Minding Molly

by Leslie Gould

  “Thank you,” I said quickly.

  “Denki,” she parroted. “I like that.” She held my brochure up in her hand as she led the way through the dining room. “So you must be a pretty good gardener—or someone in your family is.”

  “We get by,” I said.

  “And modest too.”

  I tried not to smile.

  “You know, what we could use help with is getting a garden started. Would you be willing to be our consultant?”

  “Jah,” I answered.

  “We’d pay, of course.”

  I nodded. The truth was, I’d do it to be neighborly, but pay was good. Especially now.

  “I’ll call,” she said. “About the flowers and herbs. Then in the fall about the garden, when things slow down.”

  I thanked her again.

  “I like you, Molly Zook,” she said as I followed her to the front door. “Mind if I meet your beau?”

  “He’s not really—”

  She laughed.

  “Sure,” I said, following her outside.

  Storm snorted and Leon held on tightly, keeping the horse’s head up.

  “This is Kristine,” I said as we neared.

  “Kristine Boyd,” she said. “My husband and I own the B&B.”

  “Leon Fisher,” he said before I had a chance to. He stuck out his hand and shook hers firmly.

  “Molly says you’re from Montana.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “In the northwest corner.”

  “I grew up over the state line in Idaho, near Sandpoint.”

  “I know the area,” he said. “We delivered some horses up that way. It’s beautiful.”

  They chatted for a moment, and then she broached the subject of the trail rides.

  “I work for Owen Lapp,” he said. “He boards and trains horses.”

  “No lessons? Or rides?” Kristine asked.

  Leon shook his head.

  “You never know,” she said. “There might be a market for it among the tourists, and the locals too.”

  I couldn’t imagine a bunch of Englisch girls at Hannah’s place taking lessons from Leon.

  “I’ll mention it to Owen,” Leon said, but I was pretty sure he was just being polite.

  An hour later, Leon galloped beyond our driveway on the highway below as I stopped Daisy beside our barn. I unhitched the horse, led her to the pasture, and then pulled the ice chest from the back of the buggy and took it into the greenhouse. Love followed me.

  “Your Mamm asked about you.” Mervin stood at the planting bench, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, his sunglasses on against the glare coming through the windows. He had several of the large plastic rectangular planters lined up on one side and basil, oregano, and rosemary seedlings on the other.

  I put the box against the wall, pulling out the leftover herbs to take in the house to use. “It’s sweltering in here,” I said to Mervin. “Can’t that wait until later?”

  He shook his head. “Your Mamm wanted more planters done up for Saturday.”

  They did sell really well. And the profit was good.

  “You’d better go on in,” he said. He had a concerned look on his face. “Edna’s here.”

  “Oh. Do you know why?”

  Mervin shook his head.

  I hurried on to the house and through the back door. No one was in the kitchen. I put the herbs on the counter and called out, “Mamm?”

  Her voice came from the front porch. “We’re out here.”

  I stepped quickly into the living room. They’d left the front door wide open. I stepped over the threshold, closing the door behind me, and onto the worn planks of the porch. Beatrice and Mamm were sitting on the settee and Edna on the chair.

  “Where were you?” Mamm asked.

  “Running errands. I didn’t know Edna was coming over.”

  “I didn’t either,” Mamm said. “She surprised us.”

  “I couldn’t stay away,” she said. “I kept thinking about Anna. So I hired a driver to bring me over for the day.”

  I was always happy to see Edna and for the extra help.

  “Hannah stopped by, right when Edna arrived,” Mamm said. “She was looking for you.”

  “To talk about the camping trip,” Beatrice added.

  “Oh,” I said. “Jah, we’ve talked about that. But I was thinking we’d go in a month or so.” Long after we knew how Mamm was. And besides, I’d need time to plan.

  “No,” Mamm said. “You should go as soon as possible. Invite your friends—your old gang, just the ones you’ve known all your life.” Obviously she didn’t want Leon going—and I wasn’t about to tell her that he was already planning to, thanks to Owen. “And take Bea.”

