Naomi’s breath caught in her throat. Once again, the words were simple enough, but there was something in Joseph’s expression that made her arms prickle with hopeful goose bumps.
“I will miss you, too,” she whispered.
He looked down into her eyes, and for one, long, breath-stealing second, she thought he was going to say something else, something not so simple. Something that . . . mattered.
Instead he only blinked and looked away. “I’d appreciate it if you’d get that card for me, Naomi. I’d best get on into town.”
“Sure.” Feeling strangely embarrassed, Naomi turned abruptly toward the door, bumping into the supporting post just behind her. “Ooh!”
“You all right?”
“Ja. I’m fine. It’s just so dim—it’s hard to see where I’m going,” she murmured as she slipped through the door.
That wasn’t entirely true, she realized sadly. She could see where she was going well enough—or more important, where she wasn’t going.
And it was breaking her poor, foolish heart.
Chapter Nineteen
“Do we really have to go live at Oak Point? I . . . don’t like the idea of leaving home.” Miriam fisted her hands restlessly in the rumpled covers of her bed.
Joseph forced himself to meet his sister’s eyes squarely. “I know, and I’m sorry, Miriam. But I do think it’s the best thing; otherwise I’d never ask it of you.”
He’d hated to break this news to his sister today. Things had been going a bit better just lately. Miriam still wouldn’t set foot out of the house. She wouldn’t even cross the yard to feed the chickens.
She’d finally come downstairs again yesterday, though, and she’d sat at the table with Naomi, making a half-hearted attempt to do some sewing. It wasn’t much, but it was the most she’d done in the past five days, and it had given him hope that maybe Miriam would start improving, as she’d done before.
He didn’t want this news to be a setback for her, but given what the real estate agent had told him yesterday, he hadn’t seen a way around it.
“I’ve explained to you about the movie, Miriam. Don’t you think it’s wise we should be someplace else while all that is going on here?”
“Ja, I guess so.” Miriam leaned her head against the simple oak headboard and squeezed her eyes shut as if she were in pain. “I just don’t understand. Why would people want to make movies about such terrible things?”
That was a question Joseph couldn’t answer, so he didn’t try. “I know this feels hard, Mirry, but things have fallen into place so quickly. It seems like Gott’s provision. The real estate agent, Mona, who helped you back at the café, has already found somebody to rent the house, and for a higher price than I’d hoped for. The fellow jumped on it as soon as she told him about the farm, without even coming out to see the place for himself.”
He counted that last bit as an extra blessing. Joseph wasn’t sure how he’d have managed an Englisch stranger poking through the house, not with Miriam in this condition. Mona had explained that the renter was a writer researching the Plain lifestyle. Apparently, he was so delighted to have the opportunity to live on an actual Amish farm that he’d signed a three-year lease agreement on the spot.
“I’m supposed to go to the office today to sign the contract.” He hoped that there was something in the paperwork to discourage the renter from breaking the lease agreement early. From what he’d seen, most folks who hadn’t been born to the Plain life couldn’t stomach it for very long. “According to Mona, we’d need to move in about a month.” The anguish he saw in his sister’s red-rimmed eyes made him hasten to add, “Won’t you think about it, Miriam? Ohio may not be so terrible once we get there. We’ll be with Emma again, and I know how you’ve missed her.”
“Ja, I would love to see Emma. Traveling so far is what frightens me most. We’ll have to go in a car, too.” Miriam shook her head. “I don’t think I can do it. To go outside, to ride in a car with an Englisch driver? I’m sorry, Joseph. I truly am, but I just don’t think I can.” Miriam’s breath had begun coming sharp and hard, as if she was spiraling into one of her attacks.
Joseph felt a rush of guilty concern. This was why he’d chosen to talk to Miriam here, in her bedroom, the place where she seemed to feel the safest. He’d done his best to make this as easy for her as he could, but in the end, there was nothing for it. Once news of this movie got out, he wouldn’t be able to protect Miriam in Johns Mill. Neither of them had a choice, not really, and he didn’t know what he’d do if he couldn’t convince Miriam to attempt the trip.
