The Beekeeper's Son (The Amish of Bee County Book 1) (4 page)

Stephen stood, knocking the bench back in his haste, and righted the glass. He shook his head, his expression stern. “Well, child, I reckon you should clean that up.”

Abigail normally put the smaller children at their own table, but John’s front room didn’t have the space. Hazel’s face crumpled. She scrambled to her feet, knocking over Hannah’s glass in the process. More water spilled. “Mudder!”

“Accidents happen, little one.” Abigail grabbed the tablecloth and folded it up, blotting the water as she went. The less on the floor, the less to clean up. “Get a washrag from the kitchen. I’ll clean this up.”

“Let her do it.” Stephen tugged the tablecloth from Abigail’s hands, his hands gentle but his tone firm. “Accident or not, little girls who make messes should clean them up, don’t you think?”

Abigail stopped, caught between the desire to make sure her daughter didn’t cause extra work for her sister-in-law and not wanting to get off on the wrong foot with Stephen. He nodded at her, his eyes kind, but it felt as if this was some sort of test. At three, Hazel did simple chores, but she tended to make more of a mess when she tried to clean.

“No harm done.” Mordecai set the second glass upright. He scooped Hazel from her bench and set her on her feet. “Go on, little one. Bring your mudder a towel.”

The little girl, eyes wide, her face stained with tears, sniffled and scurried to the kitchen.

Abigail opened her mouth to thank him.

“You were getting pie.”

Stephen pointed his long finger in the direction of the kitchen. His tone held an unmistakable note of authority Abigail hadn’t heard before. Timothy had never ordered her to do anything. He’d been more likely to bring her around to his way of thinking with a kiss on her neck or a hug from behind. She could never refuse him under those circumstances. “Why don’t you go sit in the yard? I’ll bring it out.”

“That is a good idea.” He paused at the screen door and looked back, smiling. “It’s been a long time. We have some catching up to do.”

He slipped through the door, letting it shut with hardly a sound.

Abigail took the washrag from a still-tearful Hazel and wiped at the water on the bench and floor. Mordecai picked up a piece of bread he’d spent more time shredding than eating during most of the meal. Abigail, her skin hot with embarrassment, forced her gaze back to the mess her daughter had made.

“It’ll dry. No harm done.” Mordecai picked up the stack of plates so she could dry under it. His eyes were blue green and brilliant against his tanned skin. “The girls will clean up.”

Timothy’s eyes had been the color of freshly turned earth and always held a questioning note, as if he couldn’t quite believe she’d chosen him. Abigail gave herself a mental shake. She had to stop comparing. “I hate to make extra work for anyone, that’s all.”

“You brought a lot of helping hands with you. We’re all happy you’re here. All of us are.”

Something about the way he said the words eased the knot of apprehension between her shoulders. He smiled. He had a kind smile. She found herself smiling back.

John cleared his throat. “Weren’t you getting pie and tea for Stephen?”

“Tea, right. Tea.”

She fled to the kitchen. There she encountered accusing stares from her four daughters, squeezed into the narrow kitchen with Eve’s three. Ignoring them the best she could, Abigail cut a thick wedge of pie and refilled Stephen’s glass. She inhaled and let out a breath. It had been only two years since Timothy’s death. She knew how to acquiesce to a man’s will. She’d done it for years, but somehow she felt out of practice. She’d best relearn the skill, no matter what the girls thought.

“He doesn’t have kinner.” Deborah looked as if she’d bitten her tongue.

“What?” Abigail had heard the statement, but she needed time to find a response. Stephen had never married, true, but that could be her fault. He’d asked her to marry him once before and she’d chosen their father instead. He’d moved away not long after Abigail married. Then he returned to Tennessee for a wedding a year after Timothy’s death. The same quiet man of faith he’d always been. A man who’d never fallen out of love with her. She had been sure of that when she left home or she would never have come. Could she learn to love him the way she hadn’t loved him the first time? She cared for him. Wasn’t that enough?

It had to be. She had to have this new start in this new place. A place far from the pond where Timothy had asked her to marry him and far from the house where their children had been conceived and born. Far from the cemetery where he’d been laid to rest twenty-four months, one week, and six days ago.

