Heart in Hand: Stitches in Time Series #3 (22 page)

Then she caught sight of Anna, tugged on her father’s hand, and made him look in Anna’s direction. Gideon stared at her across the distance that separated them, his gaze serious. He bent his head to listen to Sarah Rose, and then he nodded.

Sarah Rose hurried across the cemetery, careful of stepping on a grave, and stopped in front of Anna. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“We came to give this to my
mamm
.” She held out a card she’d made, and Anna took it to study it. Sarah Rose had lettered “Happy Birthday” on a piece of folded construction paper and pasted some sparkly fake gems from the craft store on it.

Anna felt her throat tighten as she studied the card. The printing was uneven, the jewels gaudy, the block lettering uneven. But the card showed such love.

She felt tears burn at the back of her eyelids, but she blinked them away and looked up to smile at Sarah Rose. “It’s beautiful.”

“
Daedi
says
Mamm
can see it up in heaven.”

“He’s right.” Anna looked up at Gideon and found him staring at her.

Sarah Rose grinned, revealing two missing teeth. “I’m going to go give it to her.” She looked to her father for permission and, when he nodded, ran off in the direction Anna knew Mary was buried.

“Beautiful afternoon,” Gideon said. He shoved his hands in his pockets and gazed around them, then looked back at her. “Aren’t you cold?”

Anna nodded. “A little.”

He bent and offered his hand to help her up. After a moment’s hesitation she took it and, when she rose, was glad for it. The cold ground she’d been sitting on had made her stiff and awkward. She stumbled when she took a step, and his hand tightened, steadying her.

“How come you’re holding Anna’s hand?” Sarah Rose asked, suddenly at their side.

“Your
daedi
was just helping me up,” Anna said quickly. She brushed the snow from her skirts. “I’d better be on my way.”

“We got hot stuff with us,” Sarah Rose piped up. “It was a special ’casion to come here. Want some?”

The corners of Gideon’s mouth quirked. “Special occasion. Coffee for me, hot chocolate for her. Why don’t you have some before you leave?”

Anna started to make an excuse but saw the expression in the child’s eyes—bright hope. It was Sarah Rose’s late mother’s birthday, and she wanted to share it.
How can I leave?
Anna asked herself.

“I’d like that,” she said and smiled when Sarah Rose slipped her mittened hand into hers. The three of them—Sarah Rose in the middle—walked to Gideon’s buggy.

They sat inside it, a quilt covering their legs, and Anna drank coffee from a plastic cup Gideon had brought in the picnic basket. A small handful of tiny marshmallows floated atop the hot chocolate Sarah Rose held. Anna sipped her coffee and felt something thaw in her a little.

“Well, some people say, ‘Thank goodness for Friday.’ I say, Thank goodness for the New Year.” Jamie set the take-out pizza box in the center of the table in the back room, threw herself into a chair, and sighed dramatically. “I had a real hoo doo here today.”

“A ‘hoo doo’?” Anna asked as she joined her at the table and opened the box. “Mmm, pepperoni.” She sat down, picked up a slice, and took a bite.

“You know, it’s someone who is so rude and obnoxious you want to say, ‘Who do you think you are?’ ”

Mary Katherine laughed. “You know you wouldn’t do that.”

“I guess I’m still not in the best of moods,” Jamie admitted. She looked at the spread of food on the table: pizza, dips and chips, soft drinks. Even cookies for dessert. “This doesn’t quite replace Girls’ Night Out. I so wish we could do one again.”

She looked at Mary Katherine and then Naomi. “You two had to go and get married. And Anna’s next.”

“We don’t know that,” Anna told her. She dug a taco chip into the spinach and artichoke dip.

Leaning over, Jamie opened up a drawer and pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil and began scribbling on it.

“What are you doing?” Naomi leaned forward to pick up her can of Diet Coke.

“Making a list.” Jamie chewed on the pencil. “We could still do it sometime.”

“And watch a movie and eat pizza and sleep over?”

