The Amish Seamstress

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “Are you okay?” Ella asked from the counter.

  I nodded, but I wasn’t. I was so confused. Had I been wrong to come to Indiana?

  After stacking the two plates, I stood and headed toward the gray bucket on the stand along the wall, depositing everything there. “Danke for the coffee and snack,” I said to her.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m going back up to Rosalee.” I returned to my chair for my cape and wiggled it over my shoulders, fastening it in the front.

  “I’ll be up by eleven or so,” she said.

  As I neared the door, a Plain woman with a little girl of about two came inside. Ella called out a hello and then said, “Izzy wait. This is Luke’s mamm and sister, Cora and Annie. Their farm is next door.”

  After Cora greeted me, she gestured down at Annie and said, “She’s a shy one. But only at first. She’ll warm up to you in no time.”

  “Coming to the bakery is Annie’s favorite thing to do,” Ella said.

  Annie nodded, her little kapp bumping against her mamm’s back.

  “How long will you be staying?” Cora asked me as she slipped out of her cape and put it on the back of the closest chair.

  “For a few weeks, until Rosalee is back on her feet.”

  “I hope you’ll have a chance to meet Tom while you’re here,” Cora said, helping Annie out of her cape. “He’s our oldest.”

  “And quite the catch,” Ella murmured as an aside to me.

  I smiled in return, not sure how to respond. If he was anything like Luke, I could imagine he would be a catch, but that made absolutely no difference to me. I wasn’t interested. I loved Zed, no matter how rudely he had just behaved.

  Annie ran forward and wrapped her arms around Ella’s legs. I knew the girl didn’t have any idea she would soon be an aunt. How fun for Ella’s baby to have a playmate—and aenti—so close by.

  I told Cora I looked forward to seeing her again soon and meeting the rest of her family. Then I left the bakery and went back up the path to the house. When I entered the kitchen, Rosalee greeted me from the table, where she was sitting and working on the recipes. I sat down to help her, deciding I would do my handwork after lunch while she rested.

  “Zed is such a nice young man,” she said, giving me a glance.

  Still confused and not wanting to talk about him, I just nodded and changed the subject, telling her I’d met Cora and Annie in the bakery.

  Rosalee smiled. “Wait until you meet Eddie. He’s as cute as can be too. He looks like a tiny version of his big brother Luke.”

  “How about Tom?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. “Does he also look like Luke?”

  Rosalee didn’t answer for a long moment. Finally she shook her head and said, “Tom is as different from Luke as can be.”

  I wasn’t sure of her meaning. Luke was tall, dark, and handsome. He was also sweet, kind, and dependable. If Tom wasn’t anything like Luke, then perhaps he wasn’t all that much of a catch after all.

  ELEVEN

  As the week wore on, Rosalee and I settled into a routine, and Ella’s good nature persisted. I was sorely disappointed to learn that Zed had a big test to study for and couldn’t come for the weekend, but I managed to muddle through without him. By that Monday, I couldn’t believe I’d already been at the Home Place for a whole week.

  Each day I assisted Rosalee with all of her personal needs, and we spent time copying her recipe collection as well. She was also working on crocheting an afghan for Ella’s baby, so we usually devoted several hours each afternoon to handwork, and then I would continue working while she rested. Luke took a package to the post office for me and mailed it to Susie. I’d soon have another set of place mats to send. The good news was that I was getting as much work done in Indiana as I’d been getting done at home, even though Rosalee’s sewing machine was a bit harder to use, powered by a foot pedal and not a generator. At least using hers wasn’t as noisy.

  Though I genuinely liked Rosalee, it turned out she wasn’t the storyteller Verna had been. Perhaps it was because, as an only child, she didn’t have as many people to talk about in her family as Verna did.