  “We can’t leave you,” I said to Mamm as I knelt beside her. She placed her hand on my shoulder. Hopefully by the time we did go camping she would be fine—both physically and emotionally. Maybe she’d be over her opposition to Leon by then.

  “You should go soon,” Edna said. “I’ll come to stay. And I’m sure Ivan will too. We’ll do the chores. And watch over Anna.”

  “In fact,” Mamm said, patting my shoulder, “I want you to leave next Monday and stay for two or three nights.”

  That meant we’d be gone on Tuesday, when she was scheduled to have the CT scan. I pulled away from her and stood. “Mamm . . . I’m going with you for your test.”

  She shook her head. “Remember that place we used to go to in the Poconos?”

  I nodded. Years ago, Mamm and Dat used to take us camping. We all enjoyed it. But as the work of the farm grew, we began skipping years and then about ten years ago stopped going at all.

  “Go there,” she said. “You’d better get started on the planning right away.”

  I stared down at her. “Mamm, I—”

  “Molly!” Her voice was as sharp as I’d ever heard it. “Mind me.”

  I stood tall, but a numbness started to spread through me. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want me to go with her when she got her scan. In fact, I felt hurt that she seemed to prefer to have Edna, and even Ivan, with her instead.

  Mamm stood. “I’ll go talk to Mervin and ask him to arrange for a van.”

  “Shouldn’t Mervin stay and help here?”

  Mamm shook her head. “Molly, that’s part of the reason for you to go on this trip. So you and Mervin—”

  “I’ll leave a message for Hannah,” I said quickly. “And tell her what the plan is. I’ll call for a van too, so don’t say anything to Mervin yet. Let me figure out some things first.”

  Mamm reluctantly agreed.

  As I steadied myself against the chair, Edna said she hadn’t seen any mockingbirds lately.

  “I don’t know where they went off to,” Mamm said. “I miss them. They’re so smart, so perceptive.”

  “Dat sure loved them,” Edna said. “Remember the one that would mimic him?”

  Mamm nodded, and I headed into the house, thinking about Leon and the camping trip.

  Chapter

  9

  Later in the day, I left a message for Hannah about camping, asking her to call me and not to mention the trip to Mervin until we’d talked, saying I just wanted to make sure we had all the details sorted out first. I added the last part more for her Dat, sure Owen would probably check the message and give it to her. I didn’t want him to think I was scheming, even though I was.

  Then I called and arranged for a van. While Mamm napped and Beatrice spent time on the porch with her journal, I sat with Edna at the table and had a cup of tea and one of her delicious buttermilk sugar cookies—rounded and chewy.

  “Your Mamm told me there has been a young man coming to see you, besides Mervin.”

  I nodded as I swallowed.

  “She’s afraid you’ll be going off to Montana.”

  “I’d never leave Lancaster County,” I said, picking up my mug of tea. “I’ve had offers. Ohio. Indiana. Maryland. I wasn’t interested.”

  “So he doe
sn’t plan to go back?”

  “It doesn’t seem so.”

  “Do you know for sure?” She took another cookie from the plate.

  I fought a feeling of unease. “Pretty sure.”

  “You shouldn’t court anyone you wouldn’t marry. And if you’re not willing to move to Montana . . .” She took a bite of the cookie. “You know it’s the woman who compromises on these things. Especially if his family has land—unless one of his brothers is going to get it.” She took a sip of tea.

  I shook my head. “He has a bunch of sisters, but he’s the only boy.”

  Edna clucked her tongue, brushing her hands together as she did. “Sounds as if you should at least do some research about Montana, get an idea if it’s a place you could stand. It’s cold there, right? And it doesn’t have much of a growing season. You might be able to raise Alaska daisies.” She smiled as if she’d made a joke. “I’d miss you terribly. So would your Mamm. But then again, she left her family and came here.”

  That was true. But I got the idea she’d never been very fond of Ohio. On the other hand, I loved Lancaster County.

