by Faye Sonja
A couple minutes after ten in the morning and she had already felt like she had done a full week’s work. Minna looked around the small diner that sat on one of the most popular streets in Radish County, Ohio and wondered if she would ever get away from this type of work. She wanted to work somewhere more secluded, quaint and off the well-traveled path. It didn’t have to be quiet, because a little noise every now and then was enough to make her understand she was not alone in the world, but it needed to be more than just this… whatever this was, it simply needed to be more.
“Minna! Look awake!” Sierra hollered at her.
She groaned and took the cup of coffee the woman offered, praying her day would pass by quicker. It was nice on a day when she could hole up in her room and not have to scrub the dirty diner floors.
“Howdy!” A man called out as he entered, seemingly twice the size of the door that closed behind him. There was a less than enthused response to his hollering but he didn’t seem to care. He waddled in, a stick helping him move between the chairs that crowded his walking space. His girth was much more than his feet looked like they could manage, but the kindness in his eyes was unmistakable.
“Simon!” she squealed as she saw the man that had been gracious enough to provide her a ride when she was walking down the road that night.
“Ahhh there she is!” he exclaimed and twirled her in his arms as she walked hurriedly to him. “I have missed your perky face and your wonderful pies.”
“I will have a slice here for you in a few minutes,” she said hooking her arms in his and ignoring the envious stares of the other girls around. To be honest she was not even sure if it was envy or if they were simply wondering how she could take such joy in seeing this man. She did not much care about what they thought to give an explanation. She walked him to his seat and served him his usual.
Minna looked down at him smiling up at her and it made her day. That put a little pep in her step as she went about serving him what she thought was best. She first served him the almond pie she had been trying to perfect since she got there. It had been the last thing she had tasted from her mother’s kitchen. It was a memory and a fleeting taste that had stuck with her throughout her time here. The customers loved it and so Sierra gave her free rein of the kitchen to make as many as she liked.
“Mmmm! Lovely!” the man exclaimed as the pie all but melted in his mouth. Minna smiled joyfully at the appreciation he showed.
“Sierra wants you around the back,” one of the girls walked up to the table and whispered to her loud enough for the customer to hear. Minna smiled at the gentleman and followed the flurry of the girl’s long blue dress, reminiscent of the Amish wear they had all left behind, and the arrogant clicking of her heels along the cobblestone floors towards the back.
“I heard you turned down Brian on his offer to take you out,” Sierra said when they were together.
“Yes. He is not quite the man for me,” she said avoiding Sierra’s gaze. “I want the more traditional type of man.”
Sierra sighed. “I don’t think you realize that we are no longer in what you would call a traditional world.”
Oh no! Here it was about to start, the lecture Sierra always gave when she sensed the girls development was being held back by her clinging to the memory of home. It would end with the woman giving her a choice; stay or go. The thing is that she knew there was validity to every word she said, and in a town such as this a woman’s ability to adjust was the difference between a good life and one where she just got by. She took each word with a grain of salt and stood silently listening to her. She had no hope of going back to marry a man from her home, but she was not particularly interested in Brian either, and no matter what Sierra said that was not about to change.
* * *
Jake could hardly keep his excitement contained for most of the day. He kept glancing at the wristwatch he wore dying for lunchtime to arrive. When it did, he rushed out of Liam’s office and headed to the fields where Beth would be having lunch with the children. The sight of her sitting among the children who speckled the fields made him smile. He knew he would have enjoyed every moment of being married to her, but his decisions had taken that opportunity away.
He fixed his hat on his head and tucked his shirt in neatly. “You started without me?”
She laughed. “When the children are hungry there is no waiting to feed them or they might eat you alive.”
He laughed. “What is for lunch?”
“Cheese sandwiches and your thoughts,” she replied looking at him expectantly. “You do know that just because I am married doesn’t mean I cannot still be your friend.”
“I know, but I thought your family wanted nothing to do with me for having decided to leave to begin with,” he replied remembering that when he had come back, Liam had made it clear that some of the older families considered him a bad influence on their younger children. He had left and came back, and the only reason Liam himself had accepted him was because they had been friends for so long, but he seemed to be getting on his nerves lately.
“We understand your decisions so we are the last people you have to worry about,” she said softly. “We both understand the pain you suffered, but since you have been back you have not socialized with anyone here really. We were worried. My mother is worried.”
He sighed. “I am worried.”
It was a confession that drew shock from her. “About what?”
