida wanted to know.

  Naomi raised her brows and glanced at her grandmother.

  “Don’t blame your grandmother,” Ida said quickly. “Daniel told me after he returned from selling the farm.”

  She tied a knot at the end of the thread and began sewing again. Naomi hoped that was the end of it. She didn’t really know what to say. Once she got back to Pennsylvania, it was almost certain she’d be breaking up with John.

  “We haven’t made many plans yet,” she finally said. It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it wasn’t a lie either. She sent up a quick fervent prayer that God would forgive her for it.

  “I always wondered about the two of you—you and Daniel, I mean. I always liked you.” She smiled and shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t God’s will.”

  “So, I know you quilt for a living, and you and your cousins and Leah have a shop,” Mary from Ohio said as she paused from her stitching to take a sip of tea. “Have you designed a special wedding quilt?”

  Naomi felt a momentary panic. She just hadn’t expected questions about this and didn’t know what to say. She looked at her grandmother, hoping for guidance.

  “We’ve been so busy we haven’t had a chance to discuss that,” Leah said.

  That was the truth, Naomi thought. She’d been so busy with commissions. Stitches in Time had received some nice publicity when Mary Katherine spoke at the college, and holiday business had been bigger than usual.

  The teapot was empty. Naomi went to make more tea, grateful for the chance to escape more questions. Even though she was in the same room, she hoped that looking busy would discourage them. Once again, as she stood at the sink filling the teakettle, she found herself looking at the shells. The question about designing her wedding quilt made her think about how she could make a quilt with colors and shapes that would remind her of her time here in Florida with her grandmother.

  Maybe she’d make some sketches while she fished with Nick in … she checked the clock. Less than an hour now.

  Remembering how Nick loved to eat, she decided to pack a picnic lunch. She quickly made sandwiches with the leftover roast chicken from dinner, adding some carrot sticks and a handful of cookies. Iced tea was a staple in Florida all year ’round, she’d discovered. Sweet tea, they called it, and she knew Nick liked it. She filled the small jug they’d brought along on the trip and set it in the refrigerator until it was time to leave.

  Her grandmother watched her but didn’t ask any questions in front of the other women. When she brewed more hot tea and made the rounds of the room pouring it, Naomi whispered to her that she was going fishing for a few hours with Nick.

  “Are you sure you should go out again with that nose?”

  “It’s the only nose I have,” Naomi said with a straight face. “I’ve had it all my life.”

  “Oh, you,” Leah said, chuckling. “You know what I mean.”

  “Nick promised he’d bring something so I wouldn’t make it worse.”

  “Very funny!” Naomi said, glaring at Nick when she climbed into the van and saw what he’d brought for her nose.

  Nick wiggled his eyebrows and modeled a nose protector for her. “You don’t like it?”

  “Where did you find a clown nose?” she demanded, pretending to be offended but having trouble keeping a straight face.

>   He pulled his off and took the one he’d handed her. “I was just kidding. Here, I bought you something else.” He pulled a package from a bag and gave it to her.

  “This is still pretty silly looking,” she said, hesitating as she read “Surfer Nose Protector” on the packaging and opened the triangular hard plastic thingy.

  She sighed, but since she wanted to go fishing she applied the thick white cream to her nose and face before applying the plastic piece.

  “And here’s the final part of the disguise,” he said, reaching into the backseat for a big, wide-brimmed straw hat.

  She hesitated at putting it on but then nodded. “There’s enough shade under here for two people,” she told him, then realized it sounded like an invitation for him to get closer.

  Fortunately, he didn’t take it as such, instead starting the car and moving out onto the road. The Pinecraft speed trap was in effect: several police officers patrolled on horseback, making sure there was no speeding with so many pedestrians and bike riders around.

  Phillippi Creek ran beside the shuffleboard court, and today a few people stood or sat along the shore and dropped their lines in the water. Nick found a place to park and they walked down to the water’s edge, Nick carrying their fishing poles in one hand, Naomi carrying their picnic lunch in one of hers. When Naomi stumbled on a tuft of grass, Nick reached over and took her hand in his.

  The contact with his hand felt electric and she glanced over at him. He gave her a half smile, his eyes dark, but she couldn’t read his expression. His fingers grew firmer on hers and he continued to hold on while they walked down the incline, and she didn’t withdraw her hand.

  She told herself she appreciated the help so she wouldn’t trip and fall—after all, they didn’t need two women with sprained ankles—but she felt troubled by how she felt when he broke contact when they reached the water.