Junior, being Junior, had let him believe he’d been doing enough.
Now Randall realized that he’d been only doing enough for himself. He’d worked and courted Elizabeth Nolt in his spare time. He’d always planned to ask Elizabeth to marry him when he’d been promoted to a supervisor. Whenever the time was right.
But then things had happened.
Junior had fallen in love with Miriam Zehr, Joe Burkholder had finally gotten up the nerve to ask their sister Beverly to marry him, and then Claire—to everyone’s surprise—had up and married Jim Weaver and moved to Charm.
Three siblings married in less than three months!
Of course, all three of them had spent many an hour discussing the pros and cons of their leaving. Junior and Miriam had even volunteered to continue living at the farm to take care of them all.
But that had rubbed Randall the wrong way. He was a grown man, not a spoiled teenager. No way was he going to ever say that he couldn’t handle what his older brother had been doing without complaint for most of his life.
Therefore, he, Micah, and Neil had developed a new triumvirate. Micah did most of the farming and took his college classes. Neil continued to train dogs and breed his goats and pigs, all moneymakers.
And Randall had changed his life completely. He now worked construction only two days a week. The rest of the time he took care of the house, farmed, managed most of the finances, goaded Levi into doing his chores and get to his part-time job, and tried his best to take care of the youngest member of their family, Kaylene.
Unfortunately, it seemed that he wasn’t all that good at being Kaylene’s mother. And his domestic skills were sadly lacking as well.
As the meal continued in silence, Randall tried to think of something to talk about. “Kay, did you see Miriam at school today?” Miriam had helped out at the school for a bit before she and Junior had gotten married. Now she tutored when she could.
“Jah.”
“Why do you look so glum? I thought that would make you happy.”
To his shock, Kaylene’s eyes filled with tears. “Because she’s . . . she’s going to have a boppli.”
His fork clattered down on his plate. “What?”
Kaylene swiped her cheek with the side of her hand. “It’s true.”
“Well, that’s a mighty big surprise,” he murmured, feeling a little disappointed. Why hadn’t Junior told them all about the baby?
Levi turned to him in surprise. “Randall, you didn’t know, either?”
“None of us knew,” Micah said as he dabbed at his sister’s cheek with his napkin. “Kay, how did you know?”
“Two of the kids were giggling about it. Saying Miriam looked like she was getting fat.”
“I just saw her two weeks ago on Sunday,” Randall said, trying to wrap his head around the story. “We all did. She didn’t look fat then.”
“She doesna look fat, Randall,” their little sister said impatiently. “She looks like she’s gonna have a baby!”
Micah stared at Kaylene through his wire-rimmed frames. “Miriam and Junior have been married some time now,” he said in his patient way. “I guess it’s no surprise that they are expecting a babe. Why are you crying?”
“Because now Junior is going to have his own family,” she exclaimed, thick tears rolling down her cheeks. “He hardly comes over at all now. When he and Miriam have their own baby, I won’t never see him no more.”
“That would be won’t ever see him any more,” Micah murmured, absently correcting her grammar.
Kaylene scowled. “Oh, Micah, it don’t matter, does it?”
“Well, um . . .” He looked at Randall for help.
Randall shrugged. They’d always depended on their smart brother to help with things like speech and grammar.
But that pause seemed to only make their sister even more perturbed.
As she looked from Randall to Neil to Micah to Levi, the tears started falling even faster. “None of you are girls!” she cried, then left the table in a rush.
Stunned, Randall watched her run out of the kitchen. Silence reigned around the table as the four of them listened to her scamper up the stairs, run down the hall, then finally slam her door.
Alarmed, Randall looked at his brothers. “What was that about?”
“I could be wrong, but I’m thinking that she nailed it on the head,” Micah said slowly. “We’re not women and she needs one. Bad.”
“Or Junior,” Levi commented. “Junior always looked after her like a mother hen.”
As much as he hated to admit it, he was starting to think that Kaylene had a very good point. “She needs a girl around, doesn’t she?”
“She is nine now,” Levi said. “I think girls that age need women around.”
Randall was pretty sure Levi was right. In the back of his mind, he seemed to remember Claire and Beverly being especially needy around that age—and when they became teenagers. “Do you think we should see if she could go live with Miriam and Junior? That might be best for her. You know she loves Miriam and she’s always been closest to Junior.”
Micah, being Micah, pondered that one for a long moment before shaking his head. “I don’t think we should. That feels like we’re pushing her on Junior, and that ain’t right. They’re newlyweds. Plus, if they’ve got a baby on the way, they’ve got other things to worry about.”
“You’re right about that, but we wouldn’t be pushing Kay away. We would be trying to make her happy.”
Levi frowned. “Somehow, I think that would make things worse. Besides, I don’t think we’re doing too bad of a job.”
“We?” Randall raised his brows.
“Oh, don’t act like that. You know I’m around a lot more now,” Levi protested. “Plus I’m working construction with you, and I try to spend time with Kay, too. I don’t think I’m doing anything worse than you did at sixteen.”
