An Amish Christmas (14 page)

As much as she liked the Lutzes, Meg hoped that when they reached the garage, the car would be miraculously fixed and ready to go. Staying a couple of nights was one thing; freeloading for an extended period was another. She was too embarrassed to admit to their hosts that they couldn’t afford to stay
anywhere else. If luck was with them, they could pack up the kids, say thank you to the Lutzes, and leave the farm without burdening them further.

The buggy left the quiet country roads and traveled on bigger, busier routes. Meg was amazed that the cars and trucks passing within what seemed like inches didn’t hit them. Just as she was beginning to feel her stomach had been jogged up and down past the point of discomfort, they turned in to the repair shop, its sign announcing that it specialized in vintage cars. Let’s hope so, she thought, tossing aside the blanket and getting out. James joined her, but David stayed behind, saying he would wait for them.

A middle-aged man in stained gray work clothes emerged from the back of the shop, recognizing James at once from their earlier meeting.

“Ah, the ’69 Mustang,” he said, extending his hand. “I’ve been expecting you.” He turned to Meg. “We had a long talk, your husband and I. Beautiful car.”

“Okay, Ray,” said James. “Lay it on me.”

“It’s not as bad as it could be, but it’s definitely not good. Driver’s side is a mess. So you’re talking about all new metal, headlight, front fender, paint job—I’m going to do my best to blend the paint so we don’t have to repaint the whole car.”

“How long will all this take?” Meg asked.

He shrugged. “Like I told your husband, I think you’re probably looking at a week or two.”

“Oh, no,” she breathed.

“Listen,” James said, “we’re really in a bind here. Isn’t there any way we can make this happen in less time?”

“I’ll do the best I can for you, but I wouldn’t bet on it. This is pretty time-consuming, and what with the paint and all …”

“Yeah, I understand.” James was visibly frustrated, but it was clear there was no one to blame.

“You still at that phone number you gave me?”

James nodded. “I’ll call you tomorrow anyway. We’re at an Amish house, so there’s no phone inside. It’s easy to miss a call.”

“Right.” Ray held out his hand again. “Sorry the news isn’t better. Look on the bright side. The car will be fine in the end. And at least insurance is willing to pay to fix it. I’ll go get you the paperwork.” He disappeared into the recesses of the shop.

“A week!” Meg repeated. “How can we stay here for that long?”

James cursed under his breath. “I told David that we wanted to pay him if we had to stay any longer. He said in no uncertain terms they wouldn’t take any money from us.”

“It isn’t right for us to use them like some kind of hotel.”

“I know, I know. I feel awful about it.”

Taking the computer printout from Ray, they thanked him and left. As they approached the buggy, James leaned over to whisper to Meg. “We’re going to have to get them to take us to a motel or something.”

“Which we can’t afford,” she replied.

David was sitting in the buggy. He looked up at James. “How is your car?”

“Not great. It’s going to be awhile. At least a week.”

“A week?” David readied the reins. “Excellent. We shall have the pleasure of your company for a little bit longer.”

James began to protest. “No, David, please listen—”

David grinned. “We still have so much to learn from you English. Your ways are so interesting and unusual.”

Meg laughed as she replaced the blanket on her lap. “We’re just a tourist attraction to you, eh?”

He turned to face her, more serious. “We were both on that road the other night. This is how it should be. No need to talk about it more.”

He made a clicking sound, and the horse began to trot. At Meg’s request, he stopped at a supermarket so she could run inside. She was out of ibuprofen, which she and James still needed, and she wanted to get some cleaning supplies. If her family was going to be staying in the house, she decided, she could at least take responsibility for the quarters upstairs. It occurred to her that she would have to call her parents to inform them of the delay, but she pushed it out of her head. She didn’t feel like dealing with it at the moment.

Carrying her grocery bags back to the house, she saw Barbara, the soon-to-be-married daughter, sweeping off the front porch. A brown-and-black dog kept watch by her side. Meg smiled. “Good morning.”

“Good morning to you.” Barbara returned the smile.

Meg glanced down at the dog, who was eyeing her warily. “I don’t believe I’ve seen him. Or is it a her?”

“Oh, this is Racer.”

“Because he’s fast?”

