The Amish Groom ~ Men of Lancaster County Book 1 (3 page)

“No, nothing like that.”

I stepped around the corner to see her at the counter, spooning out scrambled eggs from the pan. The aroma of coffee and peach strudel wafted past my nose, and I realized I was starving. I’d fed Timber before going to the pond but hadn’t eaten a thing yet myself.

She didn’t even look up to see me, so Jake let out a low whistle as he pushed past to go to the table. “Wow, Tyler. Nice going on your clothes there! Did you leave any mud in the pond?” He whistled again, dramatically.

Of course, at that
Mammi
’s head snapped up. She took in the sight of me, her eyes narrowing.

“Just for that, no strudel,” she said. When Jake burst out in a victorious laugh, she gave him a sharp, “I’m talking to
you
, young man. No strudel for troublemakers.”

Lucky for me, she hated tattling even more than she hated extra work on laundry day. I grinned, though I didn’t dare make a sound in return lest she come down on me as well.

“I’ll rinse everything out as soon as I take it off,” I told her.

“See that you do,” she replied, returning her attention to the food preparations in front of her.

I flashed Jake a “gotcha” look. He snagged a corner of the strudel when
Mammi
’s head was turned and tossed it into his mouth with a smirk that said “gotcha back.”

Ten minutes later, I had returned to the kitchen, cleaned up and ready for the day, relieved that the mud had rinsed right out. I spotted
Mammi
still standing at the counter and Jake sitting at the table. He was sipping coffee but otherwise waiting to dig in until everyone else had convened here too. I heard
Daadi
come in the back door as I was taking my seat, and once he’d hung up his hat and jacket, he joined us in the kitchen and crossed the floor toward his wife.

Daadi
always greeted my grandmother the same way when the morning’s first chores were done and it was time for breakfast and devotions: kissing her cheek and speaking in the softest words, meant just for her, saying,
“Gud mariye, meiner Aldi.”
Good morning, my wife.

Mammi
smiled the way she always did. “
Gud mariye
, Joel.”

I loved how tender my grandparents were with each other in these first few moments of the day. Like most Amish,
Daadi
didn’t give
Mammi
kisses in front of people, or fuss over her in a personal kind of way, especially not in public. But their morning custom made me feel good about the start of the day, and it always had. It was strange and wonderful to think my mother probably saw them do this same thing every morning of her life too.

Daadi
brought a mug of coffee to the table and took his seat at the end. “Beautiful sunrise over the pond this morning?” he asked, letting me know in his gentle way he’d seen me heading to the place I always went when there was much on my mind.

“Sure was,” I replied, adding nothing else, not even about the diffuser repair. He knew as well as I did that that wasn’t really why I’d gone out there.

I avoided his gaze, watching as
Mammi
brought a plate of sausages to the table. We bowed our heads for a silent prayer, and the topic of the pond was dropped. That was fine with me. I had always felt free to share even my most troubling thoughts with my grandfather. But I wasn’t ready to have
that
conversation.

Not yet, anyway—and especially not with him.

T
WO

A
fter breakfast Jake and I drove the wagon a short distance over to my aunt Sarah and uncle Jonah’s farm to deliver the extra seating we’d constructed for the wedding. We’d helped to get everything set up the day before—clearing out some of the furniture from the main room of the house and filling the space with all of the benches from our district’s bench wagon. The Bowmans still lacked a few more rows, though, and as none of our neighboring districts had benches to spare thanks to weddings of their own, last night Jake and I had ended up doing some quick carpentry work in the buggy shop, making the extra benches ourselves. Today we were back to deliver them, with just two and half hours to go before the festivities would start. When we arrived, we greeted Anna and then went right to work with the help of her brothers, Sam and Gideon, carrying the supplementary benches inside and setting them up.

This was one of the earliest weddings of the season, and intentionally so, according to Rachel. As the youngest of four children, Anna had grown tired of being the last of everything, so she wanted to be among the first of the courting couples to marry this year. Rachel was Anna’s best friend and had been talking about this event for weeks.

At least she hadn’t used it as an opportunity to put pressure on me, I thought as Jake and I lifted down another bench from the wagon, though she certainly had every right to. Rachel and I had been a couple for years, long enough for her—and everyone else, for that matter—to assume we, too, would end up married.

Though we hadn’t begun courting until we were in our teens, we’d been friends long before that. I first met Rachel when I was ten and she was nine. She had come from Ohio after her grandfather died and her parents moved to Lancaster County to take over his dairy farm. Rachel was the youngest of three daughters—all honey-brunettes with a sprinkling of freckles—but she was by far the prettiest. Her eyes were a vivid blue, easily rivaling the bluest cornflower ever to sprout.

When she first moved here, she was just a new girl to tease—all in good fun, of course. Jake and I couldn’t resist, and we told her all sorts of tall tales, the biggest being that he and I were twins. Though we looked almost nothing alike, she believed us until she learned that he was a Miller and I an Anderson.

“How can you be twins if you have different last names?” she’d asked one day during her second week there.

“That’s so people can tell us apart,” Jake replied with a perfect deadpan.

After a long moment, her eyes narrowed, and then she turned on her heel without a word and marched off to speak to the teacher, knowing we were pulling her leg and ready to settle the matter once and for all.

