“Nae, Alfie,” Rebecca said. “You’re going to rub Dawdi’s feet.”
Alfie’s mouth fell open. “It’s not my turn.”
“You’re going to do it anyway, and Benji, you’re going to give Mammi a scalp massage.”
Benji scratched his head. “What’s a scalp massage?”
“Use that special comb she bought yesterday.”
“But I want to show Mary where I fell and had to get stitches.”
Rebecca turned on the food processor. Combined with the generator outside, it made a terrible racket. “Obey your mamm,” Rebecca yelled, “and let Mary and Andrew have some peace.”
Alfie shuddered and made a face. “But, Mamm, I don’t want to . . .”
Rebecca turned the food processor to high. “I can’t hear you.”
Benji and Alfie probably groaned loudly, but it was so noisy in there that Mary only heard a pitiful sigh. Mary ruffled their hair as they walked past. Benji smiled and waved. Alfie hunkered down into himself and marched out of the room.
“Cum,” Andrew said, loudly enough for her to hear over the roar of the food processor. “I’ll show you what Dat is going to build.”
Andrew shut the door behind them. The noise lessened, but there was still the gas generator to contend with. “Dat is going to add to the building here and make it fifteen feet longer. Then we’re going to get two more food processors and two more tables.”
Mary hooked her arm around his elbow and pulled him far enough away that they could hear themselves think. She should have just thanked him for the tour, shaken his hand in a friendly, I’m-not-interested way, and walked home. It was unwise to be with Andrew. The more time she spent with him, the more time she wanted. And she certainly shouldn’t have touched him. His warmth spread up her arm and into her chest like a river of melted chocolate. She didn’t have the willpower to let go. Unwise, indeed.
Ignoring the voice inside her head that told her to go home and forget Andrew Petersheim, Mary steered him toward the barn. “I get the feeling you’re not thrilled about expanding into Appleton.”
Andrew curled one side of his mouth. “I’m sick of peanut butter. I almost wish I was allergic, then Mamm wouldn’t expect me to help.”
“You’d rather build furniture. At least that’s what Benji says.”
“Benji knows too much for someone his age.”
Mary smiled. “He says he hears things when people don’t think he’s listening.” She glanced at him. “Do you want to quit making peanut butter?”
He shrugged. “My mamm wouldn’t be happy about it.”
“You’d rather be miserable than make your mamm unhappy?”
He sighed. “I suppose so.”
“But what kind of life would that be? If you spend it pleasing others, where is your happiness?”
“I can find happiness in making my mamm happy.”
She pulled him to a stop. “I don’t think you can, Andrew. You’d come to resent her in the end.”
The lines around his mouth deepened. “But you chose to do what you thought would make you happy, and look what it did to your parents and your friends.” He bowed his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why not? Of course you’re right. I made my choices knowing that Mamm and Dat would be hurt, but even then I knew I couldn’t live my life for them. You can’t make everyone happy. You can’t make anyone happy but yourself.”
“That sounds selfish.”
“Maybe it is, but if your mamm’s happiness comes at the expense of your own, you’ll resent her. You’ll resent your whole family and the peanut butter and your life.”
He smiled weakly. “I already resent the peanut butter.”
“Should my parents have given me money and helped me pack? Shouldn’t they have wanted my happiness more than their own?”
“Maybe they thought they knew what would really make you happy.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure your mamm is convinced that peanut butter would really make you happy? You don’t have enough power to ruin your mamm’s happiness, Andrew. The only life you have the power to ruin is your own.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I never said it was. It’s the hardest thing anyone does—making choices and then owning the consequences. You may be making peanut butter for your mater, but you are the one who lives with the consequences. Your mater would want you to be happy.”
“My happiness at the expense of hers?”
“If that’s how you see it, jah. But she might understand better than you think that her happiness doesn’t depend on you, just as your happiness doesn’t depend on her. It would be nice if she was happy in spite of you, but that is her choice, not yours.”
