A Heart Made New (20 page)

Gracie’s face crumpled. “My spoon. My spoon. Want my spoon.”

“Like this.” Annie stuck the offending spoon into the mess in Gracie’s bowl. “Stir, stir, stir.”

“Stir, stir, stir.”

Gracie reached for the spoon. Her arm hit the gallon of milk on the prep counter and it toppled. Annie dove, but too late. The plastic container smashed into the floor. Its contents poured out in a
glug, glug, glug
sound. Milk splattered on Annie’s face, her apron, her shoes.

Angry words flew to Annie’s mouth. She pressed her lips together, forcing them back. Accidents happened.

“Milk. I need milk.” Gracie clamored down from her chair, her bare feet making squelching sounds in the puddles. She squatted and slapped her hands in the liquid around her. “Drink milk?”

Annie put her hands on her hips and Sadie appeared at her side. “I think three may be a tad too young for cookie-making.” She laughed, a deep-in-her-belly laugh. “What do you think?”

Annie couldn’t help but join her. The laughter felt good.

“You all have gone completely daft.” David dropped a bag of flour next to the sugar. “You’re standing there laughing while that stuff dries. What if a customer comes in?”

Always the practical one. That was David. At that moment, Annie wanted to shake him until she could shake a little imagination, a little sense of adventure, a little fun, into him. “You’re—”

As if on cue, the door opened and the bells over it dinged.

Fortunately, Charisma entered instead of a customer. Her red eyes and wet cheeks told the story of how the arraignment had gone before she could open her mouth.

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!”

Gracie took off toward Charisma. Her wet feet slid from under her, her hands flew up in the air, and she landed smack on her bottom in the pool of milk. Her mouth opened in a wide circle. A second later, the howls started.

“On that note, I’d better go back to the deliveries before it gets too late.” David whirled and headed out the back. “You look like you have plenty to do here.”

Men. Always ducking out when the going got tough. Annie started toward the crying child.

“I’ve got her.” Sadie scooped up Gracie from the floor and headed to the sink. “I’ll clean up the poor mite. You handle Momma.”

Annie thanked God for the blessing named Sadie Plank and rushed over to Charisma. “What happened?” she called over Gracie’s wailing.

Seemingly oblivious to her daughter’s fussing, Charisma sank onto the bench next to the door. She wiped at tears with her fingers. “They offered him a plea bargain—five years to serve—and then he’d be extradited to one of the other states on the other charges. He refused so they bound him over for trial.”

Annie tried to absorb all the unfamiliar words. It sounded as if Charisma were speaking a foreign language. “Is he getting out of jail until the trial?”

“Only if we have a lot of money for the bond, which we don’t.”

“So when is the trial? Soon?”

Charisma scoffed and began rooting through the faded denim bag she carried everywhere. “The judge set the date for a month from now. He says he can’t get back to town for a long enough stretch to do a full trial until then.”

Annie plopped onto the bench next to her. Charisma and Gracie would be living in the Shirack house for another month at least. With a baby due anytime. Leah would love that.

D
avid lifted the enormous white cake box from the wagon with a grunt. A layered chocolate sheet cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting and cherry filling, it would be the talk of Mayor Haag’s thirtieth wedding anniversary party. The whole thing probably weighed twenty pounds or more. Delivering cakes might not be dig-your-hands-in-the-earth farm work, but it felt good to be useful. The sun shone overhead, sparrows chirped in the elm tree in the mayor’s crisply manicured front lawn, and a soft breeze dried the sweat on his face. This qualified as a good day. As long as he could brush away the memory of the look on Annie’s face earlier when he’d told her she would make a good mother. What had he been thinking? He’d been so taken by the look on her face as she tried to teach sweet little Gracie to bake, he’d forgotten for just a second he had no right to say such a thing to her.

He couldn’t help it. The sight of her standing at the counter, making cookies, a smudge of flour on her nose, had undone him. Everything about her pleased him, from her green eyes to her long, thin fingers to the way she tilted her head when she laughed that low, sweet laugh. Annie. Lovely Annie.