  Eddie, Luke’s nine-year-old brother, stopped by to visit most days. A few times he brought Annie with him when they were on their way to the bakery. But it wasn’t until the end of my first full week at the Home Place that I met Tom. It was a bitterly cold day. The temperature had fallen to the low thirties, dipping into the twenties every night. There had been no precipitation and therefore no rain—just cold, cold air. I was hanging laundry on the line when an Amish man wandered out of the woods, and I knew immediately who he was even though Rosalee had been right. Tom was as different from his brother Luke as could be. He wasn’t as handsome, for one thing, though he was much taller, with broader shoulders.

  “You must be Izzy,” he called out. “You’re as pretty as my mamm said.”

  My face grew warm, even though the cold stung against it. His words were inappropriate, and I was trying to decide how to respond when he seemed to realize that himself.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Let’s try that again.” He came to a stop and gave me a broad smile. “I’m Tom. It’s nice to meet you.”

  I forced a smile in return. “You too.”

  “How are they treating you around here?”

  “Gut.” Bending down, I pulled a damp apron from the basket, and as I rose glanced at him again, once more comparing his looks with those of his brother. Somehow, where Luke’s features were soft and kind, Tom’s were sharper, his dark eyes and narrow lips sporting a vaguely sarcastic, teasing expression. Ella had told me Tom had courted several different girls but couldn’t seem to settle on choosing a wife. Judging by his looks and magnetism, I imagined he’d broken quite a few hearts, though for some reason he didn’t appeal to me.

  “Will you be here long?” he asked and then winked, a dimple flashing in one cheek.

  Turning away, I laid the apron across the line and speared it with a clothespin as I answered. “Just for another couple of weeks. I’ll probably head home in time for Thanksgiving.”

  “That’s a shame. What makes you want to hurry back to Lancaster County so soon?”

  I shrugged.

  “A beau?” he pressed.

  I ducked my head as I told him that he was being inappropriate again, especially considering we’d just met.

  Instead of looking properly chastised, he grinned.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” he said, but his apology did not seem earnest to me at all.

  Before I could think of a response, Luke’s voice boomed down from the barn loft, saving me from further embarrassment.

  “Tom! Thanks for coming over. Be right down.”

  Tom looked over toward his brother and then turned back to me and tipped his hat. “I’m going to help Luke move an old axle. See you soon.”

  “Ya. See you around.”

  I finished up the rest of the laundry, but Tom never came back by. He did, however, come in with Luke for the midday meal, much to my surprise.

  With more people around than just the two of us, Tom managed to tone down the charm. He was friendly rather than flirty, though a few of his gazes lingered a bit too long. The thing was, with two older sisters and two younger ones, I had seen guys like him before, and they held no attraction for me at all. The problem with them was that you just could never know if they were genuinely interested in you or they simply flirted from sheer habit.

  When the meal was over and I was helping to clear the table, Tom’s eyes met mine, and he gave me a discreet, sultry look I think was meant to make me swoon. Instead, I had to work hard not to laugh. He was handsome and charming, yes, but he was the kind of guy my mother called glitschich, or slippery. Watch out for glitschich men, Izzy, because they think they can slide right into your life and then slide back out again just as smooth.

  I believed her and always took her advice. After all, Mamm should know. Before she
married my daed, she’d had experience with a glitschich man herself, a guy named David who made her promises, gotten her pregnant, and then disappeared. My daed had married her soon after, knowing she was carrying another man’s baby but willing to raise it as his own. That baby was my oldest sister Sadie, who once told me that our daed was her only daed, whether he was her biological father or not.

  Tom didn’t leave when the meal was over, but at least Ella kept the conversation going as she and I did the dishes, chattering on about a customer who had bought her entire batch of sticky buns that morning and then talking about Annie coming in with Cora.

  “There’s no way Mamm would have taken us for treats like that when we were little,” Tom said. “And even if she’d wanted to, Daed would never have allowed it.”

  “Well,” Rosalee said, “perhaps Annie has better parents than you did.”

  That stopped Tom for a moment, but then he began to laugh, as did I.

  “I guess it’s true what they say,” Tom told us. “Parents tend to mellow with age.”

  The second week passed by quickly as I cared for Rosalee and focused on my handwork every afternoon while she rested.

