A Widow's Hope (34 page)

Julia smiled with satisfaction. “Glad to hear it. There’s always something to worry about raising
kinner.
I had my hands full before Emma started school, but that sure was a long time ago.”

“I seemed to have gotten two crises sorted out—Phoebe and my hay crop—but now another situation presents itself that I’ve been neglecting.”

Julia chuckled—only a farmer could lump a little girl and harvesting a field into the same category.

“What is so amusing to you?” Seth asked. The man looked as though his Sunday shoes were pinching his toes. “I’m asking for your help with Hannah. I don’t come close to saying the right thing when I’m around her. I get all nervous and tongue–tied and end up just about biting her pretty head off.” He glanced once more toward the doorway. “Any advice you could give me to smooth things out over this shunning business would be appreciated. Not that I think it would ever come to that. She never meant any harm quoting the Good Book. Your sister has the purest heart of any woman I’ve ever known…” Seth drew a breath and added quietly, “…excepting yours, sister.” He tried to smile, his first of the morning.

“A pure heart and a pretty face?” Julia asked. “A man couldn’t do much better than that.”

“That’s pretty much the conclusion I came to.”

Julia sighed with regret, knowing that this time she couldn’t help. Both Hannah and the man before her with hat in hand might run around like blind squirrels romantically, but Hannah’s privacy must be respected. If her sister wasn’t ready to open her past to Seth, there wasn’t anything Julia could do.

“I’m sorry, Seth. Your description of me is often correct, but this time I must mind my own business. You’ll have to find your way through this. Anything Hannah told me was told in confidence. I cannot help you.”

The expression on his face nearly broke her heart. He gulped his coffee and set the cup in the sink. “I understand. I’ll try to speak with Hannah before the service starts.
Danki
for the coffee.” He strode outdoors toward the outbuilding looking even more haggard than when he had arrived, despite a double dose of caffeine.

Julia bowed her head and prayed that two blind squirrels might eventually find each other during their mad scramble.

As Hannah walked the road from Mrs. Lee’s, several Amish buggies passed her on the way to Simon’s farm. The women wore their heavy bonnets, while the men had donned black felt because it was only a few weeks to the biannual communion service. Everyone smiled and waved as they drove by. There wasn’t a pointed finger or shaking head or clucking tongue to be seen. Hannah absently wondered whether they had heard of her blunder as she kicked a stone along the gravel berm.

The sun rose over the distant hills, burning off the last dew from the meadows and fields. It would be a warm morning in Simon’s outbuilding. Yet even three hours in a stuffy barn didn’t daunt her. Hannah liked preaching Sundays—the hymns, the sermons, the prayers. She was lifted up closer to God, and nothing could be better than that.

She hadn’t seen Simon this morning before leaving for the neighbor’s, but she imagined he would preach one of the sermons. With her mind made up and her path clearly marked, Hannah could enjoy one last church service in Holmes County with her chin up.

God knew her heart, and nothing else mattered. Romans 12:12 came to mind: “Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying.”

As two more buggies rolled by, Hannah picked up her pace. Both had stopped to offer her a lift, but she had declined, preferring to walk. This would be the coolest time of the day, and Hannah enjoyed the sounds of birds and insects around her. When she reached the Millers’ gravel lane, small groups of men and women were already filing into the barn.

Thank goodness she wasn’t late! Hannah took a seat toward the back on the women’s side of the congregation. Only smiles and nods greeted her as everyone rose for the opening hymn. During the first hour she concentrated on the High German hymnbook because she didn’t know all the words, and then she listened to the bishop’s
Scripture readings. During the sermon, she recognized the back of Seth Miller’s head with a quiver of alarm.

Would she cross paths with him today? It was too soon. Her emotions too raw to make polite conversation about the weather or prospects for rain. She spotted Julia’s stooped shoulders where she sat with her daughters and niece. She hoped the money she would leave behind with Emma would pay for her treatments and pills for a long time to come.

Hannah had no better use for the money. She would not be buying any farm or house in the future. Her home would be with her brother or with her aged parents. Only her flock remained a perplexing dilemma. Hours spent crowded in a livestock trailer at the height of summer could wreak havoc on sheep. Her ewes could miscarry, and many lambs might be lost. Even strong, healthy animals suffered during a hot–weather relocation.

Shaking off her worries about the sheep, Hannah turned her attention to the second sermon. It was Simon’s turn, and it took all her determination not to imagine he was directing his admonitions toward her.

Before the building grew too warm, the service concluded and the people wandered out to enjoy the Sabbath. Some looked for their friends to catch up on news; others sought the cool shade of a tree. Children scampered off to play while teens stole surreptitious glances from beneath bonnets and hat brims. Tonight there would be a singing for young people, and Hannah remembered the carefree days of her own youth.

But she possessed no yearning to go back, not with the knowledge of the pain and disappointment yet to come—the days of waiting and praying for a baby. Yet her arms remained empty, and even the affection of one quiet child had been taken away.

Hannah shook off painful memories and hurried into Julia’s kitchen. She joined the other women carrying platters of meat, casseroles, trays
of veggies, and baskets of baked goods. Soon the tables set up beneath the large oak were laden with a bounty of food.

Hannah retreated inside to clean the kitchen while the menfolk ate. Their voices might be subdued, but their faces revealed pleasure in partaking of a good meal.

“There you are,” Julia said from the cellar steps. “I brought up extra pickles to go with the cold ham.”

