A Home for Lydia (The Pebble Creek Amish Series) (19 page)

Someone had cracked open the window over the sink to allow in the morning breeze. Large pots of water boiled on the stove, and another of Floyd’s daughters had just picked one up, holding it carefully away from her dress, and was carrying it into the washing room.

“
Gudemariye,”
she said in surprise as she moved past him into the adjacent room.

He heard the splash of water into a machine. The soft sound of women’s voices was interrupted by the yank of someone pulling on a starting cord. Then the familiar sound of a gasoline engine caused a washer to hum, and Barbara Hershberger walked into the kitchen.

Her face flushed from the laundry work, she patted at the sweat beading on her forehead with a dish towel. Gabe almost envied her that. Perhaps men should take up housework. At least they wouldn’t be interrupted by the whims of nature.

“Gabe. How are you?”

“
Gut
.”

“Can I pour you some
kaffi
?”

“
Ya
. If it’s no trouble.
Danki
.”

Barbara poured three mugs of
kaffi
and walked over to the table.

Floyd pulled out a chair and sat, but he didn’t relax. Instead, he drummed his fingers against the tabletop. “He came to speak to you about the rugs.”

“Oh. Does Miriam need something?”

“No. No, not exactly.”

Floyd was tall and thin, reminding Gabe of the pictures in the schoolbooks of President Lincoln. Barbara, though, was quite the opposite. Shorter and plumper, she had the look of a contented housewife. They seemed like opposites in many ways.

Even now, she sat down opposite him, relaxed and patient, while her husband continued to tap his fingers in an impatient rhythm.

“You might have heard that Aaron Troyer has come to help at the cabins since his
onkel
died.”

Barbara pushed cream and sugar across the table, and then she asked one of the girls to bring over some breakfast rolls. Gabe knew Miriam would tell him he shouldn’t, that he needed to watch his waistline. He didn’t want to appear rude, though, so he accepted one.

“
Ya
, I think Floyd may have passed Aaron on the road and said hello.”

“I did.”

“Aaron is trying to make the cabins more profitable so that Elizabeth will have a better income for herself and the girls.”

“Sounds like the boy has a
gut
business mind.” Barbara studied him as she drank her
kaffi
. “We all care about Elizabeth, and we’ll help her however we can.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

Floyd finally stopped drumming his fingers.

“Aaron would like to sell Amish goods at the cabins. Offer items to the guests who stay there.”

“Barbara sells her rugs here.” Floyd scrubbed a hand over his face.

In the adjoining room, the washer had stopped, and the wringer had started. Gabe’s mind flashed back to when he’d done his and Grace’s clothes, to when Miriam wasn’t a part of their lives. It had been a lonely time, a hard time, and for more reasons than laundry. He gulped his
kaffi
and pushed on.

“Do you have lots of folks stop in? They see your sign by the road?”

“
Gotte
sends those we’re meant to sell to,” Floyd insisted stubbornly.

“
Ya
. That’s true.” Gabe stared down at the near empty mug in his hands and resisted stating the obvious. Instead, he waited for Barbara to do that.

“Could be He also sent Aaron to us, and if we’re helping Elizabeth…” She stood and rinsed out her cup in the sink. “What sort of arrangement can he offer, Gabe?”

“He’s offering an eighty/twenty split.”

“We get a hundred percent here.” Floyd shook his head and began drumming again.

“A hundred percent of nothing isn’t helping us, husband. I’ve more rugs stacked in the sewing room than we’ll sell all this coming summer if last year is any indication.”

For the first time a smile twitched at the corner of Floyd’s lips. “
Ya
, Barbara weaves faster than you or I can plant a row. It’s a sight to behold.”

“That’s not all,” Gabe said, having withheld the best for last. “He’ll purchase five up front. Once business picks up, he’ll purchase more as he’s able.”

Floyd and Barbara both stared at him in disbelief. “The lad is setting up house?” Floyd finally asked.

“No, I don’t believe so.” Gabe drained his cup. “His idea is to place some of each product in the cabins. When guests see—and use—the items…maybe they’ll come to the office seeking to buy.”

“It’s a
gut
plan,” Barbara said, moving to the washroom to check on the girls.

“We’ve finished,
mamm
.”

“
Ya
, and with no missing fingers. Only clothes went through the wringer.” The girls giggled as they walked out in front of their mother each carrying a basket. As they crossed the room and stepped out into the warming day to hang more clothes on the line, Gabe wondered what that would be like.

What would he feel like when his girls were that age?

And would he ever have a family large enough to require a full morning’s laundry work?

If so, he’d need to expand the washroom and extend the lines where Miriam hung their clothes.

“Let’s go and fetch you some rugs,” Barbara said.