“But my actions do have the power to cheer her up or bring her down,” he said.
“If I had stayed in the community, my parents would never have known that I wanted to run away, but I would have spent my life wondering what might have been. Trying to keep my parents happy would have made me bitter. I don’t know if my parents would be happier today if I hadn’t left, but they certainly wouldn’t have appreciated or even known that I had sacrificed my whole life for them.”
Andrew nodded thoughtfully. “Nae. They wouldn’t have known.”
“I would have died spiteful and broken without them knowing or caring about my sacrifice. I would have hated them, and they wouldn’t have even known why.”
“I think I understand.” He smirked good-naturedly at her. “I think. Your thoughts are sometimes too deep for me.”
“Not too deep. I’ve just been marinating in them for a very long time, maybe to make myself feel better. Maybe to make sense out of what I’ve done.”
“Everything used to make more sense than it does now.” Andrew opened the barn door, and they hesitated at the entrance, letting their eyes adjust to the dimness.
Mary breathed in the dampness of the air. This was one smell she’d missed in the city, the cool, sharp odor of an Amish barn. The scent brought back a thousand memories. “When I returned, I had hoped my parents would forget their anger and rejoice that I’d come home, but they didn’t.” She held her breath and let the pain wash over her. “They aren’t happy I’m back. They’re only sad I went away. They’d rather lash me across the face with their pain than shower me with their joy.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
She forced a carefree lilt into her voice. Andrew needn’t be burdened with her troubles. “I’ll not complain that the path I chose ended up here. My parents choose their own happiness and their own misery. I can’t force them to love me again. Maybe they don’t even want to. I have caused them too much heartache.”
“That’s why I haven’t told my mamm.” Andrew looked around as if getting his bearings. “Why are we in the barn?”
She gave him a sly smile. “Benji says you sneak in here every night. I want to see your woodshop.”
It was dim inside the barn, but she could still see the color travel up his neck. “It’s not much.”
“Will you show me?”
He shrugged. “Don’t expect anything grand.”
“I saw that chair you made. I expect to be astounded.”
“Hah.”
She followed him to the far corner of the barn behind a substantial stack of hay where two tables sat. The first table was small but made of sturdy wood, marked with the scars of Andrew’s hard work. The second table was covered with a canvas tarp. Four small blocks of wood lay atop the tarp with pencil marks drawn into the grain. Mary ran her finger along the pencil lines of the closest block.
“I’m going to make a toy train for Benji and Alfie,” Andrew said, his eyes studying her doubtfully.
“You’re their favorite bruder, you know.”
“It’s only because I don’t tell Mamm half the things they do.”
She laughed. “They’ve got you wrapped around their little fingers.”
He scrunched his lips togethe
r. “I fall for it every time.”
“The best kind of friend is the one who can keep secrets.”
Andrew’s tools hung on the wall behind the table, each carefully mounted on its own set of hooks. The tools caught the light from the windows above. It was plain that Andrew took very good care of them. No rust, no wood shavings, no dust. It was apparent he loved his work—the work his mamm saw as a nuisance.
“Poppy’s husband, Luke, has a lathe and a jointer and a circular saw that he powers with a generator. I have no power, just some simple tools and elbow grease, so I use Luke’s tools when I can.”
“But I can tell you take your tools very seriously.”
He wiped an invisible piece of dust from one of his saws. “I’m saving up for a sander. I might be able to hook up a generator out here. Mamm probably wouldn’t care. Sometimes I go to Luke’s shop and use his sander. It saves so much time.”
Her heart did a little somersault as he reached above her head and pulled something from a high shelf she hadn’t noticed. It was a canning jar half filled with gumballs sitting on top of a small box. “What is it?”
Smiling like a little kid, he handed it to her. “It’s a bubble gum dispenser. You pull this handle, and one gumball falls from the jar and into the notch on the handle. Then you pull it out and eat it.”
