That didn’t seem to deter any of the crowd. Amish and English alike, intent on finding a bargain, moved from used Amish buggies to lines strung with quilts to food stands offering everything from warm soft pretzels to cotton candy to funnel cakes.
He could only hope his children weren’t talking Rachel Brand into buying them anything to eat. She had offered to have the younger ones walk around with her and her children, so that he could take a look at the tools that were spread out on several long trestle tables. And Matthew had gone off on his own with Jacob Esch and some other boys from his class.
Their acceptance was a sign that Matthew was settling down here, and he was relieved at that. He’d been worried about the boy, but not sure whether his worries were justified or not. Matthew had changed, and there was no way of ever getting back those lost years.
He glanced up from the harrow he was inspecting, his eye caught by someone coming from behind the small brooder coop next to the henhouse on the host farm. Even at this distance, even after meeting him only once, he had no trouble identifying the man. John Kile.
His eyebrows lifted. That was a surprise, for sure. Anyone could come to the Mud Sale. Plenty of Englischers were here, but Kile couldn’t hope to pass unnoticed, not with the number of Amish in attendance. This was a public announcement of his return.
How would his family take that? They’d no doubt been through plenty of grief already. His stomach twisted. He knew that feeling only too well.
Kile moved quickly, almost like he was running away. Shoulders stiff and hands clenched, he headed for the nearest cluster of people gathered around a stand selling sausage sandwiches. He disappeared into the crowd.
Someone else came from behind the brooder coop. Black cape, black bonnet hiding her face. But as soon as she moved, Daniel knew it was Leah. Teacher Leah meeting with her old sweetheart in a not-so-secret place.
He stood, irresolute, for a moment. It was not his place to confront her. But if he had seen, others might have as well.
Even as he hesitated, she turned slightly and saw him. She stopped, her body stiff. Then she came toward him across the stubble of grass.
He waited. If she wanted to talk to him, he wouldn’t avoid it, although he didn’t think she’d want to hear anything he was likely to say.
Leah stopped a few feet from him. A couple of men who’d been looking at the tools moved off, leaving them alone.
“I suppose you saw.” Her mouth was firm, but her face was pale with strain.
“Ja.” He hesitated. She’d be angry if he told her what he thought, but—
“I met John Kile to give him his family’s answer to seeing him.”
For some reason, that gave him a sense of relief. She hadn’t been with Kile on her own accord, then, but had been trying to do the right thing for her friend.
“I take it the answer was no.”
She nodded. “How did you know?”
“He didn’t look like someone who’d just had gut news when he went off.” He searched her face, understanding the strain he saw there. “It was not easy for you.”
“He was very hurt.”
And she’d had to be the one to deliver that hurt. Given their history, it was probably more painful for her than for him.
“I’m sorry for him,” he said gravely, praying that he honestly meant it. “And for you, having to be the one to tell him. But I understand why they decided that.”
Her face was still troubled. “If he had come back sorry, they’d have forgiven him in a moment. The prodigal son, home where he belongs.”
“That would only be right.”
But he thought of his wife and his hands tightened, pressing against his legs. If Ruth had returned, wanting to be accepted into the church again, wanting to resume their marriage, he’d have forgiven her.
But would things ever have been the same between them? He didn’t think so.
Still, the relationship between a man and his wife was different from that of a parent to a child.
“They’re in so much pain.” She turned to start walking back toward the crowd, seeming to assume they’d walk together.
“They love him and want him back. It’s hard that the only way they have to push him to return is to stay separate from him.” He fell into step with her.
The brim of her bonnet moved as she nodded. “I know that’s what they’re thinking, and they could be right. But what if you’re dealing with a person who will never come back, no matter what?”
Leah couldn’t know that she was causing him pain with every word. If she knew about his wife, she would never have spoken to him about this.
But this was what he’d wanted when he’d come here, wasn’t it? The chance to start fresh, where everyone didn’t look at him, at his children, with pity for what had happened to them?
