by Senft, Adina
Carrie’s shoulders relaxed, and she turned her hand over and squeezed back. “I should have known better than to believe you would be carried away by a handsome face and a pair of eyes that don’t belong on a good Amish man.”
“You think he’s handsome?”
Carrie blushed again, just when she’d managed to get her color back to normal. “I may be married, but I have eyes.”
“And hopefully, so do the other girls. Though if he decides on someone, I may have to have a little talk with her before she gets in deeper than she should.”
“He could have changed, Emma.”
She nodded, and sipped her Kaffi. “He could. With God, all things are possible. Even the reformation of Joshua Steiner.”
Carrie put her mug down with a clack. “Do you think he could be—no. Of course not. That would be terrible unfair to you.”
“Could be what? Come on, you can’t start a sentence like that and not finish it.”
“Do you think he could be…using you to put a shine on his reputation? Because yours is so good, I mean. There isn’t a person in the settlement who doesn’t think well of you, and how good you’ve been to Lena.”
“Mamm deserves nothing less than my best, after spending her life giving her best for us Kinner.” Emma’s voice felt a little scratchy in her own throat at the thought of Mamm darning endless piles of socks for the boys and sewing dresses for her and Karen when Pap was getting the farm going and money had been tight, and meanwhile her own dresses faded in the sun and she patched and mended seams, all hidden under cape and apron.
“Of course that’s true, but that’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.” But Emma didn’t think so. The man whose eyes had lit up when she’d agreed to go with him had been sincere. He had been her friend again, not some schemer who would use a woman to give a fresh coat of paint to a badly built barn.
She was sure of it.
Chapter 9
At the age of six, Emma had been chosen to play one of the sheep at the school Christmas pageant. She and her two companions were to wear woolly ears and sing to the Christ Child (played by William Esch, Alvin’s oldest brother, who had been not quite two) in his straw-filled manger. They had rehearsed and rehearsed until they had their song pitch perfect…and then when they’d finally mounted the steps to the manger, Emma had looked out at the sea of people filling the schoolroom and had her first attack of stage fright. Pap had had to take her outside to the porch, bawling at the top of her lungs, and Christina Yoder and Esther Grohl had sung their song without her.
If dinner at Karen’s had been the rehearsal, then surely this was the command performance. All that remained was the attack of stage fright, and Emma could feel it building in her stomach with every step she took.
“Why so quiet?” The sun had just set, but the twilight had enough light in it yet to let Joshua Steiner see her face as they crossed the field. “Nervous?”
“Of course not. Amelia and I have been best friends since third grade, and her parents have welcomed me so often that their house is practically my second home.”
“I didn’t mean about them or the get-together. I meant about uns. About being seen together.”
“Joshua, there isn’t any uns, and don’t you go around saying there is.”
“Because if I say it, that will make it true?”
“In the ears of our friends, it will.” And there was no truth harder to break than one that had its roots in the grapevine.
“I’m more concerned about your ears.”
What was he getting at? “My ears are just fine the way they are, denkes.” She nudged him out of the way of an enormous cow pie. Moses Yoder had clearly been pasturing his herd in this field instead of the one that lay between the Stolzfus place and Amelia’s little white house.
Had Eli had supper with Amelia and the boys before coming over to Isaac and Ruth’s? No, probably not. If he were staying at the Martin Kings’ place, she and Matthew and Elam would either go there or wait until they saw him at Lehmans’. There would not be any talk about Amelia Beiler. She wouldn’t allow it, as concerned about the appearance of evil as she was.
Emma just didn’t seem to have the knack.
Joshua stepped over the cow pie and held two strands of barbed-wire fencing apart wide enough for her to slip through, since her hands were full. Down at the bottom of the southeast-facing slope, nestled in trees that had leafed out at top speed in the warmer weather, they could see the lights of the Lehman place. The yard was packed with buggies, and the boys had already started parking them at the bottom of this field, on the level part before it dropped off into the creek bottom.
Joshua touched her arm. “Wait a moment, Emma.”
She moved her elbow away just enough to break the contact. “I don’t want to be late. This layer salad won’t improve for waiting, either.”
“I won’t keep it long.” He made her look at him. “If there was an uns, would that be so bad?”
Impossible as it is, I don’t want that word to ever mean anything but Emma and Grant. Together. One word, one couple, one home.
How could so much be packed into three little letters?
But he was waiting for her answer. If only she could figure out what he wanted it to be. “Joshua, we’re good friends. I’m happy that you’re home, and happy to be your friend. But I don’t know what you want from me with all this talk of uns.”
“Isn’t that pretty obvious? I didn’t walk you over here to help you through fences, or to make the old ladies gossip. I asked you to come with me so that we could spend the evening together and get to know each other…as we are now. Not as we used to be.”
We. There you go again. Joshua was awfully fond of plural pronouns. “Which will make the old ladies gossip. And everyone else.”
“Let them.”
And Grant would hear, and then what would he think of her?
Oh, who was she fooling? The man had liked her cooking, and had given her permission to paint graffiti on her own house. He was Lavina’s faithful husband, and when he saw her, he probably just thought, Oh, that poor old maid. What a life she must have.
