Second Chance Proposal

by Anna Schmidt

  She went back inside and retrieved her sewing basket. Taking her place again on the porch swing, she pulled out the pieces for a nine-patch quilt square and began stitching them together. Yes, this was better. She could keep an eye on things and yet not appear to be laying in wait.

  But as the shadows lengthened and it became harder to see the small pieces of the patchwork, much less measure her stitches properly, Lydia grew restless. The sounds of the wind rustling the large palm fronds, dry from the days without rain, were usually a comfort to her after a long day at school. Tonight the sound grated on her nerves. Through the open window she could hear the clock in the front room clicking off the seconds as the brass hands made their way toward six-thirty. The chatter of the birds as they settled into the shrubs surrounding her house for the night seemed louder than usual. A horse in the stables whinnied. The ice in the pitcher settled into melting.

  And still John stayed at the hardware. She saw the unmistakable glow of a lantern spilling its light onto the loading dock through the open back door of the shop. The sawing had been replaced by hammering, a light tapping that matched the restless rhythm of her foot.

  “This is ridiculous,” Lydia muttered as she put aside her sewing and stood. Without bothering to retrieve her bonnet, she picked up the extra glass and the pitcher of watery lemonade and struck out across the yard toward the rear of the hardware store. With each step she told herself that she simply needed to satisfy her curiosity about what John was doing at the shop so late. It was nothing more than that. She would take him the cool beverage on the pretense of having noticed that he was still working. She would see whatever he was doing and, satisfied at last, she would walk home and get some rest.

  But when she reached the hardware’s loading dock, she stopped short, her mouth open in surprise and admiration. Inside John had set his hammer aside and was sanding the arms of the most beautiful rocking chair Lydia had ever seen. It was small and slender and the lines were as graceful as the woman who would surely sit there cradling her child.

  “Is that for Greta?” she asked as she climbed the three steps to the loading dock.

  John glanced up and grinned. “Shh,” he whispered, putting his finger to his lips. “Luke wants it to be a surprise.” He stood and set the sanding block on a stool near the chair. “Is that for me?” he asked, nodding toward the pitcher and glass she held as he wiped his forehead with the back of his arm.

  He was so incredibly handsome, his features lit by the soft glow of the lantern. Lydia felt her heart race, and her hand shook a little as she filled a glass and handed it to him. “It’s watery,” she said.

  He drank it down without pausing for breath and held the glass out for her to refill. “It’s perfect,” he replied.

  He was not wearing his hat. His hair was damp with sweat and clung to the edges of his face. He had rolled back his sleeves, exposing tanned and muscular forearms, and he was covered in a fine coat of sawdust.

  “This is very kind of you, making a chair for Greta,” she began, needing to say something to break the silence that surrounded them, a silence filled with unspoken possibilities.

  “Not kind at all. Luke hired me to do it. Seems he preferred not to do business with Josef Bontrager even though from what I’ve been told Josef has the furniture-making trade pretty well sewn up in these parts.”

  “Greta will be very surprised. She already has a rocking chair, the one our mother used when we were born.”

  John frowned. “Do you think she won’t want to replace that one? Luke tells me that after three children already, the chair is in need of some repair. Maybe he should have...”

  Instinctively she placed her hand on his arm. “She will be very, very pleased,” she assured him.

  John drank the second glass of lemonade more slowly than the first. “Come to think of it, I seem to recall that Greta and Josef Bontrager were pretty close. What happened?”

  “They were just children in those days. Greta and Luke are a good match and Josef seems to have made an equally good match with the Yoders’ eldest daughter, Esther. It has all turned out well, as God intended,” Lydia assured him.

  John grinned. “It certainly has for me. Luke is paying me a nice sum to make this chair for Greta, and if others see the work, perhaps they will...” He stopped abruptly.

  She hated the shadow of defeat that passed over his features. He set down the empty glass and took up his sanding block again.

  “It’s just something I was able to do for Luke,” he told her. “Roger said I could use the space here and his tools in the evenings to work on it. With the money Luke is paying me I can start replacing some of the tools that I used to have.”

  Lydia waited for him to say more but he just worked the sanding block across the curve of the rockers.

  “Will you tell me what happened, John?” Lydia set the pitcher next to his glass and folded her arms in her apron as she leaned against the doorjamb. She knew that she should simply let the past go, but she had so many questions.

  He shrugged and kept on working, not looking at her. “Surely you know the story. It’s the same for everyone out there. Things were going well—and then they weren’t.”

  “You made a good living then?”

  “For a while. Most of the time.”

  She could see that the memory caused him pain so she stopped asking about it. Instead, she watched him work. “Have you eaten?” she asked after several minutes.

  “Yah.” He did not look at her and she wondered if he was still lost in the thoughts of happier times, before he’d been forced to come back to Celery Fields. And from there logic took her to the more obvious point.