“I’ll be right there with you the whole time, and I’ll help you all I can. What if we ask the doctor if he can give you a pill, to make you sleep on the ride? That would be easier, ain’t so?”
“Nee, that would be even worse.” Miriam shook her head more furiously, tears spilling down her cheeks. “To be . . . helpless like that, outside. Nee, I can’t stand the thought of it, Joseph. I’m sorry to be such a coward, but I can’t help it.”
Miriam’s voice held such shame and desperation that Joseph’s heart cracked open. He cast a despairing look at Naomi. She’d been standing by the door, offering her silent support and sympathy as he’d broken this news to his sister.
She crossed the room to sit next to Miriam on the bed. “Maybe not a pill to sleep, then, ja? Just a pill to relax you a little and make the trip easier on your nerves. And I’ll pack plenty of food so that you won’t have to stop at restaurants on the way. You can take your quilting squares and work on them in the back seat, maybe. That’ll make the miles fly by, I reckon. Once you’re there, it’ll be wonderful gut. You’ll see. Quiet, I bet, and nobody but Plain folks everywhere you look. You’ll like that part of it, ain’t so?” Naomi patted Miriam’s hand.
Miriam swiped the tears off her cheeks and sighed. “If all the people up there are like Melvin, I don’t know that I’ll like it so much as you say. He’s not such a pleasant man, our onkel.”
She didn’t sound any happier about the prospect of the trip, but still, Joseph marveled at the change in her voice. She’d been crying buckets a second ago, and now she was grousing about Melvin in a way that sounded nearly normal. Naomi had an amazing touch with his sister; that was for sure.
“Ja,” Naomi answered with a chuckle. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already. I’ve met him. Sour as an unripe persimmon, that one.” She pursed up her mouth comically, and amazingly Miriam’s quivering lips tipped up into an almost-smile.
She grasped Naomi’s hands with both of her own. “Will you come with us to Ohio, Naomi? If you and Emma and Joseph were all there, I think maybe I could manage all right. Do you think you could?”
Naomi cast a helpless look at Joseph, but he had no help to give her. He’d not been prepared for this, and he wasn’t sure what to say—especially since a part of him wanted to hear Naomi’s answer as badly as Miriam did.
“Nee,” Naomi said gently. “I can’t go with you. I’ll be going back to Kentucky.”
“You don’t want to do that,” Miriam argued, her voice gaining strength. “You’ve told me so, time and again. You like working and being useful and busy, and your brothers and their wives don’t need you like we do. You’ve been happy with us, haven’t you?”
Joseph held his breath as he waited for Naomi to speak. Naomi seemed to be having a little trouble with it, but when she finally answered, she sounded sincere.
“I have been very happy here with you, Miriam. I’m sorry, too, that our time together has come to an end, but there’s nothing for it. I couldn’t come along with you to Ohio. I’m not really family, you know, and it wouldn’t . . .” Naomi seemed to be searching for the right words. “Give the right appearance,” she finished at last.
“Joseph.” Miriam turned her pleading eyes to his. “Naomi will be unhappy in Kentucky. Couldn’t you find some way that it would be all right for
her to come with us?”
Joseph didn’t answer. His mind was turning over what Miriam had just said—that Naomi wasn’t looking forward to returning to Kentucky. It had never occurred to him that she wouldn’t be glad to go home to her family. That she might truly be happier staying with Miriam . . . and with him . . . in spite of all their troubles. Was that true? He’d felt grimly sick ever since he’d set his hopes about Naomi on the shelf, but he’d thought it was the best thing to do, for her sake. The possibility he’d been wrong set his heart to pounding.
Naomi had risen from the bed and was smiling down at Miriam. “It will be all right, Miriam. Gott has a way of working these things out for the best. Now I’m going downstairs. I feel like baking today. When you smell something delicious, that’s your cue to come to the kitchen, all right? We’ll have some tea and a treat and start cutting our new material so you’ll have plenty of pieces in your basket to work on during your drive.”
