The Beekeeper's Son (The Amish of Bee County Book 1) (7 page)

Was he listing the chores he expected she would do as his
wife? Or trying to sell her on how the house would look once a woman got ahold of it? He plopped her on her feet so she stood close to him. “It sounds—”

“Shush.” He loomed over her, a curious gleam in his eyes. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

He bent down. She opened her mouth to protest. His hand came up and touched her cheek, his skin rough against hers. His eyes closed and he leaned in. Abigail wanted to back away, but the side of the buggy dug into her shoulder. “Stephen.” Her voice came out a whisper. “I don’t—”

His lips covered hers in a wet, slobbery kiss that reminded her of Caleb’s favorite dog back home. Bubba, with his big muzzle all over their faces whenever they’d been away for a while. Abigail closed her eyes and tried to summon the emotion such a kiss should elicit. Her heart chugged faster, but more from embarrassment than emotion. She wanted to give Stephen what he wanted, what he was asking her to give him with this kiss. He wanted her heart. He wanted them to be as one, as husband and wife.

She wanted that too. She’d been sure of that. The kiss seemed to go on and on. Her back hurt and her face felt slick with sweat.

Stephen took a step back, but his hands lingered on her shoulders, his fingers moving in gentle circles until they touched the hollow of her neck.

“There. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time—for years, in fact.” The grin turned self-satisfied. “What better way to start your visit to your new home, don’t you think?”

He turned toward the house with the flourish of one arm. Abigail swiped at her mouth with her sleeve. He hadn’t had much practice kissing, that was obvious, and she should be glad of that. He kept his affection special and pure by sharing it only with
someone he really cared about. If he had longed to do this when they courted as youth, he’d never shown it. Would she have responded differently if he had? Her mind’s eye filled with Timothy’s face as he bent his head to kiss her on a moonlit-drenched night on the road that led to her house. Nee, Timothy had made her his with that very first kiss.

And now Timothy was gone and she had to go on. Stephen was a good man, not unpleasing to the eye. So why couldn’t she respond in kind? She had more practice, but only because she’d been married to a man she loved for more than twenty years. Maybe it was for that reason. She still loved Timothy. She would always love him. Perhaps she simply couldn’t learn to love another. If that were the case, she would be alone for the rest of this earthly life.

Plain men and women were expected to marry again. Families needed to be complete. Kinner needed mudders, but they also needed daeds to be the heads of their homes. If she were to talk to the bishop, he would tell her as much. She knew it in her head, but how did she get her heart to go along?

Stephen grabbed her hand again and tugged her toward the house. “Come on, come on, I want to show you everything.”

In his exuberance, he stumbled in a rut in the road and down he went with a thud. For some reason not clear to Abigail, he refused to relinquish his hold of her hand. Down she went with him. Her knees smacked against the hard earth. Gravel scraped her free hand, and her momentum carried her until her nose banged against the sunbaked dirt road hard as brick.

“I’m so sorry. I’m such a clumsy oaf.” Stephen scrambled to his feet. He slid his hands around her waist and planted her on her feet before she could protest. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’ve never been so clumsy—”

“It’s all right.” Abigail brushed at the dirt on her apron, leaving a faint red tinge of blood from the scrape on her palm. “No harm done.”

“You’re bleeding.” Stephen grabbed her hand and examined her palm. “I’m such an oaf.”

“Nee. Just enthusiastic.” She tugged her hand from his once again and hid it behind her apron. “Maybe if you slow down a little, if we slow down a little.”

His face darkened. “If we go any slower, I’ll be too old to have our own children by the time we marry.”

So that was the rush. He wanted children of his own. “I know it’s been a long haul for you, but you have to remember, it’s only been two years since Timothy passed.”

“Two years is a long time. Most Plain folks remarry pretty quick.”

As if he had any idea what it took to get to that frame of mind. “I know and I’m trying. But I’m asking you to give me a little more time.”

His gaze softened. “If time is what you need, then time you shall have.”

“Danki.”

“No need to be all fancy about it. Gott will give me the patience I need and you the courage you need.”

“Courage? I’m not . . . I wasn’t—”

“Let’s go in. You can wash your hands and face—you’ve got dirt on your nose.” He swiped at it with his catcher’s mitt–sized hands and missed. Much to Abigail’s relief. Her nose throbbed as it was. “I want you to see the kitchen. I put in a propane stove next to the woodstove. Two ovens. You can get them both going and have bread and pies baking.”