  He had come home to Celery Fields. That did not mean he had come back because of her. John had a ready smile and friendly wave for everyone he saw. Why was she imagining that she was special to him? Or was it John’s true motive to win her back because out in the world he had fallen so far that he had decided she represented a safe haven? He had come back to his past and she was nothing more to him than a part of that past. She was making a fool of herself for all the town to see.

  Without a word she collected the pitcher and glass and walked back out to the loading dock.

  “Wait,” he called.

  “It’s late,” she replied, and kept walking.

  * * *

  John caught up to her before she cleared the last step of the loading dock. He closed his fingers around her upper arms and turned her so that she was facing him. “It’s hard, Liddy,” he said. “Going back over those times—the fool I made of myself, the losses I suffered.”

  “But you are back now and safe again.”

  “And you think that’s what I want? When did I want what was safe, Liddy? When did you want that?”

  Finally she looked up at him and in the light spilling out from the shop he saw that she studied him not with the longing and love he’d hoped for, but with pity. He released her arm and stepped back.

  “We were so young then, John.” He hated the way her lips pursed in the disapproving manner of their former teacher.

  “You were not a child that Sunday when you decided to take your place with the married women at services,” he reminded her. “That was an act of defiance by the girl I once knew, the girl I...”

  Her expression softened as she pressed her fingers over his lips. “Do not say things you will regret,” she whispered. “Please. You are too soon trying to set things the way you remember them, the way you want them to be. But you are not the boy who left here, John. And I am not that girl. We cannot go back in this world—only forward.”

  She pulled away from him and continued walking back to her house—her house, her school, her life.

  “We could be if you’re willing to work things out with me,” he said, and was gratified to see her step falter. “We could fin
d a way to...”

  She turned around but her features remained in shadow. “I am glad that you’ve come home, John. Is that not enough for now?”

  “It’s a beginning,” he admitted. “But...”

  “And that’s the point, John Amman. We are beginning again and you must allow time for things to develop according to God’s will.” She took half a step toward him and stopped. “You must think of me as someone you are just getting to know, John.”

  “Is that how you see me? As some stranger?”

  “Not a stranger exactly. Just not...” Her voice trailed off.

  “Just not the same person you once loved?”

  For a long moment she said nothing. Then very softly she said, “There are glimpses of him, John Amman. That I will grant you, but it has been eight years and whether you are willing to admit it or not, each of us has changed—grown, hopefully—taught and shaped by the lives we have lived while apart.”

  He knew she was right but he didn’t want her to be. “So what are we, Liddy?” He knew he sounded annoyed.

  “We have made a good start as neighbors.”

  He snorted. “Neighbors? I barely see you these days.”

  “Friends, then—friends who have not seen each other for many years and are looking forward to getting reacquainted.”

  He could see that it was the best answer he was likely to get on this occasion. “Truly? You’re looking forward to getting to know me again?”

  She laughed and the lightness of it floated on the air between them. “I am, John Amman. I seem to remember that you were always a most interesting man. Now, guten nacht.”

  He let her go, watching until she let herself into the dark house, waiting for the light in the window of the front room that never came.

  * * *

  Lydia was actually shaking as she stepped inside the dark house and closed the door behind her with a soft click. It wasn’t a chill or fear that overcame her. It was her understanding that after all these years—after assuring herself that she had made a life for herself—she still had deep feelings for John. But surely such feelings were born of reflection on things past. John’s very presence in Celery Fields was bound to stir up scenes they had shared when they were younger. His laughter would naturally bring back those times when they had laughed together. His touch would evoke the sensation of times in the past when he had held her hand, stroked her cheek, kissed her.

  She closed her eyes against the flood of sensations that swept through her as she leaned against the closed door. Having John Amman back in town was going to be much harder than she could have imagined.

  “Well, there’s nothing for it but to take things one day at a time,” she admonished herself. She pushed away from the door and in the dark went through the familiar regimen of preparing for the next day’s teaching and for bed. But, after assembling the items she would need for the following school day, she bypassed the rocking chair in the front room where she was accustomed to ending her day by reading passages from her Bible and silently praying for her students, her family and her neighbors.

  Her chair, the one her father had sat in when he was alive, was nothing at all like the chair that John had been making for Greta. But it was enough that it was a rocking chair and that alone brought to mind the image of the beautifully shaped wood, the smooth gracefulness of the back and arms, the sheer simple beauty of John’s handiwork. From there it took little to make the leap to recalling her fingers touching his lips. She found herself standing next to her father’s rocking chair, her fingers moving slowly over her own lips.

  “You are being ridiculous, Lydia Goodloe,” she said as if she were lecturing one of her students. “Go to bed.”

