The Heart's Journey: Stitches in Time Series #2 (20 page)

It was back to business as usual. Nick picked them up and then swung by to pick up Anna. Mary Katherine’s husband, Jacob, liked to take her to work these days.

Anna sat waiting on the front porch of her home and squealed the minute Nick pulled into her drive. She opened Naomi’s door and hugged her, then climbed into the backseat to throw her arms around her grandmother. Belatedly, she said hello to Nick and then clicked her seat belt.

“Hello to you, too,” he said, grinning at her.

Then the questions started. Nick tuned out the excited female chatter. The drive seemed over before it started—probably because he’d just made a two-day road trip so recently that anything less than that might seem short.

Nick turned down the street of the shop and saw a familiar male figure standing in front of Stitches in Time. He didn’t need to glance over at Naomi to know the moment she spotted her fiancé waiting on the sidewalk, a bunch of roses in his hand.

“Shall I go around the block?” he quietly asked her.

“Why would you go around the block?” Anna asked, breaking off her conversation with her grandmother. “What’s going on?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Naomi told her.

She gathered up her purse and tote bag and looked at Nick. “Go ahead and drop us off. But thanks for the offer.”

Nick pulled to the curb and watched Naomi release her belt and get out.

“Have a good day,” she told him.

His stomach clenched at the despair he saw in her eyes. He wanted to protect her, shield her from pain, but he had no right to do so.

“
Ya
,” said Leah, giving Nick’s shoulder a pat. “We’ll see you later.”

“Nick?”

He met Anna’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Yeah?”

“What’s going on?”

“Naomi said you’d talk later.”

She made a face at him and got out of the van, shutting the door with a little more force than necessary. Then she glanced over her shoulder and shot him an irrepressible grin.

Nick laughed and shook his head. That was Anna. Always curious. Always pushing. But never bad-tempered. He was a little surprised at how he’d missed her while he was gone.

He sat there in front of the shop, watching Naomi accept the flowers from John. Watching the man give her a chaste
kiss on her cheek. And watching her shake her head and gesture at the shop.

There were other people Nick needed to pick up. A schedule to keep. But he realized he was waiting because he didn’t want to leave Naomi alone with John. Not after what he knew about him now.

Naomi could be heard saying she had to get inside for work. John argued with her but Naomi remained firm. When he reached for her arm, she backed away, and he didn’t pursue touching her.

Good thing. Nick had his hand on his door and would have intervened.

Nick could hear parts of their conversation because Naomi had rolled her window down. But he didn’t need to hear their voices or all of their words. Just one surreptitious glance at their body language and he could see that both were tense.

He sighed, knowing he couldn’t protect Naomi if she wanted to stay with John. When Naomi suddenly glanced over at him Nick pretended to be occupied with his clipboard. She was probably curious why he hadn’t left yet, since he usually had pretty full days with his business. He reminded himself again that he had other clients he needed to pick up. It was important to maintain his reputation for promptness.

Reluctantly, he set the clipboard down, checked for traffic, and got back on the road.

As he drove, he thought about how he and Leah had done a lot of talking about God’s will the past few months. She understood about his search for something more in his life, his desire to understand what God wanted of him.

All he could do at this point was try to be a friend to Naomi since he couldn’t be more. And he could pray for her.

Come to think of it, that was a lot. Feeling better about things, he continued on his route.

“Naomi!”

She glanced up and saw Jacob pulling up in the buggy with an animated Mary Katherine sitting beside him. Naomi had never been so glad to see Mary Katherine as at that moment.

“I’m so glad you’re back!” Mary Katherine cried, climbing down quickly and flinging her arms around Naomi. “I missed you so much!”

Jacob got out of the buggy and gave Naomi a big hug. “Nice to have you back.”

He acknowledged John with a nod, then gave his wife a quick kiss on the cheek. “See you later.”

Mary Katherine watched him leave, then turned to John. “
Guder mariye
.”

“
Guder mariye
,” he said. “Naomi, we have to—”

“Get to work,” Mary Katherine said breezily. “I’m afraid we got a little behind with Naomi and Grandmother gone.”

