Her soft reply sent skyrockets soaring through him. Somehow managing a steady voice to tell her again to wait where she was, he trotted toward the barn before he had to say anything else. He wasn’t sure he could speak more without stumbling over his words like a teenager asking a girl to walk out with him. Her confidence in him meant more than she could guess because he’d had trouble trusting himself after Arlene made such a public fool of him. How could he have guessed she’d loudly list what she considered his shortcomings in the midst of a taffy pull and in front of their friends? His attempts to hush her and to take the argument outside away from everyone else only made her shriller. He knew he wasn’t perfect. No one was, but he’d been shocked by her anger and indiscretion their last evening as a couple. Only later did he discover that she had been walking out with other men while letting him believe he was the special one for her. He knew he was letting bruised pride get in the way, but his efforts to move past it had failed.
Until the simple words I trust you showed him the way.
But he needed more. He needed the assurance he knew Linda. Really knew her, instead of being beguiled by her lovely face and gentle heart.
He shouldn’t be thinking about that. He was simply taking her and Polly sledding. Grabbing what he wanted from a shelf inside the door, he jogged to where Linda waited.
He smiled as he handed her a black bicycle helmet. When she looked at it, puzzled, he said, “The kinder wear these when they ride their scooters. Steven McMurray, the local police chief, has been urging parents to get them for their kids if they plan to ride along the roads. With the dips and rises on these twisting roads, a kind could come over the top of a hill and not be able to stop in time to make a corner.” He chuckled. “I suspect Dr. Montgomery talked Chief McMurray into the whole idea, but it’s a gut one.”
She examined it from every angle. “Do you think it’ll keep me safe?”
“I think it will protect your head. I can’t claim it’ll do anything else.” He grinned. “But we’ll stick to the gentler hills, and let the teenagers take the challenging slopes.”
“How do I put it on?” She turned it around and around. “Both ends look pretty much the same, and I’m not sure which is the front and which is the back.”
“Let me.” He took the helmet from her. Turning it so the front faced him, he stepped closer. “Let me know if anything I do hurts you.”
“I doubt that’s possible,” she murmured. She trusted him. He wished trust was as easy for him.
He shook the past from his head, knowing he shouldn’t complain about troublesome memories. At least he had his memories. No matter how bad they might be, losing them as she had would be terrible. He settled the helmet over her bonnet. Taking the straps, he hooked them beneath her chin without crushing her head covering.
“Is that comfortable?” he asked.
“A little tight.”
He reached to loosen the straps, but as soon as his fingers brushed her cheek, they refused to move. They lingered against her soft, cool skin. She kept her eyes lowered, and he wondered if she felt the same rush of delight he did. If so, she was acting smarter than he was.
He led the way through the pasture gate and toward the hill. More than once, he considered taking her hand to help her through the snow, but didn’t. If he enfolded her fingers in his, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to let them go.
Polly ran up to them, jabbering about the rides she’d taken down the hill. Snow was ingrained in her wool coat, and her cheeks were a brilliant red. Her eyes glittered as brightly as the snow as she urged them to join her.
Amos borrowed a sled and positioned it at the top of the hill. It was long enough for Linda to sit in front of him with her arms around Polly. His heart danced in his chest like a runaway horse when he reached forward to grasp the ropes connected to the front. He’d have liked to slip his arm around Linda and draw her closer, but he needed to steer. There were trees flanking the hill. If the sled started heading for one side or the other, he needed to be able to pull it into the center of the hill. He couldn’t let there be the slightest chance Linda was injured.
Polly shrieked with excitement as he pushed off before putting his feet against the steering bar at the front. His breath burst from him as Linda pressed back while the sled picked up speed. When they hit a bump and she rocked to one side, he clamped his arm around her waist as she did the same to the kind.
His eyes widened. They were going too fast. They weren’t going to stop before the fence. He jammed his left boot against the bar, and the sled skidded to the side. Leaning, he shouted a warning as they toppled into the snow, skidding along with the empty sled.
As soon as he stopped, Amos clambered to his knees and looked for Linda and Polly. He saw them sprawled in the snow.
“Are you okay?” he called.
His answer was a handful of snow thrust into his face. As he sputtered, he heard Linda laughing along with Polly. Not a strained laugh or a weak one. Her laughter was genuine and burst out of her, unrestrained.
“What did you do that for?” he asked, wiping away flakes.
She laughed. “You dumped us in the snow.”
“To keep us from hitting the fence.”
“I got snow in my face, so it’s fair you did, too.”
“Fair? I’m not sure what’s fair about it.” He pointed at the fence. “I saved you from hitting that.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” She glanced at Polly who giggled. “Want to ride again?”
The little girl cheered, jumped up and ran to get the sled. As Linda stood, brushing herself off, her eyes were as bright as the kind’s. She helped Polly pull the sled up the hill.
Looking over her shoulder, Linda asked, “Coming?”
She didn’t wait for his answer as he stood to follow.
Ja, he’d help them go fast down the hill. But he knew one thing. With Linda, he needed to take it slow. This time if he made a mistake, he could hurt her—and Polly—as much as he hurt himself.
