Plain Christmas (Plain Fame Book 6)

by Sarah Price

  “And no going near those horses by yourself, you hear, Nicolas?” Amanda called out after him.

  Anna watched him, a smile still on her face. “That boy—”

  “Is a handful!” Amanda finished her sentence. “It’s amazing how different children can be, isn’t it?”

  “Ja, vell, he is a boy.” Anna returned her attention to Amanda. “And he reminds me of a miniature version of Alejandro.” Amanda chuckled when imagining Alejandro as a little boy and had to agree with her sister. Nicolas was, indeed, the spitting image of his father.

  The door that connected the kitchen to the grossdaadihaus opened, and Lizzie entered, a frown on her face. Without a word, she walked over to the table and sat down in a chair. Clearly, something was bothering her.

  “Mamm?” Amanda sat next to her and reached out for her mother’s hand. “What’s wrong? You feeling all right?”

  “Hmmph.”

  Amanda looked over at Anna, who merely shrugged in response.

  “What is it, Mamm?” Amanda insisted.

  “That woman.”

  For a split second, Amanda shut her eyes and inhaled sharply. Alecia. Of course.

  “What happened, Mamm?” Amanda asked in a soft voice, her eyes glancing toward the door in case Alecia walked in.

  “She is cooking,” Lizzie said, as if that was a criminal offense. “Preparing food for supper!”

  Anna laughed. “Oh, Mamm.”

  “And reorganizing my pantry while she’s doing it! I scarce know what to say to such a thing!” Lizzie stared at Amanda as if she expected her to do something about her mother-in-law.

  “You can just reorganize it when she leaves,” Amanda reassured her. “It isn’t such a horrible thing, is it? A little reorganization?”

  “I suppose not, but she keeps talking to herself. I can’t understand her half the time,” Lizzie confessed. “But mayhaps it’s better that way.”

  “I imagine that she feels most comfortable when cooking. I think it’s very hospitable of you, Mamm, to make her feel at home. I’m sure she appreciates your kindness,” Amanda remarked. “Besides, the two of you seem to get along quite well.”

  “Hmmph, I suppose so,” her mother mumbled underneath her breath. While they did appear the most unlikely of friends, clearly a bond was developing between the two women, despite Lizzie’s irritation at Alecia’s invasion of her kitchen, the heart of any Amish woman’s home. “I just hope I recognize my kitchen when I get it back.”

  Both Anna and Amanda laughed.

  By ten o’clock, a large van pulled into the driveway to pick them up for the quilting bee. Since Alejandro and Jonas had taken the SUV to the horse auction and there were too many of them to fit into the buggy, Lizzie had made alternative transportation arrangements with a Mennonite neighbor. It was only a short ride to the Kings’ farm, where the quilting bee was being held, but Amanda enjoyed looking out the window. She had forgotten how peaceful the landscape of her childhood could be.

  When they arrived at the Kings’ farm, the driveway looked as full as the driveway from the church service on Sunday. Inside the stone farmhouse, the kitchen was crowded with Amish women, their dresses a rainbow of dark colors: navy blue, hunter green, deep burgundy, brown. Very few of them wore bright colors, such as pink, yellow, or purple, although several of the smaller children did.

  No sooner had they walked into the house than one of the older girls from church came over and greeted Isadora as if they were old friends. Within seconds, Isadora walked off with her new friend to join the other fourteen-year-olds, who stood on the other side of the room.

  “Barbie King,” Anna whispered in Amanda’s ear.

  “Ah, of course.” Amanda watched as Isadora greeted the other girls. An enthusiastic Barbie immediately introduced Isadora to two of her friends who had not been at the church service. Amanda hadn’t initially made the connection between the young girl and the house that was hosting the quilting bee. After all, King was a popular name in the Lititz community.

  But now, as she observed her daughter blending in with the Amish girls, Amanda couldn’t pull her gaze away. The sight of Isadora laughing with the others was simply mesmerizing. When was the last time that she’d seen anyone pay such attention to her daughter? Attention on Isadora as a person, not as the daughter of a celebrity.

