Home to Paradise

by Cameron, Barbara;

  “Kate and I took some crafts to Sewn in Hope after the class yesterday. You should see the shop now. It’s doing so well.”

  “Changing the subject?”

  “Just thought you’d be interested.”

  “If she doesn’t want to talk about it, don’t fuss at her,” Mary Elizabeth said.

  Linda walked into the room. “Who’s fussing?” she asked as she took her seat and picked up her quilt. She glanced at each of them.

  Lavina blushed. “No one.”

  “I was just saying that Kate and I took some crafts in to the Sewn in Hope shop yesterday,” Rose Anna said quickly to ease the awkwardness.

  “I’m so glad it’s doing well. We should stop in there the next time we go to town. Danki for stopping in and seeing Leah. We have a lot of work lined up this month with the new orders you brought from her,” their mudder said, redirecting them as she often did.

  Were mudders always the peacemakers of the family? Rose Anna wondered.

  She listened as their mudder guided the discussion to how Mark was doing.

  Lavina was off and running.

  An hour later, when Lavina ran down, Linda glanced at the clock. “Anyone ready for a break? Mary Elizabeth, I made your favorite ginger cookies last night.”

  “I’ll go put the teakettle on,” she said, jumping up. “C’mon, Lavina, you know you love them, too.”

  Linda watched them with a fond smile as they left the room, then she turned to Rose Anna. “You are being quiet today, kind. Is something troubling you?”

  Rose Anna shook her head and continued sewing. “Danki, I’m fine.”

  “Do you want me to speak to your schweschders?”

  She looked up. “About what?”

  “About the way they tease you.”

  She gave a short laugh. “I guess it’s the price of being the baby of the family.”

  “Well, the three of you are older. I’d think they could stop now.”

  Rose Anna smiled. “They’re not trying to hurt me.”

  “Nee. But I think they are. You have a tender heart.”

  Surprised, Rose Anna stared at her.

  “Ya, a tender, easily hurt heart.” She studied her. “You know, maybe I’m not the one who should speak to your schweschders. Maybe you should think about telling them how they hurt you when they tease. Even if you think they don’t mean to hurt you.”

  She sighed. “I will. Think about it, I mean.”

  Linda nodded, set aside her quilt, and stood. “We haven’t seen Peter around lately.”

  She held out her hand and clasped Rose Anna’s, and they walked down the stairs to the kitchen together.

  “Peter’s been busy with his business. John—John Stoltzfus—has been helping him.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I saw John. How is he doing?”

  Rose Anna shrugged. “I haven’t seen him in some time.”

  “Hope he didn’t catch a cold. I heard he met a snowball recently.”

  She nearly missed a step. “A snowball?”

  “Ya. But then again, maybe I should worry about you catching a cold instead.”

  “You know,” Rose Anna said finally.

  “Mudders always know,” she said, grinning at her.

  ***

  The Stoltzfus farmhouse smelled amazing the minute he walked into it on Saturday.

  Then again, when didn’t it? Something always seemed to be cooking or baking in an Amish home. John made his way to the kitchen, pulling off his jacket as he went and tossing it on a chair in the living room.

  He told himself he should have expected to see Rose Anna at her sister’s house when he walked into the kitchen. After all, it was supposed to be a family workday, and they were part of the same family through marriage.

  He stopped in his tracks when he saw her sitting at the table and held up his hands.

  She glanced up at him. “What?”

  “Just wondering if I need a shield.” His gaze focused on the bowl in front of her.

  “They’re boiled potatoes,” she said dryly. “I don’t think you need to be worried.” She held one up and slid the peel off to demonstrate that it had been cooked.

  “Okay,” he said slowly. A cooked potato couldn’t hurt much, he guessed. “Where is everyone?”

  “The men are out in the barn. Lavina and Mary Elizabeth are upstairs doing the tough work. Mark is teething and screaming his head off.”

  He grinned. “Is that why you’re down here?”

