Heart in Hand: Stitches in Time Series #3 (16 page)

Sarah Rose settled at the table with some homework. “I have to write an essay,” she complained, rolling her eyes. “I hate to write essays.”

“That wasn’t my favorite,” Grace confided. “I loved math. Now I’m keeping the books for several businesses in town.”

Anna was looking over the shoulders of the men, and she straightened when she heard Grace’s voice. “Really? Grandmother’s looking for a part-time bookkeeper. Would you have time to work maybe ten hours a week for us?”

“That would be
wunderbaar
!” Grace exclaimed. Her cheeks pinked and she became animated. “Did you hear that, Eli?”

He mumbled something from under the sink.

“What?”

“Yes, dear,” Gideon said, leaning back on his heels to give her a wink.

Grace, always shy, blushed and laughed.

Not long after, the two men proclaimed victory over the leak under the sink. Eli and Grace left, saying they had to get home to help his parents with chores.

“Can I get you some coffee, Gideon?”

“We should go.”

“I’m almost done.” Sarah Rose scribbled furiously.

“I’ll take the coffee, thanks,” Gideon said, and he sat down at the table.

“Thanks for fixing the sink.”

“You’re welcome.”

Sarah Rose looked up, her eyes going from her father to Anna and back again. “What?”

“Nothing,” her father said, waving a hand at her paper. “Get done so we can go home.”

“Maybe we can stay for supper.”

“We don’t ask ourselves to supper,” he told her sternly.

Sarah Rose sent Anna a crafty look. “Maybe we’ll get asked to supper.”

Anna laughed. “Maybe you will. But it might not be a good time. I’ll have to ask your
daedi
.”

Resting her elbows on the table, Sarah Rose gazed at her hopefully. “Maybe you could do that now.”

Gideon opened his mouth to say something, but Anna waved her hand at him. “Maybe I could. Gideon, would you and Sarah Rose like to have supper with me?”

He met her eyes and she felt her heart race. “I think I can speak for my daughter in saying we’d love to.”

The daughter in question grinned and returned to her essay, looking much happier.

“I’m not sure what I have to offer,” Anna said, rising to look through her supplies.

“Maybe
Daedi
can show you how to make macaroni and cheese.”

“Sounds like a good idea, “Anna agreed, her gaze going to Gideon.

“The dish, I mean. I know how to make it. Let me see if I have everything I need.”

Sarah Rose made a production of jabbing her pencil in a final, big period on the essay paper. “Done!”

It was business as usual at Stitches in Time a few days later.

Except every time Anna glanced at Naomi she saw that her cousin wore a quiet smile as she worked on a quilt.

Naomi looked up then and blinked at Anna. “What?”

Anna laughed and shook her head. “I don’t think you’ve stopped smiling since you got married.”

Her cousin’s smile grew wider. “You’re probably right. Nick’s been grumbling a bit, though. He thinks it’s a little strange that we don’t go on honeymoons.”

“You’ll have to show him that staying home is better,” Mary Katherine said, and then she looked up and put her hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

Leah gave her an arch look as she stood and put her sewing down on a nearby table. “But you thought it.”

She started toward the back room and then, a few steps away, turned and fanned herself with her hand and grinned.

The three of them looked at each other, and then they collapsed in giggles.

Naomi knotted a thread and clipped it with scissors. “So, Anna, how was your date with Gideon?”

“Date?” Mary Katherine looked up from her weaving. “You had a date? When did this happen? Why didn’t I know?”

“Coffee,” Anna said. “It was coffee.”

“Why didn’t I know about coffee?” Mary Katherine walked over to sit beside Anna in a chair in the circle before the fire. “When did you have coffee with Gideon?”

“I feel like I’m back in
schul
,” Anna said, shaking her head. “Aren’t you both a little old to be teasing me like I have a new boyfriend?”

“You should have seen the way they were looking at each other at the wedding,” Naomi told her cousin.

Anna rolled her eyes.

