Fearless Hope: A Novel (15 page)

Hope could not imagine allowing someone to take such a picture. Why, the woman was wearing clothing that covered much less than the underwear Hope discreetly purchased at Spector’s in Mt. Eaton, after making certain there were no men in the store.

The
Englisch
were such a puzzle. Why would any woman allow herself to be seen in public in such an outfit? Let alone allow a picture to be taken and then framed and displayed.

“Mommi?”
Adam called to her from downstairs.

She jumped and put the picture facedown on the side table so that Adam could not see it if he should walk in. Her son should not be looking at pictures of half-naked women, even if he was only four.

She did not like Logan’s wife very much, and selfishly hoped she wouldn’t be coming to visit him often. The meeting yesterday had been such a disaster. Logan and his wife had argued, so Hope had gotten the children in the buggy without even putting the food away. She did not need the job so badly that she would allow her children to hear such words!

It was Monday morning, and Marla was gone. She had not bothered to wash up their dishes. The bathtub had not been wiped out after her bath. Two days’ worth of damp towels were scattered all over the bathroom floor. There was makeup spilled in the lavatory. It was as though she had tried to leave Hope as much work as possible.

Presumably, this photograph was a gift left for Logan to
remember her by. Hope had seen Logan for only a few minutes earlier this morning, but she noticed that he was in a foul mood.

None of this was any of her business, but she could not help but take note and wonder about those two. The
Englisch
had their television and picture shows to watch, the Amish had each other and the
Englisch
to watch. Logan and his wife would be entertaining if it weren’t for the fact that she liked the man she worked for and thought he deserved better.

Only last week he had purchased two small tricycles for Adam and Carrie to play on. One pink. One blue. He made no big to-do over it. He had simply brought them home with him.

“I was at Keim’s and I saw these. I thought they might help entertain the children while you work,” Logan had said. “They are such good children. I thought they should have a reward.”

The Amish did not necessarily consider good behavior something to be rewarded. Good behavior out of children was something to be expected, not bribed, but they did give and receive occasional gifts, and so she thanked him.

She was grateful that Logan had been thoughtful enough to purchase something that would not go against their culture. A handheld video device for her son would have caused her to make an embarrassing refusal, but a little tricycle? That was not a problem. She wondered if he had figured it out all by himself or had asked someone for a suggestion. Either way, it warmed her heart that he had been so thoughtful.

Of course, it would never do to spend too much time thinking about him. In fact, after hearing part of their argument, she suspected he would soon sell the house and move back to New York.

It was her opinion that Logan’s wife was very spoiled and more in love with herself than with her husband. If
she
were married to someone as handsome and kind and thoughtful as Logan, she would
never
speak so angrily to him!

Where had
that
thought come from? She put that idea away and quickly asked God for forgiveness. It was a terribly sinful thing to imagine being married to another woman’s husband.

“Go outside and play, Adam,” she called. “I will be down soon.”

Satisfied that his mother was within easy reach, he happily obeyed.

She went downstairs and was folding up blankets that had been left strewn about on the couch when she heard Logan’s car pull into the driveway.

She tried to hurry with the straightening up because she didn’t like to stay once Logan arrived, but the dishes were not done, and she wanted to put some of the good bread she had set to rising to bake in the oven. It was very inconvenient when he came home early.

She heard him outside talking to the children and smiled as she heard them trying to speak to him in English.

He came into the kitchen where she was starting the dishes to soak. “I brought some gummy bears for them from Violet’s shop. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Children like sweets.”

“What about their mother?” He produced a large package of Coblentz chocolates from behind his back.

He was smiling, but his smile faltered when she merely stood there with her hands in the suds.

“Don’t you like chocolate?” He seemed genuinely puzzled.

She dried her hands on her apron and reached for the box, a little unsure what to do about this. Chocolates were a gift that a man gave to his wife or his sweetheart. She was torn. Coblentz chocolates were also a local delicacy. They were delicious . . . and expensive. She rarely got any. It was a hard gift to turn down.

