Dawdi didn’t seem to notice that Melvin could barely string a sentence together. “I know this is strange, to see us this time of night, but we thought you’d want to see something very exciting that Dorothy found.”
Melvin squinted through the screen door. “Dorothy?”
“Dorothy Miller,” Dawdi said. “You know her? That wonderful-pretty girl who lives on First Street with the fabric shop?”
Melvin scratched his cheek. “Jah. I know Dorothy.”
“She knows you like the license plate game and brought something for you to see. It’s parked in the driveway.” When Melvin didn’t seem inclined to do anything but stand there, Dawdi said, “Do you want to come out and take a look? You’ll really like it.”
Melvin fell silent—well, more silent—and Reuben half wondered if he had fallen asleep. Was Dorothy sure about wanting to marry Melvin? She had said she was desperate.
“What do you think?” Dawdi said.
“Okay.” The door slowly swung open, and Melvin stepped out onto the porch.
Dawdi motioned for Reuben to lead the way, and he shoved branches out of his path as he went. Melvin’s yard needed a chain saw and an ax. They slogged through the jungle to the car, an old Cadillac that Dawdi’s friend Ken saw while filling his car at a Shawano gas station. The car’s owner, Haku Kalani, had been more than happy to help Ken, especially when Ken promised his wife she’d get to meet some Amish people.
Haku and his wife, Nora, sat in the front with Dorothy waiting in the back, ready to jump out as soon as Melvin appeared—or ready to pounce, as the case may be.
The car’s headlights were bright enough to light the way once they reached Melvin’s brick driveway. Melvin followed Reuben to the passenger side of the car. Dorothy opened the door and slipped slowly out of her seat, as if she knew any sudden movements might send Melvin back to the safety of his house. “Hi, Melvin,” she said, with a subdued smile and a tone that would have coaxed a badger to trust her.
Melvin tensed so quickly, Reuben could almost hear his spine stiffen. He didn’t say a word in reply as his gaze darted between Dawdi and Dorothy.
Dorothy hesitated only for a second before stepping behind the car and pointing to the license plate. “Felty says you play the license plate game.”
Melvin shuffled around to the back of the car as if Dorothy was leading him to his doom. He took a look at the license plate, and the wary expression on his face shifted ever so slightly. “Well,” he said, scratching the stubble on his chin with four curled fingers. “Well.”
Dorothy clasped her hands together in front of her. “Felty says it’s rare. I wanted you to see it.”
Melvin transferred his weight from one foot to the other. “Well.”
“Do you like it?” Dorothy said, budding hope making her seem ten years younger.
Melvin scratched his chin again and glanced at Dorothy. While his posture was still rigid, his forehead didn’t look so much like a plowed field anymore. “That’s really something.”
“I’ve never seen a Hawaii license plate before,” Reuben said, fearing they’d descend into uncomfortable silence if he didn’t keep the conversation going.
Melvin kept scratching his chin, which must have been extremely itchy. “It wonders me how they got it all the way from Hawaii.”
Melvin had actually uttered a complete sentence in front of a woman. Reuben looked at Dawdi in surprise. Dawdi nodded back as if he’d been expecting it all along. Dawdi had warned him not to underestimate the power of the license plate game.
Dorothy seemed more surprised than any of them. “Haku told me all about it. He lived in Hawaii until his company transferred him to California. They shipped his car over on a boat. He and his fraa drove to Wisconsin for a vacation.” Dorothy motioned to the front of the car where Haku and Nora sat patiently and quietly. They’d been warned Melvin might be a little timid. “Would you like to meet them?”
Melvin took three steps backward as if he were going to make a run for it. “Nae, denki.”
Dorothy’s eyes flashed with something akin to panic. She knew she’d made a mistake asking Melvin to reach far outside the little box he’d put himself in. “Oh, they didn’t expect to talk to you. They just came to show you the plate.”
Dawdi patted his trousers pocket where he kept his small notebook. “We both got Hawaii tonight.”
Melvin took one step forward, like maybe he was thinking he didn’t have to run away. “I saw Rhode Island three weeks ago at the lake.”
“Ach, du lieva,” Dawdi said. “I need to do more fishing.”