Well, she had a life, one for which she thanked the gut Gott daily. But maybe God wanted more than that from her. Maybe He had sent Joshua—soiled, tattered, and chastened as he was—to do more than see her off in train stations. Maybe she was the blind one.
God had not seen fit to open any other man’s eyes to her. But maybe He was doing His level best to open her eyes to Joshua. Maybe she should pay some attention to the bird she had in her hand, and stop pining for the one so busy looking after its nest in the bush.
“Is that what you want, truly, Joshua Steiner?” This time, he didn’t have to peer into her face. She gazed at him squarely in the fading light, while the sounds of a houseful of people drifted up the slope, ready to welcome them. “You want me to be a part of your uns?”
“I do,” he said without hesitation. “I like you, and you always liked me, even when it wasn’t the prudent thing to do.”
“But we’re not children anymore.”
“I know it. What I don’t know is whether I’m husband material…or even courtship material. But I figure, if I were to give this a try, I’d want it to be with you. My steady, sensible Emma. You’ll keep me on the straight and narrow, won’t you?”
She didn’t much like the sound of that. “A man needs to keep himself on the straight and narrow, or he’s not a man.” She narrowed her eyes, wishing she’d brought her glasses if she was going to be looking into men’s faces in the near dark. “I’m not going to be your conscience in a Kapp.”
“And I wouldn’t want you to be. Already you’re setting me on the right road.” With a chuckle, he reached out and took the salad in its big, cumbersome bowl from her. “Let me take this the rest of the way for you.”
She was only too happy to let him. Because it was everything she could do to wrap her mind around the fact that here,
at last, was someone who wanted to be with her—for herself.
Emma had never been as sensitive to people’s emotions and feelings as Carrie, but even she felt the wave of astonishment and speculation that washed up against the door as she stepped into the Lehmans’ front room with Joshua beside her. And when she turned to take the salad bowl from him and he pretended to hang on to it to keep the whole thing for himself…well, they might as well have sold tickets and called it a show.
How could she have let him carry the bowl? Arriving with a man could be written off as coincidence—a chance meeting on the porch—but arriving with a man who was carrying your contribution to the supper was a statement. How could she have been so stupid?
She practically fled into the kitchen, holding the salad in front of her, leaving Joshua to shake hands and brave the surge of visiting couples and families. Amelia stopped her mad rush by the propane refrigerator, otherwise she might have flown straight through Ruth’s compounding room and out the back door, salad and all.
“Emma! Where are you going in such a hurry?”
“Anywhere but in there,” she blurted. Thank goodness for Amelia. “He must be crazy to make such a display.”
“He who? What display?”
“Oh…” Emma struggled for words and finally gave up. “You’ll hear, probably sooner rather than later.”
“I’d rather hear now, from my friend who is so verhuddelt she hasn’t even taken off her gums.”
Oh. There they were on her feet, probably bringing some of Moses Yoder’s cow pies into Ruth’s spotless kitchen.
“Is that your layer salad? Give it to me and slip those off in Mamm’s compounding room. She won’t mind. With all the strange things that get dripped and spilled in there, no one will know the difference.”
Emma had no sooner done so, and handed her shawl to Amelia to put on the downstairs bed with the others, when Ruth bustled back in. “Well, Emma Stolzfus, if you don’t take the prize. Joshua Steiner, of all people. When did that happen?”
About ten minutes ago. “It—I—”
When Amelia came back, it was obvious from her face that someone had stopped her to tell her the news. Her eyes were huge. “I thought…didn’t you tell us…does Carrie know?” Emma nodded. “But when…?”
“That’s what I just asked,” Ruth said, while the two older ladies and half a dozen matrons helping uncover dishes watched, smiling in anticipation at details of the happy news. “Is that why he went all the way to Lancaster with you?”
“He had some business,” Emma managed weakly. How could he have put her in this position? Why hadn’t he talked it over with her yesterday, or the day before? Couples weren’t supposed to make a big splash like this. They were discreet. Modest. Kept themselves to themselves until—well, usually until the announcement was made in church and they were published.
But she and Joshua weren’t getting married.
“So when is the big day?” Erica Steiner, who hadn’t been married much more than a year herself, adjusted her sleeping baby on her shoulder and smiled at Emma. “Are you going to wait until fall?”
“We—”
“The nice thing about the two of you being more…mature,” Ruth put in, “is that you don’t need to wait until fall if you don’t want to. You’d want to keep it small and modest.”
“We’re not—”
Amelia stepped bravely into the breach. “Listen to yourselves. You’ll have Emma and Joshua married off before they’ve even had their supper. I think it’s a little too soon to be asking all these questions. Joshua has barely been in town a month.”
Denki, my dear friend. Emma found her voice. “More like two, but you’re right. He only walked me over here. That’s all.”
“It’s a start,” Ruth said.
“And I’m happy for you.” Erica’s voice was soft. “He seems like a good man.”
“He does now.” Kathryn Esch had a warm heart, but a voice like a rusty gate. “There was a time when no father would let him anywhere near his girls. Remember when he and that gang of his hoisted Boyd’s new washer up on top of the barn the morning of his wedding?”
