Heart in Hand: Stitches in Time Series #3 (6 page)

Anna grinned. “No problem.”

“
Daedi
, I’m hungry.”

“You didn’t have anything to eat?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t hungry then.”

“Let me go see if anything’s left.” He turned to Anna. “Did you eat?”

“No, but I’m fine until I get home.” She’d seen a number of people leave and had a suspicion that any remaining food had been packed up and was going home with them.

When Gideon returned, his blue hands were empty.

“Sorry, Sarah Rose. The food’s gone. Let’s go home and I’ll make you a sandwich.”

She stood up. “Can Anna come with us and you can fix her a sandwich while she reads the d’rections?”

Gideon looked at her. “Anna may have plans.”

Plans. She almost laughed. She’d been throwing herself into her work at the shop and chores at home in an effort to keep busy, her mind occupied with anything but thoughts of Samuel for so long.

And she didn’t need to add more problems on to her already full plate. She had a feeling she could be drawn into the problems of these two people . . . this little girl and her too-appealing widowed father.

But she suspected that had already happened.

Sarah Rose tilted her head as she looked at Anna. “She solded it to us,
Daedi
.”

Anna laughed as Gideon reacted with a gasp and a frown. “Now don’t get upset with her,” she said quickly. “She’s right. Okay, I’ll come. And I’ll take you up on your offer of a sandwich. I confess I’m feeling hungry!”

Anna had already been in his home a number of times visiting Mary and again the other night, but Gideon still had that momentary feeling of anxiety when he opened his front door and stepped aside for her to enter.

He knew he hadn’t been able to keep it at the level of cleanliness that Mary had, but he did the best he could. Besides, he had to be two parents now . . . and Anna certainly knew that.

They’d known each other since childhood, of course, but from the time he decided girls were not only okay but pretty special, he’d only had eyes for Mary. It had been the same for Samuel. He and Anna had been inseparable and were one of the first couples their age to marry.

“Coffee?”

“Yes, thanks.”

Anna turned to Sarah Rose. “So, where are those directions?”

Sarah Rose ran to get them, and the two of them sat down at the kitchen table.

Gideon rinsed the percolator, filled it with fresh water and coffee, then set it on the gas range. He opened the refrigerator
and stuck his head inside. There were plenty of sandwich makings.

“So what’ll it be?” he asked, straightening and glancing back at Anna and Sarah Rose.

Their heads were close as they bent over the directions. He paused for a moment and studied them. Sarah Rose had been sulky that day when she was called downstairs to talk about the stealing. Her apology hadn’t been as willing—or remorseful—as he’d have liked.

But apparently his daughter wasn’t holding a grudge at Anna telling on her. Not that she should. He’d just been afraid she’d be like
kinner
could be when they got into trouble—and he wondered if the conversation they’d been having on the porch today had anything to do with it.

Anna glanced up and caught him looking at them. She lifted her brows in question, and he realized that he had to think of something to explain why he’d been staring.

“We have chicken sandwiches—it’s left over from last night—and ham and Swiss and some egg salad . . .” he trailed off. “No, wait, I had the egg salad last night.”

“He eats a lot,” Sarah Rose said, shaking her head. “Boys eat a lot.”

“They do,” Anna agreed, grinning at him. “The chicken sounds good. Maybe with a little mayonnaise. But I can make it.”

“No, you’re a guest. We have some chocolate chip cookies we made, too. Sarah Rose, time to wash your hands and set the table.”

It was a new feeling to be waited on, one she felt a little uncomfortable with, but she told herself to sit back and enjoy it.

She went back to reading the directions. “I’m sure you tried scrubbing them really well with soap and water.”

“
Ya
. Maybe I should try some bleach.”

“Absolutely not!” she cried. “Don’t even think of doing such a thing! Don’t you know how dangerous that is?”

“Don’t yell at
Daedi
!” Sarah Rose said.

“I’m sorry, I just don’t want him to use something that can hurt himself to get rid of the dye,” Anna said quickly.

“It’s all my fault!” Sarah Rose’s lip began trembling. She opened her mouth to speak, and then she turned and ran from the room.

Gideon sighed and set the plate of chicken on the table. “I have to go talk to her.”

“Wait,” she said, stopping him. “You need to tell her the worst that can happen is it might take a few days to wear off.”

“So she’s overreacting?”

Anna nodded. “But please don’t use that term. Girls—women—don’t appreciate hearing that kind of language from a man.”

He met her level stare. “All right.” Turning, he started up the stairs.

People were always saying that children grew up so quickly. His baby had turned into a child, and yes, she was growing up too fast. But Anna was, in effect, telling him that she was a girl, and he was going to have to start watching what he said to her.

No, life was going too quickly.

He’d barely gotten to the top of the stairs when Anna was calling to him, her voice sounding excited.

“Gideon? May I use your phone?”

“Schur
. It’s in the shanty. The key’s on a hook by the refrigerator.”

Sarah Rose had thrown herself on her bed, but at least she’d stopped crying. He sat down beside her and placed his hand on her back. No telling her she was overreacting, he warned himself.

“I want you to come downstairs now. I’m not upset, and I don’t want you to be. But we have a guest in our home, and it’s not polite for us to be up here and her down there. And she’s sitting there hungry, too, remember?”

“I know,” she said with a sniff.

“So why don’t you go wash your face and let’s feed our guest—and you.”

