by Marta Perry
Bending forward, Joseph peered at the machine, but he quickly sat back with a muttered exclamation. “Ach, I can’t get my eyes to focus enough even to see. What if I never do? What will happen then?”
“Your eyes will heal,” Samuel said quickly, regretting that he’d said anything about the binder.
“How do you know?” It was nearly a snarl.
“They will.” He tried to sound sure. “You just have to give it time, like the doctor said.”
Joseph nodded, but Samuel didn’t think he was convinced.
Nor was he himself convinced. He’d been hoping that in a week or two, Joseph would be able to come back to the shop. If he couldn’t . . .
Well, if he couldn’t, then Samuel would carry on, even though he was beginning to think he might want to work at something other than the machine shop for the rest of his life.
Maybe he’d have begun to think that anyway, once he’d started working with that horse of Mr. Bartlett’s. But Anna had something to do with the turn his thoughts had been taking lately. She’d stirred him up, making him think of possibilities. Maybe he’d been too mired in routine since he’d come back.
That was one characteristic that hadn’t changed about Anna. She’d always come into any group and sparked it up. She might have grown up in many ways, but she still seemed to have that effect on people.
On him.
If any of her friends from Chicago could see her, they wouldn’t believe their eyes. Anna knelt in the garden, picking the last of the peppers for the relish she’d told Myra she’d make.
She held a bell pepper in her hand, feeling the weight of it, then lifted it to her nose to inhale its freshness. Her city friends thought relish was something you bought at the grocery store.
She knew perfectly well what she was doing. She was keeping her mind occupied and her hands busy so she wouldn’t think about those moments with Samuel. Those kisses.
It was funny, how she’d ignored him when she was a teenager. He was Joseph’s friend, nothing else. She’d thought him slow and maybe not too bright.
But there’d been nothing slow about those kisses. And Samuel was bright enough when it came to the horses he trained, to say nothing of how he kept the shop going and supported Myra and Joseph.
Standing, Anna stretched her back and glanced over at the cucumber vines to see if any cukes remained, but the vines were brown and withering.
A movement caught her eye. Samuel came out of the shop and started for the house. Then he spotted her. He veered off the straight course and headed for the garden. A flutter of excitement in the pit of her stomach made her feel as if she were sixteen again.
“Anna.” A smile teased the corners of his mouth. “Busy, I see.”
“I told Myra I’d make some end-of-the-garden relish this afternoon. If I haven’t forgotten how to do it, that is.”
“It’ll come back to you.” He pushed his straw hat back on his head, glancing at the farmhouse, his brows drawing down. “Myra chased Joseph back into the house a bit ago. I hope he didn’t overdo it, coming out to the shop.”
“You didn’t have him hauling any machinery, did you?” She tilted her head back to smile at him, her instinctive reaction startling her a little. Was she actually flirting with him?
It had been so long, she wasn’t quite sure. For the past year she’d been so busy and burdened just struggling to survive that she hadn’t even thought about men.
“No, I didn’t.” His smile flickered. “He’s not getting better as fast as he thinks he should. He wants to be back at work in the shop. I think he’s secretly convinced that nobody can do it as well as he can.”
“I don’t believe that. He was just saying this morning what a great job you and Matthew and Daadi are doing. He feels bad that you can’t spend more time with the horses, I know.”
Samuel’s broad shoulders moved in a shrug. “It makes no matter.”
“But it’s important to you. Working with Mr. Bartlett’s animals could open new doors for you.” She was probably saying too much, but wanted him to have his chance.
“Ach, I can be patient about that. It will work out as God wills.”
Anna picked up the basket. “I’ve never been especially patient.”
The fine sun lines around his eyes crinkled. “I remember that about you, Anna. You always had to push things along to make them happen faster.”
“I guess so.” Memories pricked at her. “Sometimes that didn’t work out so well.”
“Was it better, out among the English? Did things go fast enough for you there?”
He stood there as patient as if he had all day to talk to her. Maybe it was that patience that had tricked her into thinking him slow.
“Things were always happening out there, I guess. The months went by so quickly. It was all I could do to get by, especially after Gracie was born. I didn’t have time to think about whether I was bored or not.”
He nodded. “I found it hard to keep up out there. Even knowing English, it was still like they were all talking a different language. And so fast. I’d be sorting out one thing and they were on to something else.”
She remembered that feeling. “Once all I heard was English around me, I found I started to get better.”
“Maybe you were more ready for it than I was,” Samuel said.
She considered that. “When I left, I thought I was prepared because I had English friends. I wasn’t.”
Those first months had been indescribably difficult. A dozen times she’d been ready to come home, but something—pride, maybe, or stubbornness—had kept her going.
“We weren’t intended to be prepared for English life,” Samuel said. His eyes seemed to warm as they rested on her face. “Now that you’re back, you’re living a life you’re prepared for. Even down to remembering how to make garden relish.”
She laughed. “That’s yet to be seen. But I’d best get going on it.”
“One thing, first.” He paused, as if not sure how to say it. “The county fair opens on Wednesday.”
He stopped, and she waited. “Ja?” she said finally, when it seemed he was stuck.
