by Emma Miller
Ginger lifted her skirt and knelt in front of Phillip. “Let me see.”
“I’m fine,” Phillip said, his voice muffled by the cloth.
Ginger peeled away the rag and studied the red spots. “Tilt your head back.”
The boy did as he was told.
“Looks like it’s stopped bleeding,” Ginger declared.
Phillip tried to pull away from his mother. “Can I go back out and play?”
The boy looked just like his father, Eli. Eve had learned from Tara, not Levi, that Eli’s wife had passed a few years ago and that Ginger had been watching Eli’s children for him while he worked. Their relationship had blossomed from friendship to love, and Ginger had married Eli, getting a ready-made family in the bargain, only a few months ago. Ginger was good with the children, and they adored her, so much so that Eve would never have guessed they’d been born to a different mother.
“Please, Ginger?” Phillip begged. “Can I go back to the barn with Levi?”
“I think you best stay inside in case it starts bleeding again.” Ginger got to her feet and dropped the bloody rag into the trash can. “Go find Lizzy and Josiah and James. I think they’re playing on the upstairs landing.”
Phillip groaned, flopping his hands to his sides. “I don’t want to play with babies.”
“Your sister is hardly a baby.” Ginger looked in Eve’s direction. “At home, Lizzy may be the youngest, but she runs things. She’s put herself in charge of her brothers, all three of them. And mostly they do as they’re told.” She looked to Levi. “Thank you for bringing him up to the house. I’m sorry if he was any trouble.”
“No trouble at all. I just thought I best bring him in.”
Levi turned to go, making no point to acknowledge Eve in the room. She tried not to be hurt. Men came and went all day, she told herself. If they stopped to say hello and goodbye every time, no one would ever get anything done.
“Oh, Levi,” Ginger called after him. “Did Jesse give you the message about your dental appointment?”
He turned back, frowning. “I didn’t get a message.”
She rolled her eyes. “I stopped at the harness shop on the way up the lane this morning. Trudy was busy ringing up a customer, so I answered the phone. Your dentist’s office called to say they had a cancellation Friday. They can fix your broken filling at two thirty.”
“I saw Jesse. He didn’t say anything.”
Ginger rolled her eyes. “Boys. Anyway, I said you would take the appointment.” She grimaced. “I hope that’s all right.”
“Friday? That’s good, isn’t it?” Rosemary remarked, returning the iron to the top of the woodstove, taking care to grasp it by the wooden handle so as not to burn herself. “I’m surprised you got in so quickly. You should go with him, Eve.”
When Eve looked up, Rosemary was looking right at her. She glanced at Levi, not sure what to say. She would love to go to Dover with him, but he didn’t seem so keen on the idea from the look on his face.
Levi shuffled his feet. “I... I don’t know that Eve wants to ride all the way into Dover and back, just to sit in a waiting room.”
“Nonsense, Levi. Your wife would enjoy getting out of the house and spending time with you.” She turned to Eve. “Wouldn’t you, Dochter?”
Eve loved that Rosemary had begun referring to her as her daughter. She had no one else to call her that, and it made her feel good. Like a part of Levi’s family. “Ya, that would be nice,” she managed. “I haven’t been to town yet.”
Levi opened his mouth, closed it and then opened it again. “Rosemary—”
“Then this will be a perfect chance,” Rosemary said, talking over Levi. “And on the way home, you can stop at Spence’s Bazaar and get me some thread from the fabric shop we like. I’ll show you what color I need.” She directed this toward Eve. “Levi would never find it on his own.”
“We can do that for you.” Eve made eye contact with Levi. He didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t look angry, either. Just...resigned.
“Anyone else have anything for Eve and me to do?” he asked, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Ne? Then I best get back to work.”
Eve watched her husband put his straw hat back on his head and walk out the door. Then she returned to squeezing the freshly made butter dry, excited at the prospect of an afternoon out with her husband.
Chapter Six
Levi walked down the dentist’s office hallway, his straw hat in his hand, looking for the exit sign. The place was a warren of hallways and doors. As he looked for a sign pointing him in the right direction, he massaged his jaw that felt like pins and needles the way his foot did when it went to sleep. His beard stubble still felt odd to him. As odd as the idea that he was a married man.
Seeing an exit sign at last, he walked to the door—only to realize it was an emergency exit. He backtracked. Eve was sitting patiently in the waiting room. He couldn’t believe that Rosemary had invited Eve to go with him to his appointment. If he didn’t like Rosemary so much, he might have told her so. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Eve to come with him, only that he wanted to make that choice for himself. He wanted to invite his wife on an outing himself.
Of course, he probably wouldn’t have thought to bring Eve along if Rosemary hadn’t suggested it in front of everyone the other day. That night in their bedroom, he had been cranky about the idea of Eve going, but she’d been so excited when he’d pulled the buggy up in front of the house that he felt guilty for not having thought to invite her himself. And Eve hadn’t wanted to go just because she wanted to see Dover. She had come because she wanted to be with him. That was what she had told him on the buggy ride.