“I’ll keep looking,” Dorothy said. “Lord willing, we can find all fifty this year.”
Dorothy had just made herself part of the game. It was wonderful clever of her.
Melvin gave Dorothy a nearly, almost, barely kind of smile, as if he didn’t know quite what to make of her— as if he were too stunned to form any coherent thoughts.
Dorothy’s confidence seemed to grow when Melvin actually made eye contact. She went around to the side of the car, opened the door, and pulled out the rectangular cake carrier she’d held on her lap since they’d picked her up. “I brought you a cake, Melvin,” she said, giving no other explanation. She couldn’t very well tell him that she hoped the way to Melvin’s heart was through his stomach and she hoped Melvin would bring her eggs from his chickens and hold her hand and propose before September.
Melvin could only swallow so much in one day.
When he seemed not to know what to do about it, Dorothy foisted the cake carrier into Melvin’s hands. “It’s pineapple upside-down cake. I didn’t know what kind was your favorite, so I guessed.” She looked daggers at Reuben as if it were his fault she didn’t know what kind of cake Melvin liked.
Reuben grimaced sheepishly. It probably was his fault. Dorothy had asked him to find out.
“I like pineapple,” Melvin said, holding the carrier away from his body as if it might explode.
“Well, aren’t you going to invite us in to have a piece?” Dawdi was as sharp as a tack and cool under pressure.
“Uh.” Melvin was again at a loss for words.
Dawdi tapped on Haku’s window, and Haku rolled it down. “Thank you for the ride, Haku,” Dawdi said. “We are going in the house to have a slice of cake with Melvin, and then he’ll take us home.”
Haku’s dark face accentuated the bright white of his teeth. “No problem, Mr. Helmuth. It is my pleasure.”
“You’ll still come to dinner tomorrow night?” Dawdi said.
Haku grinned at his wife. “We wouldn’t miss it.”
Melvin stepped away as Haku backed his car out of the driveway. “My table is piled high,” Melvin said, holding the cake in one hand and scratching his chin with the other.
“How high?” Dorothy said, with that look in her eye that said she was willing to move mountains.
Melvin opened his palm and touched a spot at the level of his waist.
Dorothy pushed her sleeves up past her elbow. “Leave that to me. You’re going to want a taste of this cake.” With a spring in her step, she led the way as if she already lived there, and Melvin, Dawdi, and Reuben followed close behind.
Too bad Fern couldn’t have come. She loved cake, and Reuben would have seen to it that she ate at least two pieces. But even more than the cake, she loved seeing people happy.
And Reuben loved seeing her that way.
Chapter Sixteen
Fern swiped her arm across her face to get rid of the moisture that kept seeping from her eyes like a leaky faucet. Here she was, wrist deep in toilet water, hungry, and tired, and she couldn’t come up with anything better to think about than Reuben Helmuth?
She quickly swabbed the toilet bowl and sprayed down the rest of the toilet. The sharp smell of disinfectant stung her nose and made her eyes water even more. Gute. At least she was crying over something useful.
Even though she bristled at the thought of Reuben finding out, Fern didn’t really
mind scrubbing toilets or mopping floors, and they paid her ten dollars an hour for the gas stations and twelve dollars an hour for the offices. Working six hours a day cleaning gas station bathrooms and six hours a day cleaning doctor and law offices, she was able to send almost four hundred dollars a week home to Mamm and Dat. Dat didn’t hound her to come home so much when she sent that kind of money their way. It was almost cheaper for them if she was gone.
Sending money home didn’t leave a lot of money for groceries, but Fern didn’t mind going hungry for Reuben’s sake. Her parents need never know that the Schmuckers weren’t feeding her a bite. The bread and cheese Dorothy had given her last Wednesday had lasted nearly a week, and she ate Anna Helmuth’s cooking when she was extra hungry.
Dorothy had offered Fern a job on Friday afternoons at the fabric shop though she couldn’t afford to pay her, except in food. Because people in the community considered Dorothy an old maid, they paid her little attention—as if she didn’t matter because she didn’t have a husband. But Dorothy noticed everything. Food was the best thing she could have offered Fern. Dorothy had once been friends with Barbara and Wally Schmucker’s daughter Lisa before she’d left the church to marry an Englischer. Dorothy knew a lot more about Barbara Schmucker than most people did.