  On Friday morning the weather took a turn, growing colder, and at dinner Luke said a front was blowing in. “We’ll have snow by tomorrow,” he added. “And a huge drop in temperature, down into the teens.”

  Ella said if that were the case, she’d better get back out to the shop.

  “Customers always stop by ahead of a storm.”

  “They’d better,” Rosalee said. “If a storm blows in too early, it’ll hurt profits.”

  I had already learned that Saturday was the busiest day of the week for them by far.

  Once they left, I settled Rosalee into the living room in front of the fire, returned to the kitchen to wash the dishes, and then spent the next hour doing handwork. I tried to pry family stories from her, but it wasn’t easy. The ones she came up with—about her ancestors who first immigrated to America from Switzerland—were ones I pretty much already knew because they had been featured in Zed’s film about his wood carving great-great-great grandfather, Abraham Sommers.

  Eventually we fell silent again and worked quietly until Rosalee said she needed to rest. I wasn’t surprised. The home health physical therapist had come that morning and worn her out. Rosalee was using the walker more and more, but I followed to help transfer her to the bed.

  Luke came through the back door as I returned to the living room. “Do you have anything to mail? I’m going into town to deposit Ella’s receipts.”

  “Yes, but it can wait until Monday,” I told him, explaining that I’d finished one of the runners and a set of place mats, but I wanted to get another set ready to go with them.

  He shook his head. “I think this storm might be bad, Izzy. If you want your things to get there anytime soon, we should send them on their way now.”

  Luke was quiet and thoughtful enough that I couldn’t help but take him seriously. The cold snap had continued for so long—going on six days—that whatever snow was coming with this storm would likely stick around a while. I packaged what I had and addressed the box to Susie, and then I retrieved money for postage from my room and gave it to him, thanking him as I did so.

  “I’ll keep feeding the woodstove,” I added.

  “Gut. I appreciate it. It takes a lot to heat this old house.”

  We shared a smile, and I couldn’t help thinking, not for the first time, what a kind, even-tempered, and respectful man he was.

  If only I could say the same about his brother Tom.

  I spent the afternoon thinking about Zed, hoping he was planning to come for the weekend. So far, I’d been here in Indiana for eleven days and had only seen him that one time. He’d told Ella he’d be back soon, but to me it seemed as if it had been a long time. The more days that passed, the more the memory of his odd, snobbish behavior faded and the more I ached to see him.

  Of course, if he was coming he needed to get here before the snow started or he likely wouldn’t be able to come at all. I sure hoped it was the former. I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful than being snowed in here together.

  At first I wondered if he even knew about the pending snowstorm, but then I realized he was surrounded by televisions and newspapers and other people all day long. Students and teachers had probably been talking about it nonstop.

  On the other hand, if he was aware that the snow was coming, why hadn’t he already made a point of getting here? Surely the window of opportunity for driving his car over from Goshen would be closing soon.

  “Izzy, stop being so jumpy,” Rosalee finally told me. “Every time a car turns into the bakery, I think you’re going to leap right out of your skin.”

  She said it with a smile, and I had to wonder if she knew what was making me act this way. In response I stood and stretched, looking out the front window, glad to see that at least it wasn’t snowing yet.

  “Ella has had quite a rush on the bakery,” I told her, glad to know that some of tomorrow’s profits had come in today.

  Rosalee was tired, so I helped her down for an afternoon nap and spent the next hour simply gazing out of the window, watching for that banged-up old red Saab to make its way up the driveway.

  Ella came up to the house at four looking tired but pleased, saying she’d sold out, including the sticky buns she had prepared to bake tomorrow morning but had baked today instead, plus several extra pies.

  “The Englischers said the prediction is for ice first and then snow,” Ella said, filling the kettle with water.

  “How long is it supposed to last?”

  “I think they said it should snow all night and all day tomorrow and then finally taper off at some point tomorrow evening.”

  “Do they keep the roads plowed here the way they do back home?”

