Her Restless Heart (18 page)

But he kept giving her sideways looks . . . looks that she'd have to be really unobservant to miss.

She had to admit that she looked at him sometimes. She might have said she wanted to be only friends with him because she felt so restless, so conflicted.

But Jacob was a handsome man, one whom she'd watched grow from a cute boy that other girls had flirted with in
schul
and at singings, to the man who'd expressed interest in her not that long ago.

And he was the man who had—despite what she'd said— agreed to be her friend, and she was beginning to realize she felt closer to him than anyone else.

He glanced over at her now, and she saw the warmth in his eyes. No, it was more than the warmth of friendship. She'd never seen desire in a man's eyes, but she recognized it now.

The buggy suddenly seemed to be smaller, warmer . . . more intimate.

Her emotions were on a roller coaster. She'd gone from being rudely awakened to shouting at her father to being rescued from a thunderstorm by Jacob. And he was giving her looks that were those of a man who wanted something from her that was deeper, more—so much more—than friendship.

She shouldn't be surprised. He'd been honest with her in the beginning about wanting more but had accepted her saying she wanted only friendship. Maybe, though, he hadn't been honest with himself.

He glanced to the left when a car passed them, then he focused on the road ahead. She studied his profile, and her gaze settled on his mouth. Had he ever kissed a girl? she wondered.

Stop that! she told herself sternly. You're not supposed to be thinking about things like that.

But has he?

She'd never kissed a boy, of course. And it wasn't just because she hadn't found any of the boys to her liking.

Who wanted to take the chance of falling in love with someone and marrying and then finding that he'd turn into a tyrant like her father was? Because she was sure that he— her father—hadn't started out that way. She didn't think her mother would have married him if he'd been that way as a young man.

What had her parents been like as young people—the age she was right now, the age that Jacob was?

This is what made things so hard for her . . . you had to be so sure of things, and that's the last thing she was. You had to be sure you wanted to join the church because if you changed your mind afterward, you were shunned in this community. If you married in the Amish church, it was forever. Forget divorce. It just wasn't done.

How could you be sure of anything when decisions were so big and the consequences huge?

She jumped when Jacob touched her hand. He reddened and pulled it back.

"Don't let what happened upset you."

She realized that he meant the argument with her father.

"I'm not."

"
Schur
you are. I know you."

He said it so confidently. It must be nice to be that way, she thought. The only time she really felt that she knew what she was doing, knew who and what she was, was when she sat in front of her loom.

She couldn't wait to get back to it. She did her best thinking when she worked on it, and it wasn't just thinking about the pattern. Jacob had told her once that walking the rows in his fields made him feel connected to the people in his past and to the God in his present. When she ran her hands over the fibers, she felt closer to the person she'd become this year since she broke free of her life at her parents' house.

Maybe this time as she sat before her loom she'd see if she could talk to God.

And maybe He'd listen to her.

The "Closed" sign was still on the door when Mary Katherine got to the shop.

Funny, it felt like so many hours had passed since she'd argued with her father.

She unlocked the door, and as she walked inside, her grandmother came from the back room.

"Why, Mary Katherine, I didn't expect to see you today." Leah welcomed her with a hug.

"I didn't expect to come in today." She stepped back. "
Grossmudder,
I can't go back to my parents' house. I can't!"

"I know."

"My father was just—" she stopped. "Wait a minute. What do you mean you know?"

"I stopped by to check on Miriam not long after you left." She sighed. "Have you had breakfast, child?"

Mary Katherine felt like pouting. "No. And
Mamm
was making French toast when I left. My favorite."

Leah patted her cheek and smiled. "I'll make you some for breakfast tomorrow. In the meantime, let's go to the back room and you can have what I brought for lunch."

Mary Katherine told her what had happened over a tuna salad sandwich.

"I'm not sorry for what I said," she told her grandmother as she rose to get a soft drink from the refrigerator. "But I don't like that it got my mother upset."

She sank into her chair and rolled the can in her hands. "I wish I hadn't gone off angry. Now I have to go back and get my things. I'd just leave my clothes, but I was working on some pillows for an order."

Sighing, she popped the top on the can and took a sip. "Well, it serves me right for getting angry. I was trying so hard not to say or do anything until
Mamm
was well enough for me to leave."

"Like mother, like daughter."

"What?"

"That's what your mother's been doing for years. Keeping the peace."

"Are you saying it's wrong to keep the peace?"

Leah leaned over and picked up the cookie jar. She took off the lid and offered the contents to Mary Katherine.

"The Bible tells us to submit to our husbands, but that doesn't mean ill treatment. Your mother let your father rule the house like a tyrant."

She closed her eyes as if she was in pain, and then she opened them. "But even when she was willing to accept that treatment, it doesn't mean he should extend that to his child."