“I’ll take them out in a minute,” Hannah said over her shoulder. She was up to her elbows in soapsuds, trying to scrape off burned sweet potato.

“I’d saved you a seat on the bench next to me for the service,” Julia said, slipping her arm around Hannah’s waist.

“Oh, I found a spot in back near a window. I got back from Mrs. Lee’s in the nick of time.” Hannah scrubbed hard at one particularly burned pan.

“Is everything all right, sister? I hope you have forgiven me for being so blunt yesterday.” Julia tightened her embrace.

Hannah left the pan to soak and shut off the water. Turning around, she met her sister’s gaze. “There isn’t anything to forgive. You said nothing that wasn’t true. And it’s high time I faced reality.” She brushed a kiss across Julia’s cheek and reached for the towel. “Do you think the men are finished eating? I’m getting a little hungry.”

“Let’s go see,” Julia said, leaning on Hannah’s arm. “I’m hungry enough to finish off everything they left behind.”

They walked outdoors arm in arm, joining the other women in the buffet line. Hannah meant what she had said to her sister. She felt only gratitude and love for the person who’d told her the truth.

Hannah’s only exaggeration had been her appetite. She tried to eat but ended up just pushing the ham, greens, and potato casserole around her plate. She forced herself to eat a little and then carried her plate to the wash house where women were already busy cleaning up.

“Hannah, may I speak with you a moment?” The familiar voice of Seth Miller stopped her dead in her tracks.

She gazed into his suntanned face. “Hullo, Seth. How goes the hay cutting?”

He swept his hat from his head. “Hannah Brown, I’ve been searching for you and trying to catch your attention all morning. Now that I finally have it, I don’t want to talk about hay.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot while he talked.

“Your attention should have been on the morning message, not on me,” she said softly.

“True enough, but I’ve got some things that need to be said. I first want to thank you for helping my girl. She’s talking again, and that wouldn’t have happened without you. I had ignored the problem, hoping it would go away and pretending nothing was wrong. But plenty was wrong with Phoebe, and you got us back on track.”

He looked so sincere, yet so forlorn. Even while thanking her, he had managed to break her heart. “I’m glad that she’s talking again,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

“When I returned from the fields yesterday, I found her practicing those cards you gave her. She was pronouncing each word in
Deutsch
and English. She went from being mute to being bilingual because of you.”

“Laura Stoddard gave me those cards. She’s used them before with her students.”

“Miss Stoddard didn’t sit around with my daughter for hours. I’m sure you had better things to do.”

Remembering the afternoons spent with Phoebe and the flash cards only made Hannah hurt worse. This surely wouldn’t make the move back home any easier.

“You’re welcome, Seth. I was happy to do it. You have Emma and Leah to thank too. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must help clean up. I can’t afford for my reputation in the district to sink any lower.”

Hannah wasn’t that concerned about her reputation, not anymore. But if she stayed with Seth any longer, she would start to cry. Her
emotions were too fresh, too raw to stand around chatting as if he was any other neighbor.

Seth frowned and glanced across the yard. People milling in the shade or congregating in small groups had focused their attention on him and Hannah. Two unmarried people talking to one another tended to cause that in the Amish world. “All right, Hannah. Since the rest of what I’ve got to say has waited this long, I suppose it can wait till the dishes are done. I’m going to walk the pasture to see if the eye infections have cleared up.”

He slapped his hat back on and strode away with determination.

You go mingle with the sheep, Seth Miller. That’s one place I don’t intend to go.

Hannah made sure that women surrounded her for the remainder of the day while she socialized in the Miller kitchen. Few men wandered inside the house on a fine Sunday afternoon.

The one time she’d spotted Seth walking toward the house, she’d locked herself in the bathroom and hadn’t emerged until someone knocked on the door.

Julia would have called her behavior hiding. Hannah thought of it as self–preservation.

At long last the members of the community packed up their casserole dishes and headed to their buggies—home to chores, evening prayers, and a good night’s sleep before the start of another busy summer week. Seth too collected Phoebe from a group of
kinner
and left, looking far less enthusiastic than he had outside the wash house.

Hannah watched him leave from her bedroom window. Now she could venture outside to check on her animals’ food and water supply. She could walk the pasture without fear of unnecessary conversations or uncomfortable silences. Soon the green, rolling hills of Holmes County would be only a distant memory—a sweet reminiscence like her trip to Cedar Point or her ride on a riverboat before joining the church.

After seeing to her flock, Hannah slipped on her nightgown and unwound her hair from her bun. Gazing at her reflection in the mirror, she brushed out her hair and wondered why she couldn’t be just like everyone else. It was to her continued detriment that she went through life hitting her head against stone walls.

After her prayers, and too tired for Bible study, Hannah decided to list ten ways she could become more ordinary in preparation to rejoin the Amish of Lancaster County.

Unfortunately she came up with only three before deep, blissful sleep stole her away to the land of dreams—where all things still were possible.

Like the mother of a newborn baby, Hannah awoke to the sound of bawling sheep. But this wasn’t a lamb bleating because it had become separated from the ewe. She heard a loud ruckus coming from the pasture that must involve most of the flock. Her first thought was a predator—a coyote or feral dog—as she kicked off the sheet and ran to the window. From her back window overlooking the pasture, she saw a dark massive shape shifting erratically in the moonlight, as though the sheep en masse didn’t know which way to flee.