“She trusts you with pie.”
“Good to know. So you came down to give me a hard time?”
“Yes. And I have your car.”
“As long as you’ve done something useful.”
“Keys?” He held out a familiar-looking set of car keys.
I took them and dropped them in my apron pocket. “Thanks. Everything go okay with Kim?”
“Yes,” he said, but another answer flashed in his eyes.
“What happened?”
“Your boyfriend is Shane?”
I chewed my lip. “Yes…”
“He came for your mail. That’s what he told Kim.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t think he was happy to see me.”
Not really, no. “I wouldn’t take it personally. How’s Kim?”
He shrugged. “Fine, I guess.”
Huh. “She’s one of my best friends,” I said. “She’s brilliant. Great instincts.”
“Good for her.”
“And she’s pretty. Don’t you think she’s pretty?”
Levi sighed and leaned against the wall. “I’m not interested in Kim, if that’s what you’re hinting at.”
“Well, you should be. She’s a catch.”
“I’m sure she is.”
“You should be so lucky.”
“Jayne—” He opened his mouth as if to say something, but he must have changed his mind. “Never mind.”
“Thanks for getting my car. It was a huge help.”
He gave a small smile. “You’re welcome. Anytime.”
There are buffet restaurants with less food than at an Amish barn raising. Tables had been set up thirty feet from the charred barn. Pies upon pies stretched nearly as far as the eye could see. The sky threatened rain, but this group seemed to hold back the emptying of the heavens out of sheer will.
“How often do you guys do this?” I asked Sara as we carried food items to the tables.
She shrugged. “As often as we need to. Usually not till summer. We don’t get many fires this time of year.”
“Makes sense. Thanks for my dress, by the way.”
Her face lit up. “Do you like it?”
“I do. It seems like it hangs really well.”
“It’s because I cut it on a bias. That’s why there’s a seam down the middle—if you look at the weave, it forms a V-shape when it’s sewn together.”
“Clever.” I set the pork down on the table. “How’s that?”
“Fine.”
“Do we have to carve it?”
“The men will.”
“You really like sewing, don’t you.”
Her face grew still, and she looked as though she chose her words carefully. “I understand fabric and the way it covers people. I understand it the way Levi understands wood.”
“Do you think you would ever want to work with fabric outside the community, the way Levi does?”
“I think there’s another pie in the buggy—I’ll go get it,” she said, her words coming out in a panicked jumble.
She all but ran back to the field of parked buggies.
I felt like Kelly McGillis in Witness, walking around and watching men sweat, move beams, and pound nails.
Except there was no Harrison Ford or that other blond guy vying for my attention. And that was okay with me, because I’d come to the conclusion that there were too many men in my life right now.
Personal life aside, I focused my attention on the structure taking shape before my eyes. What would it be like to live in a community where everyone took care of each other? When my dad died, my mom had the reception catered. I had the feeling that here, she would have been swimming in custard and cobbler.
One year a coastal storm blew a tree into our kitchen. We had to leave it until the insurance man came out; contractors arrived two weeks later. What would it have been like if the neighbors had come over with their tools and gotten the job done?
On the other hand, the din was incredible. Aside from the gaggle of men constructing the new barn, another group tore the old one down, piling the burnt and damaged wood near the road. The scene looked and sounded like a battle, builders versus breakers.
I tracked down Leah and Elizabeth, who were playing with the other children mercifully far away from the noise. Two sets of sticks had been driven into the ground, turning an otherwise ordinary field into a soccer stadium for the kids. Leah and Samuel, in particular, could boast of FIFA-worthy feet. I’d never seen kids move like that.
Not that I was a soccer aficionado of any kind, but I’d watched enough with Shane to know what did and didn’t constitute ability. If these were any other kids, they’d be recruited out of high school to play nationally. Not these children, though. At some point, they would put down the soccer ball and turn to adult responsibilities full-time. But wasn’t it better that way? I’d known scores of people from school who dreamt of the rock star or pro-baseball player life, but whose careers never made it further than the video rental store. These kids were realistic, or at least their parents were.
Were they losing anything by having fewer opportunities? Or did their lessened options serve their purpose?
I mulled the thought in my head as I watched the ball travel up and down the field.
“Jayne?”
I jumped, nearly dropping my laptop. I looked up at Sara. “You have very quiet feet.”
“Can I show you something?”
“Of course.”
“In my room?”
“Okay.” I closed the lid to my laptop and followed her.
When we were inside her room, she shut the door and spent another moment with her ear pressed to the doorframe. Once she decided the coast was clear, she walked across the room and stamped her heel.
At least it looked like a heel stamp, but her foot went right through the floor, revealing a loose board. She got on her hands and knees before retrieving what looked like a stack of magazines.
“Yes,” she said, laying the pile on the bed.
I took a closer look. There were catalogs for JCrew and Anthropologie, as well as copies of InStyle and Vogue.
“Yes to what?” I asked.
“Your question.”
“Which one?”
“The one about me and Levi being the same.”