Mary Katherine reached over to cover her grandmother's hand with hers. "It's the best thing that ever happened to me. The day you invited me to come work here, and to live with you."

Leah smiled. "It was a very good day for me, too." Her smile faded, and her expression grew troubled. "I wanted you to be happy, to do the kind of work you have such a talent for. But you're still restless, still . . . feeling unloved, aren't you?"

"I'm not—" Mary Katherine began.

But her grandmother's words rang true. So true. Her shoulders sagged as she acknowledged the truth.

Her grandmother reached to clasp her hands. "I'm sorry that your father never loved you the way you needed, and in her not speaking up you felt abandoned by your mother, too. But I think you're forgetting something, dear one. I think you're forgetting Whose child you are."

"I'm the child of Isaac and Miriam."

Leah smiled slightly. "You're God's child, dear one. If He loves you, how can you feel unloved?"

She shook her head. "If He loves me, why didn't he make my parents show me more love? Why didn't He take me away sooner?" There was ingratitude in her voice, but she didn't care.

A noise drew their attention. Anna and Naomi appeared in the doorway.

"Mary Katherine! I didn't know you were coming in today!" Naomi cried, rushing forward to throw her arms around her.

"It's good to see you," Anna exclaimed, making it a group hug.

Mary Katherine met her grandmother's gaze over the shoulders of her cousins. "
Ya,
we love you, and He loves you, too."

Her mother was sitting on the front porch when she arrived that evening.

Mary Katherine climbed the stairs, sat in the rocking chair next to her mother, and watched her stitching closed the top of one of her pillows.

"You didn't have to do that."

"I'm enjoying it," her mother said. "It feels good to be doing something." She knotted the thread and snipped the ends with a pair of scissors.

Holding up the pillow, she brushed at a stray thread and smiled. "Beautiful pattern. Maybe I could commission you to make me a couple of them for the living room?"

Taking the pillow from her, Mary Katherine looked it over. "You have the neatest stitching. I can never do this kind of job. How about we make a deal? I weave the pattern and you assemble the pillows? It sure would speed up the process."

Her mother held out her hand. "Deal."

Mary Katherine tucked the pillow into the carryall with the other completed one.

"So this is what you were doing after all the cooking and housework and taking care of me was done for the day."

"It was relaxing."

Her mother snorted. "
Schur."

"Where is
Dat?"
Mary Katherine asked, casting a glance around.

"He's gone to talk to Abe Yoder." Miriam set her chair rocking. "I think he needs to talk to another man after the women pecked at him today, don't you?" She turned and grinned.

She hadn't realized her face had been stiff until her mother's words hit her and she laughed. It felt like the tension in her face was cracking.

Her mother's grin faded. "I shouldn't joke about it. It's not respectful." But her grin reappeared. "I gave him an earful after you stormed off." She paused and looked thoughtful. "Hmm, stormed off . . . in a storm."

Mary Katherine grimaced. "Bad pun. And I got really cold and wet. That'll teach me to do such a thing."

Her mother rocked and stared off into the distance. "You were right to stand up for yourself today." Glancing at Mary Katherine, she nodded. "Your father told me what he said to you and what you said to him." She sighed. "I know that you young women think some of us older wives are—what's the term?"

"Doormats?"

Miriam winced. "Yes. Doormats. In trying to do as the Bible says and submit to our husbands, well, sometimes maybe we lean too much into our own understanding,
ya?"

Mary Katherine thought about Miriam's words, remembering how the Bible said not to lean into your own understanding . . .

"Well, it's done, and maybe your father will think on what we've both said. I'm hoping that he knows that if we didn't love him we wouldn't try to help him understand he can be a better man if he changes a little."

"I don't know," Mary Katherine said. She gestured at the table between them. "I'm afraid I think
Dat's
like that table. He can't change."

"Well, I believe in miracles," Miriam said, looking more serene than Mary Katherine had ever seen her. "If I didn't, I might not have stayed with your father all these years in spite of what the
Ordnung
says about marriage and divorce."

She smiled as she watched the wind ruffle the purple spears of the hyacinths Jacob had planted a few feet from where they were sitting on the porch. "Maybe you need to believe in the miracle of love yourself,
ya?"

13

M
ary Katherine walked into her bedroom at her grandmother's house and felt the weight of the world slip from her shoulders.

She unpinned her
kapp,
undressed, and hung up her clothing. After she slipped into a nightgown, she climbed into the narrow bed and felt herself melt into its softness.

She hadn't fully relaxed at her parents' house—even though she'd slept in the same small bedroom there that had been hers from the time she was born.

Rain pattered against the window, drops illuminated by moonlight as they slid down the glass. She burrowed under the quilt and felt so grateful to be here after being soaked earlier in the storm . . . grateful, period, for being back here in what had become a real home to her.