“Looking for the exit?” a woman in pink scrubs asked as she walked by him in the hall.
“Yes. I thought it was this way, but it wasn’t.”
“Don’t sweat it,” she said. “I’ve worked here for almost a year, and I still get confused sometimes.” She laughed, pointing in the opposite direction. “Take a right down the next hallway, then the second door on your left. It’s marked.”
“Thank you,” he told her with a nod.
“No problem!” she sang.
Levi followed her directions and was relieved to find Eve waiting in a chair. She rose when she saw him.
“Are you okay?” she asked him in Pennsylvania Deitsch. “You were in there a long time.”
“Ya, oll recht.” He switched to English because his father had taught him to speak the language that prevailed in a room. He said it made people uncomfortable when others around them were speaking a language they didn’t know. So Levi spoke Deitsch among the Amish, and when with Englishers, he spoke English. “I’m still numb, but it didn’t hurt.” He glanced across the waiting room to a TV mounted on the wall. A commercial for bed mattresses blasted. He pointed at it. “Were you watching?”
“Ya. I was. That’s not a problem, is it?”
He went to the door that opened into the parking lot and she followed. She was an interesting woman, especially considering the home she had come from. He had met Amon Summy only twice, but that was enough times to know that the man was a controlling bully. Having lived under his roof, Eve would have been meeker, more docile, he thought. She was pleasantly surprising him. She spoke her mind in such an innocent way, like when she had told him the Sunday before that they weren’t spending enough time together. Levi had taken it as criticism then, but with a little distance from the moment, he realized she was only telling him how she was feeling. And as her husband, he knew he needed to learn to listen.
“What were you watching?” he asked curiously. They stood for a moment in the lobby, looking out the glass doors. It was raining.
“A cooking show. How to make a buckle. Any kind. You start with the same basic recipe and then change up the fruit.”
“What’s the difference between a f
ruit buckle and a cobbler?” he asked.
“That’s easy.” She looked up at him through her long, thick lashes. “A cobbler has fruit on the bottom and biscuit on top. With a buckle, it’s cake and fruit mixed together, with a crunchy streusel on top.”
She looked nice today in the new green dress Rosemary had made for her, a fresh white apron and a starched kapp over her dark hair. Her cheeks were rosy and her dark eyes sparkled. It was funny that the first time he had ever met Eve, before the day in the barn that had sealed both their fates, he hadn’t thought she was particularly pretty. But beginning the day they had stood before the bishop and exchanged vows, he had started to see her differently. Now, there were times when he looked at her and felt she was pretty.
“I like buckles and cobblers.” He held up one finger. “And crisps, too. I love an apple crisp made from a mix of apples.”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Me, too. I put cinnamon and vanilla in the oatmeal crumble that goes on top of my apple crisp.”
Levi rubbed his stomach. “Just talking about it makes me hungry.” He glanced out the glass door. “Looks like the rain’s let up a bit. We should go. You want me to bring the buggy around for you so you don’t get wet?”
She laughed. “I won’t melt if you don’t.”
He smiled and reached for the door.
“Levi?”
He let go and the glass door swung closed. “Ya?”
She folded her hands in front of her. “Do you not want me to watch TV when I’m in a waiting room?”
He knitted his brow. “What?”
“The TV. I’m asking you—” she looked down at her black sneakers that had a hole in the toe “—because if you don’t want me to see TV, I... I’ll sit with my back to it next time.”
“You’re asking me if you can watch a cooking show in a doctor’s waiting room?”
She nibbled on her lower lip. “Well...you being the man of the house, you have the final say in—” She exhaled. “In everything. If you tell me not to watch TV, I won’t.” She paused again. “Though I have to say, I don’t think there’s any harm in it once in a while. I mean, to see a cooking show.”
“Eve, I would hope that I would never tell you to do or not do anything. I may be the man of our house—even if we don’t have a house yet—but I hope that we’ll be able to discuss matters. I want your opinion on things, and I hope you want mine.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then said, “I knew you were a good man when I married you. Because you asked me to marry you when you heard what had happened, but—” She glanced away, then back at him. “But Levi, you’re even a better man than I thought.”
He just stood there for a moment, not sure what to say. He was touched that she felt that way and was willing to tell him. He tried to be a good man, but he knew he failed in small ways every single day. Her confidence in him made him want to try even harder. Except he wasn’t sure how to go about that. A man was supposed to court a woman before they married. They should have spent weeks, even months, going to singings together, having supper with each other’s families, taking buggy rides together on visiting Sundays. When he had impulsively offered to marry Eve, none of that had crossed his mind.
When he looked down, he found Eve watching him—waiting for him to say something.
Levi cleared his throat. “I think there’s no harm in learning how to make a good buckle for your husband, even if it is from a TV in a waiting room,” he told her, lightening the tone of the conversation. “Especially if it’s a blueberry buckle. That’s my favorite.” He glanced out the glass door again. “Now, if we’re going to get that thread for Rosemary, we better go before the sky opens up again.”
Then he held the door open for his wife the way he had seen Englishers do.