“Tyler?” For the second time today, Jake’s voice pulled me out of a memory.

“Huh?” I asked, blinking.

He was lifting down his end of the final bench, waiting for me to do the same. “I said, ‘What’s going on?’ ”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a million miles away. What gives? You okay?”

“Of course. I’m fine.” Or I would be if he would mind his own business.

We carried the last bench into the house together and slid it into place. After that, Sam and Gideon went out to handle some other chore, leaving Jake and me to finish up. We both looked around at the room, transformed now from a living area to a church, and began to shift things a bit to allow a little more leg room between rows.

Nearby, the large kitchen area was bustling with women, including Anna and her mother and various relatives, helping to prepare the wedding feast. If I’d been in there with them, I would have been stepping on people’s toes, bumping into their backs, and generally making a big mess, but they worked together seamlessly, thanks to years of practice.

“I know what it is,” Jake said suddenly, pausing to look my way as I was tugging a bench into place.

“What
what
is?”

He glanced toward the kitchen before lowering his voice so only I could hear. “Why you’re so nervous and distracted today. It’s because you know that this time next year we’ll be slinging benches around for
your
wedding.”

He laughed.

I didn’t.

“Oh, come on, Tyler,” he prodded in a soft voice. “I don’t know why you’re not
already
married. And neither does anyone else.”

I glared at him, gesturing toward the kitchen and the women who might overhear his words.

“I’m serious!” he said, moving closer now so he could speak even more softly. “You’re getting up in years, you know?”

“I’m twenty-three.”

“Which is high time to take that next step. And you’ll never find a better match for you than Rachel.”

Now it was my turn to pause. Why didn’t he get it? I spoke through gritted teeth, telling him I was not going to discuss it with him, but he kept talking as if he hadn’t even heard me.

“You know she’s perfect for you.
She
thinks you’re wonderful.” He put the emphasis on “she,” meaning, of course, that Rachel thought it even if no one else did.

“Funny,” I snapped.

Jake moved to the end of the row. “It’s time to take that next step, buddy, just like Tobias will today with Anna. I know it and you know it. Most of all, Rachel knows it.”

Unsure how to reply, I leaned down and made one final shift, intentionally pushing the bench at Jake’s knees. He yelped as he tried to avoid the impact.

“Sorry,” I said in a loud voice, glancing toward the kitchen and giving an “everything’s okay here” wave to the two women who had turned to look. “Guess I didn’t see your legs there, buddy. Must need to get my eyes checked.”

“Get your brain checked, you mean.” Jake sat down to rub his knee and whispered, “I’m only saying what you need to hear.”

“No,” I hissed, “you’re only saying a bunch of stuff that’s none of your business.”

I was saved from further harassment by the appearance of Jonah Bowman—Anna’s father and my uncle—who came in from outside. “We’re all finished here,” I said. “Anything else we can do for you?”

“
Ya
. Before you go, can you cut some more logs for cooking? We use propane in the house and in the wedding wagon, but I also borrowed three big cookstoves that we have going out back.” Glancing toward the kitchen, he added, “I thought I had enough wood, but I may have underestimated the need.”

We all shared a smile, knowing that the women in there would have an absolute fit if they ran short of fuel before they were finished roasting all the chickens this day would require.

“Happy to do it.”

Jake and I went outside to the toolshed, grabbed some axes, and then made our way to the woodpile, where we pulled out logs of birch and oak and began breaking them down into smaller, stove-sized pieces. Across the driveway from us, the barn’s big doors were open to the sun, and I could see people milling around inside, setting up for the reception.

We chopped for a while, quiet except for the thwack of our axes and the crisp splitting of wood.

“I guess I’ll let you off the hook—for now,” Jake said finally, pausing to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “But just let me say that I really am glad you have Rachel.”

“Thank you,” I replied, relieved he was willing to let it go.

Then he added, “After all, you’ll need
someone
to fill the lonely hours once I leave tomorrow.”

I couldn’t help but smile as I reached for another log and placed it on the chopping block. “Oh, yeah? You think I’ll be counting the days till you get back?” I slammed the ax down, splitting the log neatly in two.

“Absolutely. Mark my words. You’re going to miss me while I’m gone more than you can imagine.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, leaning down to pick up the larger of the two pieces and placing it on the block to split it again. “More likely, I’ll forget all about you. You’ll come back in four months’ time, and we’ll have to be reintroduced. I’ll be all, ‘What’s that? Jake who? I suppose you do look kind of familiar…’ ”

I grinned, he smirked, and together we continued working side by side, the only sounds our occasional grunts and the steady rhythm of our task. I was glad he had dropped the discussion of Rachel, but I would have liked to avoid this topic as well. We both knew that his teasing words held more than a little truth. I couldn’t imagine what the next months were going to be like without Jake around. He was headed to Missouri for blacksmithing school, something he’d been looking forward to for a long time. Though Jake had always labored alongside me in
Daadi
’s buggy shop, his first love was the horses that pulled those buggies. Shoeing took skill, craftsmanship, and a level of trust between animal and man that few people appreciated. I did, but only because Jake had been talking about it since we were kids.