Second Chance Proposal

by Anna Schmidt

  But what if Lydia had changed her mind? What if having spent years teaching other people’s children she had decided that was enough? Night after night John had fought his inclination to go to Liddy’s house and ask her point-blank what she was thinking, feeling. And as he considered how he’d failed to achieve anything he began to understand why Lydia might have decided to make a clean break of it with him by refusing to answer his letters. He had asked for and received the forgiveness of his friends and neighbors, but he wondered if God had truly forgiven him for his foolish and prideful ways. What if never having enough to support Liddy and make a home with her was to be God’s punishment?

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself,” he muttered as he scooped up the last of the powdered cleaning compound that his uncle used to sweep out the store at the end of every day. “What makes you think she’s even interested in a future?”

  The bell above the front door jangled. “Be right there,” John called, chastising himself for forgetting the turn the latch on the door. On the other hand a customer was a customer. He wiped his hands on a clean rag as he walked to the front of the store.

  Of all the people he imagined might be standing just inside the door, her hand still on the doorknob as if she might change her mind and leave, the last person he would have guessed was Liddy Goodloe.

  “Oh,” she said when she saw him coming toward her, “I thought... I had wanted to... Is Gertrude not here?”

  John slowed his step, keeping some distance between them as he might have were he approaching a skittish mare. “Just me, I’m afraid,” he replied with a smile. “Can I help?” She was clutching a basket.

  “I brought her...these are scraps she needs for... We’re making a quilt for Greta’s baby,” she finally managed. She fumbled with the doorknob. “I’ll just....”

  John stepped forward and relieved her of the basket. “My aunt will be back tomorrow. I can give these to her then if you like.”

  “She wanted to work on the quilt this evening. I got delayed at the school and...”

  “It’s not that far. Why don’t I walk them over to Gert’s house?”

  “I can manage,” she replied, seeming to conquer her obvious bout of nerves. She held out her hand for the basket. “Thank you for offering.” Her tone again was prim and proper.

  “Liddy, don’t be stubborn. It’s nearly dark and you know there have been some incidents in the town—vagrants wandering through and such.”

  “The last incident like that was months ago, before...” She pressed her hand to her lips as if to stem the tide of her words.

  “Before I wandered into town?” He handed her the basket. “Humor me, Liddy. Let me walk with you to my uncle’s house. If you like I’ll wait in the shadows. They won’t even know I’m there.”

  “Gert will want me to come inside.”

  He bit back a smile, knowing she was wavering. “I can wait,” he said softly. For as long as it takes to win you back.

  She chewed her bottom lip as she looked around the store, dimly lit now as the shadows of evening gathered. “All right,” she agreed, and then her eyes pinned him with their glitter of determination. “But you will stay back and no one is to know...”

  “I’ll just put these away,” John said, picking up the push broom and bucket of cleaning compound. “Won’t be a minute,” he added, backing away and afraid that the minute she saw her opportunity she would change her mind and leave.

  In the back room he took a minute to remove his hat and smooth his hair, then brush sawdust off his trousers. At the same time he sent up a silent prayer of thanks that God had provided this unexpected opportunity for him to walk with Liddy. It would bring back all the wonderful memories of the times they had kept company together, the times they had laughed together. The times they had stopped under the shadow of a live oak tree and shared a kiss.

  “Are you coming or not?” Liddy demanded using her teacher’s voice.

  “Yah. Ich bin...” He gave his trousers one more swipe with his palms and headed for the front of the store.

  Once they were outside he noticed that Liddy kept glancing around as if she feared being spotted by one of their neighbors. At the end of the street kerosene lanterns lighted her sister’s house, but otherwise the thoroughfare was dark. All of the shops were closed for the night, their owners at home finishing their suppers, readying their children for bed or reading their evening Scripture.

  “Do you think it might be too late?” Liddy wondered aloud.

  “I don’t think so. Gert was late leaving the shop this evening and Roger was out making a delivery. I expect they might just be sitting down to their meal.”

  Lydia stopped walking and seemed about to turn away from the lane leading to the Hadwell house. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt their supper,” she said.

  “But if my aunt needs the scraps for the quilt...” he reminded her. To his relief this seemed to give her the impetus she needed to press on. “When is the baby coming?” he asked, and immediately realized that such a statement could be taken as the invasion of a private family matter among the Amish. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “You are going to have to watch your ways, John, if you truly wish to make your place in this community,” Liddy admonished him, and the fact that she was frowning in disapproval was evident in her tone.

  “Perhaps, but when we were younger Greta was like a sister to me.” He chuckled at the memory. “A pesky little sister but nevertheless...”

  To his surprise and delight, Liddy laughed. “You came up with so many schemes for escaping her notice,” she said.

  “And not one of them worked. I doubt those children of hers can get away with much,” he added.