Chapter 10
I lowered my voice, not wanting my questions or Sara’s revelations to be overheard. “You would leave?”
Sara clasped her hands around her knees. “I would think about it.”
“What would you do?”
“Go to school. Become a clothing designer.”
“Really.” I sat back on the bed. “Where do you get these?”
She looked down. “Sometimes I get them when I go to town. Sometimes Levi gets them for me.”
I tried to picture builder Levi, motorcycle-riding Levi, purchasing a copy of Vogue.
Nope. Couldn’t get there.
But Sara as a fashion designer? Couldn’t get there, either. “When did you start getting interested in—”
“We would go into town, and the women would be wearing such beautiful colors. Not just blues and greens and purples, but reds and pinks and yellows. I could tell by the cut of their clothes which ones were more flattering and why. And,” she said, reaching to the bottom of the stack, “I have these.”
She held a sketchpad.
“May I look?”
She nodded.
The sketches were very well done. Even I could tell that. Sara’s designs showed a creative use of lines and a good eye for color. I would have expected an Amish girl to design dresses with high necklines and low hemlines, but these weren’t. “I can see Gemma in this one.”
“Gemma?”
I lowered the sketchbook. “Friend of mine, back home.”
Sara pulled her legs up and hugged her knees to herself. “What’s it like choosing what to wear from a hundred options every day?”
“I don’t have a hundred, although Gemma pr
obably does. I don’t know. It’s hard sometimes to choose.”
Sara looked skeptical. “Really?”
“Usually I throw things on and don’t think about them much, but I’ve known Gemma to be twenty minutes late because she couldn’t decide on an outfit.”
“But you don’t?”
“Well, most of my clothes are black. Matching isn’t hard at that point. Gemma has shoes that match sweaters, and bags that match pants, and skirts that match earrings. Dressing like Gemma is complicated.”
“I want to meet her.”
I smiled. “Maybe I can get her to come down.”
“I hate wearing black. I don’t like blue, either.”
“What do you like?”
“Yellow. Purple. Orange. Bright green. Pink.”
“Hopefully not together.”
She laughed at that. “No, not together. I like white too. Everything looks cleaner with white.”
“How would you leave?”
Sara bit her lip. “Levi would help me. I’d live with him for a while. Get my GED. Try to get into design school.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll stay and be baptized here. My parents stayed.”
“Your grandparents left.”
“I don’t know. Do you think it’s possible to go to heaven, even if you’re not baptized?”
“I—I’m not really the person to ask,” I stammered. “I haven’t been to church in years.”
“But you went to church?”
“My dad was an elder.”
“You left the church?”
“I stopped going, yeah.”
“Do you worry about going to hell?”
“Do you?” I found it safer to deflect the question.
“Our bishop says the English don’t go to heaven. I don’t think Jesus was Amish, though, and I don’t think His disciples were. I think His disciples went to heaven.”
“I think so. So…do you think you could live apart from your family? You seem so connected.”
“I’d have Levi. And Grandma.”
“I don’t see my mom and sister. Sometimes, I wish things were better.”
“Why don’t you make them better?”
“It’s complicated.”
“You should try to make things better.”
“Sometimes, people just get stuck. Why don’t Levi and your dad talk?”
Before she could answer, footsteps sounded down the hallway. Before you could say “Spring Collection,” Sara snatched up her pile of contraband and stashed it safely under the flooring.
I really did wish things were better with my family. The early nights at the Burkholder farm gave me lots of time to think about how much in my life I wanted to change.
But when it came to my mom and sister…what could I do? I couldn’t be the daughter my mom wanted. She wanted the traditional good girl. I couldn’t be that girl. She nearly had a heart attack when I drew on my Converse sneakers in ballpoint pen as a teen. My shoes didn’t look like the other daughters’ shoes. At least, they didn’t look like the shoes worn by her friends’ daughters.
I didn’t care what they thought. Her friends’ daughters smirked at me and whispered behind my back about the streak of purple in my hair and the band T-shirts I wore as they strutted around in their Tommy Hilfiger outfits.
Even though I grew out of the Converse-sketching, hair-dying phase, I don’t know that my mom ever noticed.
And Beth…
I didn’t know how to reach her. I didn’t know how to be her sister.
What would it be like to live in a family like the Burkholders? To have my family mean so much to me that I changed careers to be near them, like Levi?
I dreamed about pie that night.
Odd, considering my fear of ovens and accidental pyromaniac tendencies. But the pie looked really good. I think it was a nectarine raspberry pie. I don’t know where that came from. I don’t think it’s possible to have nectarines and raspberries together in a pie. Either way, it sounded really good. It sounded good as breakfast food. Pie was pretty close to toast and jam, wasn’t it? Maybe more like toast, jam, and some fruit chunks, but it still sounded good.
Really good.
To my disappointment, Martha had not read my mind that morning. There were potatoes, sausages, and a steaming mound of cheese-topped scrambled eggs, but no pie.
