A Plain Love Song (7 page)

The blank page of her notebook stared up at Adah. She should be reading the Confession of Faith articles for Sunday’s baptism class. Instead, she closed her eyes and waited, letting all the tension and uncertainty of the past few days seep away. Hurting Matthew. Knowing from now on he could simply move on and pass the time with Elizabeth Gringrich. Elizabeth was nice. And she’d had her eye on Matthew at school, even though then they’d been too young to go to the singings or court.

Why dig up all these old memories? Matthew loved her. He’d said so. And she hadn’t returned the favor. Sighing, she put the mishmash of feelings aside and tried to concentrate. Where were those words that had been knocking around in her head while she scrubbed Mrs.
Martin’s kitchen, beat the dirt out of her rugs on the clothesline, and cleaned three toilets in record time so she could come here instead of going straight home to more house cleaning?

The words hummed and her pencil began to move.

The tears that wet my face can’t erase these feelings.

My heart hurts every time I think about the days ahead.

It’s foolishness I know, but I can’t erase the words you said

When I told you I had to go. It’s foolishness I know.

I have one foot in my world, one foot in yours.

Everyone around me wants to shut the door

And separate me from you and yours.

It’s foolishness I know, but I can’t think about the days ahead.

It’s foolishness I know to think of the words you said.

Please say them once more. Tell me you won’t let them shut the door.

We’ll be together again. Tell me it’s no sin.

Tell me we’ll be together again.

It’s foolishness to think I can set this aside.

The door is standing open so wide,

I can see forever in your eyes.

I can fall into you and drown in the rushing tide

Of feelings I couldn’t stop if I tried.

Rough. Still, having a few words on the page opened up the channels and gave her something to work with. She had the ingredients. Now to stir them until they were smooth and satiny like bread dough kneaded and risen and kneaded again.

“Studying for baptism class?”

Startled, Adah looked up as she let her hand slide over the page. She’d been so engrossed in the words she hadn’t heard Molly approach. Curiosity written all over her round face, Molly peered through dark-rimmed glasses over Adah’s shoulder. Adah closed the notebook.

“Nee. I was jotting down some thoughts. And I want to write a letter to Abigail Gless in Bliss Creek.” She spoke the truth. Her to-do list included writing such a letter. “You remember her. She moved
there right before we moved to New Hope. Her daed married Helen Crouch—”

“I remember her.” Molly squeezed into a chair on the other side of the table and plopped down a large paper sack in front of her. “I didn’t know you were friends.”

“I talked to her some.” Adah shoved her notebook in her canvas bag. “I should probably get home. Mudder has a bunch of sewing she wants me to finish today while she cans another round of tomatoes. She’s stewing them and making sauce. We have a big crop already this year. Emma, Leah, and Katie are helping. How’s your garden doing?”

Her mouth ran over and she knew it, but she couldn’t figure out how to stop. Molly would tell Matthew she’d seen Adah at the library. She’d never lied to Matthew about anything. He knew about her love for music. She hadn’t told him about the songs. A lie of omission. Still, nothing said she couldn’t write a poem. A person was allowed to let her imagination run wild in poems. It was make-believe. Fiction. It didn’t mean a thing. She’d penned a poem about love and it didn’t involve Matthew. Why couldn’t it be about Matthew? He worked hard. He loved his faith and family. He was kind and strong and pleasing to the eye. He never raised his voice and he never criticized her. So why didn’t she write about him?

“What’s wrong?” Molly tilted her head to one side. She looked like a wise owl with her black-rimmed glasses, big brown eyes, and small, turned-up nose. “You look sad.”

“Nee. Just tired.” Another lie. Her cheeks burned. When had it become impossible for her to talk to someone like Molly? The girl never had a bad thing to say about anyone. She loved her brother, though, and wouldn’t want to see him hurt.

Adah didn’t want to see him hurt either. “I mean I’m…I’m just trying to figure some things out.”

“I always bring an extra sandwich in my lunch.” Molly held up the bag. “I’ll share if you’ll keep me company. Sometimes it’s easier to think on a full stomach.”

Given Molly’s round figure, she must do quite a bit of thinking. Adah stifled a smile at the thought. Matthew once told her she could do with a little more meat on her bones. No matter how much she ate, she
remained scrawny. Probably from the constant somersaults and back-flips her mind did on the trampoline in her head. “That would be nice.”

“There’s a picnic table in the back under a big sycamore. With any luck there’ll be a little breeze so we don’t melt.” Molly popped out of the chair. “It’s just peanut butter and jam, but Mudder’s strawberry preserves from last summer are really good.”

Adah followed after her, not trying to squeeze a word in. Molly led the way to the picnic table, which indeed enjoyed a lovely shaded spot in a patch of grass and a small garden of sunflowers, yellow belles, and other blooming flowers that someone obviously had been weeding. Molly doled out a sandwich heaped with so much jam it ran out and filled the crevices of the plastic wrap, followed by a bag of chips and a bag of oatmeal-raisin cookies. And an apple.

“Do you always pack two lunches?”

“I’m always hopeful I’ll find someone to share with.” She smiled as she unwrapped her sandwich, a twin of Adah’s. “It’s more fun that way.”

“What if you don’t find someone?”

“I have a nice afternoon snack or I give it to that old man who sits on the bench in front of the hardware store all the time.”

Molly really was a sweet person. Why hadn’t she been snapped up by a man? Adah considered. Matthew’s sister was only a year older than her. She still had plenty of time. On the other hand, most of the men in the New Hope District from Molly’s circle of friends had already married. At the moment, she didn’t look too concerned about her future. She looked completely captivated by the sandwich. Adah took her own bite and almost moaned. Delicious. They chewed in companionable silence. Molly pulled a thermos from the seemingly bottomless pit of the paper bag and filled the plastic lid with tea. “This we’ll have to share. I forgot to bring an extra cup.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Gut.”
Molly laid her sandwich on the plastic wrap and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Were you writing a song?”

