Her Restless Heart (9 page)

Standing there, her feet in the snow, she realized how cold she was. She'd been so angry she hadn't noticed until now. There was no way she could walk all the way to her grandmother's house without freezing.

"Fine."

He turned but she reached out her hand to stop him. "I'm sorry, you're being kind, and that didn't sound very grateful of me."

"It's all right. You're upset."

"No, it's not all right," she said quietly. "I appreciate what you're trying to do."

"Let me go tell Leah, and then I'll be right back."

Leah was surprised when he told her that he was taking Mary Katherine home. But she simply nodded and thanked him and went back to talking to a friend as they enjoyed the light lunch served after the worship service.

He returned to Mary Katherine and found her standing in the same place and shivering hard. "Why didn't I tell you to wait in the barn out of the wind?" he said, shaking his head.

"I actually thought of it myself, but I decided not to. Some of the men are there. I didn't want to give them any more to talk about. Sometimes you men gossip more than women."

"We do not!"

She merely gave him a glance. "I'll wait here while you get the buggy, if you don't mind."

"I'll hurry."

When he returned, he could hear her teeth chattering, and he was glad he kept several blankets in the buggy. Reaching behind him, he grabbed a blanket and leaned over to flip it open to spread over her. But when he went to tuck it around her, he heard her indrawn breath and his gaze shot up to hers.

"I'll—I'll do that," she said, sounding a little breathless.

When she was finished tucking it around her feet and her lap, he handed her another blanket, and she wrapped it around her shoulders.

"Do you have to go straight home?" he asked her.

"No, why?"

"I thought maybe we could have lunch in town."

When she was silent, he glanced over at her. "What?"

"I'd think you arranged this but I know better."

He laughed. "You're right. The bishop isn't exactly a friend of mine." When she was silent, he looked over at her again. "Well?"

"I suppose we could."

"OW. Well, I can tell I've overwhelmed you with my offer." She stared at him, and then she laughed. "I'm sorry. I guess I could have been more enthusiastic. But it's not a date. Right? It's just friends having a meal."

He clutched his chest. "Just wound me more."

Mary Katherine elbowed him. "Stop!"

"Story of my life lately."

Then he realized he'd said it aloud. He shot a glance at her, hoping she hadn't heard him. But of course she had.

"Has some other woman made you feel she was . . . underwhelmed by your invitation recently?"

He focused on the road. "Not a woman. That is, not a woman in the sense you mean. It wasn't someone I asked out."

"I see."

Grinning, he shook his head. "No, you don't."

Instead of pressing him—her cousin, Anna, always the inquisitor, would have had a great time at it—Mary Katherine said nothing. Instead, she huddled in the blankets and stared out at the passing scenery.

"Are you all right?" he asked finally. He'd never seen her so quiet. So troubled.

She turned to him. "I don't think I'm very good company today, Jacob. Maybe we should do this another time."

He checked to see if there were any cars following them and then pulled the buggy off to the side of the road. "I can take you home. But I'd like to be your friend, Mary Katherine."

"Why?" she asked him, her lips trembling, tears welling in her eyes.

"Because I care about you. I'm sorry now that I didn't walk out on that porch today and tell the bishop—"

"What did you hear him say?" she asked, straightening on the seat.

"I wasn't spying," he rushed to say. "I was about to walk out onto the porch when I saw the two of you, how unhappy he was making you. I wanted to do something to stop him, but I had no right—"

"No," she said slowly. Her eyes searched his. "No right. But I appreciate it. I appreciate it so much, Jacob." She bit her lip.

Without thinking, he reached out and stroked his forefinger across the fullness of her bottom lip. "Don't do that. Don't hurt yourself."

Her eyes went wide at his intimate touch, and he dropped his hand. "I'm sorry—"

"No, don't apologize. Jacob, I care about you, too. But don't you see that being friends is the only thing we can be right now? I'm so mixed up. I told you the bishop was asking me when I was joining the church—"

"I don't understand why you haven't," he interrupted. "You've seemed happier lately."

Mary Katherine nodded. "I have been. But it's a big decision, and he keeps trying to rush me."

"Well, he shouldn't. It has to be your decision." He grinned. "And doesn't he know that pushing won't do any good? It just makes you dig your heels in."

She smiled back. "You
do
know me, don't you?"

When he saw her shiver again, he called to his horse and started the buggy rolling again.