She turned to Naomi. “So, are you ready to get back to work?” she asked Naomi, wrapping a companionable arm around her waist and leading her toward the front door of the shop.

“But—” John began.

“Time to open,” Mary Katherine called over her shoulder.

Once inside, Naomi looked out the window and saw John standing there scowling, his hands on his hips.

“That was really rude of you,” Naomi said under her breath, smiling and waving to John.

He hesitated for a moment and then when he saw she wasn’t coming back outside, he began walking away. Naomi breathed a sigh of relief.

“I just wish you were engaged to a man like Jacob.”

Naomi rolled her eyes. “When are you going to come down from your honeymoon?”

Mary Katherine smiled dreamily. “I hope I never do.”

They went inside and put their things away. Naomi wanted to throw the flowers John had given her into the trash but that didn’t seem fair to the poor flowers.

The blooms hadn’t done anything wrong and deserved to be appreciated for their beauty. Instead, she found a vase, filled it with water, and arranged the hothouse roses in it.

She’d never liked red roses. But John never seemed to remember that. She sighed as she set them on the table and walked back out into the shop.

Mary Katherine hugged her grandmother and then went to stand at the front counter.

Local customers streamed in all morning, welcoming Leah and Naomi back. Fellow Amish wanted to know about their vacation. What was Florida really like? How was the weather? What had they done?

“I always wanted to go to Florida,” Katie Stotzfus said, oohing and aahing over the photos Nick had taken.

“You should go.” Leah told them about walking outside to pick an orange for breakfast, about playing shuffleboard in the middle of January, and about the sugar-white sand on the beach the day Nick carried her down to sit on a quilt and gaze at the ocean.

It was so good to see her grandmother in a totally different mood from the almost depressed one she’d worn before the trip. At noon, with the last of the morning rush out the door and the Monday quilting circle gone home for lunch, Naomi locked the door and turned the sign on it around to “Back at 1 p.m.” Then they gathered in the back room for lunch.

Leah gave a happy sigh as she sat in a chair and put her injured foot up on another.

“I’m happy to be back, but that was a busy morning,” she said.

“I brought cold fried chicken,” Mary Katherine told them, taking it from the refrigerator and placing it on the table. “I made potato salad and baked beans too.”

“That’s a lot of trouble on top of running the shop while we were gone,” Naomi told her as she set the table with plates and forks.

Mary Katherine shook her head. “I just doubled the recipe for supper last night. And Jacob helped. I think he really enjoys cooking.”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he convinced other men in the community to do so?” Anna said.

“He told me Chris, Hannah’s husband, cooks because he learned how before he became Amish,” Mary Katherine told them.

She opened up the containers of potato salad and beans and put serving spoons in them. “He and Chris actually swapped recipes when Chris and Hannah stopped by. Can you believe it?”

“I can just imagine what the bishop would think of that,” Naomi muttered.

Anna clapped her hand to her mouth. “We forgot to tell them.”

“Forgot to tell us what?” Leah asked, the chicken leg she’d just chosen suspended on the way to her mouth.

“The bishop came down with a nasty case of pneumonia a few days after you left,” Anna told her. “He’s still not doing well.”

“I’ll stop by his house and talk to his wife on the way home,” Leah said.

She placed the chicken on her plate and helped herself to potato salad and beans, then passed them on to Naomi.

“You’re going to go by his house?” Anna asked. “Really?”

“We’ve had our differences recently, but still, he’s served our community faithfully.”

Naomi listened to the conversation at the table. She couldn’t help feeling relieved that she wouldn’t have to accompany her grandmother to the bishop’s house, especially after the way their last conversation. She was still upset that he’d thought he should make comments about what goods they offered in the shop when he didn’t do that with what men sold in their stores. He wanted only traditional crafts and that was contrary to Leah encouraging new, creative crafts by her three granddaughters.

However, Naomi would have preferred visiting him over having to talk to John after work.

What a sad state of affairs to think that way, she thought. Right now, she just wanted to go home and hide under the covers—and the day was only half over.

