The Beekeeper's Son (The Amish of Bee County Book 1) (5 page)

She closed her eyes, burning with unshed tears, and sought comfort in the place she always found it. Gott’s grace covered Texas every bit as much as Tennessee. She had only to seek His will and be content with His answers.
Gott?

A mosquito buzzed her ears. She flapped her free hand, trying to ignore it. Bees, flies, mosquitoes. Like Texas’s version of the plagues.

Gott, Thy will be done. If this is Thy will for me, let me find
contentment in it. Let it be enough.

The screen door slammed. Abigail jumped and nearly dropped the plate. John stomped down the steps, Mordecai behind him. “What are you doing, standing there with your eyes shut? You look silly.” He glanced around. “Stephen left already?”

“He did.” Hoping John would be satisfied with an answer to his second question and not his first, she started to squeeze past the men. “I’ll take these dirty dishes in.”

Mordecai tipped his straw hat toward her with one finger and nodded. “Esther and Susan are still jawing with Eve, but I best be getting home to my chores. Joshua says he’ll give them a ride home.”

“It was nice to meet you.” Abigail swallowed, sure she couldn’t say another word without doing something silly like sobbing. Mordecai’s gaze looked so familiar. So . . . wanting. She recognized the look. Nee, not the look. The feeling that went with that look. Drowning in loneliness in the midst of a crowd. A knowing. He knew. Because he had felt what she felt. But not for two years. For twelve, according to Eve. If it took a man like Mordecai that long to overcome his fraa’s death, why did everyone expect her to snap out of it so quickly?

Mordecai nodded again. He hauled himself into his buggy and set off, his hat pulled low over his face against the setting sun.

John looked from Mordecai’s retreating buggy to Abigail, his face scrunched against the brilliant light. “You didn’t scare him off, did you?”

“What? Who?”

“What you mean, who?” John scratched at his ribs with one long finger, his gaze perturbed. “Stephen, of course.”

“Nee. Nee. I’m tired, that’s all. Long drive.”

“You liked Stephen before, didn’t you?”

John had known about her dilemma in her courting days. Courting might be private, but her brother had been friends with Stephen back in the day. He couldn’t help but know. Still, he hadn’t meddled when she chose another. “Jah, but I chose Timothy for a reason.”

“And now Timothy’s gone. I’m sorry for that. But Stephen’s a good man. Being a bachelor and all, he comes over here pretty regular for supper. He’s a good friend.”

“I know. You’ve mentioned that before.” More than once.

“It took him a long time to get over being hurt the first time.” John’s face reddened under a deep tan. Her bruder had never been one to talk much about feelings. “But he’s willing to forget it. I’d like to see you settled. Taken care of. Stephen’s willing to take on a fraa with five kinner with only one boy among them. That’s not worth nothing.”

“I know. It means a lot to me.” She’d hurt Stephen once. The last thing she wanted was to do it again. She managed a smile for her brother’s benefit. John studied her right back. She forced the smile wider. “I’m so happy to be here.”

“It’s a tight fit, but we’ll manage.” He slid his hat back on his head and rocked on the heels of his boots. “I’m off to feed the livestock. Your room is at the end of the hallway. It was intended for storage, but we squeezed a bed in there.”

He trotted away, light on his feet for such a tall, burly man. “It’s not for very long, anyway.”

His words floated on the air behind him, surrounded by the words not said. His house was full. Abigail needed to accept Stephen’s offer.

After all, that was why she’d come.

Wasn’t it?

FIVE

The plagues of south Texas abounded. Deborah added fire ants to her list as she dropped her empty basket into the dry, yellowed grass that crackled under her feet. Trying to avoid the fire-ant mounds that dotted an open field that went on forever, she hopped on one bare foot so she could remove a burr from the tender skin along the arch of her other foot. She tried not to feel so aggrieved at this tiny prick of pain that seemed like punishment somehow for her sour disposition this fine June morning.

Lifting her hand to shield her eyes from the sun, she surveyed the winding, leaf-covered vines that curled around a saggy fence that seemed to lead nowhere. The vines, heavy with purple and green grapes, had taken over, stretching from the fence to a dead ash tree, winding upward and resting on gray boughs as if they owned the place.