“Life,” he said flatly taking a bite of the sandwich she offered him and looking at the children play in the tall blades of grass. He was worried that his life would pass him by and that was the truth. Growing up he had had such a vision for his life and he was watching all the dreams he had burn to ashes while he toiled in his best friend’s fields all day.
“Aren’t you happy here Jake?” she asked him.
He wouldn’t dishonor her concern with a lie. “I am happy to be back, but I don’t know if I am happy.”
“Were you happier in the west?”
He had expected that question but not so soon. “I was, but I missed home.”
She patted his hand. “Home for you will never be the same as it was before you left.”
There was a truth to that that she had never thought about before. “Explain.”
“Well,” she began. “Before you left you had your father and you were younger. Now he is not around and the older we get the more we want from life. And I have been to other places. The world is a big place and it offers many possibilities. Nothing is wrong with wanting more.”
He was wondering if he was understanding her words the way she meant for him to understand them. “Are you encouraging me to leave?”
She smiled “I am encouraging you to do what makes your heart sing. We are all born to a life, but we have the right to explore and should you find more out there then there is nothing wrong with that. In that regard I say explore your options.”
“If I leave again I will not be able to come back,” he pointed out.
“Well, make sure you think about it before you decide for sure.”
That was where that conversation ended as the children required closer supervision. He looked around at them and what he could see of the community and knew that he had a decision to make. Life for him was just not the same anymore and he needed to do something about that. He would think about it.
“I have something I thought you should see,” she said and reached in her satchel to pull out an old newspaper clipping. “This is an advertisement for a mail order bride.”
“Why are you giving that to me?”
She smiled. “I see you watching Liam and his wife, and I hear the longing in your voice when you talk to me. The way I see it is that you want a family someday. This is to show you that there are women out there to be had and maybe if you had one you would not find this place so hard to once again call home. Think about it.”
“I have nothing to make a wife happy right now,” he lamented looking away from he
r piercing eyes.
She chuckled. “That is the thing with you men, always thinking you need to be rich to make a woman happy. We just want a man to love us and the children we will carry for him, and all else are things we can work through together. Life is not always about what material things you have, and you will treasure a union so much more with a woman who is willing to build and grow with you. Think about it.”
He heard every word she said and he thought about t. She was right, he was lonely and nostalgic for the kind of love he saw them with, but even with a wife he was not sure he would stay in this town. He would place an ad, when he was sure he was on his way to someplace else. Later when he returned to the work he had to do in Liam’s office he was silent.
Thoughtful.
Jake knew his life was about to change but he was not sure just how much.
* * *
3
Chapter THREE
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“ I will get her back here … I am going
after her and I will bring her back. ”
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Two weeks later, Minna finally got an early day and decided to walk into the town before the night caught her on the streets. Sierra was not particularly fond of her girls being out too late. Safety she called it, but Minna was beginning to think that it was just because Sierra didn’t stray too far from her Amish upbringing.
“Minna,” Mrs. Phelps called to her with a smile. The older woman always enjoyed it when she came by and she made it her point of duty to do just that. She walked through the door and straight into the arms waiting to wrap her in a hug. “It has been weeks since you have been here.”
She sighed. “Sierra has me running circles around myself,” she said.
The older woman laughed and pulled her into her pastry shop. “A good day’s work then isn’t it?” she asked.
Minna nodded. That was the thing she absolutely loved about this woman; she always reminded her of the fact that everything in life was a matter of perspective. And the level of stress you carried around was dependent on how much you failed to realize that every hurdle was just a stepping stone to some place better. She enjoyed being reminded ever so often.
“You know what you need?” the woman asked.
“No,” she said with a smile biting into the croissant the woman handed her. “But I am sure you are about to tell me.”
Mrs. Phelps poured her a steaming cup of hot chocolate, just the way her mother would when she was younger and they sat at the table in the empty pastry shop. In about thirty minutes the late evening traffic would bring more people with a sweet tooth to her doorstep than she had hands to serve. Minna would stay and help her as she had been doing for the months she had been there.
“You need a good husband to call your own. A woman with a man to care for her is a woman who will have time on her hands to chase her tail recreationally.”
They both laughed at that, and Minna was again reminded that she was now at the age to be married with children of her own. Sierra called her a late bloomer but that was not it really, she had other plans.
“I have not yet found such a man,” she informed the old woman.
“Well, maybe you need to look further afield.”
Confused, Minna looked at the woman who pushed the day’s paper to her. It was open to the section where English men were looking for wives and placing advertisements for them. This was how Clara had come to be with John; only he was Amish.
“You want me to sell myself?” she asked the old woman.