She pulled the handle straight out and was rewarded with a fat pink gumball. She couldn’t have kept from smiling if she wanted to. “This is the most clever invention I’ve ever seen. And so useful.”
He lowered his head and slid his hands into his pocket. Mary had always been quite taken with Amish humility. “I could sell dozens of those at the bazaar if I had the time to make them.”
“Of course you could. I can see why you hide it on the top shelf. Alfie and Benji would eat all the gumballs.”
Andrew twisted his lips into a funny grin. “I’m pretty sure they’ve already discovered it. Every time I come out here, three or four gumballs are missing—just enough so they’re hoping I don’t notice, but I guess it could be Dat who’s the thief.”
“Or Austin. He seems like someone who would like gumballs.”
He shook his head. “For sure and certain it’s Alfie and Benji. Two months ago, Alfie woke up with chewed gum plastered to his hair. The gum fell out of his mouth while he was asleep, and he rolled around in it. Mamm scolded him until the cows came home and then used store-bought peanut butter to get the gum out of his hair. Then he had to help her with the laundry for a month.”
Mary turned the gumball machine around in her hand, looking at the smooth lines and square corners, the simplicity of the design. “You are truly a talent, Andrew.”
“I could do so much more with better tools. Luke makes those collapsible baskets from one solid piece of wood. I could make toys and trinkets for the tourists along with furniture and cabinets.”
He was so excited that Mary wouldn’t dare remind him that his mamm had her heart set on peanut butter. Maybe he would figure out his life. Maybe he wouldn’t. “It would be a gute business.”
“Jah. A carpenter always has work.”
She studied his face. Andrew deserved to always be like this, wildly happy and overly excited about wood and jigsaws and toy trains.
He must have seen some unreadable expression on her face. “What?” he said.
“It’s easy to tell you love the wood.”
He leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “I hear music when I’m working with the wood—slow, beautiful music like someone humming a hymn in a grove of trees. With peanut butter, it’s always a rush to get more peanut butter into the bottles. Rush to get them to the stores. Rush to buy more peanuts. The wood almost begs to be worked slowly.”
“Rushing only ruins it,” she said.
“A tree takes decades to grow, stretching its arms to the sky from season to season, hunkering down during drought or frost, always holding out hope for spring. The tree’s patience should be rewarded with deliberate care.”
“You sound like a poet.” Josh’s stepmother loved poetry. She had poems hanging all over the house.
“I don’t know about that. I just love the wood.”
“Even this gumball machine is beautiful, and I saw your chair at the auction. You love the wood very much.”
Andrew didn’t seem to be breathing as he reached out his hand and smoothed the back of his finger down the side of her face. She didn’t seem to be breathing either. His skin was pleasantly rough against her cheek, and his touch sent electricity tingling down her spine and back up again. She should tell him to quit. For her own sake, she needed to stop this growing attachment between them, not encourage it. Unfortunately, she had no will to form the words on her tongue.
He dropped his hand to his side, and they stood in breathless silence, staring at each other. Mary wouldn’t have said a word for the world. She could wander through the quiet forest of his eyes forever. If she didn’t ask any questions, he wouldn’t have to answer. She could pretend that she’d never had another boyfriend, that she wasn’t pregnant, that her life wasn’t more complicated than a boy and a girl with their whole lives ahead of them. No peanut butter, no resentful parents, no ex-boyfriend, and no unexpected babies.
After staring at her for a long minute, Andrew seemed to come to himself. He smiled sadly and tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear. “This was definitely more than the five-dollar tour.”
She gathered enough of her wits to give him a reasonable response. “I’d like to say it was the million-dollar tour, but I can’t afford that much.”
He chuckled. “That was the ten-dollar tour. For twenty dollars, I walk the tourists home.”
She tossed her head back like an irritated tourist. “I definitely can’t afford you.”