I couldn’t blame her, though. She’d made, like, a billion pies the day before. Maybe she had pie elbow, or whatever you call a pie-induced injury.
I helped clean up the breakfast dishes after the men left for work. “I was wondering,” I said, as I scrubbed plates, “if you could teach me how to bake.”
“What kind of baking?”
“I don’t know. Bread—I’ve never made bread. The cobbler you made the other day was really good. Or,” I paused artfully as I removed a stubborn bit of cheese, “there’s pie. I don’t know how to make pie.”
Martha stopped drying dishes. “You don’t know how to make pie?”
I shook my head.
“Your mother never taught you to make pie?”
“I wasn’t much interested in baking when I lived with my mother.”
To say the least. I couldn’t be bothered to make toast at the time.
“The most important thing about the crust is not to make the shortening bits too fine.”
And so it began.
When the last dishes were put away, Martha insisted that I measure out the flour myself, even with my injury. I dipped the cup measure into the flour bag, filled it, and then clumsily tried to scrape off the excess mound of flour on the top with my sore arm.
Martha shook her head. “You can’t scoop like that. Dump it out.”
Startled, I obeyed.
She removed a spoon from a drawer. “If you scoop, you may get air bubbles and your amounts won’t be right. Use a teaspoon to add a little in at a time.”
I tried to follow her instructions, but maneuvering the spoon and cup measure with my brace proved too difficult. Martha stepped in and offered to fill it, now that I knew the correct method.
After all the flour made it successfully to the mixing bowl, Martha taught me how to cut in shortening using two butter knives, drawing them across the bowl in opposite directions. “Many recipes tell you to continue until the mixture resembles coarse sand, but they’re wrong. Only mix until it looks like little peas. Your piecrust will come out flakier that way.”
After she rolled out the crust—another task I couldn’t complete with a brace—she turned back to me. “What sort of pie do you want to bake?”
I bit my lip. “A fruit pie?”
“What fruit? We have apples, canned apricots, frozen berries…”
Apricots were kind of like nectarines. “Apricot? And raspberry?”
Martha lifted an eyebrow. “Never done that before.”
We rinsed the apricots and let them dry a bit in a strainer. The raspberries remained frozen when we stirred them with the apricots, some flour, a little sugar, a half-teaspoon of cinnamon, and a pinch of nutmeg. After we poured the filling into the pie pan, Martha showed me how to fold over the top sheet of pie pastry and crimp the edges shut.
“Now you have to cut vents,” she said, handing me the knife. “You could cut slits or make a design. You can also use your scrap crust as decoration.”
I cut two hearts out of the leftover piecrust, and then I cut a heart in the crust itself as a vent. “How’s that?”
“Good. Now put it in the oven.”
Uh-oh. “Is the oven on?”
Martha gave me a blank look. “Yes. The oven must be hot when you put the pie in, or the pastry won’t bake right.”
Hot oven, hot oven. Oh, dear. “Um…”
“Ja?”
“Er…I don’t think I can do it.”
“You can’t…”
“Lift. I can’t lift the pie pan with one hand.” I let out a forced chuckle. “Too heavy. Lot of fruit in there.”
Never mind I removed the
meringue the day before. But wasn’t meringue lighter because of all that air?
“Oh.” Martha grasped the pie with one hand and yanked the oven door open with the other. A wave of hot air greeted my face. She set it perfunctorily on the rack, closed the oven, and eyed me up and down. “You should eat more. Strengthen you up.”
Leah wrinkled her nose. “What kind of pie is it?”
I tapped her kapp. “Apricot raspberry. Doesn’t that sound good?”
“I ain’t never had apricot raspberry pie.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“It smells good,” Elizabeth said. “It smells like pie,” Samuel corrected decisively.
“Who wants a slice?” I asked.
The pie had waited, uneaten, untasted, until the children returned from school. They greeted it with the enthusiasm reserved for strange things like sweetmeats and marzipan.
I cut into the pie with a knife, the crust still slightly warm under my fingers. After cutting the first wedge, I tried to lift it out with the flat edge of the knife.
What landed on the pie plate looked less like pie than it did a fruity train wreck.
Leah squinted at the plate. “I think you need a pie server.”
“Oh. Right.” I started fumbling through the drawers in front of me, but Leah pulled one out from a drawer across the kitchen.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks.” The next slices came out much prettier. I passed out forks and led the troops to the kitchen table.
My first bite melted in my mouth with an explosion of flavors. The tartness of the raspberries contrasted with the muskiness of the apricots.
Did everyone’s first pie come out like this? I hadn’t baked since I was in middle school home economics, and even then my muffins had collapsed like my mother’s dreams for my future.
But the pie? The pie was special. Even as I devoured the rest of my slice and scraped the last bits of goo and crust from the plate, I wondered what other things I could learn to do while I was here.
Gideon took me aside after dinner that night.
Your daughter wants to leave your family to become a fashion designer, I thought.
“We’ll be going to church at the Lapps’ home, day after tomorrow,” he said.
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