She pulled the miniature muffins out of the oven and tapped the top of one with her finger. They seemed done. She turned the tin upside-down, and the muffins tumbled into a wicker basket lined with a red napkin.
Today, everything had to be perfect. She did not want to give Amos’s sisters an opportunity to find fault with anything. She hoped for their cooperation, not their resistance. Beth lined the teacups on the counter next to the stove and placed an herbal tea bag in each one. She’d chosen peppermint. It was Christmassy and had the added benefit of clearing out the lungs if anyone had a cold.
It had been a trick to convince Isaac to take her to the store this morning, but he was still on his best behavior and more easily persuaded than usual. She was able to buy everything she needed with the sewing money she’d brought with her. Her purchases had eaten up all her Christmas budget, but that didn’t matter. The sisters had to be convinced of her resolve, and the Christmas tea seemed a wonderful-gute way to get their attention.
Beth clasped her hands together and surveyed the table. A small bowl of raspberry jam and a plate of store-bought cranberry scones sat on one side of the candle and a plate of colorful fruit sat on the other. A charming pat of butter waited on each plate, and she had accented the white stoneware with red and green plaid napkins.
She remembered the day Tyler had proposed to her. He’d worked so hard with those carefully folded napkins and the sunflower in a vase. It was a nice gesture, even if she’d practically snarled at him like a dog protecting its territory. She smiled at the memory. Tyler had been thrown completely off-kilter. She liked that she had the power to do that to him.
Even though she’d been expecting it, Beth jumped when she heard the knock. She hurried to the door and found Susannah and Priscilla standing on her porch.
The eldest Hostetler sibling, Susannah, was thirty-three years old and had four children. She often wore a sensible frown that had given rise to premature wrinkles around her mouth. Susannah was tall and thin but sturdy all the same, like a woman who worked hard all day but didn’t have much time to spare in eating. Her dark auburn hair accented the myriad freckles that covered her face.
Priscilla, the sister just older than Amos and Isaac, stood almost six inches shorter than Susannah. Over the four years Beth had known her, Priscilla smiled less and less often. She’d given birth to a daughter seven years ago and hadn’t been able to conceive again. Beth studied Priscilla’s face. Bitterness had taken root there like a weed. She took pity on her sister-in-law because she understood all too well how bitterness could choke faith.
Priscilla and Susannah regarded Beth suspiciously, as if she were going to pounce on them the minute they entered her kitchen. “Cum reu,” Beth said. “I’m very glad you could make it.”
Amos’s sisters practically tiptoed into the room.
“Oh, the table looks very nice,” Susannah said. She’d always been kind, even though she kept herself fairly detached from the family.
“Jah,” Priscilla said, remembering her manners. “Like a Christmas card.”
The teakettle whistled, and Beth hurried to the stove. “Please sit down. I’ll bring the tea over.”
The two sisters looked at the chairs as if deciding where to sit was the most taxing thing they’d done all day. Oh dear, softening them up would be more difficult than Beth had imagined.
They heard a tap on the door, and Martha let herself in before Beth even had a chance to set down the teakettle.
Beth thought that Martha might have been beautiful once. Her strawberry-blond hair and shocking blue eyes combined with her silky skin for a look that should have turned the boys’ heads. But her eyes often flashed with scorn, and she pursed her lips as if she always had a bad taste in her mouth. She had an air about her that made Beth feel she was constantly being judged and found wanting.
Beth’s heart did a little flip, and she squared her shoulders. She resolved not to let Martha intimidate her today.
I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.
“Martha, it’s so gute to see you.” She placed the teacups on the table. “Please, everybody, come and sit.”
“This better not take too long,” Martha said, sliding into the chair opposite Beth. “Danny was none too happy about staying with the kinner while I went off to tea.”
“Denki for coming,” Beth said. “I know how busy everyone is this time of year.”
They said a silent prayer. Beth forgot to ask a blessing on her food. She had other, more pressing needs.
