The Beekeeper's Son (The Amish of Bee County Book 1) (21 page)

The image faded, only to be replaced with Mordecai’s laughing face as he raced across the yard, slid in the mud, and fell on
his back, his face tilted to the sky, a wide grin stretching from ear to ear. Was it his laughter or Timothy’s that rang in her ears?

She shook her head, trying to clear the thoughts from her brain.

“You won’t give me another chance?” Anxiety mingled with disbelief in Stephen’s voice. “You’re leaving with John to Missouri, then?”

“Nee, nee, I haven’t decided yet what to do.”

“Then I still have a chance.” He reached out cautiously and took her hand.

“You still have a chance. We both do. I’ll try to do better.”

His face lit up and the young man who’d vied for her attention all those years ago reappeared. “I’ll do better.”

With that, he let go of her hand, grabbed her by the waist, picked her up, and whirled her around. “You’ll see, it’ll be better.” He plopped her on the ground, then leaned down and kissed her lips with the softest brush of a kiss, a kiss a far cry from the one he’d delivered with such overwhelming gusto at his farm. “How’s that for starters?”

“Gut . . . I think.” She staggered back a step, hand on her chest, breathless from the spin. Not so much from the kiss. He was trying so hard. It was sweet how hard he tried. “It was nice, but go slow, remember?”

“I can be fun too.”

“I know.”

“I believe in hard work first.”

“I know. Me too.”

“Then let’s go get that plate of fish you offered me, and then I’d like to do some fishing with Caleb. Maybe Hazel will let me show her how to fish. While I’m here I need to have a word with
Mordecai.” His voice faltered on the name. “We’re to work on the house again tomorrow and he has tools we’ll need him to bring.”

They rounded the curve in the path and the picnic shelter came into sight. Mordecai sat with his back to the picnic table, his paper plate in his hand, Butch lolling at his feet. He looked up, a piece of fish halfway from his plate to his mouth. A smile formed, then disappeared.

Stephen didn’t seem to notice. He forged ahead. “Come on, I’m starved. I hope there’s still fish. Have you eaten?”

His words ran on, no pause in between, giving her the opportunity to not answer. Mordecai dropped the fish on his plate, wiped his fingers on his pants, and stood. He torred the plate into the trash can and stalked away. Butch stood, stretched, and followed, his tongue hanging from his mouth.

Every bone and muscle in Abigail’s body wanted to follow. For some outlandish reason, she felt the need to explain, to offer an apology, to say her walk with Stephen meant nothing.

It did mean something. It certainly meant something to Stephen.

She wiped her hand on her apron. As if she could wipe away the scene now burned on Mordecai’s memory of her strolling along the lake with another man. She’d come to the lake with Mordecai—with his family—but she would leave with Stephen.

That shouldn’t bother Mordecai. She came to Bee County to be with Stephen. Everyone knew that. So why did it bother her?

She couldn’t answer that question because it meant fettering out the meaning of the ache in her heart when she realized the look on Mordecai’s face had been hurt for that one split second before he shuttered it. Hurt and longing.

Just for a split second. Then it had been gone and so had he.

That look. She recognized it. She understood it. She felt it.

Stephen was right. The sooner she left Mordecai King’s house, the better.

TWENTY-TWO

Deborah took a quick swipe at the sweat on her forehead with one hand and then returned her fingers to the material she guided under the bobbing needle on the sewing machine. Her hands made damp impressions on the pale lilac. Her bare feet slipped on the treadle and the needle slowed. At this rate, Hazel’s new dress would have some seriously crooked seams. Not that Hazel would care, but Mudder might. She was a good seamstress, and she had taught her daughters to be meticulous with their needles and thread.

“My sewing is fine,” she muttered. “It’s the heat causing the squiggles.”

“Are you talking to yourself?” Leila trotted into the front room, a basket of clothes in her arms. “Or do you have an imaginary friend?”

“Very funny.” Deborah reached the end of the seam, stopped pumping the treadle, and pulled up on the lever so she could cut the thread. “I think it’s hotter today than it was yesterday.”

“I don’t mind the heat.” The smile on her sister’s face told Deborah that Leila really didn’t mind. The thought only made
Deborah feel even more cross. Which wasn’t fair. Leila had a sweet nature, and she and Rebekah had been doing laundry all morning and making fancy handwritten labels for the honey jars between trips to the clothesline. “I’d rather feel the sun on my face than icy snow. The clothes dry faster and they smell good.”

