Chapter Seventeen

ELEANOR STARED OUT the window of the large car as they pulled into the driveway of the Peacheys’ house. Just as Charlotte had described, the little cream-colored house was located within walking distance of the small town of Honey Brook, but the town was really nothing more than a few commercial buildings along the busier section of the main road.

Their street seemed quiet, and off in the distance, Eleanor could see the remains of what must have been a very large field of corn belonging to an Amish neighbor. Soon the leftover cornstalks would fade to brown and be cut down, with tiny stubs left in the ground until the earth was plowed for next year’s crops.

Seeing the farm in the distance helped Eleanor release some of the tension she felt as the driver stopped the car in front of the Peacheys’ residence.

It was a pretty house with flower boxes outside each of the windows that faced the road and a covered porch with two white rocking chairs. Large hanging ferns provided some privacy from the ever-present prying eyes of summer tourists, although Eleanor sensed that, like most areas of Lancaster County, there were fewer tourists now that the summer season was over. Children were back at school, and most of the Englischers had used up their vacation days. That meant that life could proceed at a normal pace.

“Here we are, girls!” Widow Jennings announced as she opened the passenger-side door and started to extract herself.

“Indeed,” Eleanor said softly.

She hadn’t wanted to travel to Honey Brook and certainly did not want to stay there for an extended visit. She knew how close it was to Narvon, and while she hoped Mary Ann could reconnect with her beau, Eleanor certainly did not fancy running into any members of the Fisher family. Subdued and quiet, Eleanor took a deep breath before getting out of the car. It would be a long few days in the company of Widow Jennings and her equally talkative daughter, Charlotte, of that she was sure and certain.

For all of Eleanor’s apprehensions, Mary Ann seemed more vibrant than she had since Willis’s unexpected departure from the cottage in Quarryville. During the car ride she had tapped her fingers on the seat between them as she looked out the window, watching everything and seeing nothing, Eleanor suspected.

No sooner had they been greeted by the Peachey family and shown to their rooms than Mary Ann excused herself and hurried to the mailbox, to Eleanor’s embarrassment. Watching from the window, Eleanor could only shake her head at her sister. After placing a small envelope in it, Mary Ann raised the red flag to indicate that the postal person should pick up a letter for delivery.

Eleanor didn’t have to ask whose address was on the envelope. She knew it was addressed to Willis.

“Really, Mary Ann,” Eleanor whispered when her sister returned to the house from the mailbox. “We haven’t even been here ten minutes! Where is your restraint? And when will he receive it anyway?”

Ignoring her sister’s harsh reprimand, Mary Ann breezed past her and hurried up the stairs to unpack her bag in the room assigned to them.

“Tsk, tsk,” Widow Jennings said from the doorway of the sitting room. “A husband won’t be caught without some display of prudence.”

Eleanor fought the urge to roll her eyes.

“I dare say,” Charlotte called from the sitting room. She stood at the window, gazing outside. “I can’t believe our good fortune! There is Lydia on her way to visit!” She laughed and clapped her hands together. “How wonderful to have a house of merriment once more!”

“Once more?” Surprised at her hostess’s choice of words, Eleanor looked over at Charlotte. “Why once more?”

“Ach, we haven’t had so many visitors since our first boppli! We used to have so many! But once the first boppli comes along, everything changes! And then a second and a third and a fourth!” Charlotte laughed gaily. “With so many kinner, the energy in our house has just chased the visitors away, it seems!” She turned toward her husband, leaning over to tap his arm. “Right, my dear?”

Her husband sat in his ratty brown recliner, the local newspaper in his hands. At Charlotte’s question, his expression remained dour. “Mayhaps you chase them all away with your prattle,” he mumbled, more to himself than to anyone else.

His comment shocked Eleanor. Raising her head, she looked at him, only partially surprised to see that he continued reading the paper. For a moment she wondered if she had heard him correctly, for he remained perfectly calm as if he had not spoken at all.

However, she knew his words were not imagined when Charlotte responded, “Oh, help! Listen to you!” She laughed and waved her hand at him. “Chasing away visitors! Maem, did you hear him?”

Widow Jennings did not respond; she merely raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips.

“A deaf man could hear you,” her husband said under his breath and turned the page of the newspaper.

Despite Eleanor clearly hearing his words, Charlotte seemed oblivious to the lack of affection and, in Eleanor’s opinion, outright ill-mannered behavior displayed by her husband. She continued chattering, declaring more than once her happiness in seeing both of the Detweiler sisters and asking Eleanor about her mother and younger sister at least two times. Before they could answer, she laughed and changed the subject, talking to her mother again.

Three young boys ran into the room and raced toward their father, who merely scowled at them, shooing them away in an abrupt manner that indicated his lack of affection toward his wife extended to his offspring. When they began to run around his chair, laughing loudly as they tried to grab at each other, Eleanor quickly understood why.

“Oh, honestly!” Charlotte shook her head and gave a quick tsk-tsk with her tongue at her husband.

Eleanor thought she heard him grunt.

“Come, boys,” Charlotte said, her arms opened wide and a smile on her lips. Immediately the boys stopped their roughhousing and hurried to their mother’s side. The way they stared at her made Eleanor suspect they had not spotted the stranger when they ran into the room. “Meet Eleanor Detweiler. Now you boys will mind your manners while the Detweilers are here, ja?”

