Through the Autumn Air

by Kelly Irvin

  “Autumn air feels good to me. Fresh and sweet after the hot summer. It tells me change is coming. Change can be good. Come in and I’ll make you some kaffi.”

  “No more kaffi. I won’t sleep for a week.”

  “Chamomile tea then. With honey. For you. Just chamomile for me. Doctor’s orders.” His prattle made him seem nervous. Was he nervous? The thought made the hair prickle on Mary Katherine’s arms. Her stomach flopped. Now she was nervous. He came around to her side and held up his hand. “I’ll help you down.”

  “Are you sure? You’re tired.”

  “I always have cocoa or tea at night.”

  His fingers were warm. She allowed him to help her get down. She fought the urge to hang on to his hand as they walked to the door.

  Inside, he turned on the lights over the counter, leaving everything else off. He bustled around, letting water heat in one of the coffee carafes, pulling out the tea bags and some sliced lemons. She watched, lulled by the economy of his actions and the warmth of the room. His restaurant exuded comfort. That’s why people liked it.

  “Do you want a piece of toast or a cookie with that?” He set the mug of tea in front of her with a saucer of lemon slices and a plastic bear bottle of honey. “Tell me about the funeral. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I can’t look at another cookie.” She picked up the honey bottle. “What makes you think something’s wrong?”

  “You’re here.” He slid onto the stool next to her. “I’m trying to imagine under what circumstances you would come here knowing we’re closed or about to be closed. You should be on your way to Thomas’s. He’ll be looking for you.”

  “He won’t look here.” She managed a smile. Ezekiel smiled back. His lips were full, his teeth even. Her gaze didn’t seem to want to leave them. She jerked it away and studied the to-go dessert menu over the kitchen window. PECAN PIE $8.99. CHOCOLATE CRÈME MERINGUE PIE $9.99. Her gaze returned to Ezekiel’s smile. Sweeter still. Stop it. “I didn’t intend to come here.”

  “But you did.” He creased a paper napkin into halves, then fourths. “And you winked at me at the produce auction.”

  “You winked at me in Deputy Rogers’s car and you came to my house the other day.”

  “So there we have it.”

  What did they have?

  “Seeing Walt there on the floor like that.” She swallowed and pressed her hand to her mouth. Breathe. Breathe. “It was like seeing Moses all over again. All the memories came flooding back.”

  “So still. So without life.”

  “Jah.”

  “I kept calling Lucy’s name. I was determined she would answer me. I couldn’t fathom why she didn’t answer me.”

  “She died in front of you. Moses was gone when I found him. Still, I tried to wake him. I called his name. I crawled under the covers . . . I don’t know which is worse.”

  Her voice didn’t want to work. The tiny crack in her composure grew like the cracks in the pasture during a drought that grew worse with each passing summer month. She fought to close the gap.

  Ezekiel slipped from the stool and stepped into her space. She closed her eyes, then opened them. His hand covered hers. Those warm fingers. He leaned closer. His beard brushed her cheek. She put her hands on his chest. Her breathing caught in her throat. He was so solid, so imposing. Her blood raced through her veins, but it wasn’t the caffeine. “Ezekiel.”

  “I know.” His lips brushed her forehead. “It’s like we’re traitors.”

  “Or adulterers.” She leaned her forehead on his chest. His scarred heart lived there. It matched hers. A set. “It’s confusing.”

  He backed away. She breathed again. He turned and propped both elbows on the counter, his expression pensive. “Others go on to marry again. Bess. Jennie.”

  He’d given this some thought. So had Mary Katherine. “I know. Even Jennie, who had such a wretched time with her first mann, was willing to take another chance.”

  “She fell in lieb again—despite her fears. That’s something I don’t expect to happen to me again. I had a happy marriage.”

  “Me too.” Mary Katherine grabbed the spoon by her cup. She needed to do something, anything, to keep from touching him. She stirred so hard, tea sloshed over the cup’s edge. “Maybe I’m here—we’re here—now because we’re lonely and we’re tired and we know how short life is.”