“You’re right.” Randall sighed. Looking at his charred chicken and half-eaten baked potato, he wondered how such a bad supper had managed to get even worse. “But we’ve got to find someone.”
“Randall, what about Elizabeth?” Neil asked after a moment’s pause.
“What about her?” He didn’t even care that his bitter tone had directed everyone else at the table to look his way.
“You dated her for years. Can’t you get her back?”
“And why would I want to do that?”
“If you married Elizabeth, she could live here.” Warming to his idea, Neil added, “Then she could cook, clean, and help with Kay.”
“I don’t think she’s going to come running back to me just because I asked,” he said dryly. “We didn’t end things on a good note, you know.”
“You mean when you broke up with her,” Levi said.
Randall felt his cheeks heat as he remembered just how poorly he’d treated her. “Um, yeah. But listen, even if she did suddenly want to marry me, asking her to come here and cook and clean for the five of us ain’t what most girls dream of doing when they get hitched.”
Levi frowned. “You really don’t like Elizabeth anymore? We all thought you were going to marry her.”
He had, too. “All I’m saying is that some things are better in the past. Regrets are for fools, and I’m surely not that.”
As his siblings slowly resumed eating, Randall felt the knot of disappointment that had settled deep inside him when he’d walked away from Elizabeth resurface.
No, he definitely didn’t believe in regrets. But perhaps he was a fool after all—because he certainly did miss Elizabeth. He missed her something fierce. More than once he’d called himself ten times the fool because he’d broken things off with her instead of trying to figure out a way to make things work.
Thank goodness no one else knew how much he regretted breaking up with her.
Or how much he still loved her.
You, Elizabeth, are a fool,” Elizabeth Nolt mumbled to herself. “For sure and for certain.”
L
eaning back on her haunches, she squinted her eyes against the morning sun and surveyed the dinky row of seedlings she’d just planted. If anything, they looked worse than the two rows of beans she’d planted yesterday.
One would think even a child could plant a decent vegetable garden; however, it seemed to be completely beyond her grasp.
“How are ya faring, Lizzy?” her grandmother called out from where she sat on the porch swing. “It looks to me like you’ve been taking a bit of a breather.”
“I needed one, I’m afraid.” After slowly getting to her feet, Elizabeth dusted off her skirts. Then, with a resigned sigh, she went to her grandmother’s side. “I’m a poor gardener, Mommi, and that’s a fact.”
“I’m sorry to say this child, but it’s true. Some days, I don’t think you could get weeds to grow.”
“I’m that bad?” She didn’t even try to hide her amusement. Her sweet grandmother was never one to hurt another’s feelings. For her to say such a thing had to mean that she was doing a really poor job of it. “And how can you be so sure?”
“Besides the fact that we’ve yet to eat anything you’ve tried to grow . . . I could hear you coughing and sighing and grunting from here on the porch. That’s never a good sign.”
“Mommi, I don’t grunt.”
“You don’t sing when you’re planting, either,” she quipped.
When Elizabeth sat by her side, Anna Mae grabbed her hand. “You need to face it, dear. You and gardening don’t mix. We’ll simply need to get our food from the grocery store like the Englischers in town.”
“Mommi, you know as well as I do that we need this garden to work. Food is expensive.”
“Most everything is, it seems.”
That was the Lord’s honest truth. Things had become very tight in the Nolt household, especially after her mother remarried and moved to Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. Though her mother had wanted Elizabeth to come along, Elizabeth hadn’t been all that eager to live with a stepfather. Milton was a nice enough man, but he had particular ways of doing things, and Elizabeth knew she would have had to follow his rules.
Of course, that hadn’t been the only reason she’d stayed behind. Though she’d volunteered to take care of her grandmother, everyone also knew that Elizabeth had only been biding her time until Randall Beiler finally proposed.
To her shame, she realized that she’d been hoping he would suddenly change his mind and come back to her. Realize that she could actually help him and his family once they got married.
She would have done that gladly, too. She liked looking after other people. She liked cooking and sewing and planning and fussing.
But he never had come back. Actually, he’d never even looked back. Just as she’d never tried to convince him that things could work out. All they’d done was try to avoid each other as much as possible.
Now she was trying to take care of her grandmother on a shoestring budget and spending the rest of her time living in the silence of her regrets.
She’d lost weight and couldn’t seem to lift the cloak of disappointment that surrounded her now. It was a difficult thing to realize that one conversation could remove all the joy from her life.
It was even worse to realize that she had no earthly idea how to get it back.
chapter two
“I don’t know if you already know this, but you’re planting your potatoes too close together,” Levi Beiler said when he came to a stop just two feet away from where Elizabeth was kneeling in the dirt the following morning.
Elizabeth was so irritated she didn’t even bother asking him why he had stopped by. Or what had possessed him to take an interest in her root vegetables. After glaring at the row of seedlings she’d just planted, she raised her chin to meet his gaze. “Are you sure about that?”
Levi used one finger and slowly tipped up the brim of his hat. When his blue eyes came into view, he met her gaze and nodded. “I’m real sure. Believe me, I’ve planted my share of ’em.” With a grimace, he mumbled, “We’re kind of fond of them at our haus these days.”
