by Sarah Price
He nodded his head as if he had expected that response. “Vell then, I wanted to know what time you’d be walking home and,” he paused as if searching for the right words. “Mayhaps you’d take a ride with me into town afterwards? We could grab a soda or something.”
She almost caught her breath, realizing that he might be asking her to ride into town for a refreshment but understanding there was something grander in his invitation. Was it possible that Samuel truly wanted to get to know her better? He sure did seem to be spending a lot of time going out of his way for her.
“I . . .”
“Well hello there, Samuel!”
Samuel stood a bit straighter as he turned to greet her daed. “Great weather for planting.”
“Clear skies and warm weather: God’s way of softening the harsh blow of winter, ja?”
Kate took a step backward and let the two men converse, awkwardly aware that Daed had not asked why Samuel was there, as if his presence was the most natural thing in the world. Their conversation focused mostly on the crops. She almost caught herself smiling as she remembered Samuel’s mother, Mary, teasingly declare that men never talked about anything besides horses, crops, and buggies.
While they stood there talking, Miriam and Becca ran down the lane, smiling and laughing as they chased each other. When they saw Samuel talking with their daed and Kate, they stopped running. Kate saw Becca nudge Miriam and whisper something that made her laugh. She’d deal with Becca later, she told herself.
Samuel smiled at the youngest Zook sisters. “There’s a refreshing ray of sunshine or two!”
Kate blushed at the friendly greeting he bestowed on her siblings. There was something about the Esh family that seemed to make the mundane very special.
Miriam smiled and lowered her eyes. Becca, however, grinned as she glanced at Kate first and then back to Samuel.
Daed glanced at the sun overhead. “In time for chores, girls.” He motioned toward the barn. “Best get started with the milking, then.” His words clearly indicated that any visiting with Samuel Esh was over. Work always came before socialization.
Kate wished Daed would leave so that she could answer Samuel’s question from earlier. However, she noticed with a sinking heart that Samuel took the hint from Daed and waved good-bye to everyone as he sauntered back to his buggy. With a quick look over his shoulder in Kate’s direction, he smiled and winked before stepping inside and closing the door behind him.
It took her twenty minutes to clear her head. She replayed the visit in her head, analyzing everything that had just happened. First, his unexpected arrival just when she’d needed help with David. Then his reaction to the harsh criticism from her brother. Finally, his asking her to ride into town . . . on Saturday! She wondered what all of it meant and from where all of this attention originated. Samuel Esh was clearly intent on courting her. That fact could no longer be denied.
The thought both warmed her heart and chilled her blood. Why on earth was Samuel Esh so interested in her anyway?
CHAPTER NINE
For the next two days, Kate remained unusually distracted. Several times, Maem had to call her name, not just once or twice, but three times in order to get her attention. Once Daed scolded her for forgetting to milk two of the cows. And Miriam asked her if she was ill.
Kate knew that she wasn’t sick. Not physically, anyway. If anything, she was sick from worry. She replayed the scene from earlier in the week when Samuel stopped by and helped her with David. The memory gave her pain: the words, the expressions, the disappointment. And, of course, there was that question about riding into town with him. She hadn’t gotten the chance to answer him, since Daed had interrupted them and then the two girls returned from school.
In the afternoons, when she worked in the garden, whenever she heard a buggy in the distance, she stopped weeding, sitting back on her heels to listen. Would the buggy wheels turn into their driveway? Would Samuel visit once again? When she realized what she was doing, she scolded herself for acting so silly. Samuel had better things to do than come visit her again, especially when she hadn’t answered his invitation. Surely he must have thought poorly of her for such ill manners.
And then, of course, perhaps he’d had second thoughts after reflecting on the incident with David. Mayhaps he had stopped by, intending to ask her to go riding with him, but after he’d returned home, he might have changed his mind. After all, David’s embarrassing accusation that she was lazy might have chased him away.