Once they were parked, he hurried them into the restaurant. It was warm inside, the air filled with the scents of the season: turkey, squash, pumpkin, apples, and cinnamon.

"Are you warmer?"

She wrapped her hands around the cup of hot coffee the waitress brought, breathed in the steam, and nodded.

Their meal came, they said a silent prayer of thanks, and she began eating. He had waited to ask her the question that had been nagging at him for the last half hour.

"I'm just curious," he said, trying to sound casual. She'd been upset enough today. "Tell me why you're hesitant to get baptized."

She closed her eyes as she shook her head, then she opened them again and stared at him, hurt.

"It must be nice to be so sure of things." She laid her fork down on her plate.

"What do you mean?"

"You belong here. You have a home. A family."

"Mary Katherine, you have those, too."

She shook her head sadly.

"I know your father isn't the easiest man to get along with."

There was a ghost of a smile on her face. "Really?"

"I've heard things."

"Folks, is there something wrong with the food?" their waitress interrupted to ask. "I notice you're not eating, miss," she said to Mary Katherine.

"It's fine," she told the woman. "I just—stopped for a minute."

It wasn't the Plain way to waste food, Jacob thought, or to possibly offend by not eating. But he wondered if perhaps he had just upset her again on top of what the bishop had done, and she just couldn't eat. Women were funny that way. A man could eat any time, any place—matter of fact, as he chewed a bite of meatloaf he found himself getting distracted by the idea of making it from the recipe in the cookbook after he went to the grocery store.

Mary Katherine put her forearms on the table and looked at him. "May I ask you a question?"

"
Schur."

"I remember you joined the church two years ago."

"That's right."

"Was it easy for you? The decision to join the church, I mean."

Surprised, he nodded.

"Tell me why."

He shrugged and spread his hands. "Why wouldn't it be? This is my place. My family's worked the farm for generations. My family and my friends are here. My church . . . I didn't need to look elsewhere when I found Him here."

She withdrew at that. He could see it, the drawing into herself, the blank look that came down over her face.

"You don't understand," she whispered. "You don't understand."

"Then help me," he said quietly. "Tell me what I don't understand."

8

M
ary Katherine stared at him for a long time.

"Do I need to wipe my chin?" he asked, lifting his napkin.

She shook her head and smiled slightly. "I—" she began, and then she hesitated. "I don't know where I belong."

He looked surprised. "What do you mean?"

"You know I've always been a little different," she told him, feeling a little sheepish. "I was always daydreaming when we were in
schul,
drawing and not paying attention."

Frowning, she looked down at her plate, then lifted her eyes. "My father was always lecturing me about my grades."

"Well, it doesn't seem that how you did with your studies kept you from doing well with your weaving."

"
Dat
thinks it's just—"

"Just what?"

"Laziness," she said flatly. "Making products for the
Englisch
for them to have even more to decorate themselves and their homes."

"Ah, I see." He nodded thoughtfully.

"You, too?"

Jacob held up his hand. "I didn't mean I agree with your father. I meant I can understand some things about you."

Wary, she folded her arms across her chest. "Like what?"

"I'm sure it hurts that he said those things to you," he told her. "That he dismissed something so important to you. Even words that aren't meant to hurt can cut deeply."

She saw something happen then, some emotion that flitted across his face and was just as quickly gone.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," he said, too quickly for her to believe him. It wasn't that she thought he lied—he just didn't want to tell her.

"I'm proud of you."

Now it was her turn to be surprised. "Proud of me? Why?"

"You didn't let it stop you from doing what you clearly love."

"It wasn't all me. I mean, my grandmother probably wouldn't have let me. She doesn't just encourage us. She tells us everyone has a gift, and we're obligated to use it to thank God and to glorify Him."

Jacob nodded. "Leah is a very wise woman."

"I wish I was more like her," Mary Katherine blurted out. "She's so calm, and she just knows what to do, what to say. I—" she pressed her fingertips to her temples. "I just have all these questions inside my mind."

"You say you feel different than others here. But you grew up here. You went to
schul
here. Your friends and family are here."

She nodded.

"Do you think you belong in the
Englisch
world?" Mary Katherine's eyes swept around the room filled with tourists. "I don't know. I just don't know."

Jacob reached out his hand and, without thinking, she put her hand out and he clasped it. "There's no rush," he told her. "There's no rush."

"Are you seeing him again?"

"Anna!"

