Treasuring Emma (22 page)
“And if he doesn’t?”
“I said I don’t know, Mark,” she repeated through gritted teeth. “You’ll have to ask him.”
Mark stopped walking. “Clara, I don’t understand. I thought you wanted Emma and me to be together.”
“I did. I do.” She faced him, irritated. “But I don’t have to devote every spare moment thinking about it. Now that she and my
grossmammi
have finally agreed to move on with the business, I need to focus on that. Not on how you’re going to take
mei schwester
out on a date.” She turned and started walking again. He quickly caught up.
“What did you do in the workshop?”
“I made some mental notes. Took inventory of the tools. There wasn’t much I could do in such little time without more help.”
“Sorry if I let you down.”
“You didn’t let me down. I could have just used the help.”
“Then maybe you should have asked Adam.”
Clara didn’t respond. Adam had still been inside the house when they left. Why did her grandmother want to talk to him anyway? She had already broken one of the rules of the
bann
—being seated at the same table with an excommunicated member. Yet she had included him like he was part of the family. She had welcomed him more than she had Mark. Which was unusual for her grandmother, who normally treated everyone equally.
Mark kicked at a pebble. “You’re quiet all of a sudden.” The clopping of a horse’s hooves filled the quiet air as a buggy approached from behind. Clara moved an arm’s length away from him.
“Just thinking.”
“And avoiding my comment.”
“I didn’t ask Adam because he was talking with
Grossmammi
. I didn’t want to interrupt them.”
“Seems to me you should have.” Mark looked at her. “He’s obviously got Leona fooled.”
They turned into her driveway. “Fooled about what?”
“About everything. He’s trying to make you all think he cares about your
familye
again. I think he’s up to something.”
“I can’t imagine what. There’s nothing he can get from us. He turned his back on our way of life a long time ago.”
“Then why hasn’t he gone back to Michigan by now?”
They stopped in front of the door. Mark let the question hang between them for a moment.
But Clara had no answer.
For the rest of the day Clara tried to focus on what she’d accomplished. Her grandmother approved of her plans for the shop. Emma had stepped out of the way. By the time Peter came home from town later that afternoon, her enthusiasm had returned.
After they had all eaten supper, Mark left, saying he was going out for a walk. For the first time in months, Clara asked her husband to sit with her on the back porch while Junior and Melvin played on the tire swing in the yard. Magdalena sat in her playpen nearby, tugging on the clothes of one of her cloth dolls.
“How was your time in town?” Clara asked.
“Fine. But I didn’t take the roofing job.”
“Why not?”
“Turns out it wasn’t for a school, but for a private home.” Peter stared out into the yard. “The pay was less than minimum wage, and we were responsible for our own transportation. At the end of the job, I would have lost money.”
Clara let out a breath, thankful Peter had made a wise decision. It made her even more excited to tell him the news. “
Grossmammi
agreed we could start working on the shop.”
“What about Emma?”
Clara averted her gaze. “Emma came around too.”
“So she agreed just like that?”
“
Nee
, it wasn’t quite that simple. But the important thing is that they’re going to let us get started on the workshop. I was hoping tomorrow you and I could take the
kinne
r and
geh
over there. We could sort through the tools together.”
Peter shook his head. “I thought I’d
geh
into town again. Start asking around about jobs.” He glanced at her. “Like you’ve been wanting me to.”
“But, Peter, don’t you see? This is your job now. Our job. Our business. Together.”
“Clara, I don’t think selling the tools will provide enough money to get the shop off the ground. Ephraim’s collection is nice, but people aren’t paying top dollar right now.”
“The shop isn’t going to be fancy. We just need to clean it up and purchase a little bit of inventory. After we make a few sales and the word gets out, we’ll be profitable.”
Peter set the porch swing in motion. Junior and Melvin chased each other around the yard. Magdalena started to whimper in her playpen. Clara picked her up, settling the chunky baby on her hip.
Her husband remained silent.
“Peter, I need an answer. Will you help me with this or not?”
He turned to her. “I’ll help, Clara. But before I do, I want us to pray about it. Together. The success of the fabric shop, or anything else we do, will not be because of hope or wishful thinking. It will only succeed because it’s God’s will.”
Clara nodded. She would pray with Peter. A familiar, distant fluttering stirred within her, something she hadn’t felt for a long time.
Everything was going to be all right. Their business, their marriage . . .
Their life.
After checking on Dill and settling the rest of the animals for the night, Emma went inside. Exhaustion swept through her. And defeat. Adam had gone home by the time Mark and Clara had left. He didn’t see her, didn’t say good-bye.
She shouldn’t have been surprised. But why couldn’t she stop caring about him? If he would just leave, everything would go back to the way it had been. Everything would be simple again.
