A Time for Peace

by Barbara Cameron

  Fall was in the air. She shivered a little but didn't want to go back for her shawl. She shrugged. Once she got moving, she'd be warm enough.

  She felt the curious stares as if she were touched.

  But that was okay. Mary Katherine was doing a lot of staring of her own. She had a great deal of curiosity about the Englisch and didn't mind admitting it.

  She just hoped that her grandmother didn't know how much she'd thought about becoming one of them, of not being baptized into the Amish church.

  As one of the tourists walked past, a pretty woman about her own age, Mary Katherine wondered what it felt like being covered in so little clothing. She suspected she'd feel halfnaked in that dress. Although some of the tourists looked surprised when she and her cousins wore bright colors, the fact was that the Ordnung certainly didn't mandate black dresses.

  Color had always been part of Mary Katherine's world.She'd loved all the shades of blue because they reminded her of the big blue bowl of the sky. Her father had complained that she didn't get her chores done in a timely manner because she was always walking around . . . noticing. She noticed everything around her and absorbed the colors and textures and spent hours using them in her designs that didn't look like the quilts and crafts other Amish women created.

  She paused at the display window of Stitches in Time. A wedding ring quilt that Naomi had sewn was draped over a quilt rack. Anna had knitted several darling little cupcake hats for babies to protect their heads and ears from the cold. And there was her own woven throw made of many different fibers and textures and colors of burnt orange, gold, brown, and green.All echoed the theme of fall, of the weddings that would come with the cooling weather after summer harvests.

  And all were silent testament to Leah's belief in the creativity of her granddaughters, thought Mary Katherine with a smile. The shop featured the traditional crafts tourists might expect but also the new directions the cousins came up with.

  It was the best of both worlds, thought Mary Katherine as she ventured out into the throng of tourists lining the sidewalks.

  Jacob saw Mary Katherine exit her grandmother's shop. His timing was perfect because Anna had told him once what time they took a break to eat at the shop during the day.

  He watched her stop to gaze at the display window and smile. It was that smile that had attracted her to him. Oh, she was pretty with those big blue eyes and soft skin with a blush of rose over her cheekbones. But her smile.

  She hadn't always smiled like that. He started noticing it just a few months ago, after the shop had opened. It was like she came to life. He'd passed by the shop one day a couple of weeks ago and stopped to glance inside and he'd seen her working at her loom, a look of absorption on her face, a quiet smile on her lips.

  Something had moved in his chest then, a feeling he hadn't had before. He'd resolved to figure this out.

  He hadn't been in a rush to marry. It had been enough to take over the family farm, to make sure that he didn't undo all the hard work that his daed had done to make it thrive. He didn't feel pride that he'd continued its success. After all, Plain people felt hochmut was wrong. In school they had often practiced writing the proverb, "Der Hochmut kummt vor dem Fall." Pride goeth before the fall.

  But the farm, its continuity, its legacy for the family he wanted one day . . . that was important to him. To have that family, he knew he'd have to find a fraa. It was important to find the right one. After all, Plain people married for life. So he'd looked around but he had taken his time. He likened the process to a crop—you prepared the ground, planted the right seed, nurtured it, asked God's blessing, and then harvested at the right moment.

  Such things took time.

  Sometimes they even took perseverance. She'd turned him down when he approached her and asked her out.

  He decided not to let that discourage him.

  She turned from the window and began walking down the sidewalk toward him. Look at her, he thought, walking with that bounce to her step. Look at the way she glanced around, so animated, taking in everything with such animation, such curiosity.

  He waited for some sign of recognition but she hadn't seen him yet. When they'd attended school, their teacher had often gently chided her for staring out the classroom window or doodling designs on a scrap of paper for the weaving she loved.

  Mary Katherine moved through the sea of Englisch tourists on the sidewalk that parted for her like the waters for Moses when she walked. He watched how they glanced at her the way she did them.

  It was a mutual curiosity at its best.

  He walked toward her and when she stopped and blinked, he grinned.

