A Widow's Hope

by Vannetta Chapman

  Hannah was helping the child with his breakfast, or perhaps she was merely avoiding Jacob’s gaze.

  The boy, though, had no problem with staring. He cocked his head to the side, as if trying to puzzle through what he saw of Jacob. Then a smile won out over any questions, and he said, “Gudemariye.”

  “And to you,” Jacob replied.

  Hannah’s mother, Claire, motioned him toward a seat. “Of course I remember you, Jacob. Though you’ve grown since then.”

  “Ya, I was a bit of a skinny lad.” This was the awkward part. He never knew if he should share the cause of his scars or wait for someone to ask. With the child in the room, perhaps it would be better to wait.

  Hannah continued to ignore him, but now the boy was watching him closely, curiously.

  “You’re taller too, if I remember right. You were definitely not as tall as Alton when you were a youngie. Now you’re a good six feet, I’d guess.”

  “Six feet and two inches. My mamm used to say I had growth spurts up until I turned twenty.” Jacob accepted a mug of coffee and sat down across the table from the boy.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m Jacob. What’s your name?”

  “Matthew. This is Mamm, and that’s Mammi and Daddi. We’re a family now.” Matthew grinned as if he’d said the most clever thing.

  Hannah met Jacob’s gaze and blushed, but this time she didn’t look away.

  “It’s really nice to meet you, Matthew. I’m going to be working here for a few days.”

  “Working on what?”

  Jacob glanced at Alton, who nodded once. “I’m going to build you a playhouse.”

  * * *

  Hannah heard the conversation going on around her, but she felt as if she’d fallen into the creek and her ears were clogged with water. She heard it all from a distance. Then Matthew smiled that smile that changed the shape of his eyes. It caused his cheeks to dimple. It was a simple thing that never failed to reach all the way into her heart.

  And suddenly Hannah’s hearing worked just fine.

  “A playhouse? For me?”

  “For sure and certain.”

  “How come?”

  Jacob shrugged and waited for Alton to answer the child.

  “Some nice people want you to have one.”

  “Oh. Cool.”

  “Dat, we can’t...”

  “We most certainly can, Hannah. The charity foundation contacted me last week to make sure it was all right, and I said yes. I think it would be a fine thing for Matthew to have.”

  “Will I be able to move around in a playhouse? Like, with my wheelchair?”

  “You most certainly will,” Jacob assured him.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “Because it don’t always fit good. Not in cars or on merry-go-rounds. Sometimes not even in buggies and we have to tie it on the back.”

  “Your chair will fit in your playhouse. I can promise you that.”

  Matthew laughed and stabbed his biscuit with his fork, dipped it in a puddle of syrup he’d poured on his plate and stuffed the gooey mess into his mouth.

  Hannah’s head was spinning. Surely it was a good and gracious thing that someone had commissioned a playhouse for Matthew, but would it be safe for him to play in one? What if he fell out of his chair? What if he rolled out of the playhouse?

  How could her father agree to such a thing?

  And why was it being built by Jacob Schrock? She hadn’t thought about him in years, certainly hadn’t expected to see him again. Why today of all days, when her heart was sore from dreaming of David? Why this morning?

  “Can I help?” Matthew asked.

  “Oh, no.” Hannah abandoned her future worries and focused on the problems at hand. “You’ll leave that to Jacob.”

  “But, Mamm...”

  “We can’t risk your getting hurt.”

  “I’ll be super careful...”

  “And you’d only be in Jacob’s way.”

  Matthew stabbed another piece of biscuit and swirled it into the syrup, but he didn’t plop it in his mouth. Instead he stared at the food, worried his bottom lip and hunched up his shoulders. Her son’s bullheadedness had been quite useful during his initial recovery. When the doctors had said he probably couldn’t do a thing, Matthew had buckled down, concentrated and found a way. There were days, though, when she wondered why Gotte had given her such a strong-willed child.

  Jacob had drunk half his coffee and accepted a plate of eggs and bacon, which he’d consumed rather quickly. Now he sat rubbing his hand up and down his jaw, his clean-shaven jaw. The right side—the unscarred side. Was the injury the reason he’d never married? Was he embarrassed about the scar? Did women avoid him? Not that it was her business, and she’d certainly never ask.

  “I just wanted to help,” Matthew muttered.

  “Now that you mention it, I could use an apprentice.”

  “I could be a ’rentice.” Matthew nodded his head so hard his hair flopped forward into his eyes, reminding Hannah that she would need to cut it again soon.

  “It’s hard work,” Jacob cautioned.

  “I can work hard.”

  “You sure?”

  “Tell him, Mamm. Tell him how hard I work at the center.”

  “You’d have to hand me nails, tools, that sort of thing.”

  “I can do that!” Matthew was rocking in his chair now, and Hannah was wise enough to know the battle was lost.

  “Only if your mamm agrees, of course.”

  She skewered him with a look. Certainly he knew that he’d backed her into an impossible corner. Instead of arguing, she smiled sweetly and said, “If your daddi thinks it’s okay.”

