Susanna's Dream: The Lost Sisters of Pleasant Valley, Book Two (15 page)

And she had a lot of respect for Lydia. If anyone could get through Susanna’s reserve, it would be Lydia.

“There’s the lane.” She pointed ahead of them. “I see they have the Apples for Sale sign up.” The sign, roughly painted on a piece of plywood, leaned against the fencepost at the end of the lane.

“Lydia spoke of the orchard several times when she came in the shop. Before . . . well, before I knew, I mean.” Susanna leaned forward. “She obviously loves it.”

Chloe nodded, making the turn. “Our parents lived here, you know, before their deaths. I think Lydia feels the orchard brings her closer to them.”

Susanna turned a startled gaze upon her. “I didn’t know they lived here. And us, too, I guess. I suppose there’s a lot I don’t know.”

Chloe tamped down her urge to plunge into explanations. For once, she wouldn’t jump in without thinking.

“Lydia and I would love to tell you what we know, anytime you’d like to hear it. And Seth’s mother has lived next door for ages.” She pointed at the house on the far side of the orchard. “She’s told me some stories of what she remembers from when we were small.”

“Seth’s family is Amish, ja?”

“Yes.” Seth would probably be here today, and a flicker of apprehension went through her. She couldn’t ignore his background when his family was around.

“It’s strange, thinking that this was my home once and not remembering it at all.” Susanna drew in a breath, and her hands clenched suddenly in her lap.

Chloe looked up the lane and understood. Everyone was outside, it seemed, waiting for them. It must look like a horde of strangers to Susanna.

“I remember the first time I came.” She slowed when she saw the two boys racing toward the car. “I felt so overwhelmed because all these strangers knew things about me that I didn’t know about myself.”

Susanna’s hands eased. “That’s how I feel, too.”

Pulling into her usual spot along the lane, Chloe cut the motor and smiled at Susanna. “It will be fine, I promise. Come and meet them.”

She stepped out of the car and braced herself as Daniel and David rushed to her. David’s hugs were sometimes so impetuous that he nearly knocked her off her feet.

He threw his arms around her. “Aunt Chloe!”

She hugged him, reaching out to pull David into the embrace as well. “How are you? It’s so good to see you.”

“We’re all right. Did you bring our new aunt?”

Daniel’s hand closed on his little brother’s shoulder. “Remember what Mamm said. Don’t rush at her.” He smiled up at Chloe. “Mamm said you were in a flood. Did you get wet?”

“Was it like Noah?” David added. Their blue eyes and smiles were uncannily alike.

“Yes, I got wet. And muddy. But no, it wasn’t as bad as Noah’s flood.” Arms around them, she piloted them around the car to where Susanna was just getting out. “These are Lydia and Adam’s boys, Daniel and David.”

“We’re glad to meet you,” Daniel said, his company manner in evidence. As the older one, he was always the most careful about his behavior.

“Can we call you Aunt Susanna?” David added.

Susanna looked a little startled, but she smiled and nodded. “That would be nice.”

Lydia had reached them by this time, and she touched Susanna’s arm lightly in welcome. Chloe could tell by her expression that she wanted to hug her but was holding back.

“Wilkom to our home, Susanna. Komm, meet the others.”

“What is that wonderful smell?” Chloe asked.

“Apple butter.” Daniel tugged at her hand. “We’re making apple butter today. Komm and see.”

Chloe let herself be hauled over to where Adam was feeding a wood fire under an immense copper kettle. A dark, spicy mixture bubbled gently in the kettle, while Seth stirred it with a long wooden paddle.

“Apple butter? Adam, are you sure you want to let Seth do the cooking?”

Adam straightened, grinning at her. “He’s not cooking. Just stirring. Everyone has to take a hand at stirring. You can be next.”

Seth’s mother, Emma, came to greet her. Her warm smile didn’t quite erase the worry lines in her forehead. “Are these boys trying to put you to work already?”

“They’re trying, but they haven’t succeeded yet. How long has this been cooking?”

“Since early this morning,” Emma said. “It takes a gut eight hours to make apple butter. And mind you don’t let it stick, Seth.”

Seth smiled at his mother’s chiding. “I won’t. Come over here, Chloe. I’ll show you how.”

With a quick glance to assure herself that Susanna was occupied by Lydia and the children, Chloe let herself be persuaded.
Careful,
she warned herself.
The fire isn’t the only source of heat when you’re around Seth.

