The Bridge of Peace (5 page)

“If we make the living room into bedrooms, it’ll work.”

“You’re going to be a demanding wife, aren’t you?”

She studied him for a moment, wanting to know if he was teasing her. His eyes reflected amusement and love, and she felt his pleasure with her thaw a little more of her heart.

“I could probably build a set of stairs and add a couple of rooms above the main floor if living there is what you really want.”

What she ached for more than anything else was for them to marry … soon. But Amish rules said that she couldn’t go through instruction until spring and that they couldn’t marry until next year’s wedding season. Because she’d been raised an outsider and had only been living as an Amish woman for a short while, the bishop had the power to make them wait several years, if he wanted to.

Ephraim laid the sketch on his desk. “Your plan will cost us a lot less money and keep me close to the shop, so it’s great for me. I was thinking it might not be so wonderful for you. You’re not used to having a large, somewhat intrusive family living next-door.”

She shrugged. “I can hold my own without you having to build us a new house.”

“Okay. We’ll wait on building a place. In a few years we’ll both be ready for a bigger one.”

Longing to feel his lips against hers, she settled for giving him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m not interested in where we live or how big and comfy the house is. I just want to be your wife.”

Four

Lena knelt and dug her bare hands into the dirt, loosening the ground around her aster plants. Nicky lay near her, stretched out in the warm sun while dozing contentedly. The sight of blossoms and petals renewed and connected her to hope.

She scooped her own concoction of mulch, fertilizer, and potting soil out of a bucket and onto the needed areas. The feel and smell of the earth, along with the beauty of the flowers—the delicate blooms and the rich shades of the purples, blues, and pinks—soothed her frazzled nerves.

While trying to get over the hurt, she looked for some answers for Peter. But even if she did discover a way for him to learn, would he accept her help? He discounted her as a worthy being. Getting past that wouldn’t be easy, especially as he constantly made it easier for her to want little to do with him.

If she didn’t need to go see Aaron later tonight, she’d visit her friend Samantha. She and Samantha had met while Lena attended public school for a few years. Despite getting together only a couple of times a year and Samantha’s Englischer lifestyle, the women had a lot in common. In her work as a school counselor, Samantha always had a trick or two for dealing with difficult schoolchildren. Surely Samantha could help Lena push past Peter’s stinging remarks and find a way to reach him.

“Lennie?”

Her brother Allen called to her. His rather craggy voice sounded just like her other brothers, but without a glance she always knew when it was him. Only a handful of people called her Lennie—Allen and two of his best buddies. While still kneeling on the lush grass, she turned to see him walking toward her. “Ya?”

“I guess you didn’t hear me calling you. Is it noisy out here today?”

She wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. “Extremely so inside my head. Did you want something?”

“No. Just checkin’ on you.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Wow, are these from your greenhouse?”

She cleared her throat, refusing to laugh at her brother. He always meant well, but the man noticed almost nothing about her flower beds. It’d be her best guess that this was the first time he’d seen her asters, and she’d planted them here as seedlings two springs ago. “At one time they were from my greenhouse, ya.”

“I dropped by to visit you and Daed and was surprised you weren’t eating supper with him. If I cooked a meal, I’d eat it.”

“You sure about that? Because if
you
cooked a meal …”

He chuckled. “Okay, fine, Teacher Lena. If I were you and cooked a meal, I’d eat it.”

As sisters went, Lena had cooked a lot of meals for Allen over the years. After their Mamm died when Lena was ten, she began learning from her older sisters how to cook and run the house. Their community was never the same after that day—her brother most of all.

The day after their mother was killed, Lena heard odd noises coming from the attic. When she climbed the stairs, she found her big brother sobbing. He looked up and saw her, and she expected him to usher out threats and throw things at her. But there Allen was, sixteen years old, sitting on the floor of the attic, crying uncontrollably. When he caught his breath, he stammered through an apology for all his years of being mean to her, and then they cried together. Slowly he’d grown into a man worth having around, but like all her siblings, he had a family of his own now.

