A Hand to Hold (24 page)

Jacob glanced away. “If they cared about me, they wouldn’t have moved away.”

Hearing the melancholy in the boy’s voice released some of Zach’s tension. “Is that what all this is about? The move?”

He faced Zach. “All my friends are back in Iowa. And my aunts, uncles, cousins. There’s nothing here. Middlefield stinks.”

“But there are plenty of
kinner
around. You can make friends.”

“You sound just like them. I should have known you wouldn’t get it. I bet you’ve lived here all your life.” When Zach nodded, Jacob scowled. “As soon as I’m done with school, I’m going back to Iowa.”

“How?”

“What do you mean how?”

“I mean how are you going to get there? Do you have a buggy?”

Jacob frowned. “
Nee
. But I can get a bus ticket.”

“With what? Do you have any money?”

After a pause, the boy shook his head. “I can get a job.”

Zach held out his hands. “Where are you going to find a job? You won’t even help out around here. Your
daed
had to hire someone else because he can’t rely on you.”

“That’s not my fault. Besides, who wants to work in a
dumm
buggy shop? I’ll find a job somewhere else.”

The irony of the conversation was unreal. Everything Jacob said echoed Zach’s conversations with his own father. And he was on the verge of saying the exact things his father had told him.
Help me here, Lord. Give me the words to say to Jacob. I don’t want to mess this up
. “Jacob, you’re making everything harder on yourself.”

“I don’t care.”

“I know you don’t care now. But let me tell you something. When you’re done with school, you’ll start to care. Do you know why I’m working here at the buggy shop?”

He shook his head.

“Because my
daed
wouldn’t hire me. He doesn’t trust me enough to give me a job.” Saying it out loud hurt, but if admitting his failures would help Jacob, it was worth it.

“Like that’s my problem.”

“And that’s my point. If you keep causing trouble for other people and yourself, that will be your problem. I can’t get work anywhere else. I don’t have the best reputation around here because of the stuff I did as a kid. Because of the bad decisions I made. Some of those decisions have cost me money, like the
schulhaus
. I’m in debt up to my eyeballs over that. But others have cost me the respect of people who are important to me. I don’t want to see that happen to you.”

“It won’t.”

“It already is.”

Jacob looked at him with belligerence. Zach worried that he wasn’t getting through, but then the boy said, “If it’s so important I
geh
to school, then how come you told
Fraulein
Byler to get out of here?”

Zach frowned. “If I’d known you were out there, she would’ve been talking to you.”

“
Nee
. I’m not the one who needs to talk to her. You do.”

“What?”

“I guess you don’t think school is that important either. Especially reading.”

“Now wait a minute. My problem with reading has nothing to do with you.”

“I heard her say she could teach you. I bet she could; she is a
gut
teacher.” Jacob curled his upper lip into a sneer. “But I guess you’re better at giving advice than taking it.” He turned on his heel and walked out of the buggy shop.

Zach stood there, stunned. Jacob’s words hit him hard. Zach didn’t have the right to tell Jacob anything. Not when he wouldn’t give Ruth a chance. He’d rather hang on to his pride than have her see how dumb he really was. He’d been trying so hard to change these past few weeks, and he thought he had. But it took the words of an obnoxious kid to show him that, deep inside, he hadn’t changed much at all.

That evening, Zach walked into the kitchen where his parents had already started to eat. He put his cooler on the counter, his hat on the peg, and washed his hands before sitting down. After a quick, silent prayer, he reached for the bowl of potatoes and put a spoonful on his plate. But he didn’t touch it. His appetite was gone.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” His mother looked at him, a worried expression on her face.

He didn’t say anything for a moment, then shook his head. “
Nee
. I’m not really hungry.”

“Your
mudder
worked hard to prepare this food.” His father gave him a harsh look. “Don’t waste it.”

Zach looked at the potatoes, then at his father. Even though they tasted like cardboard in his mouth, he finished off the potatoes, and the glass of iced tea his mother had poured earlier.

He excused himself, saying he needed to clean out Maggie’s stall. He escaped to the barn, and when he’d finished his task, he still wasn’t ready to go inside. His mind mulled over what Jacob had said. What Ruth had told him. And how he responded to both of them. He sat down on a hay bale and let his head drop into his hands.

At the sound of footsteps entering the barn, he looked up. His father was walking toward him. Zach popped up from the hay bale. He must have done something wrong again, although he couldn’t imagine what. Not that it mattered. In his father’s eyes, almost everything Zach did was wrong.

But his father didn’t say anything right away. He didn’t even look at Zach at first. He walked over to Maggie and patted her, then peered over the top of the gate and inside the stall. Suddenly Zach realized his father was checking on his work. When his father didn’t speak, Zach turned around to leave.

“Zachariah.”

Zach didn’t think he could take another insult or admonition from his father. Not tonight. He should ignore his father and walk away, save himself from more pain. Hadn’t he experienced enough shame for one day?

But something kept him in place. Whatever his father had to say, Zach needed to face it. After his conversation with Jacob, he knew what it was like to have your words ignored, your advice questioned and rejected outright. He turned around and looked at his
daed
.
“Ya?”

“Gabriel Miller came by today. He was looking for you.”

“Is something wrong with the
schulhaus
?”

His father shook his head, then reached into his pants pocket. He took out a few folded bills. “He wanted to give this to you.”

Zach stepped forward and took the money. It was over a hundred dollars. “What’s this for?”

“Apparently Ruth told him that you paid for the replacement window out of your own pocket. He wanted to make sure you were reimbursed.” His father scratched his beard. “I didn’t know you did that.”