Gabe wasn’t sure what he expected when they walked into Barbara’s sewing room. It was obviously a newer addition Floyd had built onto the side of the house. Maybe at one point it had been a
woodshed or mudroom, but now it was finished nicely into a sewing room.

What surprised him was the size of the loom, and the fact that every square inch of the room was filled with thread, rags, and rugs.

“Have you seen a loom before?” she asked, her eyes twinkling.

“Maybe when I was a
kind
, but I don’t remember it being so large.”

“Three hundred and sixty spools of thread.” Her hand lingered over the spools that were a variety of colors. “No doubt it works much like the one you saw. Weaving is one of the things that has remained constant for us. I learned from my
mamm
, who learned from hers.”

Barbara pushed up a horizontal wooden bar, sent a shuttle across—from right to left, and pulled the bar back down.

Gabe grinned. “My
dochder
would love to see this. Maybe I could bring her by sometime?”

“Of course, Gabe. I’d be happy for Grace to visit. Floyd repairs the loom when I manage to break it, though mostly it’s a low-maintenance operation.”

“The
Englischers
love her work, but you’re right…” Floyd stared out the single window of the room. “We don’t see much traffic here.”

“One of Drake’s men came by before their store opened.” Barbara moved away from the loom, walked to a stack of completed rugs, and began thumbing through them. “He offered us a fifty/fifty split. We told him we’d take our chances with road traffic.”

Barbara selected a dozen rugs of different sizes and colors for Floyd to carry to Gabe’s buggy.

“He can only purchase five—”

“You tell Aaron he can pay when he sells them. We have plenty more, and we will pray
Gotte
smiles on his efforts. It would be
gut
to sell the rugs, but it’s even more important that Elizabeth be able to keep the girls here if possible. I know that weighs heavily on her heart.”

Gabe thanked her and climbed into his buggy. As he drove away, the girls were walking back toward the house, having hung the last of
the trousers, shirts, and aprons on the line. Floyd was walking back into the shadow of the barn, and Barbara was standing on the porch, watching over her family like a mother hen.

It occurred to him then how they were like the rugs she wove. They were dependent on each other, much like those many strands of thread. He felt foolish for his earlier frustration over a muddy field…as if he could understand
Gotte
’s ways,
Gotte
’s plans.

What he could do was trust and persist in doing what he knew was the right thing.

As he continued toward the next family on Miriam’s list, he knew with certainty that those two things would be enough.

Chapter 16

G
race stared up at her teacher.

As usual when she was with Miss Bena, she felt confused. One part of her wanted to run outside and enjoy the rest of the lunch recess with Sadie and Lily. That part of her could barely wait for the school term to be over and summer to start.

But another part of her wanted to stay right beside Miss Bena and hear what she was about to say, even though she was afraid it might be criticism, which it probably was. After all, her face was scrunched up as though she’d just tasted some of Doc Hanson’s worst cough syrup. But then Miss Bena’s face usually looked that way, so her expression might mean nothing at all.

Grace started to tap her foot, but she stopped when Miss Bena raised her eyebrows in a pointed look. Miss Bena did not abide fidgeting.

“Grace, this was supposed to be your end-of-the-year report on our history unit.”

“Yes, Miss Bena.”

“And you chose to focus on Jakob Ammann.”

“Yes, Miss Bena.”

Her teacher tapped the page where Grace had erased a word and replaced it—the word was “fought” and she’d replaced it with
“struggled.” She liked struggled better. It seemed to describe what Ammann had gone through. Fighting was what boys did behind the outhouse sometimes. It was childish and against what they stood for as Amish people. She’d heard enough preaching in her nine years to know that word didn’t feel right. It couldn’t possibly describe Ammann’s part of their history.

But “struggled,” that word slipped into her sentence like her foot slipped into her well-worn shoes. Ammann had struggled—with others in his church, with his own beliefs and feelings, and with the things he had done.

Miss Bena tapped the spot with the end of her pen and moved on to the next page. “This was supposed to be a two-page report.”

She frowned at the second page. “You wrote half a page here, but you filled the rest of the paper with your drawing.”

Grace squirmed in her seat. She’d wondered about that, but in the end she’d had no choice.

“Did you not understand the assignment?”

“I understood.” Grace’s words came out small, like before, when she was first finding her voice again.

Miss Bena removed her glasses and rubbed them with the hem of her apron. When she placed them back on the edge of her nose she cleared her voice. “I’d like an explanation.”

“You said we couldn’t go over two pages, and I wanted to tell the whole story of Jakob Ammann. I didn’t want to leave anything out.”

Instead of saying she understood or correcting her, Miss Bena waited. Miss Bena could outwait Gus, she was that stubborn.

“Sometimes I feel I can say a lot more with my drawing than I can with words.”

They both stared down at the picture. It covered every available space on the bottom half of the page. Grace had never drawn anything like it before. All of her other sketches made sense. You could look at them and identify the place or the person.