“You can’t blame us,” Mary Katherine told her. “You teased us unmercifully when we were dating Jacob and Nick. And nosy? Oh, my.”

“If I was as nosy as you say—” she broke off as Mary Katherine shook her head.

“Yes?” Naomi looked up from rethreading her needle. “Finish what you were going to say.”

“I’d be wondering why Grandmother’s making a big fuss with lunch today.”

Naomi looked at Mary Katherine. “I don’t think that’s what she was going to say.”

“Sure it was. You know Anna’s always interested in her stomach.” Mary Katherine checked the clock and got up to walk across the room to lock the door and turn the sign to “Back in an Hour.”

They filed into the back room and found it filled with the delicious scent of baked ham and scalloped potatoes.

“What was all that I heard out there?” Leah asked as she set the ham on the table.

“Naomi was teasing Anna,” Mary Katherine said, sneaking a sliver of ham.

“I was not!” Naomi denied. “I just asked her about her having coffee with Gideon.”

“Now the two of you need to stop teasing Anna,” their grandmother chided. “You’re sounding like teenagers again.”

She tilted her head and studied Anna. “You had coffee with Gideon?”

Anna started to protest that her grandmother was behaving no better than her cousins when they heard a knock on the shop door. Anna started for it, but her grandmother passed her the oven mitts in her hand. “You get the potatoes out. I’ll get the door.”

“Ignore them and they’ll go away.”

But Leah was hurrying out of the room.

Mary Katherine took dishes from the cupboard. “Is she expecting someone?”

“I don’t know any more than you do,” Naomi said.

When it had been a few minutes and their grandmother hadn’t returned, Anna walked to the doorway and looked out into the shop.

“Grandmother!” she gasped, and the mitts fell from her fingers.

“What’s the matter? Is someone robbing her?”

Her cousins pushed her out of the way, then stopped dead in their tracks and stared.

She stood there just a few feet from the doorway, Henry’s arms encircling her waist. Lifting her chin, she smiled at them. “Henry and I have something to tell you.”

11

Married? You’re getting married?”

Feeling as if someone had pulled the rug out from under her feet, Anna looked from her grandmother to Henry. “This is a surprise!”

Leah smiled at him. “We’ve known each other since we were in school. He was even one of the attendants at my wedding to your grandfather.”

“I guess we thought the two of you were just friends,” Mary Katherine said.

Henry patted Leah’s hand lying on the table. “We were. We are. The best marriages start with friendship, don’t you think?”

Anna had to agree with that and not just because that was what had happened between her and Samuel. You became friends with each other in school, went to singings and other activities, and started feeling deeper emotions, falling in love with each other.

Leah helped herself to a slice of ham and passed the platter to Henry. Anna watched them smile and exchange a look of love.
Well
, she thought,
they had certainly not shown this when I saw them together before
.

The platter came to Anna. She speared a small slice of meat and put it on her plate, then turned to pass it to Naomi.

All the while Anna kept thinking how she never expected her grandmother to get remarried. Why, she wasn’t elderly but she was . . . old. Her grandfather had died so many years ago.

Scalloped potatoes and bread were passed around, and then they bent their heads in prayer.

Anna chewed her ham and thought about how she and her grandmother now had more than being a widow in common—God seemed to be sending other men to them. He hadn’t set aside just one for them. She hadn’t been certain how she felt about dating Gideon, but now that she’d tried it, she was glad she had.

“Are you planning on getting married this year?” Mary Katherine asked.

Leah exchanged a look with Henry. “We’re not sure yet.”

They aren’t sure after they’ve known each other so long?
Anna wondered.

“There’s no rush,” said Henry. “If Leah wants to wait, I’m fine with that.” He gazed at her, adoring. “I’m not going anywhere.”

If—If—things progress with Gideon, it will be next autumn before we marry as well
, Anna thought. She didn’t think he was the kind of man to behave so impulsively that he’d ask her to marry him this month. And certainly she didn’t see herself going from that panic about dating him to marrying him just weeks later.