Her room was plain, as she was. Her Bible lay on the small table next to her bed, along with a battery-operated lamp if she wanted to read. Some of her earliest projects decorated the room—a pillow with a slightly crooked pattern deemed not good enough to sell, a small purse embroidered with violets. A basket with fabric balls that she and Anna had had fun making sat on a nearby dresser. Emily, the faceless doll her grandmother had made for her when she was a little girl, sat propped against a small wooden box her grandfather had fashioned for her before he died. The doll wore a dress made from a scrap left from one of Mary Katherine's own dresses years ago. She supposed she should put away such a childish toy, but the doll made her remember the love that her grandmother had put into making it.

The whole room reflected the love her grandmother felt for her, from the walls she'd painted herself to the quilt she'd stitched for the bed. Even the rag rug on the wooden floor was handmade by her grandmother.

She fell asleep to the music of the rain.

Something woke her. She lay in her bed and wondered what it was, then heard it again. It sounded like the rain had the night before, pattering against the window glass. But when she turned her head, she saw that the rain was gone and the sky was blue and cloudless.

Getting out of bed, she winced as her feet hit the cold wooden floor. She went to look out the window and saw Jacob standing on the grass below. He tossed a handful of pebbles that hit the glass and then waved when he saw her.

"Come down!" he mouthed, gesturing with his hand.

She hesitated, and then she drew the curtain and flew around the room, gathering her undergarments and clothing to dress.

Mere minutes later, she ran down the stairs and joined him outside. "What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to see you. Let's go for a ride."

"Where?"

"Anywhere you want to go."

"Far away," she said, gazing past her grandmother's farm to the town that lay miles away. "I want to go far away."

When she glanced back at him, wondering why he hadn't responded, she saw that he looked sad. She didn't want him to be sad but she yearned for something . . . something she didn't know how to find. Didn't even know how to express to herself, let alone to him.

"Where are you going?"

"Hmm?" she turned and looked at him. "What?"

"Where are you going?"

Fog swirled around her, like the clouds of doubt that had surrounded her for so many months now. She stuck out her arms, trying to part the fog so she could see him, touch him, but it was impenetrable.

"Come back," Jacob called. "Don't go away!" His voice faded.

She'd wanted to leave but not like this, cut off from seeing him, hearing him.

But she couldn't have that—whatever it was out there— and have him, too. He was rooted here and couldn't leave. Wouldn't leave.

She woke, her cheeks wet with tears, and realized she'd been dreaming.

"You're being awfully quiet," Anna said. "What's wrong?"

Mary Katherine examined the weaving on the loom before her. She sighed. "Do you ever feel like nothing's as good when you make it as when it's in your mind, your imagination?"

Anna walked over and took a seat. She pulled her knitting needles from a nearby basket, and the familiar clacking noise began.

"Yeah. I think it's like that with anyone who does something creative. Especially artists," she said, holding up the muffler she was creating.

Laughing, Mary Katherine undid the last two rows she'd woven. "I'm not an artist."

"No? I think you are. And you're also a perfectionist."

Mary Katherine looked at her cousin. "That's the pot calling the kettle black. I've seen you unravel baby caps that look fine to me."

"Hey, they have to be as perfect as what I make for anyone else." She smiled. "Maybe even more so. They're going to be worn by someone who's considered pretty much perfect, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, I suppose."

"I guess you're glad your mother's doing better."

Mary Katherine nodded. The new row she'd added still didn't look right.

"So you can go back to seeing Jacob again."

That got her attention. "Jacob's a friend."

"Uh-huh."

Leah walked past with a bolt of fabric. "Anna, are you teasing—" she paused. "Or shall I say
needling
Mary Katherine again about Jacob?"

"Nice pun,
Grossmudder,"
Mary Katherine said.

Grinning, Leah nodded and walked to the cutting table.

"But I'm a big girl," she said. "I can deal with Anna."

Anna giggled. "Go for it, Cousin."

Mary Katherine picked up a ball of yarn and tossed it at her. Anna neatly caught it on one of her knitting needles.

Was it possible to achieve perfection? she wondered. Not just in creative work, but as a person?

Anna jumped up, dumping her knitting in the basket beside her chair when a customer entered the shop.

Leah walked past with the bolt of fabric to return it to its shelf. She took Anna's chair when she returned. "So, what's got you looking so thoughtful?"

"If we're made in His image, why aren't we perfect?"

Her grandmother raised her brows. "Well, that's an interesting question."

"Deep for me, right?" Mary Katherine grinned.

"You've always been 'deep,' " Leah said. "Always seeking, always questioning."

"Not an easy child, right?"

Leah's smile was kind. "I'd rather have a child who's looking for answers than an easy one who just accepts everything."

