The Haven

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Will laughed and Sadie felt herself relax even more around him. He rose to his feet to get ready to go and she was surprised by a tweak of disappointment. Except for those brief times when she thought she saw a sadness flit through his eyes, his heart seemed as light as the breeze, with an ability to absorb all that went on around him and take it all in stride.

  So unlike Gideon. It wasn’t right to compare Will to Gideon. Comparing a Plain man to an English man was like comparing apples to oranges, deserts to oceans, elephants to lions. But everything felt so serious with Gid. So awkward. But then, she was awkward too. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe they were too much alike. In her mind flashed a vision: she and Gid at a table, surrounded by awkward children. An entire awkward family. She shook her head to clear it of that image. Since when had she ever given serious thought to marrying Gideon Smucker? No! Never! But maybe someday.

  Will picked up his cowboy hat and fit it on his head. “Well, Sadie, if you need me to rescue you in the future, just give a holler. I’m right over the hill.”

  Sadie put one hand up close to her face and gave a tiny slow wave like a shy child. His impish grin put a twist in her heart, and her face tingled with warmth.

  12

  It was funny what Mary Kate Lapp could do for a room. She burst into Twin Creeks Schoolhouse on a gray, misty Tuesday morning and lit it up. The room was actually brighter when she came inside, Gid thought. It sparkled. She sparkled.

  She held out a plate of warm doughnuts, drizzled with chocolate. “I wondered if you’ve already had any breakfast. You haven’t, have you?” M.K. looked at him longingly, with the transparent plea written all over her face: Please say you didn’t, that you’re famished and were just this minute wishing for some homemade doughnuts.

  “Well, I did have a little something,” Gid said. “But not enough to satisfy my appetite,” he hurried to add when her eyes clouded. Her face crinkled with delight, and she held the plate out farther.

  “They’re still warmish,” M.K. said. “They’ve been setting on top of the stove.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be good . . . thanks.”

  “I made them myself. I woke up really early this morning and was just waiting around for something to do.”

  Gid doubted that. Mary Kate kept herself busy. She had more inner resources than any twelve-year-old needed.

  “Fern says I need more on my mind so she’s trying to turn me into a crackerjack baker. The doughnuts are best with coffee, Uncle Hank said, and he would know because he ate seven this morning—do you have any? Coffee, I mean?” M.K.’s eyes darted to his desk.

  “I’m not a coffee drinker. I’m sure the doughnuts will be . . . well, just fine without it . . . the way they are. Thanks.”

  Gid didn’t know what to say, though it didn’t seem to matter because Mary Kate was blessed with the gift of conversation. The doughnuts did look good—golden and fried, with just the right amount of chocolate. Though, Gid had to admit, you could never have enough chocolate.

  “Go on, taste one,” she said, and as he bit into one, her eyebrows scrunched together, and her face tightened.

  He nodded his head and smiled. “It’s good,” he said, talking around the mouthful of chewy, sweet cake. “Very good. It’s delicious.”

  “See? See there? Aren’t they good? The best I’ve ever made.” And she clapped her hands together as she laughed.

  Then it grew quiet. Gid knew her well enough to know there was something else on her mind. M.K. covered the plate with the foil and set it on his desk. “Well, I might as well just tell you. You’ll hear about it soon enough.”

  This was going to be about Sadie. Gid’s stomach twisted. The bite of doughnut in his mouth suddenly tasted flat, gummy, like he would have trouble swallowing it. He set down the uneaten half. “Something’s happened.”

  M.K. told him about last night’s revelatory goings-on, blow by blow, not leaving out a single detail. The longer he listened, the worse Gid felt. As he heard about Will scooping Sadie up in his arms when she fainted—and of course, M.K. had to act that part out with a dramatic flair, swaying like a poplar tree—he had an irrational flash of jealousy in which he imagined himself running that bird sitter out of town, or slinging him into outer space with a large wooden catapult. Just thinking about it felt pretty good. Almost as good as doing it.

  For a second he felt guilty as he remembered one of the bishop’s sermons about sin and how if a person thought about doing something wrong in his heart it was the same as doing it. But wasn’t he talking about big things like murder and adultery? And wouldn’t it be good for everybody if the bird sitter were to pack up and head off to wherever it was he belonged?