They’d reached a wide muddy patch, and he touched her sleeve lightly to guide her around the edge of it. “It’s not so bad over here where the cars are parked.”
She nodded, moving with him. It had been a long time since he’d walked anywhere, even through a muddy field, with a woman. It felt odd, but somehow natural, too.
She glanced up at him, and it seemed the strain had eased from her face a little. “Do you have no answer to the problem, then, Daniel?”
“I don’t.” He managed a smile. “I know that surprises you, Teacher Leah.”
“It does. But you’d best be careful of expressing too much wisdom, anyway. Someone might think you’d make a gut minister.”
He shook his head. “Like most, I pray the lot never falls on me. My father is the bishop of our church district back in Lancaster County, and I know how heavy a burden it can be.”
Her steps slowed, and she smiled. “Now I’ve learned something more about you.”
“Is that gut?” He could get used to that smile, to the way it made her green eyes fill with light.
“It satisfies my regrettable curiosity, I’m afraid. Yours is the first new family in our church district in quite a few years. You’ve given us something to talk about besides who’s courting whom and whether the price of milk will go up.”
That sort of curiosity was the last thing he wanted, but it was inevitable. “Both of those things are more important than anything you might learn about me.”
“People are always more interesting to me than cows,” she said lightly.
He found himself wondering what she had been like at eighteen, before John Kile had left her behind. More like her pert sister than he’d have originally guessed, perhaps, before grief and disappointment had taken that liveliness away.
“Not more important to a dairy farmer,” he said.
They rounded a row of cars. At the end of the next row, two motorcycles were parked.
Three Amish boys surrounded one of them, gawking at the boy who’d been brave enough, or foolish enough, to climb onto the motorcycle. Daniel stopped, taking in what he saw. The boy was Matthew.
For a moment Daniel froze, feeling as if he’d taken a pitchfork in the stomach. Then he surged forward, grabbed his son, and pulled him off the contraption.
“What are you doing?” It was all he could do to keep from shaking the boy. “Is this how you behave when I let you go with your friends? Is it?”
He was vaguely aware of Leah drawing the other boys away.
“Jacob and Thomas Esch and Gabriel Stoltzfus.” It was very much her teacher voice. “You go back to your parents right now, before you find yourselves in trouble.”
Murmurs of agreement, and the other boys ran off, leaving them alone. Daniel looked at his son, and Matthew stared back at him.
“Well? What do you have to say for yourself, Matthew?”
His son’s face was white and set. “I didn’t do anything so bad. It’s just a motorcycle.”
“It’s not for us, as you well know.”
Something flashed in Matthew’s eyes, an expression he’d begun to dread. One that made his son look like a stranger.
“I rode on one once, with a friend of Mamm’s.” He spat the words out. “She didn’t think it was wrong. I didn’t either. It was fun.”
The pitchfork in his belly twisted. He heard the quick intake of Leah’s breath. He turned to her, knowing his anger was irrational but not able to stop it.
“Ja.” He snapped off the word. “You heard. My children lived in the English world for two years. Now you really know something about me.”
Holding Matthew by the arm, he charged off.
“Don’t
you bother to tell me you’re not interested in Daniel Glick.” Barbara paused at the kitchen door on her way out on Monday afternoon, clearly determined to have the last word on the subject. “I saw you together at the Mud Sale with my own eyes already.”
She waved, chuckling a little at her comment, and scurried off the porch toward the waiting buggy.
Leah counted to ten, keeping a smile pinned on her face with an effort. By the time she reached eight, Barbara was in her buggy and heading down the lane.
Leah turned to her mother, frustration building to the boiling point. If she didn’t say something to someone, she’d burst with it.
“When is this matchmaking going to stop? Can’t I even speak to a man without the busybodies making plans for a wedding?”
Mamm continued moving a batch of snickerdoodles from the cooling rack to a plastic container, her face placid. “Ach, Leah, you take Barbara’s teasing too much to heart. She doesn’t mean anything by it. Anyway, you know how she is.”
“I know too well how my sister-in-law is, but she’s not the only one. I heard the whispers after church yesterday.”