  “Why, Amanda Beiler!” an older woman said in a warm, friendly voice. “I don’t believe my eyes!”

  Amanda smiled at the woman who approached her.

  “My word, child! You are all grown up and then some!” She made a clicking noise with her tongue. With her thinning white hair and the thick glasses that covered the deep sun-weathered wrinkles under her eyes, the woman looked older than Lizzie, and although she seemed somewhat familiar, Amanda couldn’t quite recognize her.

  “Why, you don’t remember who I am, do you?”

  Embarrassed, Amanda dug deep into her memory. A spark of recognition began to grow.

  “Katie Lapp,” the woman said.

  “Of course, of course.” Amanda could feel the heat rising to her cheeks. She still wasn’t certain who this woman was. After all, the name Katie Lapp was also rather common. “I’m terribly sorry I didn’t recall your name,” she said, still racking her memory to place the woman in her past.

  Katie waved her hand at Amanda, dismissing her forgetfulness. “Nothing to fret about, child. Why, I haven’t seen you in years, and mayhaps I wouldn’t have recognized you, either, if I hadn’t heard you were coming home for the holiday!” Clutching her hands together over her stomach, Katie rocked just a little on her heels. “And, of course, my Sylvia and her husband do remember your husband visiting with them when he first came out here.” When Amanda frowned, puzzled over this remark, Katie quickly added, “Right after your accident.”

  Vaguely, she recalled the memory of her father, Elias, taking Alejandro to Jake Edwards’s horse farm. He had returned amazed at how beautiful Jake Edwards’s place was. “How are Sylvia and Jake?”

  Katie smiled at a woman who was walking past them but kept her attention on Amanda. “Oh, she’s just fine, Amanda. Danke. Six children and another one on the way. I do miss living over that way, but I’ve moved to my younger son’s haus in Lititz just two years past.” She paused. “After my Jonas died, you see.”

  Amanda was too embarrassed to admit that she had never learned of Jonas Lapp’s death. It made her wonder what other things she had missed over the years: births, marriages, deaths. The cycle of life, and yet by living in the world of the Englische, the only life that she focused on was her own with Alejandro. The rest of the world seemed so removed—and no one thought to update them on anything that didn’t impact their own.

  “I’m so sorry, Katie.”

  “Nee, he’s with God now. Much better place, don’t you think?”

  Amanda felt a hand on her shoulder and glanced to her left, relieved to see her mother standing there.

  “Now, Katie,” Lizzie said in a teasing tone, placing her hand on Amanda’s arm as she guided her toward the back of the room, where the women were beginning to take seats to start quilting. “You best not monopolize my dochder. It’s rare enough that I get to see her, too!”

  While there was no malice in her mother’s words, Amanda felt the sting of the unspoken complaint. She was a stranger in her family’s world. And she didn’t feel like she fit in. Even more telling was that the more she realized that she didn’t belong, the more she realized how much she had missed it.

  In the middle of the Kings’ large gathering room, typically used only for hosting worship services or the rare weddings and funerals, there was a large wooden quilting frame with a mixture of kitchen and plastic folding chairs. A beautiful quilt stretched out between the eight-by-twelve-foot rails. Around the frame, most of the chairs were occupied by women, their heads tipped down as they worked on quilting the section in front of them.

  Amanda sat next to her mother, still feeling more than a little out of place,
even though everyone had greeted her with nothing but kindness. Anna sat on the other side of the quilt and talked with two of her friends, women who Amanda did not recognize. The older women focused on the quilt more than the company.

  Reaching for the needle and thimble that her mother had brought for her, Amanda looked down at the quilt. The pattern, the Grand Dahlia, resembled a beautiful flower with seven rings of petals surrounding the center. Each ring of petals had been carefully cut and pieced together to make the top of the quilt. By the time all of the women finished making their tiny stitches to attach the quilt top to the batting and bottom fabric, over 1,600 yards of thread would be used.

  But it wasn’t just the work that brought everyone together. It was the camaraderie of women being together, making something with love, for a young couple in their church district or family. In this case, the quilt would be gifted to one of the Kings’ younger daughters, who had just married the previous November.