Let it go. Done is done.
It can’t be helped. It can’t be changed.
Focusing on the fragile package, he balanced the box on the white picket fence
that guarded the mayor’s fancy two-story home and struggled with the gate latch. With any luck Mayor Haag would be too busy preparing for her party to pepper him with questions and demands that his mother and Annie appear at the bakery burglar’s trial. Of all the people who had to be in the bakery at the time of the armed robbery, it had to be someone in a position of power in Bliss Creek. Mayor Haag didn’t understand that her kind of power meant little in the Plain people’s world.

“Here, let me get that for you.”

The voice pulled him from his reverie. David lifted his gaze to his helper’s face. Sarah Kauffman. She smiled up at him, not a care in the world reflected on her pretty face framed by a carefully placed prayer kapp that hid most of the fire-engine-red hair she’d wound into a bun. She didn’t look anything like the girl he’d seen driving Josiah around in a pickup truck back in the height of his friend’s wild and wooly rumspringa. That girl wore jeans and T-shirts and played loud music on the radio so she could sing along to songs that talked about women liking tractors. That girl called him Dave and tried to get him to join her friends for a keg pasture party. David tightened his grip on the cake box.

“So you aren’t talking to me? The least you could do is say thanks.”

Her tart tone pulled him from the memory. “Danki. What are you doing here?”

Her dimpled smile disappeared along with the twinkle in her eye that seemed to say everyone she met could be her best friend. Her bottom lip protruded in a pout that made her look twelve.

“Not you too, Dave Plank.” She snapped the gate open and pushed through ahead of him. “I’ve been treated like I’m wearing some sort of red A on my dress by just about every other Plain person in Bliss Creek. I wasn’t expecting it from you.”

He adjusted the box in his arms and followed her on the sidewalk. The man who did the mayor’s yard work came around the corner, pruning shears in his hand. He gave Sarah a curious look and nodded at David. David nodded back. Mayor Haag had her share of friends,
but Sarah Kauffman? He studied her stiff posture. “The name is David. Why would you think I’d be different?”

“Number one, because you’re Joe’s best friend, and I’d think you would at least have an open mind on the subject of what might or might not make him happy.” She stomped up the steps and then turned to look back at him. “Number two, because you really believe all that forgiveness stuff.”

“You don’t?”

“Oh, no, I’m not falling for that one.” She planted both hands on her slim waist above a long, flowing skirt the color of blueberries. “I’ll not say one thing you can take back to your community to prove I’m not serious about joining the faith.”

“It wasn’t a trick question.” David jerked his head toward the door. “Could you knock for me?”

She held up a key. “Actually, the mayor’s running late. She asked me to meet you here. She’ll be here in a while.”

“Why would she ask you to do that?”

“Because…” Sarah slid the key in the lock, turned it, and pushed the thick walnut door open. “I’m her maid.”

“Her maid?” David sputtered a little as he followed her into the foyer. Sarah Kauffman, the lazy-daisy girl whom Josiah described as a tomboy, who loved to play volleyball and basketball, who couldn’t sew a lick and enjoyed microwave popcorn and pizza rolls for supper, had a job. As a cleaning lady for the mayor of Bliss Creek. “Mayor Haag hired you?”

“Yep.” She grinned, obviously pleased with his surprise. “Don’t say anything to Joe. I want to be the one to tell him. The deacon knows. He thinks it shows I’m serious about staying here and embracing the life.”

“Because you clean bathrooms for the mayor?”

Her frown this time burned a hole in David’s forehead. She turned and swished down a hallway with walls covered with paintings of cowboys on horses herding cattle. After a while, the paintings gave way to photographs of the mayor’s three
kinner
in caps and gowns. David inhaled the aroma of cherry tobacco. It reminded him of the mayor’s
husband, who strolled to the bank he owned every morning with a pipe clamped in his teeth.