Sarah Rose sat up, wiping her tears away with her fingers. When she went to wipe her nose with the cuff of her dress, he stopped her, shook his head, and gave her a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket.

“Maybe she’d like to see my room after?”

“I bet she would.”

She considered that. “Okay.” Cheered, she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him, then slid off the bed.

Crisis averted, Gideon went downstairs and found Anna looking inside his refrigerator.

“You don’t have to make your own sandwich.”

She jumped. “Oh, didn’t hear you. Do you have pickles?”

He pulled out a jar and handed them to her. “Dill?”

“Doesn’t matter. What about toothpaste?”

He eyed her warily. “We have mayo.”

Anna laughed. “Just get the toothpaste, please.”

She’d told him that he needed to be careful what he said to Sarah Rose because she wasn’t so little, she was becoming a big girl. Mary had never been hard to understand. He knew from what other men said that some were but not her. She had always been so easy to be around. Interesting that her daughter was looking like she might not have that easy personality Mary had.

Sarah Rose joined them. “I’m sorry I ran upstairs, Anna. You must be very
hungerich
.”

She nodded. “I am.”

Gideon walked back into the kitchen and handed Anna the tube of toothpaste.

“You’re going to eat toothpaste?” Sarah Rose asked her.

Anna grinned. “No, your father’s going to wear it. Or pickles.”

Now it was Gideon’s turn to stare.

“Excuse me?”

She walked over to the sink. “After you two went upstairs I suddenly had this idea. I called Jamie. You know Jamie? She’s come to church a couple of times.”

“The
Englisch
girl with the colored hair?”

“That’s right. She works at the shop part-time. Well, I remembered that she sometimes uses Kool-Aid to color her hair. I called her, and she told me what to do if you get it on your skin.”

“Pickle juice and toothpaste?” Gideon asked, wondering if he was hearing correctly.

“One or the other. Not both at the same time.”

Gideon looked at Sarah Rose and then shrugged. “I’m game.”

A few minutes later, he watched as the pickle juice did its magic. “Well, how about that,” he said as dye ran down the sink. “Who knew it could be that easy? Nothing to get upset about after all, right?”

“Except Henry said you looked like a Smurf,” Sarah Rose said with a giggle.

Gideon gestured for them to sit. “I can handle being called a Smurf,” he said grandly.

It wasn’t what he’d like to have been called, but now, if teasing him put that smile that he loved back on her face, well, the world could call him a Smurf and he wouldn’t care.

Then he looked across the table at Anna and saw that she was smiling at his daughter. She glanced at him, and he saw something he had never seen before.

He saw a woman he wanted to know better.

Reminders of Mary were everywhere in the house, but nowhere more than in Sarah Rose’s bedroom.

Perhaps it was because this had been one of Mary’s favorite rooms. He knew many people called the kitchen the heart of the home, but for Mary, their long-awaited first—and only—child’s room became the place he’d often find her.

He wasn’t as good a carpenter as other men he knew, but he’d done his best on the rocking chair he gave her the Christmas before Sarah Rose was born. She’d sit in it and read during the time before she delivered, and then she’d rock their baby many a night when she was colicky or teething.

Near the end, when he’d wake and find Mary’s side of the bed empty, he’d tiptoe into Sarah Rose’s room and find Mary sitting in the rocker, watching her sleep in her big girl bed.

It was as if she tried to cram in every moment with her child in case she didn’t survive the ovarian cancer that the doctor discovered during one of her checkups.

The rocking chair wasn’t the only thing that reminded him of Mary. As his gaze swept the room, he saw the old chest of drawers that had been hers and her mother’s and her grandmother’s. There’d been a pad on top of it she’d sewn so that she could change Sarah Rose’s diapers, but that was long gone now.

A shelf he’d made held some of the cloth dolls and stuffed animals she’d made for their daughter, most of them lovingly tattered by a little girl who used to take them to bed. Now she acted like she was too old for even her favorite doll.

Fortunately, she hadn’t yet grown too old for story time before bed.

He sat down on her bed with the book she’d chosen for tonight’s bedtime reading and waited for her to finish brushing
her teeth. She always kept her bedroom clean and her bed made, but she’d obviously used the time-out yesterday to make it spotless.

Lost in his thoughts, she surprised him when she padded barefoot into the room and climbed onto his lap.

Her hair was soft and clean and smelled like the baby shampoo he still bought. The snowy white nightgown she wore smelled of sunshine. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her before she slipped between the sheets.

She looked like such an angel, but as he opened the book she made a face. “You still smell like pickle juice.”

Gideon picked up a pillow and put it over Sarah Rose’s face. “Now you don’t have to smell it.”

She pummeled him with her fists and wiggled to get free.

He pulled the pillow off. “Did you say something?”

“Smurf!”

Clapping the pillow back over her face, he said loudly, “Can’t hear you!”

She pushed at him and got the pillow off her face—it wasn’t hard since he barely held it on her. “Smurf, Smurf, Smurf!” she giggled.

He held his hand over her face. “Here, have a nice whiff before you go to sleep.”

“Ugh! Now I’ll dream about green pickles chasing me.”

Without turning, she nipped at his fingers with her teeth.

“Ouch! You’re so obnoxious!”

“I know what that means!” She pretended to be offended.

“I bet you do,” he said, getting up. “I’ll be right back.”