Mary Katherine laughed. "Well, you got that in me, didn't you?"

"It doesn't make for an easy life though, does it, dear one? It's why you struggle so with your decision."

Sighing, Mary Katherine nodded.

Leah smoothed her hands over her skirt. Mary Katherine noted that her grandmother's hands were still beautiful, not lined or rough, even though Leah cleaned her own house and worked in her kitchen garden.

"It has occurred to me that you may be overthinking some things," Leah said slowly. "Maybe you're thinking with your head instead of your heart."

Mary Katherine rested her own hands—usually so busy— in her lap. "How can I overthink something so important? The decision is one you make for a lifetime."

"The church or marriage?"

"Well—both."

"I guess it's a matter of just what you think you'll find in the
Englisch
world that you've been seeking here and haven't found."

She considered that. "You mean, make a list?"

Leah laughed. "You might be a creative person, but you're very practical, you know that?"

"Can someone be Amish and not be practical?" Mary Katherine teased.

"Ah, so you consider yourself Amish?" Leah returned seriously.

"I—uh . . ."

"And I would ask you what you think you'll find in a man that isn't in one you already love?"

Mary Katherine threw up her hands. "Why is it that you and Anna and Naomi seem determined to pair me with Jacob?"

Leah just smiled that wise smile of hers. "I wonder."

It was Jacob's favorite season.

He knew many farmers preferred late summer or fall, when they reaped what they'd sowed, when they harvested the crops they'd toiled over for so long.

But there was something about spring that made it his favorite. A whole world of possibilities stretched out in front of him . . . He could change everything out—rotate his crops. Plant seed for new varieties. The weather was never certain, but he never shrank from a challenge—not with God on his side.

For the longer he farmed, the more he came to depend on Him and acknowledge His will and His wisdom in his life.

He walked his fields and every so often found himself glancing out at the road, wishing that Mary Katherine would visit as she had that day after she'd taught that class. Now that her mother was better and she'd moved back in with her grandmother, he hoped he'd see her happy again.

There was nothing better than Mary Katherine happy.

He couldn't figure out any excuse to go by her shop, and besides, it was coming up on a busy time for him again. Sighing when the only vehicle that passed was an
Englischer's
car, he went back to walking the fields.

Memories of working these fields often came to him as he walked them to check on the progress of the crop, to see what he needed to do to nurture it.

Amish children learned early how to farm, and most of them loved it. He frowned when he thought about how Mary Katherine didn't feel that way about it. It was easy to understand her dislike of farm work. Her father wasn't an easy man and seldom cracked a smile. Jacob figured that Mary Katherine, with her gentle nature and her artistic bent, had had a hard time of it being around such a critical man. Then, too, Isaac hadn't had a big, sturdy son to help him with the harder farm chores, only a rather delicate young daughter.

And Isaac considered it a waste of money to hire outside help.

Farm work was hard, no doubt, and not for the weak or squeamish or lazy. Definitely not for those who hated it. But he wasn't sure Mary Katherine hated it.

He was still hoping that she didn't really hate it, that she'd developed an . . . aversion to it because of her father.

And optimist that he was, he hoped he could work on that.

A glance at the position of the sun told him the approximate time. Clear skies and low humidity meant he and Ben would begin planting the seed the next day.

If he hadn't had his head bent, watching where he was walking, he might have missed the little clutch of violets pushing up from the earth.

He heard a car door slam and looked up to see Mary Katherine emerging from a car he recognized as one from Nick Brannigan's taxi business. A rush of pleasure shot through him. Acting on instinct, he plucked up the flowers and carried them with him. It was hard to keep his stride steady and not hurry too much.

"
Gut-n-owed,"
she called as she picked her way through one of the rows.

"Stay there, don't get your shoes dirty!" he called.

The setting sun outlined her slender figure; the wind fluttered the skirts of her dress and the ties of her bonnet.

She smiled when he approached and held out the flowers.

"I found these just as I heard the car."

"They must be the first violets of the season. And white ones. You don't often find them." She raised them to her nose and inhaled. "Mmm, they smell so sweet.
Danki."

"My
mamm
used to have the most beautiful garden out in front of the house."

They walked together to the front porch, and he gestured for her to have a seat.

"I helped her take the flowers and bushes to her new home when she remarried," he told her. "I knew I wouldn't have the time to keep it up. Maybe not even the knowledge to do so."

"You're a farmer. You couldn't make her garden grow?"

"I'm a crop farmer, not a flower grower," he said. "And she needed the things she'd nurtured. They were like her
kinner
to her."

"I had a little garden at my parents years ago.
Dat
didn't give me much time to work in it. Said it was more important to raise vegetables we could eat."

"My
mamm
always says a woman's soul needs flowers."