After praying, the three sisters lifted their heads and stared at Beth. She picked up the basket. “Would everyone like a muffin?”
Martha examined her knife and then polished it against her sleeve. “Are they good? You never did know how to cook well. Amos used to sneak to my house whenever we had fried chicken. He said he was losing weight being married to you.”
Beth bit her lip and let the pain subside. She tried not to give Amos’s memory the power to hurt her. She wanted to be stronger than that—at least someday.
Susannah cleared her throat and gave Martha a pointedly irritated look. Then she smiled at Beth. “This is so nice, Beth.”
Priscilla snickered. “Nice without Mamm.”
Susannah did her best to make up for both of her sisters’ behavior. “We’re so glad you’re back, Beth. We’ve missed you.”
“You ran off so fast, we didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye,” Priscilla added.
Martha smirked. “All those old men chased her away. They sure came courting once Amos died.”
Priscilla spread jam on her muffin. “You should have married Isaac. Then you wouldn’t have needed to run off. We feared you’d gone for good, but Isaac assured me you’d come back once you heard about Mamm’s cancer.”
“Jah,” said Susannah. “You always took such gute care of Mamm, even though she didn’t have a nice thing to say to you. You have a tender heart to agree to come back and care for her again.”
Priscilla nodded, a little too eagerly. “We appreciate that you would put up with her.”
“You’re an answer to our prayers,” Susannah said. She took a sip of her tea. “Peppermint. I love peppermint.”
Beth steeled herself against their reaction to what she would say next. “You prayed that I would come back so that none of you would have to take care of her.”
All three sisters froze and stared at Beth as if she had eaten her napkin.
She stared right back. “Isn’t that the truth?”
Susannah pursed her lips and gazed at her plate. Martha propped her chin in her hand and glared in Beth’s direction.
Seeing that her sisters weren’t inclined to say anything, Priscilla defended herself. “I can’t care for Mamm. I have my own family, and Perry’s sewing machine business is just getting off the ground. I help him keep his books.”
Beth shouldn’t have put them on the defensive. That wasn’t how she wanted to win their cooperation. She smiled. “That is wonderful about Perry’s business. I love sewing machines. I too have a family to care for and a business to run.”
Martha shook her finger as if scolding a child. “You’re making that up. You don’t have any way to support yourself. You care for Mamm, and she pays for a roof over your head and food on your table.”
“You should marry Isaac,” Susannah said, sincerely trying to be helpful. “It’s plain he loves you. Then you wouldn’t feel like you’re a burden on anyone.”
Priscilla raised her eyebrows. “That’s a gute idea. You can’t just live here for free.”
Beth sighed in exasperation. “I don’t want to live here for free. I don’t want to live here at all. I want to go back to Wisconsin, where people love me.”
Another prolonged silence.
“We love you,” Susannah murmured, not all that convincingly.
Beth didn’t want them to feel defensive or guilty. “It’s all right. I’m not upset about it anymore. We don’t really know each othe
r. After I married Amos, the three of you didn’t come around very often.”
“Because Amos and Isaac are Mamm’s favorites. She doesn’t want to see us,” said Martha. “And we don’t want to see her. She’s grumpy and bitter, and we can’t stand her.” Beth wondered if Martha ever looked in the mirror.
“I know how she is,” Beth said. “I took care of her for a whole year.”
Susannah dunked her tea bag up and down in her water. “We thought you didn’t mind.”
Beth laid a hand over Susannah’s forearm. “You never asked.”
“But . . . but you were married to Amos,” Priscilla protested, as if this were the most convincing argument of all.
Martha wasn’t above using guilt as a weapon. “Amos was Mamm’s favorite. It’s your Christian duty to take care of her now that Amos is gone.”
Beth met Martha’s eyes with a determined gaze. “Why isn’t it yours?”
The tea turned cold and the muffins sat uneaten. At this point, none of the sisters would look Beth in the eye.
Beth broke the silence. “She is your mother. The woman who gave you life.”
