The Way to a Man's Heart (The Miller Family 3) (28 page)

“Sure, I’ll take them off your hands.” His lips formed the smallest smile possible.

As the buggy rolled down the driveway and turned onto the pavement, the silence between them grew unbearable.

“Tell me about yourself,” she blurted. “You know plenty about me and my tastes. You’ve visited my restaurant and sampled my handiwork.” She turned to face him on the bench. “What about you? What are you looking for in life?”

He leaned back and didn’t reply right away. “I guess I’m content raising dairy cows. I’d like to build a bigger herd and sell more milk to the cheese producers. Maybe I’ll build
mamm
a bigger facility on the farm for her specialty cheeses. Other than that, I’d like to get married and raise a family—six boys and six little girls would be just about perfect.”

“A dozen
kinner?”
she asked with a voice rough and scratchy.

“Jah,
a good round number, don’t you think? The boys would help me around the farm while the gals could help…whoever is lucky enough to become my wife.”

Leah couldn’t see his expression in the darkness, but she distinctly heard him chuckle. She’d never given much thought to her future. She’d assumed she would marry some day and bear children, but this man’s expectations unnerved her.

How would she work at Leah’s Home Cooking once those
bopplin
started arriving? The obvious answer was she wouldn’t. If she were to marry Jonah, her job would become a distant, pleasant memory. She knew she was getting way ahead of herself, but just the same…

Maybe she wasn’t a good match for Jonah Byler after all. And that thought ruined an otherwise enjoyable ride home.

They don’t call them the dog days of summer for nothing.

Emma swiped off her wide-brimmed bonnet to scratch her scalp for the third time that morning. She’d been picking tomatoes and peppers for hours and had plenty of mosquito and deerfly bites for her efforts. She didn’t mind the hot sun, but the humidity sapped her energy and made her feel wilted. Straightening her spine, Emma shaded her eyes to scan the distant fields for a sign of Jamie.

The trouble with Hollyhock Farms was it was too big to keep track of one’s spouse. Her
mamm
usually knew the whereabouts of
daed
—either in the hay, corn, or wheat fields, the cow pasture, or in the barn. But the Davis family owned frontage on eight different township or county roads. A network of gravel lanes might allow easy movement of farm equipment, logging trucks, or livestock haulers, but finding someone wasn’t easy.

Sticking your head out an upstairs window and hollering was pointless.

Even their big iron farm bell was more for decoration than function with the pagers and cell phones of English agriculture. Her own cell phone sat in the pocket of her apron with a dead battery. Placing the device into the charger each night still wasn’t second nature to her. Not that she often called Jamie anyway. The woodlot and high pastures had no service. Even reception near the house was spotty and unreliable.

Emma assessed her bushel baskets and declared them adequate for a morning’s work. Carrying them one at a time to the back door, she planned what to fix for lunch. Maybe she would pack a hamper of cold chicken sandwiches and a thermos of iced tea. The foreman would know Jamie’s location. She could hike to where he was working, spread her checkered cloth on a grassy hillside, and share the noon meal with him. Hollyhock offered spectacular vistas of the hills and valleys of southern Holmes County, especially on a day this sunny and clear.

However, her impromptu plan proved short lived. Barbara Davis was buzzing around the kitchen with twice the normal energy of a woman her age. “Ah, there you are, Emma. I was just going to look for you. I’ve got lunch all ready—tomato soup with toasted cheese sandwiches.” Deep lines set off her blue eyes when she smiled.

“Isn’t it a bit warm for a hot lunch?” Emma asked, walking to the sink to wash up. She swallowed down her frustration like a bitter pill.

“Do you think so? I enjoy a bowl of soup no matter what the weather is like. Come, sit, and start eating. I have plans for us for the afternoon.” Mrs. Davis ladled soup into their bowls. Their sandwiches sat on paper plates, already garnished with bread-and-butter pickle chips.

Emma slipped into a kitchen chair feeling twelve years old. “Shouldn’t we wait for Jamie and Mr. Davis?”

“Oh no, dear. They’re cutting hay. With this stretch of hot weather, cut hay will dry quickly. The men won’t stop until they finish all the eastern fields. But don’t worry. We’ll see them at suppertime.” She sounded as cheery as one of those people on TV trying to sell you something.

Emma tried her soup, but burned her tongue with the first spoonful. “What are your plans for us?” she asked, picking up the sandwich instead.

“Today is my day to lead the Bible study group at the women’s correctional facility in Canton.” Her face shone with enthusiasm. “I would love it if you came to help out. It’s a wonderful opportunity.”

“What?” Emma croaked. The melted cheese stuck to the roof of her mouth and had made speech difficult. Her singed tongue didn’t help much, either. “You want me to correct other women?” She put the sandwich back on the plate.

Barbara laughed wholeheartedly. “A correctional facility is just another name for a jail, dear. We have a Saturday Bible study group that’s gaining in numbers each week.”

Emma couldn’t understand why
Englischers
insisted on changing the names of things, as though a “reclamation landfill” smelled any better than the “town dump.” She tried the soup again. “Why do we have to read the Bible to these women? They can’t read the Good Book for themselves?”

Her mother-in-law paused with the spoon midway to her mouth. “Well, almost all
can
read, but most of them don’t. They’ve never been taught the habit or might not have their own Bible. Some of the women have never been inside a church in their lives.” She returned the spoon to her bowl still full of soup.

