He left several messages on Hope’s phone shanty answering machine, but she did not return them. He understood her reasons, but he really needed help with the developing situation between Agatha and Simon and he didn’t know who else to ask. He also needed recipes. Lots and lots of Hope’s recipes. He had not thought it possible to find an Amish girl who couldn’t cook, but Hope had managed it.
Finally, when she continued to ignore his phone calls, he gave up and decided to take a different tack. She’d given him no choice.
• • •
“What are you making, Mommi?” Carrie asked as they sat together in their kitchen.
“I’m making a card to try to get some work.” Hope finished the little flower border she’d made the first time.
“It’s pretty.”
“Thank you, Carrie.”
“Can I help?”
“I’m finished now, but you can play with these.” She gave Carrie some crayons and blank cards to color.
It broke her heart to stop working for Logan, but that was the point. Her mother had been right to warn her. She had grown too attached to him, just as her mother had feared. Talking with him was a pleasure that she had looked forward to from one day to the next. When he went to New York, her heart felt the void, and her heart lifted the minute she saw his car in the driveway. She was treading on very thin ice.
Until he had pulled her into his arms, she had been able to pretend to herself that there was no danger. The day of worship at his house had changed all that. She could pretend no longer. Now she had no choice.
The problem she faced was, who else would want to hire a pregnant woman with two small children in tow? Silently, she bowed her head and prayed for God to intercede in her life. All she asked for was the means to care for her family.
She thought through her marketable skills again. She could cook, sew, do housework, and raise children. Perhaps after the baby came, she could babysit for others, although that did not pay very well. Once again her mind went to the dream she’d had since she was a little girl trotting around the farm behind her father. Having her own land. Making her own decisions about livestock and crops. She had always subscribed to two farming magazines and read every word—not because she thought anything would ever come of it, but because the subject fascinated her.
She’d tried to interest Titus in a sheep breed she’d read about that produced not only marketable meat but decent-quality wool. There was a market for lamb in Cleveland and Columbus in the ethnic restaurants. With all the interest in sustainable farming practices and a growing market for organic, grass-fed meat, she thought there might be a business opportunity there.
Plus, she was fascinated with the idea of having wool to work with. Her mother had an old spinning wheel that had belonged to her grandmother and still knew how to use it. Hope longed to spin her own wool and dye it with natural substances. The tourist market being what it was in Holmes County, she had a suspicion that hand-spun wool might bring in a modest income, especially if the tourists could purchase it at a real Amish home where they could see the grazing sheep from which the wool had been produced.
It would involve purchasing a different breed, but sheep milk could be made into a rich soap, good for the skin, that could also be sold. Making soap and yarn would be something her children could help with. Creating a strong work ethic in their children was key to their survival as an Amish people, and her mind naturally worked that way.
The good thing about sheep, also, was the fact that sheep manure contained more nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium than horse or cow manure. It could be used to help build up the land to produce better crops.
An Amish schoolteacher she knew was doing well with an organic chicken farm. Both chickens and rabbits produced excellent, rich manure for vegetable growing. She’d recently read that there was also a growing market for rabbit meat.
Ideally, an organic farmer could create a sustainable cycle in which rabbits thrived on the discards from the vegetables that their very waste helped produce. Of course, there was the possibility of selling baby bunnies as well—another potential job for Adam and Carrie.
Sustainable farming practices and diversity. That’s what she believed would keep the small family farms in business.
The problem was she could raise only four ewes per acre, and this small piece of land she was renting was simply not big enough. There was also the problem that those ewes, chickens, rabbits, chicken houses, rabbit cages, and feed, cost up-front money that she did not have.
It was so terribly frustrating. She knew she had the knowledge, energy, and will to create a healthy living for herself and her children. Except for two things. She did not have enough land, and she did not have enough money to get started. Unless God gave her a miracle, she would be eking out an income by cleaning houses for other people the rest of her life.
She asked God for forgiveness for her rebellious heart! Since she had quit work at Logan’s, she missed the ease of the electric lighting and appliances at his house, and every time she pulled out onto a busy highway with her children in that buggy, she questioned the wisdom of their bishops’ decision to forbid cars. She had no doubt that good Mennonites like Ivan and Mary and their families were going to heaven, too, so why did she have to put her children in danger?
Quickly, she said another prayer asking for forgiveness for her bad thoughts. Yes, she was tired. Yes, she was frustrated. Yes, she was uncomfortably pregnant, but that did not give her the right to be angry about her position in life. The Amish believed that the way things were was the will of God. Unless He showed her differently, she would try to stay on the path He had chosen for her.
“See, Mommi?” Carrie held up her crayon drawings. Hope tried to admire her little girl’s efforts, but all she wanted to do was cry.
Her mother was planning to come by this morning, and Hope was not surprised when there was a knock on the door. She didn’t even bother to put on her head covering before answering it.
To her shock, it was not her mother. It was Logan—the last person she expected to see standing on her doorstep. The last person she wanted to see.