* * *
Levi checked his pocket watch, a gift from his father when he started his first job at fifteen years old. It was three thirty. Jacob had gone into the hardware store to get a primer for the walls of the buggy shop, as well as another box of nails, leaving Levi to finish mudding the drywall. He should have been back by now. He should have been back forty-five minutes ago.
He dipped his blade into a tray of mud and dragged it over a seam in the drywall. If it had been up to him, he wouldn’t have put up the shop’s drywall—bare studs would have suited him fine—but their father had insisted the walls be finished. He said he took pride in his workspace, and Levi needed to do the same.
Levi scraped away the excess mud and moved on to the next tape-covered seam. It wasn’t that he didn’t take pride in the place where he worked; it was only that he was in a hurry to get started. Working alone, it would take him a full month to build a buggy. And now, with most of the supplies having arrived, he was eager to get to work.
His father walked in through the open bay door, carrying two boxes. “Another UPS delivery,” he announced.
Levi glanced over his shoulder. Things between him and his father had been awkward since his return to Hickory Grove. His dat had not once brought up the circumstances of his hasty marriage, but he didn’t have to. Levi knew what he was thinking. He could see the disappointment in his father’s eyes every time he looked at him.
“Should be the mechanism for the airbags. Folks can adjust them according to how big a load they’re carrying,” Levi explained. It was considered new technology, and it might cause a stir in some of the church districts in the county, but he liked the idea of bringing progress to his community in a good way. He also had plans for better headlamps and taillights, which ran off a simple battery. The brighter LED lights would make a buggy easier to see in the dark and, therefore, safer.
Levi watched his father set down the boxes without responding. He’d missed talking with his father when he was away and had been looking forward to the conversations they would have again when he returned. He’d been home three weeks now, and his father was still ignoring him for the most part. His dat answered him when spoken to, but he didn’t initiate any conversation, and Levi was beginning to feel as if he were the naughty child put in a corner as punishment. And he was becoming more frustrated by the day because this behavior was so unlike his father. When he’d first arrived, he had assumed his dat would get past his displeasure and their relationship would return to what it had been, but now he feared that would never happen. Several times in the last week, Levi had almost said something to his dat, then bit his tongue.
But suddenly he couldn’t hold back any longer. “Dat,” he said, setting his putty knife down.
His father was restocking the boxes, his back to him.
“Dat,” Levi repeated a little louder.
His father turned to him. “Ya?”
“Dat, I’m sorry that I’ve disappointed you, but...” He exhaled and glanced away, beginning to wish he had kept his mouth shut. But it was too late now. “I know that this is not how you wanted to see me married,” he went on, choosing his words carefully. “But what’s done is done. I’m tired of being treated like a schoolboy who’s misbehaved. I’m beginning to feel like you don’t want me here. Want us,” he added. “I’m starting to worry that maybe Eve and I should have stayed in Lancaster.”
His father slid his hands into his denim pockets, looking down at the floor. He, too, was choosing his words carefully. “I’ve been wondering... Have you talked with the bishop?”
Levi’s brow furrowed. “I saw him Sunday. We chatted during the meal.”
“I mean...” His father cleared his throat. “Have you talked to him about you and Eve?”
Levi stared at his father for a moment, still not following. Then it hit him. What he was asking was if Levi had gone to the bishop and confessed his sin of relations before marriage. “I have not because there’s no need,” he answered stiffly.
The older man, the man Levi had looked up to his entire life, took his time in responding. He seemed to b
e turning Levi’s words over in his head. At last he said, “You know that I love you.”
Levi’s eyes suddenly felt scratchy. “I do.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve made you think I didn’t want you here because that’s not true.” His father slowly lifted his gaze. “But I never expected this from you, out of all of your brothers. And to think that a son of mine would not confess to his sin...” He paused, then cleared his throat and went on. “As I told you the day you arrived, I still need some time, Sohn.”
“How much time?” Levi asked, wishing desperately that he could tell his father that he hadn’t sinned, so no confession was necessary.
Benjamin shook his head. “I can’t answer that right now. Rosemary is saying the same, and I can’t give her an answer, either. Both of you—all of you—will just have to be patient with me.”
“All of us? Who else has talked to you about this?” Levi asked.
“Tara.” The barest smile appeared on his lips. “She accused me of being mean. She likes Eve. We all do. I’m not trying to be mean. I just need time to work through this.”
His father went silent, and for a long moment, Levi just stood there. He hadn’t thought seriously about going back to Lancaster, but he wondered if maybe that would be best for him the way he was feeling today.
He reached for the spackling compound blade again and scooped up some mud to continue his drywall work. “Where is Jacob with those nails?” he muttered.
* * *
Eve took the croquet mallet Jacob handed her and stared at the blue wooden ball resting in the grass in front of her. She looked up at him apprehensively. “I just hit it?”
“Just hit it through the wire thingies!” Tara called from twenty feet away. She had already taken her turn and had managed to hit her red ball all the way to the foot of a poplar tree that was outside the playing area. Jacob had instructed her to move it back inside and forfeit a turn.