  "Jacob! What are you doing here?"

  "You make it sound like I never come to town."

  "I don't remember ever seeing you do it."

  "I needed some supplies and things are slower now with the harvest in. Have you eaten?" He'd casually asked Anna when they took their noontime break but he figured it was a good conversational device.

  "Yes. We ate a little early at the shop."

  He thought about that. Maybe he should have planned better."I see. Well, how about having supper with me tonight?"

  "Did you come all the way into town to ask me out?"

  Jacob drew himself up. "Yes."

  "But I've told you before—"

  "That you're not interested in going out."

  "Yes."

  "But I haven't heard of you going out with anyone else."

  She stared at him, oblivious of the people who streamed around them on the sidewalk. "Who did you ask?"

  Her direct stare was unnerving. His collar felt tight but he knew if he pulled it away from his neck he'd just appear guilty."I'd have heard."

  "I'm not interested in dating, Jacob."

  When she started past him, he put out his hand to stop her.She looked down at his hand on her arm and then met his gaze. "Is it you're not interested in dating or you're not interested in dating Jacob?"

  Her lips quirked. "I'm not interested in dating. It's not you."

  "I see."

  She began walking again.

  "Do you mind if I walk with you?"

  "Schur." She glanced at him. "Can you keep up?"

  He found himself grinning. She was different from other young women he knew, more spirited and independent.

  "Where are we going?"

  She shrugged. "Nowhere in particular. I just needed to get out and get some fresh air."

  Stopping at a shop window, she studied its display of tourist souvenirs. "Did you ever think about not staying here? In Paradise?"

  "Not stay here? Where would you go?"

  She turned to look at him and shrugged. "I don't know. It's a big world out there."

  Jacob felt a chill race up his spine. "You can't mean it," he said slowly. "You belong here."

  "Do I?" she asked. Pensive, she stared at the people passing."Sometimes I'm not sure where I belong."

  He took her shoulders and turned her to face the shop window."This is where you belong," he told her.

  She looked at the image of herself reflected in the glass as he directed. He liked the way they looked together in the reflection. She was a fine Amish woman, with a quiet beauty he'd admired for some time. He'd known her in school and of course they'd attended Sunday services and singings and such through the years. He hadn't been in a rush to get married and he'd noticed she hadn't been, either. Both of them had been working hard, he at his farm, she in the shop she and her grandmother and cousins had opened.

  He began noticing her shortly after the shop opened. There was a different air about her. She seemed more confident, happier than she'd been before.

  He reminded himself that she'd said she didn't date. .

  So why, he asked himself, was he trying again? Taking a deep breath, he turned to her. "Mary Katherine—"

  "Jacob!" a man called.

  He turned and saw a man striding toward him, someone who had returned to the Plain community after
years away.

  Though the man hailed him, his attention was clearly on Mary Katherine. He held out his hand. "Daniel Kurtz," he said."We met last Sunday."

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jacob saw Mary Katherine turn to the man and eye him with interest.

  "You're Rachel's cousin from Florida."

  "I am." He eyed the shop. "So, this is your shop?"

  "My grandmother's. My cousins and I help her."

  Daniel nodded. "Very enterprising." He glanced around. "Is this the size of crowd you get this time of year?"

  Mary Katherine nodded. "After-Christmas sales bring them out. But business slows down while people eat this time of day."

  "I came into town to pick up a few things and thought I'd have dinner here. Have you two eaten?"

  "I asked Mary Katherine but—"

  "We'll join you," she said quickly.

  Jacob stared at her. But the two of them were already walking away. With an unexplained feeling of dread washing over him, he followed them.

  2

  It wasn't often that Mary Katherine had not one but two handsome men sitting at a table talking to her.

  Actually, it had never happened before unless you counted the times she and Jacob and his brother Amos had sat at a table and done their studies when they'd been scholars. It hadn't been pleasant. Amos had pulled her braids and dabbed paste on her papers.