But Dorothy was sensitive to Fern’s dignity, so she had offered her a job instead of a handout. Her friends here in Bonduel knew Fern didn’t want a handout, no matter how poor she was, so they helped with what they could and left the rest to Gotte. Most of them didn’t know how bad it was at the Schmuckers’, but some of them suspected—Dorothy was more conscious of Fern’s troubles than anybody.
Fern sniffed back her tears. How could she feel sorry for herself when she had three gute jobs and a place to sleep? Some people had none of those.
Juana, the tiny Mexican lady who cleaned offices with Fern, stuck her head in the stall and gave her a kind smile. “You okay, Fairn?” Juana spoke almost no English, but she was sweet and motherly and never without a smile on her face.
Fern got on her feet and flushed the toilet one more time for good measure. “Sí, Juana. Yo bueno,” she said.
Juana’s eyes lit up at Fern’s attempt to speak Spanish, even though Fern knew about six Spanish words and her accent was terrible. Juana wrapped her latex-gloved hands around Fern’s waist and gave her a warm hug. She couldn’t have been more than four-foot-ten. It was as high as she could reach. “You good. No cry,” she said. “Boys are stupido.”
How in the world did Juana guess that Fern was crying over a boy?
Maybe that was the only thing girls ever cried over.
Fern nodded and gave Juana a quick squeeze. “Boys are stupido,” she repeated, wishing she actually believed it. It would make things easier if Reuben wasn’t worth the trouble. She picked up her spray bottle and moved to the next stall.
She had purposefully avoided Reuben since gmay on Sunday when she had run all the way to the Schmuckers’ house without stopping, her tears mixing with the rain that ran down her face. Even when she had been an irritating little tag-along as a child, Reuben had always kept an eye out for her. He’d helped her up when she tripped and made sure she never fell too far behind, even when John and the other boys tried to run fast enough to lose her.
Sunday was the first time Reuben had purposefully neglected her. He’d let her walk home by herself in the rain, and he hadn’t even cared.
Fern put all her emotion into spraying the toilet. She made herself stop when disinfectant puddled on the tile floor. She was a girl who cleaned toilets, and a pig farmer’s daughter. She had never really deserved Reuben’s kindness, so why did the lack of it hurt so much now? He was forging his own way, making friends, finding love again. Couldn’t she be happy about that?
Why did the thought of Scrabble with Sadie Yoder make Fern ill? She could just imagine Reuben with that heart-stopping smile on his face, eager to make a gute impression on Sadie’s parents, laughing and joking, maybe even calling Sadie a pet name like Fernly or something equally as silly. She couldn’t blame him for canceling knitting lessons to be with Sadie, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
But she should like it. Wasn’t this exactly what she had wanted to happen? If Reuben was happy, Fern was happy. She’d been tagging after him long enough. It was time to leave the poor boy alone and get out of his way.
She wanted to believe that if she stayed away long enough, he’d come looking for her, which wouldn’t be a gute thing, considering where he might find her.
Maybe it was time to go back to Sugarcreek.
Her throat tightened, and she blinked back more tears. She couldn’t go home yet. She needed to help Reuben wash Esther’s third dog tomorrow. And then there was the benefit haystack supper on Friday night. And she had promised Anna she would teach Reuben how to knit.
Reuben didn’t need her for that. Sadie was a better knitter than Fern would ever be.
Fern scrubbed her rag across the toilet seat as if she could wipe the porcelain off if she pressed hard enough. Reuben was going to be okay. She wanted him to come back to Sugarcreek, but now that he and Sadie were coming along so well, that seemed less likely than ever.
Her breath hitched in her throat.
She should go home.
Still. She wanted her brother and Reuben to be friends again, even if Reuben never came back to Sugarcreek. She wanted John to apologize to Reuben and Reuben to say out loud that he forgave John. She had to do that one last thing.
For Reuben’s sake.
Then she’d go home.
A tear escaped her eye and plopped into the toilet.
“You okay, chiquita?”
“Jah. I’m okay.”
But she’d never be able to breathe again without that hitch in her throat.