It didn’t help matters that David seemed to sense her pensiveness. As was typical when Kate was feeling down, David sought for ways to needle her even more than usual. She tried to tell herself that his bitterness was just his way of dealing with his resentment over the situation, and didn’t specifically relate to her, even if she didn’t always believe that.
His cutting remarks were bad when the family was around, but during this time grew increasingly malicious when no one else was around. At those times, David seemed to acquire more intensity in his efforts to disparage and belittle Kate.
On Friday, when Maem was outside in her herb garden and the house was quiet, David pushed his wheelchair close to the sofa where Kate was sewing up a tear in one of Becca’s dresses.
“Don’t know why you bother,” he sneered. “She’ll only rip it again. Climbs trees like monkeys, she does!”
While it was true, Kate merely shrugged as she threaded the needle. “I like helping Maem. One less thing for her to do.”
He scoffed as he turned around the wheelchair. “Ja vell, I liked helping Daed before, too.”
“You could still help,” she said, her voice sounding meek.
“Oh really?” He glared at her, the tone of his voice changing from belittling to downright cruel. “Sure would be hard to maneuver this contraption down the line of cows for milking, don’t you think?” He paused, looking in the air as if pondering something. “Oh wait, that’s right. You don’t think. That’s part of the problem.”
She set down her sewing, bracing herself for the verbal tornado that she sensed was ready to touch down. “David . . .”
“Don’t ‘David’ me,” he snapped, pointing a finger at her. “You have no right to ‘David’ me! You don’t think. You’ve proven that time and time again. If you think I’m wrong, just go ask Jacob or Ruth.” He laughed, a sinister gleam in his eyes. “What’s that? You can’t because they’re dead?”
His obsession with Jacob and Ruth felt like a dagger in her heart each time he brought up their names. Her throat began to close in and she could barely speak. “Stop it,” she managed to whisper, horrified at his heinous words.
David responded by laughing as he rolled the wheelchair away from her, apparently satisfied with the tears in Kate’s eyes and sorrow in her voice. She wiped at her cheeks, ashamed for having let him see her pain. It was bad enough that she felt responsible for two deaths, and she certainly didn’t need David’s hateful reminders.
By the time Saturday came, she needed to get away from the house. As she walked down the road toward her aendi’s farm, she wondered if that was why Maem had volunteered her to help Susan. The thought kept her mind occupied as she approached the place where the wrecked buggy had loomed. It felt like the first time that she’d been able to concentrate on something besides the accident as she passed the location.
A fresh perspective on the situation presented itself. Originally, Kate presumed that Susan needed her help. Now she wondered if Maem knew how much Kate needed to help. If she’d set things up to provide Kate with at least one day of peace in each week.
“Gut mariye!” Susan greeted Kate from the porch where she hung damp clothes on the line that stretched from the roof corner to the work shed across the barnyard. White sheets, black pants, and multicolored dresses flapped in the light spring breeze. Certainly Susan had been up for hours if she was already hanging the laundry.
“Up early, then?”
Susan smiled. “Guess who began sleeping through the night!”
Kate smiled. “Really?”
Susan nodded, reaching down for a towel to hang from the line. “Ja, really! She skipped her two o’clock feeding! Why, I feel fit as a fiddle today!”
“Sleep will do that for you.”
Grabbing the last towel from the basket, Susan pinned it to the line and then pushed the clothes farther out by moving the pulley. “All right! Now that is done and I have time to visit before I go help Timothy!” She turned to Kate and put her hands on her hips. “How about a nice cup of coffee and a chat? The Lord doesn’t mind a little break from chores once in a while.”
The coffee percolated on the stove as Kate waited for Susan to join her at the table. She missed the days when Susan lived with her family. Her bubbly personality, so contrary to Maem’s, always seemed to brighten any day. In many ways, and in spite of their differences, Becca and Susan’s personalities favored each other while Miriam and Kate’s took after Maem.