  And then came the shocker. He swallowed and stared at M.K. “This baby . . . you’re telling me this is . . . Menno’s baby? Annie and Menno’s?”

  “Sadie’s pretty confident of that fact. And I don’t think my sister is the type to jump to conclusions.”

  M.K. looked at Gid in pure innocence, but the words she spoke cut him to the core. No, Sadie wouldn’t jump to conclusions the way he had, the way others had. It hit him like a right cross, then—why Sadie told him that if he really trusted her, he would never have needed to ask her such a question.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid! A large splinter of guilt wedged into his heart. Sadie had hurt him; in return, he’d hurt her. He had wounded the very person he had tried to protect.

  The doughnut that he ate felt like lead in his stomach. No wonder Sadie wouldn’t even look at him at church on Sunday. He was the worst person on earth.

  As the baby slept, Sadie went into the kitchen to blend some herbs into a remedy that could be brewed as a kind of tea. It was a mixture to break up colds that Deborah had taught her to make: ground ginger and cayenne pepper. A pinch of that, added to a mug of hot water, apple cider vinegar, and honey, sipped throughout the day, could shorten a cold’s duration. Sadie sneezed twice as she stirred the mixture. Just sniffing it, she thought, could clear the sinuses. An added benefit to the remedy!

  Uncle Hank burst into the kitchen, hopping on one foot. “SADIE! I need your help! I’M DYING! Every move is a misery to me!” He sat on a chair and thrust a bare foot on the table. Sadie went over to see what was causing him such misery and saw a thorn in his leathery heel, imbedded deeply. The area around the thorn was swollen, red, and angry. “How long has this been bothering you?” she asked.

  “DAYS! MAYBE WEEKS!”

  “Well, why didn’t you . . .” She shook her head. “Never mind. I know just how to help.” She hurried to the refrigerator, took out some carrots, and grated them into a bowl. She put a towel under Uncle Hank’s foot, then applied the grated carrots to the area around the thorn. “You just wait awhile. You’ll see. It’ll draw the thorn right out.” Hopefully, she thought, before Fern came inside and saw Uncle Hank with his foot on the kitchen table. Fern’s patience for Uncle Hank always hung by a thread.

  Too late. The door squeaked open. Fern’s eyes narrowed. “Hank Lapp. You get that dirty foot of yours off my clean table!”

  “NOSIR! IT IS AN EMERGENCY!” Uncle Hank roared. “Sadie’s doctoring me. We’re considering amputation.”

  While Hank was sputtering away with Fern, Sadie found the tweezers in the medicine box. She brought a warm, wet rag to the table and wiped the carrots away from the thorn. The carrots drew the thorn out and Sadie was easily able to pull it out with the tweezers. She held up the tweezers. “Voilà!”

  Uncle Hank turned away from complaining to Fern and looked at Sadie, wide-eyed. He wiggled his toes. “SHE’S A MIRACLE WORKER! First, she cures Ira Smucker of hay fever—”

  “Actually,” Sadie said, “the rain we had last week cleared out the pollen in the air.”

  “—and next, she has saved my foot from gangrene! SHE’S GOT THE TOUCH!”

  “Not hardly,” Sadie said, cleaning up the mess of the carrots. “It was just a thorn in your foot.”

  “Could’ve saved yourself a heap of
trouble in the first place by wearing shoes,” Fern pointed out.

  Uncle Hank paid them both no mind. He prided himself on his ability to share news of marvels and curiosities and other odd bits of news that might be of interest to folks. Word of Sadie’s healing abilities spread rapidly throughout Stoney Ridge. People came to think Sadie could cure anything and she didn’t know how to tell them different.

  Uncle Hank said she should hang out a shingle to advertise her healing work, but she didn’t. She wouldn’t even take any money for helping. That way folks couldn’t get mad at her if the remedies didn’t work or made them even sicker. That happened once, last fall, when she gave Edith Fisher the wrong remedy. Edith had sent a note to Sadie via Jimmy via M.K., asking for a laxative. At least, that’s what it looked like, in Edith’s spidery handwriting. So Sadie sent over some slippery elm. It turned out Edith wanted something for insomnia. Edith had to miss church the next day, for obvious reasons, and wouldn’t let Sadie forget it.