“What does he know about what a little girl should do or shouldn’t do?”

“You best hush.” Abigail picked up the saucer, avoiding her oldest daughter’s dark look. “He was right. Hazel needs to learn.”

“Will he tell the rest of us what to do too?”

“Do the dishes.”

Deborah plunged her hands into the water so hard it slopped over the edges of the tub. Leila grabbed a plate and started wiping it down with a furious motion while Rebekah scrubbed the prep table with enough force to remove the varnish. Abigail wanted to reprimand them, but she couldn’t come up with a specific reason. They were doing as they were told. She bit back angry words. It would take some adjustment, this living in a new place, for all of them. Adjustments would have to be made if—when—she married Stephen. Deborah would learn. She would learn to respect Stephen, even if she couldn’t love him the way she loved her father.

They all would.

Not wanting to dwell on what that meant for herself, Abigail marched out to the front yard where she handed the pie to Stephen, all the while giving him her best smile. “Here you go.” She set the tea on a battered crate situated between the two lawn chairs. “I hope you have room for a big slice.”

“Always.” He settled into the faded plastic chair and waved his free hand toward the other one. “Sit with me.”

She sat. Despite the hour, the sun sinking in the west still bathed her in heat. Sweat pricked her forehead and trickled down the back of her neck. Flies buzzed her face. She swatted them away, only to see them dive-bomb the pie. The chair creaked under her, loud in the evening air laden with the sound of cicadas buzzing endlessly in the distance. What would they talk about? She’d imagined so many conversations for so long, it never occurred to her that at this moment her mind would be blank.

“Where’s your pie?”

Her stomach churned. She felt like a girl about to go to her first singing. Stomach full of butterflies, mouth dry, hands sweaty. As a widow with five children, she could barely remember her first singing. She felt more like a filly for sale at a horse auction. “Eve’s pulled-pork sandwiches were so good, I couldn’t eat another bite. The fried potatoes really hit the spot too.”

“You’ve gotten thinner.” A bit of pie crust teetered on his lower lip and fell into his beard. He brushed it away, his head still cocked as he stared at her. “You know what they say: A skinny woman must be a bad cook.”

“A skinny woman is a woman working the fields with her
dochders
because she has no mann and only one young
suh
.” She tried to temper the tartness in her voice. He wanted to make conversation. He didn’t really mean it. “I ate plenty this spring, but between the fields and the garden, I burned it all off.”

Stephen chuckled. “You got a little vinegar in you. I like that. I’m only giving you a hard time. It’s good to laugh a little, don’t you think? Especially when things are awkward.”

She heaved a sigh of relief. He liked her vinegar. How he would feel about her daughters, who all possessed that same vinegar in varying degrees, remained to be seen. As hard as she tried, Abigail had never been able to cultivate placid dispositions in her daughters. She’d prayed and admonished and punished, just as her mudder had done with her. Deborah, Leila, Rebekah, and Hazel—they all reminded her of herself. And Timothy. “I’m sorry about the water.”

“I expect I’ll have to take them in hand when the time comes.”

“When the time comes?” Abigail’s heart banged against her rib cage. Blood pulsed in her ears. In his letters, Stephen had
asked her to come out west, but he never actually proposed marriage. The rest of his meaning sank in. “Take them in hand?”

“If we’re to make this work, they’ll have to respect me as the head of the household.”

“Getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren’t you?” Again she worked to keep her tone soft. “We hardly know each other after all these years.”

“We both know why you’re here.” His hand rested on hers for the merest second, then lifted, leaving behind a faint, lingering heat. “I need a fraa. You need a mann. We need each other. We have a second chance to make that happen.”

His declaration lacked romance, but Abigail wasn’t a young girl in the throes of her first love. Stephen spoke the truth. So why did her throat hurt with the effort to hold back tears? “A woman with five kinner can’t dispute that.”

“You know I’ve always cared for you.”

“I know you did a long time ago.”

“I never married.”

“Because of me?”

He leaned back in his chair, his gaze fixed on some distant point she couldn’t see. “For many reasons. I reckon I felt . . . uncertain . . . about trying again. Time passed. More time than I intended, but I never found the right woman. Until now.”

“I hate to think of you being unhappy on my account.”