“You either need to write out all of your recipes, in detail, or that housekeeper you gave me has to go,” he said.
“Why?” She tried to look innocent, but she had known all along that Agatha’s cooking was substandard. It served him right for breaking through the fragile wall they had built between them. “Is her cooking not to your liking?”
“You must have had to look very hard to find an Amish woman who can’t cook!”
“Not really.” Hope tried to hide a smile and failed. “Many in our Amish community have learned to avoid Agatha’s contribution to potlucks. She needed a job and I hoped her cooking would improve with time.”
“Time is the one thing I can’t afford. Her cooking is slowly improving, but it’s her affection for Simon that’s beginning to worry me. I’m assuming the Amish are not thrilled with an unwed pregnancy.”
“Agatha is pregnant?”
“Not to my knowledge. She’s only been working for me a week, but if you don’t get her out of there and away from Simon, I think it could become a strong possibility. I didn’t sign up to be a babysitter for two Amish teenagers with raging hormones.”
“This is indeed a problem.” She tapped her lower lip.
“Come back to work for me,” he pleaded. “I’m sorry, Hope. I know I stepped over a line last Sunday. I’ve kicked myself a hundred times for it. You were right to walk away. If you’ll just come back I promise to stay in my office when you’re there working. Or, if you prefer, I’ll leave the house completely when you’re there. Just tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it.”
“Agatha’s cooking must be worse than I thought,” Hope said. “I had better hurry with those recipes!”
“It isn’t just the cooking and you know it. Hearing you talk to your children, or sing as you work around my house. It’s . . . it’s important to me. I haven’t
been able to write well since you left. I miss hearing the chatter and laughter of your children. The house feels lonely without you coming in every day.”
“It would not be wise for me to continue to come.”
“Of course it would be wise,” he argued. “You need a job. It will be hard for you to find one you can manage with the baby coming. At my house you can take breaks whenever you want and put your feet up, or take time off when the baby comes and start back slowly whenever you feel up to it. The one thing I can’t bear is for you and the children to go without because I was upset, and you were kind. It was a moment of weakness. It won’t happen again.”
She knew this was a bad idea. Going back there went against all her training. She shook her head. “No, Logan. I’m sorry, but . . . no.”
Gently, she closed the door in his face and locked it, shutting him out of her life.
Then she watched from behind a curtain as he walked away and climbed into his car.
But he didn’t leave. Instead, he sat in the driver’s seat with his head thrown back against the headrest as though he was napping . . . or thinking. She grew nervous. Was he never going to leave?
In a few minutes, he opened the car door and walked back to her house. He knocked again.
She opened the door a crack. “I have given you my answer.”
“I don’t think you have.”
She was ready to slam the door shut and lock it again if necessary. He had never been anything but kind to her, but one never knew what an Englisch man might do. Perhaps she didn’t know him as well as she thought. Sunday had certainly been a surprise.
“I promised you I would think about something. That’s what I’ve been doing while you were peeking through the curtains. Keeping my promise. Thinking.”
“About what?”
“Do you think you could gather together whatever you and Simon need to make your father’s farm productive again?”
“Of course, but why?”
“I see farmers starting to till their soil. Evidently they think it’s warm enough to start planting. Seems to me like it would be a good idea to put some crops in, and I don’t have a clue.”
“Wait a minute.” She was incredulous. “You are offering to make me, a pregnant Amish woman, your farm manager?”
“I sure am. You can manage the farm, Simon, Agatha . . . and me for that matter.”
“But why?”
“Here’s the problem, Hope. I have a deadline coming up in a couple more months and this book has to be stellar. I have to concentrate, and I can’t with Simon and Agatha mooning around in my kitchen. I can’t send Simon back to his father to get beaten up again. I’m tired of people asking me if I’m planning to let my property grow into scrub. I’m sick and tired of hearing about what a good farmer your father was and how straight he made his corn rows.”
She was stunned. “Why did you not offer this before?”
“Because I was afraid you’d overwork yourself.”
Hope tried to wrap her mind around his offer to let her farm land that she knew like the back of her hand.
“You can oversee all the planting and sowing and manure spreading or whatever else it takes to grow crops. Purchase the livestock you need. Hire the workers you need. One restriction, though. I don’t want you doing anything stupid like getting behind a plow. The idea is for you to manage—not work until you drop.”
She swallowed. “You are serious about this?”
“Dead serious.”
Was this an answer to prayer? Or a temptation straight from the devil?
She couldn’t help it. Excitement flared in her heart at Logan’s words.
“My father made a good living for us on that property,” she said. “He used the old farming methods and cared for the soil.”
“I’ll give you complete freedom.”
Her mind was already whirling with calculations. “You would be willing to back me financially and work on shares?”
“I would.”
A terrible thought struck. “What if I put time and effort into getting the farm up and running again, and you decide to sell it?”
“I won’t. I’ll put it in writing if you want.”
She could feel her resistance melting. It would be foolish to pass up this opportunity. It would probably never come around again.
“I have so many ideas! If my methods and crops are successful, there is a good chance I might be able to buy my own farm in a few years!”