Chapter Seventeen
Reuben tapped the broom across the cement, trying to keep the floor at least partially swept up halfway through the benefit haystack supper. He stole another glance at Fern, who was dishing up rice at the far table. As if she sensed his gaze on her, she lifted her head and smiled at him. Even from across the warehouse, she almost knocked him over.
And what was it about her lively eyes that always made him catch his breath?
She wore a cheery light blue apron over her brown dress that brought out the cinnamon highlights in her auburn hair and made her eyes look extra chocolatey. She was the prettiest girl in Bonduel, even though she was from Sugarcreek, Ohio.
Johnny Raber wasn’t the only boy in Bonduel who had taken notice of Fern King, though he was the most obvious about his admiration. Two boys sat at one of the long tables eating haystacks and glancing at Fern every few seconds, while Marty Lambright and Abe Kauffman loitered near the open door to the warehouse, keeping an eye on Fern and the other girls serving food. Johnny Raber hovered near Fern, not daring to speak, but not straying far from her. He stood four feet behind her while she served food to Englischers and Amish.
Reuben raised an eyebrow at Fern and motioned to Johnny with a slight nod of his head. She took a quick look behind her and turned back to her rice, her face glowing with an attractive peaches-and-cream blush. She eyed Reuben, pursed her lips together, and shook her head slightly, as if to warn him not to do anything to humiliate poor Johnny Raber. He grunted his indignation, although she was too far away to hear it. She knew him better than to think he’d do anything to embarrass Johnny. Reuben liked to tease Fern, but he wouldn’t do it at Johnny’s expense.
“I’m driving you home tonight,” he mouthed.
She stared at him with a puzzled look on her face. “What?” she mouthed back.
Reuben leaned his broom against the wall and pointed to Fern, then to himself, then pantomimed opening a buggy door and jiggling some reins to get the horse moving.
Fern’s mouth formed into an O, and she peered doubtfully at Reuben before her attention was pulled away by a plump Englischer wanting a scoop of rice.
Reuben frowned. He deserved her hesi
tation. He’d told her he would take her home last Sunday and failed her, and he hadn’t seen her once this week to apologize. She’d sent him a note on Wednesday morning telling him she couldn’t come with him to wash Esther’s dog because she’d been able to pick up an extra shift at work.
What kind of shift? He still didn’t know.
Thursday was another day at work for her, and as of a week ago, her Fridays were spent at Dorothy Miller’s fabric shop dusting shelves and cutting fabric for customers. If Reuben didn’t know better, he’d think she was avoiding him. But that was silly. Fern had never been able to resist poking her nose into his life. Surely she’d want to know how things were coming along with Sadie.
Wouldn’t she?
He scowled so hard, his face hurt. He was wonderful mad at himself for canceling the knitting lesson. The more he considered his behavior, the more ashamed he felt about it. Fern might have been an underling in Sugarcreek, but she didn’t deserve to be treated like she was expendable when he got a better offer.
He hadn’t seen Fern this week at all, but he’d seen Sadie three times. She just kept finding excuses for him to come over. First it was the dairy and a game of Scrabble. Then on Tuesday he’d helped her inspect cow hooves, and on Thursday, they’d gone to a bonfire at the lake with a few of die youngie.
Reuben snatched up his broom and turned his face away so he couldn’t see Fern, not even in his peripheral vision, though he wasn’t sure why it mattered. Even if she saw him frowning with his whole face, she wouldn’t guess that he was thinking that Sadie had neglected to invite Fern to the bonfire last night. Of course, with her work schedule, she might not have been able to come. That was probably why she hadn’t been invited.
Reuben swept so hard, he was soon sending up a cloud of dust. He relaxed his grip on the handle and ambled farther away from the tables. No one wanted their food seasoned with dirt.
The benefit haystack supper was being held in one of Vernon Raber’s big warehouses. Since the Amish didn’t buy health insurance, a haystack supper was one way they raised money to help pay for medical expenses of district members. The Burkholders’ little girl needed leukemia treatments. They hoped to raise two thousand dollars. Reuben had come early in Dawdi’s two-seater buggy to help set up tables, and Mammi and Dawdi were coming later with Reuben’s cousin Moses, his wife Lia, and their son.
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