“Fine.” She scraped the remnants of the sauerbraten, left from last night, into a compost bucket, then turned on the water in the sink to rinse out the bowl.
By the time she turned around, he was gone.
* * *
* * *
“Hannah said she’d make pancakes if we waited until she got here,” Zeb announced. With typical energy, he was bouncing around the kitchen like a rubber ball. “I bet she cooks really good pancakes.”
Gideon bet she did, too. He’d intended to fry some hash browns, probably plain because he didn’t have time to fancy them up, but if he dawdled a little . . .
Rebekah dashed into the kitchen from the front of the house. “Hannah’s here! I saw her car coming.”
He hadn’t hired her to cook his breakfasts as well as the other two meals, but if she’d already promised the kinder . . . He poured himself some coffee, and leaned back against the countertop, crossing his booted feet.
“Can I help you today?” Zeb was begging, when Hannah let herself in the back door carrying a couple of bags filled with groceries.
Gideon straightened. He’d forgotten she had promised to do the shopping. “Do you have more?”
She didn’t want to look at him. “Ja, but I can—”
He went out the back door, well aware that he’d damaged the new trust between them by questioning her judgment. He didn’t like feeling in the wrong, or wondering whether she’d ever smile so openly at him again.
By the time he returned with five more bags, all but one from Troyer Bulk Foods, Hannah had a griddle heating on the stove and was mixing batter in a big ceramic bowl with his daughter’s assistance. Rebekah squeezed out orange juice as Hannah grated the zest.
He heard her say in Deitsh, “Now we need—” and then smile when Rebekah handed her a small box of baking soda. “Denke.”
She fried bacon as Rebekah, frowning in concentration, spooned the first circles of batter onto the griddle.
Savoring the delicious combined aroma, Gideon settled at the table with his coffee and just watched as Hannah effortlessly juggled tasks while interacting with both his kinder.
Minutes later, Zeb triumphantly carried a platter heaped with crispy bacon to the table, as pleased as if he were responsible for it. “I got it out of the freezer for Hannah,” he told Gideon.
“It’s good that you do what Hannah asks of you.”
Because of the juice, the pancakes were tinted orange and sprinkled with bits of cranberry. Instead of syrup, Hannah supplied a spread that was cream cheese with more orange zest in it along with . . . maybe cinnamon? Gideon wasn’t sure, but they were so good, he ate until his eagerness to get to work waned.
Ach, there was plenty of time for another cup of coffee, he decided.
As usual, Hannah ate so little, she was long since on her feet cleaning up by the time he finished. When Rebekah tried to jump up before she’d cleared her plate, Hannah leaned over and whispered in her ear, her smile . . . beautiful. Rebekah forked up another bite.
At the same time as Zeb declared himself ready to go to work, Gideon drained his coffee. After pushing back from the table, he hesitated. Thanks and goodbye were taken for granted among the Leit, but today it felt wrong to walk out without saying something, especially considering how Hannah had changed toward him since he’d said that about her mother. She was as warm as ever toward the kinder, but she held herself back from him, guarded. A little stiff. That might be for the best, but he missed their former comfort, the feeling he could talk to her, that she was happy in his home.
So he said, “Denke. That was the best breakfast I’ve had in a long time.”
With a dishrag in her hand, Hannah lifted her eyebrows. “What do you usually have for breakfast?”
“Oatmeal,” he admitted, “but not from little packets. Hash browns, toasted bread, eggs.”
“Well, I’m glad this was a treat.” She gave him one of those smiles, the kind that both warmed him, and worried him.
This was an auslander, he reminded himself, when he shouldn’t have to. She’d driven here in a car. She’d worn trousers today that outlined her hips and legs. He must not forget who she was. And yet that smile—
“What are we going to do first, Daad?” Zeb asked.
“Actually,” Hannah said tentatively, “I was hoping you could help me for a little while.” She must have seen Gideon’s surprise. “Today’s a perfect day for gardening. I’ll bet you’d be good at digging, ain’t so?”
Ain’t so? She must have picked that up from Samuel or Lilian.
“I can do that,” Zeb said. “Can’t I, Daad?”
“Ja, I think you’ll be a big help.” He rested a hand on his son’s thin shoulder. “When Hannah doesn’t need you anymore, come and find me. Today, I’ll spray manure on the back field.”
Zeb wrinkled his nose.
Gideon laughed and looked at Hannah. “It’s a stinky job. You’ll smell it, too. I waited until a day when there’s no breeze to carry the stench to neighbors, but it has to be done.”
She chuckled. “A neighbor of Daad’s did it the other day. It was pretty awful, but that’s country life, I guess. Maybe Rebekah and Zeb and I will hurry to get our work on the garden done, and then hide in the house without opening any windows.”
“That will work,” he agreed, and grinned at her. “Until I come in for lunch.”
“Maybe we should make Daadi eat in the barn,” Hannah suggested, a smile quivering on her lips. For his daughter, not him, but he liked it anyway. “What do you think, Rebekah?” she asked.
His daughter had understood enough of Hannah’s mix of Deitsh and English words to be shocked. Her mouth fell open. “That would be mean.”