  These two men were as different as night and day. Jacob's hair shone the blue-black of a raven's wing when he took off his hat. He had a square jaw and intense gray eyes that seemed to bore into you when he looked at you. And his hands. Well, they were big and strong, with blunt fingers, but he'd picked a delicate flower once when they were on a picnic with other youth and surprised her with it.

  Daniel was as fair-haired as Jacob was dark, the strands of his hair streaked from the Florida sunlight. Both men were tanned from working in the fields but Daniel's was darker from more exposure. His features were finer, his hands smaller, and there was a glint in his blue eyes that spoke of charm and mischief that contrasted with Jacob's more serious manner.

  Their clothing was similar, the Plain attire of black felt winter hats, black pants and jackets and colored shirts. Both were tall and strong and muscular.

  They had grown from schoolboys to fine, strapping Amish men. Both caught the eye of Plain folk and Englischers alike when they walked to the restaurant, and now as they sat at the table.

  A waitress brought menus, took drink orders, and left them.

  "Florida," Mary Katherine mused as she glanced out the window. "Palm trees, warm sea breezes . . ." She glanced out the window, watching as people hurried by dressed in jackets, coats, and hats. "Sounds wonderful."

  Daniel grinned. "Well, we work in Florida, you know. My parents took a vacation there one winter and never wanted to come back to the weather here. So I stayed, too."

  He looked at Mary Katherine over the menu. "You've certainly changed from the gawky girl I remembered."

  She felt a blush creeping over her face. "I—thank you."

  "What brings you to Paradise?" Jacob asked.

  Her eyes flew to his. He didn't sound very friendly. Matter of fact, he didn't look it, either, his dark eyebrows drawn in a frown, his jaw set. Strange, she thought. Jacob was usually one of the friendliest people she knew.

  "I'm here to finalize the sale of the family farm." Daniel opened his menu and scanned the choices.

  "So you're breaking all ties here then?"

  "I wouldn't say that," Daniel told him, closing his menu."We still have family here. But we don't need the property and it's a good time to sell with there being less land available in Lancaster County."

  The waitress came to take food orders.

  "Just the tea for me, thanks," Mary Katherine told her.

  "You're not doing one of the Englisch diets, are you?" Daniel asked her. "You look great."

  Blushing, she shook her head. "We ate at the shop.Grossmudder brought fried chicken in today."

  "I remember her fried chicken." He looked at the waitress as she walked toward the kitchen to place their order. "Should I have ordered the fried chicken here?"

  "The pot roast is better," Mary Katherine and Jacob said at the same time. Then they looked at each other and grinned.

  She caught Daniel looking questioningly at Jacob, then her."Tell us about where you live now," she said quickly.

  "We vacationed in a town called Pinecraft, near Sarasota, for a couple of years. That's on the west coast of Florida," he explained. "You'd see some familiar names on the mailboxes if you went there, names like Stoltzfus, Yoder, Beiler. There are Mennonites there as well as Plain people. Not very many Englischers know we're there so we haven't become a tourist attraction like other Plain communities. I—oh, that looks good," he exclaimed when their food arrived.

  The men dug into the pot roast special. "You're right, it's good," he told Jacob.

  The restaurant was filled with locals and tourists enjoying the "authentic Amish" food. Anything labeled "Amish" was popular with the tourists.

  Daniel asked about mutual friends. Mary Katherine filled in the blanks for him, telling him who'd gotten married, who had children, who was engaged, who'd moved away to other Amish communities. He wanted to know about her grandmother, Leah, and cousins Naomi and Anna, too, and he seemed very interested in the shop.

  "You were always sketching designs in school," he said as he buttered a roll. "Jacob, you remember how often our teacher chided Mary Katherine for doing that instead of schoolwork."He chuckled. "But look how it paid off. Is the shop doing well?"

  She nodded. "We had a very prosperous holiday season."

  "But that's not what it's all about, is it?" he asked quietly.

  Startled, her eyes met his. "No," she said at last. "I love what I do."

