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

by Barbara Cameron

  The color leeched out of her face as she stood, frozen, staring at him with wide eyes.

  Nick reached for her arm but she backed away and fled, rushing up the steps of the little house. Once she had the door open, she stepped inside, spun around and opened her mouth as if she were about to say something, and then slammed the door shut.

  He hadn’t meant to upset her. Closing her van door, he walked up the steps and rapped on her front door, but she wouldn’t answer.

  Resigned, he walked back to the van and started the engine.

  Everything was such a mess. And unlike Naomi, he didn’t have anyone to talk about it with.

  Bandit wasn’t at the door when he got home—not that he often greeted him there. Nick went from room to room calling him and even used the electric can opener to signal a tasty fish dinner awaited. Still no Bandit.

  A half hour later as Nick sat eating his microwaved frozen meal, Bandit appeared. He reached down to scratch the cat’s ear and got his hand scratched for the trouble.

  “Maybe I should have gotten a dog,” he muttered.

  Bandit stalked away, swishing his tail, as if he understood the threat.

  It was a small shop but Anna managed to avoid Naomi for most of the morning the next day.

  Naomi watched her wait on customers, perform several tasks their grandmother requested of her, and spend time in the storage room whenever Naomi was too occupied to confront her.

  “What do you suppose she said to Nick after he dropped us off?” she asked her grandmother when they took a break.

  Leah shook her head. “She’s like a dog with a bone. But Nick’s not a pushover. I’m sure he told her to mind her own business. Politely, though. Nick’s always polite.”

  Naomi thought about that. Nick had so many good qualities. Kind, patient, thoughtful. Generous with his time and with his money. She knew that the arrangement he’d made with her grandmother for driving them to Florida had been very generous.

  Stories had come to her, too, about how often he took some of his clients to doctor’s appointments and grocery stores and so on and, knowing their financial situation, would refuse payment or accept baked goods or produce or something else they had to offer in return.

  “It’s not that I don’t think Nick’s a nice young man,” her grandmother broke into her thoughts. “However, you have to understand that I’m concerned. Where could a relationship go between the two of you?”

  She put a cup of tea before Naomi. “Nick understood that.”

  Naomi roused herself. “What?”

  Leah colored, then she lifted her chin. “Nick and I talked about it when we were in Florida.”

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean you talked about it?”

  Sighing, Leah took a seat and stirred her tea. “Nick came to me worried about you being with John. He was afraid that John would hurt you even worse the next time. He told me that he knew what he felt for you—well, that he knew it couldn’t go anywhere because you were baptized and you’d be shunned if you got married.”

  “But only if she left the church to marry him,” Anna said.

  Startled, Naomi turned. “How long have you been there?”

  Anna walked into the room and got her own tea. “Long enough. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. It’s just when I heard Nick’s name I stopped. He’s not exactly my favorite person right now.”

  Leah smiled slightly. “Did he tell you to mind your own business?”

  “In his own way. He had a few other things to say as well that I didn’t want to hear.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “But after I thought about it for a long time, I realized that they needed to be said. He thinks that I—”

  She stopped. “Never mind what he said. This is about you.”

  “No, I want to know what he said to you!” Naomi insisted.

  “Me too!” Leah said.

  “Too bad.” She traced a finger on the tablecloth. “The thing is, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that life’s short. We don’t know what’s going to happen. One day you’re married and your whole life is ahead of you and the next—”

  She stopped and bit her lip. “Well, anyway, the point is how do we know that Nick isn’t the man God set aside for Naomi? Does he have to be Amish to be perfect for her?”

  Naomi’s head spun.

  “Radical thought, huh?” Anna grinned at her. “Actually, sometimes I think Nick’s more Amish than some Amish men I know.”

  Then her grin faded. “I’ve seen the way you look at him, Naomi. You love him, don’t you?”

  “Even if Nick’s the man God intended, it’s too soon,” Naomi said slowly, sidestepping Anna’s question. “I’m still so mixed up.”

  Anna shoved to her feet. “Oh, take your time. Maybe you’ll have it. Maybe he’ll wait for you.”

  She paused at the doorway. “Maybe God won’t take him early. You’d know about that as well as I do, wouldn’t you, Grossmudder?” She left the room.

  Naomi let out the breath she found she’d been holding. “Well.” She looked at her grandmother.

  Leah sat there looking stunned. “Ya. That was a surprise. Even for Anna.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt you.” Naomi reached for her grandmother’s hand. “She—”

  “No, it’s allrecht. She’s right.”

  “She is? About what part of it?”

  “Most of it.” Leah sighed. “All of it. Of course I know about being a young widow. But just because God might take a loved one home sooner than we’d wish, it doesn’t mean we rush headlong into something we shouldn’t. God has a plan for us and we have to be patient.”

  Naomi considered her grandmother’s words as they went back to work.

  Mary Katherine walked in a little while later. “I was just at the doctor’s office and you’ll never guess!”

  “You’re pregnant!” Anna cried. She rushed at Mary Katherine but her cousin held up her hands.