  Hannah’s father readily agreed and then Jacob was pulling out sheets of drawings that showed a playhouse in the shape of a train, with extra-wide doors—doors wide enough for Matthew’s chair, room to pivot the chair, room to play. How could she not want such a thing for her child? The penciled playhouse looked like the stuff of fairy tales.

  When she glanced up at Jacob, he smiled and said in a low voice, “We’ll be extra careful.”

  “I should hope so.”

  And then she stood and began to clear off the dishes. The last thing she needed to do was stand around staring into Jacob Schrock’s deep blue eyes. A better use of her time would be to go to town and pick up the Monday paper so she could study the Help Wanted ads. It looked like that wasn’t going to happen. There was no way she was leaving Matthew outside, working as an apprentice to a man who had no children of his own. She’d come home to find he’d nailed his thumb to a piece of wood, or cut himself sawing a piece of lumber, or fallen and cracked something open. Secondary infections were no laughing matter for a child who was a paraplegic.

  She’d be spending the morning watching Matthew watch Jacob. As soon as he left for the day, she’d head to town because one way or another, she needed to find a job.

  Chapter Two

  Hannah pushed aside her unsettled feelings and worked her way through the morning. She managed to complete the washing and hang it up on the line, and she helped her mother to put lunch on the table, all the while keeping a close eye on what was happening in the backyard.

  When it was time for lunch, Matthew came in proclaiming he was an “official ’rentice now,” and Jacob followed behind him with a sheepish look on his face.

  Her father joined them for the noon meal. Earlier, he had stayed around long enough to confirm where the playhouse would be built and then he’d headed off to the fields. It worried her sometimes, her father being fifty-two and still working behind a team of horses, but her mother only scoffed at that. “What is he supposed to do? Sit in a rocking chair? Your father is as healthy as the bull in the north pasture, and if it’s Gotte’
s wille, he’ll stay that way for many more years.”

  The meal had passed pleasantly enough, though Hannah didn’t like how enamored Matthew was with Jacob Schrock. They laughed and described their morning’s work and talked of trains as if they’d been on one.

  “There’s a place in town called Tender Jim’s.” Jacob reached for another helping of potato salad. “Have you heard of it, Matthew?”

  Matthew stuffed a potato chip into his mouth and shook his head.

  “Down on Danbury Drive. Isn’t it?” Her father sat back, holding his glass of tea with one hand and pulling on his beard with the other. “Nice Englisch fellow.”

  “And what were you doing in Tender Jim’s?” Claire asked.

  “Curious, mostly. I’d taken Dolly to the farrier and had to wait a bit longer than I thought I would. Wandered down and talked to the fellow.”

  “Did he have trains?” Matthew asked.

  “Oh, ya. Certainly, he did. Small ones and large ones.”

  “As large as my playhouse?”

  “Nein. They were toys.”

  “Perhaps we could go by and see them sometime,” Jacob said.

  Hannah jumped up as if she’d been stung by a bee. “Matthew has a full week planned with his physical therapy appointments and all, but danki for the offer.”

  This was exactly why she didn’t want a man like Jacob around—or any man for that matter. They’d raise her son’s hopes, promise him things they wouldn’t deliver and then disappear one day when they realized that Matthew was never going to walk, never going to be normal.

  She pretended to be occupied with putting things up in the refrigerator as Jacob, her father and Matthew went out to look at the “job site.” Her job was to protect Matthew—from strangers who would pretend to be friends, and from upheaval in his life. Which reminded her that she still hadn’t been to town to purchase a newspaper.

  She needed to stop worrying, which was easier said than done. Jacob would be finished with the playhouse in a day or two and then Matthew wouldn’t see him anymore. Didn’t Jacob mention that he was part of a different church district? She hadn’t been home long enough to sort the districts out, but she did know there were a lot of Amish in the area. It would explain why she hadn’t seen him at church.

  Hannah and her mother cleared away the lunch dishes and put together a casserole for dinner and then her mother sat at the table. Hannah continued to peer out the window. What were they doing out there? How could Matthew possibly be helping? Why would Jacob want him to?

  “Come sit down a minute, Hannah.”

  “But—”

  “Come on, now. You’ve been on your feet all morning.”

  Hannah peeked out the window one last time, then walked to the table and sank into one of the chairs. Mamm was putting the finishing touches on a baby quilt for a new mother in their congregation.

  Hannah had to force her eyes away from the pastel fabric and the Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Sam pattern. Her mother had given her a similar quilt when Matthew was born. When Hannah had first wrapped her son in that quilt, she’d trusted that only good things would happen in their future. She’d hoped that one day she would wrap her daughter in the same quilt. Now such beliefs didn’t come so easily.

  “I know you wanted today’s paper, but last week’s is still next to your father’s chair in the sitting room.”

  “How did you know I wanted a paper?”

  “Matthew told me you mentioned it.”

  Had she told Matthew?

  Abandoning any attempt to figure out how her mother knew things, Hannah fetched a highlighter from a kitchen drawer and the newspaper from the sitting room, folded it open to the Help Wanted section and sat down with a sigh.

  “I wish you wouldn’t worry about that.”

  “But we need the money.”

