Читать книгу Seasons in Paradise - Barbara Cameron - Страница 11

Chapter 4

4

It took a long time for the room to empty.

As the women filed out of the classroom, they chattered excitedly. It did Mary Elizabeth’s heart gut to see them this way. In the months she’d been volunteering here at the shelter with Lavina she’d seen so many of these women come in scared, sometimes bruised and beaten . . . beaten down, in Kate’s words. Often they had only the clothes on their backs. And the kinner . . . if they had kinner, those poor little ones were even more scared.

Gradually they began to feel safe. Protected. Supported. Some of them drifted into the classroom and became interested in the quilting and sewing crafts. Some of them drifted out after they said it really wasn’t for them. The kinner clung to their mudders and looked too old for their years. Velcro kids, Kate called them, desperate to hold onto the only security in this scary world they knew. Gradually, as they saw their mudders relax and felt the love and support here, they smiled and played and went back to being kinner again. Ellie lingered with her mudder and chatted with Leah about how she’d sewed the tiny quilt that covered the doll she carried in her arms and never let go of.

Mary Elizabeth waited with Lavina—actually, Lavina had slipped from the room again in a pretty big hurry—and watched Carrie approach Kate.

“I want to apologize,” she said.

“For?”

“When I came to this class the first day, I said it was a waste of time. Why should we bother with it? No one was going to hire us to sew a quilt. We’re not Amish.”

“Well, you were right,” Kate said, unoffended. “Leah’s not asking anyone to sew a quilt and pretend it’s been done by an Amish woman. But the shop will offer quilts, and there are plenty of things the women here can make to sell there. And they’ll take the same skills everyone’s learned in the class.”

“Well, anyway, I’m sorry for the attitude I showed. You’ve been great to start the class and show up here each week when you could be home putting up your feet.”

Kate laughed and tucked the quilt she’d been working on in her tote bag. “Thanks. I love doing it. And sometimes I put my feet up here and sew.”

She paused and looked up at Carrie. “Actually, what you said stayed in my mind and when I was in Leah’s shop recently we got to talking. A few weeks later she called me and wanted to chat about her idea for the new shop. So you might say what you said to me that day led to this opportunity for the women here at the shelter.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Wow.” She settled the strap of her purse on her shoulder and picked up her tote bag. “I’m thinking maybe you could help me get everyone organized with what they’re going to do. I figure you were pretty good with people working at the bar like you did.”

“Yeah, I could do that. Yeah.” Carrie grinned.

“See you next week.”

“See you.” Carrie walked over to put her project box on the shelf.

“Sorry things took so long today,” Kate said as she walked downstairs and on out to the car with Mary Elizabeth and Lavina.

“We wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” Lavina said.

“You were out of the room a lot of the time,” Mary Elizabeth reminded her.

“Everything okay?” Kate asked Lavina as she unlocked the trunk of her car and put the tote inside.

Mary Elizabeth saw Lavina blush, but she nodded and got into the back seat.

Kate dropped them at their house, and Lavina hurried ahead of Mary Elizabeth. When she walked inside, Lavina was closing the door of the downstairs bathroom.

Mary Elizabeth walked into the kitchen. Her mudder was slicing a loaf of bread.

“Did you stop for lunch on the way home?” her mudder asked.

“Nee, Kate wanted to talk to us—the class—about something. Mamm, listen, I’m worried about Lavina. I think something’s wrong with her.”

Linda looked up. “What is it?”

“I swear, she’s been running to the bathroom every ten minutes. That’s where she is now.”

“Nee, I’m not.” Mary Elizabeth jumped guiltily and spun around to see Lavina standing in the doorway.

“Are you allrecht, kind?” Linda asked. She hurried to press her lips to Lavina’s forehead to check for fever.

Lavina laughed and hugged her. “Don’t treat me like a boppli, Mamm. I’m just going to have one.”

Linda drew back and stared at her, then she threw her arms around her dochder and hugged her. “Oh, I’m so happy for you!”

Mary Elizabeth hurried to her side and hugged her. Worry turned to joy in a moment.

“What’s going on?” Rose Anna wanted to know as she walked into the room.

“David and I are having a boppli!”

Rose Anna screamed and joined in on the group hug.

Their dat found them like that, bound in a group hug in the middle of the kitchen.

“What is going on?” he asked approaching a bit warily.

Linda pulled away, wiping her eyes on a tissue. “Jacob, we’re going to be grosseldres!”

“Lavina?” he asked, looking at her for confirmation.

“Ya, Daed.”

He held his arms wide and all the Zook women piled into them.