  “Absolutely. Besides, someone has to fix the food.” She jerked her head in the direction of the stove. “I just made coffee if you want some.”

  He walked over to the stove and poured himself a cup while keeping a wary eye on her. After all, a knife lay on the table within reach.

  “Since when do you peel potatoes after you cook them?”

  “You boil them, let them cool, then the peel slips right off them,” she said, demonstrating.

  He sat at the table and watched her make quick work of the potatoes in the bowl. Then she used a metal masher to mash them up. She pulled a casserole dish over, and he saw that it had a hamburger mixture in it. After dumping the mashed potatoes on top of it, she spread it like frosting on a cake.

  “Shepherd’s pie?”

  She nodded, got up and slid it into the oven, and set the timer. “It’ll be a nice hot supper on such a cold day.” She pulled a bowl of Granny Smith apples toward her and began peeling them. “Apple crisp.”

  “One of my favorites.”

  She nodded.

  “So no snowballs?”

  “No snowballs. We might manage some ice cream with the crisp if you want.”

  “Truce?”

  She met his steady gaze. “Truce.”

  He sipped his coffee and watched her. “So what was it all about anyway?”

  She lifted her gaze. “The snowballs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe I was just having fun.”

  “You sure?”

  Rose Anna nodded. “Just having a little fun at your expense.”

  “No ulterior motives?”

  “Like what?”

  “I figured you didn’t want me moving back to town.”

  She rose to check on the shepherd’s pie. It seemed to him that she took more time than it usually did to perform the task.

  Then she turned. “Why should it matter if you move back to town? You’ve made it clear that you don’t want to stay in the Amish community,” she said quietly. “And that you don’t want a relationship with me anymore.”

  The back door opened, and David entered letting in a gust of cold air. He shut the door, turned, and took in the scene. “Did I come in at a bad time?” he asked, sensing the tension.

  John shrugged. “It’s your house,” he said mildly.

  “Everything’s fine,” Rose Anna told David when he looked at her.

  David shed his jacket, hung it on a peg by the door, and strode over to the stove to pour a cup of coffee. He leaned against the counter as he took his first sip and studied John. “So, loafing while the real men work, eh?”

  John took a last gulp of coffee. “Just having a cup before I join you.”

  “Uh-huh. Got a late start on your morning, huh? Partied too hard last night?”

  John glanced at Rose Anna, but she acted like she wasn’t listening. “Hardly. I had to give Peter a couple of hours before I came here.”

  “I thought you had today off.”

  “He had an emergency he needed help with.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  John just shrugged. He’d been the one who’d let others think he was enjoying his time in town, so he could hardly blame David for coming to such a conclusion.

  David tried and failed to hold back a huge yawn. “Where’s Lavina?”

  “Upstairs trying to get your sohn down for a nap,” Rose Anna told him. “Looks like you could use one, too.”

  “He kept us up most of the night. Just started sle
eping through the night and now he’s decided to get in teeth.” He shook his head. “Don’t know how our parents lived through having the three of us so close together.”

  “Why didn’t Sam and Amos come in for coffee?”

  “They were busy going over Sam’s plans for his farm.” He pulled on his jacket. “Guess I’d better get back out there. You know how Daed is—he’s the only one who knows what should be planted on a farm.”

  “Wait a minute.” Rose Anna went to the cupboard, pulled out a Thermos, and filled it. She put it into a tote bag and added a couple of mugs. Then she took a plastic bag to the cookie jar, tossed in a handful of snickerdoodles, and handed it to David.

  She hadn’t offered him any cookies, John thought. “I’ll be out in a minute,” he told David.

  “Allrecht.” David turned to Rose Anna. “Whatever you’re making for lunch smells wunderbaar.”

  “Danki. It’s shepherd’s pie. We’ll eat in forty-five minutes.”

  John waited until his brother left, then he looked at Rose Anna. “So you’re not mad at me and I don’t have to worry about a sneak snowball attack any time in the future?”