  He straightened. “Is that what you think?”

  “I still talk to my dead mann.”

  His eyebrows rose, but he didn’t laugh or lean away as if he was dealing with a crazy woman. “Does he talk back?”

  “Jah. I’ve never told anyone that, not in the seven years since he died.”

  I’m not crazy, am I? Moses?

  No answer.

  Am I a traitor? Am I an adulterer?

  Silence.

  “I lay in bed at night and imagine Lucy is there. I can hear her little woman snores.” Ezekiel shook his head and laughed, a brusque, half-angry sound. “She steals the blankets and wiggles. I don’t say anything because I don’t really mind.”

  “Everyone has their way of getting through it.” She wasn’t the only crazy one. They had that in common. What else did they have in common, besides loneliness, bossy, caring children, and their community? “I know Moses isn’t there. I know I’m not really talking to him. He’s dead. He’s gone forever. But I write stories and this is like another story in my head. What Moses would say if he were here with me now.”

  “He might be peeved that another man almost kissed you.”

  “I don’t think so. He’d say I’m finally starting to live again.”

  Ezekiel smiled. She smiled back. His lips were so soft looking. She wanted to touch them. An old woman with a passel of children and grandchildren besotted by lips. Ridiculous.

  He touched her lips with one finger. His hand dropped. “Sorry. I don’t know what it is about you.” He shook his head. “I’ve known you all my life.”

  “You never gave me a second thought.”

  “That’s not true. I see you. I think of you. At least I have in the last few years. Before, Lucy was . . . my everything.”

  “Like Moses was for me.”

  “And then they were gone.”

  “I was trying to explain to Dottie today how we reconcile that with our faith.” She squeezed fresh lemon into her tea. The light scent made her think of spring, fresh and clean. “We cling to the knowledge that Gott knows what He is doing even if we don’t understand.”

  “We say the words until we can believe them.” He spread his hands, palms down, on the counter’s slick varnished wood. “Burke and I have been talking about that. I’ve been mad at Gott for a long time. I never told anyone that. He figured it out on his own.”

  “He recognizes the anger because he feels it himself. Dottie is angry too. I was never really angry, mostly bewildered.” Mary Katherine touched the scar on the back of his middle finger. A mishap with a paring knife? “I have five sons who look like him. They walk like him. Talk like him. I go to family gatherings and I’m surrounded by him. Yet he’s not there.”

  “I lost Gott for a while.” His hand turned over and his fingers touched hers. “I felt like giving up.”

  “But you found Him again.”

  “I’m working on it. Burke is helping.”

  “The stranger from Virginia.” She sighed. “The God of all comfort leads us through our struggles. We learn from our suffering and then we comfort others.”

  “Burke and me. You and Dottie. Me and you.”

  “I thought we were supposed to help Burke, not the other way around.”

  “Me too. My project.”

  “My project.” How arrogant that must seem to God. Sorry. “Maybe his helping us helps him.”

  “I hope so. No matter how much advice he gives to others, he’s still lost.”

  “And so are we.” Her heart raised a fist and smacked it against her rib cage. At her age, it could be a heart attack. “After sev
en years, I still run my decisions by my husband. I tell him about my day and my joys and my concerns. About the grandbabies and the skinned knees and the sharp words.”

  “Because you haven’t let him go. Like I haven’t let Lucy go.” Ezekiel dabbed at lemon juice with his napkin. His lips twisted in pain. “I don’t talk to my wife, but Lucy is still present in everything I do. She’s the reason I opened the restaurant. To keep our family together and strong.”

  “She was a sweet woman. She always will be.”

  “I know.”

  They were quiet for a few seconds.

  “What now?” His tone was soft, the question barely a whisper. “My friend.”

  “It’s as if you still have a fraa. I still have my Moses. So, for now, you get in your buggy and go home. I get in my buggy and go to Thomas’s house.”

  He picked up his hat and let it drop on his head. “We have unfinished business. We both have to let go of the past before we can have a future. I’ll follow you home.”

  “No need.”