“Haven’t been to your house in a while,” Susan said as she poured the coffee into two mugs. “How are things going, anyway?”
Kate shrugged, not wanting to say anything negative for fear of being perceived as complaining.
Susan saw through it. “Not better then, I take it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Susan laughed. “You didn’t have to. I have eyes, Kate. I can see for myself how things have changed.” She blew on her coffee before taking a sip. “Plus Becca told me, too.”
Ah, so there it was. The truth. During their visit, Miriam and Becca must have confided in their aendi. Kate could guess that Becca had made a comment that caused Susan to question them further. Kate could only imagine what they would have told Susan, certainly enough to let her know that a dark cloud hung over the Zooks’ household.
“It’s to be expected, I guess,” Kate mumbled. “I mean . . . everything is different now. There’s so much uncertainty. This is a change.” She looked up. “A big change for all of us.”
“Big change, eh?” From the expression on Susan’s face, Kate could tell that she was not convinced.
“For Daed and Maem, especially.”
Susan frowned. “How so?”
Kate didn’t feel like talking about it. She’d rehashed the details so many times in her own head. Saying them out loud made the reality that much harsher. She looked forward to coming to Susan’s house in order to escape the dark reality of what had happened and the toll it had taken on her family. “Their lives have changed forever, I reckon. Who will take over the farm? David can’t do it now, and Thomas has his own family and farm.”
“I reckon that’s true,” Susan admitted.
“And when they get old, they have to worry about David’s care as well as their own. And then, when they are no longer with us, who will take care of David? That must weigh heavily on their minds, don’t you think?”
“Ja, I do.”
“Ain’t no more boys,” Kate added, as if she truly needed to point that out. “I’m doing what I can to make up for it.”
Susan set down her coffee mug and stared at Kate. For a long moment, she remained silent, as if mulling over what Kate said. The clock ticked in the silence, the gentle rhythm of the pendulum soothing Kate’s frayed nerves.
“Do you think it’s your responsibility to make up for it, Kate? Do you think you really can?” Susan shook her head. “Nee, Kate. This is not your cross to bear.”
Then why does it feel as though it’s my responsibility? The question almost burst from her lips. She wanted to ask. And she knew that talking to Susan would release the burden from her shoulders. But she couldn’t. Susan didn’t know the truth. Susan didn’t know that Kate could have prevented the accident. If Kate had ridden home that night with David and Ruth, if she had taken the reins, insisting that he not drive the buggy, if she had alerted Ruth or anyone else that David was intoxicated . . . but no. The fact that she, and she alone, could have prevented his injury and Ruth’s death was something Susan probably couldn’t imagine.
“Mayhaps not,” Kate said, more out of politeness than because she agreed with Susan. “It’s not quite five months yet. Reckon we all just need more time.”
From the bedroom at the top of the stairs, Ruth Ann began to cry. Susan glanced in the direction of the noise and sighed. “Well, more time is not something we have right now.”
Susan started to stand up, but Kate stopped her. “I’ll get the boppli,” she said, grateful that the conversation had been interrupted. Truth be told, Kate felt uncomfortable airing the situation at home to anyone, even Susan. She’d made a mental reminder to talk with Miriam about curtailing Becca’s loose tongue in the future. Their youngest sister’s bad habit of talking without thinking would come back to haunt all of them one day.
Upstairs, Kate entered the baby’s room. It was dark, with drawn shades blocking the light. Kate moved to the window and lifted the shade, bright sunlight flooding the room. Small specks of dust floated in the sunbeams and Kate made a mental note to thoroughly clean the room later that morning. A simple room with just a crib, changing table, and rocking chair, it was typical of most Amish nurseries, although many parents simply let the newborns sleep in their own bedroom.