Mary Elizabeth knew she would remember this moment for the rest of her life.

* * *

Her journal slipped out from under her pillow when she climbed into bed.

Mary Elizabeth stared at it for a long moment. She hadn’t written in it for a long time, but something made her tuck it under her pillow every morning anyway.

She pulled the quilt up around her and flipped to the last page she’d written on. The page was blotched and in places the ink had run. No wonder. She’d been crying as she wrote about the visit she’d made to see Sam. All the hurt came back now as she stared at the page. He’d refused to return to their community, said he was sorry that she was upset but he wasn’t returning to the community.

She’d cried that day. She’d cried as she wrote in her journal. And she felt tears welling up now as she held it in her hands.

Did it matter that he hadn’t met her gaze that day and avoided looking at her every time he saw her at his bruder David’s farm since then?

She blinked away the tears, determined not to spend one more second, one more tear over him. Closing the journal, she turned to put it on the bedside table, but the moisture in her eyes caused her to misjudge the distance and the book fell on the floor. Leaning over, she picked up the book and the slip of paper that had fallen from it. She set the book on the table and leaned back to look at the paper. “My wish list for my mann,” she read.

She remembered when she’d written it. Katie, a friend of hers, had told her she’d made such a list once. Mary Elizabeth had thought it was silly at the time—the kind of thing that daydreaming maedels did. And it was actually a little arrogant. After all, she’d heard all her life that God set aside the right person for you so telling Him what you wanted was telling Him how to do His job, wasn’t it?

But she’d sat down and composed such a list. And a short time later she’d found herself looking at Sam Stoltzfus one day and realizing he was everything she’d put on her list.

So she put the list in the journal and forgot it. After all, she had the real thing.

But everything had changed. She sat up in bed, reached for a pen on the bedside table.

And took a deep breath and began a new list.

* * *

“So did you hear the news?”

Sam sat on the grass in the shade of a tree and pulled a bottle of iced tea from his lunch box. He drank half of it down and recapped it before he looked at Peter. “What news?”

“Leah is opening up a second shop.”

Sam grinned. “I had no idea you’d taken up quilting.”

Peter scowled at him. “Don’t be a jerk. She needs help doing some renovations on the shop—it’s next to Stitches in Time.”

“How do you know?”

“Heard it from my mudder—who heard it from Fannie Miller who heard it from—”

“Never mind. In other words, from the Amish grapevine.”

“Right. Anyway, Leah’s mann died last year, so he can’t help her like he used to. So I stopped by to see what I could do.” He took a big bite of his sub and chewed. “If you’re interested, this could be our first project together.”

Sam looked at him. Peter sat there looking so calm, eating his lunch and talking about making the renovations on Leah’s shop the first project.

Of the company, he’d asked Sam to think about joining him just two days ago.

“You’re serious.”

“Very.”

“You’d give all this up.” He waved his hand at the controlled chaos of the construction going on around them.

“Dead serious.”

“You move fast.”

“Got to jump on opportunities, you know?”

“You sure do. You talked about starting your own company just two days ago.”

“Told you, been thinking about it for some time. Then this came along. I’m thinking it’s a sign. God’s giving me the go-ahead.”

“It’s one job.”

“And then we’ll get another.”

“You can’t know that.”

Peter just looked at him. “You can’t know we won’t.”

Sam didn’t have any answer to that. He kept eating his sandwich even though he was getting pretty tired of eating bologna. It had been on sale, and pennies counted when your budget was as tight as his was.

“So why’d Leah decide to open another shop? Seems like she’s pretty busy already with Stitches.”

Peter finished his sub and started on an apple. “She says it’s a craft shop. Women from a local shelter are going to sell their stuff they sew there.”

“Shelter?”

“Yeah.”

Sam searched his memory. It seemed to him that the last time he’d seen Lavina and Mary Elizabeth, they had talked about teaching quilting at a women’s shelter.

“So, you in? Leah wants us to get started next week. We can do it a few afternoons a week after we get off here. Then we can see how it goes with other work, quit this job when we have enough business coming in.”

Sam stared at the sandwich in his hand, at his patched work pants. Things had been tough since he’d moved into an apartment with John. Rent was high, then there was gas and insurance and the payment he made to David on the truck. Some extra money would come in handy. It wasn’t the farming he loved, but it was work.

“That sounds reasonable.”

“We’ll make a great team,” Peter told him, clapping him on the back. “I come up with the ideas, you rein me in a little.”

“And your girlfriend reins you in the rest of the way?” Sam asked him with a grin.

“Ya,” Peter said, chuckling. “Say, she sent along some oatmeal cookies. Want one?”

