Heart in Hand: Stitches in Time Series #3 (13 page)

“Everything all right?”

Mary Katherine had been standing at the kitchen door, and her gaze went past Anna’s shoulder.

“Fine,” Anna said.

Apparently, she denied it too quickly because Mary Katherine’s eyes narrowed.

“Did Gideon say something upsetting?” she asked, her hands on her hips.

“What, are you going to be a mama tiger and go after him for me?”

Laughing, Mary Katherine shook her head. “I can’t imagine Gideon doing or saying anything that you need protection from.”

Just my heart
, Anna thought, and surprised herself.

“On the other hand, I found it hard to believe at first that John could hurt Naomi,” she heard Mary Katherine mutter before looking back at Anna.

Her emotions about what Gideon had said were too new, too private to share even with her cousin who had always felt like a sister to her. She wanted to go home, think about that startling emotion that she’d never felt before. Life with Samuel had been one of joy and happiness but also of contentment and serenity.

Gideon and terror. That seemed cause for backing away.

Running, even.

She was grateful for the time in the kitchen. She didn’t have to think. She didn’t have to feel. The other women were chatting around her, with her. Weddings were joyful, daylong occasions where the whole community got involved helping with cooking and cleaning and sharing the joy of the day.

“I love weddings here,” Jenny told her as she handed Anna a dish to dry. “It’s like the forever thing is expected, not hoped for.”

“The what?” Anna asked, puzzled.

“You know, that you expect to be together forever.”

“Don’t the
Englisch
expect that?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t think these days they believe it so much.” Jenny stopped, and her forehead crinkled in thought. “They even toss around this supposed statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce. I looked it up. One out of eight isn’t as good as I’d like to see it, but it sure isn’t half end in divorce.”

She shook her head and glanced around. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t even be talking like this on such a day.”

“
Mamm
?
Daedi
said please come look at Johnny. He says his tummy hurts.”

Jenny wiped her hands on a dish towel. “Probably just ate too much cake. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Emma moved into place at the sink and began washing dishes, rinsing them, and handing them to Anna to dry.

“She’s something else,” said Emma.

“Excuse me?”

“That Jenny.” Emma rubbed at something stuck on the plate until Anna thought she’d rub off a hole in it. “Did you see what she brought today? The mashed potatoes were lumpy, and the cake was lopsided.”

“Well, to be fair, that’s how you know the potatoes aren’t from a box,” Anna told her, drying a plate and putting it into
the cupboard. “The lumps tell you that the potatoes are fresh, not flakes from a box.”

“You’d think she’d be better by now,” Emma responded. She glanced at Waneta, who nodded. “Maybe if she didn’t spend so much time writing—”

“Did you ever think maybe she’s doing the best she can?”

Everyone turned to see Sarah Rose standing in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, a scowl on her face.

“And she writes good stories, about kids who need people to help them. I read one of them. I liked it.”

She spun on her heel and ran from them.

“Well, wait until I tell her father about that behavior!” Emma huffed.

Anna set the plate she’d been drying on the counter and tossed the dishcloth on top of it. “I’m going to go talk to her.”

“Oh?” Emma perked up, her eyes avid on Anna. “So you’re seeing her father?”

Her breath caught in her throat. Anna started to respond sharply, and then she remembered her manners. Even if Emma had none. She took a deep breath and counted to ten, and when she thought she could be polite, she smiled at her.

“No,” she said. “Although that sort of thing is private, Emma.”

She left the room and went in search of Sarah Rose.

Gideon happened to be standing with a clear line of vision of the front door when he saw his daughter rush outside, followed a few steps behind by Anna.

What is up
? he wondered, excusing himself politely and stopping in the bedroom to retrieve coats for the three of them.
Something must be up for Sarah Rose and Anna not to get their coats before they went outside.

He shrugged into his jacket and walked outside, finding them almost immediately in a corner of the porch protected a little from the wind.

Anna glanced up in surprise when she heard him walk toward them. Tucking her jacket under her arm, she took Sarah Rose’s jacket to slip it on her. She gave her a reassuring pat, then smiled slightly at Gideon.

“Aren’t you going to put your jacket on?”

“I need to get back inside.”

Gideon frowned. “What’s going on? You two just came out here.”

Anna looked at Sarah Rose, and it seemed to Gideon that some unspoken message passed between them. Sarah Rose studied her shoes for a long moment, and Anna bent to whisper something in her ear. She looked up and nodded at Anna, then turned her attention to him.

“I guess I said something I shouldn’t have to Emma,” she confessed.

“You guess?” He looked from his daughter to Anna and back again. “You don’t know? I think you’re acting like you know you shouldn’t have. What did you say?”

Sarah Rose chewed on her thumbnail, then sighed. “I sorta told her that she shouldn’t say bad things about Jenny.”

Gideon looked to Anna for confirmation and watched her straighten. “Well, she shouldn’t.”

“What did she say?” he asked her, hoping it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.

“Who? Emma or Sarah Rose?”

“Both.”

“Emma was criticizing Jenny’s cooking.”

“Jenny says things about her own cooking,” he reminded her.

“Yes, well, it wasn’t nice of Emma to say it, and then she said if Jenny didn’t spend so much time writing, she’d be better at her cooking.”

Emma’s words hadn’t been nice, but they also hadn’t been appropriate in front of others. Gideon knew Sarah Rose liked Jenny—after the day Jenny had briefly shown up at the knitting lesson at the Stitches in Time shop and she and his daughter had talked in the kitchen Sarah Rose had asked if he’d get something Jenny wrote. They’d read it one night and Sarah Rose had been thoughtful and they discussed how Jenny tried to get people to help little kids being hurt by wars.