“He used to be, but that was a long time ago.”

Meg knelt, setting down a bag, and let him sniff her hand.

Barbara went on, “Your son Samuel really likes him. Racer spent a lot of time with him this morning.”

Meg looked up at her. “He does love your dogs here. Do you happen to know where Sam is now?”

“He and your other son went with Eli to work in the barn.”

“Really?” Meg was happy, if surprised, to hear that her boys were out of the house, doing something useful.

“If you are looking for your daughter, she went with my mother to Annie’s.” Barbara nodded in the direction of the house next door. “They’re baking. For the store.”

Lizzie was baking with the women? Wonders never cease, Meg thought. She grabbed her grocery bag and stood up. “Thank you, Barbara. Do you think it would be all right if I went to Annie’s?”

“Oh, yes.” The young woman resumed her sweeping. “I will go there soon, too.”

Meg went inside to unpack the grocery bags before walking over to Annie’s house. Like the Lutzes’, it was painted white and had dark-green window shades behind all the first-floor windows. Meg had noticed those same green shades in a number of the houses during her buggy ride, so she guessed it wasn’t a coincidence.

When she was almost there, a side door opened, and Lizzie emerged. As soon as she saw her mother approaching, she hurried over, still limping slightly on her bruised foot. “I thought I’d never get out of there!” she burst out in greeting. “Catherine said I should go with her, and I couldn’t find a way to say
no.” She gave Meg a look. “Because now I’m such a perfect lady.”

“Ahh, yes,” Meg said.

“Yeah, well, they have some kind of insane assembly line going on in there.” She shuddered. “These people give me the willies.”

Meg sighed. She should have known it was too good to be true. “Okay, listen. If you’re going back, please clean up in the bathroom we’ve been using. I have a sponge and stuff in the cabinet beneath the sink. Straighten the towels, wipe down the sink and toilet, all that stuff.”

“Oh, ew—
no.
”

Meg regarded her with impatience. “I’m not asking you, Lizzie. I’m telling you.” She moved past her daughter.

“Wait,” Lizzie yelled after a moment. “What about the car?”

“It could be another week,” Meg replied over her shoulder. She was glad she was already a few yards away so she didn’t have to respond to her daughter’s wail.

“WHAT? A
week
?
No
WAY!”

Meg knocked on the door, glancing back to see Lizzie frozen to the same spot, staring at her. “Ice your foot, honey,” she called out, flashing her daughter a bright smile before a voice hastened her inside.

The first thing to strike Meg was the warmth of the kitchen and the incredible aroma of apples and cinnamon. The room was a scene of vivid color and motion, the women in their bonnets, dressed in deep-hued tones of teal, green, purple, and blue, all moving smoothly and efficiently from one task to another.
They were quiet, immersed in their jobs, although they looked up to murmur a greeting to their visitor.

“Hello, Meg.” Catherine welcomed her with a smile. “You are doing well today so far?”

“Thank you, I’m fine.”

Meg watched in fascination, noting row upon row of uncooked pie crusts in aluminum pie plates set up along an enormous table. She saw that the kitchen had a huge kitchen island and two large double ovens, all four of which were already pressed into service baking batches of the fragrant pies. Catherine and her mother-in-law, Leah, were rolling out additional pie dough on large floured wooden boards. Sue, who was married to Joseph, the eldest Lutz son, and lived across the street, and Amanda held large ceramic bowls and used wooden spoons to pour the apple filling into the crusts. Catherine and Leah moved behind them quickly to put the covering layers of dough on the fruit filling. Annie, whose house it was, followed right behind them, expertly pinching the edges to form perfectly scalloped ridges. Amanda then made X-shaped slits in the centers.

Meg hesitated but decided to jump in. “Is there some way I could help?”

Leah gave her a quizzical look, but Catherine replied at once. “You need oven mitts. We will take the finished pies out in a minute.”

With that, Meg was drawn into the whirlwind of the group, removing the golden-crusted pies from the hot oven and carefully handing them off to be whisked into a nearby room to
cool before being wrapped for sale. When the ovens were empty, they refilled every rack and began preparing a third batch.