  Liddy sighed. “It is hard to believe that she’s a mother herself, almost four times over now.”

  “She is certainly providing future students for you to teach,” he said. When Liddy grew quiet as they walked away from town and down the lane that led to his uncle’s house he knew that once again he had said the wrong thing. Still, having broached the subject, he decided to persevere. “Tell me more about this business of shutting down the school.”

  “I told you, John. The elders are thinking that for the time being the building and land might be put to better use. They will do what is best.”

  “But if a community is to thrive, surely it needs to have a school,” he argued.

  “Whatever the children need to learn can be taught at home,” she replied, but her voice sounded as if she were simply repeating some argument given for closing the school. “And these hard times are bound to pass. Once more people come here to live, we can start another school.”

  “And what about—”

  “Ah, here we are,” she interrupted as they approached the gate that led to the small cottage his uncle and aunt occupied. “Wait here. I won’t be long.”

  He crouched down in the gathering darkness, resting his elbows on his knees while she walked up the path and knocked on the front door. Her voice and his aunt’s were muffled, but the tone of their words told him that Gert had invited her inside and she had refused. He heard her laugh as she retreated down the porch steps and called out her good-night. How he had missed the lilt of that laughter!

  He was about to rise to meet her when he heard her hiss, “Stay down.” Then she turned back toward the house and waved. “Guten nacht,” she called out.

  John watched as Liddy continued on her way back toward town. If his aunt were watching she would see only Liddy walking with her usual determined stride.

  “Well, come along,” she said in a normal tone when she’d already gotten several yards past him.

  He caught up to her and she started to walk faster. He kept pace and even moved a little ahead of her as he turned to face her. She giggled as she raced past him. Then they both started to run as t
hey had when they were children and had just gotten away with avoiding Greta or John’s stern father and were running off to the shore to wade in the shallow water and collect shells. And it was the most natural thing in the world for John to grasp her hand in his as they ran back toward town.

  * * *

  Lydia was not only giggling like one of her students, she was also gasping for breath by the time she and John reached her front porch. It felt like old times—the two of them out together on some adventure, the wind in their faces and hair, her one hand clutching his while the other held fast to her bonnet. Their fingers were so entwined that it was as if he never intended to let go and Lydia found that she liked that feeling—she liked it very much.

  Too much, she thought as caution and common sense overcame her giddiness. She slid her hand from his and pressed it to her chest as she forced her breathing to slow. “Thank you for going with me, John. You were right—I would have been nervous in the dark alone,” she admitted. “And I did not thank you for the oranges you left for me. They were very...sweet.”

  It was the wrong word but the only one that came to mind. She found that she could not look at him, and yet even if she closed her eyes she could see him clearly: the wide smile that lit his entire face as if his features had been bathed in sunlight; the eyes that twinkled and teased and dared her to take the kinds of risks that he had more often than she cared to recall talked her into taking as teenagers; the mouth that so often had kissed hers in those long ago years.

  A moment before she had been babbling like a brook, the words tumbling out almost faster than she could think them. But with the sudden image of his lips meeting hers she felt as if she had been struck dumb.

  “Guten nacht, John,” she whispered as she prepared to flee such thoughts of him in favor of the secure isolation of her house. But he caught hold of her hand before she could move more than a step away from him.

  And then he waited. John had never been more eloquent than when he said nothing. Everything he might have said was contained in the compelling silence that was heavy with expectation and unasked questions.

  “John,” she whispered, and her voice was a plea that she could not have defined. Was she asking him to stop or to come closer? Did she want him to leave or to stay? She had no idea what her feelings were. “You confuse me,” she added petulantly.

  He chuckled and stroked her cheek with the tips of his fingers. She closed her eyes, savoring that touch.

  “Gut,” he replied as he kissed her lightly on her forehead.

  And then he was gone.

  * * *

  Slow and steady, John reminded himself as he walked from Lydia’s house to his rooms above the stables. And although he had to fight against the urge to look back at her, he kept walking, knowing she was still standing where he’d left her. He could not keep the smile off his face. He had his answer. Whatever she had felt about his leaving all those years earlier he was sure now she was glad he was back. A man could build something on that.

  Later, as he lay in bed waiting for sleep to come, he thought about the many good days he’d had since returning to Celery Fields. That first day when he’d gone to the school and Lydia had walked into the schoolroom. Later, when he’d surprised his aunt. The meeting with Bishop Troyer when he’d known by the man’s kindness and complete absence of censure that he would be forgiven. Then, that Sunday when he had stood before the congregation—some faces familiar while others were new to him—and without question they had welcomed him back into the fold of their community.

  All except Lydia.

  She had maintained her caution and reserve, while remaining polite.

  Until tonight.

  He folded his hands behind his head and gazed out the small window at a strip of clouds sailing across the moon. The way things were going he had every reason to hope that he might win her back. They might have a real future just like the one they had planned years earlier.