He cleared his throat. “Joseph wants me to go and look over the equipment displays. I thought . . . well, maybe you would want to go with me.”
For a moment she could only stare at him. Her instinctive reaction was to pull back. It had been too long. She wasn’t ready.
“That . . . that would be nice, but I can’t leave Gracie with Myra. She has enough to do.”
“We can take Gracie along. She will like to see all the animals.”
Anna had a sudden image of the three of them walking around the fair, looking like a family. “Samuel, I can’t. People would say that we are courting.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Is that such a bad thing? Anyway, I thought Anna Beiler didn’t care what folks thought about her. Ain’t so?”
That had been the old Anna Beiler, the one who was careless with the people she loved. Now she knew better. If you lived in a community, you had to care what people thought.
But she also knew she wanted to go. She wanted to have a day with Samuel and the baby, to see how they were together.
It meant stepping into deep water, didn’t it? Did she have the courage?
She took a breath. “Ja, Samuel. Gracie and I would like to go to the fair with you.”
The house hadn’t been this quiet since the day she and Gracie had arrived. Anna washed vegetables in the sink, trusting that neither of the two little girls would wake from her nap when she was in the midst of making the relish.
It was certain-sure that if one woke, the other would, too. Already Sarah and Gracie were more like sisters than cousins, looking for each other first thing every day.
She paused, staring down at the pepper in her hand. It was irrational, wasn’t it, to feel almost . . . well, jealous that Gracie had so many other people in her life now. But for all these months, she’d been everything to Gracie. And Gracie to her.
If that changed . . . well, it should, shouldn’t it? Amish or English, children grew, and their worlds grew, too, becoming larger than just mommy and baby. Maybe the question she was really skirting around was whether she ought to be moving into a relationship with Samuel.
What relationship? She called on the skeptical part of her mind. A few kisses, a single outing together . . . that didn’t make a relationship. In modern society—but she wasn’t in modern society, was she?
She got out the wooden chopping board, as comfortable now in Myra’s kitchen as she’d been in her own tiny nook of a kitchenette back in Chicago. It had been a relief to come in from the garden and find that Joseph was taking a nap, apparently tired out from walking this morning, and Myra had gone to the store for groceries. That had put off the moment when Anna would have to tell them that she and Gracie were going to the fair with Samuel.
Not that Joseph and Myra would raise any objection. Quite the contrary. They’d have trouble hiding their elation, probably, and that would be enough to make Anna want to back out.
Maybe she should anyway. Maybe . . . The sound of a car in the driveway cut short that line of thought. She leaned over to look out the window over the sink, to see Rosemary sliding out of her late-model SUV.
Anna dried her hands on the dish towel and went to the door. She hadn’t expected to see the English neighbor again so soon. She’d enjoyed their conversation and the taste Rosemary had given her of the world she still missed, but she suspected none of the family would smile upon her developing a friendship with an Englischer, thinking it too tempting. Which it probably was.
“Rosemary, how nice to see you.” She reached the door before the woman could knock. “Myra is out now. She’ll be so sorry she missed you.”
“No problem.” Rosemary took the open door as an invitation and walked into the kitchen, her glance sweeping over the peppers, onions, and cauliflower on the counter. “Looks busy in here. I was hoping you’d have time for a cup of coffee.”
“There’s a pot on the stove,” Anna assured her. “I’d love your company, as long as you don’t mind if I keep on with this. I’m afraid the girls will be up from their naps before I’ve finished.”
“Always busy,” Rosemary commented, making herself at home and pouring her own mug of coffee. “I never saw anybody who liked work as much as the Amish.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I saw some pretty fierce workaholics when I lived in Chicago.”
“Was that where you were?” Rosemary came to lean on the counter next to her, carrying the mug, obviously ready for a chat.
Anna nodded, sorry she’d let that slip. She’d be better off to keep that part of her life private. Still, what could it hurt for Rosemary to know she’d lived in Chicago?
“Maybe you’re right.” Rosemary shrugged her shoulders, staring a bit glumly into her coffee mug. “Here’s my husband rushing off on another business trip just a day after he got home. Apparently the company can’t get along without him for more than twenty-four hours.”
“I’m sorry.” Anna responded to the note of disappointment in Rosemary’s voice. The woman was lonely, that was all, with her husband away again and apparently no prospects of the child she longed for.
“Oh, well, that’s life, right? At least when he’s not here I can eat a frozen dinner and snuggle up in front of the television with an old movie.”
“It Happened One Night?” Anna suggested.
“Casablanca,” Rosemary said. “If you want a good cry, you have to watch Humphrey Bogart giving up the woman he loves for the greater good. Hey, I thought Amish didn’t watch movies.”
“They don’t.” We don’t, she corrected herself. “I had a friend in Chicago who loved all the old Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart movies. We’d get together on a Sunday afternoon and watch them.”
For a moment Anna longed to be in Liz’s small apartment. The sensation was so strong that it was almost a pain. She was swept with that sense of being two different people—of English Annie looking contemptuously at Amish Anna.
“So what exactly are you making?” Rosemary left the subject of old movies abruptly.