Sarah Rose had obviously been defending someone she liked and respected. He wasn’t sure his independent and increasingly verbal daughter might not have been too outspoken this time.

“So what did you say to Emma, Sarah Rose?”

Her bottom lip jutted out. “I asked her if she thought about maybe Jenny was doing the best she could.”

Gideon felt Anna’s movement more than saw it. When he pulled his gaze from Sarah Rose, he saw the flash of indignation in Anna’s eyes.

“She’s right,” Anna blurted out. “It’s not right the way Emma talked, the way she gossiped, especially when other people could hear.”

“Like me,” Sarah Rose said, nodding righteously.

He considered that for a long moment, biting back a smile. It wouldn’t do to minimize Sarah Rose being disrespectful to an older woman from the community, even though nearly everyone thought Emma was a gossip and tended to poke her nose into the business of others. He suspected there was one in every community.

A chill wind blew past, and Anna shivered. She glanced at the door. “I should get back inside.”

“No, don’t go,” Sarah Rose pleaded and stepped closer to her.

Gideon took Anna’s coat from her and held it out to her, and she slid her arms into it and pulled it closer. “Stay for just a few more minutes,” he said. “Maybe you can help me decide what to do with Sarah Rose.”

She wavered and then looked at his daughter. “Maybe Sarah Rose should decide what she should do.”

Wonderful idea
, he thought.
Why didn’t I think of it
?

She thrust her bottom lip out again. “She did wrong.” She hesitated. “But I did, too.”

“That’s right.”

Sarah Rose rolled her eyes. “So, I guess I should go ’pologize.” She looked at Anna, who looked impressed and nodded.

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” he agreed. “And the sooner the better.”

With another eye-roll, she scuffed her shoes as she walked inside.

“You’d think she was walking to the gallows, wouldn’t you?” he asked, grinning now that she was gone.

“It’s not easy apologizing.”

“No,” he agreed, wondering where this was leading.

She looked at him, her brown eyes clear and steady on his, but full of uncertainty. In a gesture that seemed nervous, she licked her lips. “I’ve been avoiding you.”

“I noticed,” he said, moving closer as some people walked past. Moving closer because he wanted to be nearer her and study the way the moisture on her lips glistened in the light. “Why was that?”

9

Anna looked away for a moment, then back at him. “This isn’t really the place for this discussion, is it?”

Gideon hesitated, then shook his head. “But if you don’t want to date, all you have to do is say so. I wouldn’t be happy, but I wouldn’t bother you again.”

She held his eyes. “It’s not that. And you wouldn’t be bothering me.”

He tilted his head and studied her. “Then what—” he stopped. “Sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” Sarah Rose asked, startling him.

Looking down, Gideon frowned. “I didn’t hear you walk up.”

“I didn’t sneak,” she said. “I couldn’t find Emma. I think she prob’ly went home.”

“Then we’ll have to go see her at her house. We should do that now.”

“And leave the wedding?” Aghast, Sarah Rose stared at him. “They were just going to have games and snacks for us kids!”

“It would be the right thing to do to go apologize,” he told her. “The Bible says we should apologize quickly and then forgive.”

Sarah Rose gave a big sigh. “I’ll go look again.”

“Try the kitchen,” he called after her.

Gideon heard a muffled sound and glanced at Anna. “It’s not funny,” he said, trying to sound stern as she fought to suppress her mirth. But he had to admit that even he saw the humor.

“Don’t be mad at her. She’s just going through a stage.”

“I’m praying that I survive it.”

Her smile faded. “Some of it’s a stage, and some of it is she’s working her way through grief. It takes some people longer.”

“Does that include you?” he asked quietly.

“We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about your daughter.” She hesitated. “She’s a child. Jenny said—” She stopped, unsure of how much Jenny had said about losing her mother she should repeat. It could be something Jenny didn’t want shared with everyone. “Talk to Jenny someday and ask her about her mother, okay?”

He nodded. “It feels bad not being able to protect your child from pain.”

But God’s will was God’s will. He knew what He was doing. There was a reason He’d taken Mary to be with Him and had left Sarah Rose here with him.

As for working through grief, all he knew was that he’d started feeling like he’d come out of a fog recently and begun to feel like he was beginning to come to life again. But he didn’t really know how she felt, he realized. Was she trying to tell him that she hadn’t gotten to the place he had?

“Jenny lost her mother when she was young,” Anna said quietly. “She told me she never really got over it. She just learned to cope—especially when her father was too lost in his own grief to help her. I can see that you’re trying hard to help her. That should mean something.”

She shivered. “I need to go inside.”

“Can we talk later?”

She hesitated and then she nodded. “Maybe we can have coffee tomorrow morning? Around ten?”

“Sounds good.”

Sarah Rose came back out onto the porch. She looked aggrieved.

“I found her.”

“I thought you would.”

“She wasn’t real nice about me ’pologizing. Said I wasn’t polite to an older person.”

His heart went out to his little girl who looked disappointed that her attempt to make up for her impetuous words hadn’t gone better.

“And what did you say to her?”

“I told her she was right, and I would try to do better.”

Gideon let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding and smiled. “
Gut
. Don’t you feel better now?”

She stared up at him with wide eyes. “I guess. Can I go play games and have snacks now?”

He smiled at the nasal way she pronounced
snack
as
snahk
with a flat, nasal tone like so many
kinner
her age did. “
Schur
.”

She spun, sending her skirts swirling, and ran back into the house. He called out to her to slow down, but she was already inside.

“Looks like someone’s enjoying the wedding.” Chris climbed the steps to the house.

“Chris, good to see you.” The two men shook hands. “
Ya
, Sarah Rose is quite happy. There’s games and
snahks
.”