  “Will you stop that! No, I’m not pregnant. While I was there, Hannah walked in with Chris. She was in labor! She kept telling Chris that she wasn’t, but he insisted on her getting checked out. They were calling for an ambulance to take her to the hospital when I left.”

  “I don’t blame him for being concerned,” Leah said. “Not after she had complications and went into early labor last time. That officer who comes in for quilt lessons delivered her first baby, didn’t she?”

  Naomi clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Hannah won’t be coming in to teach class this afternoon.”

  She turned to her grandmother. “Guess I’ll be doing it.”

  “I’ll go start the coffee,” Anna said.

  “Danki.”

  Naomi didn’t mind taking over Hannah’s class. The group of women had started out as strangers but had quickly become friends as they learned about quilting. Kate, the police officer, was new to the class.

  “So I don’t get to deliver another baby?” Kate asked. “Oh well, it was mostly Malcolm who did it the last time. He was a corpsman in the military. What did Hannah have?”

  “We don’t know yet. The hospital won’t tell us.”

  Kate pulled out her cell phone and punched in a number. Within a few minutes, she got off the phone with the news that Hannah had just given birth to a girl.

  “I know a few people at the hospital,” she said, shrugging as Naomi thanked her before rushing off to tell her grandmother and her cousins.

  “I just think it’s so nice that you’re doing such work,” she’d overheard one older woman saying to Kate. “You’re a role model. Why, in my generation we only got to be teachers and nurses. Not that those aren’t noble professions, but a woman should get to do the job she wants.”

  The other ladies had nodded in agreement as they stitched.

  Kate lingered after the class ended. She indicated the back room with a jerk of her head and Naomi followed her.

  “How are things? Is the ex-boyfriend staying away?” she asked,
her eyes intent on Naomi.

  “I haven’t seen him in ages. We heard he moved back to Franklin County.”

  Kate pulled a small notebook from a shirt pocket and jotted a few lines in it. “Do you remember a street address?”

  Naomi could only remember a road, not a house number.

  “That’s fine. This’ll be enough.” She studied Naomi for a moment, then handed her a card. “Friend of mine’s a counselor; has a group for women who’ve been involved with guys like Zook. Might be something you’d be interested in. No pressure.”

  Naomi fingered the card and considered the idea. “I’ll think about it. Thanks.”

  “Here comes the jaywalker,” Kate murmured.

  She couldn’t help grinning as Nick walked in and stopped in his tracks as he saw the officer. Then he strolled over and nodded at her. “Hello, Officer.”

  “Been using the crosswalks?” she asked with a smirk.

  “Absolutely.” He looked at Naomi. “How are you?”

  “Good.”

  Nodding, he turned to an elderly woman nearby. “Ready to go?”

  She handed him her big, stuffed tote bag. “Ready. See you next week, Naomi. I expect Hannah won’t be back for a few weeks.”

  Nick turned back to Naomi. “Back at the usual time.”

  “Nice guy,” Kate said quietly as Nick moved out of hearing range. “Is he the new guy?”

  Her face flaming, Naomi shook her head.

  “Really? Could have fooled me.”

  She gathered up her tote and shot Naomi a look. “Actually, you can’t fool me. Thought I was going to have to arrest the two of you for spontaneous combustion that night outside the restaurant.”

  She sighed. “Well, this has been fun. Now I have to be getting home and look at what else I have to do for the wedding.”

  Naomi started to say something, then stopped.

  “What?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “You have a question. Ask it.” She glanced around when Naomi hesitated. “Want to go in the back for some privacy?”

  Naomi nodded and they went into the back room and shut the door. She twisted her hands in front of her. “I—this isn’t really my business—”

  “If I don’t want to answer, I don’t have to.”

  She tried to smile. “True.” This woman appeared so different from others she knew: so confident, so strong. Yet so approachable and eager to help.

  “You’re getting married. To Malcolm.”

  Kate nodded.

  “I know he’s different now—” she stopped, not knowing how to go on.

  “You wonder how I can marry him after he did bad things.”

  Naomi nodded. “We’re—the Amish—supposed to forgive. But you’re a police officer and you’re going to marry him.”

  Kate poured herself a cup of coffee, held up the pot, and then set it down when Naomi shook her head.

  “Malcolm had a lot of problems with alcohol and drugs during his military service overseas,” she said seriously. “You know Chris Matlock testified against him. Then even after he was acquitted, he went after Chris. Hannah got hurt when she came between them.”

  Her eyes took on a faraway look. “I think Hannah saved Malcolm’s life. Well, there’s no ‘think’ about it. Malcolm says so. She forgave him and wouldn’t press charges and convinced Chris not to do so either. And now you wonder how I can marry someone who has that history.”

  She looked directly at Naomi. “You wonder how he’ll be with me.”

  Naomi nodded.

  “The difference is that Malcolm got himself into rehab and he turned his life around. He’s a different man, one who realizes he got more than one chance to change. He works two jobs and volunteers at the veteran’s center. And he has never, ever hurt me.”

  “John refused to go to counseling.”

  “I thought there was less resistance to it in the community.”

