A Home for Lydia (The Pebble Creek Amish Series) (50 page)

Lydia should have been happy.

She should have been satisfied with the ways things had gone at the cabins, not just that day but all week. Reservations were good. Renters were happy, and sales of their Amish-made merchandise were up. She and Clara were working well together for once. They hadn’t fought since last week, when she’d sent her to clean cabin two and found her in the rocker, peering through the branches of a bush,
watching two Amish boys who had come to cut the grass. Even that had lightened Lydia’s heart, for it seemed more like the old Clara, the Clara from before the burglaries and arrests.

The cabins were full nearly every night. Business had been so brisk she’d needed to hire the boys to help Seth, who was now doing Aaron’s work.

She should even be grateful about the quiet ride home—Clara hadn’t worked today because she’d had a dental appointment. Their neighbor had given her a ride into town, and she’d taken the afternoon off.

But instead of enjoying the ride home, Lydia found herself stewing over her life.

The reins to Tin Star fell slack in her hands, and she slouched against the seat as her parents’ home came into view.

Her parents’ home.

Was she destined to always live there? To never have a home of her own?

The old restlessness stirred in her, and she fought once again to push it down. She would turn twenty-three soon. What sort of life had she envisioned when she was Clara’s age?

Why was she never happy?

Part of her discontent had come with the phone call about hiring help for Seth. She’d thought to be able to speak with Aaron about that, but she’d only been able to leave a message at the phone shack near where he lived in Indiana. When he’d called back, she’d been fetching a cat out of a tree and had missed it, so Clara had brought her the message from their own phone in the office.

So much for phones providing fast and easy communication as the
Englischers
declared. She wouldn’t mind a letter. At least that she could read over and again.

She missed him.

There was no denying the hollowness in her stomach and in her heart. It gnawed at her each day, especially when she arrived at work and he wasn’t there.

He’d been gone for two weeks now. Maybe he’d changed his mind. Maybe he wasn’t coming back.

Stephen walked out of the barn as she pulled into the small drive leading to their house. It was hard for her to believe he was done with his schooling. She’d spent so long fighting to keep him in the classroom, that now she wasn’t sure how to feel with him out and about.

Where would he work?

They had no fields that needed tending, and the few extra hours she needed a man at the cabins—the hours she’d given to the boys she’d hired to help Seth—weren’t enough to provide for her family. Not to mention Stephen wasn’t interested. She hoped he wasn’t running around late at night any longer.

“I’ll brush Tin Star down,” she said as he reached for the horse’s reins.

“No, you should go on inside.”

She sat looking at him for a moment before getting out of the buggy. Stephen knew she preferred spending a few moments with the horse. It helped to ease her mind and relax her a bit from the work day.

“Go inside, Lydia.”

“Is it
dat
?
Was iss letz
? Is he all right? You could have called me at the cabins—”

“
Dat
is fine.” He took the reins from her hands and began to unharness the horse. “They’re waiting for you.”

Lydia’s pulse began to race, and she resisted the urge to run. Why were they waiting? What had happened? Stephen had gazed at her with such seriousness, but if
dat
was fine…

She practically ran up the porch steps and pulled the door open at the same time her younger sisters burst through it. Martha, Amanda, and Sally Ann all giggled at the sight of her, but only Sally Ann stopped to throw her arms around her legs, embracing her in a tight hug.

“I love you, Lydia.” She was gone in a flash of blue dress and black
prayer
kapp
, running off after the other two into the last of the afternoon light.

Stranger and stranger.

She placed her purse on a hook by the door. As she turned toward the kitchen, she noticed Clara uncharacteristically standing by the stove. Something was not right. She was actually smiling as she stirred what smelled like potato soup.

“You’re cooking?” Lydia asked.

Clara started to answer. No doubt it would have been a retort worth hearing too. Lydia could see now that Clara had cut the biscuits and put them on the baking tray. She could also see the smile blossoming on Clara’s face as if she were hiding the biggest of secrets. It did Lydia’s heart good to see the smile after the weeks of sadness that had followed Jerry’s arrest. But before Clara could speak, Lydia’s mother walked into the room and interrupted them.

“Lydia, you’re home.
Gut
. We have company, and we’ve been waiting for you. What kept you so late?”

“I’m late? Company? Stephen said you needed to see me. Is something wrong?” Her voice rose with each question as her mother put her hand to her back and turned to usher her into the sitting room.

She didn’t need to see him though, because suddenly she knew.

It felt as if every nerve in her body had come alive.

The scent of him was in the air, stronger than the smell of the soup on the stove.

Lydia turned and her eyes immediately found his. It was as if he’d never been gone. As if it was two weeks ago and they were sitting at the cabins, and he was telling her that he had to go back to speak with his father. She closed her eyes, and he was brushing her lips with his own.