  “And Dat, as much as he cared for Anna, never would have left the farm to move to Ohio. Of course I was still at home, but the land had been in his family for years. It was part of him.”

  Leon’s land hadn’t been in his family for years. His Dat had grown up somewhere near Paradise. Determined to change the subject, I said, “I’ve been thinking about your Mamm.”

  She leaned forward. “My Mamm?”

  I nodded. “And how hard it must have been when she was so ill. I didn’t really understand before, but this uncertainty about . . . Anyway, all that’s gone on has made me think about it. And how young you were when she passed.”

  “Denki,” Edna said. “That’s kind of you. Jah, it was hard. But by the time she passed it was such a relief to have her out of pain, we were ready to have her suffering over. She’d gone through enough.”

  “Mamm told me she came and met all of you, while your mother was ill.”

  Edna took another sip of tea. “Jah. Wasn’t that something? How they all got to know each other through the circle letter? Mamm wasn’t even that interested, but Dat thought it might give her a hobby, to sit on the porch and watch for birds.”

  Edna was silent for a moment and then said, “I know my mother and Dat loved each other, but she never helped with the farm, not the way Anna always has. And they didn’t have that spark Dat had with your Mamm.”

  I didn’t know what to say, wondering if that made Edna feel bad. But then she said with a gracious tone, “It was such a blessing that Dat remarried. Anna was so good to me, to all of us, from the very start. Still is. And then for you and Beatrice to come along . . .” She sighed. “I’d prayed for years for a little sister. Then I got two.” She smiled. “Of course you didn’t act like a little sister for long. By the time you were two you wanted to run the house.”

  I grimaced. “Was I really that bad?”

  “Oh, you weren’t bad. It wasn’t like you were disobedient—it was the opposite of that. You wanted to do everything. Chores. Dishes. Cooking. You’d follow your Mamm and me around, demanding that we let you work.”

  I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed talking with Edna. It warmed my heart. I realized with Dat gone, she was the one other person besides Mamm—and Ivan, but he didn’t really count—who would always carry memories of me as a child.

  Edna sighed. “Think long and hard about going to Montana. Your Mamm needs you.”

  It was my turn to lean forward. “I know,” I said. “What I can’t figure out, though, is why she doesn’t want me to go with her when she gets her scan.”

  “She won’t get any results that day.”

  “I know, but she—”

  “She’ll be in a tube for an hour. I think she’s worried about that, but even more so about how you will feel, and she doesn’t want to put any more stress on herself.”

  “I’d be fine.”

  “I know you would.” Edna sighed. “She wants to be strong for you and for Beatrice. She doesn’t have to be for Ivan and me.”

  I tilted my head, aware that maybe Edna and Mamm had a relationship deeper than I’d thought. It was no surprise. They’d known each other for nearly twenty-five years. Mamm had been there for Edna when she married, when she wasn’t able to have children, when her husband died. Now Edna had a chance to “be there” for Mamm.

  “Anna has always been so good to me,” Edna said again. “It’s a privilege for me to do something for her. And I think it’s a relief for her to think of you and Beatrice off having fun at a place she enjoyed so much with Dat.”

  I understood. I was also sure that Mamm was much more worried about what the scan might show than she’d been letting on.

  I thanked Edna for the cookies, grabbed a couple for Mervin along with a glass of ice water, and headed out to the greenhouse.

  He was grateful to see me and for the snack.

  “I’m going to go check on the lilies,” I said. “I’ll be back to help in here in a bit.”

  As I walked toward the field, I pulled out my cell to call Cate. I was pretty sure her husband, Pete, had traveled as far west as Montana. On second thought, I decided I didn’t want to talk with him. He wasn’t the gossipy type and neither was Cate, but still I didn’t want to put them on alert.

  Then I thought of a friend in Maryland who had a cousin who’d been out west. I called her, and she went on and on about her cousin’s impressions about Montana. “There are hardly any people—but lots of cows. Everything is a long ways away. Just going shopping is a really big deal. And winter lasts forever.”