“Sure we could,” Mary Katherine said. “The husbands could do without us one night.”

“That would be so great.” She scribbled on the pad some more. “I’m sorry to sound like I’m in such a bad mood.” She stopped. “It’s not been a good last few months. You know I had trouble with the college messing up my student loan. Steven dumped me. I tell you, I’m staying up late to make sure this year leaves for
good
.” She picked up her soft drink. “This is one year I’ll really be toasting a New Year.”

They lifted their drinks—Mary Katherine’s was a bottle of grape juice in deference to her pregnancy—and Jamie made a toast to the New Year being a good one.

Then she set her soft drink can down on the table and frowned.

“What’s the matter?” Naomi asked her.

“I’m just thinking of adding another resolution.” She studied her list, then looked up. “I’ve never heard any of you talk about making resolutions.”

“I barely know what they are,” Anna told her and shrugged. “I do sometimes pray to change how I think about something, but that’s not the same thing, is it?”

Jamie laughed and shook her head. “No. A lot of people make a resolution to lose weight, and they eat less and go to the gym. Then they lose their determination. Sometimes that starts about the end of January.”

“Why make resolutions then?” Mary Katherine asked.

“Every year you think it’ll be different,” Jamie told her.

“Do you want to share yours with us?”

Jamie smiled at Naomi’s question. “When I get them finished. You know Anna will just drive me crazy asking until I do.”

“I will not!” Anna protested. “I’ve been much better about that sort of thing the past few months.”

“She has,” Mary Katherine agreed, looking thoughtful. “I think true love has made Anna more mellow.”

Anna snorted. She glanced at her cousins, and they were laughing, too, and shaking their heads.

Mary Katherine was the first to stop laughing, and she sat there, regarding Anna with a sober face. “Seriously, you do seem different somehow lately.”

“True love,” Naomi teased. “It’s softened her.”

Rolling her eyes, Anna reached for another slice of pizza. “Maybe I’ve just matured a little.” She put the slice on her plate but didn’t eat it. “I know it hasn’t been easy sometimes to be around me while I’ve grieved over Samuel.”

Mary Katherine’s expression softened, and she reached across the table to touch Anna’s hand. “We love you. It hurt to watch you grieving. We never minded anything you said or did even when you lashed out. You hurt, so we hurt.”

Anna knew she didn’t dare take a bite of pizza. She’d never get it around the lump in her throat.

“You know we’re just teasing you because we love you.” Naomi got up to peek out the door when they heard the bell over it tinkle as someone came in. “It’s Grandmother.”

“I shudder to think how they’d be if they didn’t love me,” Anna told Jamie.

“I think it’s so neat that you guys are such good friends,” Jamie said. “Most of my cousins are scattered around the country. I’ve barely seen some of them, and there’s two I haven’t even met. Their families moved, and we never got together.”

Jamie reached for the cookie jar and pulled out an oatmeal raisin cookie. She looked at Mary Katherine and grinned. “I think I just got into a good mood.”

“All it took was one of my oatmeal raisin cookies?”

“That’s it.” Jamie looked around the table. “And having lunch with the three of you. Did you know there’s a saying that cousins are your first friends?”

“That’s true,” Naomi agreed.

“Everyone done with this?” Jamie asked. When they all nodded, she pulled a plastic container from a cupboard, filled it with the leftover pizza, and put it in the refrigerator.

“What are you guys whispering about behind my back?”

“We thought we’d see if you’d like to be our honorary cousin,” Mary Katherine told her.

Jamie’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, guys, that is so sweet.” She went around the table and hugged each of them. “Thank you.”

Anna accepted Jamie’s hug and watched her return to her seat.

“So, did you all have a nice lunch party?” Leah asked, walking in to put up her jacket and purse.

“The best,” Jamie told her. “I’m an honorary cousin.”

Leah smiled. “Well, that’s wonderful. Does that mean I get to call you my granddaughter?”

“Look at that,” Anna said, grinning. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jamie speechless.”

