A Heart Made New (19 page)

“No, no, no, He’s not.” Annie grappled for words. Always surrounded by her community of believers, she’d never had to defend God before. “He has a plan.”

“Whatever. I’m going to the courthouse tomorrow.” Charisma started toward the house. “You coming with me?”

Maybe now wasn’t the time, but there would be a time. Charisma, as much as anyone Annie had ever met, needed to know God had a plan for her.

She didn’t bother to answer Charisma’s other question about the courthouse. Either her visitor’s hearing was bad or she still didn’t understand the fundamental truth of their ways. Luke said no courthouse. That meant no courthouse.

J
osiah peered through the tack shop window. Miriam stood near the front door talking to Samuel Miller, who held a package in his arms. The conversation looked animated. Knowing Miriam, she was regaling Samuel with stories of the latest foal’s birth at the farm where her brothers raised and trained cutting horses. Exhaling, he considered his options. He shouldn’t go in there while she had a customer, but he wanted to talk to her. He needed to talk to her. He’d been wrong not to do it Sunday night at the singing.

The memory of seeing her standing outside the Glicks’ barn Sunday night, her face smiling as she talked to Simon Gross near the end of the singing when the pairing off had started, burned in his brain. Far hotter than her brother Paul’s words. Josiah had forced himself to stay and be a part of a crowd that no longer held interest for him. He told himself he did it to move on with his life, just as Miriam was doing. Instead, he’d found himself watching her the entire evening, unable to take his gaze from her as she sang and laughed and talked to everyone but him.

Paul had no right to tell Josiah to whom he could talk. Both Miriam and Josiah were still in their rumspringas. Everyone seemed to have forgotten that. Everyone except Josiah. He hadn’t slept for two nights. Tossing and turning, Sarah to one side, Miriam to the other. He had to talk to Miriam. He couldn’t forget the sad look on her face at the pond
and the feel of her hand in his. So soft, yet so strong. A paradox. Like Miriam herself. So soft and sweet, but built with a backbone made of steel. No one would sway her from what was right. His moral compass.

“Got a harness that needs mending?”

The sound of Solomon Yonkers’s voice sent a chill up Josiah’s sweaty arms and jolted him from his uncomfortable reverie. Solomon had never been friendly, but he had grown even colder since Josiah’s sojourn to Wichita. “No. I…No.” Josiah pulled his hat down and moved away from the window. “Just passing by. We needed a couple of things from the hardware store.”

“We don’t sell nails and such.” Solomon’s hard stare traveled to the window. He put a hand on the door. “If you’re needing tack, I can help you with that.”

The emphasis on the
I
was unmistakable. Leave Miriam out of it. “I…I won’t be needing anything.”

Solomon brushed past him and let the door close with a hard, final slap.

Josiah sat down on the bench. As much as he respected Solomon’s position, he had to talk to Miriam. He owed it to her. He had to tell her he meant what he said about not contacting Sarah. As much as his heart and mind battled over it, he had to keep his word to the bishop. He couldn’t put his family through that again. He wished he had someone to talk to about it. It used to be he talked to Emma. And David had made his position clear. He would never waver from the tried and true. David never gave an inch. He held his friends accountable. Josiah respected that, even if it sometimes fit him like a shirt two sizes too small. No need to talk to David when he knew exactly what he would say. Josiah would have to muddle through on his own.

“Well?”

He jerked up. Miriam stood in the doorway. He rose. “I…you… your father said…”

“I’m in my rumspringa. Until I’m baptized I still have some leeway. Daed knows that and so does Paul, despite what he said to you Sunday night.” Miriam shut the door. She didn’t sit down next to him. Not
in broad daylight on a Bliss Creek street. “My father knows he’s very blessed. I haven’t run around like some others.”

“Like me, you mean.”

She smiled. “Well, as an example.”

“You’re not mad about what happened at the pond?”

“Sad, Josiah, not mad.”

“So why did you avoid me at the singing? Why were you talking to Simon Gross? His rumspringa has been just as…eventful as mine.”

“You have no right to ask me about Simon. I can talk to any Plain man I please.” Her cheeks turned pink. She strode a few steps along the sidewalk, her long skirt swishing as she walked.
Swish-swish.
It sounded angry. When she turned, though, she still looked sad. “You’re the one who makes it so I can talk to him. By your choices. I can’t wait forever.”

“I know you’ve been more than patient.”

“Helen Crouch is coming.” She slipped past him and put her hand on the door. “You’ve never had a very good sense of timing. Or propriety. This isn’t a conversation you have on the street.”

“If you want propriety, you won’t get it from Simon. Be sure of that.” Why did he keep going on about Simon Gross? Jealousy burned through him like fire fueled with kerosene. He had no right to be jealous. “I’ll give you propriety. I’ll come for you one night this week. Promise me you’ll come out if you see a light in the window.”

“Promise me there’s no one else and I’ll think about it. Promise me you won’t break my heart again.” She still didn’t raise her voice. In fact, it got softer.

“I have to take care of some things before I can make promises.” The words sounded hollow and empty in his ears. “It won’t be long.”

She gripped her hands together, almost as if she were praying. “I’m going to be baptized soon.”

Josiah stood. “I understand.”

She slipped back into the store and let the door shut gently behind her.

Miriam planned to move forward. She wanted him to go with her. If only he could.

Follow the rules. Why was that so hard for him to do? Simple rules. A conversation he’d had with the deacon around Thanksgiving replayed in his head. He didn’t like rules because he wanted to be in control. Until he let go and let God take control, his life would be a constant tug-of-war. Back and forth, until exhausted he would finally fall to his knees. God would never let go. That’s what the deacon said. So far, Josiah’s shoulders and arms ached with the effort to hang on. He longed to let go.