He smiled, enjoying her enthusiasm. “You seem to have given this a great deal of thought.”
“I have been thinking of better ways to make a living off the land since I was ten and started reading my father’s farming magazines.”
“Farming’s a gamble. What if the weather doesn’t accommodate your plans?”
“I have in mind a diversification of crops and animals that could see us through any weather. If hail takes our wheat crop, then our organic chicken business would create a stream of income. If a weasel gets at the chickens, the corn crop will still bring in some money. Sheep can bring in profit several different ways. This land is good at growing briars and wild blackberries. Why not take advantage and plant the new hybrid, thornless blackberries? With all the new knowledge of the benefits of blackberry juice, I know I could sell any amount. It’s a perfect summer job for two children. And blueberries! They are so easy to grow and so healthy. People would drive miles to pay for a chance to pick their own. You have two hundred prime acres. You won’t believe the various businesses, crops, and livestock I can work with on that much land!”
Her words came to an abrupt stop. Too many dreams and thoughts had just poured out of her mouth. He would think she was talking foolishness.
She was reassured by the kindness in his eyes. He was pleased with her joy.
“Your father gambled on blackjack and horses,” he said. “I think he would have been wiser—so much wiser—to have gambled on you.”
• • •
While Hope and Simon made plans about which crops to plant and where, Logan headed back to New York. It was time to break things off with Marla.
His reasons had little to do with Hope. Any fantasy he’d had about Hope was just that . . . a fantasy. Still, the feelings he had for her made him realize how very wrong he and Marla were for each other. It would not be fair to allow her to go ahead with wedding preparations.
Even if Hope had not been in the picture, he needed time to sort out where he was spiritually.
He felt so bad about initiating this breakup that he was seriously contemplating allowing Marla to keep the apartment. That would be quite a consolation prize to her and she probably deserved it. It also might ease the awkwardness of the breakup. Marla had her grandfather’s trust fund to blow on expensive handbags and clothing for herself, but she would never have the funds to purchase an apartment like the one in which they lived.
On the other hand, the apartment would bring quite a substantial price. If he decided to sell it. He wasn’t sure he was ready to relinquish all ties to New York—only his ties to Marla. It had been his home for a long time. Still, visions of the good that even part of that equity could do for Ivan Troyer’s thirsty children made him feel selfish for thinking about hanging on to such a valuable asset. Plus, he had no idea how much start-up money Hope would need.
The doorman at his building seemed a little agitated when Logan showed up, which surprised him. He’d purposely not called Marla ahead of time because she was astute when it came to reading the tone in his voice, and he was afraid she’d know that something was wrong and start interrogating him over the phone.
He wanted to be face-to-face with her when he explained. It would be cowardly not to.
He stepped into the elevator that would take him to the top floor, thinking about the fact that he would miss the view from his apartment if he sold it, but not much else.
He opened the front door and threw his keys on an antique table, walked into the living room, and stopped
cold. There, wearing one of his own bathrobes, sat a man so famous that grown women had been known to faint when he walked by.
He had met a few actors, he’d even been on movie sets when three of his books were made into movies, but Jebulan Steele was like a demigod to moviegoers. At least he had been. Movie stars tanked quickly, and Jebulan’s past two movies had bombed.
But still . . . he didn’t know whether to be upset or ask the man for his autograph. Jebulan Steele was right here, drinking coffee and eating a bagel with cream cheese. In fact, the movie star had a smudge of cream cheese on his upper lip. Both of them stared at each other in openmouthed surprise. Jebulan found his voice first.
“Who are you!” His impressive voice was imperious. “And what are you doing here!”
“I happen to own the place,” Logan said. “The question is, what are you doing here?”
At that moment, Marla came out of the bedroom. She quickly belted the flimsy robe she was wearing, leaving no doubt as to their relationship.
“Logan! What are you doing here!”
It was like a very bad comedy routine.
As his shock drained away, Logan felt a great calm come over him. There would be no need for explanations, no need for recriminations. His reason for breaking off the engagement had been handed to him on a silver platter.
A part of his brain also recorded the fact that there was a reason things had felt strange to him when he’d been here before. That’s why his suits had been shoved to the side, and the contents of his drawers moved. That’s why Marla had wanted him to go out to the foyer while she made a phone call. She had given Jebulan a warning to clear his things out. This affair had apparently been going on for some time.
But why hadn’t she broken off the engagement if she was in love with another man? Jebulan was famously single.
“I’ve been decorating his house,” Marla said. “It’s—it’s not finished yet.”
He could see her eyes darting around the apartment as though searching for an alibi. “His apartment is being renovated. He needed someplace to stay and . . .”
In spite of his initial shock, her attempt to give him an innocent explanation struck him as funny, as did the caught-in-the-act look on the movie star’s handsome face. It wasn’t as though Jebulan couldn’t afford to stay in an upscale hotel while his apartment was being renovated. Both of them seemed to be holding their breaths, waiting for him to react.
Fearless Hope: A Novel Page 20