Meg marveled at the efficiency of the operation but even more so at the pleasure the women seemed to take in what they were doing. They obviously enjoyed one another’s company, and rather than trudging through a task they must have done hundreds of times, they seemed to find it completely engaging. At one point Leah started to sing something that Meg guessed to be a hymn, and the others joined in. Meg found their voices soothing.

“Will you stop after the apple pies today?” she asked during a momentary lull in the activity.

“Barbara will come later, and we will make other pies,” Annie answered. She adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses and smoothed her apron front. “Each week is different. Later this week, shoofly pie and whoopee pies. Every morning there is bread and muffins. Tomorrow, I think, we will make carrot cake, peanut butter cookies, and some pastries.”

“Yum,” Meg said.

Annie laughed. “Yes, but maybe not if you see them every day for years.”

“Annie can resist them,” Catherine said, smiling. “But we always make enough to have here as well.”

“I’m sure.” Meg grinned.

“We also bake for some restaurants and bakeries. We don’t make so much now. In the warm months, there are many more tourists.” Catherine washed her hands at the sink. “Now
Amanda and I must go to make lunch. Jonathan will take her to the store with these pies later today.”

“Would you mind if I went with them, just to see the store?” Meg asked.

“That would be fine.” Putting on her wrap, Catherine turned to Amanda. “You finish up here and then come.”

It was only a short distance back to the Lutz house, but Meg used the opportunity of being alone with Catherine to tell her about the delay with the car repairs. Catherine only nodded calmly. Somehow Meg felt she couldn’t leave it at that; she owed this woman more of an explanation.

Meg stopped walking and put a hand on the other woman’s arm to get her to stop as well. “Please understand. We don’t want to take advantage of your generosity.”

Catherine’s blue eyes held her usual direct gaze. “You do not.”

“We—my husband—he lost his job,” Meg managed to get out. “We’re going to my parents in upstate New York because we pretty much have nothing. We have to stay there until we get back on our feet.”

Catherine took this in, nodding, her expression unchanged.

“That’s why we can’t leave our car. If we weren’t in this financial situation, we never would have stayed in your house like this. I mean, we’re strangers. Five strangers, no less, and not even Amish. We know this is a huge imposition on your family.”

Catherine smiled gently and put a hand over Meg’s. “You are here, that’s all there is to know. If there is anything we can do to help you, we want to do that.”

Tears of relief stung Meg’s eyes. She hadn’t realized what a burden it had been, keeping the secret of why they were traveling and why they hadn’t made plans to leave the Lutz household. She also couldn’t remember the last time she had met such generous, good-hearted people. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Now,” Catherine said, starting to move forward again, “we will have lunch. Today is a good day to take a little rest after.”

Meg shook off her melancholy thoughts. “Ah, you
do
sometimes rest.”

“Of course I do. But I meant
you
should take a rest today. I will be doing the ironing.”

Meg hurried to keep up with the other woman’s brisk pace. She imagined her old pink leather appointment book in Catherine’s hands. Do everything in the whole world, it would say on each day’s page. The image brought a smile to Meg’s face.

It occurred to her that she had gone forty-eight hours without a scheduled appointment. I knew there was something really amiss, Meg thought wryly. The upheaval wasn’t in her marriage or their financial ruin or being in a place that was unfamiliar in the truest sense of the word. It was that she didn’t have her entire day scheduled down to the minute. No rushing around doing errands, no sense of juggling everyone’s schedule.

It was, she decided, pretty great.

When they got into the house, Sam came running to greet her, hugging her around the waist. The bump on his head was turning dark shades of blue and purple, but he didn’t seem to know it was even there.

“Mommy, where have you been?” He rushed on excitedly without waiting for an answer. “Aaron took me to collect eggs from the chickens before he left for school. It was so fun!” He took a step back, sharing his newfound expertise. “They don’t lay as much in the cold weather, you know, but they do lay some eggs. I got two all by myself. At first I was scared, but then I wasn’t!”

Meg grinned. “That is extremely cool, Sam.”

“Aaron was really nice. He let me put out their feed and everything. They kind of smelled, but that was okay. And you know what? He said if you and Dad and his parents said it was okay, I could go to school with him one day. He goes to a special Amish school. All the grades in one room, first grade up to eighth grade. I hafta see this.”