“No,” she said. “I want you to open your eyes to the world around you and have a little adventure while you search for love. You are not selling yourself and I would never suggest such a thing, but I was once a mail order bride and I can attest to the fact that sometimes love is just waiting only a state or two over.”
She listened to her recount how joyful it was to be a mail order bride and Minna saw a whole new world she had been apprehensive about. But if the two women she trusted had good stories maybe she would consider it when she was ready.
When she was ready…
When would that be?
* * *
It had been three long weeks for Jake, lost in thought but nothing had changed. He was still very conflicted about staying or going and nothing seemed to be making this decision easy for him.
“Can we eat now, Jake?” asked Abraham’s son who he had agreed to look after for the day, as the child was feeling a bit under the weather and his father had to be taken into the city with Liam to handle some business for his wife who had just died.
“Yes! Yes!” he said feeling the child must be starving by now and he remembered Beth’s warning.
“Where did my Dad go?” the boy asked him. “And do you know why my Ma hasn’t been here for ages?”
It was then he realized that no one had probably explained death to the little boy, and it was a much needed explanation. It made him think about what could happen if and when he had children. Death was hard to explain to anybody let alone a four year old who had been raised on the rough play time of his father and the loving kisses of a doting mother.
“Well your mother went away,” he began wondering if maybe he should leave this conversation to the child’s father instead, but the wide eyes looking up at him with the expectation that he would be reassured, took that option from him.
“What is wrong with her why she has been gone for so long, Jake?” the child asked.
Okay, this is the part about living he really didn’t like. This was the part about having to deal with death that upset him, but he felt he needed to talk to the little four year old about it.
“Nothing is wrong with your mother.” He paused not exactly sure how to continue, but knowing he had to find a way to somehow. “She won’t be coming home though. You need to understand that,” he finished.
“Was it because I broke the crockery she told me not to play with?”
He almost chuckled at the despair that flashed across his tiny face. Had the situation been any other, he would have done just that, but not now.
“Do you know what death is?” he asked him, again feeling inadequate and at a loss. Even with first-hand knowledge of it, he was still at a loss as to how it should be explained.
“I just know people say you are dead when no one gets to see you again,” he responded, frowning at his sandwich.
“That is exactly what it is,” Jake said. “Your mother is dead.”
The shock that went across the boy’s face at his words was more than he could handle. It was then he was reminded why he never quite liked staying with children; they either gave him grief or made him so afraid that he was telling them something he should not. He could handle them in the great outdoors where they would run loose and leave him be.
Luckily Liam came back just then and saved him from the ordeal.
“Do you want to go for a quick swim?” Liam asked him. He nodded, but when they got to the riverside he was to find that that was not what Liam had really intended.
“Beth told me about what you both spoke of,” Liam said and he instantly felt betrayed.
“Why would she do such a thing?” he asked in anger. But this was a small town and everybody knew everybody else’s business, so it should have been expected.
“No!” Liam said fixing him with an angry glare- that seemed to be the norm these days. “You do not get to be upset because people care about you. Since you have been back you have been moping about as if you had the world on your shoulders. It is time you stopped.”
“I have not!” he tried to defend himself, but even as he said the words he knew it was true.
Liam rested a hand on his shoulder.
“It is okay for you to be frustrated here. You have seen another world, lived in another world and it would be hard to readjust here with no family. I thought coming back you would at least
court one of the women who look at you every time you walk by, but now I see that although you might be here in person your mind and heart are elsewhere. Did you leave a love on the outside?”
He shook his head. When he had been there all he could think about was coming back, now that he was back here all he could think of was leaving.
“I don’t know what to do,” he confessed.
Liam pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “This is the address for a man who runs a very traditionally farmed ranch out in Texas. He is old and is looking for a young man with knowledge of the land to help him run things there, and the memories you have in this place are clearly haunting you, so you need to get away for a while.”
“I don’t know if I want to leave here,” he said looking at the house in the distance where he grew up and where all the memories he treasured were made.
“This will always be your home, Jake,” Liam said to him. “But for now you need to go be happy elsewhere.”
“What if I am not?”
“Then you can always come right back home,” Liam said patting his shoulder. “But before you do that take Beth’s advice and get yourself a wife in this new place. You will soon see that that could make a world of difference.”
He had been thinking about it since Beth had mentioned it. “I will miss this place.”
“I know,” Liam said. “Come back if and when you need to.”
Three hours later plans were made for him to leave for Texas in the morning and he was thinking how nice it would be to have had a wife to make the travel with him. He knew then and there that once he was settled he would try this mail order bride thing they were all suggesting he do.