“Oh, stop,” Jamie finally managed to say. “My grandmothers died when I was young. I’ve always felt I missed out. I would love to have you as a grandmother!”

Leah leaned down to hug her. “I have a surprise for the four of you.” She reached into her purse, withdrew four envelopes, and passed them out.

“What’s this?” Naomi asked, frowning as she pulled out a check.

“Bonuses,” Leah announced. “We had a very good year.”

“Wow! Oh wow! This’ll cover my last semester tuition. I think you’re the fairy godmother,” Jamie exclaimed. She jumped up and hugged Leah, then did a little happy dance.

They heard a knock on the shop door.

“I’ll get that,” Jamie said. “Suddenly I’m in a really good mood!”

“I imagine if I said we’re going to close a half hour early that mood would get even better,” Leah mused, her eyes alight with mischief.

“Wow! Double wow!” She stopped in front of Leah, gave her a smacking kiss on her cheek, and fairly danced out of the room.

“This is going in savings,” Mary Katherine said, tucking the check into a pocket of her dress. “It’ll help pay for the hospital if I decide to have the baby there.”

“I need to talk with Nick. See if we should put it in the bank or in the business he bought.” She looked down at the check, then up at them. “It was expensive for him to buy Abe Harshberger’s tour company. I thought it was a big sacrifice for him to stop driving a van, but he looks so happy taking tourists around in a buggy. Maybe it was a good decision after all.”

“It’s not just his work that makes him happy,” Leah told her, setting the teakettle on the stove. “It’s you and the church he joined.” She turned to Anna. “And what will you do with your bonus?”

“I don’t know.” Anna fingered the check. “I don’t need anything.”

Leah walked over and hugged her. “Of course you don’t. You’ve always had everything, even when you thought you didn’t. He’s watched over you and seen to that.”

Anna didn’t have to ask who her grandmother meant. She knew the
He
her grandmother referred to was God. She’d forgotten sometimes when she was angry at Him after Samuel died, in her pain of losing the man she loved more than anything.

But now she was beginning to see that God had sent someone else to her, someone who loved her, someone who wanted to walk the path of life with her.

What else could she possibly need?

15

Gideon had always considered himself a patient man.

After all, the work he did required him to take a tiny seed and nurture it for months, hoping that God would help him with a fruitful harvest. The longer that he did the work the more he trusted that God worked with him and all would be well.

But lately, he noticed a growing restlessness in himself. He was so used to working hard, and winter was a time of rest—not just for the fields, but the farmer himself. But after weeks of doing maintenance on equipment in the barn, building new bookshelves for Sarah Rose, and taking care of assorted other winter projects, Gideon still had pent-up energy and wanted to be outside.

There was a change in the weather. He noticed it the moment he stepped outside. Long experience had him scanning the sky—lightening a little earlier each day. He stood there, listening to a whippoorwill call. Some said there would be no frost after you heard a whipporwill. Avid birders—and many of his friends in the community were—said so. He only knew that he’d seen a flock of Canadian geese fly north the day before, and that was a sure sign, one he knew to be true.

Oh, and the reappearance of his elderly neighbor who was just home from Pinecraft, Florida.
Snowbird
, he thought, and smiled. The man said his arthritic old bones couldn’t take Pennsylvania winters any longer and so he basked in the Florida sunshine with his wife.

Gideon bent to scoop up a handful of the rich earth beneath his feet. He sniffed it, formed a ball with it to test its texture, then let it drift through his fingers.

“Are you playing in the dirt?” Sarah Rose said behind him.

He turned and saw her nightgown peeking out from under the hem of her coat. Rubbing his hands together, he reached for her. “I’m going to get some dirt on you, little one!”

Sarah Rose shrieked and backed up, but when she tried to run, one slipper got caught in a muddy patch and she landed on her fanny. Laughing, she held out her arms. “Help me up!”

He bent and let her climb on his back like the little limber monkey that she was and began walking the fields with her. She looped her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek to his. “Are we gonna go see Anna today?”