Leah picked up a dish towel and began drying the bowls and spoons left in the sink from Mamm’s baking. The whole house had smelled of cinnamon and sugar when she’d come in from school, setting her mouth watering as if she were a scholar herself, running into the kitchen ravenous.
Her mother stopped what she was doing to look at Leah. “I heard whispers, too, but they were about Johnny Kile and how he’s back in Pleasant Valley. Did you know about this already, Leah?”
“I’ve known for a few days.” Her towel slowed on the mixing bowl. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you and Daadi, but Rachel asked me not to say anything until she’d had a chance to talk with her parents about it. She’s worried about how they’re taking it.”
Her mother nodded, but her gaze was troubled. “They are grieved, I know. But does it bother you again, knowing he’s here in the valley?”
“Not as much as having half the church trying to pair me up with Daniel Glick,” she said tartly. At least she thought that was true. “Whatever feelings I had for Johnny Kile were boy-and-girl notions, over a long time ago and forgotten.”
“It’s gut, that.” Her mother put the cookie container into a basket and added several jars of rhubarb sauce. “It makes no sense to be crying over the past. Let the troubles of the day be sufficient.”
“I suppose so.” Mamm had a thought from Scripture for every eventuality, though Leah had never found that one especially comforting.
Her mother tucked a cloth over the basket’s contents. “There. You have time before supper to take this over to the Glick place, you do.”
The cookie sheet Leah was holding clattered onto the counter. “Mamm, what was I just saying? You’re as bad as Barbara is, trying to match me up with Daniel just because he’s a widower.”
“Nonsense.” Her mother bridled, but her eyes didn’t meet Leah’s. “I’m trying to be neighborly, that’s all. I don’t suppose Daniel has time to be baking cookies for those young ones of his, running the farm all on his own the way he’s doing.”
“If you were just being neighborly, you could have asked Barbara to drop them off on her way home,” Leah said firmly. “She’d have loved an excuse to call, and she’d probably be talking up my virtues to Daniel along with delivering the cookies.”
“Barbara’s not—”
“What? A maidal?” Bad enough that the rest of the valley thought that she and Daniel made a perfect match, without her mother getting into it.
“I’m just being neighborly,” her mother repeated stubbornly. “But if I were trying to bring the two of you together, is that so bad?” She reached toward Leah, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. “Is it bad that I want to see my oldest daughter settled with a home and family of her own before I die?”
The words were like an arrow to Leah’s heart, and her breath caught painfully. She clasped her mother’s hands in hers.
“Mamm, what’s wrong? Why are you talking that way? Did you get a bad report from the doctor? What did he say?”
“No, no, nothing like that.” Her mother patted her cheek. “Don’t fuss over me. I’m just thinking of the future.”
“Why would you be thinking that way if nothing’s wrong?” She should have insisted on going with her mother to that last doctor’s visit. Then she’d know for certain what they faced.
“The doctor says I’m well. That the tiredness is to be expected.” She sighed, putting her palm against her cheek as if to comfort herself. “I just never thought we’d be moving into the daadi haus so soon. I hoped and prayed that you and Anna would be married before that happened. Barbara’s a gut woman, but—”
“Ja.” They both knew how that sentence would finish. Barbara was a fine woman, but neither Leah nor Anna wanted to live with her. “Mamm, are you sure that’s all? You promise?” She looked intently into her mother’s lined face, trying to read the truth there.
“That’s all,” she said firmly. She cradled Leah’s face in her hands. “You have so much love in your heart to give, daughter. I want a chance for you to give that love to a gut man and children, the Lord willing.”
Leah felt the words like a physical pain. So Mamm thought she had love to give.
After the way she’d failed Johnny, she doubted it. He’d said she was a coward, and he’d been right. She didn’t have what it took to love the way Mamm did.
But it would only upset her mother if she said that.
“Well.” Her mother turned to the table, picking up the basket. “If you won’t take this over to the Glicks, I guess I’ll walk over myself with it.”