The Heart's Journey: Stitches in Time Series #2 (30 page)

And now for a sneak peek into the first chapter of
Heart in Hand
, Book 3 of
Stitches in Time
, Anna’s story.

1

I
t felt like dawn would never come.

When Anna first realized that it was going to be one of those nights—one of those awful nights that felt like it would never end—she reached for the book she’d been reading and read for a while with the help of the battery lamp on the bedside table.

Reading didn’t help. Knitting didn’t either, and knitting always relaxed her. Reaching for her robe, Anna pushed her feet into her slippers and padded downstairs to the kitchen. There was no need for a light for she knew her way from all the dozens—no, hundreds—of nights she’d gone downstairs in the dark.

Even before the first time she stepped inside this house, she knew it like the back of her hand. She and Samuel had drawn the plans, spent hours talking about how he and his brothers were going to build it. As soon as the house was finished, he’d started crafting furniture for it. The final piece he’d made was a cradle for the baby he hoped they’d have soon.

His sudden illness stopped him in his tracks. “Leukemia,” said the doctor. One day it seemed he was an agile monkey climbing up the frame of a barn he and other men were
raising, then just a few days later he could barely get out of bed and she’d joked he’d turned into an old man. She’d insisted that he see a doctor and reluctantly he’d done so.

Six months later, he was gone, and she’d shut the door to the room with the tiny crib. She buried her dreams the day she buried Samuel.

She filled the teakettle and set it on the stove to heat. How many cups of tea had she drunk in the middle of the night? She wondered as she reached for a cup and the box of chamomile tea bags.

Before Samuel had died, she’d heard about the seven stages of grief. She’d been naive. You didn’t go through them one by one in order. Sometimes you walked—faltered—through them in no certain order. Sometimes they ganged up on you when you least expected them.

And sometimes—it felt like too many times—no one seemed to understand.

She couldn’t blame them. The only way she got through the first month, the first year, was to put on a brave face and pretend she was getting through it. There was no way she could get through it otherwise—she’d shatter into a thousand pieces that no one would be able to put back together again.

Humpty Dumpty
, she thought wryly. Then she frowned, wishing that she hadn’t thought of the childhood story. A closed door didn’t keep out the memory of the tiny crib that lay behind it.

The teakettle’s piercing whistle broke into her musing, its sound so sharp and shrill that she put her hands over her ears to block it while she got up to take it off the flame. She poured the hot water over the tea bag, then took the mug back to the kitchen table and sat there, dipping the bag in and out of the water.

Finally, she pulled the bag out and set it on the saucer. Sighing, she massaged her scalp and wondered if she should take an aspirin to stop the pain. Then she flicked her hair behind her shoulders and hunched over the cup. In a minute, she’d get up and get the aspirin. Her mind might be awake, but her body felt tired and full of lead.

As she trudged back up the stairs a few minutes later, she heard something—it sounded like a laugh, a high, excited one that went rushing past her up the stairs. She watched, tired, leaning against the wall as she saw herself—lifting the hem of her nightgown so she wouldn’t trip, Samuel reaching for her as she flew up the stairs to their room.

She blinked, not sure if she was dreaming or seeing ghosts of the two of them, so young and in love, so unaware that anything bad could touch them.

When she reached her room, there was no one there. Climbing back into bed, she pulled the bed quilt around her shoulders and lay on her side facing the uncurtained window. The wedding quilt that her cousins Naomi and Mary Katherine and her grandmother had sewn for her and Samuel lay wrapped in muslin and tucked in a box in the closet of the same room as the cradle. She hadn’t been able to bear lying under it after Samuel died.

She’d thought she wouldn’t be able to bear living without him in this house they had built, but her grandmother had brought her here after the funeral to pack and she’d found she couldn’t leave it. Somehow, it felt like she’d be abandoning everything they’d worked so hard for.

Her grandmother had understood. She’d done the same thing—continued to live in the house she’d shared with her husband, who’d also died too young. She’d continued to stay there for nearly two decades. Only in the last couple of years had Mary Katherine and then Naomi come to stay with her.

Hours passed. Anna remembered reading that it was always darkest before dawn. She could vouch for that.

Finally, the sky began lightening. She got up and made the bed before she went to shower. The reflection in the mirror made her wince. She looked tired, with faint lavender shadows under her eyes.

Funny, everyone said that she and her two cousins—Mary Katherine and Naomi—who worked with her at Stitches in Time all looked so much alike with their oval faces and brown eyes and brown hair, although Mary Katherine’s was a bit more auburn. But she felt like she just looked like a dull version of them lately. She was the youngest, yet she looked older and more subdued.

With a sigh she center-parted her hair and began arranging it in a bun, then she placed a starched
kapp
on her head. She chose her favorite dark blue dress and hoped the color would flatter and not make her look pale.

Her first cup of coffee helped her get moving. The knock on the door startled her as she sat eating her breakfast.

She opened her door to find Nick standing there.

“Sorry, I had to come a little early,” he apologized as she invited him inside.

“It’s okay, I’m ready.”

He touched her shoulder. “You look tired.”

“I sure hope you don’t ever say that to Naomi,” she responded testily. “No woman wants to hear that kind of thing.”

“I’ll remember that.”

She regarded this man who was engaged to marry Naomi. He had dark hair, angular features, and sharp green eyes. Not as handsome as Samuel had been.

Nick was quiet and serious and had a heart just as big as Samuel’s. She could trust him with someone as dear as Naomi.

“Want some coffee before we go?”

He shook his head. “I have a thermos in the car.”

She took a plastic box filled with sandwiches from the refrigerator and tucked it into a tote bag. A bag of cookies was next.

Catching Nick’s interest, she pulled another plastic bag from a nearby cupboard, filled it with half a dozen, and handed it to him.