“They don’t look like any grapes I’ve ever seen.” She worked to keep the disdain from her voice. Everything about this place seemed to disappoint her, and that wasn’t Frannie’s fault. “I mean, they’re kind of small and peaked looking.”

“That’s because they’re mustang grapes.” Frannie snatched
one from the vine and held it out. “They don’t grow in clusters like Spanish grapes. Daed tried planting that kind, but they died out—too hot, I reckon, or not enough rain. These grow wild, which is a blessing for us. Try one.”

Thinking of the grapes they used for jelly back home, Deborah popped it in her mouth. “Ewwww.” Her tongue curled and her lips puckered. She spit the skin at her cousin’s feet. “Frannie! Sour!”

Frannie whooped and did a two-step to avoid the offending grape. “What’s the number one thing we put in jelly and jam?”

“Sugar.”

“So what does it matter if they’re sour? We just add more sugar. The
Englischers
who come to the store even ask for it special.”

“Well, the other grapes we can eat plain.” Deborah sounded like a spoiled child and she knew it. “I reckon all that sugar isn’t good for us. It rots our teeth and makes us fat.”

“I ain’t got an ounce of fat on me, and I eat butter-and-jelly sandwiches all the time.”

Fresh, hot bread slathered with butter and jam did sound good. They’d left the house right after breakfast and the sun looked to be well overhead now. Deborah was hungry and thirsty and surely had a whole new batch of chigger bites. “Is it time to go back yet?”

“Nee, silly, you haven’t begun to fill that basket. We need to pick as many grapes as we can. Mudder wants to make the jam tomorrow so we can get it to the store before Friday. That’s when most of the Englischers come to buy the produce and honey.” The smile slipped from Frannie’s face, replaced with a pensive expression Deborah hadn’t seen before. “Too bad Leila and Rebekah were busy digging potatoes. We should’ve brought Hannah and Hazel. They could help carry. The more we pick, the more money we make at the store.”

“And then we’d have to carry Hazel, Hannah, and the baskets.” Deborah’s little sister handled small chores, but her short legs still kept her from being a help on treks like this. Besides, if they didn’t have the jam to the store this Friday, there was always next Friday. “What’s the matter? You look worried about something.”

“Nee. Don’t do any good to worry about things. ’Sides, Leroy says worrying shows a lack of faith.”

Deborah hadn’t spent a lot of time with Frannie, but she knew worry when she saw it. She’d seen it too many times on her mother’s face. “Come on, spit it out.”

“I heard Mudder and Daed talking.” Frannie began to pick grapes with a steady, sure hand that said she’d done this many times. “It sounded like . . . Daed’s worried. Daed never worries. He says worrying is a sin too. They were arguing . . . not arguing . . . Mudder never disagrees with Daed. But it sounded like they were tugging back and forth on something.”

Deborah copied Frannie’s technique and began to fill her own basket. “About what?”

“It sounds like Mudder wants to move back with her schweschder up in Missouri.”

Deborah lost her grip on her basket. It tumbled into the weeds. “Ach.” She squatted, set it upright, and began to pick up the spilled fruit. “Nee, you must’ve misunderstood. Your family has lived here forever. Your farm is here. We just came down here because you’re here.”

“I know.” Frannie plucked grapes faster and faster. She didn’t look up. “I don’t reckon it’s my place to say anything—”

“Say what?”

“Before you got here, I heard Mudder telling Daed that he should’ve told Aenti Abigail not to come. It was foolishness for
y’all to come here. He wanted y’all to come because of Stephen. He figured that’d work itself out, either way.”

“Why move, though?”

“Look around.” Frannie flopped her hand in the air. “The district isn’t getting bigger. It’s getting smaller. We lost two families this year already. We don’t mind working hard, but Mudder says sometimes you have to admit that a thing isn’t meant to be. That Gott didn’t intend for us to try to farm in a place with rocky soil and no rain. She says we could go back up north and farm where Gott intended food to be grown. She says Daed’s just being stubborn because he doesn’t want to admit that he was wrong to move here or bring y’all here. That Leroy’s daed was wrong to bring his family here from Tennessee way back when.”