  “What if those burglars break into Thomas’s house?”

  “They know there’s nothing more to steal than there was at the old house.”

  “Maybe they were looking for you.”

  “I imagine Thomas sleeps with one eye open and his ears perked up, waiting for me to get home. So does Moses.”

  Ezekiel laughed, a deep, rich belly laugh. “Now you’re scaring me.”

  She laughed with him. The hysteria of exhaustion tinged the sound. “Just a little joke. Let me wash out my cup.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “You’re tired. I don’t want to make more work for you.”

  He stood and took her mug. “I’m right behind you.”

  Her limbs heavy with regret, she trudged to the door. The flowery aroma of chamomile with a hint of fresh lemon would remind her of Ezekiel from this night forward.

  He made quick work of the cleanup, picked up the keys from the counter, and followed her through the door. Then he took her hand and led her to her buggy. For the first time in years, she felt enveloped in the care of another. She slowed her pace. The streetlight cast long shadows in the dusk. An old pickup truck putted past them, spewing gas and oil fumes. Ezekiel stopped on the driver’s side but didn’t let go of her hand.

  “I’ll need my hand back.” She didn’t try to remove it. “To drive.”

  He looked up the street, then down the street. His gaze landed on her face. Wonder and trepidation mingled in his careworn features. He shook his head. “It’s not a gut idea.”

  She waited. It was for him to decide.

  He leaned over and kissed her, once, hard. She didn’t have a chance to kiss him back. “Nee, not so fast.” She stretched on tiptoes and did her own kissing.

  His laugh was rueful. “Your kisses are so sweet.”

  “It’s because it’s been so long.”

  “Nee. They’re simply sweet.” He tested the theory with yet another kiss, this one longer, deeper. She slid her hands up his chest to his shoulders and held on for dear life. His hands found their way to her cheeks and caressed her skin. Shivers shot through her, followed by waves of heat. He rubbed his rough cheek against her. “Simply you.”

  The street seemed to grow uneven under her feet. Staggering, she turned to haul herself into the buggy. A strange euphoria fought with something akin to shame. Every nerve and every muscle tingled with aliveness, a feeling missing in her life for so many years she’d forgotten what it felt like. Kissing Ezekiel was new, unexplored territory. Soft lips, lined cheeks, a beard, a different country than the one she’d explored as a young newlywed who kissed her whiskerless husband on her wedding night. Oh, Moses, I’m sorry.

  No answer.

  She grabbed the reins. She shouldn’t have come here.

  “Mary Kay?”

  She allowed herself to look at Ezekiel one more time. He smoothed the folds of her dress, his hand near her knee. Another wave of heat, this one so intense it crackled like a wildfire kindled by lightning on a breathless summer night, raged through her. “If I should show up at your suh’s house one evening, would you slip out to meet me?”

  “Like teenagers on their rumspringa?” The words had a bitter taste to them, like grapefruit rind. “We’re too old for this.”

  “Like two people trying to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives.”

  Would Moses be there with her if she went on a buggy ride with another man? Would he still speak to her? Could she live without hearing his voice every night before she went to bed?

  Hope blossomed, a lovely sunflower that found light where before there had been none. Did she want to spend the rest of her life in the dark, lonely place or with someone willing to take the chance that new love could exist in the same place with a perfectly happy, perfectly too-short love?

  Ezekiel smiled up at her, but his eyes were sad. “I know kisses don’t mean lieb. But ours mean something.”

  “Give it time. Give me time.”

  “I have nothing but time.”

  No, he didn’t. No one did. Walt’s, Lucy’s, and Moses’ deaths proved that.

  She clucked and snapped the reins. He stepped back as the buggy jolted forward. “See you soon.”

  “I hope so.” She whispered the words. She didn’t want him to hear them. They weren’t a promise. They were the beginning of hope.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The woody taste in Mary Katherine’s mouth jerked her back to reality. Chewing on her pencil again. Wrinkling her nose, she pulled the orange number two from her lips. The eraser was wet and ragged, the metal edging around it bent, and the wood looked as if a mouth had been nibbling on it. The story had her stumped. If she revealed her heroine’s gender too soon, the other cowboys would throw her off the cattle drive. She needed to make it to the end of the Chisholm Trail to Abilene where she would find love and a new life. How long could these silly men miss that their cook was, in fact, a young woman? Men tended to miss clues right in front of their noses in real life. Why not more so in fiction?