She cooed at the boppli, who stopped crying when she appeared. She glanced at the dresses hung from small hangers, miniature versions of an Amish woman’s dress, and selected the green one. Kate set it on the changing table and hurried over to pick up the boppli. She nuzzled Ruth Ann’s neck, breathing in the sweet scent of talcum powder, as she carried the baby over to the changing table. Within minutes, she had Ruth Ann dressed and the crib tidied. With the baby on her hip, Kate carried her downstairs, all the while talking softly in Dutch to her.
The day seemed to fly by. She never felt as if she was actually working when she spent the day tending to Ruth Ann. During Ruth Ann’s late morning nap, she managed to clean the kitchen and fold the dry clothes from the line. Then, after feeding Ruth Ann at noon, she took her for a nice walk, the hand-me-down stroller fighting the gravel of the lane toward the back fields.
By the time four o’clock rolled around, supper was ready, the kitchen smelled of cooked ham and fresh rolls, and Ruth Ann was napping on a blanket that Kate had placed on the floor in a sunbeam in the sitting room.
She wasn’t in a hurry to get home. She knew that Miriam and Becca would be helping Daed with the late milking. Still, she was eager to see if Maem needed any help with David. It would have been a long day for her, tending to his needs while the other two girls helped Daed. With tomorrow being a worship day, everyone would bathe that evening starting with David who, as usual, would fight off help every step of the way. Maem liked to have him bathed first so that by the time Daed came in, David was already in his bedroom.
After saying good-bye to her aendi and kissing the boppli’s soft head, she started walking home. Her mind was fixed on the conversation that she’d shared with Susan earlier. If only Susan knew what it was really like, living with the constant reminder of the ramifications from that night: Dad’s anger, Maem’s headaches, David’s bitterness.
A buggy rolled down the hill, approaching her from the opposite direction. She didn’t think much of it until she noticed the horse slow down as it neared. When it was close enough, the horse stopped and a familiar face looked out the open door, smiling in greeting.
“Good afternoon, Kate Zook!”
She lifted her hand and waved. Samuel Esh surely had a way of surprising her.
“Why don’t you jump in? I’ll give you a ride home.”
“It’s just a short walk if I cut through the Yoders’ fields,” she said, gesturing up the road. “Plus, you look to be headed the other way.” While she certainly noticed and appreciated his kindness over the past few weeks, she didn’t want to i
nconvenience him. Surely he was headed home after running errands.
He didn’t look deterred. “I can turn the buggy around easy enough, I reckon.”
When he tilted back his straw hat and lifted his eyebrows at her, she relented and smiled. “All right, then.”
Once again, he waited until she was situated before slapping the reins on the horse’s back and clucking his tongue to urge the horse forward. He continued down the road, not saying anything as he looked for a place where he could turn around. She listened to the gentle whirling noise of the buggy wheels against the road and found herself lost, just for a moment, in the peacefulness of sitting next to Samuel in his buggy.
She took a deep breath and relaxed. She sensed his eyes on her, but he remained silent. She wished that she could think of something to say, something beyond just commenting on the weather or inquiring about what errands he had run that day. Her timid nature in conversing with men kept her tongue-tied.
To her surprise, he did not turn into the lane beyond Susan’s house to turn around. Instead, he continued driving the buggy.
“You missed the turnaround,” she pointed out.
“Ja, I sure did.”
“You didn’t have to take the long route,” she said. “It’s . . . it’s not as painful passing it anymore. Someone moved the buggy.”
“Did they now?” The mischievous smile on his lips told her that he kept a secret.
For a brief moment, she wondered if he had anything to do with its disappearance, a question that she did not feel comfortable asking. However, her curiosity was definitely piqued by his cheerful look and the sparkle in his blue eyes. Once again, she found his temperament contagious, a refreshing breath of fresh air after so many months of solemnity in her family’s house.
Trying to appear serious, he looked at her. “Sure does feel a little warm out, don’t you think?”
The sun shone in the sky and the clouds floated peacefully over the horizon. But the air was still cool, even though April had arrived. “Not particularly.”