  Gid loped into the kitchen on Saturday morning, freshly showered. His sister, Alice, was taking a batch of corn muffins out of the oven—a complicated thing to do when a person relied on crutches. But at least she was out of the wheelchair and her broken legs were healing and she wasn’t grumbling about Mary Kate Lapp quite as regularly as she had been. Amos Lapp had offered to send M.K. over to Goat Roper Hill on Saturdays while Alice recovered from her injuries—a kind of penance—but Alice wouldn’t hear of it. After teaching school for seven years with Mary Kate Lapp as a student, Alice was convinced that any interaction with her translated to steady trouble. She was convinced she would end up in a body cast. “She’s about as bad as a boy for devilment, with a spark in her eye for warning,” she had told Gid more than once. Dozens of times.

  Gid thought Alice was slightly paranoid. Personally, he liked the spark in M.K.’s eyes. She was his favorite scholar, and not just because she was Sadie’s sister. She was as bright as they come and had the best of intentions, though she rarely thought before she acted. His sister had no appreciation for M.K.’s zest for life. In fact, she was suspicious of it.

  Alice had an acute sense of doom and disaster. She even kept a shoe box filled with newspaper clippings of house fires and buggy accidents. Just in case, she always said, if anyone asked why she kept them. And that’s when his father would quietly mutter, “And we wonder why she’s still unmarried.”

  Gid took a corn muffin, broke it open, and breathed in the steam. “Mmmm, good,” he said, mumbling, and grabbed another. He hopped on the counter, expecting Alice to swat him away, but she didn’t seem to mind his company.

  “Any improvement in the Sadie Lapp department?”

  Gid practically choked on the muffin. Alice pounded on his back.

  “I guess not,” she said dryly.

  Gid swallowed, coughed again. “She’s still pretty mad.”

  “Well, what would you expect, Gid? You assumed the worst about her. A woman doesn’t get over that kind of hurt and humiliation easily.”

  Gid didn’t think that now was the time to point out that it was Alice who had told him the baby was Sadie’s in the first place. “She’s not even talking to me. How can I get her to listen to my apology?”

  Alice sighed. “Are you absolutely sure you want to court Sadie Lapp? You know those Lapps are—”

  “Alice.” Gid’s voice held a warning tone. This conversation wasn’t a new one.

  “Fine. I do happen to have an idea.” As she told him about it, he gave her a skeptical look.

  “You’re sure that Sadie would like that?”

  “You can count on it. Jay Glick asked Susie Hostetler to marry him in that very way. The girls are still talking about it. Girls love that kind of thing.”

  Gid wasn’t as confident as Alice, but he had to try something. Twice this week, he had stopped by Windmill Farm in the night and shined his flashlight on Sadie’s window. She had ignored it and he had left, defeated. Alice’s plan might just work.

  Gid stopped by The Sweet Tooth bakery and picked out pink petit fours—tiny little cakes covered with smooth icing. He asked the owner’s granddaughter, Nora Stroot, if she would pipe a letter in icing on each petit four—he described it just the way Alice had told him to. Then Nora Stroot told him that would cost an extra fifty cents per letter and Gid gulped. Resigned, he pulled out his money. “Okay. Here are the words I want:

  I U

  MEA CULPA

  “That’s only eleven cakes,” Nora Stroot said. “You’re paying for a baker’s dozen whether you get them or not. But I’ll still charge you for the piping.”

  Gid bit his lip. “Then make it ‘Y-O-U.’”

  “What does ‘mea culpa’ mean?”

  “It’s Latin for ‘my mistake.’”

  Nora Stroot raised a pencil-drawn eyebrow. “Sure she’ll figure that out?”

  “Absolutely.” Wouldn’t she? Mary Kate certainly knew it. Of course, Sadie would know it too.

  “You must have done something incredibly idiotic.” She waited for Gid to elaborate on his stupidity, but he stood there in stony silence. She sighed, giving up, and turned away to write the letters in white icing on the petit fours, set them in a pink box, wrapped it with a ribbon, and handed it to him. “That will be twenty-five dollars.”

  Gid swallowed. “Thank you.”