“Anna?”

She blinked and looked into Naomi’s amused face. “What?”

“I was just saying that this is such a wonderful surprise. I wonder if there’ll be any others this month?”

“Well, no one can accuse you of being
sub-tle
,” Anna said, emphasizing the pronunciation of the word.

Naomi didn’t take offense but instead just laughed and elbowed Anna the way they’d always done when they were young girls teasing each other. “That’s no answer.”

“Okay. Here’s my answer: don’t look at me.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Their meal was full of conversation and good food and warmth on a cold day. They’d known Henry all their lives so once past her surprise, Anna felt comfortable with the news and even wondered why she’d never thought of him as a possibility for a second husband for her grandmother.

“Have you told anyone else?” Mary Katherine asked.

Leah shook her head. “I wanted to tell you three first. Henry and I will be stopping by to see your parents later this afternoon.

Finally, after a glance at the clock, Leah sighed, wiped her lips on her napkin, and set it beside her empty plate. “Back to work. We’ll have a busy afternoon with the holidays coming.”

Leah turned to Henry. “I’m so glad you could come have lunch with us today.” She slipped her arm inside his and smiled up at him. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

“Mary Katherine, if you and Anna don’t mind doing the dishes, I’ll go open up with Grandmother,” Naomi suggested.

Anna saw the expression of disappointment flash across her grandmother’s face before it was quickly changed.

“Naomi, we need your help in here,” Anna said quickly.

“Three people are needed to help clean up lunch dishes?” she asked with disbelief, but she began clearing the table.

Mary Katherine tilted her head in the direction of Leah and Henry as they left the room. She pursed her lips and mimed making kisses. Anna laughed.

And her face froze as their grandmother walked back into the room.

Leah lifted her brows. “What’s going on?”

Biting back laughter, Anna turned to put dishes in the sink. “Mary Katherine was just telling us a story about when she and Jacob got engaged.”

“Anna, I’m going to go out and get ready for class,” Mary Katherine said, backing out of the room. “If you and Naomi don’t mind doing the cleanup.”

Leah stared after her for a moment, shook her head, and then reached for a roll of aluminum foil and wrapped up the leftover ham. “This’ll make some nice sandwiches for a soup and sandwich supper tonight.” She hummed a hymn while she finished putting the leftovers in the refrigerator.

“You were looking thoughtful during lunch,” Naomi said the minute their grandmother left the room.

“I seem to be missing a lot lately,” Anna said after a moment. “I didn’t pay attention when we talked about your wedding plans, and now I didn’t see this coming with Grandmother and Henry.”

Naomi accepted the plate Anna handed her and began drying it with a dish towel. “Didn’t you notice that Mary Katherine and I were just as surprised?”

Anna considered that. “No, I didn’t think you were.”

“He’ll be a good
mann
for Grandmother,” Naomi said. “He always showed he loved his wife before she died. Both he and Grandmother have been alone for a long time. I think it’s wonderful that God has brought them together now.”

She wiped the dish and put it away. “Love’s not just for the young.”

Anna put her hands on her hips and pretended to glare. “What are you saying?”

Naomi just threw her arms around her and hugged her. “You’re hardly old.”

She’d been so impulsive, so in love with Samuel, that she’d married before Mary Katherine and Naomi. So then she’d become a young widow.

Calling herself a widow made her feel old no matter how young anyone else thought she was. Everyone thought of widows as being women who lost their husbands after a long marriage. But life wasn’t like that. Husbands and wives died young as well as old. Samuel wasn’t the only proof of that or Gideon’s wife, Mary. There were other widows and widowers in the community.

Calling herself a widow also made her feel lonely. Being alone didn’t automatically mean being lonely, but the word
widow
sure did. Most young women in her community went from their parents’ home to the one they’d share with their husband—sometimes with time spent with her husband’s parents while the newlyweds built their home. So living by yourself as a woman wasn’t done as often as she’d heard it was done in the
Englisch
community.