She wrinkled her nose at Naomi. "It's just a simple question."

Naomi looked up from her stitching. "There's nothing simple about your question. You're prying again."

"You want to know, too."

She tried to look stern but ended up laughing. "She's right, Mary Katherine. I want to know, too, but I'm much too polite to ask."

Mary Katherine looked over from her seat at her loom. "Then I'll save you from yourself and not answer. Honestly, both of you. Jacob and I are just friends."

"You see him nearly every day," Anna pointed out as her knitting needles worked busily on one of the darling little cupcake hats that were selling like . . . cupcakes as she always liked to joke.

Her cousins were right, of course. Jacob seemed to find every excuse to see her since that day they'd gone to lunch. Several times he had come into town on business for his farm—he said—and had stopped by to see if he could take her to lunch or just to chat at the shop. They went for a lot of buggy rides and talked and talked. In fact, they'd gone for so many rides around the countryside that she'd teased him that he was giving her the tourist tour.

"You're smiling."

Naomi's eyes were warm when Mary Katherine looked at her. "I guess I am," she admitted. "He's a
friend,"
she said. "A nice male
friend.
He was very understanding when I said I was just too unsure about whether I wanted to join the church."

"I don't understand—"

"Anna," Naomi warned, frowning at her.

"But—"

"We agreed to leave Mary Katherine alone about this."

Anna sniffed and her knitting needles clacked even faster. "We didn't agree. You told me to leave her alone. You're so bossy sometimes. Like you're the oldest or something. I'm the oldest. Why, I was even—" she stopped and looked away.

"Anyway," she said after a moment. "You're hardly a wise old woman."

"Did somebody call me?" Leah asked as she walked over to where the girls sat in front of the fireplace.

"Now,
Grossmudder,
you're wise—"

"But you're not old," Naomi finished for her.

"I'm a
grossmudder,"
Leah told them. "Obviously that makes me old."

"No it doesn't," Mary Katherine said, glancing over from her work. "After all, a woman can be a grandmother in her late thirties."

"Well, I'm not in my late thirties, I'm in my early fifties," Leah said, sitting down in a chair and stretching out her feet. "I'm feeling very old and tired today. I find myself looking forward to closing and going home to my supper and my bed."

Mary Katherine exchanged looks with her cousins. She didn't remember ever hearing her grandmother talk like this.

Her grandmother noticed their looks. "It's just been a long winter," she said. "And we've been very busy all season. Not that I'm complaining. God's been very good to us."

The door opened, and Daniel strolled in.

"Daniel! This is a surprise."

He walked over to them, took a seat beside Leah, and handed her a package. "I'm playing mailman."

She glanced at the address and beamed. "It's from your
mamm."

"Hurry up! Open it!" Anna said, putting her knitting needles in her lap.

"Patience, patience," Leah admonished. But she was tearing the brown wrapping paper off impatiently.

Inside the box were several big oranges and a conch shell. She lifted one of the oranges to her nose and inhaled deeply. "Oh, this smells
wunderbaar.
Here, girls, smell it!" She passed it to Naomi, who was nearest. Naomi sniffed at it and passed it to Anna, who passed it to Mary Katherine. She tossed it back to Daniel, who caught it neatly.

"I see you haven't lost your arm," Daniel said.

"I don't play baseball much these days," Mary Katherine told him, laughing. "But I used to trounce you at the game, that's for
schur!"

"I let you slide into home that last game, as I remember."

"Ha! Your memory is aging faster than you are," she scoffed.

"Shh," Leah said, waving one hand as she used the other to hold the conch shell up to one ear. "I can hear the sea! Did your
mamm
find it on the beach in Sarasota?"

"No, she bought it in a local shop," he said, looking like he hated to admit it. "But there are others on the beach to pick up, and the weather is so warm there right now, compared to here."

"There's a letter in here, too," Leah said. She held it up for them to see, then unfolded it and gave it a quick scan. "She's inviting me to come for a little vacation."

"You should go. She misses you."

"Oh, I don't take vacations," she told him. "That's not the sort of thing I do."

"It would be good for you," Daniel said.

Leah got a faraway look in her eyes. Mary Katherine and her cousins exchanged another look.

"Why don't you?" Anna piped up as she picked up her knitting needles again. "You were just saying that you felt—"

"Like I need to go finish the deposit," she said, quickly getting to her feet.

As she moved quickly toward the back room, Naomi turned to Anna. "Why did you do that?"