  Rose Anna turned to look at him. “Nee, you don’t have to worry about that.”

  She smiled at him, but for some reason he didn’t feel reassured.

  ***

  Rose Anna tucked herself into bed early that night. It had been fun helping Lavina paint two second-story bedrooms that day and help soothe her nephew cranky from teething. But staying calm and collected when she was around John had taken a toll.

  She didn’t dare let him know that she had a plan and she was interested in him. She figured he’d run fast back to town if he knew. So she’d been serene and friendly but not too friendly as she talked to him, as she sat across the table from him and ate and passed him food and especially when she ever-so-casually handed him the tote bag filled with leftovers.

  He didn’t suspect anything.

  But she’d noticed her shoulder muscles were knotted when she drove the buggy home, and she had a slight headache.

  She pulled her journal out from her hiding place and wrote about how things had gone that day.

  She’d known he was going to be at Lavina and David’s house, of course, and so she’d worn her prettiest dress—the forest green one that gave her face a nice, rosy glow. It hadn’t been an accident that she’d made one of his favorite desserts, either. She’d brought apples from home just in case Lavina didn’t have any.

  And when he’d left to go home, she made sure he had a plastic container of shepherd’s pie and one of apple crisp to take with him. Maybe it was simplistic to think the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, but she knew a hardworking man who wasn’t gut at cooking—his repertoire of dishes that revolved around ramen noodles proved that—appreciated a gut meal.

  Maybe when he ate those leftovers for supper that night or the next he’d think about her.

  She chewed on her pencil as she flipped a page and studied the list of people she wanted to talk to about what she’d come to think of as her romantic quest. She’d checked off Jenny—and that unexpected chat she’d been able to have with her that day. Her schweschders hadn’t been the most encouraging with their advice, but after having watched romance bloom between them and the two older Stoltzfus bruders she thought she’d learned something from them.

  A bare branch tapped on her window as the wind picked up outside. The wind made a moaning sound. Even though she felt lonely tonight in her narrow bed, she was grateful for it. The pictures on the wall were those she’d chosen—actually, were wildflowers she’d pressed and put in dollar store frames. A quilt her grossmudder Miriam had sewn for her covered her bed. Her warm flannel sheets were scented with the lavender her mudder liked to tuck into drawers after they came off the clothesline. They brought a scent of summer on a cold night.

  But it was no substitute for sharing a double bed . . . she reined in her thoughts and forced her attention on her journal until her eyelids drooped. She tucked the journal under her pillow, turned off the battery-operated bedside lamp, and drifted off to sleep.

  She tossed and turned much of the night, dreaming of searching for John and never finding him.

  When she woke the next morning she felt listless and not in the best of moods. Fortunately, it was one of her two volunteer mornings at the shelter. She was grateful she didn’t have to sit in the sewing room and make conversation with her schweschders and mudder. Focusing on helping the women at the shelter would help keep her mind off herself.

  She took the buggy today since Kate had to do some overtime at work and didn’t know when she’d be done. When she pulled into the parking lot behind the shelter she saw Jenny getting out of her buggy.

  “What a nice surprise!” she exclaimed and walked over to her.

  “I had a free morning and decided to take you up on your invitation to help with a class,” Jenny told her. “I ran into Kate the other day, and we talked about Brooke. Malcolm, Kate’s husband, counsels ex-military with PTSD, but Kate and I felt Brooke might do better with a woman.”

  “Pearl told me once that many of the women and children are nervous around men even after they’ve been here a while.”

  Jenny nodded. “Can’t blame them. Sometimes they’ve been abused emotionally and physically for years before they come here.” She reached into the back of the buggy and pulled out two shopping bags. “I brought some fabric.”

  Rose Anna grinned as she took one of the bags. “Wunderbaar. We can always use fabric.”

  “So Kate tells me. I had fun picking it out. I don’t get time to quilt often around my book deadlines, so I wasn’t tempted to take it home from the store.”