Her fingers went to her lips at the memory.

“Lydia.” Aaron stood, his hat in his hands, his eyes still locked on hers.

“I…I didn’t realize you were back.”

“Aaron arrived an hour ago.”

“Hour…”

Her feet were moving her toward him, but she felt as if she were back in her room, having another of her dreams that made no sense.

When she sat down, her father reached out and covered her fingers with his own. She looked at his weathered hand on hers. The tears she’d held back for two weeks threatened to spill, but she blinked them away. When she looked up, she realized Aaron had sat down again, and Menno had placed his other hand on top of Aaron’s.

He sat between them, laboring to pull in deep breaths.

It was Ella who explained. “Aaron came here first, Lydia, because he wanted to speak with your
dat
. Although it isn’t required, he wanted to ask about your marrying. Do you care for him as he cares for you?”

Lydia met Aaron’s gaze. She couldn’t have resisted it if she’d used her last ounce of strength, and she didn’t want to.

“
Ya
.
Ya
, I do.”

“
Wunderbaar
. In that case, your
dat
and I would like to offer our blessing.”

Aaron’s smile, which was more beautiful than anything Lydia had ever seen, should have been enough. It should have been, but it wasn’t. She stared down at her father’s hand, on top of her own.

“But, if we were to marry, how would you…that is to say, where would we…” She closed her eyes, focused her mind, and started over again. “I mean, I couldn’t leave—”

“
Gotte
will provide for us.” Ella reached out and touched her softly on the cheek. “He has provided, and He will continue to. It’s not for you to worry.”

But she was worried.

She couldn’t simply marry, move away, and leave her father when he was so sick. She couldn’t do it!

Menno patted her hand as he pulled in another deep, rattling breath. “What…what is faith, Lydia?”

She knew the answer he wanted. She remembered when she was a child, and he’d tuck her in each night, always with a proverb and a kiss on the forehead.

As she glanced up and into Aaron’s dark brown eyes, she felt the tears tracking down her cheeks. “Faith is knowing there is an ocean…”

He finished the saying for her, finished it with a smile that was genuine and sure. “Knowing because you have seen a brook.”

Epilogue

October

L
ydia resisted as Aaron tugged on her hand.

“I want the house to be just right when we move in, and there are only three days left.”

“You know Miriam and Mattie will help you set the dishes just so.”

“
Ya
, but—”

“Not to mention that all of your
schweschders
have been pestering you to let them lend a hand. They want to help.”

“I know, and I mean to, but—”

“Come with me, Lydia. There’s something I want to show you.”

It wasn’t his words that convinced her, or even the teasing in his voice, but the look in his eyes. Would she ever grow immune to the invitation there? She hoped not. She prayed not.

Pulling her shawl from the back of the kitchen chair,
their
kitchen chair, she slid it around her shoulders. Aaron’s fingers wrapped around hers and sealed the deal. They walked shoulder to shoulder across the kitchen, through the sitting room and out the front door. She paused on the front porch, turning her gaze to the swing.

“I know what you’re thinking. I can see it in your beautiful eyes,
but we’ll come back to the swing.” He tugged on her hand and pulled her down the steps and across the lawn.

“What do you want to show me, Aaron Troyer?”

She thought they would turn toward the creek. These days, with the cabins doing so well and Seth taking on an increasing amount of the responsibilities there, Aaron could be found more often down near the water. He’d even begun serving as a fishing and nature guide to the
Englischers
. The same creek that ran through the cabins ran through the back of their property. It ran through their community. It was part of what bound them together.

Instead of following the path across their yard to the banks of Pebble Creek, he led her past the small barn toward the pasture and the fence that separated their property from her parents’ home.

“Come watch the sunset with me. It’s beautiful,
ya
?”

A kaleidoscope of colors splayed across the western sky—everything from purple to rose to blue. The sunset reminded her of walking through the quilt shop in town, when she’d been a young girl, younger than Clara. Her mother had insisted that she choose fabric for wedding quilts, but in her mind those quilts might never be needed. God had known, though, and now those quilts lay on a bed in the cozy two-bedroom home behind her.

“It’s
gut
to stop working for a few minutes.” Aaron turned and studied her face. “What do you think?”

Suddenly she wasn’t sure if he was asking her about the sunset or about all he’d done to ensure she could marry and yet remain close enough to care for her father. During the two weeks he’d been in Indiana, Aaron had sold his land to his brothers. He’d used that money to purchase the property next to her family’s—the property she’d often passed and stared at with such longing. When they planted in the spring, Aaron would split his time between the cabins and the fields. He’d also teach her brother, Stephen, how to farm.