Anna's needles stopped and she looked at Naomi with wide eyes. "Do what?"

Naomi rolled her eyes. "Sometimes I think you're still a little girl," she muttered. "You were about to say she felt old and tired."

"Well, she said it!"

"To us, not for us to say to her."

"Well! You just have to fuss at me for the least little thing," Anna said, getting to her feet as well. "I'll just take myself off into the other room so I don't say something else you don't like!"

With that she flounced out of the room and shut the door to the back room smartly behind her.

Daniel watched her, and then he looked back at Naomi and Mary Katherine.

"She hasn't changed a bit," he said, and they all laughed.

"I think I'll go turn the sign around and lock the door," Naomi said as she glanced at the nearby clock. "Daniel, you're welcome to stay and visit until we leave."

"
Nee, danki,"
he said. "I have to be going. I'm having supper with some friends tonight."

"When do you leave for Florida?" Mary Katherine asked.

"The closing on the farm is in two weeks," he said. "Maybe we can have lunch sometime before then?"

"
Schur,
I'd like that," she told him.

He said goodbye to Naomi at the door, and, just as he was leaving, Jacob appeared at the door. They greeted each other, and Jacob walked over to Mary Katherine.

"He's still here?"

"He said the closing is in two weeks."

"Has he been visiting you much?"

Something about him caught her attention. He seemed casual, but she thought from the stiff way he held himself and the intense look in his eyes that he was waiting expectantly for her answer.

"I haven't seen him since the three of us had lunch that day," she told him. "Why?"

He shrugged but seemed to relax. "No reason." But he glanced at the door where Naomi was talking to Daniel. "Is he interested in Naomi?"

"It wouldn't matter," Mary Katherine told him as she got up from her seat before her loom. "She's been going to the singings with John Zook."

"I see."

"So what are you doing here?"

"I know this is last minute but I had to come in for my seed order, and I decided to stop by and ask if you want to have supper with me."

"You're celebrating your seed order?"

He stared at her for a long moment, and then he laughed. "Very funny. Just for that, I'm going to tell you my ideas for crop rotation as we eat."

Mary Katherine shuddered. "You're a cruel man, Jacob. I had no idea."

But over supper she was the one who talked, and she probably bored Jacob. But she had to admit he hid it well, asking her questions about the talk she was going to do at the college the next day and about how she was so nervous about it.

He listened, and then he said, "You'll do just fine. When you love what you do, it comes out."

"So you say."

Jacob grinned. "Yes, so I say. So it will be."

Mary Katherine remembered his words the next day as she walked onto the campus. True to her word, the professor had sent her work-study student to give her a ride and help carry the things Mary Katherine wanted to show the students.

Everyone seemed to be in a hurry. Students rushed here and there, carrying their backpacks and chattering a mile a minute. The building looked huge, totally different from the little one-room schoolhouse she and Jacob had attended.

Students filed into the room as the professor helped her set up the fabric samples that she had brought. Mary Katherine placed her note cards on the podium and then sat down and waited for the professor to introduce her.

She was used to being stared at by
Englischers,
so it didn't bother her that they were staring and whispering to each other. Some of the girls were dressed like Jamie—with a flair for the creative with their colors and contrasting fabrics and styles. Secretly, Mary Katherine thought it might be interesting to dress like that. She wore Plain dresses and that was fine, but there was such a limitation on colors, and of course the fabrics were always solid, not patterned.

She looked for Jamie, but her friend didn't show. The professor took attendance and quietly asked Mary Katherine if she knew why Jamie wasn't there. Mary Katherine shook her head.

"I thought she'd be here." Mary Katherine's shoulders slumped. She'd hoped to see her friend at the class . . . well, she also had an ulterior motive: she wanted to use her for what Jenny had called "kind eyeballs" as she spoke. She'd just have to call Jamie later to find out why she was absent.

With an eye on the clock, the professor started the class and handed out an assignment sheet for that night's homework. It had something to do with little squares of fabric and a color wheel. Then the professor introduced her.

Mary Katherine did what Jenny had suggested: she focused on one or two of the students who gave her "kind eyeballs." That relieved her anxiety a little—she could then look around the room as she gave them a little background about herself. Then she told them about seeing a woman weaving one day at a county fair and how fascinated she'd been. An aunt did some weaving and gave her lessons. That led to her saving her money from a part-time job until she could afford a loom of her own.