  “Gotte will provide, Hannah.”

  “Maybe He’s providing through one of these ads.”

  The next twenty minutes passed in silence as Hannah’s mood plummeted even lower. The part-time positions paid too little and the full-time positions would require her to be away from home from sunup to sundown, if she could even get one of the positions, which was doubtful since she had no experience. She could always be a waitress at one of the Amish restaurants, but those positions were usually filled by younger girls—girls who hadn’t yet married, who had no children.

  “He’s nice. Don’t you think?”

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  “I don’t know who.”

  “We sound like the owl in the barn.”

  Hannah smiled at her mother and slapped the newspaper shut. “Okay. I probably know who.”

  “I guess you were surprised to see him at the door.”

  “Indeed I was.” Hannah should have kept her mouth shut, but she couldn’t resist asking, “Do you know what happened to him? To his face?”

  “A fire, no doubt.” Her mother rocked the needle back and forth, tracing the outline of a Sunbonnet Sue. “We’ve had several homes destroyed over the years, and always there are injuries. Once or twice the fire was a result of carelessness. I think there was even one caused by lightning.”

  “A shame,” Hannah whispered.

  “That he had to endure such pain—yes. I’ll agree with that. It doesn’t change who he is, though, or his value as a person.”

  “I never said—”

  “You, more than anyone else, should realize that.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “You wouldn’t want anyone looking at Matthew and seeing a child with a disability. That’s not who he is. That’s just evidence of something he’s endured.”

  “There’s no need to lecture me, Mamm.”

  “Of course there isn’t.” She rotated the quilt and continued outlining the appliqué. “I can see that Jacob is self-conscious about his scars, though. I hate to think that anyone has been unkind to him.”

  “His scars don’t seem to be affecting Matthew’s opinion. He looks at Jacob as if he had raised a barn single-handedly.”

  “Gotte has a funny way of putting people in our life right when we need them.”

  “I’m not sure this was Gotte’s work.”

  “I know you don’t mean that. I raised you to have more faith, Hannah. The last year has been hard, ya, I know, but never doubt that Gotte is still guiding your life.”

  Instead of arguing, Hannah opted to pursue a lighter subject. “So Gotte sent Jacob to build my son a playhouse?”

  “Maybe.”

  She nearly laughed. Her mother’s optimism grated on her nerves at times, but Hannah appreciated and loved her more than she could ever say. Mamm had been her port in the storm. Or perhaps Gotte had been, and Mamm had simply nudged her in the correct direction.

  “You have to admit he’s easy on the eyes.”

  “Is that how you older women describe a handsome man?”

  “So you think he’s gut-looking?”

  “That’s not what I said, Mamm.”

  Claire tied off her thread, popped it through the back of the quilt and then rethreaded her needle. “Tell me about this first date you two had, because I can hardly remember it.”

  “Small wonder. I was only sixteen.”

  “Ya? Already out of school, then.”

  “I was. In fact, I was working at the deli counter in town.”

  “I remember that job. You always brought home the leftover sandwiches.”

  “Jacob and I attended the same school, in the old district when we lived on Jackspur Lane. He’s two years older than me.”

  “I’m surprised I don’t remember your stepping out with him.”

  “Our house was quite busy then.” Hannah was the youngest of three girls. She’d always expected her life to follow their fairy-tale existence.
“Beth had just announced her plans to marry Carl, and Sharon was working with the midwife.”

  “I do remember that summer. I thought things would get easier when you three were out of school, but suddenly I had trouble keeping up with everyone.”

  “The date with Jacob, it was only my second or third, and I was still expecting something like I read in the romance books.”

  Her mother tsked.

  “They were Christian romance, Mamm.”

  “I’m guessing your date with Jacob didn’t match with what you’d been reading.”

  “Hardly. First of all, he showed up with mud splattered all over the buggy, and the inside of it was filled with pieces of hay and fast-food wrappers and even a pair of dirty socks.”

  “Didn’t he have older brothers?”

  “He had one.”

  “So I guess they shared the buggy.”

  Hannah shrugged. “We’d barely made it a quarter mile down the road when we both noticed his horse was limping.”

  “Oh my.”

  “It was no big thing. He jumped out of the buggy and began to clean out her hooves with a pick.”

  “While you waited.”

  “At first. Then I decided to help, which he told me in no short fashion not to do.”

  “There are times when it’s hard for a man, especially a young man, to accept a woman’s help.”

  “I waited about ten minutes and finally said I was heading home.”

  “Changed your mind before you were even out of sight of the house.”

  “Maybe. What I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to stand on the side of the road while Jacob Schrock took care of his horse—something he should have done before picking me up.”

  “Could have been his brother’s doing.”

  “I suppose.”

  “I hope you didn’t judge him harshly because of a dirty buggy and a lame horse.”

  “Actually, I don’t think I judged him at all. I simply realized that I didn’t want to spend the evening with him.”

  “Well, he seems to have turned into a fine young man.”

  Hannah refolded the newspaper and pointed her highlighter at her mother. “Tell me you are not matchmaking.”

  “Why would I do such a thing?”