“Thank you,” she said. “I do like chocolate very much, but it is not an appropriate gift to give your housekeeper.”

“Huh?”

She laid the chocolate box on the table and turned back to her dishes. Her face was burning. She should not have said anything.

“Hope?”

“Ja.”

“You have worked for me several weeks now, and you have done an excellent job. Beyond excellent. But sometimes you act as frightened as a rabbit when I’m here. Have I done something wrong?”

She scrubbed at a pot. Marla had apparently tried to make oatmeal and burned it. The pot might not ever be the same. “No.”

“Have I frightened you in any way?”

“No.”

“Then enjoy the chocolate. I don’t mean anything by it. I just thought you would enjoy it. And . . . I also wanted to apologize about Marla. She can be pretty high-strung sometimes.”

“Thank you.” She continued to work on the dishes and did not look at him. “But it is not necessary for you to apologize for someone else’s behavior.”

“Marla’s a city girl. Being in the country isn’t easy for her. She doesn’t know what to do with herself.”

She could start by picking up her own towels, Hope thought.

“It is fine.”

“Thanks for understanding.” He left and went upstairs.

Tonight she would allow herself to enjoy some of the chocolate, but not while she was here. The way she figured it was that she had earned it.

A few minutes later Logan came thundering down the stairs dressed in nothing but running shorts, a sweatshirt, and tennis shoes. She quickly turned away. She was not used to seeing so much of a man’s legs. Seeing him in bathing trunks in a photo
was one thing, but to be standing there only a few feet away—well, she hoped no one saw him go outside like that with her still here in his house!

“I’m going for a run, Hope,” he said. “Thanks for straightening up my bedroom. I went ahead and put that picture Marla brought with her in my bedside table drawer. I found it facedown, so I’m guessing it bothered you?”

“I did not want Adam looking at it.” She thought perhaps this might be an opportunity to let him know that she did not appreciate the way he was dressed, either. “We try to teach our children to dress modestly.”

“Of course you didn’t want Adam looking at a woman in a bathing suit. I apologize for that, too. Marla can be very thoughtless sometimes. She should never have brought that picture here.”

With that, he was out the door. She peeked out the window and saw him bounding down the road with his shorts and his long, embarrassing bare legs. She let the curtain drop and shook her head. It was just like each time she tried to make sense out of the little colored cards taped all over her old bedroom. The
Englisch
were crazy people. That’s all there was to it. In her opinion, it made no sense for a grown man to run around on the roads unless it was an emergency.

Because it was starting to be winter, and chilly outside, Logan had recently purchased what he called a “stationary bike” as well as something he called a Bowflex. These items now sat in his front room, taking up space and needing to be dusted.

He told her that he sat so much at a desk, he needed to stay in shape, and so he had started running—when there was no reason to run—and on especially cold days, he used that silly bicycle that pedaled to nowhere, and then, presumably, he’d use that thing with the pulleys and ropes.

She agreed with him that he needed to move his body after
sitting at a desk for so many hours, but she did not understand expending that much energy to accomplish nothing.

Amish men bicycled, but they bicycled to work every morning and home every evening. It was more convenient and kind to park a bicycle outside a woodworking shop than to keep a horse and buggy there. Amish men lifted weights, but usually in the form of bales of hay or lumber or firewood, and they used their muscles holding a plow steady against the pull of a team of horses.

If Logan had told her he needed exercise, she would have been happy to recommend a few chores to him. She would have handed him a shovel and had him turn over the garden she intended to plant. Or she might have suggested he get himself a nonstationary bicycle and ride it to the antiques store each day instead of burning gasoline everywhere he went.

Amish men had common sense, and plenty of it.
Englisch
men . . . well, from what she could see, not so much.

She liked her employer, but she did not understand him. How could a married man act so cheerful with his wife so far away? After meeting Marla, she wondered if he was relieved to have an excuse not to be living with her. It was a puzzle.