Sarah laid the key on a spotless granite island in the middle of a huge room outfitted with stainless steel appliances that looked as if they’d never been used. If there was going to be a big party this evening, apparently it didn’t involve food. “Set the cake here.”

David did as he was told, glad to be rid of the package. The muscles in his arms were starting to quiver from its weight.

They stared at each other for a second. She lifted her chin and smiled. “I know Joe and I can be happy together. We can make a life together as a Plain couple.”

“No. You can’t.”

“What do you know?”

“For starters, his name is Josiah and as long as you call him by an Englisch name, it tells me you don’t really understand who he is.”

Sarah grabbed a washcloth and wet it under an ornate brass faucet. “It’s just a name.”

“No. It’s from another world. Your world.” David brushed his hands together, wishing he could wash them. “And you do it to show people you’re closer to him than they are. People like Miriam.”

“This is my world now.” She slapped the washcloth on the counter and began to wipe with more force than necessary. “Joe—Josiah technically is still in his rumspringa. I don’t understand why they won’t let him at least talk to me. He hasn’t been baptized yet. He should be free to do what he wants.”

“Josiah isn’t the boy you knew a year ago.” David edged toward the kitchen door. He shouldn’t be having this conversation. Her sudden appearance had taken him by surprise. “He’s grown up now. He’s committed to the Ordnung.”

“I’m grown up too.” She tapped a foot clad in a sensible black sneaker on the slick tile floor. “I’m willing to commit to the Ordnung too.”

“Josiah is more concerned about how your presence will affect others than his own happiness. He’s worried about your happiness if you
decide to stay. He’s worried about what will happen if he gives you his heart and you change your mind.” David worked to keep his voice kind. She was a girl. She had a heart too. “He’s able to see the long-term consequences. That’s how I know he’s grown up. I don’t know if you’re grown up enough to see those things too.”

Her face contorted with a mixture of frustration and anger, Sarah hurled the soggy washcloth at David. He didn’t have time to react, and it smacked him right in the face. It smelled like lemons. Sarah threw her hands in the air. “I hate the way y’all keep judging me.”

David bent and picked up the washcloth. He walked over to the sink and dropped it in. When he was sure he could control his voice, he spoke. “That wasn’t very grown-up.”

“I’m so frustrated. Everyone here treats me like an outsider, a loose woman. I’m an average girl who likes a guy and wants to be with him.”

“Likes a guy?” David plucked a tissue from a box on the counter and handed it to her. “If you’re not sure, you shouldn’t be here at all. You’ll end up hurting everyone.”

“Loves! I mean loves.” She blew her nose so hard it sounded like a duck quacking in the middle of the kitchen. “I love Joe—Josiah. Don’t you know how that feels?”

“Like if you had to live without him you’d die?”

She sniffed and nodded. “You do know.”

“More than you can imagine.”

“So why are you pushing me away?”

“Because sometimes love isn’t enough.” Not when faith was at stake. Or when cancer reared its ugly head. “You would think it would be, but it’s not. Grow up, Sarah. Do the right thing. For Josiah’s sake. For Miriam’s sake. Go home. Find a good New Order Mennonite man and make him happy.”

“That’s your advice?”

“That’s my advice.”

“Josiah told me about Annie.” She sniffed hard and wiped at her nose again. “Is that what you’re doing for her?”

“Jah.”

“Do you think it’s making her happy?”

No. He could tell by the look on her face every time he walked into her line of vision. “She will be. One day.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m right and you know it.”

“Hello, hello, I’m here.” Mayor Haag’s high voice wafted into the room. “Where is everyone? Sarah, where are you? Why haven’t you rearranged the furniture? Or dusted…”

She bustled into the room, bulging shopping bags in each hand. “Oh, David, I’m glad you’re here. I have your money, but I want to see the cake first. Make sure you didn’t squish it in transit. It’s a lot of money for a…”

She stopped. Her gaze swung from David to Sarah and back. “Did I interrupt something?” Her thin, penciled eyebrows did push-ups under her silver bangs. “What are you two up to?”