  He took the bakery box right over to Windmill Farm and knocked on the kitchen door, but no one was at home. The door was unlocked, so Gid thought it would be wise to leave the box of petit fours on the kitchen table so they wouldn’t melt in the sun. He saw that someone had left some sandwiches on the table, covered with plastic wrap. He pulled the ribbon off the box and opened it, then grabbed a pen off the kitchen counter and wrote on the top of the box: To Sadie from Gideon. Just so there was no mistaking who had brought these little cakes.

  He hoped Alice was right about this. He had started to doubt her advice on the ride home from the bakery. What did Alice know about courting, anyway? She had never had a boyfriend. Maybe he should just take the little cakes and go home.

  Suddenly, he heard a baby’s cry upstairs, then Sadie’s voice soothing the baby. She was home! Panic streaked through him. Before he left, he turned the pink box around, lid open, so that she would see it as she came down the steps into the kitchen. He looked at the pink box again, straightened each lettered petit four so it would read just right, took a deep breath, and hurried to leave. Quietly.

  This past week, Amos seemed to be feeling more like his old self. He still went about his farm chores slowly and methodically, but he was starting to feel the old bounce in his step. He couldn’t even remember when he had last felt a bounce in his step. Why, it had been years!

  Amos and Will had spent the last few mornings out in the fruit orchards, trimming dead branches, and moving M.K.’s hives from one orchard to another so the bees could work their magic. Amos’s muscles ached from the hard work—a wonderful ache. Will didn’t know much about farming, but he was an able and willing worker. He liked to talk too. He asked all kinds of questions about the birds on Windmill Farm and that always seemed to lead to Menno and his birding. Will had a keen interest in birds, all kinds, and Amos was happy to oblige him. Talking about Menno like this, in this way, felt like a healing balm to his soul. Each time they talked, Amos felt the knot in his chest release a little more.

  It was past noon and they were famished. At breakfast this morning, Sadie had said she would run lunch out to them after the baby woke up from his nap since Fern was at a quilting frolic, but Amos didn’t think they could wait much longer. “Will, if you wouldn’t mind running back to the house, Fern left lunch for us on the table. And some iced tea in the fridge.”

  Happily, Will dropped his gloves and started up the hill. “Bring something sweet too!” Amos called out. As long as Fern wasn’t there to monitor his low-fat, heart-healthy diet, he might as well go for broke.

  Will stomped off his dirty shoes and walked into the kitchen. The house was qu
iet except for the sound of water splashing upstairs. Fern was gone, so maybe Sadie was giving the baby a bath. He was a little surprised to find himself hoping to see Sadie for a minute. Or two.

  “Your dad sent me to get lunch,” he called up the stairs. “He wants to eat now.”

  “It’s on the table,” came Sadie’s muffled reply. “You can take everything.”

  He washed his hands at the kitchen sink and filled the cups on a tray with iced tea from the fridge. On the table were a plate full of sandwiches, a bowl of fruit, and a pink bakery box. He put the plate and a couple apples on the tray, then reached across the table to grab the pink box. On top he saw words scrawled: “To Sadie from Gideon.” He rolled his eyes. If Sadie didn’t want the pink box, then it was clear to Will she had no interest in that hapless schoolteacher.

  Will piled the box on the tray, but it slipped and fell to the floor. Will set the tray down. He knelt to open the box and found little cakes, all topsy turvy. Girly cakes! His mother used to serve those petit fours when she had friends over to play bridge. To Will, it was one more piece of evidence that there was something wrong with that schoolteacher. He popped a cake into his mouth, then another. Delicious! Will tucked as many cakes as he could on the sandwich plate. He set the pink box on the table. “Thanks for the sweets,” he called up the stairs to Sadie. “I took as many as I could and left the rest.”

  He strained to listen, hoping Sadie might come down to say hello. But he could still hear water splashing upstairs, so he flipped the lid onto the box, picked up the tray, and headed out the door. Amos would get a kick out of those little girly cakes for dessert.

  Sadie couldn’t believe that a baby could make so much work out of such a little task. She had started to change Joe-Jo’s diaper and reached down to get a new one as he released a spray that covered Sadie, her dress, her hair and prayer cap, his own undershirt, the floor, the bureau top. What hadn’t been sprayed? She gave the baby a bath, diapered and dressed him—was it the fourth time this morning?—set him in the basket, and stuck her own head under the sink faucet to wash her hair as she heard Will’s voice calling from the kitchen. He had come to the house to pick up lunch.