Mending Hearts

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

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  He couldn’t have mistaken the way Miriam’s gaze had lingered on him in the buggy. Of course, he’d been right in front of her—where else would she have looked? But he knew better. Her eyes had darkened, and she’d lost track of the conversation. When he’d remarked on that, her cheeks turned rosy.

  He had felt things he shouldn’t allow himself, excitement and hope among them. There was no question left in his mind that she saw him now, in a way she never had before. Maybe he’d been smart, sharing his thorny childhood. What if he really did ask to court her? Since being accepted into the church, forgiven, David had been able to let go of so much. He could live without confessing the rest, couldn’t he?

  Raising his head after the silent prayer preceding dinner at the Bowmans’, his thoughts jumped back into the same furrow even as serving spoons and forks clinked on dishes, and others began to speak.

  Levi was gone. David’s regrets came down to a blink of time, less than a minute. A misjudgment. Him distracted. If he never told Miriam . . .

  He imagined a lifetime spent with the woman he loved, always knowing that he would never have had her if the first man she loved hadn’t died.

  Because of his envy, his longing, for what Levi had and didn’t value the way he should.

  Yet David knew he could give her a good life, make her happy. If her choices were that, having kinder of her own, or remaining a spinster . . .

  But who was he, a man with an ugly burden, to make that choice for her while leaving her ignorant? And, as he’d become painfully aware Sunday, she did have other choices. He couldn’t believe Gideon Lantz, a widower with children, hadn’t responded to Miriam’s warmth and heartfelt smile, seen the way kinder crowded around her.

  All he had to do was watch her tenderness with Abby.

  Think about this later, he ordered himself. Right now, he was in good company, eating a good meal. Miriam was right beside him, smiling at him sometimes, his arm brushing hers when he reached for a serving bowl. The Bowmans had offered him nothing but kindness. Gobbling their food while brooding and ignoring the conversation was no thanks.

  So he concentrated on dishing up until Deborah asked how he was. For lack of any other topic, he told them about Copper’s progress, the cart he’d ordered, and about Ezekiel Stutzman’s suggestion. Eli asked about his plan to clear the field to plant hay, and he told them Micah had offered to help.

  “I’ve asked my brother and my daad, too. Jake will enjoy telling his big brother how to do it right,” he said.

  They all laughed.

  “I was thinking maybe Reuben would let us use his team,” David added, “since he’s so close.”

  Eli nodded his satisfaction. “I’m sure he would. Elam would probably be more help to you than Luke or me. I can let him know.”

  David shook his head. “Four of us should be plenty, don’t you think, for only one field?”

  “How did you come to hire Abram?” Miriam asked.

  He smiled. “Micah and I were good friends as kinder. Sunday during the members’ meeting, when I went outside, Abram came to talk to me. He seemed to think I needed someone at my side. Mostly, he wanted to know what it’s like out there, especially driving a car, but when I told him I prefer horses and intend to train them, he seemed excited. So he’s to work for me,” he explained for Deborah’s benefit, “just a few hours a week, maybe more during the summer, to see if that’s really what he wants to do in the future.”

  He told them his ideas for noisemaking, including using a tape player if Amos would allow that, having Abram flap a coat at Copper, dart in front of him, and so on. Chuckles rewarded him.

  “He’s strong enough to clean stalls, too, and can help me continue checking my fences and painting them. I’m thinking I’ll need paddocks, too, if I’m to have a number of horses there at a time.”

  “He’s always seemed like a good boy,” Deborah said placidly. “Not as scatterbrained as some kinder that age.”

  David laughed. “Not your own, of course.”

  Luke grinned at him, but, apparently taking him seriously, Eli grumbled, “Elam was slow to make up his mind what he wanted to do with his life. He tried my patience, that one.”

  Amused, David would swear both Luke and Miriam rolled their eyes when they were sure their father wouldn’t see.