Zach looked down at the money. It was more than the window had cost. Far more, and it would make a small dent in the debt he’d accrued. But he handed the bills to his
daed
. “You can give it back to Gabriel.”

Surprise registered on his father’s face. “What?”

“I don’t need the money.” At his father’s dubious look he added, “
Ya
, I need the money, but not this way. I said I was going to take care of the repairs for the school, and I meant it.”

“But the window has nothing to do with that.”

“Then consider it a contribution to the school. I’m sure the board can figure out a better way to use the money.”

His father looked more perplexed than before as he pocketed the money. “Your
mudder’s
worried about you. It’s not like you not to eat her supper.”

“I wasn’t hungry.”

“You’re always hungry.”

Zach looked at his father and shrugged. “Not today.” He turned away, and when he’d taken only a couple of steps toward the other side of the barn, he heard, “You’ve done
gut
,
sohn
.”

Zach looked up, hearing the crack in his father’s voice. The light inside the barn wasn’t on, but there was still enough daylight for him to see his old man’s expression. His father’s bottom lip quivered for a moment but he turned around before Zach could see any more.

As his father walked out of the barn, it felt like a boulder had lodged in his throat. For the first time since he could remember, his father had praised him.

Chapter 16

A
fter her talk with Stephen, Deborah spent the next few days keeping an eye on her father as much as she could. He seemed all right, although the few times she’d approached him alone he was too consumed with farmwork to exchange more than a few words. He also stuck with his routine of leaving the house early and coming inside after dark, which made her wonder if he was avoiding her and Naomi. As of yet, he hadn’t done or said anything to alarm her, but she would continue to watch him.

When she’d resolved to look after her father, she’d also vowed to avoid Stephen. On the night she’d cried herself to sleep, she’d tried to make sense of her feelings toward him. She was afraid she was falling for him. Then again, what woman wouldn’t in her situation? He had shown so much compassion toward her and her family. And no one could deny he was a very handsome man. But could she trust her heart? She wondered if her attraction to Stephen was driven by her loneliness. Her worry over her father had kept her tied to the house, and other than attending church the previous Sunday, she didn’t interact with too many people, not even Elisabeth, who was busy with her own life. Deborah didn’t begrudge her that. At the moment, Stephen was the only other adult she could talk to.

She decided her feelings toward Stephen didn’t matter. There was no spark of attraction in his eyes when he looked at her. No desire. He was her best friend’s brother and a friend to her family. Nothing more than that. And her yearning for more from Stephen just kept her from trusting herself. She’d rather stay away from him than spend so much time second-guessing herself. Between Will, her father, Naomi, and the farm, she had enough to deal with.

Shortly after supper she tried to play with Will inside, but he was antsy and wouldn’t behave, especially with the weather so beautiful outside. The temperature was mild, not stifling hot as before, and Will wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to be cooped up inside. She scooped him up and took him to the backyard, hoping she could avoid seeing Stephen. When she walked out the back door, though, she was surprised to see Naomi standing by the vegetable garden. She thought her sister was still upstairs.

Will squirmed. Deborah put him on the grass but hung on to his hand and led him to the tire swing. The swing had been there since she and Naomi were children. She put him in the center of the tire and knelt down, one hand on his waist as she gently pushed the swing back and forth.

She kept her gaze on Naomi, who was still standing at the edge of the garden, staring at the ground. Deborah frowned. It wasn’t like her sister to be so still. She was constantly moving, always doing something. Deborah knew there were still a few green bean plants that needed picking and a couple of tomato vines that were still bearing fruit. Yet instead of tending the garden, Naomi remained as motionless as a cement figurine.

“Ma!” Will called out, trying to climb out of the swing. Deborah sighed. His attention span was so short that he flitted from activity to activity like a bee in a flower garden.

Naomi had jumped at the sound of Will’s voice, her expression startled. Without looking at Deborah, she headed back to the house.

Deborah called, “Naomi, wait.”

Her sister took a few more steps forward, and for a minute Deborah thought she would ignore her again. To her surprise, Naomi looked at her. “What?”

“I need to talk to you. It’s about
Daed
.” She picked up Will and balanced him on her hip as she walked over to Naomi. Will held his arms out to Naomi, but she ignored him.

“What about
Daed
?” she said, folding her arms over her skinny chest.

Deborah noticed the movement. Her sister had always been thin, but she seemed to have lost weight since Deborah’s arrival. “Are you eating enough?”

Naomi’s eyes clouded. “What does that have to do with
Daed
?”

“
Nix
. It’s just that you look like you’ve lost weight.”

“I don’t want to be fat like you.”

The words dug in deep. True, Deborah had never been as slender as Naomi, and her hips had widened since giving birth to Will, but she wasn’t fat. She put Will on the ground next to her, partly to shield him from her sister’s wrath. “That was mean.”

Naomi lifted her chin in response, peering down her nose.

Deborah sighed. “I don’t want to play this game anymore. If it makes you feel better, insult me all you want. I don’t care. What I care about is
Daed
. I think there’s something wrong.”

Her sister’s chin dipped a quarter inch. “I haven’t noticed anything.”

“Has he talked to you about the farm? What his plans are for it?”

She shook her head, her gaze narrowing. “Why? Has he been talking to you about it?”

“
Nee
. But a few days ago he mentioned to Stephen that he might sell the farm.”

“
What
? Why would he do that?” Naomi spoke through clenched teeth, her arms falling to her sides. “Doesn’t he know how important this farm is?”

“He’s overwhelmed, Naomi. There’s a lot of work to do around here.”