“Relish. My mother used to call it end-of-the-garden relish because you put in whatever’s left in the garden. It’s delicious.” She gestured with her paring knife at the array of vegetables on the counter.
“Hmm. I guess, if you say so.” Rosemary sounded doubtful. “It seems like an awful lot of work just to use up leftover veggies. I’ll bet I don’t go through more than a jar of relish in a year.”
“We do eat a lot of relishes. Haven’t you heard of the Pennsylvania Dutch seven sweets and seven sours?”
“I guess I’ve seen it on restaurant signs, but I didn’t know you had to make it from scratch. Don’t Amish believe in buying food at the grocery store?”
Anna had to smile. Rosemary was obviously intrigued by her Amish neighbors.
“The Amish shop in stores. That’s where Myra is now, at the grocery store.”
“Well, then.” Rosemary tapped a manicured fingertip on her mug. “Why bother to go to all this work just for a jar of relish? Or is it religious? Do you believe that God wants you to work this hard?”
Anna tried to sort out her thoughts, knowing she wasn’t the person best suited to be explaining Amish beliefs to anyone.
“I don’t know that any Amish person would put it that way, exactly. Most Amish want to work the land if they can. They take pleasure in raising the food their families will eat, and it does taste better than something that’s been processed to death.”
“Maybe so.” Rosemary sounded doubtful. “I guess I don’t get this whole living close to the land thing. Richard—that’s my husband—he seemed to think he’d be happy puttering around the garden, but now that he has one, he doesn’t have the time anyway.”
“Everyone isn’t suited to country life.” That was the most noncommittal response she could think of. She certainly didn’t want to discuss Rosemary’s husband with her.
“That’s me,” Rosemary declared. “In fact, I’d think that was you, too.”
Anna’s knife slipped, barely missing her finger. “What do you mean?”
“Well, just that you were away for what—three years? Is it really possible for somebody to come back and be Amish again after that?”
Anna’s jaw clenched. It was a question she’d asked herself, but she decided she didn’t care to hear it from someone else.
Rosemary’s expression said she knew she’d gone too far. “Listen, I shouldn’t have said that. My trouble is that I’m alone so much, when I do have somebody to talk to, stuff just falls out of my mouth.”
“It’s all right.” It wasn’t, but the woman had apologized.
Rosemary set her mug in the sink. “I really did have a reason for coming today, besides being nosy. I wanted to ask if you’d like to work for me a few hours a week. That big house gets to be too much for me to keep clean. You could set your hours whenever you want.”
A refusal hovered on her lips. She had so many responsibilities here, with Joseph still not working. But a job would put some money in her pocket, money she wouldn’t have to account to anyone for.
“Say twelve dollars an hour?” Rosemary asked, rushing the words. “That sound about right?”
If she had even a little coming in, she wouldn’t have to feel so dependent on the family. And if she needed to leave . . .
She shut that thought off quickly. Hadn’t she been telling herself that maybe this was the right life for her and Gracie? If she were really sure of that, she wouldn’t be thinking that way.
So maybe she wasn’t convinced. Maybe she didn’t know her own mind at all. And Rosemary was still waiting for an answer.
“Thank you, Rosemary. I’d like to do some work for you.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
As soon as they walked through the gates at the county fairgrounds, Anna knew she’d made a mistake in coming with Samuel. What had she been thinking?
The crowds flowed good-naturedly along the rows of stalls, aromas of a dozen different foods filled the air, and from the distance came the shriek of the rides. It was familiar, and at the same time it scared her.
It was one thing to be Amish again at home, among people who loved her. But when she’d ventured out, even in the church, her acceptance hadn’t been complete. The memory left a bitter taste in her mouth.
And here she was back in the English world again, as an Amish woman.
“What is troubling you, Anna?” Samuel seemed to have an uncanny knack for reading her moods.
“Maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t come.” She glanced down at Gracie, asleep in the stroller Samuel was pushing. “If we hadn’t come. It feels odd, being here like this.”
“Because people are staring at us?”
“I hadn’t even noticed that, but now you’ve given me something else to worry about.”
He smiled at her tart tone. It was oddly freeing, knowing she could talk openly to Samuel in a crowd and no one would understand them.
“It hasn’t been that long since I was one of them.” She nodded toward the nearest clump of English who passed.
“Anna, you were never like them.”
“Not those people in particular,” she said. Maybe she shouldn’t have picked a group of Goth teenagers, all in black, as an example. She shot a sideways glance at the piercings and dyed hair. “And they think we look odd.”
“So we do, to them.” Samuel was unaffected, no matter how people gawked. “You are Amish again now, Anna. That’s how it is for us.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Is this a test?”
“Only if you see it that way. Only for your own sake, not anyone else’s.”
“I don’t understand.”
He gave a quick glance at the kids. “Those teenagers dress as they do because they want to be looked at. We dress as we do in obedience to God and the church, to remind us that we are to be separate.”
A group of preteen kids in jeans and T-shirts, out of school for the first day of the fair, raced around them, jostling the stroller just enough to stir Gracie. She gave a startled cry.