  “What about growing things? Like flowers.”

  “Oh, she didn’t say much about that. Montana definitely wasn’t her thing—she likes Florida much better—but that’s not to say you wouldn’t like it.”

  I thanked her and hung up. I’d certainly never been to Florida, but from what my friend had said about Montana, I was pretty sure I’d like the southern state better too.

  That evening, Mamm and Beatrice sat together on the settee on the front porch, most likely still anticipating the arrival of a mockingbird, while Edna and I cleaned the kitchen. She left just before Bob Miller arrived holding the manila folder in his hand, without Nan.

  When I asked about her, he answered, “Betsy’s over, along with Robbie and the baby.” That was his youngest daughter, his grandson and namesake, and his granddaughter, Tamara. The little boy was not quite two now and the baby was a year. “Betsy says she came over to help with the wedding plans but when I left, Nan was taking care of the kids.”

  “I’d forgotten about your wedding,” Mamm said.

  I grimaced at another short-term memory lapse.

  “I was going to ask if you and Nan could chaperone a Youngie camping trip,” Mamm said. “But I don’t suppose that would work.”

  “When?” Bob leaned against the porch railing.

  “Next week. Monday through Thursday.”

  My face grew warm at Mamm asking such a thing of the busiest man I knew—especially when he was just a couple of weeks away from getting married.

  “I wish we could,” Bob said, “but I have several appointments. What would you think of Pete and Cate going along?”

  Mamm brightened. “Do you think they could?”

  “Jah,” Bob said, breaking into a smile. “They both work for me—there shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Although I would have enjoyed having Bob and Nan along, Cate and Pete were preferable. Not because they wouldn’t do a good job chaperoning us—they would. Not that we’d need it. But maybe Cate would have some advice for me about Leon.

  Bob raised the folder in his hand. “I’ll do more in the next week, but I worked up a plan that I’d like to explain.”

  “Of course,” Mamm said. “Beatrice, you may join us if you’d like.”

  She shook her head and pulled her journal from where she’d tucked it along t
he side of the settee. “I’ll stay here.”

  Once we were at the kitchen table, Bob assured Mamm that our district’s mutual aid fund would cover the expenses for her doctor’s appointments and the upcoming test. “We’ll talk more once we know what the complete diagnosis is,” Bob said.

  The Amish rarely chose drastic measures to save a life. An elderly person with cancer or some other terminal disease didn’t usually go through chemotherapy or radiation to extend life a few years. But Mamm wasn’t elderly.

  Bob opened the folder. “As far as your business, we need to figure out how much you need to produce per square foot of land to break even and then double that.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Mamm said. I knew she meant the Mosiers’ farm.

  “You may have to consider plowing up your lower pasture since you don’t have much livestock,” Bob said.

  But that would mean giving up the farmers’ market. Maybe another field of plants would bring in more money, but I couldn’t imagine life without the market.

  “Also,” Bob said, “consider selling directly to florists. I thought we could brainstorm what other products or services you could offer. Anna, do you have any thoughts on that?”

  Mamm shook her head, a frown settling on her face.

  “Molly?”

  I hadn’t told Mamm what I’d been up to. “I have some ideas,” I said. “One is selling our products to local bed-and-breakfasts.”

  “That sounds like a possibility,” he said. “It wouldn’t bring in a lot though.”

  “And I may have a job as a garden consultant,” I said.

  “I like your thinking,” Bob said, “but again that’s not going to bring in what’s needed.”

  I quickly added, “How about hosting groups of Englisch people for dinners and renting out rooms for overnight guests? I have a lead on that.”

  Mamm crossed her arms. “Why would anyone want to eat here? Or stay here?”

  “The bed-and-breakfast owner said they would,” I answered.

  “Both of those ideas would bring in more income,” Bob said. “And a good profit.”

  “Would the bishop allow it?” Mamm leaned forward.

  “You could ask,” Bob said, tapping the eraser of his pencil on the table.