  “How’s the latest book going?” Rose Anna asked her as they walked to the back door of the shelter.

  “Like usual. Hard to get started,” Jenny complained with a wry smile. “It gets to be more fun as I reach the middle. Happens with nearly every book I write. You’d think writing would be getting easier as I get older but it hasn’t happened.”

  She shrugged as Rose Anna knocked on the door. “Sometimes the best things aren’t easy.”

  Rose Anna had to agree with her. She didn’t figure getting John to marry her was going to be easy but she didn’t care. She hadn’t ever wanted anyone but him, so she’d just have to work her hardest to convince him they should marry.

  Pearl came to open the door and welcomed them inside. A young woman sat at the table in the kitchen sipping a cup of tea, avoiding their gaze. Rose Anna said hello as they passed and winced inwardly as she saw tears on the woman’s cheeks and the bruise on her face. Did the stream of women fleeing their abusers ever end?

  She and Jenny climbed the stairs to the quilting room. When she walked in Rose Anna was surprised to find Brooke sitting at the table at the far back of the room.

  “Pearl said I could come up here before the class,” she said, sounding tentative.

  “Absolutely,” Rose Anna assured her. She introduced the two women and walked to the front of the room to set her tote bag down and take off her coat. When she turned she saw that Jenny had taken off her coat, set it on a table next to Brooke’s, and was pulling fabric from her tote bag.

  “I’ve only been here a couple of times,” she told Brooke. “I’ve never been a very good quilter, but I like to come help and meet new people.”

  “I thought all Amish women were good quilters.”

  Jenny laughed and shook her head. “Maybe those who have been born here. I joined the Amish church when I fell in love with an Amish man.”

  Brooke looked intrigued. “So you were Englisch?”

  “Very Englisch. My father was born here but chose not to join the church. I came here after I was hurt overseas.”

  “Were you in the military?”

  “No, I was covering the war for a TV network.”

  “Now I recognize you. I saw one of your broadcasts years ago. And Pearl has your books in the library
room here.”

  Jenny blushed. “Well, she had to. I gave her some,” she said self-deprecatingly.

  “They’re good books,” Rose Anna chimed in. “I think everyone who knows you has bought at least one.”

  “You got hurt over there,” Brooke said quietly. “You know what it was like.” She glanced nervously at the window.

  “I did. And I do. I’d love to talk to you about it if you want. Any time.”

  Brooke nodded slowly. “I would.”

  “I’m going downstairs to get some coffee,” Rose Anna told them. “Shall I bring some up for you both?”

  “I’d love some,” Jenny said. “I brought some cookies I baked.”

  Rose Anna glanced at Brooke. “Um . . . Jenny’s as good at baking cookies as she is at sewing quilts.”

  “Hey!”

  She chuckled as she darted out of the room before Jenny could retaliate.

  6

  Rose Anna and Jenny walked out to the parking lot together after the class.

  “Do you have to go home right away?”

  “No, why?”

  “Kate and I decided to have lunch. We’d like you to join us. I have some ideas to help Brooke.”

  “Schur.”

  Kate came out of the shelter carrying a box that she set in the trunk of her car. “I have to drop another box off at the Sewn in Hope shop after we eat. I can’t believe how much our ladies are getting done. We have a real cottage industry here.”

  Once they were seated in a nearby restaurant and their server had taken their orders, Jenny placed her arms on the table and leaned forward eagerly. “I’m so glad that you invited me to drop by a class, Rose Anna. Kate, you know I’ve always been a big supporter of what you’re doing with it.”

  She leaned back when the server brought their drinks. “I didn’t get to talk to Brooke for very long before she wanted to go back to her room. Both of you know I’ve had some trouble with PTSD, my brother-in-law, Chris, as well. Kate, he and I were talking just the other day about a friend of his who got a service dog from an organization that supplies them to veterans who are suffering from PTSD, anxiety, panic attacks. The dogs are specially trained to help them with it. Maybe Malcolm could check into that for her.”