He put her hands on the paddle, enclosing them in his as he did. “Stir it clockwise, scraping the sides and bottom to be sure it’s not sticking.”

He was too close, his arms practically around her as they worked the paddle.

“I can manage. Thanks.”

The glint in his eyes told her he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Okay.” He let go.

Chloe nearly dropped the paddle. The mixture was so thick that the movement was like rowing through molasses.

“Harder than you thought, ja?” Adam said, his eyes twinkling.

“Ja,” she said emphatically, making both men laugh.

Funny. When she’d first met him, she’d thought Adam a dour, humorless chauvinist. It was only when she’d gotten to know her sister’s husband that she realized what she’d seen that first day was his complete devotion to Lydia and his fear that she would be hurt.

Maybe Adam had grown to like her a bit better with time. She hoped so, but she knew he was still wary of the influence of their Englisch aunt on his children.

“Be sure you get the sides of the kettle.” Seth grasped the paddle to help, his hands brushing hers again.

“I never pictured you as a cook.” She made an effort to keep the atmosphere light. “How do you know so much about making apple butter?”

“I wouldn’t claim to know how much sugar and spices go in. That’s for the experts to decide. But everyone has a part in apple-butter making.”

He seemed to have a point. Susanna and Lydia were sorting glass jars on the picnic table while his mother measured spices. Seth’s sister, Jessie, was supervising the two boys as they trundled a wheelbarrow of wood to the fire. Jessie’s blond hair shone in the sunlight, and her blue eyes sparkled when she laughed at something one of the boys said. She looked like the popular image of a young Amish woman, but every day she battled against the bipolar disorder that plagued her.

Adam shoved a last log on the fire. Rising, he said something to Seth in dialect, laughing, and went off to help the boys.

Chloe glanced at Seth, detecting a trace of embarrassment in his expression. “What did Adam say?”

“It was nothing.”

“It was something since it made you blush.”

“You make me sound like an old maid.” He grinned. “Okay, you asked for it. He reminded me of an old saying that courting couples love to stir the apple butter together but they’re likely to let it burn.”

Now it was her turn to feel her cheeks grow hot. “He . . . was just kidding.”

“Sure.” His gaze evaded hers, as if he realized they were venturing onto dangerous ground.

Chloe’s thoughts scrambled to find something to say. Her gaze landed on Jessie again. “Did your mother come to any decision about letting Jessie assist with the flood relief?” That seemed a safe enough topic.

Seth nodded, frowning slightly. “I’ll bring Jessie over to Oyersburg tomorrow to help at the shelter. Are you going to be there? I told Mamm someone would keep an eye on her.”

Chloe discovered a reluctance to become responsible for Jessie. But she was the one who’d thought volunteering might be a good idea, wasn’t she?

“Sure.” She tried to force enthusiasm into her voice. “I’ll be glad to show Jessie the ropes.”

“Great, thanks. I told Dave Hartman I’d help with tearing stuff out of flooded houses tomorrow. They’re supposed to start hauling things away, but nobody’s been able to figure out where they’re going to put everything.”

That was an aspect of the problem that hadn’t even occurred to her. Her eyes sought out Susanna again.

“From what Susanna said, she hopes work can start on the shop in a day or two.”

“Just let me know when, and I’ll be there to help,” Seth said. “Is the building in bad shape?”

“Not as bad as some, but bad enough. Susanna said Nate Gaus is bringing someone in to decide whether it’s worth rebuilding.”

“That’s natural enough, I guess. But if it’s not, what will your sister do? Move the shop to a different location?”

“She doesn’t know.” Chloe looked down at the apple butter, which was slowly darkening with each bubble that came sluggishly to the surface and burst. “I want to help her, but I’m not sure she’s ready to accept anything from me.”

“Give her time.” His voice was filled with sympathy. “She’ll come around. After all, who could resist you?”

She was spared finding a reply by David and Daniel scurrying over. David leaned precariously over the kettle. “Is it ready yet?”

His brother hauled him back by his suspenders. “Not yet, dummy. Mamm didn’t even put the sugar in yet.”

Chloe tried giving him the look that seemed so successful when Lydia did it. “Are you supposed to call your brother a dummy?”

“I guess not,” Daniel admitted. “I’m sorry, David.”

David didn’t seem to care, apparently immune to insults. Maybe that was part of being brothers, she supposed.