“Are they any better than the last batch?”

“She’s getting better.” Peter held out the bag.

Sam took one and bit into it. Or tried to. It was hard as a rock. “You’re right,” he mumbled around a bite. He hoped he hadn’t chipped a tooth. “Look, Boss is waving us back to work.”

When Peter glanced over, Sam tossed the cookie aside and hoped a squirrel had better luck.

“So anyway, I told Leah I’d see if you could stop by with me after work today to take a look at things.”

Sam had known Peter for a long time, but he’d never seen him move so quickly on anything.

“Schur.”

“Maybe you can give me a ride there?”

“How would you have gotten there if I hadn’t said yes?”

Peter set his lunch box in the front seat of the truck. “Knew you would.” He loped off to the ladder set against the house, climbed up, and moved out of sight.

Chuckling, Sam put his own lunchbox into his truck and returned to work installing windows. Like many of his fellow Amish men, Sam had never been inside Stitches in Time, Leah’s quilt and crafts shop. Peter led the way and seemed a lot more at ease in the land of fabric and crafts and . . . the bustle and chatter of women.

Two of them, very familiar, stood at the front counter. To his utter shock, one of them was Mary Elizabeth.

“Peter! Sam!” Leah cried. “So glad you both could come by today! I want to get started quickly on the new shop. Mary Elizabeth, do you want to walk over with us? She’ll be helping us coordinate with the women sewing the crafts we’ll sell in the new shop,” she explained.

Sam stood silent, absorbing the information. He wondered how much they’d see each other while he and Peter did the renovation.

“Schur.” Mary Elizabeth looked at Sam. “I’d like that.”

Leah took them next door, a whirlwind chattering nonstop the whole way. Leah had granddaughters, but Sam had always thought she had enough energy and drive to run circles around much younger people.

“As you can see, the last tenant left quite a mess.”

Sam looked around at the broken shelving, the holes left in the walls by fixtures being pulled out.

“First thing I want to do is put an entranceway into Stitches so customers can move back and forth through both shops,” she began and then she was on a roll.

Peter took notes and Sam took measurements. Mary Elizabeth observed and said nothing—new behavior for her. Sam didn’t think he’d ever known her to be quiet this long. An hour later, Peter and Sam had what they needed.

“I’ll have an estimate for you in two days,” Peter promised.

“Remember I need to be open by September 1.”

Sam felt his stomach clench. How would they get everything she wanted done by then if they were working part-time? But when he glanced at Peter and got a warning look, he kept his mouth shut.

“Allrecht, I know what you’re thinking,” Peter said as they climbed into Sam’s truck.

“So now you read minds as well as think you’re Superman and can work two jobs?”

Peter fastened his seat belt and leaned back in his seat. He tapped his notebook on his knee. “How about we go for a pizza and work up a bid and a work schedule?”

“Pizza?” It was days before the next payday.

“I’ll buy. You can get the next one.”

“ ’Cause we’ll be rich then, right?”

Peter laughed. “Ya.” He opened his notebook and started jotting something down.

Sam drove, concentrating on the traffic, a mixture of people heading home after work and tourists who weren’t always paying attention to driving but were instead checking out the scenery.

And all the while he drove he wondered if they got the job how he was going to handle coming into contact with Mary Elizabeth at the new shop.

* * *

“You’re up early,” Linda said when Mary Elizabeth walked into the kitchen the next morning.

She went straight for the percolator on the stove. “I spent a lot of time at the quilting class yesterday, then with Leah at the new shop. I don’t want to get behind in my work.”

Her mudder flipped pancakes onto a plate then set it in front of her. “You won’t. You sew quickly.”

“Ya, but I’m working on making my stitches smaller. That takes time.”

Linda sat down at the table with a cup of coffee. “You always were impatient. Why, you were even born a month early.”

Mary Elizabeth grinned as she cut into a pancake. She’d heard that many times. “Mmm, these are gut.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” her mudder said automatically. But she smiled.

The back door opened and Lavina walked in.

“Two early birds.”

Lavina clapped a hand over her mouth and ran for the bathroom. When she emerged a few minutes later her face had a slight greenish tinge. “You had to mention . . . well, let’s just say you mentioned early birds and I thought of what they eat.”

A funny expression flashed over her face and she bolted for the bathroom again.

When she returned to the kitchen a second time she had a damp washcloth in her hand. She sat and held the cloth to the back of her neck.

“Is there anything I can get you?” Linda murmured, reaching over to rub her back. “Maybe some crackers and a glass of ginger ale.”