  “Something that might interest you,” Luke said. “Just the other day, I heard a man complaining that he couldn’t trust a horse he’d bought straight from the racetrack. He said he’s done that before and had good luck, but he’s thinking he’ll try to get his money back from the man who sold the horse to him.”

  Eli snorted. “I heard part of that, too. Samuel Ropp?”

  “Ja. I didn’t see who he was talking to—”

  “Samuel is timid. He thinks your Charlie was wild.”

  Deborah opened her mouth but then closed it, making David wonder whether Luke’s handsome gelding hadn’t initially been a handful.

  “I think Samuel would rather drive a car than depend on an animal,” Eli added, “except cars go too fast for him.”

  “And his bishop would be sure to speak to him,” Miriam pointed out, a smile playing on her lips.

  Soliciting business . . . David didn’t know about that. Along with all those other skills he didn’t possess, he also wasn’t much of a salesman. He might need help with that part. If Miriam were his wife . . . “This Samuel might not be willing to pay anyone to work with his horse.”

  “He’s tight with his money, for sure,” Eli agreed, “but it might be that if you gave him a good price, people would find out what you can do.”

  “I’ve thought about having some business cards made.” He and Levi had done that, a memory that gave him a pang. He feared he’d find some in one of the boxes he had yet to open that Mamm had kept in the attic. “Micah uses them to advertise his blacksmith work. If I posted them on bulletin boards around town where people go often, word would get out. But your idea is good, too. I can afford to give my first customer a special deal, in hopes he talks me up.”

  “Samuel is in Benjamin Ropp’s district,” Eli told him. “They’re cousins, I think.”

  “I could ask Gideon Lantz to speak to Samuel Sunday.”

  “You don’t need to wait. Samuel is the hatmaker in town.”

  “I remember the store,” David said slowly. “Daad took me there a time or two.”

  “It’s only two blocks from the furniture store,” Eli said. “Closer even to A Stitch in Time.”

  Was that a hint? If so, Miriam picked it up, because she said, “I’ll be glad to stop tomorrow and tell him you’re starting a business.”

  Ja, she could sell anything, even the services of a glum horse trainer. Still, she’d been boxed into a corner.

  “If that would make you uncomfortable—” he began.

  Her smile lifted his heart. “It would make no trouble. I can tell him how within a week you turned a wild horse into one as sweet as Mamm’s shoofly pie.”

  He looked blandly at her. “Ach, and with hardly any bodderation. Except for almost having to call the undertaker for my neighbor when she had to bring him home after he went wandering.”

  “Don’t say that!” Deborah exclaimed.

  Miriam laughed. “Don’t worry, Mamm. He’s only teasing.”

  David lifted his eyebrow enough to remind her of the risk she’d taken, but he didn’t argue. He did say, “Don’t give Samuel the idea I can fix his horse so fast. Only God can accomplish miracles in seven days, ain’t so?”

  She was still smiling when she bounced up with her mother and Julia to clear the table, replenish the men’s cups of coffee, and place a plate heaped with molasses cookies within reach of everyone. David almost groaned, knowing how much he’d already eaten. But molasses cookies were his favorite, and chances were good Mi
riam had baked them, besides.

  Luke’s kind couldn’t reach, so she stood on her chair and sprawled over the table until she could snag a cookie. David thought she’d actually planted a knee beneath her.

  “Abby!” her new mamm exclaimed in horror. “If you can’t reach something during a meal, you ask politely for someone to pass it to you. You don’t climb on the table.”

  David heard a choking sound from Luke, even as Deborah began a lecture about how a good girl would say, Sei so gut.

  David recollected some of those same lectures given to him when he was that age. And the cookies were irresistible. Only, with his longer reach, he was able to snap one up effortlessly.

  And then a second and third.

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  A little annoyed by her mamm’s smug smile, Miriam slipped out the back door with David, closing it behind her. Daad had walked Luke, Julia, and Abby out a few minutes ago and not returned, which meant he’d gone to hide out in his workshop. David had been held captive while her mother, with Miriam’s assistance, packed another giant basket full of food for him to be sure he didn’t starve.