  There was a slight sound to her left. Turning, she saw Jacob staring at her.

  "Is something wrong?"

  "No," he said quickly. "Could you—would you pass me the salt, please?"

  "Sure." She handed him the shaker and watched him sprinkle it over his pot roast. "Just like my daed. He salts everything before he eats, too. Mamm keeps threatening to oversalt his food one day so he'll stop." She frowned. Sometimes Dat was so critical. There wasn't a family that loved him more, worked harder for his approval. Yet he seldom thanked them or seemed to appreciate them.

  "How is he?"

  She looked up and smiled at Daniel. "Same Dat you remember.He hasn't changed."

  "I had an onkel like that. He pointed at a chair one day and said he was just like that—he couldn't change. I decided right then and there I couldn't be like that." He fell silent as he ate his food.

  Perhaps that was why he'd made the move to Florida with his parents. She started to ask him that but something made her glance over at Jacob. He was staring at his plate and hadn't eaten much.

  "Is something the matter with your food?"

  He blinked. "What? Oh, no. I just was thinking about something."

  "I don't remember you as being this quiet," Daniel teased him.

  "I remember you as being this talkative," he shot back.

  "Boys, boys!" Mary Katherine said, laughing. "And I remember the two of you being good friends when we were scholars."

  Daniel's grin faded. "Yes, I do as well. I'm sorry, Jacob. I should have kept in contact."

  Jacob shrugged. "I understood. I figured you were busy or that maybe you decided that since you weren't coming back there was no point in staying friends."

  "We were busy. Still are. But that's no excuse for not staying in contact with good friends."

  "Well, we're here now," Mary Katherine said.

  Daniel nodded. "I was on my way to take a look at Mary Katherine's shop, pick up a present to take back to my mamm."

  He looked at Jacob. "Guess now that the harvest is in you have a little more time?"

  "Ya. While I was in town picking up supplies I thought I'd see if Mary Katherine wanted to ha
ve lunch."

  "Are the two of you dating?"

  Mary Katherine choked on her tea. She looked at Jacob but it was Daniel who rushed to pat her on the back.

  "Why do you ask that?" she asked him when she got her breath back.

  "He was coming to take you to lunch."

  "He was coming to ask," she corrected. "That's different."

  "I see," Daniel said slowly. He looked at Jacob. "So, are the two of you dating?"

  Jacob watched Mary Katherine's gaze drop to the cup before her.

  "We're friends," Jacob told him. "Just friends."

  "I see. I thought the two of you might be seeing each other."

  He watched Daniel go back to eating and studied him for a long moment. As a rule he tried to accept people at face value and not look for ulterior motives. But he couldn't help wondering if Daniel was interested in Mary Katherine.

  If only Mary Katherine had agreed to have lunch with him.Then they wouldn't have run into Daniel. He wouldn't have had to sit here and watch another man look interested in her.

  He wouldn't feel unaccustomed feelings of jealousy washing over him.

  There was no way he could compete with Daniel. The man had known how to charm girls since he attended school and he'd gotten even better at it. Mary Katherine had been smiling at him more than he ever remembered seeing her do since he'd known her. And every time the subject of Florida came up . . . well, it was obvious that it sounded romantic to her because she looked so dreamy when Daniel mentioned it.

  What did he have to compete with that? A farm in Pennsylvania. That was hardly romantic to her. After all, she'd grown up here, worked on her family's farm. Florida with its mystery and warm weather was obviously appealing.

  As was Daniel. Both of them were tanned from working in the fields but his hair had been streaked by the sun, too.Women liked blond men, didn't they?

  No, Mary Katherine wasn't so shallow that looks were that important to her.

  And she was happy here. He knew that. Her work at the shop was obviously the fulfillment of everything she'd ever wanted. That dreamy girl who sketched in school instead of doing her lessons now worked at her loom all day at the shop and sold her work. She and her cousins were sisters and there were no closer sisters than Amish schweschders.