Second Chance Proposal

by Anna Schmidt

  John turned to her with a wry smile. “My uncle has repeatedly reminded me that there is not much call for handmade furniture these days—hard times.”

  The words held an aura of bitterness and regret that seemed to cover him like a cloak. Lydia instinctively stepped closer as she searched for any gesture that might offer some comfort. “The chair you are making for Greta is fine,” she said.

  He smiled. “Are you complimenting me twice in one week, Lydia Goodloe?”

  “I am simply stating a truth,” she replied, hating the edge of contention that colored her words. Why did she always have to sound so prudish when she spoke with him?

  “I could make you a chair—or a desk or anything you might like,” he said, moving away from the fireplace and closer to her.

  “My father furnished our home when he was alive. Besides, I have no money for such...” He kept coming until he was standing so near that if she moved an inch his breath would surely fan her suddenly hot cheeks.

  “It would be a gift,” he said, his eyes roaming over her features, her hair and finally settling on her eyes. “I have missed seeing you these last days, Liddy.”

  As have I missed you. “I was at the school and the evenings I spent with Greta helping her with the little ones. She has not been feeling well.” That’s right. Stay with mundane, impersonal topics. Neighborly, friendly topics.

  John frowned. “The baby?”

  It was not appropriate that she should discuss such matters with him—no woman would. But she was worried and, because she had promised Greta that she would say nothing to anyone lest talk get back to Luke, she had kept her concerns to herself. But this was John and she had always been able to confide in him.

  “I’m worried,” she admitted.

  He lifted his hand as if to touch her then lowered it back to his side. “Can I help?”

  She realized that he already was. The relief that flooded her with the ability to finally say aloud the thoughts she had carried with her for days now was like a great weight had been taken from her.

  “You know Greta,” she said, the words flowing like a rushing stream now. “She is determined to put on a brave face, but when it is just the two of us I see that she is so very uncomfortable. With the first three babies she had no problems at all, but this time is different.”

  “I can see now that Luke is also concerned. He’s been quieter than usual these last days. I thought perhaps his distraction was due to the fact that business is slow, as it is for everyone. I expect he understands more than Greta realizes.”

  “Yes, they are so loving and caring with each other. Luke wants her to agree to see one of his customers, an Englischer doctor from Sarasota, but she refuses. She insists that she will be fine with the catcher.”

  John smiled. “I haven’t heard that term for a very long time, Liddy.”

  “Do they not have catchers in the outside?”

  His smile broadened. “Only in the game of baseball,” he said with a chuckle. “Never applied to the woman who attends the mother in a birthing.”

  “Greta will be in good hands.”

  “Hilda Yoder is still the catcher for Celery Fields?”

  Lydia nodded.

  “She has certainly been present for the delivery of her share of the children of Celery Fields,” John said. “And if Greta trusts her...”

  “Oh, she does. Everyone does. It’s just that...” Unexpectedly her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, John if I were to lose Greta...”

  He caught the single escaping tear with his thumb. “She’s not going to die,” he said softly.

  “You can’t know that,” she argued, but she did not pull away from his touch.

  “No,” he said softly. “Just like you can’t be sure that she might, so why worry about something we cannot control?”

  He had a point. Lydia gave him a tentative smile. “You were always one to find the brighter side of the matter,” she said.

  He chuckled, his thumb still lightly touching her cheek. “And you were always the worrier.”

  Behind them a woman cleared her throat and they turned to find Hilda Yoder frowning at them. “Here you are, Lydia,” she said, as if making a pronouncement for all those in the yard to hear. “I thought you must have already gone back to town to see how Greta is doing. I cannot recall a time when she and Luke missed services. We are all quite worried.”

  Lydia put several steps between herself and John by heading for the door where Hilda stood waiting. “There’s no need for concern, Hilda. Greta is just a bit under the weather.”

  “Still, it would ease all our minds to know that you were with her—at this time,” she added with a look that conveyed her reluctance to mention Greta’s pregnancy.

  “Yes, you are right. I was just about to...”

  “Let me drive you there,” John said.

  “I really do not think that you and Lydia should be seen...” Hilda began.

  But John gave her the smile that Lydia remembered charming every female in Celery Fields, regardless of her age, from the time John was a young boy. “Ah, now Hilda Yoder, let me do my part in setting your mind at rest. As it happens my uncle and aunt and I were late coming this morning so there was no time to stable their horse. Why spend time hitching up Liddy’s buggy when God has already seen to our having one ready to go?”

  Lydia saw what he was doing. By turning things around so that he seemed to be trying to put Hilda at ease he would no doubt win her approval.

  “Well, I suppose...perhaps I should ride along, then.”

  “That might be all right,” John said hesitantly as he frowned and scratched his clean-shaven chin.

  “But?” Hilda asked impatiently.

  “Well, that might give folks the wrong idea about Liddy here. With you appearing to be acting as chaperone, it might look like we had taken up courting again and, well, it’s just that...”

