Sweet as Honey (25 page)

As reluctant as Dan was to be a big brother, he was also incredibly eager to know if Paul had redeemed himself at Sol Kiem's house. He slipped into the chair next to Poppy. If he couldn't sit by Lily, at least he could have a good view of her face.

Bitsy sat back and folded her arms. “I want you to know, Dan Kanagy, that I do the best I can for my girls.”

“From what I've seen,” Dan said, “nobody could do better.”

Sorrow flashed in her eyes like distant lightning. “Except their
mater
. Nobody will ever be as good as Salome Kiem Christner.”

“Your sister,” Dan said.

“Older than me by fifteen months and wiser than me by many years.” She slid an arm around Rose and pulled her close. “Growing up, I was like a popcorn kernel stuck in my
dat
's tooth. I resisted correction, tested Dat's patience, and questioned every rule. By the time I reached ten, I'd been taken to the woodshed so many times, I could have found the place blindfolded.”

Dan winced. His own
fater
had never once laid an angry hand on him.

“Salome was the leaven to Dat's anger and Mamm's disapproval. She would often stand between us and talk Dat into mercy instead of justice. She saved me many a sore backside. I loved Salome better than my own soul.” Bitsy wiped some moisture from her eyes. It was the deepest emotion Dan had ever seen from her. “I would have done anything for her.”

Tears shone in Lily's eyes, Rose sniffled quietly, and Poppy stared straight ahead as if willing herself not to cry. They had been old enough to know and love their
mater
before she died.

Dan wanted to reach out and take Lily's hand something wonderful. Instead, he made a fist and tried not to dwell on how good her skin would feel against his.

“I couldn't live under my
fater
's roof once Salome was gone,” Bitsy said. “When Salome married, I left home and the church. It's not that I didn't believe anymore, but I couldn't force myself to accept that my
dat
's way of doing things was the way
Gotte
would have done them. Dat has never forgiven me for breaking his heart.”

“You aren't responsible for Dawdi's heart, Aunt B,” Lily said. “He drove you away because he wanted to control you instead of love you. I don't mean to speak ill of Mammi and Dawdi, but it would have been hard to grow up in a home with so little affection.”

“
Jah,
it would have been,” said Dan. “What other choice did you have?”

Lily's tender look radiated so much warmth, he could have toasted marshmallows by it.

Poppy smiled at Dan too. “I visit Mammi and Dawdi every week, but I would stay away if I didn't feel an obligation to my
mater
's parents. Dawdi is hard and unforgiving. Mammi only criticizes. It's exhausting trying to keep from losing my temper.”

“I'm glad you hold your tongue,” Bitsy said. “I learned the hard way that no good can come of it.”

Poppy shrugged. “It would make me feel better anyway.”

Bitsy reached over and patted Poppy's hand. “My
dat
is sure I'm going to hell. Probably because he doesn't like the earrings.”

“How could he not like the earrings?” Dan said, in mock amazement. “The sunflowers are my favorite.”

This time, Rose, Poppy, and Lily all beamed at him. His heart did a flip.

Bitsy fingered the sunflowers in her ears. “A patient gave these to me because I did such a good job cleaning her teeth.”

“A patient?”

“Aunt B worked as a dental hygienist before our parents died.”

That explained her insistence about her girls' teeth. Dan rejoiced she'd been so particular. Lily's smile was about his favorite thing in the world.

Bitsy cocked an eyebrow in Dan's direction. “You thought you were so clever with your nicknames for Lily. I've heard teeth nicknames that would curdle your milk.”

Dan frowned. How he regretted those horrid nicknames. He glanced at Lily, and she raised her eyebrows in a scold. She must have told him a dozen times that she had forgiven him. She went so far as to warn him to quit with the remorse or she'd throw his hat in the woodstove. If he hadn't felt so bad about it, her threat might have made him smile.

“Why did you decide to come back to the Amish?” Dan said.