Abigail trailed after him, her gaze on the spreading patch of dark sweat on the back of his faded blue shirt, her aching hands cupped in front of her.

“Come on, don’t be shy!” He opened the back screen door and went in, not bothering to hold it open for her. “You can pour us some water from the pitcher on the counter and I’ll find the ointment. I’ve got it in here somewhere.”

Finding it might prove to be a challenge. Abigail stopped inside the door, her fingers over her mouth. She wanted to pinch her nose to keep the stench at bay. The kitchen smelled of old coffee grounds, rotting cantaloupe rinds, and rancid grease.

Dirty dishes covered the counter. A skillet filled with dirty cooking oil sat on the stove. An overflowing bag of trash drooped by the prep table. “It’s in here somewhere.” Stephen rummaged in a cabinet, his back to her. He turned and held up a tube. “Found it!”

His triumph faded after a second. His gaze roamed the room as if following hers. “I told you it needs a woman’s touch.”

“You did.” Her voice sounded weak in her ears.

“The sooner the better, I reckon.”

Abigail managed a nod.

The sooner the better, or the cockroaches would carry the place away.

SEVEN

Dear Josie,

I know this is my fourth letter in two weeks, but you said you wanted to know everything that happens to me. It’s like living in the wilderness. We picked grapes yesterday and I got stung by a bee. I know we had bees back home, but here they raise them and sell the honey. It was the first time I saw the beekeeper’s son again, and he was mad at me because we raised a ruckus with our singing. We were just trying to make the work lighter. Like you and I did when we washed laundry or did the dishes. Phineas King wouldn’t know fun if it bit him on the nose.

Deborah lifted her pencil and sighed. That was mean. The accident had wrecked Phineas’s nose. Yesterday he had been minding his own business, working hard, and they’d stirred up the bees. She touched the swollen red spot on her finger. It hurt. Still, no need for Phineas to get so snippy with Frannie and her. They didn’t do it on purpose. Frannie was right. Phineas was a sourpuss.

So why did she feel so funny about the way he’d looked at her
before taking her hand? His touch had been delicate, his expression tentative. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her. She shoved away the thought. He had hurt her. With his snippy attitude. Wiggling on the hard wood of the step that led to Onkel John’s back door, she bit on the end of her stubby pencil, the taste of paint and wood and lead bitter on the tip of her tongue. Enough thinking about Phineas.

It’s the same every day. Get up, help cook breakfast, clean the kitchen, work in the garden or do laundry, make the lunch, sew and mend, clean the house, fix supper, go to bed. I guess it’s not so different from back home in that respect, but it always seemed so much more fun when we did it as friends. And we had the singings and frolics and fishing and wading in the pond. Here there’re hardly enough of us to have a singing or a frolic, and they haven’t any creeks that have water in them. It’s dry as bone here. Drier. Dry as sawdust. Dry as ashes. The grass is brown and crispy like straw and the trees are dwarfs.

I wish you could see what I see. I know what’s on the outside means nothing and we shouldn’t draw attention to ourselves by being fancy. But does that mean we leave junk lying on the ground and let the paint peel off our houses? I wish I could ask the bishop that question. Jonas knows about these things. Gott knew what He was doing when Jonas drew the lot. Maybe you can ask him for me.

That sounds silly, doesn’t it, like Gott doesn’t always know what He’s doing?

Deborah raised her pencil, her cheeks suddenly hot, even though she was alone with her words. She should erase that last
part. She stuck the pencil out and studied it. Only a nub remained of the pink end. Not enough eraser to get rid of her words. Besides, she hadn’t said what she really meant. She hadn’t written down the words that so often did somersaults in her head and made her stomach hurt. How could Gott’s plan include taking Daed from this earth so soon? What purpose did it serve? What plan involved moving her family to this dirty, barren, brown place?

She waved away a fly the size of her big toe and squinted against an evening sun dipping toward the horizon. If her old bishop were here, he would say she was full of hubris and needed a good dose of humility. He’d say she had no right to question. That Gott should strike her down with a big bolt of lightning for having a head too big for her kapp, and he’d be right.