Hannah’s laugh sounded young and carefree. “I was teasing. We’ll just hose your daadi down before we let him in. Zeb, too, if we have to.”
Rebekah looked aghast.
Gideon was still laughing when he reached the barn. Ach, there’d been too little laughter in this house before Hannah came.
His step checked when he remembered how soon she’d be leaving them. She had worked for him such a short time, and yet felt important to them all. Because of her cooking and kindness and ability to make them all laugh, he told himself, not because she filled the empty place in their small family in a way the other young women he’d hired hadn’t.
No, he wasn’t foolish enough to believe an Englisch woman could ever do that.
Chapter Eight
As much as Hannah had enjoyed the week working with Gideon’s kinder, she’d also looked forward to Sunday. She needed a reality check. However natural her relationship with Zeb and Rebekah felt, how . . . comfortable she was managing the Lantz home, her job was to be a substitute.
Unfortunately, her attraction to Gideon hadn’t waned. If anything, it had gotten worse since he’d let her see his dry sense of humor, his gentleness with his kinder, what a hard worker he was. She’d just have to keep hiding what she felt. Honestly, the idea of their having any kind of relationship beyond employer and employee was ridiculous. She was in Tompkin’s Mill for the sake of her grandparents, and to get to know her father. Period.
She would have nodded in satisfaction, except she hadn’t entirely convinced herself.
A health aide was to stay with Robert while Helen and Hannah attended church. She’d promised to bring the makings for a midafternoon meal she could put together in the small kitchen.
Thank goodness Robert had bounced back after Monday’s scary episode. Hannah had called her grandmother twice this week to make sure all was going well.
She parked in a visitor space outside the complex, collected the grocery bags from the back seat, and straightened, almost bumping into someone.
She knew before she even turned around.
“Sweetheart,” her mother said, holding out her hands. “Can
I carry one of those?”
Hannah’s hands tightened. Anger felt like a spike thrust between her ribs. It frightened her to feel like that.
“Did Grandma Helen invite you?” she asked.
Her mother looked woeful. “Do I need an invitation? Mom mentioned that you’d be going to church with her this morning . . .”
In other words, no. It had never occurred to Hannah that her mother might appear at church, but apparently she’d go to any lengths. It wasn’t as if Jodi had ever been a churchgoer, except now and again when she’d been trying to impress some man. Probably thanks to her parents, she knew how to go through the motions, but that’s all it had ever been.
Hannah knew her resentment was unchristian and uncharitable, but church was her refuge. Of all times for her mother to show up.
“I’m not ready to talk to you,” she said, still not moving.
Of course, tears shimmered in Jodi’s eyes. “Can’t you believe that I love you, and did what I believed with all my heart was best for us?”
“I know you love me.” Hannah was ashamed of her stony voice, but that’s how she felt. Hard. Unforgiving. “I think you did what you thought was best for you, not me.”
Those brown eyes widened. Teardrops trembled on her mother’s dark lashes. “You don’t know everything. If you’d just let me explain . . .”
“You’ve had more than twenty years to explain. Instead, you lied.” Hannah shook her head. “If your parents welcome you in their apartment, I won’t argue. But I’m not willing to listen to your excuses.”
Jodi backed up a few steps to let Hannah close the car door and lock.
“What did Helen say when you asked if you could join us this morning?” Hannah asked, still stonily.
“They’re my parents! I . . . didn’t think it was necessary to ask,” her mother said with fragile dignity.
“That’s between you and her. Just don’t upset Granddad.”
“I would never do that! How can you think—”
Hannah gritted her teeth and marched toward the big building. Did her mother think those counterfeit death certificates hadn’t upset anyone? They were just a little excuse for not staying in touch?
The slap of Jodi’s footsteps came behind her. “You’re being cruel,” she cried.
That might have penetrated Hannah’s armor if she hadn’t known her mother so well. Jodi Hinsch aka Prescott used helplessness like the police did tear gas to bring people—especially men—to their knees. The better Hannah got to know her Englisch grandparents, Samuel, Lilian, Grossmammi, and the rest of the family, the less well her mother’s tactic worked on her.
Cruel. Of all accusations, Jodi couldn’t have picked a more ironic one.
At the glass doors, she hesitated, then stopped. “I do love you,” she said to Hannah’s back, her voice soft.
Her own eyes burning, Hannah kept going.
She could only feel grateful when her mother didn’t follow her into the building.
* * *
* * *
“We’ve asked that she not be allowed in,” Helen explained. “It’s not foolproof, but there’s almost always someone stationed by the doors.”
They had just gotten into Hannah’s car to drive the dozen blocks to the Congregational church where her grandparents had gotten married, and worshipped in for all the years since. The first Sunday Hannah had joined them, she tried to decide if anything about the handsome old church felt familiar, but she couldn’t decide. Her grandmother said that Jodi had sometimes brought her small daughter to worship with them on the “off” Sundays, when the Amish visited rather than holding a service.
Hannah started the car and put it in reverse. She wished she knew what her mother was driving. “Has Mom tried to get in?”