“Do you know what’s the best part of making apple butter, Aunt Chloe?” David said, fixing his round blue eyes on her.

“Eating it?” she guessed.

David grinned, showing the gap where he’d lost his first tooth. “After it’s all poured out, we get a piece of bread and scoop up what’s left in the pot.” He rubbed his tummy. “Yummy.”

Laughing, Seth tapped the top of David’s straw hat. “You have to wait a bit yet.”

The image seemed to imprint itself on Chloe’s heart. The man reaching out, the boy laughing up at him, the golden colors of fall around them, the air filled with the aroma of the wood fire and apples. It was a perfect, beautiful slice of life, and she didn’t want to lose it.

I want a life that’s real.
That was what her mother had told a friend, trying to explain the choices she’d made. In this moment, Chloe could almost agree.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

F
or
Susanna, helping Lydia get the canning jars ready for the apple butter was a soothing, comforting task. The scent of spices, the sun slanting across the grass, even the high voices of the children brought back memories.

“You’ve done this many times before, ain’t so?” Lydia smiled at her, the dimple appearing in her cheek, with the look that was so oddly like her own.

“Every fall for as long as I can remember until we moved to Oyersburg. Daad said we probably shouldn’t have a fire burning all day once we lived in town.”

She was speaking Pennsylvania Dutch, not Englisch, falling into it quite naturally since she was alone with Lydia. Maybe that added to her sense of familiarity.

“It must have been hard to leave your friends behind to move here.” Lydia ran the tip of her forefinger around the glass edge to be sure there were no nicks to spoil the seal.

“In a way, it was.” Susanna hated thinking about those difficult days when they realized her mother’s cancer had returned. “But Daad and I were both so eager to move Mamm within reach of the specialists that I didn’t really have time to think about it.”

“She went to the medical center in Danville, ja?”

Susanna nodded. “Daad thought Oyersburg was the best place to settle, since it had an Amish community and was only a little over a half hour’s drive to her doctors. And then he passed away just a year later.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. It was odd, wasn’t it, that his decision brought you back to where you’d started, and you didn’t know it?” Lydia glanced at her, sunlight picking out highlights in her light brown hair. A question seemed to hover on her lips. “When you were little, didn’t you remember anything about your life before the accident?”

Lydia so obviously wanted her to say she did, making Susanna feel guilty that she didn’t. “I’m sorry, I don’t. But from what you and Chloe told me, I was only three. I wouldn’t, would I?”

“I suppose not. It’s just . . . well, I’ve felt so guilty that I didn’t remember my sisters. Mamm says the head injury wiped out those memories forever, so I shouldn’t feel bad about it, but I do.”

“Your mamm is . . .” Susanna tried to remember what they’d told her, but the story was muddled up in her mind.

“My daad was brothers with our birth father,” Lydia said. “When I wonder what our birth father looked like, I just look at him. They were very alike, everyone says.”

There would be no photographs of him, of course, and that birth father, as Lydia called him, seemed impossibly remote to Susanna. “If our . . .” She couldn’t say
mother
. It was too disloyal. Elizabeth Bitler was her mother.

“Diane was Englisch.” Lydia used the first name as if she spoke of a mutual friend. “So of course there were photographs of her. Chloe can show you, if you’d like to see them.”

Something in Susanna rebelled at the thought. “Not . . . not yet.”

“I understand,” Lydia said, her voice soft. “Mamm and Daad—your aunt and uncle—wanted to come today, but they thought it might be too many relatives all at once. They said to say they want to meet you, but not until you’re ready.” There was a hopeful lilt to her voice.

“Not yet,” Susanna said quickly. She felt a flicker of panic at the thought of meeting these strangers who seemed to know more about her than she knew herself. Her response had to hurt Lydia, and Susanna hated that it was so.

Daniel and David ran up to the picnic table, interrupting them before she could say anything else that would cause discomfort.

“Emma is putting the sugar and spices in, Mammi. Is it ready yet?” Daniel looked up at his mother, his blue eyes solemn.

“It has to cook awhile longer. Be patient.”

“I hate to be patient,” David said, pouting a little.

Lydia touched their small faces lovingly. “Good things take time,” she said. “We can’t rush them.”

The words resonated in Susanna’s mind. If Lydia really felt that way, it should make it easier to move slowly. The problem was that she was beginning to feel too much at home here.