“Okay, okay, Miss Ray of Sunshine.” Deborah held up the skirt of the dress. Time to pin the bodice and begin on those seams. “How can you be so cheerful? What’s your secret?”

“She’s in
lieb
!” Rebekah traipsed through the door, her face half-obscured by another pile of laundry. “Didn’t she tell you?”

“She did not. It’s none of my business.” Deborah pulled pins from the material and stuck them in the red tomato-shaped pin cushion. “Where’s Hazel?”

“I sent her to the kitchen to get me a glass of water. I’m parched.” Rebekah dumped the clothes onto the rocking chair and stretched, one hand on her back, the other raised over her head. She grimaced. “You’d think after the fire, we’d have less clothes to wash, especially with Caleb not being here.”

“I told Susan we’d take care of all the laundry and finish putting the labels on the last batch of honey jars while she and Mudder are at Martha’s helping deliver her baby. It’s all in the timing, a baby coming on laundry day.”

“I’m sure Martha planned it that way.” Deborah joined her sisters in giggling over her silly comment. She was trying not to think about Rebekah’s earlier statement. Leila in love. Already. They’d only been in Bee County two months. “Delivering a baby is a lot of work, you know.”

“You want to know about Leila’s beau, I can tell.” Rebekah shook a finger at Deborah. “You like to know what’s going on, same as the rest of us.”

“Courting is private.”

“I’m not courting.” Leila’s dimpled face turned pink. She ducked her head and smoothed the pants she was folding with both hands. “Leastways, not yet.”

“But he talked to you, didn’t he? He’s talked to you at the singings and after the prayer services.” Rebekah clapped her hands in a quick one-two, one-two as if applauding her own statement. “He’ll be showing up here one night to take you for a ride, you watch.”

“He who?” Deborah couldn’t stand it anymore. “Is it Jesse?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know.” Rebekah rolled her eyes, her mouth stretched in a wide grin. “Of course it’s Jesse.”

Deborah focused on pinning the bodice seam. Good for Leila. She was starting her new life here on the right foot. She’d made a clean break. Gut for her.

“Why do you look so sad?” Rebekah’s smile disappeared. “Don’t worry, schweschder, your time will come. That’s what Mudder always says. In Gott’s time.”

“Besides, everyone can see you like Phin.” Leila’s tone made the words more of a question than a statement. “You walked with him at the lake that day we went fishing.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Then why is your face turning as red as a strawberry?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

Deborah slipped the material under the needle, dropped the lever, and began to pump. Maybe the noise would discourage her sisters from pursing this line of questioning.

“Come on, Deborah, I’ll tell you about Jesse if you’ll spill the beans about Phin.”

“There are no beans or peas or radishes to spill.” She stopped pumping. “I’m just not sure if he . . .”

“If he what? He likes you. I can tell by the way he stares at you at the supper table when you’re not looking.”

“He stares at me?”

“Jah, with this strange look like his stomach hurts or something.” Rebekah demonstrated by squinting her eyes and scrunching her face as if in pain. “I watched him last night. I couldn’t decide if it was staring at you that gave him that look or whether he had indigestion from the wieners and sauerkraut.”

The sauerkraut had been particularly sour. “You’re making that up.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

A crashing sound emanating from the kitchen filled the air. A cry of pain followed.

“Hazel!” Deborah stood so fast she smacked her knee on the sewing machine drawer. “Ouch!”

Another howl of pain from the kitchen made her wince and dart toward the door that divided the two rooms. She jockeyed with Leila to get through it first. There she found Hazel huddled on the floor next to an overturned chair. A glass lay shattered next to her on the cracked, faded linoleum. Blood dripped between fingers pressed to her mouth and ran down the back of her hand. The girl sobbed big, shuddering sobs as she rocked back and forth.

“Hazel, what happened?” Deborah knelt next to her little sister and gently pried her hand from her mouth. She peered at the swelling lower lip, then tugged it forward just enough to see inside. “Ach, schweschder. You have a little scratch.”

It wasn’t a little scratch, but she didn’t want to give Hazel
more reason to sob. Her lower front teeth were mashed up against the inside of her lip. They’d penetrated the skin, making a deep, nasty-looking gash. Blood turned the spaces around her teeth red, both top and bottom.