“Twice, according to the front desk.” Helen’s face crumpled with distress. “I have no idea what she wants, unless it’s more money. Or why she’s staying in the area.”
Hannah gusted out a breath. “She may be genuine in fearing that she’s lost my love.”
“That doesn’t explain why she’s battening on us.”
“Unless she truly has regrets.”
They stopped at a red light two blocks from the senior complex.
“Has she expressed any to you?” Helen asked.
Hannah ached. I must forgive her, but . . . I pray God understands why I’m not ready.
“No,” she said. “She begs me to understand why she did what she did. She hasn’t once said she’s sorry, or that she could have handled any part of leaving Dad differently.”
“She hasn’t to me, either,” her grandmother said, voice low and sorrowful. “I begged her to tell me how she could have done that to us, and she just claimed it seemed like the best thing to do at the time. I feel as if I’m trying to reason with a temperamental toddler.”
Her mother always had been childlike in many ways, Hannah reflected, except for the need to have a man adoring her, not to mention her ability to organize their regular escapes whenever anyone dared question her, or when her latest swain became disenchanted.
“She just doesn’t get how angry I am, or why.” Hannah bit her lip. “I’m hurting her, but I need for her to see this from my point of view.”
“I don’t know if she’s capable of that,” her grandmother said raggedly. “I wish I knew what we did wrong.”
Hannah took a hand from the steering wheel to squeeze Helen’s. “She may be mentally ill, you know.”
“Then why didn’t we see it sooner?”
“People mature at different speeds.” Some, out of necessity, did very young, Hannah couldn’t help thinking. “You know how silly a lot of people still are in their twenties.”
Had these well-meaning people spoiled their daughter by never insisting she suffer the consequences of her own actions? As kind as they seemed to be, that was a possibility—but not one Hannah would ever say to either of them. She and Daad hadn’t really talked about her mother yet, either, but Hannah knew they’d have to eventually.
“When Jodi married Samuel, I thought she finally knew what she wanted.” Helen tried to smile. Tears made her eyes look even more like her daughter’s. “And then when you were born.”
Her mother hadn’t been ready to have a baby, Hannah knew. When she took an incomplete in a class or quit a job without giving notice, the only one she was hurting was herself.
“Did she really believe she was ready to make that kind of commitment?”
“She said she was.” Helen stared straight ahead. “And if she needed someone to lean on, Samuel wasn’t anything like her previous boyfriends. He seemed so strong, so steady.”
“I think he is.” Hannah hated that he’d had to grieve for so many years. She couldn’t help thinking about how different her life would have been, too, if Mom had left her with her daad. She wouldn’t be the same person, that was for sure.
She’d be Amish, looking askance at those Englischers with their fast cars and reliance on the phones they couldn’t be parted from. Maybe in a rural part of Missouri like this, most of those Englischers did attend church regularly, unlike moderns in much of the country. But Hannah somehow doubted they lived their faith in the way she saw the Amish doing every day.
And that was making her examine her own relationship with God. Reading her Bible last night, she’d pondered another passage from Matthew.
Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.
Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
Much of her life had been a struggle, but not because she’d chosen to pursue the narrow path to life eternal. Did her Lord ask for His faithful to make every decision in life with an eye to whether it kept them close to Him or led them away?
Nobody in her life had ever suggested that to her, including the many pastors she’d heard speak in all those different churches she’d attended. The Amish were surely not the only people who sought to live their faith, down to the smallest choices, but in so few weeks, she was coming to see that they were remarkable. She admired them—and felt an ache for what she’d lost.
And yet . . . she wasn’t the woman she would have been. How could she be her?
She still found a smile for her newfound grandmother, and said, “I think the church service is just what we need right now, don’t you?”
Helen’s answering smile trembled. “Bless you, Hannah. You’re what Robert and I needed most.”
* * *
* * *
As he set the oven to preheat Sunday morning, Gideon felt both gratitude and remorse. By ordering Hannah not to allow her mother on his property, he’d both insulted her and, he feared, hurt her feelings. And then what did she do, along with caring for his kinder, teasing him, digging up sod and enriching the soil in the new part of the garden, whacking clean every rug in the house, and making both lunch and dinner, but also prepare a breakfast bake for him to warm this morning. Not just that; after she’d left, he’d found several fresh-baked loaves of friendship bread on the counter.
She was an astonishingly generous person. Unfailingly cheerful with Zeb and Rebekah, too, even as he sometimes caught sight of sadder emotions beneath.
Her loneliness, he recognized. He knew better, and yet it was all he could do sometimes not to reach out to her in comfort and perhaps because he would then feel less alone. Remembering how fragile her hand had felt when he did touch her unsettled him.
His . . . regret at hurting a woman who had been hurt too many times stuck with him through breakfast, while harnessing his bay gelding, Fergus, hitching him to the buggy, lifting Rebekah up onto the seat and waiting while Zeb scrambled up to join her. Had he really believed for a minute that Hannah would allow the mother who’d stolen her from the rest of her family to come near his kinder?
Finding Hope Page 9