What she couldn’t figure out was how to make her thoughts behave. They barricaded themselves behind her heart and showed up when she closed her eyes at night and tried to sleep. They pestered her while she picked tomatoes and dug up beets in the garden. They tried to burst from her lips when she saw Mudder serving yet another piece of pecan pie to Stephen, who seemed to have a hollow leg and no use for napkins.

Deborah wiped a drop of sweat from the end of her nose. It might be a tear, but she preferred the idea that it was sweat. She was no crybaby. She took a big swallow of lukewarm, tart lemonade from a Mason jar to ease the lump in her throat. Sniffing hard, she applied pencil to paper, determined to finish this letter so she could walk it out to the mailbox in the morning before the mailman came by.

I’m sitting on the back step at Onkel John’s house, smelling the smell of garbage in a rusted trash can. I’m staring out at
a broken-down buggy that looks like it hasn’t moved in years. Grass is growing up around it and pretty soon it’ll be hidden. Maybe I can use it as a hidey-hole place to go and write my letters where no one can see or know what I’m thinking. ’Course, there might be a rattlesnake in there or one of those armadillos I told you about in my first letter.

Mudder has gone on a buggy ride with Stephen. I’m not supposed to know. She thinks I’ve gone to bed already, but it was so hot I couldn’t sleep. I saw them ride away. Mudder says Stephen is a smart farmer who took lemons and made lemonade.

The thing about Stephen is he keeps looking at me funny, like he’s trying to figure something out. Like I’m a bug he wants to study or squish under his boot—one or the other, I’m not sure which. He’s never been married and if he’s been around kinner, it’s been a very long time. The first night here, he made Hazel cry because she spilled her water.

Mudder says we have to give it time. That he’s trying. I’m trying too. I think I might need to try harder.

When I walk down the road, dirt floats in the air. When the wind blows, grit gets in my mouth and my teeth grind on it.

I keep thinking I’ll get used to it. When I wake up in the morning and smell eggs frying and pancakes and kaffi, I can almost imagine I’m back home again. Then I open my eyes and see the sagging roof over my head and hear my cousin Frannie snoring and smell her morning breath and I remember.

Write me. I want to know everything I’m missing. I’m coming home just as soon as Mudder gets settled with Stephen. They’ll get married in November and I’ll come back. I can get a job cleaning houses or as a teacher, earn my keep on my own. I’ll be home soon, you’ll see.

Write me back as soon as you can. I’m crazy to know what’s going on there. With you-know-who. I should stop now so I can write to him too. I haven’t received a letter from him. Yet.

Tickle your little sister for me and eat my share of the ice cream.

Deborah

She hadn’t mentioned this plan to her mother. Or her sisters. She tried to imagine getting on a bus and going home without them. She’d never been anywhere in this world without her family. They’d get by without her. They had each other.

She would spend time with Aaron. It’d only been two weeks. Yet his image in her mind’s eye had begun to fade and curl up around the edges. Try as she might, she couldn’t summon the complete picture. Or how his voice sounded. Or his laugh. How could these things fade so quickly?

She’d written him three times. He hadn’t responded.

Maybe her image had faded just as quickly. Maybe he had begun to forget her as well.

Nee. Nee. She would write him another letter.

Right this very minute.

EIGHT

Abigail squeezed the tongs around the wide-mouth Ball jar and lifted it from the cast-iron pot of boiling water. It felt as if her own blood were boiling, such was the billowing heat from the woodstove, combined with the sun-heated breeze that lifted a white curtain hanging in the window in Susan King’s kitchen. Almost three weeks here and she still hadn’t grown accustomed to the heat.

Eve and John assured her she would. They claimed not to notice it at all. Even though their clothes were always soaked with sweat and their faces red with sunburn. Abigail set the jar on a wooden table that looked as if it had been built from mesquite. By Mordecai? Or Phineas, maybe? The idle thought made her glance toward the kitchen door as if her thoughts could make the King men appear.

Which led to the next thought. Did she want Mordecai to appear? And the next. Why? Just because Stephen’s house was a pigpen and the King house was spotless. Sparse, but clean and orderly. No doubt because of Susan and not Mordecai. It wasn’t fair to judge Stephen when he had no woman to clean up his messes. No, that would be her job, the second she married him.