“Leila, get me a clean washrag.” While Leila rushed to a basket on the counter, Deborah lifted Hazel into her lap. Not for the first time, she wished for ice. Back home, they always had ice in their gas-powered refrigerator. Did these folks have something against ice? “What were you doing, little schweschder?”

“Needed glass for water.”

“So you stood on the chair to reach the cabinet?”

“I fell.”

At three, Hazel had plenty of chores and she handled them well enough. But still, short was short.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that.” Rebekah slapped a hand to her cheek. “Next time come tell me you need help, silly girl.”

“Wanted water.”

“No standing on chairs to get it.” Deborah pressed the towel against Hazel’s chin and lower lip, hoping to stanch blood that trickled from her mouth. “There’s no shame in asking for help.”

A lesson she could learn herself.

“Want Mudder.” The words were muffled by the towel, which quickly soaked red.

“Rebekah, go get Mudder at Martha’s.”

“What happened?” A box of empty jars in his arms, Phineas strode through the doorway. His gaze shot around the room, an emotion like fear making his scars stand out in stark relief against his skin. “I heard a scream.”

Deborah hugged her sister close and explained.

“Did you check to see if any bones were broken?” Phineas laid
the box on the counter and squatted next to Deborah. He touched Hazel’s plump arm with one finger. “Where does it hurt?”

“Mouth.”

The word came out
mouf
.

“Anything else? Arms, legs, fingers, toes, your backside?”

“Nee.”

“Open up wide, then.”

Hazel did as she was told. Phineas peered inside, clucked, and shook his head.

“What?” More tears slid down Hazel’s cheeks. Her swollen lips trembled. “Hurt.”

“You have a really big mouth.” His scarred features softened by a kind smile, Phineas pretended to tickle the girl’s neck with two long fingers. “No wonder that’s what you fell on.”

Hazel’s sobs eased and turned into hiccups. “Nee, I don’t.”

“Do too.” He patted her cheek with a hand that looked huge and brown against her small, tearstained face. “You must take after your sister Deborah.”

Hazel giggled and hiccupped again, which made her giggle more. Her face scrunched up in a frown. “Owie.”

Some of the tension drained from Deborah’s neck and shoulders. Phineas had a way with kinner. The brusqueness he used in dealing with adults fell away when he talked to children. “Nee, you’re the one with a big mouth.”

“Get her into the buggy. I’ll hitch up the mule and take us over to Mr. Carson’s. He’ll give us a ride into the clinic in Beeville so the doc can check her out.”

“You think she needs to go to the doctor?” That would mean a doctor’s bill. Mudder usually did their doctoring. “I think we should wait for Mudder.”

“We need to go.” Phineas’s tone didn’t change, but the look he gave Deborah told her his meaning. “She needs stitches.”

“Up you go.” Deborah tugged Hazel from her lap and stood, her knees cracking in protest. “Phineas will take us for a ride, and we’ll get you all fixed up.”

She glanced back at her sisters, standing side by side. Leila looked worried, and Rebekah looked so guilty a person would think she personally pushed her little sister from the chair. “It’s okay. You two stay here and let Mudder know what’s happened when she comes back.”

“Shouldn’t one of us go find her and tell her?”

“Get my daed from the field. He’ll ride over to Martha’s.” Phineas spoke with an authority that said he had taken charge of this situation. “It’s faster and I don’t have to worry about you getting lost or bitten by a snake or stung by a scorpion.”

“A scorpion?” The words burst from Deborah before she had a chance to lock them in. “You never said anything about scorpions before.”

“I’ve lost track of the number of critters I’ve told you about.” He grinned, lifted Hazel onto his hip as if she weighed no more than a gnat, and started for the door. “Let’s go. This girlie needs to be fixed up.”

A sly smile on her face, Leila gave Deborah a push. “Go on, Phin says the girlie needs to be fixed up.”

Deborah glared at Leila. “Maybe you should go.”

“You’re the oldest.” Leila pushed harder. “Mudder would want you to go.”

“Jah, Deborah, Mudder would want you to go.” Phineas mimicked Leila’s high voice. “Phineas says.”

Leila and Rebekah tittered. They were actually matchmaking
in the middle of this mess. Deborah opened her mouth to protest.