  She’d been taken aback when he met her eyes and said, “Walk partway with me?”

  He asked me! He asked me!

  Ach, here she was again, a maidal, giddy with delight because he had singled her out.

  The more mature woman she was suspected he wanted to talk about Levi. The more mature woman she was also noticed that he wasn’t a boy, but a man, solid with muscle, face showing the first lines that betrayed character she admired. How could it be otherwise when he’d overcome even his own restless, questioning nature to fully give his trust to God?

  Dusk approached but wasn’t as close as it had been the last time she accompanied him on his walk home. The days were lengthening rapidly.

  Almost to the garden, she nodded at the basket. “I made sure plenty of my cookies are in there.”

  His grin deepened those grooves in his cheeks. “You noticed how greedy I was for them, did you?”

  “Ja, although you weren’t as greedy as Abby was.”

  His laugh was deep and unfettered, surprising in such a guarded man. “When I was a boy, we had a half-grown puppy who was mine. Rascal followed me everywhere, including into the house when Mamm didn’t notice.” He paused. “He was under the table when she set out a platter of fried chicken. So fast I didn’t see it coming, he leapt onto the table and snatched up as much chicken as he could cram into his mouth. I tried to grab him, Mamm whacked him over and over with her dish towel, and Daad yelled about chicken bones killing him.”

  When she glanced sidelong, it was to see a reminiscent smile on David’s face. “Did a chicken bone get lodged in his throat?”

  “No, fortunately. Daad was so mad at Rascal, and me, too, for letting him in the house, I’m not so sure he’d have taken him to the vet.”

  “So now you’re comparing an untrained puppy to a sweet kind?”

  “Seeing her crawling on the table did bring back the memory,” he said apologetically.

  Miriam giggled. “Seeing her misbehaving is a joy, believe it or not. When she first came to Luke, she peered out from behind hair she wouldn’t let anybody brush, suspicious like a wild creature. She trusted Julia first, which was hard because—” She broke off, remembering Luke’s anguish.

  “Because she was Englisch.”

  “Ja. Abby wouldn’t talk. She didn’t know Deitsh, since her Mamm raised her out in the world. Her first word ever was Julia, after not seeing her for a long time. After that came Daad and cookie. Julia taught her to yell, ‘Cookie!’ because it was important she knew she could ask for what she wanted.”

  “Cookie.” He was grinning again. “She had to be thinking about one of your cookies.”

  “If I agree, you’ll think I have a gross feelich about myself.”

  He shifted the basket to his other arm. “I don’t believe you ever think too much of yourself. Maybe not enough.”

  “Denke,” she said quietly. His free hand brushed the back of hers. It would be so easy to reach for it . . .

  “Was there something you wanted to say?” she made herself ask.

  “Say?” He looked at her, eyebrows raised.

  “When you asked me to walk with you.”

  “Oh. No. I like your company,” he said simply. “When everyone is talking around the table, you don’t say much.”

  The happiness that blossomed in her chest almost hurt, which made no sense. Maybe it was only because she hadn’t felt anything like this in so long.

  “I do sometimes,” she argued. “When Elam and I were younger, we drove Mamm and Daad crazy with our squabbling. We’re only a year apart in age, you know.”

  “I hardly remember him. Just a skinny boy who was around sometimes.”

  “Do you remember me any better?” The moment the words were out, she wished she hadn’t asked them. They sounded . . . flirtatious. Or was she begging for something deeper?

  He was quiet for at least a minute. An agonizing minute.

  “Ja,” he said finally. “How could I forget you? Levi talked about you all the time, you know.”

  It wasn’t Levi she wanted to talk about, Miriam realized in shock, but she was responsible for turning the conversation to him.

  “I can’t believe that! I suspect for many years, I was nothing but a pesky girl he wanted to swat away like a fly.”