“You have ginger ale?”

“I bought some right after you told us you were going to have a boppli.” She rose, filled a glass with ice, and brought it and the bottle of ginger ale to the table.

“If I’m half the mudder you are, I’ll be happy,” Lavina told her fervently.

“You’ll be a gut mudder. You always helped me with your schweschders. Some other mudders warned me sometimes the oldest kind can be jealous of the other kinner, but not you. Once I found you giving Rose Anna her bottle when I walked into her room. She’d woken from her nap, you saw she was awake and got her bottle out of the refrigerator.” She smiled at the memory. “Well, time to wake Rose Anna,” she said, and she got up.

“Do you want me to take her a bottle?” Mary Elizabeth asked, grinning.

“You know she’d stay in bed all morning if she could,” Linda said. “If you took her some food, she’d stay there longer.” She walked to the stairs and called up.

Mary Elizabeth and Lavina winced. Their mudder had quite a carrying voice when she called up the stairs.

“She must have a pillow over her head,” Linda muttered as she started up the stairs.

“So, you’ll never guess who Leah’s getting to do the renovation on the new shop.”

Lavina stared at her. “Sam? Really?”

“Who told you?”

“No one. I could just tell by the look on your face. Does that mean you’ll see more of him since you’re helping with the things the shelter ladies are sewing?”

Mary Elizabeth nodded.

“Well, well.” Lavina took another sip of her ginger ale, then picked up a cracker and bit into it. She looked thoughtful. “This is interesting. David left the community and didn’t intend to return, but then he did when his dat got sick and we got back together and got married. Sam refused to return and said he didn’t want to get back with you and now the two of you are going to be tossed together—”

“We’re not going to be tossed together,” Mary Elizabeth said flatly. “I don’t want him anymore.” She ate the last bite of her pancakes and set her fork down on her plate with a snap. “You and Rose Anna are welcome to the Stoltzfus men. I’ve had enough of Sam.”

Lavina reached to touch her hand. “I’m sorry he hurt you so much. I know how that feels.”

“I know you do. David hurt you a lot. I’m glad the two of you got back together, but I don’t have as forgiving a heart as you do.”

“If you love him, you find a way to forgive him,” Lavina said simply. She touched her abdomen and smiled. “And if you do, there’s a lovely reward.”

Mary Elizabeth felt a lump form in her throat. She’d never seen Lavina look so happy.

“Sam’s not interested in me, so I have to move on.” She got to her feet and set her plate in the sink. “I think I should start looking for someone else. I’m not wasting any more time. I want a mann and kinner.”

“I felt that way, too. But then you remember what happened. God had other ideas.”

“Well, He hasn’t had them this time with Sam and me.”

“Nee? Then why do you suppose He’s got Sam working on Leah’s shop and you’re helping coordinate the crafts she’ll sell there?”

They heard footsteps descending the stairs. Their mudder entered the kitchen followed by a grumpy looking Rose Anna still in her house robe.

“Someone decided to get up for pancakes,” Linda said cheerfully as she walked to the stove and turned the gas flame up under the cast iron skillet.

Rose Anna sank into a chair and yawned. She frowned at her plate and appeared half-asleep. Mary Elizabeth took pity on her and rose to get her a cup of coffee. She set it in front of her schweschder, stirred in two teaspoons of sugar then sat again. Rose Anna thanked her. At least Mary Elizabeth thought her grunt was a thank-you.

She perked up some when their mudder placed a plate of pancakes in front of her.

“Lavina, how are you feeling? Want to try a pancake?”

Mary Elizabeth studied her face. Lavina had lost the greenish tinge.

“Maybe a small one.”

“See you upstairs,” Mary Elizabeth said as she rose and left the room. She couldn’t wait to get sewing. Working on a quilt settled her as nothing else did. She sat in her favorite chair and began working.

Lavina came upstairs a few minutes later.

“How’d the pancake do?”

“The boppli seems to like it.” Lavina patted her abdomen and sat in a nearby chair. She didn’t pick up her quilt in the basket next to it right away. “So what are you going to do now that you’ve decided not to be interested in getting together with Sam?”

“I mean it.”

Lavina nodded. “I know you do. I know you.”

“There’s a singing Sunday evening. I thought I’d go to it.”

“You’re going to the singing?” Rose Anna asked as she walked into the room. “We can go together!”

“That’s right.” Mary Elizabeth realized she was stabbing her needle into the fabric and relaxed her fingers. She was going to the singing, and she was going to have fun. She’d meet someone and forget all about Sam.

Why, she had put him totally out of her mind. Totally.

Sam who?