A rig turned into their driveway and ambled toward the house. Just the sight of Deborah Mast refreshed Lena’s spirits. Cara sat beside her. Lena hadn’t had much chance to get to know her yet.

Allen grabbed his suspenders. “Mahlon bailed on Deborah, and Ephraim broke up with Anna Mary for an outsider. For a while I feared all your closest friends would marry off, leaving you feeling like an outcast, but with all that heartache going on, maybe never dating isn’t such a bad thing.”

With soil covering Lena’s hands, she stood. “I know you were trying to say something nice, but …” She wiped her hands down the front of Allen’s shirt, pressing hard as she did so. “That’s all I have to say on the matter.”

“Lennie, Emily’s going to shake the rafters when she sees this,” Allen complained as he brushed off his shirt, taking extra time on the ground-in dirt.

Lena chuckled and walked toward the buggy, Nicky quietly shadowing every step she took. “Now this is a pleasant surprise.”

Deborah brought the horse to a halt, got out, and hugged Lena. Cara climbed out, holding on to a cake box.

“Hi, Cara.” Lena wasn’t sure whether to hug Cara or offer to shake her hand or just speak. No one but Ephraim really knew Cara. Since she now lived in Hope Crossing with Deborah and Ada, they were getting to know her. The rest of the Amish community was still grappling, trying to get past the awkwardness of Ephraim breaking up with one of their own to welcome an Englischer stranger into the fold. People left the Amish faith to join the world, but she’d never seen it work in reverse—although she’d heard of a few Englischers who’d spent months or a couple of years aiming to join, only to change their minds.

“Hey, Lena.” Cara passed the box to Deborah.

“We brought you something.” Deborah gave it to Lena. “I made two cakes with that recipe you gave me and brought you one.”

“Well, that’s very sweet and thoughtful. Denki.”

“Yep, that’s me.” Deborah placed her arm around Lena’s shoulder. “Let’s go in and share a bite. I want your opinion.”

“I wouldn’t care for any right now, but I’ll cut a slice for each of you.”

“Not care for any?” Deborah glanced to Cara. “How can you turn down my dessert? Ada is one of the best cooks ever, and she’s trained me for years.”

“Personally,” Allen said, having followed Lena from the garden, “I think she’s had a rough day at school.” With a glint in his eyes, he continued to brush dirt off his shirt, clearly letting Lena know he was telling Deborah as a payback for rubbing dirt on him. “Lennie, I’m going on home.”

“By all means, go home.” She kept a straight face as he chuckled.

Deborah guided her toward the house. “You need to try this cake. It’ll make me happy if you do.”

“I’m really not the least bit hungry. I’ll have some later tonight. May I cut a slice for you two?”

Deborah and Cara glanced at each other and shook their heads.

“We’ve already had plenty of the other one. Some of the scholars giving you trouble at school?” Deborah asked.

“Scholars?” Cara’s brows scrunched. “I know you are not talking about a class full of Rhodes scholars, so what is it?”

“That’s what you call students,” Deborah said. “We call them that too sometimes, but mostly we call them scholars. So are they being difficult, Lena?”

“A few.” They walked up the porch steps and into the house. Nicky zipped past them, heading for her doggy bed next to the stove.

Once they were in the kitchen, Cara took a seat at the island. “It’s a one-room schoolhouse with Amish kids. How bad can they be?”

Lena set the box on the counter. “Just because we dress plain and live simple doesn’t mean some of our youth don’t push every boundary there is.” She scrubbed her hands, taking note that her Daed had washed the dishes. After grabbing a kitchen towel out of a drawer, she sat on a barstool across from Deborah and Cara. Lena settled in, enjoying the banter.

After they’d talked for a while, Deborah gestured toward the cake. “You sure you don’t want to try a bite?”

“I’ll use the cake as a treat when the hard parts of the day are over.”

“What else needs to be done?” Cara asked.

“I have to see Aaron about his bull. It’s getting into the field nearest the school.”