Deborah worked Frannie’s words over in her mind. Onkel John hadn’t said anything to her mother. She was sure of that. Mudder never would have moved them here if she thought the district was about to break up. “Why did the families leave?”

“Different reasons.” Frannie’s voice dropped as if she feared someone would overhear in this great, wide-open space. “The Matthew Glicks left because they didn’t agree with the
Ordnung
. They moved into town and started a carpentry business. He even drives a van now and they go to an
Englisch
church. They said Leroy was being too strict. That we needed to find new ways to support ourselves. David Schrock and his kin moved back to Missouri because his mudder and daed were getting old and needed him to run their farm.”

“It doesn’t sound much different from back home.” Deborah wanted to comfort her cousin, but she could see both sides of the argument. “It doesn’t matter who it is, Plain or Englisch or
whatnot, folks have differences. That’s what my mudder always says. Maybe Leroy isn’t hearing what Gott is saying now.”

“Leroy is the bishop. He was chosen by holy lot. Gott chose him.” Frannie shook her head so hard, it was a wonder her freckles didn’t fall off. “Still, in a little district like this, we can’t afford to lose families. The Schrocks and the Glicks weren’t the first to go. From what I hear, they won’t be the last. It ain’t much.” She pointed a finger toward the field with its ornery cacti, black-eyed Susans, and mesquite. “But it’s the only home I’ve ever known. It grows on a person.”

Deborah didn’t have the heart to tell Frannie she couldn’t ever see it growing on her. “Gott will provide.” Hadn’t Mudder told her that a thousand times since Daed’s death? “You know what? We could pray.”

“We could.”

A sudden hopeful look on her face, Frannie closed her eyes and bowed her head, still clutching her basket. Deborah did the same, waiting. The silence was filled with cicadas. A bee buzzed her ear. Or maybe it was a horsefly. A mourning dove cooed.

Deborah struggled to find words that would help Frannie and still be truthful. God would see through her words to her heart. He would know her true desire was to return home. It could be that God’s will for this tiny, dirty place was to let it sink back into wilderness, to let the vines cover the fences and the fierce winds from the south blow down the tin walls until nothing remained of this settlement.
Gott, Thy will be done.

The familiar words of the Lord’s Prayer, repeated at every church service she’d ever attended and nightly evening prayers, ran through her mind.
Thy
kingdom
come, Thy will be done. Thy
will be done. Even if it’s this place.
She kept her eyes closed, hoping God read her heart and not the confusion in her head.

“Amen. I feel like singing.”

Startled, Deborah opened her eyes. “What?”

Frannie attacked the grapevines with renewed vigor. “After praying, I always feel like singing. That’s what I feel like doing now.”

“Huh?”

“Singing always makes me feel better.”

“What song would you sing?”

“Let me think about it.”

Deborah let her think on it. As if singing would get Gott’s attention if their prayers hadn’t. She had her own thinking to do. They’d driven nine hundred miles across several states to a district that might very well disappear from one day to the next. Did Mudder know? And why would Stephen lure them here if he knew?

Deborah had more questions than answers.

The soothing hum of forty thousand or more bees a concert in his ears, Phineas tucked his pants into his knee-high rubber boots, then adjusted the screen over his head. The sun beat down on him, but he didn’t mind. Days like this, with the sun shining and the bees as his only company, he felt content, if not happy. He double-checked to make sure his shirt was tucked in all around. Honeybees were a docile lot, and they had no bone of contention with him, but he’d found it was not much fun when one got under his clothing and then couldn’t find its way out.

Satisfied that he was sufficiently protected from the unlikely chance the bees would take offense at his intrusion into their home, he picked up the smoker and lifted the apiary lid. The hum reached a crescendo as thousands of bees went about their many
duties of depositing nectar in the combs, cleaning the empty cells, and taking care of the queen. Their industrious nature served as an example for humans, in Phineas’s way of thinking. Plain folks worked hard, harder than most, but nothing compared to bees, who literally worked themselves to death—as Daed liked to remind his kinner whenever they complained about their chores.