"It doesn't matter since he's not going to influence me."
"Influence you?" Naomi looked at her cousins. "He's trying to make you pressure Mary Katherine?"
"I'm not letting him do that," Mary Katherine began. "I'll go speak to him myself." She reached for her jacket hanging on the peg.
Leah sighed. "No, dear one. He didn't come here to talk about you. Not exactly."
The teakettle whistled. She turned and shut off the flame under it, then poured the hot water into mugs she set in front of them.
When Leah finally sat down, Mary Katherine tensed, and felt her cousins lean forward, waiting to hear their grandmother speak.
Leah took a sip of tea. "The bishop wanted to talk to me about the things we're making," she told them. "He feels we're straying from producing what is traditional for Amish handiwork."
"What?" Anna stared at her, looking incredulous.
Shrugging, Leah took another sip of her tea. "Apparently some of our work is too . . . different."
"He's talking about me. About my weaving," Mary Katherine said. "It's an old craft but I have very new ideas for my patterns."
"Tradition is good," said Leah. "Our lives are full of it. We create something traditional like an old standard quilt pattern or a knitted baby cap that's from the past—started at some point from a new idea by some woman."
"Is he saying he wants us to stop?" Naomi asked.
"I think he was . . . encouraging us to return to the type of goods that used to sell in shops like ours."
"Go back. We're supposed to go back?" Mary Katherine said flatly.
Leah nodded. "He feels we should. We're a symbol of our Plain community to the Englischers. His words, not mine," she added quickly when she saw Mary Katherine jump to her feet.
"We're a business, just like so many other businesses run by our community," Mary Katherine told her. "I bet he doesn't try that with some of the men. Does he tell them what to make and what to sell?"
She stopped and took a deep breath. "Okay, that was a dumb question. I know there are rules. But we have both the traditional Amish goods here and some wonderful things like some of Naomi's newer quilt designs and Anna's baby caps."
Picking up one of the caps, she shook her head. "How can you be against a cupcake cap, for goodness sake?"
Anna reached over to take Mary Katherine's hand. "Thanks for defending my cupcake hats."
"It's just like you to make a joke when something turns serious," Naomi said.
A strange expression flitted across Anna's face. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Naomi touched Leah's arm.
"So what's going to happen? Are we going to stop doing what we do? The new things, I mean?"
"No." Leah looked at each of them in turn. "I don't believe we're doing anything wrong, so I don't think we should change anything."
The cousins looked at each other.
"What if he doesn't like that?"
"Then he can take it to the elders."
The bell jangled on the front door. Naomi stood, but Leah shook her head. "I'll get it. I need to do something to work off this—this urge I have to say something not so nice about the bishop!"
Mary Katherine chose to walk to Jamie's apartment. She felt like her grandmother—upset and needing some way to work off her churning emotions.
And she felt some guilt. The bishop had never come to the shop until she'd had that talk with him after church. Her conscience prodded her. Maybe she could have been more polite to him. Allrecht, she should have been more polite to him. She just hadn't been able to resist behaving the same way to him that she had with another over-bearing authority figure— her father.
Now maybe she'd just made trouble for all of them. She kicked at a stone in her path and watched it skitter ahead of her.
She climbed the stairs to Jamie's apartment and knocked on her door. Then again. When she knocked for the third time, she began to wonder if Jamie wasn't home—if she'd forgotten that they were going to spend the evening together.
Just as she started to knock once more, the door opened.
Jamie stood there dressed in sweats, her hair uncombed, her eyes reddened from crying. "You came."
"I said I would. What's the matter? Aren't you feeling well? Have you got the flu?"
Jamie wiped at her eyes. "No. I'm just upset about something. Listen, give me a minute, and I'll change."
"We don't have to go for pizza!" Mary Katherine called after her.
But Jamie had already entered her bedroom and closed the door. When she came out, she was dressed in jeans and a sweater, her hair was combed, and evidence of crying had been mostly hidden with cosmetics.
"We don't have to go anywhere," Mary Katherine repeated. "We can stay here and talk."
"No, it'll be good for me to get out. Besides, I haven't eaten all day, and now I'm starving."
Mary Katherine told her about how Jacob wanted to join them and hoped to bring Ben along. "I told Jacob I had to ask you, and he said they'd sit at another table if we didn't want company."
"No, it's okay. Jacob really seems to like you. And Ben is cool to talk to. It doesn't hurt that he's cute, too."
"But you have a boyfriend."
Jamie's mouth tightened, and she frowned. "Not anymore."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No, let's go."
They walked to the restaurant, their breath huffing white in the cold air. When they arrived at the restaurant, they saw Jacob and Ben standing outside.
Jamie smiled at them. "So, you two handsome guys want to have pizza with us?"
Mary Katherine's eyes widened. She didn't know any Amish girls who would talk like that.
Ben rushed to hold the door open for them.
"Such a gentleman," Jamie said as she looked at him, and Ben reddened.
Jacob motioned for her and Mary Katherine to precede them into the restaurant.
"You're a gentleman, too," Mary Katherine teased as she walked past them.
"Ya, that's me," he said with a grin.
