Thankful (28 page)
Authors: Shelley Shepard Gray
Unfortunately, it seemed that he wasn't a very good mother. And his domestic skills were sadly lacking as well.
As the meal continued in silence, Randall tried to think of something to talk about. “Kay, did you see Miriam at school today?”
“Jah.”
“Why do you look so glum? I thought that would make you happy.”
To his shock, Kaylene's eyes filled with tears. “Because she's . . . she's going to have a
boppli
.”
His fork clattered down on his plate. “What?”
Kaylene swiped her cheek with the side of her hand. “It's true.”
“Well, that's a mighty big surprise,” he murmured, feeling a little disappointed. Why hadn't Junior told him about the baby?
Levi turned to him in surprise. “Randall, you didn't know, either?”
“None of us knew,” Micah said as he patted her cheek with his napkin. “Kay, how did you know?”
“Two of the kids were giggling about it. Saying Miriam looked like she was getting fat.”
“I just saw her two weeks ago on Sunday,” Randall said, trying to wrap his arms around the story. “We all did. She didn't look fat then.”
“She doesna look fat, Randall,” their little sister said impatiently. “She looks like she's gonna have a baby!”
Micah stared at Kaylene like she was sprouting whiskers. “Miriam and Junior have been married some time now,” he said in his patient way. “I guess it's no surprise that a babe is on the way. Why are you crying?”
“Because now Junior is going to have his own family,” she exclaimed, thick tears rolling down her cheeks. “He hardly comes over at all now. When he and Miriam have their own baby, I won't never see him no more.”
“That would be won't
ever
see him,” Micah murmured, absently correcting her grammar.
Kaylene scowled. “Oh, Micah, it don't matter, does it?”
“Well, um . . .” He looked to Randall for help.
Randall shrugged. They'd always depended on their smart brother to help with things like speech and grammar.
But that pause seemed to only make their sister even more perturbed.
Looking from Randall to Neil to Micah to Levi, the tears started falling even faster. “None of you are girls!” she cried, then left the table in a rush.
Stunned, Randall watched her run out of the kitchen. Silence reined around the table as the four of them listened to her scamper up the stairs, run down the hall, and then finally slam her door.
Alarmed, he looked at his brothers. “What was that about?”
“I could be wrong, but I'm thinking that she nailed it on the head,” Micah said slowly. “We're not women and she needs one. Bad.”
“Or Junior,” Levi commented.
As much as he hated to admit it, he was starting to think that Kaylene had a very good point. “She needs a girl around, doesn't she?”
“She is nine now,” Levi said. “I think girls that age need women around.”
Randall was pretty sure Levi was right. “Do you think we should see if she could go live with Miriam and Junior? That might be best for her. You know she loves Miriam and she's always been closest to Junior.”
Micah, being Micah, pondered that one for a long moment before shaking his head. “I don't think we should. That feels like we're pushing her on Junior, and that isn't right. They're newlyweds. Plus, if they've got a baby on the way, they've got other things to worry about.”
“You've got a point, but we wouldn't be pushing Kay away. We would be trying to make her happy.”
Levi frowned. “Somehow, I think that would make things worse. Besides, I don't think we're doing too bad.”
“We?” Randall raised his brows.
“Come on. I'm around a lot more now. And I'm working. I don't think I'm doing anything worse than you did.”
“You're right.” Randall sighed. Looking at his charred chicken and half-eaten baked potato, he wondered how such a bad supper had managed to get even worse.
“Randall, what about Elizabeth?” Neil asked.
“What about her?” He didn't even care that his bitter tone had directed everyone else at the table to look his way.
“You dated her for years. Can't you get her back?”
“And why would I want to do that?”
“If you married Elizabeth, she could live here.” Warming to his idea, Neil added, “Then she could cook, clean, and help with Kay.”
“First of all, Elizabeth broke up with me when I couldn't spend as much time with her as she wanted me to. Nothing's going to change anytime soon. And secondly, even if she did suddenly want to marry me, asking her to come here and cook and clean for the five of us ain't what most girls dream of doing when they get hitched.”
Levi frowned. “You really don't like Elizabeth anymore? You courted her for two years.”
No matter how much his pride stung, he couldn't say that he didn't like her. “All I'm saying is that some things are better in the past. Regrets are for fools, and I'm surely not that.”
As his siblings slowly resumed eating, Randall felt the knot of disappointment resurface that had settled deep inside him when Elizabeth left.