He had to go back to Bishop Kelp and convince him to allow him to talk to Sarah. She would never leave Bliss Creek until he did. And he would never convince Miriam he could be true to her until Sarah left.

Annie dumped a cup of flour into the bowl with such force a fine white dust blew back in her face. She coughed and slapped a hand to her mouth. Gracie, who was standing on a chair next to her, mimicked her movements. More flour flew through the air, filtering the sunlight that shone through the windows of the bakery. Annie touched the little girl’s arm. “Gently, gently.”

Gracie giggled and reached for the enormous flour canister. “More, more.”

“No, that’s enough for our cookies.” Annie added the rest of the dry ingredients to both bowls, then began to cream the softened butter together with the sugar. She gathered her wits and gave instructions as if the three-year-old understood. It was never too early to teach girls how to bake. “We do it gently so the flour ends up in the cookies and not on the counter and the floor and our faces.”

“She’s just following your lead.” Her tone tart, Sadie punched down whole wheat dough and began to knead it on the floured counter. “Gently, Annie, gently.”

“I’m just so…I really wish…I mean…” Annie didn’t dare express her true feelings, not even to Sadie. She wanted to be in that courtroom for the arraignment. She should be there supporting Charisma
and Logan. She wanted him to know she bore him no ill will. What was the point of being a grownup if people—people like her brother—still told her what to do? “It’s nothing.”

“You really wish Luke would let you go to the arraignment with the little girl’s mudder.” Sadie took care not to say Charisma’s name, for which Annie was thankful. As long as Gracie wasn’t reminded that Charisma had left her alone, probably for the first time in her life, she didn’t fuss. But if anyone said the name she became inconsolable for several minutes. “We don’t involve ourselves in such things. You know that. Going to court would only make that lawyer want us to be witnesses even more. Besides, you’re needed here to take care of the little one.”

True. It wasn’t like they could leave Gracie with Leah. Her sister-in-law had made that perfectly clear before Annie could even pose the question. Sadie was so kind to let Gracie be in the bakery at all. They’d agreed to let her make her own little batch of cookies and keep them clear of anything that went to customers.

She cracked four eggs, one after the other, into a separate bowl. The quick snap of her wrist, the clean break, the efficiency of the movements made her feel better somehow. This was something she knew how to do. She was in control.

“Annie, are you listening?” Sadie tapped a flour-coated finger on the counter. “You are right where you belong.”

“I know.” She added the eggs to her bowl and then cracked two more into Gracie’s. “Stir.” She put a hand on the girl’s wooden spoon. “Gently. You don’t want raw egg all over your new dress.”

A big grin on her face, Gracie slapped a chubby hand on the green dress Annie had made for her the previous evening. After the scene at the quilting frolic, it had soothed Annie to sew. The
whap, whap
sound as she pumped the treadle sewing machine with her bare feet always made her think of Mudder.

“Pretty. Pretty,” Gracie crowed. “Gracie pretty.”

Pretty wasn’t something Plain women aspired to be, but Annie understood the sentiment. “Very nice. Now stir. Gently.”

“You have such patience. You’ll be a good mother.”

At the sound of David’s voice, Annie’s arm froze in mid-stir. Her heart sped up, just as it always did. It betrayed her every time. His words sank in and the usual ache caught in her throat, then spread until she could barely swallow. Surely he knew how she longed for that day. Didn’t he think of having children with her? Apparently not, if he could make such an offhand remark.

She inhaled the sweet, lovely scent of baking bread.
One. Two. Three. Breathe.
She could be as offhand as he. Without haste, she laid the spoon next to her bowl, and turned. “Good morning. I didn’t know you were here.”

His gaze collided with hers. Something in his dark eyes said he wasn’t as nonchalant as she first believed. She refused to drop her gaze. The seconds stretched and stretched, and then seemed to snap back. Something there in the deep brown of his eyes mesmerized her. He felt something. As much as he denied it, she could see it there in his eyes. She took a step forward. He shook his head slightly, cleared his throat, and the want—the yearning—disappeared, swallowed up by regret. Then he bent over to let bags of sugar slide from his shoulders to the floor. The moment was lost in the thud of their weight against the wood. He began to stack them.

“I came in through the back.” His voice sounded oddly hoarse, like he had a cold. “Our shipment arrived.”

“So I see.” Annie glanced at Sadie. She could’ve said something. A faint smile on her wrinkled face, David’s mother appeared engrossed in shaping the loaves and placing them in the greased bread pans.
Fine. No help there.
“Why are you stacking those here, instead of in the back?”

“Because I don’t want you two trying to carry them up here.”

“I’m quite capable of carrying a bag of sugar.”

“From the sounds of it, you need to add an extra helping of that sugar to your coffee this morning.” David headed toward the storage room door. “You know that you gather more flies with honey than vinegar, don’t you, Annie?”

“Who wants flies in honey anyway…” She didn’t bother to continue. He’d already disappeared through the door. “Men.”

“Men.” Gracie swung her wooden spoon through the air in an enthusiastic flourish. “Men.”

A glob of sugar and egg landed on Annie’s cheek. “Gracie!” She grabbed at the spoon and missed. More of the sodden mess deposited itself on her dress. What was the point of wearing an apron if it didn’t cover anything? She took another swipe and managed to wrestle the spoon from the girl. “You have to keep the spoon in the bowl, little one.”