Chapter Five
As soon as the school Christmas program on the first day of winter was over, Polly ran to hug Mandy and her cousin Debbie at the front of the schoolroom. Polly adored the two girls and followed them everywhere after school, and the two older girls always welcomed her.
Linda smiled as the girls showed Polly the display the scholars had made and hung on the blackboard. It was covered with pictures of the Nativity drawn on every possible shade of construction paper. Joy to the World was spelled in block letters on red and green sheets above the windows on one side of the room.
The school felt familiar. Desks were lined up five across for six rows. They faced the teacher’s desk set by the blackboard. Everything looked exactly as she’d expected it to.
Linda was sure she must have attended a school like this, but was she also a teacher as Amos’s younger sister Esther had been before her recent wedding? She tried to imagine herself teaching a class filled with kinder from six to fourteen years old. Glancing at the books stacked on the bookcase beneath one window, she knew their titles by the colors of the spines. Was it because she’d studied with similar books, or had she taught with them? If she was a teacher, that meant she wasn’t married.
Her gaze went, before she could halt it, toward where Amos was talking with his mamm. He glanced at Linda and a slow, warm smile curved along his lips. The too-familiar quiver in her middle warned her to look away.
She couldn’t. The buzz of conversations filling the room faded as he walked toward her. Would he brush his fingers against her cheek as he had on Sunday before they went sledding with Polly? Even four days later, her skin heated in anticipation of his gentle touch, though she knew he wouldn’t be brash when his family and neighbors stood nearby.
“You look unsettled,” he said quietly, though nobody was paying any attention as par
ents congratulated the scholars for remembering the lines they’d worked hard to memorize.
Linda sighed. “I am.” She explained how she recognized the textbooks. “Why can I remember the name of the third grade reader, but I don’t know my own last name?”
“Why are you unhappy you’ve recovered another memory? It may not be the one you hope for, but it’s a memory, and it’s yours.”
“You’re right. It’s my memory. It’s mine.” She spoke those words like a prayer, then sent up a true prayer of gratitude to God for what she was able to recall.
And for Amos.
He was a steady rock in the storms swirling around her.
“I don’t know if I could be as patient as you are,” he said, leaning one hand on a nearby chair.
“What gave you the idea I’m patient?”
“You aren’t stomping around displaying your frustration over the whole situation.”
“I would if it’d help.” She smiled at him. “Do you think it would?”
“If I say ja, will you stamp around?”
She appreciated his teasing that drew her out of her doldrums. If not for Amos, it’d be far too easy to give in to the grief tugging at her whenever she let her guard down.
Polly ran to them. “Mandy says she’s going to teach me the songs they sang today, even the ones with Englisch words!”
“Isn’t that wunderbaar?” Linda asked.
“Ja.” The little girl dimpled. “I’m glad we’re here. I miss Grossmammi and Grossdawdi, but Mandy is my bestest friend!”
Linda kept her smile in place, but it wasn’t easy. She couldn’t miss Polly’s grandparents—whoever they might be—because she remembered nothing about them.
“And you’re her friend,” Amos said. “Hers and Debbie’s.”
“Debbie says I’m gut to practice on. Her little sister is a boppli.”
“That she is.” He stood straighter. “But she’s growing fast.”
Polly turned to her. “Linda, let’s get a boppli, too.”
Sure every ear in the room had heard Polly’s question, Linda hoped her face was not as red as it felt. “A boppli needs a mamm and a daed.”
“I know that.” The little girl regarded her with an expression that suggested Linda was the silly one. She looked at Amos. “You can be the daed.”
Every word Linda had ever known fled from her mind, but Amos laughed and bent to look at the kind. “You’ve got everything planned, don’t you?”
“Ja!”
“Can you keep a secret?” he asked in a conspiratorial tone.
Polly nodded eagerly.
“You won’t tell anyone?”
“No.”
“Not even Linda?”
The little girl hesitated, torn between needing to know what he had to say and knowing she’d want to share it with Linda.
Amos chuckled. “All right. You can tell Linda, but nobody else. Okay?”
She nodded and grinned. “What is it?”
Putting his hand next to his mouth, he bent to whisper in the little girl’s ear. Linda couldn’t hear what he said, but Polly’s smile returned, growing wider with every passing second. Linda wondered what he was saying to the kind about her expectations.
Her naive expectations, Linda knew. But why was her own mind filled with images of her and Amos standing together and watching Polly participate in a Christmas program? Smaller kinder, their kinder, would be gathered around them, as eager as Polly was now.
Had she lost her mind as well as her memories? Mistaking Amos’s kindness for anything else would be the worst thing she could do.
Amos drew back as Polly crowed, “Hooray! We’re going to have snitz pie tonight!” She put a finger to her lips. “Don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret.”
“I won’t,” Linda said, astonished how easily Amos had turned the little girl’s mind to other matters. She smiled over Polly’s head and mouthed, “Danki.”
He winked in response, and the motion sent another rush of warmth cascading through her. He cared as much about the little girl as she did.