Bitsy took one of the sunflower earrings out of her ear and twirled it in her finger. “Right after Rose was born, Aaron got thyroid cancer. They cured it, but that illness was enough to give us all a scare. Salome and Aaron wrote a will, leaving their girls to me because Salome didn't want our
dat
to raise her children. But Salome believed in the church with every bone in her body, and she was frantic that if her girls weren't baptized, they'd burn in hell. The sheer terror of it kept her up at night. She begged me to bring up the girls in the Amish faith if it ever came to that. I would have done anything for her, so I promised her that I would raise the girls Amish. I didn't promise they would stay Amish, but I promised I'd try. My
dat
's mistake was thinking he could control my choices. I haven't raised my girls that way.”

“I'm glad they stayed Amish,” Dan said, smiling at Lily so she had no doubt why he was glad.

Rose drew her eyebrows together. “You're glad we're Amish, aren't you, Aunt Bitsy?”

“Of course. Your
dawdi
is one kind of Amish, but you've seen for yourselves how many
gute
Christian people there are in our community. They are people worth knowing and loving. Being Amish makes you girls happy, and that's what I most want. I was unhappy growing up, but not because I grew up Amish. It was because I grew up in my
dat
's home.”

“Was this Aaron and Salome's farm?” Dan asked.

Bitsy shook her head. “After the cancer scare, I took out a life insurance policy in Salome's name. I knew Aaron would never buy insurance on himself. It's not the Amish way. But I wanted something for Salome if she lost her husband. I bought the farm with the insurance money. The bees and the orchards and the gardens support us.”

“Most of our income comes from the hives. Paul's family buys all our honey,” Lily said, as if the thought troubled her.

Poppy scrunched her lips to one side of her face. “If Paul had his way, we would tend to our hives in dresses and get stung to death before we could harvest our next batch.”

Lily frowned, and her usually bright eyes glazed over as if she were deep in thought. “Paul was very sorry he made a fuss about the bee suits.”

Bitsy narrowed her eyes. “Paul Glick would rather swallow a bee than apologize. Are you sure he was
very sorry?
”

“He cares for our family and is anxious for our well-being. He gives correction only because he cares so much. Just today he reminded me that I have been led away into vanity. I am grateful to him for his vigilance.”

“Vanity?” Bitsy caught the word with resentment.

“Why would Paul accuse you of such a thing?” Rose said.

Lily glanced at Dan and quickly looked away. Her face glowed bright pink. “I told him that Dan thinks I'm pretty.”

Dan's pulse beat double-time. He'd made an impression. This was a very, very
gute
thing. “I think you're beautiful,” he said, so she knew where he stood.

Lily acted as if she hadn't heard him. Instead she lowered her eyes and stared faithfully at the table. “Paul said that Dan is only flattering me. And he's right. I took pleasure in Dan's compliments when I shouldn't have. It's pride, pure and simple.”

Dan ground his teeth until they squealed like chalk against a blackboard. He thought every bone in his face might crack. Paul Glick could twist good principles beyond recognition.

“Paul's wrong,” Poppy said.

Rose had difficulty believing anything but the best of people. “Why would he say that?”

Thank the Lord for Aendi Bitsy. “
Ach du lieva,
little sister,” she said, so loudly that Farrah Fawcett lifted her head from her comfy bed on the window seat. “I'm tired of being told I'm wicked simply because
Gotte
made me pretty. It's okay to be pretty, Lily.”

“It's not okay to be proud of it.”

Bitsy growled. “You are the least vain person I know. You wear your glasses so Paul won't get mad at you. You walk with your head down, and you blush every time Dan gives you a compliment. Even though he makes a pest of himself, it's plain as day he has good taste.”

Dan wanted to kiss that sadness right off Lily's face. Of course, he wanted to kiss her no matter what her expression, but that dejected look was especially heartbreaking. If only he could convince her of a better way. If only he could convince her that he wasn't the big brother type.

“Paul doesn't think I'm pretty,” she said.