“She gave Amos life too,” Priscilla said weakly.
Beth’s throat constricted when she thought of Tyler. “There is a boy in Wisconsin,” she whispered. Her relationship with Tyler felt too precious to share with her sisters-in-law, but she wanted them to know. “I love him. He is everything that Amos wasn’t. Do you understand how unhappy I was here before and after Amos died?”
Susannah finally quit studying her plate and looked Beth in the eye. “Amos was a hard man.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry for how he treated you. And for how Mamm treated you.”
The tears sneaked up on Beth. “I want to be happy again, and I believe that God wants me to be happy. Will you begrudge me that?”
The lines deepened around Martha’s eyes, but she wasn’t scowling anymore. Priscilla looked genuinely worried, as if she were being forced to surrender the best years of her life.
Susannah breathed out a long sigh as if resigned to her fate. “Mamm has made herself so unpleasant, none of us want to take care of her.”
Martha crossed her arms over her chest. “She’s made her bed. We should make her lie in it.”
“She is our mater,” Susannah said. “The good Lord has commanded us to honor her.”
Priscilla’s high-pitched voice confirmed her distress. “But I have Rosie to take care of and all the sewing machines.”
Beth took Priscilla’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “I have been doing a lot of praying about this, and I believe your mamm does not want to be a burden to anyone.”
“She likes to complain enough about it.”
“Yes, she wants to be a burden,” Martha insisted. “When she suffers, she thinks everyone else should suffer with her.”
“Do you remember what the good Samaritan did when he found the man beaten alongside the road?” Beth asked. “He bound up his wounds, put him on his own beast, and took him to an inn. But the Samaritan did not stay at the inn. The next day, he went on his way and paid the host at the inn to care for the injured man.”
“So, you’re saying we should pay someone to care for Mamm?”
“I’m saying that there are many ways to make sure Mamm gets the care she needs, and we don’t have to feel guilty because we look at other options.” She turned to Priscilla. “You wouldn’t want guilt to be the reason your daughter cares for you when you get older, would you?”
“Nae.”
“I want to help her,” Beth said. “Will you help me?”
Priscilla nodded.
“Yes,” Susannah said. “Of course.”
“I’ll help,” Martha said. “But not cheerfully.”
“We wouldn’t have expected that,” Susannah said.
Feeling generous, Beth served each of her sisters-in-law a scone. She gave Martha two scones.
“Denki,” Beth said. “I have a plan.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tyler felt like a sardine packed in a can. Felty sat to his left, Aden sat to his right, and Tyler was crammed in the middle of the backseat of the car. Though he had shrunk a little over the years, Felty had always been a tall man. And Aden, at six feet a hundred inches, took up more than his share of space. Tyler wasn’t as tall as either of his companions, but his wide shoulders and muscular arms didn’t fit so well between them. He groaned inwardly. They were going all the way to Green Bay like this. On the way home, he’d opt to sit in the front with Max Bonham, their driver.
Felty should have been sitting in the front right now. Tyler couldn’t begin to guess why he had chosen to squeeze next to Tyler and Aden in the back.
Felty pried his arm from between them and pulled his small wire-bound notebook out of his pocket. “I’m glad you came with me. Annie is baking Christmas goodies and couldn’t spare the time, and I’ve got to see what I can do about finding the rest of my license plates. I’ve got Hawaii, Delaware, Nevada, and Rhode Island left to find.”
Despite the heaviness in his chest, Tyler felt like laughing. Only Felty would pay the money to hire a driver to take him to Green Bay so he could scout license plates. On December 23.
Tyler thought it unlikely that they’d find Hawaii in the dead of winter in frigid Green Bay, Wisconsin, but they’d definitely see more license plates there than passed through Bonduel all year.
Aden propped his elbow on the small ledge next to the window. “Lily wanted me out of the house. I think she’s planning a surprise for Christmas.”