Deborah made a face. “Again?”

“Ya.”

Deborah splayed her hands against the countertop. “We’d better go. You have things to do, and Cara didn’t travel for an hour with me just to spend her evening waiting to see when you’re going to eat that cake.”

“Again with the cake. What is it with you tonight?” Lena rose.

Cara brushed wisps of hair out of her face as she got up. “Lena, about that ca—”

“Cara.” Deborah jumped up. “We need to go.” She took Cara by the hand and pulled her toward the door. “We only had a minute to stop by. We went by Ephraim’s first, and I gave him my word I’d have Cara back real quicklike.”

Lena followed them onto the porch. Deborah shooed Cara to the rig and then gave Lena a quick hug. “Good to see you.”

If Lena didn’t know better, she’d be convinced Deborah was pulling some sort of prank on her. And it’d be a welcome relief if she felt up to pulling pranks again. “You didn’t even let me and Cara say a proper good-bye. Have you been spending too much time in a hot kitchen lately?”

“Maybe. But come see us in Hope Crossing this weekend if you can. Then you can say anything you wish to either of us. Bye.”

Perplexed, Lena remained on the porch. Maybe Deborah just realized it was getting late. “Bye.”

After watching Deborah and Cara’s buggy pull onto the road, Lena knew she couldn’t delay going to Aaron’s any longer. She went inside and washed her face before putting on a clean apron. After hurrying to the barn, she hitched her horse to the carriage. But before she left, she went back inside and grabbed the box containing the cake. She knew that talking to Aaron for the third time about his bull being in the wrong pasture would be easier if she had a gift in hand. Passing him one of Deborah’s desserts was a perfect plan, and surely Deborah wouldn’t mind the cake being used as a peace offering.

When she pulled into the Blanks’ lane, she noticed three rigs with horses tied to a couple of hitching posts. Clearly the Blanks had company, but all she needed to do was speak to Aaron for a moment. She looped Happy Girl’s reins around a small tree, grabbed the box containing the cake, and headed for the house. She knocked on the front door and waited.

Dora Blank opened the door. “Lena.” The fifty-something woman glanced behind her as if unsure what to do. “Were we expecting you?”

Lena held up the cake. “I need to see Aaron.”

“Oh.” She took a step back.

The moment Lena walked inside she understood Dora’s cool reception. The members of the school board—Michael Blank, Enos Beiler, Jake Fisher, and Grey Graber—were sitting at the large kitchen table. Three wives, including Dora, were with their husbands. Grey’s wife, who was Dora and Michael’s daughter, wasn’t there. For reasons Lena could only guess at, Elsie always avoided the school board gatherings. Maybe the meetings were too high-spirited for her more gentle nature.

The group appeared to be engaged in a serious conversation with Peter’s Mamm and Daed—Crist and Mollie Bender—and with Sylvan and Lillian Detweiler. She wouldn’t blame the Detweilers for being set against her. Her brief lapse in judgment last May could have cost them their oldest son’s life. Their son John and his three siblings had left their lunches at home. If she’d had enough food from her lunch as well as other scholars’ to feed them, as she’d done in the past, she’d have given it to them. But that day she’d only brought an apple, and she’d given it to the youngest Detweiler. No one else had extra in their pails either, so rather than letting them go hungry, she’d hitched her horse to its rig and told John to go back for the lunches. The Detweiler place is only a short distance from the school. But he must have been daydreaming, because her horse took over and automatically headed for home, her home, which meant the rig came to a four-way stop. Once at the four-way stop, John realized he’d gone the wrong way and slapped the reins on the horse’s back without realizing that he didn’t have the right of way and that a vehicle was coming. The car almost slid sideways trying to stop, and it nipped the back of the buggy, toppling the rig. Her horse came loose from the buggy and ran on home. John had a few bumps and bruises, and the people in the car took him home. It’d been a foolish mistake on her part, and the board had put her on probation for this school year, but surely they weren’t still reviewing that incident.