But that wasn’t true either. Nothing would ever be the way it had once been. Everything had changed.
She turned off the gas lamps in the living room and went upstairs. As she passed by her grandmother’s bedroom, she heard that low, raspy cough again. She knocked on her grandmother’s door. “
Grossmammi?
Are you all right?”
A moment passed before her grandmother responded. “Come in, Emma. I was hoping to talk to you before you went to bed.”
Emma entered the room. Her grandmother was sitting up in bed, a plain blue and white quilt folded over her waist. A Bible lay open on the side of the bed where her grandfather used to sleep. The old woman patted the empty space next to her. “Come. Sit.”
Emma sat. “Are you sure you’re okay? You sound worse than you did this morning.”
Grossmammi
waved her off. “I just have a cold, Emma. They always get worse before they get better. But I don’t want to talk about
mei
cold. I want to discuss the situation with you and your
schwester
.”
“We don’t have anything to discuss. I understand that opening the shop is important. I know it will help us. And I know I’ve been acting childish about it.”
“Who said you’re acting childish?”
“Clara. Didn’t you hear her today?”
“Oh, I heard her, all right. But she is smart, and she is right about one thing. If it’s God’s will that this shop should succeed, it will. Meanwhile, Clara will work hard at doing God’s will.”
“So will I. I’ll start cleaning it out tomorrow.”
“I don’t think you should help clean the shop just yet.” She sneezed. Wiped her nose.
“Why? There’s no reason I shouldn’t help Clara and Peter.”
“Peter and Clara will have plenty of help. I have a feeling Mark will be around here. More than he probably should.”
“You don’t like Mark?”
“I don’t trust him. Something about him doesn’t sit right with me. Adam feels the same way.”
Emma got up from the bed and went to the window. It was dark outside. Still, she could make out the shadowy outline of the Ottos’ house, with Adam’s truck still parked in the driveway. “Adam shouldn’t have an opinion about Mark.”
“Why not? Adam’s your friend.”
“Not anymore.”
“He won’t be if you keep pushing him away.”
Emma turned around. “I’m not pushing him away. He’s the one who left. He’s the one who’s leaving again.”
“Do you want him to leave?”
She didn’t respond.
“Maybe if Adam had a reason to stay, he would.”
“He had a reason to stay. He chose to leave.” She looked at her grandmother. “I know you don’t trust Mark. But at least he came to check on me today. I haven’t seen Adam since this morning.”
Grossmammi
nodded but didn’t say anything.
“Mark will be here tomorrow at four. We’re going on a buggy ride. I’m going to show him a little bit of Middlefield.”
“Is that something you want to do? Or do you feel you have to?”
Emma shrugged. “What I want doesn’t matter anymore.”
The next morning Adam woke up late again. Without his cell phone alarm clock, he was having trouble getting up at a decent hour.
When he was a kid, his parents had often reprimanded him for oversleeping; his
daed
had been especially hard on him about that. But now his father and mother never woke him. They didn’t even knock on the door of his bedroom, which they had to pass to get downstairs. They probably thought he was old enough to get up on his own.
And they were right. He would have to try harder.
He dressed in Amish clothes again and went downstairs to the kitchen. Breakfast had come and gone, and the kitchen was spotless. Sounds of the hand-cranked washer came up from the basement as his mother washed clothes. He took a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter from the pantry, made himself a sandwich, and wolfed it down with a glass of milk.
When he was done, Adam went outside. He’d spent a restless night thinking about the question Leona had asked him. Who was in charge of his life?
As a child and a young teenager, he would’ve said God. He had been taught all his life that God was in control. Everything you did, from the time you woke in the morning until the time you fell asleep, had to be your best, done for the glory of God. Living humbly, plainly, remaining separate from the world.
As he grew to adulthood, Adam couldn’t reconcile that part of his life. How did living with all these rules bring him closer to God? None of it made sense. And so he’d left the community and tried to find a place in the world.
But since he’d been back in Middlefield, he’d begun to think about things differently. What if, despite his father’s harsh and rigid outlook on things, making a connection with God wasn’t really about the rules at all? What if, instead, it was about the heart?
When he entered the barn, he saw his father putting up hay for the winter. Adam stood and watched for a minute as his
daed
tucked his fingers in the twine around the hay bale and tossed the bale to the loft above. At fifty, he had the strength of a man two decades younger.
Without saying a word Adam joined him. Soon they were both in the rhythm of loading the bales to the upper loft.
“What made you so sure you wanted to stay Amish?”
Adam’s father froze, his hand still gripping the twine wrapped around the bale. “I don’t understand the question.”
“You were once my age. You went through
rumspringa
. How did you decide to stay Amish and not live in the Yankee world?”