“He does,” Bitsy replied. “But you couldn't pry a compliment out of that boy's mouth with a crowbar.”

“He doesn't want to tempt my vanity.”

“Paul Glick should go jump in the lake,” Poppy snapped.

Dan's sentiments exactly, but he would never say them out loud to anyone but Luke Bontrager.

“Poppy,” Rose warned. “The Bible says—”

“I know what the Bible says, and I don't care.”

Rose looked stricken with a dread disease. “You don't care?”

Poppy huffed out a breath and deflated slightly. “You know I didn't mean that, Rose.”

Lily propped her elbows on the table and pressed her hands to her forehead. “He asked me to marry him,” she said flatly.

It was as if the air had been sucked from the room. Everyone fell silent and stared at Lily, who pretended not to notice the reaction. She simply sat, quietly kneading her forehead as if trying to ward off a headache.

Bitsy was speechless. Rose looked as if she would burst into tears at any moment. Poppy might have been preparing to punch something.

Dan turned to ice. Cold, hard, aching dry ice.

The day he'd been dreading for years had finally come. If Lily so much as breathed another word, he thought he might crack into a million pieces.

“Congratulations,” Rose murmured, as if saying that one word proved the hardest thing she'd ever done in her life.

Dan's gaze darted from Rose to Poppy to Bitsy, and his heart flipped over like a pancake. Lily's family didn't want her to marry Paul either.

He and Luke Bontrager weren't the only ones.

But it didn't matter what Dan wanted. Bitterness filled his mouth. Bile boiled in his throat. He'd lost her, and the pain was excruciating.

“Did you set a date?” Poppy might have been asking what day they'd scheduled her funeral.

“I told him I'd have to think about it,” Lily said.

Dan drew in a great gulp of air like a condemned man who'd just been given a stay of execution.

Lily wasn't engaged.

He still had time.

Rose tried valiantly to hold back a smile. Poppy turned her face from Lily and casually raised her hand to her mouth, hiding the fact that her lips also curled upward.

Bitsy looked to the ceiling. “
Gotte
moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.”

“What are you going to tell him?” Poppy asked.

Dan pressed his lips together as if his life depended on it. If he opened his mouth, he feared he'd get down on his knees and beg Lily not to make the biggest mistake of her life. Something told him that wouldn't be the best course of action at the moment.

But the temptation was sore.

“I don't know what I'll tell him,” she said. “He wants me to give him an answer tomorrow after
gmay
.”

“There's no rush,” Bitsy said, looking at Dan as if she dared him to do something about it. “It never hurts to think on a problem for several weeks.”

Lily seemed to perk up temporarily. “At least no rush to decide tomorrow. The buggy is missing a wheel. We don't have a way to get to church.”

Dan's heart shrank to the size of a walnut.
Ach.
He'd done one too many good deeds today. “That's not entirely true,” he murmured.

Bitsy slowly expelled the air from her lungs. “Dan brought his two friends over earlier, and they fixed the buggy.”

He forced a weak smile. “My friends Luke and Josiah.”

“Oh,” Lily said, forcing her own smile. “Well, then.”

Rose also feigned cheerfulness. It seemed no one was willing to say how they really felt. “
Denki,
Dan.”

“
Jah,
” Poppy said. “
Denki.”

Bitsy stood and strolled into the kitchen. “What's done is done. We'll have to make the best of it.” She pulled a saucepan from the cupboard.

“Maybe we can miss
gmay
after all,” Poppy said. “Aunt Bitsy could come down with the measles.”

Lily frowned. “Paul is eager to make plans. To get on with our lives. He'll be disappointed if he has to wait.”

Poppy jumped to her feet as if she couldn't bear to hear another word. “It won't hurt Paul to wait a month of Sundays.”

Rose put an arm around Lily. “If he truly loves you, he'll want you to be sure.”

Dan kept as quiet as a church mouse, with arguments and pleas and emotions swirling inside his head and desperation mounting in his heart. Lily couldn't say yes to Paul. She just couldn't.