They were seated in a booth, a small one that made Mary Katherine uncomfortably aware of Jacob sitting beside her. She pulled her skirts close to her body, but when her hand accidentally touched his thigh covered in wool fabric there was a crackle of static electricity.
Trying not to look at him, she picked up her menu and studied it. To her mortification, she heard her stomach growl.
Jacob quirked an eyebrow at her.
"I didn't have lunch," she said. "I got back to the shop and we were busy."
"I'd have made you a sandwich instead of coffee cake if I'd known."
"It was good coffee cake."
"Danki. I actually enjoyed making it."
She put her elbow on the table and set her chin in her hand. "Maybe you should tell your sister. Maybe she did you a favor." She paused for a moment. "Like that professor did for me by asking me to do something I'd never done before. And now you're cooking, something you never really did much before."
Their eyes met. If there were other people around her, they faded away. She couldn't hear them, couldn't see them.
Then her stomach growled again. Jacob signaled for the server. "Let's get you some food before you fade away before my eyes."
"I'm not some insubstantial miss who's going to fade away."
"No," he said, turning to look at her. "You're perfect to me."
The moment the words slipped out, Jacob wished he could call them back.
"I wish somebody else felt I was perfect," she muttered.
"Yes, can I help you?" the server asked.
He wanted to send her away, but he'd called her over. Besides, Mary Katherine was hungry, and so was he.
They placed their order, and then he looked back at her. She was tracing the circle of condensation on the wooden table left by her glass of water and frowning.
"What was that about wishing somebody thought you were perfect?" he asked her quietly.
She w
as distracted as Jamie and Ben got up.
Jacob glanced up at them.
"We want to go look at the bakery case," Jamie told them.
Mary Katherine looked relieved to see them leave. "The bishop stopped by the shop after you dropped me off," she said quietly.
"The bishop visited the shop?"
She nodded.
"Well, I never thought about him doing that. Was he buying a gift like I did?"
She gave a derisive laugh. "Hardly. He came to tell us that he didn't like what we were doing. I think he was especially displeased by what I do."
"You?"
"Some of our things are too modern. Not Plain enough. We're supposed to be representing the Amish with traditional crafts, he said."
"Really?" He sat back, trying to absorb what she said.
"I love what Grandmother has encouraged us to do. Naomi and Anna and me, I mean. I'd hate to think that it's causing a problem for her."
"What do you mean? Is he threatening to go to the church elders about it?"
She shook her head. "He didn't say that today. But I'm afraid that's the next step."
Shaking her head again, she sighed and leaned back in the booth. "I wonder what Daniel's bishop in Florida is like?"
The minute Jamie walked into her apartment with Mary Katherine, Jamie kicked off her shoes and walked over to collapse on the sofa.
"I'm going to put the leftover pizza in the refrigerator," Mary Katherine told her. "Unless you want another piece?"
"No," Jamie said with a moan. She put her arm over her face. "I feel sick. I think I ate too much."
"You're not the only one," Mary Katherine told her. "Maybe I should wrap the pieces in aluminum foil and put them in the freezer."
"Good idea."
When Mary Katherine returned to the living room, Jamie wasn't lying on the sofa anymore. The bathroom door was closed, and when she heard the toilet flush, she knew where her friend was.
Then the door opened, and Jamie appeared, leaning dramatically against the jamb. "I feel so sick. I can't seem to keep anything down lately. Why I thought I'd get away with pizza— especially stuffing myself with it—is beyond me."
"Is it the flu? It's going around."
Jamie's face contorted. "I don't think so. I'm—I'm scared to death I'm pregnant."
She said it with such bitterness and despair, Mary Katherine was shocked. A boppli—baby—was eagerly looked forward to by the Amish. Well, they weren't perfect, she reflected; occasionally there were couples who anticipated their vows, who married and had an early baby.
"Think? You haven't gone to the doctor?"
"I can't afford it," Jamie said, returning to the sofa to flop onto it and cover her face with the afghan.
"Then you should at least take a pregnancy test from the drugstore."
Jamie pulled the afghan down, revealing her face. "How do you know about this?"
"I'm Amish. Not ignorant," Mary Katherine told her briskly. She stood and pulled her purse strap onto her shoulder. "Then that's the first thing you need to know. The drugstore is probably still open. We'll go get a pregnancy kit."
"I think I'm going to throw up again." Jumping up, Jamie bolted for the bathroom and slammed the door.
This wasn't looking good, thought Mary Katherine. She walked over to the door and knocked on it. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah."
"I don't want to leave if you're not okay."
The toilet flushed, and water ran in the sink. Jamie opened the door. She was wetting a washcloth. "All better now."
"I'll go by myself. You don't seem to be in any shape to go."
"Thank you," Jamie told her.
She looked wan, but her voice was heartfelt.
Mary Katherine started for the door. "Is there anything else you need?"
"Chocolate," Jamie said in a muffled voice as she wiped her face with the washcloth. "A couple of pounds of chocolate."
"Chocolate never cured anything," Mary Katherine told her, but she couldn't help smiling a little.
"It never hurt, either."