  Amanda took a deep breath and started to thread her needle. She missed the eye three times before someone leaned over and tossed her a pair of glasses.

  Surprised, Amanda looked up in time to see Katie Lapp nod at her.

  “Danke, Katie,” Amanda said.

  “No readers in that Englische world of yours, Amanda?” another woman teased, causing several women to chuckle.

  Amanda remembered far too well the teasing tongue of Amish women seated around a quilt. She took no offense at being the object of a little ribbing. But she didn’t feel comfortable trying to poke fun back. Instead, she put on the glasses and quickly threaded the needle. When she finished, she borrowed her mother’s small scissors to snip the thread before she gently tossed the glasses back to Katie Lapp.

  “Why, Lizzie!” said Mary King. She was an older relative, who sat near the corner of the quilting frame. “You gave no mention that your granddaughter was such a good quilter!”

  Amanda looked up, following her mother’s gaze to where her daughter sat with Barbie King, who was showing Isadora how to quilt.

  “Oh, Mary!” Lizzie shot back good-naturedly. “She’s no better or worse than any other Englischer, I’m sure.”

  The other women laughed, and Amanda joined them.

  “Now, Barbie, girl, you make certain that you teach proper now,” Mary shouted across the quilt. “Her grossmammi says she quilts as good as any Englischer, so that means you best keep an eye on her, then!”

  Barbie looked up and made a playful face. “Ja, Aendi. I’ll keep an eye on her. What is it you do? Twelve stitches an inch?”

  The women laughed again, and Mary pretended to take offense.

  “Oh, you!” She shook her head and clucked her tongue. “You know perfectly well that I’m a ten-stitch quilter now. But those ten are perfectly tiny and even stitches. I’ll leave twelve stitches to the young ones with steady hands and perfect vision.”

  The teasing continued well into the afternoon with a sprinkling of good old-fashioned gossip, making the gathering livelier than Amanda remembered from her youth. Sitting next to her mother, she felt a sense of peace and calm wash over her. When was the last time that she had enjoyed such a relaxing time with other women? Whenever she was with other women, it was always at an event, typically a fund-raiser where people would rather take photos with her than talk to her.

  She thought back to the woman she had met in Michigan. It had been the closest she’d come to shedding her celebrity status and merely being a regular person engaged in a dialogue that didn’t involve someone telling her how much they loved her. How could so many people love her if they didn’t know her? It was a question she had asked from the very beginning of her relationship with Alejandro. The artificial affection so many felt for her weighed heavily on her conscience. Was fame so important that people forgot that she was a regular person, too?

  Despite all of her good works to raise awareness of self-esteem and to raise money for the children’s cancer center, Amanda had never embraced the concept of fame alone being a reason to adore a person. Such energy should be put where it belonged: with Jesus and each person’s effort to follow in his spiritual path.

  But unlike the Amish, Amanda was raising her children in a society influenced by fame, beauty, and power—not God.

  Amanda dipped her head, concentrating on her stitches as she listened to the other women. If only she could change that, she thought. What a better world it would be for her children.

  “Mami!” Sofia ran up to her, jumping up and down excitedly. “Guess what Aunt Anna said!”

  Earlier, when they had arrived home from the quilting at four o’clock, Nicolas and Sofia had disappeared to help the men with the milking as Amanda prepared supper with the help of Alecia and Isadora. Anna had lain down for a short nap while Lizzie entertained the grandchildren.

  Right after the supper meal, while the men went out to the barn to feed the livestock, Amanda had taken Samuel for a short walk, pushing him in a stroller down the lane. The air was cold, and they were both bundled up, Amanda in a thick coat she borrowed from Anna and Samuel under several layers of lap blankets. By the time they’d returned to the house, Samuel was sleeping, and Sofia was bursting with excitement. Amanda could hardly imagine what had made Sofia so enthusiastically happy in such a short period of time. Behind her, however, Nicolas stood with a long face, clearly not feeling as animated about what had overjoyed his sister.

  “It must be something wunderbar to have you so happy, mija!”

  Sofia nodded, a big grin lighting up her face. “Anna said that we could go to school with Hannah and Rachel tomorrow!”