“You forget. Mamm said it was free. You might as well get the twenty-dollar experience since someone else is paying for it.”
She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t keep a smile from sprouting on her face. “I might as well.”
While they walked, Andrew told her funny stories about his bruderen and his mammi, and she shared fond memories of growing up. It was amazing what became dear to you when you stopped looking for the bad parts. They watched for bluebirds and wildflowers, and kept an eye out for bees as they got closer to Honeybee Farm.
Andrew braved the hordes of bees and walked her clear up to the porch where he said goodbye and kept his eyes glued to her face as he backed slowly down the lane.
Mary slipped into Bitsy’s house and took off her bonnet, feeling dizzy and giddy and oh, so foolish. She shouldn’t have set foot inside the barn. Seeing that little corner of Andrew’s world only made her like him all the more. Andrew was careful and considerate, kind to his bruderen and concerned about his mater. He had the uncanny ability to inspire her to talk and to make her feel that what she said was important. How many times had Josh complained that she talked too much? Maybe Andrew would grow tired of her if they spent enough time together.
Mary sat down at the window seat and ran her hand down Farrah Fawcett’s silky back. Farrah Fawcett turned up her nose at Mary like she did with anyone who dared invade her window seat, but she let Mary pet her anyway. Bitsy came down the stairs carrying a lump of bread dough, with flour up to her elbows. “Did you have a gute time on your tour?”
Mary pressed her lips together and nodded. “Gute enough.” She raised an eyebrow. Bitsy had a smear of flour down her cheek. “Were you kneading dough upstairs in your room?”
One corner of Bitsy’s mouth turned up. “If you must know, Yost saw you and Andrew Petersheim cross our bridge, and I went upstairs to spy out the south window, but I didn’t see much.”
Mary felt as if the floor was slowly crumbling out from under her. “There wasn’t anything to see.”
Bitsy nodded curtly. “Gute. I don’t allow kissing on my porch.”
Mary forced a laugh even though there was nothing funny about it. “I can safely promise that Andrew will never
kiss me on your porch.”
“Does he prefer the barn?”
Leonard Nimoy, one of Bitsy’s other cats, jumped up to the window seat and sidled onto Mary’s lap. Mary petted both cats so she wouldn’t have to look Bitsy in the eye. “Andrew might like me as a friend.”
“He likes you better than that.” Bitsy set her dough on the counter and started kneading it.
Mary shrugged. “He might be interested in me as more than a friend, but he’ll talk himself out of that soon enough.”
“Why would he do a thing like that?” Bitsy looked up at the ceiling. “Lord, why do you keep sending dumm boys?”
“You know why, Bitsy. Amish boys do not want damaged goods as fraas.”
Bitsy grunted. “Damaged goods? That’s your fater talking.”
“That’s everybody talking. Andrew is kind and loyal, but he would never think seriously about someone like me. I’ve been with another man. I’m carrying Josh’s baby. You know as well as I do that no man in the Amish community would ever consider marrying someone like me. Who wants to raise another man’s child?”
“That’s an awfully bleak reality you’ve invented for yourself, little sister.”
“Not liking it doesn’t change anything.” There were always consequences.
Bitsy pounded on her bread dough like a judge with a gavel. “I don’t spy on you as much as Alfie and Benji do, but I notice things. I warned you not to feed him, but Andrew Petersheim doesn’t come around just for the food.”
Mary shook her head. “He’s nice to me, but I’m not worried about his feelings. Mine is the only heart that will be broken—whether I leave or I stay.” She clamped her lips together. Oh, sis yuscht. She’d just admitted out loud how strong her feelings were for Andrew.
Bitsy eyed Mary as she kneaded her dough. “You can’t tell me anything I don’t already know. And after the haystack supper, it seems less and less likely you’re going to stay—unless Andrew talks you out of leaving.”
Mary didn’t intend for her sigh to come out like a sob. “Andrew will go on just fine without me because he’d never really consider loving me anyway.”
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