Mary Katherine was holding two pregnancy kits—wondering which was better—when she felt someone watching her. She turned and someone—a man—darted behind a display of cereal.
Shrugging, she turned back to her study of the kits. One promised that fewer mistakes were made with it and that it could detect a pregnancy earlier than any other tests on the market. She checked the price. It was two dollars more, but she figured it was worth the price.
Satisfied, she walked to the checkout and was digging in her purse for money when she realized that everything had gone silent. Glancing up, she saw that the clerk and two staff members were standing there, staring at her.
She felt a moment's twinge, then dismissed it. They didn't know her, and she didn't know them. And most importantly, she wasn't wearing her Plain clothes. They probably thought she was Englisch, so no one in her community would ever know that she'd bought a pregnancy kit.
She quickly handed over the money, got her change, and held out her hand for the package safely hidden now in a plastic bag.
Hurrying back to Jamie's apartment, she thrust the package into her friend's hands. "There. You can find out now."
Jamie stared at the package as if it were a snake.
"Well, I thought you'd want to find out right away."
Lifting her eyes, Jamie shook her head. Her lips trembled. "I do. But I'm scared everything is going to change if—if—"
Mary Katherine hadn't ever been faced with something like this. But she could see Jamie's terror, could almost feel it. She'd never even thought of what might happen if she got pregnant outside of marriage because she'd been so determined to avoid dating until she figured out where she belonged.
But fear—she'd known fear, and she saw it now. So she did the only thing she could think of. She reached out and hugged her friend.
"Let's just get it over with," she murmured. "The sooner, the better. Then we'll talk about whatever you need to do."
Jamie's breath hitched, and she nodded. "Okay." She backed up. "Thanks."
"The instructions say it's really easy. That it's hard to get the results confused."
"Really?" Jamie's laugh was more an exhale of air than a sound of mirth. "Well, that's good to know." She rubbed at her forehead. "It's just been such a difficult semester. I took on too many classes to get out sooner, then I had my hours cut back at work. My roommate moved out. I'm scared I won't have my rent money this month. And I let myself get talked into—" she stopped and blushed.
Mary Katherine hugged her again. "Everything will work out."
"I don't know how." She turned and walked toward the bathroom with slumped shoulders and closed the door behind her.
"I'll pray for you," Mary Katherine whispered.
Mary Katherine took a seat on the sofa and did as she'd told Jamie she would do: she prayed for peace, and for guidance, for her friend.
She realized at that moment that she had turned to God for the first time in a long, long time. She'd asked Him for peace, for guidance—things she hadn't asked Him for herself. And she'd asked, believing that He was listening to her when she hadn't felt that way for months and months.
The next day, Jacob sat in his kitchen, brooding over a cup of coffee while he waited for the oven timer to go off.
He couldn't forget Mary Katherine's question from the night before: "I wonder what Daniel's bishop in Florida is like?"
Why had the bishop picked now to visit the shop and make his comments to Leah? Mary Katherine had been so upset. Jacob didn't see anything wrong with what they created and sold at the shop, and he didn't think anyone else in their Plain community would.
And it didn't make sense that if the bishop wanted Mary Katherine to join the church, he would be critical of her. Then again, he was an authority figure who didn't go around trying to be liked. Instead, he was looked on as being someone who saw to it that the Ordnung, the unwritten rules, were strictly ob
eyed.
Mary Katherine had been so upset with the bishop she told Jacob she had left the shop for a walk to cool off.
He could only wonder if she'd view what had happened with the bishop as just another reason she shouldn't stay in the Plain community. The timer dinged, and he rose to pull the baking pan from the oven. Setting it on top of the stove, he used a toothpick to check to see if it was done. Satisfied that there was no uncooked batter on the toothpick, he turned off the oven.
The pan was still warm when he knocked at his sister Rebecca's door a little while later.
He heard yelling through the door, and then it was opened by one of his nephews.
"Mamm! It's Onkel Jacob!" he yelled.
She held her hands over her ears and winced. "Danki, liebschen. Next time please use your inside voice. Now go back to your homework."
Jacob watched him drag his feet back to the kitchen. He remembered the days of homework and winced. Then he realized that his sister was standing there rubbing at the small of her back, an expression of pain on her face. He stepped inside and closed the door.
"I brought you a peace offering." He held out the coffee cake.
She took it from him and sniffed at it. "Smells good. You made it?"
"Ya. Here, let me carry it into the kitchen and you sit down. You look exhausted."
"Well, if you go around saying things like that, it's no wonder you're not married," she told him with a trace of tartness.
"I'm sorry, but—"
She held up her hand. "Never mind. You try being pregnant for nine months and see how good you look."
He felt himself pale. "That's not funny."
Yawning, she leaned against the chair of her oldest and watched her do her sums. "What I wouldn't do for a nap."
He looked around the table. His nieces and nephews were busily working on their homework. Such quiet, well-behaved children, he couldn't help thinking. Even the youngest, a four-year-old boy who was the spitting image of his mother, was quietly coloring a blue squirrel within the outlines of a coloring book.
"Tell you what," he said, placing the coffee cake on the kitchen counter. "How about I watch the kinner so you can lie down?"
Her Restless Heart Page 11