“Oatmeal raisin,” he said with a satisfied sigh. “Will you marry me?”

“Sorry, the Amish don’t believe in plural marriage.”

Gathering up her sweater and her purse, she walked to the door with him and locked it behind her.

After they climbed into the van, Nick set the cookies on the seat between them.

“You know you’re going to eat them now.”

“They’re oatmeal,” he reasoned. “Just because it’s not hot and in a bowl … ”

“So very logical,” she agreed, trying not to smile.

“That’s me, logical.”

She opened the bag so he could slide his hand inside to pull one out and take a bite. “Please give Naomi the recipe.”

“Are you sure you want to tell your intended that you like my oatmeal raisin cookies better than hers?”

He considered that. “Maybe not. She wasn’t happy when I complimented Leah’s rolls.”

“Exactly.”

“Maybe you’ll sneak me some of these now and then?”

“Maybe,” she agreed with a grin.

Nick glanced at his watch and turned the radio on. “I want to check out the weather forecast.”

“Partly sunny and hot in Paradise, Pennsylvania,” she said as the jingle that announced the news broadcast filled the
interior of the van. “Chance of afternoon showers. Tell me how it can be partly sunny. It’s either sunny or it’s not.”

“I agree.”

They listened to the quick news report and then the weather before Nick turned the station off.

A yawn overtook her. She covered her mouth and shook her head. “Sorry.”

“S’okay. Rough night?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you close your eyes and try to get a little shut-eye?”

“Don’t want to be rude,” she said, stifling another yawn.

“I don’t mind. I might fall asleep in front of you someday.”

She blinked at him. “Don’t do that when you’re driving!”

He laughed as he reached for another cookie. “I saw Abe Miller asleep at the wheel the other day.”

“Abe was driving his buggy,” she pointed out. “I heard the horse got him home okay.” She studied him. “How are the lessons going?”

“The last time I remember being around a horse, my mother was putting me up on it for a kiddie ride,” he said with a grin. “I was five. I didn’t really like it very much and never wanted to be around a horse again. Now here I am buying a business where I’ll have to work with a horse for hours every day. Feed it, water it, care for it. Hitch it to a buggy, persuade it to walk along a route for me.”

He glanced at her. “Deal with manure.” He made a face, then patted his steering wheel with one hand. “Big change from this horseless carriage.”

“It sure is.”

“Thank goodness I made training me a condition of the sale,” he said.

“How’s the other instruction going?”

Nick reached for a third cookie. “Just as hard. I thought I knew what was involved, but there are so many more rules than I thought.”

He began telling her about the lessons he was taking to become Amish. It hadn’t been all that long ago that she’d taken them. She found her attention drifting off even as she frowned and wondered why she’d never noticed how Nick spoke in a monotone. Snuggling her cheek against the upholstery of the back of the seat, she heard him chuckle.

“Am I boring you?” he asked. “I never bore Naomi.”

“She has to put up with you.” Anna felt her eyelids growing heavy and she jerked awake once, then twice.

“You’re chicken-pecking,” he told her. “Relax and shut your eyes. Don’t worry, your cousins will wake you up.”

“Let her sleep,” Nick was whispering. “I don’t have to be anywhere for another half an hour.”

“I’m awake,” Anna said, yawning and straightening in her seat. “There’s no need to babysit me while I nap.”

She saw that they were parked in front of the shop. Turning, she saw Naomi and her grandmother sitting in the backseat, staring at her, concerned.

“Rough night?” her grandmother asked, her eyes kind and a little sad.

“Had trouble sleeping.” She unsnapped her seat belt. “I’m fine.”

Anna stepped out and looked at the shop while her grandmother unlocked the door. The name of the shop, Stitches in Time, was emblazoned on a sign with needles and thread and little quilt squares dancing around the letters. She’d just
changed the window display the night before, so she stopped to examine it before going inside.

Everything about the display was designed to say “summer.” Naomi had sewn the cutest red and white quilt with ants marching across it. It just said “picnic quilt” to Anna, so she’d arranged it on a bed of artificial grass and set a picnic basket stuffed with goodies atop it.

Mary Katherine had made big floor pillows to sit on and woven tote bags to carry and they were part of a vignette atop sand in another part of the window. Their grandmother’s cute little Amish dolls sat under a grape arbor enjoying books.

And Anna had knitted a lacy ivory-colored shawl so delicate it might have been a spider web. It draped across a chair with a flowered dress, ready for an
Englisch
girl to wear on a summer evening.

The delicate shawl was quite a departure from the plain, warm woolen ones Anna and other Amish women knitted. For the most part, the things she knitted were more for the fall and winter seasons—cute sweaters and vests and her personal favorite: the whimsical hats for babies that kept their precious little heads warm.

She started to go inside and then realized that Naomi still hadn’t gotten out of Nick’s van. There was nothing she liked better than teasing—not just the two of them, but particularly them. Marching back to the van, she knocked on the window.

“Hey you two, no PDAs!” she called.

Naomi rolled down the window. “You are so obnoxious! All we’re doing is exchanging a good-bye kiss!”

“You’re steaming up the windows,” Anna said with a grin. “Get inside before you get arrested.”

Nick leaned over and gave Naomi one last kiss. “Have a great day.”

“You’ve been cheating on me!” she exclaimed, licking her lips. “Whose oatmeal cookies have you been eating?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told her as he brushed crumbs from his tie.

“You!” Naomi said, pointing a finger at Anna. “You’ve been tempting him with your oatmeal cookies.”

“Guilty,” Anna agreed, grinning. “Maybe if you help me with a design idea, I’ll share the recipe.”

Naomi climbed out of the van. “Maybe I should rethink this wedding if my future
mann
can be so easily tempted.”