Heart in Hand: Stitches in Time Series #3

Heart in Hand

Other books by the author

A Time to Love
, book one in the Quilts of Lancaster County series
A Time to Heal
, book two in the Quilts of Lancaster County series
A Time for Peace
, book three in the Quilts of Lancaster County series

Her Restless Heart
, book one in the Stitches in Time series
The Heart’s Journey
, book two in the Stitches in Time series

HEART IN HAND

Stitches in Time Series

Barbara Cameron

Heart in Hand

Copyright © 2013 Barbara Cameron

ISBN: 978-1-4267-1434-4

Published by Abingdon Press, P.O. Box 801, Nashville, TN 37202

www.abingdonpress.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, posted on any website, or transmitted in any form or by any means—digital, electronic, scanning, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations in printed reviews and articles.

The persons and events portrayed in this work of fiction are the creations of the author, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cameron, Barbara, 1949-

Heart in hand / Barbara Cameron.

     pages cm. — (Stitches in Time Series)

 ISBN 978-1-4267-1434-4 (Book - Paperback / Trade Paperback) 1. Amish women—Fiction. 2. Amish--Social life and customs—Fiction. 3. Amish decorative arts—Fiction. 4. Grandparent and child—Fiction. 5. Widows—Fiction. 6. Widowers—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3603.A4473H43 2013

813’.6—dc23

2012041285

Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / 18 17 16 15 14 13

For Eva

Acknowledgments

A cousin asked
that
question recently: Where do you get your ideas?

It always makes me groan. I’m usually a pretty polite person, but I always want to say something like, “The idea tree in the backyard,” or “I bought this book of them years ago.”

The truth is there are so many places that writers get ideas. And sometimes we don’t even know where they come from. Some come as niggling little things, and other times, the whole book is just there. Of course, the ones that come full-blown are great! Sometimes it’s even an idea that just won’t let go.

Once, when my doctor and I were talking about our families, she asked how my then teenagers were doing. Well, they were great kids, but all kids seem to go through challenges at one time or another . . .

“You’re a writer,” she said. “Bet you could learn what to do if you wrote about it.”

What an idea. And that is not only how so many projects begin for me—it’s how I end up learning something for myself. One of my favorite times in my life was when I got to stay home for a while with my two children and be a homemaker. I cooked everything from scratch, sewed most of their clothing, and reveled in a role that felt so right. When I was able to sneak time during their naps to write, I felt like the world was perfect.

As I’ve worked on my Amish books, I’ve learned a lot about forgiveness and inner peace and big themes like that—and I’ve learned about fun activities like quilting and weaving and so on. I found myself yearning for those days sewing and doing so many domestic crafts, so that I visited a quilt shop. I wanted
to write about three Amish cousins who are as close as sisters . . . and there, in the quilt shop, the idea of a series about them sewing and quilting and weaving and falling in love with three Amish men began to form. And so I created this series.

Thank you to Magrieta of Magrieta’s Quilt Shop in St. Augustine for being so gracious to me and answering so many questions and letting me wander the shop. I enjoyed the times I visited so much.

Thank you, too, to Wendy Ashton, who runs PA-Dutch-Travel and helped me with some research.

Thank you, as always to Judy Rehm, such a good friend and inspiration to learn more about God and His endless ideas for our lives.

A thank-you should go to my mother, May, and her twin, June, for teaching me how to sew—seemingly a lost art these days. The memories of working on such simple but necessary things like clothing and creative additions like embroidery warmed my heart so many times as I stitched. I used those memories as I wrote the three books of Stitches in Time.

My mom was one of nine children, so there are many cousins. Memories of growing up with some of them gave me material for the relationships of the cousins in the books. So thank you to them.

Thanks, as always, for the encouragement of my editor, Ramona Richards, and all the staff at Abingdon Press who take these ideas of mine and help me turn them into books with such beautiful covers that get sent out there into readerland. I am so grateful for the many readers who write me and tell me they’ve given you a few hours to read of a peaceful place where people still care about each other.

Blessings to you.

1

It felt like dawn would never come.

When Anna first realized that it was going to be one of those nights . . . one of those awful nights that felt like it would never end . . . she reached for the book she’d been reading and read for a while with the help of the battery lamp on the bedside table.

Reading didn’t help. Knitting didn’t, either, and knitting always relaxed her. Reaching for her robe, Anna pushed her feet into her slippers and padded downstairs to the kitchen. There was no need for a light for she knew her way from all the dozens—no, hundreds—of nights she’d gone downstairs in the dark.

Even before the first time she stepped inside this house she knew it like the back of her hand. She and Samuel had drawn the plans, spent hours talking about how he and his brothers were going to build it. As soon as the house was finished, he’d started crafting furniture for it. The final piece he’d made was a cradle for the baby he hoped they’d have soon.