  She followed her own advice but sleep did not come. Instead, she lay awake next to the open window. Every night sound seemed exaggerated and she kept thinking she was hearing the swoosh of a handsaw slicing into wood or the light tapping of a hammer. Surely John was not still at work on the chair. Like her he had to work long hours the following day, and yet she recalled that even as a boy he had been single-minded when it came to completing an important project. And John would see the perfection of that chair as vital to his goal of impressing Luke and anyone else who might see his handiwork.

  Lydia frowned. He was clearly aware that Josef Bontrager had been the carpenter that the people of Celery Fields had turned to for years. John must understand that loyalty, if nothing else, would keep them from abandoning Josef in favor of buying from him. And, besides, there were two other issues that made questionable his chances of succeeding in establishing himself as a furniture maker. For one thing, the families still living in Celery Fields had been there for years and their homes were already furnished. And second, even if someone did need to replace a cabinet or chair, most likely the purchase would be postponed until the economy was stable again.

  She should warn him of the folly of his plan.

  Why me? Surely his uncle...

  But I know him so well.

  She sat up and pulled the heavy braid of her hair over one shoulder, fingering the ends that curled round her forefinger as she tried to calm herself. Again she thought John Amman was too much on her mind. From the moment she’d seen him kneeling next to the stove at the schoolhouse he had been a constant presence, and she was only fooling herself if she believed that living practically next door to the man was going to be easy.

  Didn’t she have troubles enough of her own to worry about? If the school closed and she had no income she would have to consider selling this house, and then what? Move in with Greta? Pleasant? She shuddered at the image of the rest of her life spent as the spinster aunt whose only purpose in life was to make herself useful so as not to be a burden to her sisters and their husbands. Yes, she had more than enough to worry about without adding John Amman to the list. Neighbors? Fine. Friends? Of course. But anything more? Far too risky.

  * * *

  After Liddy left, John returned to the shop and continued working on the chair. Only now, as he sanded and stained the smooth wood, he imagined he was making a chair for Liddy. He imagined them married and her rocking their child and singing softly to the baby. As he recalled she had a lovely voice, as sweet and clear as the air on a spring morning. He pictured the way she would look up at him from under her long lashes, her eyes brimming with love for him and their baby.

  Liddy would be a wonderful mother.

  But what kind of a father would he be? How would his natural inclination toward restlessness and adventure affect their children?

  He paused in his work and closed his eyes.

  How long would it be before he could no longer stand the sameness of the life he’d come home to in Celery Fields? At least when he was building something, he had the freedom of his creative imagination. There were always problems to be solved so that the piece turned out different.

  He set down his paintbrush and wiped his hands on a rag. That was the crux of it. John had always been different, had always needed to stray from the path set for him first by his parents and then by his community. But, while he readily admitted that he had rebelled against those norms, he had never in all of his life felt that he was straying from the way God was leading him. Even when he left Celery Fields, he had felt he was doing what God intended him to do.

  At first, he reminded himself sternly. For he had left with the best of intentions to go out and earn the money he would need to return, establish a business and marry Liddy. But when she had not replied to his letters—when there had been no word at all—he had turned his mind to the ways of the outsiders. Making his fortune became the one driving force that got him up every morning, and in time it had replaced everything else—his family, his religion...even Liddy.

  Liddy. Liddy. Liddy.

  She was everything he wanted in this life and yet he had nothing to offer her.
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  Chapter Seven

  After that night, Lydia managed to keep her distance from John until the community gathered once again for their biweekly worship. But avoiding him at Sunday services and especially at the social gathering afterward proved more difficult. As she carried food out to the gathering in Josef Bontrager’s large yard, John never seemed to be more than a few feet away from her. And even though he was engaged in conversation with the other men, his soft voice settled around her like blossoms from an orange tree blown free by a tropical breeze. When she sought refuge inside the large farmhouse, assuring Josef’s wife, Esther, that she simply needed a break from the heat, she certainly did not expect to wander into the front room and find John there.

  He was running the flat of his palm over the closed cover of Josef’s tilt-top desk. The piece dominated one corner of the otherwise mostly barren front room. The expression on John’s face was hard to read, but Lydia decided that it showed something between admiration and disappointment. Either way, she felt that it would not do for her to interrupt his reverie or for others to see them alone together. She turned to go.

  “Josef Bontrager is a fine carpenter,” John said without turning.

  “Yah.” She was rooted to the spot, one foot half-turned to leave.

  “I can see why he’s earned the loyalty of his customers,” he continued, moving on to the fireplace, studying the way Josef had so expertly matched the wood grain of each side piece and crossbeam the way a woman might precisely match the square of a quilt to form a border between the rows.

  As the sun streamed in through the open windows, Lydia was glad for the breeze that filled the room with the fragrance of the bougainvillea blossoms matting the trellis outside the open window. She stepped into the room, the leather heels of her shoes echoing on the bare wooden floor that an hour earlier had been filled with the benches used for worship, benches now moved outside.