Naomi flashed a sympathetic look at Joseph as she passed him. When she walked out the door, the whitewashed bedroom seemed dimmer, as if the sun had ducked behind a cloud. Funny, that, how Naomi brought such brightness into any room, just by being in it.
From the way Miriam’s expression crumpled as soon as Naomi was out of sight, it was clear his sister felt the same way. She shot him a guilty look. “I’m sorry. I’m being selfish.”
“Nee, Miriam. I’m asking a lot of you, I know.”
“And I know you wouldn’t ask me this at all if you saw any other choice.” She stopped and swallowed hard. “I am willing to try the trip, if you really feel it’s for the best.”
Joseph sent a thankful prayer heavenward. “I do think so, Mirry. I truly do.”
“I shouldn’t have asked about Naomi coming with us. I could see it embarrassed you. You have such a hard job now that Mamm and Daed are gone, and instead of helping you, I only cause you more trouble.”
“You are no trouble to me, Miriam, and I understand how you feel about Naomi. She’s been a great help to you during a terrible time, and of course, you will hate to lose her company.”
“She has helped me, more than anybody else could. When she is with me, that is the only time I feel peaceful.” A fresh tear rolled down Miriam’s face, but she swiped it away quickly.
“Ja. I know what you mean.” Joseph’s mind drifted back to the way he felt walking up from the barn each morning and evening. Through the windows, he would see Naomi moving about the family kitchen. Then when he walked through the door, she would glance up from her work and smile a welcome at him. She never said anything special, but something about those smiles warmed his belly as much as the steaming food she set on the table.
More, even.
He realized that Miriam was watching him closely, her eyes clearer and sharper than they’d been for a long time. He cleared his throat uncomfortably, feeling as if he’d been caught sticking a grubby hand in the cookie bin before supper. “Naomi has a restful way about her, certain sure.”
“You’ll miss her, too, then?” The question was innocent enough, but Joseph suddenly felt as if he were balancing on a very thin board.
Even so, there was only one way he could answer that question honestly. “I will miss her. Like I said, she has been a great help, and she’s a hard worker.”
Miriam kept her eyes fastened on his as she smoothed out the quilt over her knees. “Is that the only reason you will miss her, Joseph? Because she has been such a hard worker?”
“Of course not! She’s not a plough horse. She is good company, Naomi is.”
“Ja, she is. I don’t know what it is about her. She’s very quiet, mostly. When we sew together, I end up doing most of the talking.”
That was actually one of the things Joseph liked best . . . Naomi’s gentle stillness. “She speaks when she has something to say. She’s very kind, and she can be funny, too. Like she almost made you laugh just then about Melvin. She manages to make things nicer somehow, even in a house like this, with so much sorrow and trouble. I don’t know how to explain it, but—” He glanced up to find Miriam studying him and broke off in midsentence.
“I think you are explaining it very well,” his sister said dryly. “And do you know what else I think?”
“What?”
“I think Naomi would make some man a wonderful good fraw. She’d be such a blessing for him and all his family, with her sweetness and her big heart. And I think, if the right fellow came along, Naomi would be very happy to have a home of her very own, instead of moving from one brother’s house to another all the time. That’s what I think. What do you think, Joseph?”
He didn’t answer her question. Not aloud anyway. But his long-suffering heart produced its own answer with a fire-hot certainty.
The answer was yes. Yes, he thought Naomi would make a wonderful gut wife. The best wife any man could wish for, in fact.
He couldn’t say such a thing to his sister—or to anybody else for that matter. And something about the way his sister was eyeing him, with the beginnings of hope in her eyes, was making him naerfich.
“I should get out to the woodshop. I’ve work to finish if I’m to get all my outstanding orders completed before we leave.”
Miriam nodded slowly, still not taking her eyes from his face. “All right. Me, I think I will rest up here, at least until Naomi’s baking is done. So if there is anything you might like to speak to her about before you go out, you won’t be disturbed.”
Joseph stopped with one hand on the dented brass doorknob and looked hard at his sister.
“I can think of nothing I need to speak to Naomi about that I would not wish for you to hear, schwesdre.”