  Lydia thought her cheeks must be ready to burst into actual flames. “Really, John, I can—”

  “No, John is absolutely right,” Hilda interrupted. “The two of you go along, and should there be speculation I’ll be here to assure everyone that it is exactly what it appears to be—John giving you a ride so you can get to Greta’s as quickly as possible. You should take along some of the food we haven’t yet put out,” she added, leading the way to the kitchen, where she loaded a basket with partially filled containers of their meal. She handed the basket to Lydia. “For Luke and the children, even if Greta doesn’t feel like eating.”

  “Greta will appreciate your thoughtfulness,” Lydia said.

  “Well, go on,” Hilda instructed. “I’ll tell Roger and Gert that they need to drive your buggy back to town, Lydia.” She shooed the two of them out the back door in the direction of the barn, where a row of identical black buggies sat lined up at precise angles to one another.

  John helped Lydia onto the seat and then waved to Hilda as he climbed up and took the reins. “That was close,” he murmured with a grin.

  Lydia could not help herself. She burst into laughter and nearly choked trying to cover her mirth as he guided the buggy past the house and out to the road with Hilda Yoder still watching them from the back porch. The tears that spilled down her cheeks were of pure joy, and she could not remember a time when she had felt so lighthearted.

  Then she saw John give her a sideways glance, his own face wreathed in a smile, his eyes twinkling with mischief, and she remembered that there had been times—many of them—when she had felt this way. Back when she and John had been courting, there had been so many times like this.

  * * *

  “I see Hilda Yoder hasn’t changed much,” John said as he let the reins go slack, knowing the horse would find the way back to town without his help. “When we were children she was always kind of the town over
seer, and that seems to still be her role.”

  “She means well.”

  He glanced at Lydia, aware that in the close confines of the buggy their shoulders would touch whenever the vehicle swayed. He sent up a silent prayer of thanks for rutted roads.

  “I expect there is someone like Hilda in most small communities,” Liddy added, “someone who takes it upon herself to make sure things run smoothly—or at least the way she believes is right and proper.”

  “You’ve got a point. My partner’s mother was that woman when...”

  He stopped talking. Rarely, since he’d returned to Celery Fields, had he allowed himself to speak of those years he’d spent living in the outside world. He knew that his neighbors did not wish to hear about such things—certainly Liddy would not want to know the details of his life then. Even if she had raised the question herself that night when he was working on Greta’s chair.

  They rode in silence for several minutes, the mood now stifled by his slip of the tongue.

  “What was it like?” Liddy murmured so softly that at first he wasn’t certain she had really spoken. “Out there, what was it like, John?”

  He took a moment to consider his answer. How much should he say? How much did she really want to know?

  “Did you like that life?” Liddy asked before he could find words to answer her initial question.

  “It was...it was so very different from life here,” he began, glad that the horse seemed content to plod slowly along, giving them more time. “At first it was all so strange. Their ways are not our ways. It took time for me to find my place.”

  “And did you find your place in their world?” There was no accusation or judgment in her words, just curiosity.

  “Once I met George Stevens, things got easier.” He smiled at the memory of that first meeting with the man who would become his friend and business partner. “I had taken a job with his father’s company. The building industry was booming and new orders were coming every day. One day George’s father brought George to me and told me that my job was to take him in hand, teach him how to do the work I was doing.”

  “And you became friends?”

  John chuckled. “Not at first. George certainly wasn’t used to working with his hands. I think he began to hate me a little in those early days, but I knew that his father was preparing him to take over the business and he believed that to be successful you had to know everything about it.”

  “So you became a teacher.”

  “I suppose you could say that. In time, as we worked, we started to talk. He’d had a harder life than I first thought. His father was a true taskmaster, and especially with George. Then his father was in an accident and suddenly George was in charge.” He shook his head. “It’s still hard for me to understand, but the very next day he called me to his father’s office—his office then—and promoted me to foreman for the entire company. A year later, after his father died, he made me a partner in the business.”

  “But surely as a partner you would need money to invest...”

  “I had built up quite a savings by then,” he said, and swallowed the words that would have reminded her that his whole purpose in going away had been to make the money necessary to return and start his own business and marry her. “George could never understand what he called my ‘living on the cheap.’” He smiled. “He spent money almost before he had it in hand. Anyway, he offered me stock in the company at a price that would take all my savings—two years’ worth—but would make me a major shareholder.”

  “And you gave him your money?”

  Now he heard the faintest hint of disapproval creep into her voice. He tightened his grip on the reins. “Yah,” he said, and snapped the reins to urge the horse into a faster pace.

  “So what happened?”

  John’s lips thinned into a hard line as he recalled those difficult times. “The stock market crashed and it seemed like overnight everything just changed. People had no money for clocks or furniture—or to pay for furniture that they had already ordered. The company was heavily invested in bad stocks and had to close up shop.”