She wished she could have the kind of forgiving attitude her grandmother had about the bishop. If she did, maybe then she could have a better attitude than she did about John. All she wanted was to break off the relationship she had with him. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she was so tired of him turning everything around on her when it was actually him hurting her.

When she realized that the room had gotten quiet, that Leah was staring at her, she realized she was absently rubbing at her forearm, which still ached from where John had hurt her when he unexpectedly visited her in Florida. She shook her head in a silent message to her grandmother that she didn’t want to talk about it and placed her hand on her lap.

They heard the shop door open and then close. Hannah walked in, her key in her hand, her husband, Chris, at her side.

She bent and hugged Leah. “So glad to see you!”

“I’m glad to be back,” Leah said.

Hannah turned to Naomi and hugged her too. “Are you glad to be back? Did you have a good time?”

Naomi nodded. Well, that was mostly true, she thought. She’d had a wonderful adventure in Florida and she was glad to be back and happy to see everyone.

Except John.

Chris pulled out a chair and helped Hannah into it, then stood beside her, his hand a silent gesture of support.

She patted his hand. “Why don’t you go find something to do for an hour while I teach the class?”

“We talked about this.”

He met her gaze and an unspoken message moved between them. Neither backed off.

“Hannah, we have some juice if you’d like it,” Naomi suggested.

She glanced at the coffeepot sitting atop the stove. Her bottom lip jutted out. “I want coffee.”

“I know, I know,” Naomi soothed. “But it won’t be much longer.”

Hannah rubbed her protruding abdomen. “I can’t drink coffee even after the baby comes. I’ll be nursing.”

Naomi turned to Chris. “Can I get you something to drink?”

He gave his wife a sidelong look. “I’ll have whatever she’s having.”

Hannah’s pout vanished. “You don’t have to do that.” She looked at the other women. “He said he wouldn’t drink coffee since I can’t have it.”

Chris reddened. “No big deal.”

Anna reached over and gave his forearm a squeeze. “That’s really sweet of you, Chris.”

“Long as I don’t have to give birth,” he muttered.

He stuck around after the women cleaned up the remains of lunch, sipping a cup of decaffeinated tea like Hannah.

The ladies taking Hannah’s quilting class began arriving. Naomi knew most of them, but one woman was new—a police officer who wore her uniform. She thought she’d seen her before.

Chris greeted her when she walked into the back room looking for coffee. “Kate, how’s everything?”

“Good,” she said, leaning against the kitchen counter. “You coming to the wedding next month?”

“Wouldn’t miss it. Can’t wait to see you put a ball and chain on my old friend Malcolm.”

“Ha-ha,” she said, rolling her eyes. “There’s that guy humor about marriage.” She glared at him. “I’m getting enough of it at the station, thanks. And if I hear anything said about me being here for a quilting lesson, I’ll know who to go after.”

Chris held up his hands. “What happens in Stitches in Time stays in Stitches in Time,” he said, grinning.

Naomi jerked her head to look at him when he said it, but he wasn’t directing his comment to her. It reminded her of what Nick had said about what happened in Florida stayed in Florida. But no one was looking at her. There was no deeper meaning.

“So are you here for a quilting lesson?” Kate asked Chris.

“Me? No.”

“I’ve heard some men quilt.”

“Well, I do my part cooking, when most of the men around here don’t. That’s all the girlie stuff I’ll do.” He winked at Naomi to show he was joking, that he was enjoying teasing Kate.

Naomi rolled up her sleeves and plunged her hands into the dishwater. Sometimes they had the time to clean up right after
lunch and sometimes it had to wait until they closed the shop. It all depended on how busy the shop was.

Chris brought his cup over and handed it to her. Then he frowned. “That’s quite a bruise you’ve got.”

She glanced at it and nodded.

“How’d you get it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Probably bumped it.”

Chris reached out and took her forearm. He peered at it. “Don’t think so. Looks like somebody grabbed you—you can see separate finger marks.”

Naomi pulled her arm away from him and pushed her hands back into the soapsuds. “It’s nothing.”

“Naomi—”

Glancing over her shoulder, she shook her head. “I’m taking care of it.”