His sudden illness stopped him in his tracks. Leukemia, said the doctor. One day it seemed he was an agile monkey climbing up the frame of a barn he and other men were raising
and just a few days later he could barely get out of bed and she’d joked he’d turned into an old man.

She’d insisted that he see a doctor, and reluctantly, he’d done so.

Six months later he was gone, and she’d shut the door to the room with the tiny crib. She buried her dreams the day she buried Samuel.

She filled the teakettle and set it on the stove to heat.
How many cups of tea have I drunk in the middle of the night
? she wondered as she reached for a cup and the box of chamomile tea bags.

Before Samuel had died, she’d heard about the seven stages of grief. She’d been naïve. You didn’t go through them one by one in order. Sometimes you walked—faltered—through them in no certain order. Sometimes they ganged up on you when you least expected them.

And sometimes—it felt like too many times—no one seemed to understand.

She couldn’t blame them. The only way she got through the first month, the first year, was to put on a brave face and pretend she was getting through it. There was no way she could get through it otherwise—she’d shatter into a thousand pieces that no one would be able to put back together again.

Humpty Dumpty
, she thought wryly. Then she frowned, wishing that she hadn’t thought of the childhood story. A closed door didn’t keep out the memory of the tiny crib that lay behind it.

The teakettle’s whistle broke into her musing, its sound so sharp and shrill that she put her hands over her ears to block it while she got up to take it off the flame. She poured the hot water over the tea bag and took the mug back to the kitchen table and sat there, dipping the bag in and out of the water.

Finally, she pulled the bag out and set it on the saucer. Sighing, she massaged her scalp and wondered if she should take an aspirin to stop the pain. Then she flicked her hair behind her shoulders and hunched over the cup. In a minute, she’d get up and get the aspirin. Her mind might be awake, but her body felt tired and full of lead.

As she trudged back up the stairs a few minutes later, she heard something—it sounded like a laugh, a high, excited one that went rushing past her and up the stairs. She watched, tired, leaning against the wall as she saw herself, lifting the hem of her nightgown so she wouldn’t trip, Samuel reaching for her as she flew up the stairs to their room.

She blinked, not sure if she was dreaming or seeing a ghost of the two of them, so young and in love, so unaware that anything bad could touch them.

When she reached her room, no one was there. Climbing back into bed, she pulled the quilt around her shoulders and lay on her side facing the uncurtained window. The wedding quilt that her cousins Naomi and Mary Katherine and her grandmother had sewn for her and Samuel lay wrapped in muslin and tucked in a box in the closet of the same room as the cradle. She hadn’t been able to bear lying under it after Samuel died.

She’d thought she wouldn’t be able to bear living without him in this house they had built, but her grandmother had brought her here after the funeral to pack and she’d found she couldn’t leave it. Somehow it felt like she’d be abandoning everything they’d worked so hard for.

Her grandmother had understood. She’d done the same thing—continued to live in the house she’d shared with her husband who’d also died too young. She’d continued to stay there for nearly two decades, and only in the last couple of
years had Mary Katherine and then Naomi come to stay with her.

Hours passed. Anna remembered reading that it was always darkest before dawn. She could vouch for that.

Finally, the sky began lightening. She got up and made the bed before she went to shower. The reflection in the mirror made her wince. She looked tired, with faint lavender shadows under her eyes.

Funny, everyone said that she and her two cousins who worked with her at Stitches in Time—Mary Katherine and Naomi—all looked so much alike with their oval faces and brown eyes and brown hair. But she felt she just looked like a dull version of them lately. She looked older and more subdued.

With a sigh she center-parted her hair and began arranging it in a bun, then she placed a starched
kapp
on her head. She chose her favorite dark blue dress and hoped the color would make her look less pale.

Her first cup of coffee helped her get moving. The knock on the door startled her as she sat eating her breakfast.

She opened her door to find Nick standing there.

“Sorry, I had to come a little early,” he apologized as she invited him inside.

“It’s okay. I’m ready.”

He touched her shoulder. “You look tired.”

“I sure hope you don’t ever say that to Naomi,” she responded testily. “No woman wants to hear that kind of thing.”

“I’ll remember that.”

She regarded this man who was engaged to marry Naomi. He had dark hair, angular features, and sharp green eyes. Not as handsome as Samuel had been.

Nick was quiet and serious and had a heart just as big as Samuel’s. She could trust him with someone as dear as Naomi . . .

“Want some coffee before we go?”

He shook his head. “I have a thermos in the car.”

She took a plastic box filled with sandwiches from the refrigerator and tucked it into a tote bag. A bag of cookies was next.

Catching Nick’s interest, she pulled another plastic bag from a nearby cupboard and filled it with half a dozen and handed it to him.

“Oatmeal raisin,” he said with a satisfied sigh. “Will you marry me?”