  “And the money you had invested?”

  “Gone. Everything was gone—my savings, my job, my ability to find work...” You and the life we had planned together.

  “But surely your friend was in the same position and the two of you...”

  “First of all, he’d lost his business and a lot of money in the bargain, but he still had his family and the means to make it through. Times would be hard, but he assured me that the day would come when things would be better again and then the two of us would start fresh.”

  “So he was able to help see you through these—”

  “That is not their way, Liddy. He offered me a loan, but how was I ever going to repay him?”

  “What did you do?”

  This was the part of his story that John was most reluctant to talk about. He shut his eyes against the images of begging for handouts and working in the citrus groves picking fruit for hours and hours in exchange for a place to sleep and a hot meal. “I came back here,” he said after a moment. I came home to you.

  In silence they approached the cluster of shops and homes that made up the center of Celery Fields. Just before John turned the buggy onto the street that led to Greta and Luke’s house, Liddy reached over and covered his hand with hers.

  “You made the right decision,” she said, and her hand remained on his, her warmth seeping into his fingers and spreading up his arm to settle in his chest as he pulled the buggy to a stop.

  * * *

  Lydia was glad for the wide brim of her bonnet that hid her face from John. His story of the years he had spent away from her had not only touched her, it had infuriated her. So much time wasted and lost when they might have shared those years. And what of this so-called friend and business partner? Did he not care that while he apparently remained in his home with his family, John was left to make do as best he could? What kind of people were these Englischers? By the time she stepped down from the buggy she was fuming about how the people who had called themselves John’s friends had abandoned him. So lost in her own thoughts was she that she marched straight up to the front door and entered her sister’s house without knocking.

  “Tante Lydia!” Samuel shouted as he came racing toward her from the back of the house.

  Almost immediately Luke stepped into the hallway, shushing the boy as he tried to balance the two younger children, one in each arm. Lydia immediately reached to relieve him of one of the children, but he shook his head. “I’ve got them. Could you go and see about Greta?” His eyes shifted toward the stairs and Lydia saw that he looked more haggard and worried than usual. “She’s been ill all through the afternoon.”

  Lydia turned to mount the stairs and saw John waiting uncertainly in the doorway, the basket of food in his hand. “We brought this for you and the children, Luke. Perhaps John could help feed the children while you make Greta some tea?”

  To her relief John did not shy away from the duty she had assigned him. Instead, he looped the handle of the basket over one arm and scooped Samuel into the other. “I’m starving,” he announced. “How about you?”

  “Me, too,” Samuel agreed, and the other two children echoed his words.

  As he passed the stairway on his way to follow Luke to the kitchen, John glanced up at her. In his eyes she saw his concern for her and for Greta and also his assurance that he had things in hand with Luke and the children. She could focus on her sister.

  Lydia removed her bonnet on her way up the stairs, and when she reached the landing she followed the sound of low moaning to the large bedroom at the end of the hall. As soon as she saw her sister, she dropped her bonnet onto a dresser and ran to the bedside where Greta was thrashing about. Her eyes were closed, her lips were parched and her
forehead gleamed with perspiration.

  Lydia soaked a cloth in a nearby basin of tepid water and wiped her sister’s face, smoothing back the strands of golden hair that clung to Greta’s cheeks. “Shh,” she crooned. “I’m here now.”

  Greta’s eyes flew open and she tried to sit up. “Services are over? What time is it? Luke and the children haven’t eaten and...”

  Gently Lydia pushed her back onto the pillows. “They are eating now. I brought a basket of food from services and John is downstairs helping Luke with the children.”

  “John? Here? With you?” She managed a smile. “Progress at last,” she murmured as she relaxed against the pillows and closed her eyes. After several more minutes of restlessness, her breathing settled into the steady rhythm of sleep.

  Lydia studied her sister’s wan face. After a moment she rested her hand on the mound of Greta’s stomach and then instantly removed it when she felt the movement of the child inside. What would it feel like to carry a living being? What would a child of hers look like were she to ever know the joy of motherhood?

  John, she thought as she imagined a towheaded boy running from the house where she lived down to the hardware where John worked. His child—and mine.

  She heard steps in the hallway and got up expecting to see Luke bringing the tea. “She’s resting,” she said softly at the same moment that John entered the room carrying a tray with a teapot and two cups. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said, but at the same time she felt such gladness that he was.

  “Luke has his hands full downstairs. I’ll just set this here and go.” He kept his eyes averted from the bed and Greta’s sleeping form. “Is she...?”

  “Resting a little easier,” Lydia assured him. She did not look at him as she relieved him of the tray and set it on the top of a bureau next to the door. “When she wakes, I’ll try to get her to sip a little tea.”

  “You should have a cup, as well,” John said, and she could feel him watching her.

  “I’ll be fine. Thank you for...everything,” she said, and knew that it came out as if she were dismissing him even as everything inside her cried out for him to stay.