No one was ever going to forget that.
“I heard,” Erica said with a laugh. “And all the wedding linens to wash the next day.”
“That wasn’t the worst of it.” Did Kathryn realize Emma was still in the room? If they’d just been published, would she be raking up all Joshua’s dirty laundry? “You’d best be careful, Emma.” That answered that question. “I’d have a stern talk with Joshua and ask him what really happened with that Englisch girl.”
“I’m sure it was only gossip,” Emma said, hoping she’d get the hint. What was Kathryn up to? She was usually much kinder than this. Had she found out about her son Alvin’s correspondence packets coming to the Daadi Haus, and this was her way of punishing Emma for it?
No, it couldn’t be. That wasn’t the Amish way. You could be brought into line by hints and the older ladies’ critical gazes if your hems were too short or you wore your Kapp too far back on your hair so it left your ears uncovered, but for something as serious as those packets, she would have found Will and Kathryn on her doorstep to correct her in person and in private.
“I’m sure Joshua has been honest in all his dealings since he came back,” Amelia said. “Just as Emma has been honest with him.”
“Let her speak for herself, Amelia Beiler.”
Emma could take any number of busybodies’ noses in her business, but she would not tolerate that tone of voice being used on her best friend. “I don’t choose to speak of Joshua Steiner anymore,” she said firmly. “This is Eli’s birthday party, and it’s him and Amelia we should be thinking of.” The gentle stress she’d put on thinking of had turned Erica’s cheeks a faint shade of pink, but Kathryn was made of sterner stuff.
“I don’t mean to speak ill of anyone you’ve chosen, Emma. I just hope that your man is as honest and decent as you are.”
“And I hope that since Bishop Daniel has welcomed him into the Gmee, the past will be put where it belongs. If God has forgiven him, then it would be presumptuous for us to bring these things up again. Don’t you agree?”
Kathryn could do nothing but nod, and Emma turned to Amelia. “I have a question for your Eli. Is he in the house, or did he go out to the barn with the men?”
“He’s probably out in the barn. I’ll go with you.”
They hurried down the back steps without their shawls, but Emma wouldn’t have gone back into that kitchen even if there had been a foot of snow on the ground.
“What’s got into Kathryn, I wonder?” Amelia asked. “Did she find out about your little evening classes?”
“I wondered that myself. You’ve never said anything, have you?”
“Of course not. That’s a confession for you to make, not me. Maybe one of her sisters was one of Joshua’s conquests, and she wants to warn you away from him.”
“I don’t think so. Joshua didn’t go for the girls from the plainer families. He had a taste for the fancy back then.”
“Things have changed.” They’d almost reached the barn. “What was it that you wanted to ask Eli?”
Emma grinned. “If he truly loves my friend.”
“Emma Stolzfus! You did not.”
“I just needed to get out of that kitchen.”
“Well, now that we’re here, you’d better come and say happy birthday.”
Amelia leaned through the opening in the barn doors and called Eli’s name, which resulted in a babble of good-natured ribbing about who should come when who called. When he stepped outside, he was grinning, and took Amelia’s hand in his with such a look of love in his eyes that Emma’s throat closed up.
This was what her heart yearned for. Not the kind regard of friendship that Joshua offered, tinged with need and the faintest hint of desperation around the edges. But this…this all-encompassing love, the kind that surely Christ must have when he looked upon His Church and saw them
all waiting for His return.
Are you going to settle? Can you? Is it better to wait for what may never come than to live with what has already arrived?
Her brave determination of half an hour ago, that had carried her through the front door and the resulting sensation, now seemed less about God’s will for her and more about her own foolishness. Why would God send second best for her partner?
Ach, Emma. Aren’t you just as proud as can be to label a good, God-fearing man such a thing?
As Emma smiled and wished Eli happy birthday, then asked him some nonsense question about the shed he planned to build, she wondered in despair if the whole subject of waiting for God to reveal His choice of mate was supposed to be this difficult. How did girls like Mandy Lapp and Lavina Weaver make up their minds when they were so young—just teenagers yet. They met a boy, they decided to marry, and they were published, just like that. Did they simply not think? Or was Emma thinking far too much, and letting her human reasoning elbow out God’s choice?
Thinking about it all was exhausting.
Amelia squeezed Eli’s hand and shooed him back into the barn, where apparently he was talking over a business plan for his mechanical conversions with Moses and Bishop Daniel and a bunch of the younger men.
“Ready to brave the kitchen again?” Amelia bumped her shoulder with her own.
“Ja. And I plan to find the biggest, fattest piece of pie in the whole house and eat it all by myself.”
One thing about getting together with her friends and neighbors…there would be no shortage of comfort food.
When nine o’clock came, Emma whispered to Amelia that she needed to get back to Mamm, collected her clean salad bowl, and tried to slip out quietly. But Joshua materialized out of nowhere and stuck himself to her side, so that they left as a couple. At least they’d walked over, so there would be no jokes about taking deserted side roads and stopping the buggy in someone’s field to canoodle.