  She raised her head and let the breeze from the living room’s open windows cool her warm face. The curtains lifted and fell. An evening thunderstorm had cleared the humidity from the air and left a lovely evening behind. She stared into the darkness. What it must’ve been like on those cattle drives when it stormed. The thunder and lightning that she adored would’ve been close and scary. The cattle might’ve been spooked. The cowboys would’ve been soaked with no place to get out of the storm’s fury. Mary Katherine bent over her paper. Somehow she could weave this thought into her story.

  A dog began to bark. Remus, the stray who had decided to make Thomas’s barn his home, sounded displeased.

  Ezekiel? It was too soon. Only a week had gone by since her late-night visit to the restaurant. She needed time. She asked for time.

  Memories of a sixteen-year-old girl anxious, yet petrified, to get to her first singing flooded her. Nerves fluttered in her belly. She wasn’t ready.

  “Jah, you are, Fraa.”

  Don’t be silly, Moses.

  “Leave the story. It’ll be there when you return.”

  How can you encourage this?

  “I know it will make you happy.”

  You make me happy.

  “Made you happy, love. Go. Now.”

  “It’s only a buggy ride.” The memories from all those years she’d spent in her room listening to the sounds of her teenage children beginning their courting journeys, watching them learn of the delights of love, and then marrying, flooded her. “I promise to behave.”

  She said the words aloud.

  “Like you did at the restaurant. He’s The One, Kay.”

  Only Moses called her that. Kay.

  The One. Surely Moses couldn’t have been listening to her conversation with Laura. Because he was dead. Mary Katherine might be addled, but she wasn’t crazy. Her conversations with her dead husband were a lovely figment of her writer’s imaginat
ion. Born of terrible loneliness and the sense that they hadn’t had the chance to finish their conversation before he was ripped from her life so suddenly.

  What makes you think Ezekiel is The One?

  “I saw the way you looked at each other the day of the wedding. When you fell all over each other. The sashay in your walk after that night at the restaurant.”

  Plain women don’t sashay.

  Had there been a look? She trotted out her memories from the wedding day. Ezekiel’s scent. His warm brown eyes. The way his full lips turned up in amusement. The sturdiness of his body under hers. The way his hand gripped her arm and helped her up. Her heart tripped over itself.

  You let your imagination run away with you.

  A soft rap-rap sounded at the door.

  Mary Katherine took a long breath and opened the door.

  Ezekiel stood on the other side, his hand lifted as if to knock a second time. “I was hoping you would still be up.”

  “I’m up. Did you get caught in the storm?”

  “I waited it out. Is everyone else asleep?” He pushed his black hat back on his head, his expression tentative. “I didn’t have an invitation.”

  They were, for which Mary Katherine was deeply thankful. She didn’t want Thomas’s thoughts on this part of her life too. “You don’t need an invitation.”

  “Gut to know.”

  The pause stretched. He studied his boots. She studied them with him.

  “Can I come in or would you rather come out? It’s nice out. A little nippy, though.”

  “Jah, jah. I’ll come out.” She started forward. The porch wood was cold and wet on her feet. Her bare feet. “I should put on shoes.”

  “You should. And a shawl. I’ll wait right here.”

  She dropped one shoe. Her fingers fumbled with the laces. She couldn’t get the knot out of the other one. Her skin felt damp under her arms. “I’m coming.”

  “There’s no rush.” His voice held a note of amusement. “Nobody knows I left the house. They won’t miss me before morning.”

  She laughed. He’d meant for her to laugh. He wanted her to feel comfortable. The realization stilled her shaking hands. This was new for Ezekiel too. “You’d think we were on our rumspringa and my parents were sleeping upstairs.”