The straightforward question caught Adah off guard. “Sort of. Until you put the words to music it’s really just a poem.”

Molly wrinkled her nose. “It looked like English. It’s not a hymn, is it?”

“Nee.”

“What’s it about then?”

Adah wished she knew. If she couldn’t explain it to herself how could she explain it to a simple, plainspoken woman like Molly. “It’s about…feelings…and trying to figure them out.”

“Feelings for my brother?”

Not so simple, but definitely plainspoken. Her appetite gone, Adah pinched off a piece of the thick homemade bread and rolled it around between her thumb and forefinger until it formed a ball. “My feelings are all mixed up, I guess. That’s what the poem is about. Being mixed up.”

“My mudder says the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”

“Mine too.” Adah popped the bread in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed, giving herself time to think. She needed to move the conversation away from her, somehow. “Do you think you’ll get married?”

“If it’s Gott’s will.”

The standard answer. It should be enough for Adah. “How does a person know if it’s Gott’s will?”

“I wish I knew.” A sudden sadness heaped itself on Molly’s face. She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I’ve been patient. I’ve waited. I don’t understand why I’m the only one who hasn’t found a special friend. I got baptized over a year ago. And here I sit.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” Molly’s hands flew to cheeks that stained red. “I’m enjoying eating lunch with you.”

“I knew what you meant.”

“I shouldn’t complain. It’s wrong. I’ve been blessed. I love working here and helping Mudder around the house and taking care of the kinner.”

“But you want your own house and your own kinner.”

“I do. Is that selfish?”

“It’s natural.”

“It’s what every Plain girl wants, isn’t it?”

Adah struggled to keep her face neutral. Every Plain girl except her, it seemed. She did want to be a fraa; she wanted kinner. But she also wanted to make music. Which was more important?

Family, of course. “Jah, it’s what we all want.”

They finished their sandwiches and chips in silence. Molly dumped her apple and her cookie into the bag and brushed crumbs from her hands. “I think I’d rather have ice cream for dessert. What do you say?” Her tone sounded determinedly cheerful. “Come with me to the soda shop at the drugstore. They have a scoop on a waffle cone for a dollar.”

“Jah, we can drown our sorrows together.” If she didn’t allow herself to write, she might as well console herself with an ice cream cone. “Or smother them in ice cream, in this case. My treat since you brought the sandwiches.”

“That’s what I don’t understand.” Molly tossed the rest of the tea in the grass and screwed the lid back on the thermos. “What sorrow do you have? Matthew never looks at anyone but you.”

“I really don’t think we should talk about this.”

“I would never tell Matthew anything. That’s a promise.” Her tone crisp, even bordering on sharp, Molly paused, her forehead wrinkled as she stared at Adah. She stood and picked up the bag. “You know why? I would never do anything to hurt my brother. Can you say the same?”

“I haven’t hurt him.” Again, not true. She strode after Molly. “I haven’t done anything.”

Molly stopped and Adah nearly ran into her. “Why does Matthew seem so sad when he looks at you? I know my
bruder
well. It’s something about you.”

“It’s between him and me.”

For a plump woman with short legs, Molly covered a lot of ground quickly. Adah was relieved when she stopped at the corner to wait for a line of cars to pass. “Even with everything he’s had on his plate, with the building of the dawdi haus and Enoch and Clara moving in with us, Matthew’s been studying for the classes. He intends to be baptized in September with Groossmammi and Groosdaadi looking on.”

“I know. He told me.”

“Were you listening?”

“I just said he told—”

“Did you hear what he was really saying? Matthew wants you to be his fraa.” Her voice softened and trailed off to a whisper Adah had to strain to hear. “He needs someone he can count on.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Molly took off the second the light changed. Adah scampered after her. The other woman didn’t look left or right as she made a beeline for the drugstore. “Molly!”

Finally, she halted at the door. “You have a man who loves you and wants you for his fraa. You take that for granted. Not everyone gets that.”

“I don’t take it for granted.” The sadness in Molly’s face made Adah squeeze her arm even as her own heart contracted. “You will find someone—”

“God’s will. God’s plan.” No bitterness tinged the words, but sadness hung from them, like the moss in the trees. “I’ll make the best of it. I always do. I try to, anyway.”

The door opened and Richard Bontrager strode out, a white paper bag in one hand and a waffle cone piled high with two—no, three—scoops of ice cream in the other.

“Adah!” He let the door slam behind him, apparently oblivious to Molly who, although a good foot shorter than the towering man, stood in his direct line of sight. “I was just thinking about seeing you at the frame raising. When are you coming to a singing again?”

Adah couldn’t imagine going to the singings, knowing Matthew wouldn’t be driving her home afterward. “Soon. Next time, we’ll—I’ll be there. If I can.”

“Hi, Richard,” Molly interjected, her voice unusually high. “That’s a lot of ice cream. You must be hungry.”

She didn’t sound at all like herself. Her face flushed a deep, unbecoming red that spread in splotches to her neck. She clutched her wrinkled paper bag to her chest with one hand and shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose with the other. Richard nodded at her, but his gaze swiveled back to Adah. “I like a good ice cream cone now and again. Is that where you’re heading—to the soda shop?”

Adah jerked her attention from Molly’s face to Richard. Richard didn’t have a clue. Knowing he’d gotten himself tangled up with Phoebe last spring when everyone knew she was in love with Michael Daugherty proved it. Why were men so dense when it came to women? “It was Molly’s idea. We’re drowning our…we’re having dessert.”