“Emma Miller is a gut friend, ain’t so?” she said, trying to change the subject.

Lydia nodded, giving in with a smile. “We’ve been neighbors since we moved here when we were first married. Before that, another relative took care of the place. And before that even, our birth parents lived here. Emma was a gut friend to Diane. She helped her adjust to life here, I think.”

“It must have been wonderful hard for her.” For the first time, Susanna found herself thinking of her birth mother as a young mother struggling to adapt to Amish ways. “Just the language alone would be challenging.”

Lydia nodded. “Emma says she was wonderful quick at learning Pennsylvania Dutch, though. And she taught Diane how to do a lot of things, living so close. She says they used to have a laugh over it when the jelly didn’t gel or the biscuits didn’t rise.”

“Diane must have been lighthearted.” Mamm would be more likely to weep if something didn’t turn out right, it seemed to Susanna. She’d always been so intent on making everything perfect.

“From all I’ve been able to find out, she was a happy person. Apparently she had a time of depression after Chloe was born, but that happens to some women.”

The mention of depression had Susanna watching Jessie, who was taking a turn stirring the apple butter. “Chloe said something about Jessie having problems that way.”

“Jessie’s difficulties are much more serious than what our birth mother had.” Lydia shook her head slightly. “I’ve seen her at her worst, and it was frightening. The doctors call it bipolar disorder and some other things I don’t remember. It worries poor Emma half to death sometimes.”

“Is that why Seth came back?” Of course, he might be hanging around because of Chloe. Anyone could see they were crazy about each other. Anyone but the two of them, it seemed to Susanna.

Lydia nodded, her face troubled. “I finally had to speak to the bishop about some things I’d seen Jessie doing, and he sent for Seth, since Emma was in rehab for her broken hip then. I hated doing it. It seems so wrong, to speak to the bishop about a neighbor.”

Susanna touched her hand in an instinctive gesture of comfort. “It sounds as if you did her good in the long run. That’s the important thing.”

“I guess.” Lydia smiled slightly. “That’s what I pray, anyway. I know Emma worries about what is to become of her. It doesn’t seem likely she’ll marry.”

Probably not. Lydia couldn’t know that she’d struck a blow at Susanna’s heart. She would probably never marry, either. Never have a man look at her in the cherishing way Adam looked at Lydia, never laugh at the antics of her kinder, never feel a new baby growing beneath her heart.

“I think we have time before the apple butter is ready to can,” Lydia said suddenly. “There’s something I want to show you. Will you come to the porch for a moment?”

Susanna nodded, just as glad to be diverted from the path her thoughts had taken. But once they reached the back porch and settled into the two rocking chairs, she noticed something. The others were rather obviously ignoring them. This was not as accidental as it seemed. She felt herself freeze up inside. They had been talking about her—planning something about her.

“Please don’t think we were plotting.” Lydia seemed to read her thoughts in her expression. She touched the miniature dower chest that sat on the table between them. “I told the others that I wanted to show you this, that’s all. They’re giving me an opportunity.”

“I see.” Was that supposed to make her feel better? Still, whatever Lydia planned, she knew Lydia’s intentions were good.

“My mamm gave me the little box after I found out the truth about my parents.” Lydia’s lips pressed together. “It was difficult, knowing they’d held the truth back from me all those years. In some ways I’m still struggling with it.”

“I guess you would be.” She softened. Lydia hadn’t asked to have her life turned upside down with this knowledge any more than she had. “What does the box mean?”

Lydia’s fingers caressed the lid. “Our father made this for me when I was a little girl. After the accident, Mamm put some things in it that she thought I might want someday.” She smiled wryly. “And then she couldn’t give it to me, because she’d agreed to keep the secret.”

“Secrets can be harmful,” Susanna said slowly, thinking of the things Nate had let slip. He held more secrets, she felt sure of it, and they seemed to be pressing on him, as if they needed to be spoken.

“Ja, they can. Even when people have the best intentions.” Lydia lifted the lid of the box. “I have shown this to Chloe, and we both felt you should see it as well.” She lifted items out, one at a time, and set them on the table.

“We can’t know what this was from,” she said, opening a folded paper to disclose a dried flower, so fragile a breath would disintegrate it. “I like to think it was a memory of their love.”

Susanna didn’t remember them. She couldn’t think of them as her parents. Even so, tears prickled behind her eyelids at the sight.