No, he definitely didn't believe in regrets. But perhaps he was a fool after all, because he certainly did miss Elizabeth. He missed her something fierce.
Thank goodness no one else knew how much.
“You, Elizabeth, are a fool,” Elizabeth Nolt mumbled to herself. “For sure and for certain.”
Leaning back on her haunches, she squinted her eyes against the morning sun and surveyed the dinky row of carrots she'd just planted. If anything, they looked worse than the two rows of beans she'd planted yesterday.
One would think even a child could plant a decent vegetable garden. However, it seemed to be completely beyond her grasp.
“How are ya faring, Lizzy?” her grandmother called out from where she sat on the porch swing. “It looks to me like you've been taking a bit of a breather.”
“I needed one, I'm afraid.” After slowly getting to her feet, Elizabeth dusted off her skirts. Then with a resigned sigh, she went to her grandmother's side. “I'm a poor gardener, Mommi, and that's a fact.”
“I'm sorry to say this child, but it's true. Some days, I don't think you could get weeds to grow.”
“I'm that bad?” She didn't even try to hide her amusement. Mommi Anna Mae was legally blind. She could hardly see the door in front of her, to say nothing of the not-so-beautiful garden. “And how can you be so sure?”
“Besides the fact that we've yet to eat anything you've tried to grow . . . I could hear you coughing and sighing and grunting from here on the porch. That's never a good sign.”
“Mommi, I don't grunt.”
“You don't sing when you're planting, either,” she quipped.
When Elizabeth sat by her side, Anna Mae grabbed her hand. “You need to face it, dear. You are a poor gardener. We'll simply need to get our food from the grocery store like everyone else.”
“Mommi, you know as well as I do that we need this garden to work. Food is expensive.”
“Most everything is, it seems.”
That was the Lord's honest truth. Over the last year things had become very tight in the Nolt household. Three years ago her mother had remarried and moved to Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. Though her mother had wanted Elizabeth to come along, Elizabeth hadn't been all that eager to live with a stepfather. Jim was a nice enough man, but he had particular ways of doing things, and Elizabeth knew she would have had to follow his rules.
Of course, that hadn't been the only reason she'd stayed behind. Though she'd volunteered to take care of her grandmother, everyone also knew that Elizabeth had only been biding her time until Randall Beiler had finally proposed.
And though, of course, she'd loved Randall for himself, it hadn't escaped her notice that the Beilers were one of the most prosperous families in Sugarcreek. When she married Randall, her financial troubles were going to be over.
But unfortunately, he never did ask. He'd always been waiting for something, though what that was she never knew.
Then three of his siblings had gotten married, and one night he'd admitted that he was in no hurry to marry anytime soon, on account of his family needing him.
His confession hurt, almost as much as the way he'd hardly done more than quietly nod when Elizabeth had broken things off.
Almost as if their two years together had been nothing but a passing fancy.
To her shame, she realized that she'd been hoping that he would fight for her, even suggest that they marry and stay at his farm.
She would have done that gladly, too. She liked looking after other people. She liked cooking and sewing and planning and fussing.
But he never had run after her. Actually, he'd never even looked back.
Now she was trying to take care of her grandmother on a shoestring budget and spending the rest of her time living in the silence of her regrets.
She'd lost weight and couldn't seem to lift the cloak of disappointment that surrounded her now. It was a difficult thing to realize that one conversation could remove all the joy from her life.
It was even worse to realize that she had no earthly idea how to get it back.
Sisters of the Heart series
Seasons of Sugarcreek series
Families of Honor
The Secrets of Crittenden County
The Days of Redemption series
Return to Sugarcreek series
Cover design by Mary McAdam Keane
Cover illustration by Ricky Mujica
Author photograph by The New Studio
“Peanut Butter Pie” recipe from
Simply Delicious Amish Cooking
by Sherry Gore (Zondervan, 2012) reprinted with permission.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.⢠is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
THANKFUL
.
Copyright © 2014 by Shelley Shepard Gray. Excerpt from
Joyful
© 2014 by Shelley Shepard Gray. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gray, Shelley Shepard.
Thankful / Shelley Shepard Gray.
pages cm.â (Return to Sugarcreek ; book two)
ISBN 978-0-06-220447-9 (pbk.)
1. Manâwoman relationshipsâFiction. 2. AmishâFiction. I. Title.
PS3607.R3966T53 2014
813â².6âdc23
2013048647
EPUB Edition May 2014 ISBN 9780062204493
14Â Â 15Â Â 16Â Â 17Â Â 18Â Â
OV
/
RRD
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