“Three pairs of eyes are better than one. Especially since I need glasses to see past the end of my nose.” Felty nudged Tyler’s squished arm. “To tell the honest truth, Anna asked me to bring you. She thinks looking for license plates will bring you some cheer. You smile like you’ve got heartburn.”
Tyler let his smile droop. He should have known better than to try to fake happiness. Grinning stupidly was anything but natural for him—except when he spent time with Beth. He couldn’t help but smile around her.
That was, until a week and a half ago. Now he felt lower than a fat beetle crawling across the floor. Finding Delaware wouldn’t improve his mood one bit. Even Hawaii had no power to make him happy. He wanted to marry Beth in the worst way, and she wouldn’t have him.
Aden shook his head in resignation. “I’ll say it again, Tyler. Go talk to her.”
“Every time I say something, she gets mad. I’ve apologized so many times my throat is raw.”
Felty tapped his pencil on his notebook. “You told me stubbornness is her best quality.”
Tyler wiggled his arms out from between Felty and Aden and folded them across his chest. “She’s holding on to her past with white knuckles. It’s not my place to pry her away.”
“It’s not like you to give up so easy,” Aden said.
The weight pressing on his chest grew unbearably heavy. “Easy? I made her bacon-grease pancakes. I bought her a rotary cutter and asked her to marry me. I kissed her twice.” The memory rendered him momentarily unable to speak. Those kisses would stay with him forever.
“Only twice?”
“Did you hear that part about asking her to marry me? I’ve done everything I can.”
Aden lifted an eyebrow. “I got arrested, the elders had me shunned, and I stole your fiancée. You didn’t give up on me.”
He looked away from Aden’s intense gaze. “She thinks I’ll turn into Amos.”
Felty turned from the window long enough to give Tyler a sympathetic glance. “I don’t think even Annie has an answer for that.”
Aden sneered. “That’s insulting.” He rubbed the new beard on his chin. “Those three years with Amos damaged her spirit. She came home unable to trust men and unwilling to trust in God. But if anyone can make her believe again, it’s you.”
Tyler clenched his fists. The thought of Amos’s treatment of Beth still angered him as nothing else did. He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and
buried his face in his hands. “It hurts too much. I don’t want it anymore.”
“It’s love, Tyler,” Aden said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Love is a messy jumble of heartbreak and anger and happiness beyond your wildest dreams.”
“The pain is going to suffocate me.”
“She’s worth fighting for.”
Of course she was worth it. She had become more important to him than sunshine or rain. Her smile shined brighter than a thousand kerosene lanterns and put off more heat than a forest fire. The sound of her laughter still teased him in his sleep and the feel of her skin lingered on the tips of his fingers even now.
But he could also remember, in vivid detail, the pain that sliced through him when she had accused him of being like Amos, as if the four months they’d known each other didn’t matter. As if all the kindness and affection he’d felt for her meant nothing, and nothing he could do would ever convince her of his faithfulness.
He ached at the thought of giving up, and he ached at the thought of trying again.
But as he sat there by Beth’s cousin and grandfather, he knew without a doubt he must try again. The thought of losing Beth knocked the wind right out of him. “I’ll . . . I’ll go talk to her, as soon as we get home.”
“That’s no use,” Felty said. “She’s gone to Indiana with Isaac Hostetler.”
Tyler thought his tongue might dry up and fall out of his mouth. “What?”
“Last Friday morning. He somehow managed to convince her to go back with him. Annie spent an hour trying to talk her out of it.”
“Did she say why?”
“She told Annie it was something she needed to do, and she wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise, so Annie sent her with some potholders just in case they would help.”
The news punched Tyler in the gut. Only the direst circumstances would convince Beth to return to that pack of wolves. What in the world had compelled her to go?
Another punch to the gut. He knew what had compelled her to get away from Bonduel. He’d been short with her, almost harsh, when he’d met her at the bazaar. Ignoring the sorrow in her eyes, he had turned his back on her because he hadn’t wanted to compound his own pain. Had he driven her into Isaac’s arms?
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