Emma lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t they have church services at this jail?”

“Yes, they hold Sunday services, but sitting around a table in small groups makes it easier for people to grasp the message. They can ask questions about words or ideas they don’t understand.”

Emma pushed away the plate with the sandwich. The melted cheese had cooled and turned rubbery. “Seems to me that if these gals are just starting to learn about God they should get their lessons from a preacher, not from the two of us.”

Barbara stared at her and then spoke in a firm voice. “Jesus told His followers to go make disciples of all men.”

“He was talking to His apostles.”

“All Christians have the responsibility to spread the gosel.”

“Old Order don’t go around talking, talking, talking about religion to strangers. We’re a whole lot quieter about our faith.” Emma dragged out the word “whole” for emphasis.

“But you’re not Old Order anymore, are you?” Barbara asked, lifting her chin. “You’re New Order now, and I believe they do engage in Christian outreach to the poor, the sick, and those who don’t know the Lord.” She picked up her plate and bowl and carried them to the sink, leaving Emma at the table, fuming but silent. “If you don’t want to come with me, you don’t have to, but being quiet isn’t going to help those young women find the right path when they leave prison and reenter society.” She added her own inflection on the word “quiet.”

Emma sat alone in the overly large kitchen feeling ashamed of her argumentativeness and also feeling cut adrift between two worlds.

How can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?
She’d read those words from the book of Romans many times, and they now came back to haunt her.

After her morning and afternoon spent in the air-conditioned diner, the kitchen at home felt hot and airless. Leah opened every window on the first floor of the house as far as they would go and even brought down her battery-powered fan from her room. But no breeze stirred the white muslin curtains. Then she spotted the package of pork chops thawing on the counter and her heart sank.
Ninety-five degrees and
mamm
wants to fry chops for supper?
She wished she’d brought home the remaining chicken salad for a nice cold meal that wouldn’t heat up the house anymore than it was. But she knew her mother wouldn’t have any of that. “A hardworking man deserves a hot, home-cooked meal,” had been Julia’s reply the last time Leah suggested a meal of diner leftovers.

Tucking a damp lock of hair beneath her
kapp,
Leah poured oil in the frying pan to heat and went in search of recently picked produce on the porch. Buttered fresh green beans, carrots, and new potatoes would round out fried pork chops nicely. While she scrubbed and sliced the root vegetables, her thoughts focused on the best way to talk to her parents about the bake-off. Yet by the time Julia roused from her late afternoon nap, no great insight had come to mind.

“Ach,
according to my joints, it’s gonna rain later. Maybe it’ll cool things off some,” Julia said, lowering herself into a kitchen chair. “Good, you’ve started the chops; that’ll give the kitchen a chance to cool off before we eat.” Julia fanned herself with a paper fan she’d picked up at the dollar store.

After Leah turned the meat in the skillet, she sat down with her bowl of beans to snap and began without preamble.
“Mamm,
I got an idea a while back to enter my favorite pie recipe into a baking contest. You know, my Peach Parfait Supreme?”

Julia’s attention drifted from what Leah was doing to what she was saying, but she remained silent.

“Everybody says my new recipe could be a contest winner, so, on a lark, I sent it in to the Pillsbury Company.”

“On a lark?” asked Julia, frowning.

“Jah,
I did it spur-of-the-moment, never thinking that I’d hear a word from the Pillsbury folk.” She snapped the ends off her beans with expert precision.

“You thought it a wise decision to place yourself in competition with others…with
Englischers
?
”

Leah didn’t have to ask her mother’s opinion; her tone of voice said it all. “It’s just people sending in recipes. And then they put the winning ones in cookbooks and on the back of piecrust mixes.” She chose her words carefully in an attempt to minimize the competitiveness.

“Plain folk don’t enter contests. If you make up a good recipe, fine and dandy. Share it with those who ask for it or keep it your big secret, but don’t set yourself up to crow about how special you are. God knows the worth of every one of His lambs, and you don’t need to impress anybody other than Him.” Julia moved the wastebasket underneath the edge of the table and swept the ends of the beans into it.

At that point Leah knew without a doubt what the final outcome would be, but she continued with stalwart determination. “I understand and agree with that,
mamm,
but I already entered the contest, and I just found out I’m a finalist in the Sweet Treats category. I received a letter inviting me to Orlando to bake my pie in their kitchen, and then the final judges will pick the grand prize winner.” She stopped, knowing the nature of the grand prize wouldn’t impress her mother in the least.

Julia moved slowly to the sink to fill a pot of water for the vegetables. When she’d dumped in the colander of beans, she turned to face her daughter. “You shouldn’t have entered, Leah. I don’t think your
daed
will allow this to go any further. And you’ve just created a fuss for the Pillsbury folk because now they will have to pick someone else to take your spot as a finalist.”

Leah tasted sour disappointment in her mouth. “Are you sure
daed
will say no? Maybe he won’t see any harm in it.”

Julia drummed her fingertips on the table. “Do you know how far away Orlando, Florida, is? You’re starting to sound addled. Do you need to lie down for a while?”

“Couldn’t we just ask him?” Leah’s pleas rang harsh in the hot kitchen. Then in a childlike voice she added, “Couldn’t you please ask him for me?”