  Nicolas scowled.

  Amanda laughed at the different reactions of her two children. “Now, Nicolas, that should be fun! You can sit in the same schoolhouse where I used to attend! And it will be interesting to experience an Amish school day.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and pouted. “I don’t know why we have to go to school on our vacation. It’s our vacation! I’d rather help Jonas with the milking all day!”

  Amanda smiled as his scowl turned into an enthusiastic grin. “You enjoyed that, ja?”

  He nodded. “Oh sí! I did, Mami. Why, I even got to pull at their others!”

  Sofia laughed. “Others? You mean udders!” She nudged him with her elbow. “That’s why you have to go to school, goose! You aren’t smart enough to know one udder from another!”

  Her joke caught Amanda off guard, but when she realized what Sofia has said, she couldn’t hold back her laughter. Amanda gave Sofia a quick hug. “Oh, mi amor, that was priceless.”

  Not understanding the joke, Nicolas continued to scowl.

  Sofia was clearly undeterred by Nicolas’s long face. “Maybe I could wear one of their dresses,” she said. “And you could fix my hair like theirs?”

  “I’m sure we could ask Hannah. You would look especially pretty in a blue dress.”

  Sofia looked up toward the sky as if contemplating the suggestion. “Can you help me ask if they would let me?”

  Amanda put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and leaned over, planting a soft kiss on Sofia’s head. “Of course, mija. Let’s go upstairs, and while you are getting ready for bed, I’ll ask them.”

  “Bed?” Nicolas practically choked on the word. “It’s not bedtime yet!”

  “You want to help with the cows in the morning, ja?” Amanda waited for him to take her hand so that she could lead him to the stairs. “Sylvia and Elizabeth must be upstairs getting read for bed. And Samuel is already sleeping in his stroller. I’m sure Hannah and Rachel are soon to follow.” After dinner, Isadora had gone over to the grossdaadihaus to help Alecia with something, Hannah and Rachel tagging along with her. After the long day, Amanda wanted nothing more than to get the children situated so she could sink into her own comfortable bed under the heavy quilts. Her back ached and her eyes stung from quilting for so long.

  Once upstairs, Amanda knocked on Hannah’s bedroom door and inquired about Sofia’s borrow
ing a dress. Hannah giggled and nodded her head.

  “Here, Amanda,” she said as she took down a blue dress that hung on a hanger from a peg on the wall. “This should fit her, I reckon.”

  Amanda took the dress and looked at it. “So pretty, Hannah. Did you make this yourself or did your mamm?”

  “Mamm did,” she admitted before quickly adding, “but I helped. I like sewing. Mayhaps I could make a dress for Sofia to keep?”

  Amanda felt her heart warm at her niece’s generous idea. “I’m sure that Sofia would love that, but I would only agree if she helps you.”

  Hannah smiled and nodded her head enthusiastically.

  When she returned to the room Sofia and Nicolas shared with Isadora, Amanda held the dress up and asked, “What do you think?” She watched as Sofia studied the dress, her lips pursed and to the side. Amanda wondered what her daughter was thinking. Back at home, such a dress would have been far too plain for Sofia’s taste. Now, however, when she just wanted to fit in with the others, a plain and simple dress might actually appeal to her. How ironic, Amanda thought. “Mayhaps with your white sweater?”

  Sofia made a face. “Mami! The other girls don’t wear white sweaters!”

  “Well, I’m sure I can borrow a black one for you, then.”

  Satisfied, Sofia nodded. “All right, then. I think that will do.”

  With unbridled excitement, Sofia climbed into the bed and snuggled under the blankets. Nicolas, however, still wasn’t convinced that going to school was something he had any interest in doing.

  Amanda sat on the edge of Sofia’s mattress. “Mammi Lizzie will be pleased to see you in this dress tomorrow.”

  She could only imagine that Alecia would be appalled. Unless a dress had frills and lace, Alecia felt it was too plain. And while she had been adapting well to the Amish environment, there were plenty of moments when Alecia seemed to share her disapproval with either silent criticism or unusual resolve about some things that were going on. Most of the time Amanda couldn’t decide which one it was.