  Naomi lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “Maybe there is. But not in John.”

  “Then you have to move on.” She leaned forward. “You have to move on.”

  She nodded. “I know. I have.”

  “Good. If you need to talk, call me. You still have my card?”

  “I carry it with me every day.”

  Naomi watched how Kate’s smile transformed her face. “Good. Now, I’m going home to see if I can talk Malcolm into helping with a little wedding planning.”

  With that, she strolled out of the shop.

  17

  Nick pulled into the space in front of the hospital that was designated for picking up patients, shut off the engine, and got out.

  He was here to pick up a very special passenger.

  Chris pushed Hannah’s wheelchair up to the van door. A nurse followed carrying a pink blanket-wrapped bundle. She handed it to Nick, who had to take a quick peek at the sweet little face inside.

  “She’s beautiful,” he told her happy parents. They beamed at him.

  He leaned into the backseat of the van, tucked her into the car seat he’d brought, and fastened her harness. Only when he was satisfied that the safety belt was secure did he back out of the van and let Chris help Hannah inside.

  Chris looked over at him as the two men fastened their own belts and Nick started the engine.

  “I really appreciate this.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” Nick said. “It’s my new baby special. She gets her first car ride free and you two get to come along with her. It’s a three-for-one deal.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror before he pulled out. “Hannah, you okay back there? Anything you need?”

  “I’m great,” Hannah told him. She leaned over and smiled at the baby, who’d slept through the whole transfer from hospital to van.

  “So, you decided to have the baby in the hospital instead of the backseat of a car.” He grinned at her in the rearview mirror.

  Hannah shot a glare at Nick, but then she grinned. “I thought Chris was going to make me spend the last month of my pregnancy there. It wasn’t my fault that I had complications and went into labor so quickly.”

  “Then whose fault was it?” Chris teased, leaning around his seat to look at his wife.

  They seemed so happy. Nick couldn’t help thinking … Chris had been Englisch when he’d come here several years ago suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome—and looking for spiritual answers and a sense of where he belonged.

  He and Jenny Bontrager had met at a veterans’ hospital and corresponded for a time after she came here to recuperate at her grandmother’s house. They’d connected, Chris and Jenny, because both had been injured in roadside bombings overseas. Jenny had been a television network correspondent covering what war was doing to children. Chris had been a soldier. So it was an odd pairing—this disillusioned, weary warrior and Hannah, who’d been raised Amish.

  Nick reflected on how Jenny—whose father had been born into an Amish family but hadn’t joined the church—had been Englisch but joined the Amish church to marry the man who lived next to her grandmother. Chris had joined the church to marry Hannah as well.

  Would he—could he—do the same in order to marry Naomi?

  In a heartbeat.

  “Can we stop at the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for Hannah?”

  “Of course.”

  He drove them there and waited while Chris hurried inside.

  “That’s one happy man,” he said to Hannah while they waited.

  Rain began falling. It slid down the windows and the van seemed like its own little world. When he heard a strange noise he glanced in the rearview mirror. Hannah had apparently gotten the baby from the car seat and was holding her up to her. He started to say something, then his eyes widened as he took in the scene and realized what she was doing.

  He jerked his head back and stared straight ahead through his windshield, feeling heat rise up in his face.

  She was nursing the baby.

  “Sorry!” he stammered. �
��I didn’t realize what you were doing! I’ll get out—”

  “Stop!” she cried. “Don’t be silly! We’re all covered up!”

  If a blush could register a temperature, a thermometer would show two hundred degrees, he thought.

  “I just remembered I need something. I’ll be right back.”

  “Shut the door quietly,” she whispered.

  He did as she asked and went inside the store to find Chris.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked when he saw Nick.

  “Just remembered I needed something.” He looked into the cart. “Wow. Does a baby use that many diapers?”

  “I figure this isn’t something you want to run out of,” Chris said, “so I thought I’d pick up some more since I was here anyway. If Hannah wants to switch to cloth diapers later, she can. But I want things to be easy at first.”

  Chris thought about that. “Easier.”

  When he added some little prefilled bottles of formula, Nick raised his eyebrows.

  “What, you don’t think the baby needs formula, either?”

  Nick found himself going into the blushing and stammering routine again.

  “Oh,” said Chris, and he laughed. “Let me guess. The baby wanted to eat while I was in here.”

  “I didn’t see anything!” Nick rushed to say.

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” Chris said calmly. “Amish women are very modest.”

  “She seemed to think it was funny that I was embarrassed.”

  “That’s my Hannah. She’s not some quiet little mouse.”

  “I don’t actually know many quiet little Amish mice. That’s a stereotype.”

  “Exactly. What do you think? Don’t you think the baby needs this?” Chris asked, holding up a bib that said “I love my Daddy!”

  “Sure. When does she start wearing Amish dress?”

  Chris laughed. “Soon enough.”

  Nick saw a display of children’s toys and books and walked over to it. He picked up a book and a little plastic car and added them to the cart. “That’s for me. Well, it’s for me to give to your son.”

  “You don’t have to do that. You’ve done enough.”