  Slowly John’s smile and the high spirits behind it dissolved into the worried frown that had been his constant companion when he and Lydia had first talked of marriage. Nothing had changed. Or maybe now things were worse than they’d been when he left. He still had no means to start a business of his own—he was a carpenter with no tools. And he could hardly expect to earn enough from clerking at the hardware store to make the kind of life he wanted for Liddy.

  He sat up, his bare feet resting on the polished floor, his fingers buried in his hair as he realized that unlike before when he’d so foolishly left, these days he literally had nothing to offer Liddy. Everything he had earned in the world was gone, taken by creditors along with the business he’d built with George Stevens, the son of a wealthy Englischer family. The Stevenses had absorbed their son’s part of the losses. They had even offered John some money “to tide him over” but he had refused.

  “You’ll do all right,” his partner had assured him. “You’ve got a gift for building things, fine things that one day people will be wanting again,” he added. “These hard times won’t last forever, John, and one day...”

  John couldn’t afford to dwell on one day. He needed to find work he could do today and tomorrow and next year. He thought about some of the furniture pieces he had designed and built—pieces that were then mass produced in their factory and sold to stores all up and down the East Coast. Tables and chests and bureaus and desks. And the clocks. How he had loved figuring out the intricate workings of fine clocks—each cog and wheel and wire set just so.

  But those days are gone, as are my tools, he reminded himself as he flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He had a trade, a skill with which he might make a decent living, but without the tools or the money it would take to purchase lumber and the other materials he would need, how was he going to build a business? And without a way of earning a living, there could be no future for him with Liddy.

  He closed his eyes against the sting of tears. What a mess he’d made of everything. He and Liddy were no longer teenagers flush with the certainty of youth that all things were possible. “Oh, Liddy, what are we going to do?”

  He got up and paced the confines of the tiny apartment, finally coming to rest at the kitchen window that looked down on Liddy’s house, which was dark now. She would be sleeping. But then he saw a light in the window of an upstairs room and the silhouette of Liddy herself seated in a chair, her head bent as if in prayer. And even though he had no idea whether she was also struggling with thoughts of the evening they had shared—of his touch, his light kiss on her forehead—he needed to believe that such a thing was likely. Because believing that she held him in her thoughts and prayers, he would find a way.

  God would show him a way.

  Chapter Six

  Lydia saw John only from a distance over the next several days. Sometimes when she was on her way to school she would see him grooming one of the horses from Luke’s livery. He would pause for a moment in his work and lift his hand, palm out, to her. At first she simply nodded in his direction and kept walking. But after a week of such silent greetings she found herself responding in kind. She took some pleasure in the blossoming of his smile when he saw her return the special signal they had devised in their youth.

  Each of them worked long hours and they both had chores. Ever since the evening that John had walked with her to the Hadwells’ and then seen her home again, Lydia had begun staying after school to tutor a child, correct the children’s work or prepare the lessons for the following day. After a few days she realized that she was unconsciously timing her departure from the school for when John might be finishing his work at the hardware store. Such schoolgirl foolishness was more Greta’s way than Lydia’s and yet she simply could not seem to help herself. John Amman was constantly in her thoughts.

  Not that her careful timing did any good. Even if she stayed at school until nearly suppertime, Jo
hn was always still at the hardware store. She knew Roger and Gert closed at five, as did every other merchant in Celery Fields. But many an evening John stayed there until well after dark. What could he be doing?

  Unable to suppress her curiosity, she left school one day at her regular time, went home and spent some time squeezing lemons from Greta’s garden to make lemonade. She told herself that her purpose was to use the lemons before they spoiled, and then she ended up with far more of the product than she could hope to use herself. It was only prudent that she share.

  Through her open kitchen window she heard the rhythmic sound of a handsaw passing back and forth across a piece of lumber. The sound was faint but definitely coming from the rear of the hardware. It was well past five. The sun was low on the horizon, but the heat and humidity that earlier had led Lydia to release the children to sit under the shade of a banyan tree to work on their lessons had not abated.

  Before she could change her mind or overanalyze her motives, Lydia filled a crockery pitcher with the fresh lemonade, chipped in some ice from the block that Jeremiah had delivered to her earlier that week and carried the pitcher and two glasses outside to the porch. Her plan was to sit on the swing and wait until she saw John walking from the store to the steps leading up to his rooms. She would offer him the lemonade, as she would to any neighbor she saw coming home from a long, hot working day, she told herself firmly.

  With her plan decided she took her place on the swing. From this vantage point she had a clear view of the stables with the stairway that led up to John’s rooms as well as the hardware store. She poured half a glass of lemonade for herself. Then she realized that it would be odd for her to simply be sitting idly sipping lemonade at this time of day. She should be doing something—reading or needlework.