She and Polly had spent a week at the Stoltzfus farm, and the odd situation of not knowing who she was and where she’d come from almost seemed normal. Depending on Amos to cheer her up when she felt blue was becoming a habit, too. She wished she could be sure if it were a gut one or not.
* * *
When Linda went with Polly to see Mandy’s desk, Amos remained where he was. He couldn’t tag after Linda like a puppy. That would cause more talk about the mysterious woman who’d appeared during a snowstorm. Nobody was unkind. Simply curious, and he couldn’t fault them, because he wanted to know the truth about her, as well.
He pulled his gaze from where she stood by a desk with Mandy and Polly. Mamm was talking with Neva Fry, the new teacher. She’d done a gut job stepping in when she took over the responsibilities of the school and its scholars after his younger sister Esther married Nathaniel Zook two weeks ago. The newlyweds and the young boy who lived with them were visiting Nathaniel’s family in Indiana for the holidays. Otherwise, Esther wouldn’t have missed seeing the program.
It had been a splendid one. He listened to Polly join in each time a song was sung in Deitsch. The kind wouldn’t learn to speak Englisch until she went to school, so when the carols were in Englisch, Linda whispered a translation into her ear. Though Linda had lost much, she hadn’t forgotten her love for the kind.
He could admit to himself he was glad the kind had confirmed Linda wasn’t her mamm. That was the one fact he was sure of. Watching Linda from the corner of his eye, he wondered—as he had many times before—why she’d been traveling with only a little girl. Surely if she had a husband, he would have come with them.
Amos knew he shouldn’t let her become more a part of his life. He’d made a mistake over another woman, and he’d been certain he knew Arlene well. He couldn’t say he knew Linda. She hid much of herself, more than what her lost memories could account for. Maybe she didn’t want to make too many connections in Paradise Springs until she discovered where she belonged.
“Amos?” Mamm’s tone suggested she’d called to him more than once.
“Sorry. I was...thinking.”
“I can see.” She gave him an indulgent smile. “Could you bring Linda and Polly home in your buggy? Leah’s is full.”
“I hope you aren’t trying to matchmake, Mamm.”
“I leave that to the professional matchmakers.”
He arched a brow, and she chuckled. “Ja, Linda and Polly can ride in my buggy.”
“Danki, Amos. We’ll see you there. Don’t be late, or your brothers will devour your share of the snitz pie.”
Laughing, he said, “I won’t be late. Nobody wants to miss your famous snitz pie, Mamm.”
“Hardly famous,” she chided, but he could tell she was pleased at his compliment for her dried apple pie.
His mamm walked away to speak with a neighbor, and he headed toward Mandy’s desk to let Linda know of the change in plans.
As he approached, he heard Polly saying, “I liked when you used to read stories to me, Linda.”
“You did?”
“I like stories before I go to bed. You used to read to me every night. Until...” The light in the little girl’s eyes became cloudy with distress.
Linda’s face flushed, then went gray, but her voice gave no sign of her thoughts as she said, “I think we should have a story before bed tonight and every night. What do you think?”
“Ja!” She pressed her cheek against Linda and whispered, “Ich liebe dich, Linda.”
“I love you, too.”
Something in Amos’s chest loosened when he watched the two embrace. Was it his tight hold on his heart? He’d guarded it since Arlene had tossed it aside lik
e last week’s newspaper. Never had he imagined a pint-size kind would break the chokehold he’d kept in place for five years. No, not Polly, but Linda who couldn’t hide her love for the little girl. He wondered what it’d be like to have her love him.
He stepped aside as several of the scholars’ parents and grandparents paused to ask Linda how she was feeling. Her smile appeared to be genuine, but he noticed how her hands curled into fists before she concealed them behind her back. Their well-intentioned words were a reminder of how much she had lost.
If Linda’s smile grew any more brittle, it was going to crack off her face. Amos wondered how much longer her composure could hold together. She looked exhausted, and he reminded himself it’d been only a little over a week since he’d found her, lost and in pain, in the parking lot.
He waited for a break in the conversation. “We need to leave,” he said in his most casual tone when that pause came. “I’ve got to make a stop before we head home.”
Linda nodded, but he could sense her relief as she said goodbye to the crowd. Taking Polly by the hand, she squatted to help the kind button her coat. She didn’t notice the looks exchanged over her head, but he did.
He was glad she hadn’t, because she would have been bothered by the sympathetic expressions. He bit back words he must not speak. The concern was meant kindly, but it made Linda uncomfortable. She hadn’t given any quarter to the pain or her lost memories, and she didn’t want to be seen as an object of pity.
Dusk was changing to dark on the shortest day of the year when Amos led the way to his buggy. Linda hadn’t acted as if riding home with him was anything out of the ordinary. Because she didn’t see him as someone she’d walk out with?
Polly chattered about what she’d seen, and Amos was grateful because he wasn’t sure what to say to Linda when his thoughts were completely out of his control.
He broke the silence when they turned on the road leading through the middle of Paradise Springs. “I need to stop at the store, but I can take you to the farm first.”
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