  She nodded. “The main roads, yes, though it takes them a while to do the lane, which is a problem. Even once Luke clears the parking lot in front of the bakery, that doesn’t do much good if nobody can get to it.”

  I wondered if he did the snow clearing with a shovel, or if their district permitted snowblowers.

  “Anyway,” Ella continued before I could ask, “can you do me a favor?” She took a package of stew meat from the refrigerator. “Run down to the root cellar and grab some potatoes and carrots.”

  Glad for the distraction, I flung my cape over my shoulders, picked up the flashlight from the shelf, and went outside into the falling dusk. Tiny shards of ice stung at my face as I made my way across the lawn.

  I always loved the first snowstorm of the season, not so much to play in but to feel safe and cozy inside and curl up with a good book or a project. Mamm would make hot chocolate and Daed would build extra big fires both in the woodstove and the fireplace. The boys would trek in and out, back to their sledding and fort-building and ice-skating. I’d go skating a time or two each season myself, but it didn’t appeal to me the way it did to my siblings.

  I knew Luke’s family had a pond, and I wondered if they ever used it for skating. Eddie was old enough, though little Annie was probably still too young. Zed was a good skater, but he’d grown so tall in the past year that I had to wonder if he’d still be as graceful as he used to be.

  I pushed open the root cellar door and grabbed a burlap sack from beside the mountain of potatoes, shaking out the bag before I started to fill it, first with potatoes, then carrots, and then several onions. I turned and hurried out, hoping I didn’t have any spiders hanging on me. It was completely dark as I headed back toward the house without even a hint of moonlight. The ice pelted my face and bare hands and danced at my feet as it hit the ground.

  We’d just sat down to stew and biscuits when a knock fell against the back door. We barely heard it over the crackle of fire in the woodstove and the ice against the window. Luke stood and shuffled toward the door. My heart pounded, and I prayed it was Zed.

  “Ach,” Rosalee said. “Who could that be
out on a night like this?”

  “Probably my stupid little brother,” Ella replied with a roll of her eyes.

  Sure enough, after a moment Zed came tromping into the kitchen behind Luke, his eyes shining, his cheeks bright red from the cold. I grinned, and it was all I could do not to jump up and throw myself into his arms.

  “Cutting it kind of close with this weather, aren’t you, college boy?” Ella asked him, her eyebrows angled in a stern expression.

  He gave her a sheepish grin in return. “Not close enough, I’m afraid.”

  We all looked at him, wide eyed, as he described how he’d made it here fine, only to slide into the ditch right after he’d turned into the driveway, just a hundred feet or so from the house. Again, I wanted to hug him, this time out of concern, but I held myself in check.

  “Maybe you should call a tow truck,” Rosalee said.

  Before Zed could answer, Ella shook her head. “Nah, sit down and eat supper first. Get warmed up. Your car’s not going anywhere right now anyway.”

  Zed grinned and then hung up his coat while Ella set another place at the table across from me. Soon we all fell into easy conversation.

  At one point, I couldn’t help but compare this supper with Zed to dinner with Tom earlier in the week. I’d felt tense the entire time with Tom, afraid of what he might say next. But with Zed I hung on his every word, wanting to hear all the details of his adventures. A few times I caught myself smiling too broadly and reminded myself to tone it down.

  It wasn’t just with Zed that I felt comfortable. The longer I stayed at the Home Place, the more I enjoyed Ella, Luke, and Rosalee, and I couldn’t help but imagine them as my in-laws. In fact, my relationship with Ella felt like a better fit than with my own sisters. I couldn’t believe there was a time when I had found her abrasive and unlikeable.

  As it turned out, Zed didn’t have to call a tow truck. With the help of Tom and a team of draft horses, they pulled the car out and dragged it over to the first spot in the parking lot, where it would stay until the lane was plowed.

  By the time I was readying Rosalee for bed, Zed was back in the house, talking and laughing with Ella in the kitchen. I wanted nothing more than to be with him and didn’t even realize I was rushing Rosalee’s bedtime routine until I transferred her into her bed too quickly, bumping her leg. She yelped.