  “That’s true, now that you mention it.” David’s seemingly genuine amusement restored her mood.

  “Mamm reminded me of something. When I was five or six, I fell in the Bontrager pond. Levi rescued me. I must have decided he was brave and caring.”

  “I think he was both,” David said slowly. Then his tone turned brooding. “Later, though—”

  She would not ask. She would not. Thankfully, she had an excuse. A trail had taken them into the woodlot where the family’s firewood came from. They’d nearly reached the boundary.

  “There’s the fence,” she said. “Not in such good shape.”

  The color of the sky had deepened, she suddenly realized, but not so much she couldn’t still see David’s grimace. The end of the top rail in one section lay on the ground. Daad must not have been out here recently, or he’d have mended it.

  An idea came to her. “Since even I could climb over it, would you mind if I bring Abby to visit the puppies one day? Friday I don’t work. If you’ll be home?”

  “I will be. You know you’re wilkom anytime.” David smiled. “It’s good I have no animals in this field. Maybe when I repair the fence, I’ll put a gate there.”

  Pleased by the idea that he’d want to be able to visit easily, she teased him, “After eating at our house, it might not be easy to scramble over a solid fence, for certain sure. Or squeeze between rails.”

  Laughing, he faced her. “Asking for trouble, are you?”

  “With Elam not here, I’ve been saving it up.”

  David’s smile faded, leaving his eyes dark and inscrutable. “Miriam,” he said, voice deep. Quiet. Just her name.

  Excitement bubbled in her. All he had to do was bend his head . . .

  But he blinked, and suddenly he was the man he’d been on first returning home, a stranger. One she couldn’t read at all.

  “Denke for coming this far,” he said, sounding no more than polite. He hoisted the basket slightly. “And for the cookies.”

  Stung, she said, “You don’t need to thank me.”

  He backed up a step or two, then turned away to swing his leg over the break in the fence. Miriam turned her back on him and started toward the house.

  He broke the nighttime silence that was really made up of many soft, familiar sounds by calling, “Cookie!”

  Laughter vanquished her momentary hurt, even if he had left her hopelessly confused.
/>   Chapter Sixteen

  Determined to keep her word, Miriam dashed down the street during her lunch break Thursday to a store she’d never entered: Men’s Hats. It was a narrow storefront, nothing colorful or enticing to be seen through the windows. As an Amishman, Samuel had chosen busts with featureless faces to wear hats of different styles. She was mildly surprised to see that two of them must be aimed at Englisch men.

  She could see further displays of hats on shelves to each side of the small room, ending at a counter. Samuel likely had a workroom behind that. A woman sat waiting in a buggy parked at the curb. She and Miriam exchanged smiles, but her astonishment was clear when Miriam opened the door and entered the store.

  An apparent customer, probably the woman’s husband, stood at the counter, blocking her view of the man behind it. A bell jingled, the only tiny bit of good cheer.

  She hadn’t recognized the woman, but, seeing the suspenders and broadfall trousers worn by the customer, who already wore a hat, she wondered if he was someone she knew. At the sound of the bell, he turned toward her, his expression going from mildly inquiring to disapproving. Samuel, looking past him, scowled.

  Didn’t wives sometimes shop for hats for their husbands? Maybe not in this store, Miriam decided. Certainly not the one sitting out front.

  “I’ll wait,” she told the two men.

  The men said a few more words in low voices. Their business apparently concluded, the customer cast her one last not-so-friendly glance and walked past her and out the door.

  Unchastened, Miriam realized anew that holding a job all these years and remaining a spinster had made her far bolder than most of her sisters in the church. Or had she always been, and that was why Levi—?

  The worry had no place here.

  She introduced herself and said, “I’m here with a message from my daad. He heard you have a problem horse, and we have a new neighbor who trains them. David inherited the farm from his onkel, Hiram Miller. Maybe you knew him?”