“They didn’t have very long together,” Susanna said softly.

“Seven years.” Lydia folded the paper back over the flower. “But they were happy years, from everything we know. It’s harder for Chloe to understand the joy of Plain life, growing up Englisch as she did. But you know.”

Lydia was right. She did. There was joy each day in the assurance you were living the way the Lord wanted. That you were in the place He had prepared for you.

“This is a journal our mother wrote in. Not every day, but it seems she did when she had something special she wanted to record.” Lydia paused. “There is something toward the end that troubled me, when she said she feared she’d made a mistake in becoming Amish. I wrote to a woman in Ohio who had been her friend, and I’ve put her answer in the journal for you to read.”

She didn’t wait for a response, but just left the fat leather book in front of Susanna on the table.

Maybe it would have been natural to reach out and take the book, but she couldn’t. She didn’t think she wanted to gaze that deeply into the heart and mind of the stranger who had been her mother.

“Mammi, Mammi!” David darted away from his father’s restraining hand. “The apple butter is ready.”

“In a minute, David.” Lydia smiled at Susanna. “Please, take the book with you. Then you can decide if you want to read it or not. It’s as much yours as it is mine and Chloe’s.”

Susanna pressed her lips together. She seemed to stand on the brink. One part of her longed to turn away, to retreat to the safe world in which she knew everything there was to know about herself.

But could she do so? Every day seemed to bring new challenges. Her life was changing at an alarming rate, and nothing she did would stop it.

If she read the journal, maybe she would begin to understand how she’d come to this place. With the sense of stepping off a cliff, Susanna nodded and picked up the book.

* * *

Saturday
afternoons were always busy in the store, but this was the most hectic Nate had seen in some time. In addition to the shoppers, volunteers moved in and out, checking on assignments. Susanna had made some changes to the boards, so that they now showed how many people had gone to each area and when, making it easier to see where help was most needed.

Thomas passed him, staggering a little under the weight of the cartons of canned goods he was carrying. Nate lifted off the top two boxes and shifted them to the floor in front of the rapidly emptying shelves.

“Denke.” The tips of Thomas’s ears, visible through his corn-silk hair, reddened, a sure sign the boy was embarrassed. “Anna Mae wanted the shelves refilled right away.”

“You’re doing fine work, Thomas.” The boy was well intentioned, even when he made mistakes, and he was shaping up well. “No need to rush.”

Thomas grinned. “That’s what Susanna keeps telling me. She says hurrying just gets us rattled.”

“Susanna’s a wise woman,” Nate said. He realized he was scanning the store for Susanna’s slim form and pulled himself up short.

Susanna was having a well-earned afternoon off with her family. And no matter how indispensable she’d begun to seem in the present crisis, he should not be spending so much time thinking about her.

Nate glanced at the clock above the door. Nearly noon, and Mamm would be waiting lunch for him. “I’m going to the house for lunch. Thomas, you take charge while I’m out.”

Nate’s eye caught a flash of resentment on Anna Mae’s face, and she flounced away from the counter, heading toward him. Unfortunately the girl had begun to have an inflated image of her ability.

He was going to have to talk to her, but not just now. Quickly, before she could reach him, he went out the side door and headed across the parking lot.

That incident with the Englischer who’d tried to make money off the suffering of others had shown Anna Mae’s immaturity. All she’d seen was a big sale. It had taken Susanna to realize something was wrong.

Nate gritted his teeth and reminded himself that he shouldn’t think so much about Susanna. For an unmarried man and woman their ages, there could be only one result of growing closer, and marriage was out of the question for him.

Marriage could be fine for the right people. His sisters were happy, as were many of his friends. But he couldn’t think of it without hearing Mary Ann telling him she was leaving. Or without thinking of his mother, working herself half to death because his father couldn’t be bothered to take on a man’s responsibility.

Still, Susanna persisted in intruding into his thoughts. It was amazing that he’d once barely noticed her.

He opened the door to the smell of roasting chicken. Mamm turned from setting a platter on the table to smile at him.

“Gut. I saw you coming and got the meat up.”

He moved to the sink to wash. “Mamm, you don’t need to make such a big meal every day.”

“What else do I have to do, since I can’t get into the shop?” Mamm spooned mashed potatoes into a bowl.

He definitely didn’t want to get into a discussion of the gift shop with Mamm, not until he’d figured out the best course of action.