On the other hand, when he was home, she could frequently hear him upstairs in that room with the index cards on the wall, talking to himself. Sometimes he’d storm down the stairs, look at her with wild eyes, and say something crazy like “what’s another word for
infectious
?”

She would shake her head in bewilderment and he’d turn and stomp back upstairs.

He was a very nice man. He paid her well and treated her with respect, but had he been an Amish man, she would suspect that he had some screws loose in his head. As it was, she simply wrote it off to his being
Englisch
.

“E
verything looks good,” Grace said. “You and the baby are doing well.”

Levi’s wife, Grace, took the stethoscope from around her neck and stuck it into the pocket of her smock as she helped Hope off the examining table.

“That is such good news.” Hope adjusted her clothing and glanced around the comfortable room. Claire and Grace had done a good job of making the examination room feel homey, with Amish quilts hung on every wall, but also easy to keep clean, with its shiny wood floor and sparse furnishings. “It is wonderful to have this clinic so close to home.”

Grace took a bottle of prenatal vitamins out of a pine cabinet and handed them to her. “When I was working as a military nurse in Afghanistan, the last thing I would ever have imagined myself doing is running a home birthing center in partnership with my Amish mother-in-law.”

“It’s working out well for you?”

“Claire is such a skilled midwife that I have learned a great deal from her.”

“Thank you.” Hope put the vitamins in her purse. Grace gave her a thirty-day supply every time she came for her once-a-month
visit. “I’m certain Aunt Claire has learned much from you as well.”

“We make a good team, but we had to get over quite a few hurdles first.”

Hope glanced into an antique wall mirror to make certain her hair and
Kapp
were tidy. “Like what?”

“It took a while for her to stop resenting me for being part of the reason her son left the Amish church. Then it took me a while longer to stop resenting
her
for being so good at absolutely everything! The woman can grow anything, cook anything, sew anything, make a living for her family midwifing,
and
raise a houseful of kids at the same time. There’s no way on earth I could ever measure up. It was easier on my ego to just go to work at a hospital where no one expected me to turn a half-acre of cucumbers into pickles.”

“Aunt Claire can be a little intimidating,” Hope said. “She caught me in bed one morning a few weeks ago, with my cow still unmilked!”

“Gracious!” Grace exclaimed in mock surprise. “I’m shocked Claire didn’t call the sheriff.”

Hope could see the humor in it now, even though it hadn’t been much fun at the time. “I got a good talking-to!”

“I’ll just bet you did! What time was it, anyway?”

“Seven-thirty.”

Grace burst out laughing. “Claire probably already had the week’s wash hung out on the line, done her spring cleaning, and had plucked and butchered a chicken for dinner!”

“I don’t know about that, but she had already baked an apple pie from scratch. It was still warm when we had it for breakfast.”

“See what I’m up against?” Grace pulled off the sheet of paper upon which Hope had been lying and put a fresh one on the examination table. “The woman truly is remarkable.”

“How did you get over your problems with her?” Hope asked.

“I made myself stop feeling like I had to be in competition, and just started appreciating the amazingly talented woman she is. Besides, when you work as a team day after day helping bring the miracle of new life into the world—it tends to draw you closer. We’ve turned into pretty close friends.”

“It is a great relief to have you so close . . . and family,” Hope said.

“When Elizabeth proposed that we combine our skills, it felt like an answer straight from God. It still does. I don’t know why we didn’t see earlier that we could join forces and make a difference for the women of the area.”

“I bet Levi didn’t mind doing the carpentry necessary to turn this house into a clinic. I know he was not happy with you working at the hospital.”

“I never saw a man so focused. Didn’t he do a good job?”

Grace opened the door of the examination room and led her out to the front room. It was interesting to see how Levi had remodeled Elizabeth’s old house. He had somehow found room to create three birthing/examination rooms without taking anything away from the large, old, original kitchen, which was fitted out now with comfy chairs in addition to the central table. There was enough room for at least five or six women to nurse babies or just have a cozy place to visit.