He spoke firmly, but to his astonishment, Miriam, for the first time since their world had fallen to pieces, laughed. It was soft, and it was brief, but it was definitely a real laugh.
“Maybe you need to think a little harder then, bruder.”
Joseph went out the door, shutting it firmly behind him. His head spun as he walked down the stairs into the kitchen.
Naomi was unscrewing the metal top off a canister of flour. She glanced up at him and smiled, but she didn’t speak. She’d gotten out his mother’s old pie board, and she sprinkled a generous handful of flour over it. Then she measured a cupful into a crockery bowl, frowning seriously as she did.
She looked sweet, standing there. The dress she was wearing was a new one. He’d noticed her sewing on it up in Miriam’s room, but today was the first day she’d worn it. It was a deep, rosy shade, and it lent its color to her face, making her neatly coiled blond hair seem even lighter. It was still stiff and new, and its thick sleeves made her slim arms, busy in their work, look even daintier somehow as they poked out beneath the folded-up fabric.
That dress looked more like a woman’s than a girl’s. She really did look like a man’s wife, busy at her morning work. It was his kitchen, so she could easily have been his own young fraw, baking for their family.
The thought shuddered him, the way a loud clap of summer thunder could shake the walls of even the sturdiest house. His face stung hotly, and his mouth went suddenly dry.
“Did you need something from me before you go to town, Joseph?” She cut a quick glance at him and gave him a half smile before returning her attention to the dough she was forming in the striped bowl. “I can leave this for a bit if you do. It’s only a piecrust.” She looked up again, and her easy smile dimmed as she studied his face. “Is something wrong? You’re all flushed. Are you feeling well?”
Would you ever consider me as a husband, Naomi?
The question burned in his mind, begging to be asked, but instead he said, “I’m well enough, denki. You’re making a pie?”
“Ja. Apple-raisin. Or at least I hope so.” She darted another look at him. His heart did a somersault. “We’ll see how it turns out.”
“I thought you nev
er made pies on difficult days. This sure feels like a difficult day to me.”
Naomi sighed and dusted a snowfall of flour off her hands into the bowl. “Ja, I know it must feel so, for both of you. Hard for Miriam to hear about the move, and even harder, I think, for you to tell her about it. But you did it kindly, Joseph.”
Her praise warmed him. “She’s agreed to go, but the trip won’t be easy for her.”
“Nee, it won’t, but with your help she’ll get through it all right. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to get her in a good frame of mind before you leave. This pie is Miriam’s favorite, ain’t so? I’m hoping that the smell of it will be enough to lure her into the kitchen.” She tilted her head and gave him a mischievous smile. “That’s why I decided to take a chance on the pastry. You’d best say a prayer that it will work out well.”
Why was his heart beating so hard? He stood as if he’d grown roots into the kitchen floor, watching her as she spooned snowy lard into the mound of flour. She worked the mixture briskly with a wire pastry cutter for a second or two, then she arched an eyebrow at him.
“Is there something else you need from me, Joseph?”
Ja, there is. That deep, certain part of his heart sounded off again.
“Was it true what Miriam said? Are you not looking forward to going back to Kentucky?”
Naomi’s hands slowed. “I hope you don’t think ill of me. I love my family, Joseph, I do. But I’m the youngest, you know, and the only girl. I was sick for so long, and such a trouble to everybody, that it’s no wonder they still see me as someone they must look after.”
“Your brothers must miss you, though.”
“I suppose they do.” Naomi spoke cheerfully, but something in her voice told Joseph that she didn’t really believe what she was saying.
He frowned. “Aren’t they kind to you?” He remembered the way the Schrock boys had jogged off and left their frail sister struggling behind. Maybe that hadn’t changed as much as one would hope.
“They’re kind. It’s just they’re all so busy with their own families, they’ve little time to fret over me. They’ve been real pleased that I’ve been so happy in Johns Mill.” She offered him a rueful smile. “It got me out from under everybody’s feet for a while.”
Shelter in the Storm Page 17