“I can’t believe this. Levi, I’ve almost finished planting the whole row.”
“Um, I don’t think so.”
She set down her spade. “What do you mean by that?”
He stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. “I’m just sayin’ that you won’t have finished much if the plants don’t have room to grow. All you’ll be getting is a mess of undergrown veggies. Ain’t so?”
“I guess you’re right. It’s just so hard, though. I’ve been out here for three hours.”
Levi looked at her crooked row, at the basket of tiny seedlings that she no doubt had paid too much money for, and sighed. With a look of distaste, he rolled up his sleeves and held out his hand. “Hand me that spade.”
Hope, followed by the smallest amount of guilt, led her to pick the spade back up. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Since it was a sin to be prideful, Elizabeth handed it to him without another word. She needed help and was even willing to get it from a know-it-all sixteen-year-old.
She sat down on the hard ground and watched Levi nimbly walk to the beginning of her row. Then, without a bit of fuss, he dropped to his knees, dug up her seedlings, made each hole a little deeper, and then replanted every other one. He completed the task in under fifteen minutes.
Then, to her amazement, he started on the next row.
To say it took him less than half the time to dig each hole was putting it mildly. Actually, he looked a bit like an Englischer’s fancy machine, his muscular arms making easy work of the hard soil. The entire time he didn’t seem eager to speak, either. Instead, he merely continued to dig and repair.
And then, not even thirty minutes later, he handed her back the hoe and spade. “Now you’ll have all the potatoes a person could want, Elizabeth.” He frowned. “Probably more than you’d ever want.”
“Danke.”
“It weren’t no problem.”
As she watched him brush off his hands and roll down his sleeves, she murmured, “I don’t know whether to thank you again or hug you.”
His head popped up. “You could do both,” he said with a wry grin. She knew he was only saying such a thing as a bluff.
But because she was relieved enough to call it, she walked over, threw her arms around him, and gave Levi a little squeeze. “Thank you again, Levi. You’ve saved the day.”
Raising his arms, he hugged her back, and then with a blush, hastily stepped backward. “Hardly that.”
“I’m serious! You not only saved me hours of work, you saved me hours of frustration. I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to return your favor.”
“I do.”
“Oh?”
“Uh-huh. I came over to talk to ya about something, you see.”
“I guess I had better listen, then. Come on in the haus and I’ll get you something to drink. I made some lemonade this morning. I bet it’s real cold by now.”
“That sounds really gut. Danke.” At last, he smiled, showing off those dimples that were surely going to be the downfall of many a girl’s heart.
As Elizabeth led the way into the house, she wondered why he’d come over. And she couldn’t help but wonder about his blush when he’d hugged her.
Of course, it probably meant nothing, but the way his eyes had lit up at her offer of lemonade made her wonder if he’d come courting.
Surely he was too young for that; he was only sixteen to her twenty!
But if he was? She was going to have to let him down gently.
Her grandmother was resting so the house was dark and silent as they walked through the front room into the kitchen. At least there the room was sunny and bright. The yellow paint, blue cabinets, and white tiled countertops never failed to make her smile.
“Have a seat and I’ll get you some lemonade,” she said after they washed up. “I have some cherry pie, too. Made it fresh just yesterday. Would you like a slic
e?”
“I sure would.”
She would have giggled at the speed to which he accepted the offering if not for his expression. It was one of pure bliss. Almost as if he didn’t get such treats all the time.
Which was most curious. His sister-in-law, Miriam, was known to be one of the best cooks in the area.
After serving him a generous slice, complete with a dollop of whipped cream that she’d just prepared that morning, she sat down across from him.
Without a trace of embarrassment, Levi drank his lemonade like a man dying of thirst and attacked the pie like a man going into battle.
Only when his plate was scraped clean did he look up. A pained expression entered his eyes as his fork clattered onto the dish. “Sorry. I was a real pig, wasn’t I?”
His obvious embarrassment amused her. “I wouldn’t call you a pig. More like someone who was ravenous.”
“I was, at that.”
“Any special reason you’re so hungry? I never have known your family to have any problem keeping food in the cupboards.”
“Oh, it ain’t that. It’s just that no one in the haus can cook too gut.”
“Oh, Levi. We both know that Miriam can cook rings around most anyone, especially any girl my age.”
“She’s not there. Her parents helped buy her and Junior a haus near them.”
“Doesn’t she still bring some meals around?”
“Not too often.”
“What about your sisters? I’m sure they’ve kept you fed just fine.”
“Beverly and Claire haven’t come around too much, either.” Looking at his plate, he said, “Junior, Beverly, and Claire seem to be more concerned with their new spouses than keeping their siblings fed.”
“Hmm.” She was surprised by that. Everyone in Sugarcreek knew the Beilers were an especially close family. She, for one, had always been more than a little envious of the way the eight siblings looked out for one another. Being an only child, the idea of having so much help and support sounded like a dream.
Getting up, she brought over the pitcher and refilled Levi’s glass. “Where are they living? I’m pretty sure I saw Beverly and Joe walking downtown the other day.”
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