“I wasn’t unhappy. I learned to be content. I learned to wait upon the Lord.” His gaze came back to her face. He smiled. “And Gott has rewarded my patience.”

His happiness at this thought shone in his face. That he thought of her as a reward from God was almost too much for Abigail to contemplate. He’d thought of her as some ideal for
all these years. Now he would know the real her. The one who burned the bread on occasion and often snapped at the kinner before she’d drank her
kaffi
in the morning.

“Sounds like you did real well with the sale of the farm.” He eyed a huge chunk of the pie. Apparently deciding against it, he cut it into smaller pieces. “Did you bring the money with you?”

The sale of the farm had been the hardest thing she’d ever done—next to putting Timothy’s body in the ground. “Nee. John advised me to go to the bank there in Ethridge and have them set up an account for me at one of the branches they have here in Texas. The lady at the bank said they have one in a place called Victoria not too terribly far from here.”

“Too far to go by buggy.” A bee settled on the remnants of Stephen’s pie. He shooed it away with a gentle swish of his big hand. “You’ll have to hire a driver to get your money out. It’s another expense.”

Did he think she would carry that kind of money in her canvas bag across three states? She’d kept out money for their expenses, to pay the drivers and to help John with feeding her brood. Beyond that, she hadn’t thought of needing more. “Get it out?”

“When the time comes, I mean. I was thinking we could irrigate another five, ten acres of my property. Plant more fruit trees.”

“What happened to the olive trees you wrote about in your letters?”

“It takes six or seven years before they start bearing. I should have olives next year.” He set his plate on the crate. “We’re doing good selling onions and such to the grocery store chain. But I’ll need to do more to feed five kinner. Or more.”

The last two words sent heat coursing through Abigail once again. She hadn’t allowed herself to think beyond a wedding. To
being the fraa of a man again. To the days and the nights that would follow. Memories flooded her. Timothy holding her hand as they walked into their home for the first time as husband and wife. Timothy removing her kapp and taking the pins from her hair with the gentlest of touch. Timothy, tears in his eyes, holding Deborah in his arms minutes after her birth, and sixteen years later holding Hazel with the same look of awe and joy on his face. Timothy’s big, callused hands on her shoulders, his kind eyes dancing with laughter and love as he bent to kiss her, sure any minute one of the kinner would walk in the kitchen and discover them acting like teenagers.

“Abigail?” Stephen leaned toward her, his forehead furrowed. “Are you all right? You look done in. Maybe we should put off this conversation for another evening.”

“Jah. Jah, that would be good.” She choked out the words, horrified at the thought that tears might follow. She popped from the chair. “It was good to see you again.”

“I’ve waited a long time for this.” Stephen caught her arm as she turned toward the door. “I don’t want to wait much longer.”

“I know.” She nodded and tried to summon the optimism she’d felt as she packed up all their belongings and closed the door behind her on the house that had been filled with memories of a life that had ended with Timothy’s sudden heart attack. “I’m just tired.”

His hand dropped. “You can’t stay in your brother’s house forever. It’s too small.”

“I know.”

“I have a decent-sized house.” He smiled at her, his expression begging her to see the future he imagined. “Big enough for five kinner and then some.”

“I know.” She forced a return smile. “You said that in your letters.”

“One of these nights I’ll take you for a buggy ride.” He ducked his head, staring at his dusty boots, sniffed, then looked her in the eye. “You’ll see. The house needs a woman’s touch. Some elbow grease to shine the floor, pies baking in the kitchen. The vegetable garden needs weeding. You’ll find it suits you.”

He was trying so hard. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’m sure I will.”

He picked up his plate and handed it to her. “Don’t forget the glass.”

“I won’t.”

Stephen walked away, grasshoppers scattering in his wake, leaving her standing in the front yard, his dirty dishes in her hands. Caught in the moment, she watched him drive away in his buggy.

A woman her age couldn’t expect romance.

Shouldn’t expect it.

Should she?

She was being ridiculous. She slid the glass on top of the plate, intent on heading inside. Gott had blessed her with the chance for a new start with a good man. The Stephen she remembered was a steady, decent man. The kind who would take on a readymade family and step up as the head of the house. That was what she needed. Not romance. Her season for romance was over. She should be content.