Seasons in Paradise. Barbara Cameron
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to love like that? she wondered. Love for so many years?
“Cookie?” Lavina asked, holding them in front of her to get her attention.
She took one. They were her favorites—her mamm’s oatmeal cookies with butterscotch morsels. Her mudder would ask her if she wasn’t feeling well if she didn’t eat one or two.
But it tasted dry and bitter in her mouth.
As soon as she could, she escaped upstairs to the sewing room, claiming she had quilting class tomorrow and didn’t want to get behind. She was able to sit with her own depressing thoughts and sew for some time before the others joined her.
When she found herself sighing and feeling sorry for herself even after her schweschders and mudder joined her to sew, she gave herself a stern talking to.
She had a wonderful life whether or not she had a mann in it—or even someone dating her at the moment—a warm, wonderful family, a safe and secure home. And a job that was fun and endlessly creative. Every day she could stay in her home and be with people she loved and do something that paid well.
Time for her to do what she’d heard an Englisch friend say to herself once: “Get over yourself.”
So she sewed until she needed to stand and walk around a bit, and then she decided to help her mudder make supper. And after supper was eaten and dishes were washed, she turned to her mudder.
“Would you mind if I took some fabric in to donate to the shelter tomorrow?”
“Nee, that’s fine.”
“Got enough of it,” her dat muttered as he ate a second piece of pie. Then he glanced up and grinned.
She’d started volunteering at a shelter for battered women along with Lavina months ago and thought at the time she was doing it for others. But along the way she wondered if she was supposed to learn that life wasn’t supposed to be just about yourself.
After she gathered enough fabric to stuff a shopping bag, she carried it downstairs and left it by the front door so she wouldn’t forget it when Kate came to pick her up the next day.
She was used to making something beautiful out of little scraps of fabric sewn together with care and attention and imagination. It was time to look at her life that way.
* * *
No one could make you feel more like a jerk than a woman. Not your boss, not your mudder or dat.
No one.
In a foul mood, Sam hammered a nail into the wooden window frame, glad he had something to vent his temper on. He had feelings for Mary Elizabeth. It seemed like he always had. But like his two bruders, he’d left the Amish community when they felt they just couldn’t handle the way their dat treated them.
He should have known that once Lavina, his new sister-in-law, had persuaded his bruder, David, to return home that Mary Elizabeth would start thinking that he should, too.
Were all women born romantics?
He hadn’t been able to return to the Amish community as David had. Maybe it was wrong not to forgive his dat for the way things had been between them, but that was the way it was. When he returned for Christmas he saw that his dat had changed a lot, but there was still a problem between them, one that a visit didn’t fix especially when Amos acted stiff and wary of him and John. They’d been back a number of times since then helping on the farm on Saturdays, and he and John hadn’t felt any lessening of the tension.
Schur, their dat didn’t shout at them or belittle their efforts at farming the way he used to. And he treated their mudder better than he had before.
But there was still this prickly reserve . . .
So that left Sam with his apartment he shared with John, the youngest bruder, and the job he’d worked for more than a year now with an Englisch construction company. He didn’t mind not being given the farm as David had. After all, David had returned home and put up with their dat’s unpleasant behavior while he underwent chemotherapy. Neither of his bruders had.
Sam wasn’t sure how much of Amos’s change in behavior had been realizing God had given him a second chance or how much David had forged a new relationship with him. But David deserved the farm. He’d always loved it.
Sure, he was lonely sometimes. He missed Mary Elizabeth, his friends, his church. John had been enjoying the time away from their dat, had viewed it as his rumschpringe. Several times Sam had found John partying with his friends in their apartment and had worried over his drinking and dating women who seemed . . . rather forward compared to the women in the Amish community.
Although, Mary Elizabeth was not a traditional sort of Amish maedel. She’d always been more confident, more outspoken than other women. He’d liked that. Too often the maedels pretended to be everything they thought the man they were interested in wanted. They deferred to him to the point that they weren’t themselves.
He didn’t want someone who did that. He’d seen his mudder spend her life so desperate for her mann’s love that she’d accepted treatment that wasn’t gut for her. Maybe now she’d gotten the kind of marriage she’d hoped for. Maybe he didn’t have to worry that Amos behaved harshly to her. Or worse, raised his hand when no one was around to see.
Sam was so lost in his thoughts it took a moment to realize that a shadow had fallen over the window in front of him.
“Time for lunch.”
“Right. Thanks.”
The job foreman looked at what Sam had done, nodded with satisfaction, and moved on.
He walked out of the house they’d been working on for the past two months. They were making gut progress. He’d parked his truck under the shade of a nearby tree. He let down the tailgate and sat on it with his lunch box.
“Hey, how are things going?” Peter asked him. He hopped up on the makeshift seat.
“Pretty good. Nearly finished with the windows. You?”
“We have another day on the roof.” Peter looked up, shading his eyes from the sun. “Weather should hold up.”
Tall and lanky, Peter took off his straw hat and wiped his forehead with a bandanna.
They bent their heads and said a prayer of thanks. Sam might have left the community, but he hadn’t forgotten the way he’d been raised.
“How’s Sadie?” he asked Peter as he unwrapped his sandwich.
“Gut, but she’s pushing to get married.” Peter unwrapped his sandwich but didn’t immediately bite into it. He sat there looking at it.
“What’s the matter? You love ham and cheese.”
“Lost my appetite.” He looked at Sam. “Why is it maedels are so interested in rushing to get married?”
Sam thought of Mary Elizabeth. He shook his head. “They’re ahead of us in a lot of ways. Schul. Thinking of marriage. Of having kinner. They’re raised that way.”
He bit into his own deli turkey sandwich. “They don’t do the crazy risky stuff we do,” he said with a full mouth.
“I think jumping into marriage too soon is pretty risky. I mean, there’s no divorce.” He shuddered.
“True. The gut thing is that we know the maedels pretty well growing up with them. It’s not like the Englisch who don’t often know the one they’re marrying as long.”
Peter nodded. “You’ve got a point.” He ripped open a bag of chips and offered it to Sam.
He took a handful and munched thoughtfully. “Mary Elizabeth and I had a talk the other day. She wants me to come back home. And she wants the same thing as Sadie. She didn’t say November specifically, but I know it’s on her mind.”
With a sigh, he took another bite of his sandwich. “I don’t want this