The eldest of the three boys nodded his head, his eyes wide as he stared at the stranger seated before his mother. The other two boys remained silent, the smallest of them lifting his bare foot to scratch the back of his leg with his toe. Eleanor suspected that not one of the three knew much about minding their manners at all, especially when their father looked up from the paper and, on seeing his wife doting over his sons, rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Now run along and play outside.” Charlotte watched as they scampered toward the door, each one trying to outrace the other as they hurried to escape the confines of the house. Once the back door slammed shut, Charlotte sighed and turned to Eleanor. “Such good boys. I absolutely dote on them!”

Eleanor wasn’t certain about that, and when Charlotte’s husband grumbled under his breath, she thought she heard the word spoiled, an assessment that she thought might be a touch more accurate than Charlotte’s description of her sons as “good.”

Forgetting about her three sons, Charlotte switched her attention back to Eleanor. In the hallway Mary Ann’s footsteps on the stairs announced that she was returning downstairs. “But they are too young and not as interesting as you young women!” Charlotte said, her expression lighting up as Mary Ann entered the room. “Isn’t it so, Mammi?”

Widow Jennings nodded her head. “Oh, ja!” She leaned forward and directed her next comments toward Eleanor and Mary Ann, who took the empty seat beside her sister. “It was a sad day when Charlotte was married. I had no more young women to marry off!”

Charlotte laughed, covering her mouth with her hand in delight.

“But now I have both you and Mary Ann to see properly settled!”

Eleanor bit her tongue from responding that she didn’t want or need Widow Jennings’s help in securing a husband. God would do that for her according to His plan, not hers. But not wanting to sound ungrateful, she remained silent, although she was certain her cheeks turned pink.

Fortunately she didn’t have to respond, and the conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Who’s that, Charlotte?” Widow Jennings asked.

Without wasting one second, Charlotte quickly rose to her feet and crossed the room. “Oh, Mammi! We have so much baking to do for the fund-raiser tomorrow. What’s a baking party without more people?” With that she disappeared into the hallway toward the front door.

Widow Jennings leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. “She always was my social butterfly!” The satisfied look on her face expressed her pleasure with Charlotte. “Not like Leah,” she added. “At least Jacob makes up for that!”

To Eleanor’s dismay Lydia swept into the room, her angelic face and sparkling eyes immediately seeking Eleanor’s. “Oh, we’ve been so looking forward to this!” She greeted Charlotte and Widow Jennings before directing her attention solely to Eleanor. “I think this will be a great weekend! It’s so nice to visit with good friends. And for such a wunderbarr cause, don’t you think?”

While Eleanor wouldn’t consider any of the women in the room good friends, she did smile at the enthusiasm with which their visit was greeted. And even though she felt the pain of knowing Lydia was courting Edwin, Eleanor tried to look past her own suffering to see the good in the woman. Baking for charity was not something malicious and ungodly people did. Besides, she could only blame herself for having misread Edwin’s friendship for something more. That was not Lydia’s fault, Eleanor reminded herself.

But try as she might, Eleanor still had a hard time warming up to Lydia. Whenever Lydia tried to work alongside her, Eleanor remembered that Lydia was Edwin’s fiancée. Unbeknownst to the other women in the kitchen, Eleanor’s heart broke over and over again during the course of the afternoon.

She tried to focus on baking chocolate chip cookies and double fudge brownies to donate to the local firehouse for their fund-raiser. Thankfully the atmosphere in the kitchen was one of camaraderie and friendship. Forcing Edwin from her mind, Eleanor listened to Charlotte and Widow Jennings banter back and forth, telling stories about different people in their family. And while Eleanor considered it gossip, she couldn’t help but smile at their expressiveness in describing the events.

“A skunk in the house?” Lydia covered her mouth when she laughed just a little too gaily for Eleanor’s taste. “And it sprayed them?”

Charlotte nodded her head. “Ja, they had to replace the sofa and everyone took baths in tomato juice!”

Even Mary Ann laughed. “Oh, help! I couldn’t imagine such a scene!”

Widow Jennings used a spatula to remove the latest batch of cookies from the metal sheet, transferring them onto a wire rack to cool. “When you live in the country, you need to keep the screen door shut! Otherwise you never know what will wander in!” She looked up and made a face. “Including people!”

Charlotte opened a cabinet, and not finding what she was looking for, she sighed. “Eleanor, would you mind running down the basement steps, please? I must have left my containers down there at the bottom of the stairs. I need at least six of them for transporting these to the firehouse tomorrow.”

“I’ll help her,” Lydia volunteered.

The last thing Eleanor wanted was time alone with Lydia. Unfortunately it was the one thing Lydia seemed to seek out all day. Now, as they walked down the basement stairs to an area of the house where Lydia could bare her deepest and darkest secrets to her, Eleanor felt even worse. Her heart ached at the thought of Lydia standing before her g’may, Edwin on her right side, as the bishop read the vows of matrimony. Being near Lydia made it even harder on Eleanor. But true to her nature she maintained her composure and smiled at the woman who guided her toward the basement.

“Oh, Eleanor,” Lydia gushed when they got to the bottom of the staircase. “Such news! I have been practically exploding so that I could share it with you.”

Eleanor braced herself.

“You’ll never guess who has returned to his family home!” Like a young teenage girl on rumschpringe, Lydia clapped her hands together and bounced on the balls of her feet. “Edwin! And I am certain he will attend the event tomorrow! Won’t that be just wunderbarr?”

“Certainly,” Eleanor managed to say, her eyes scanning the shelves for the containers. While she tried to remain calm and unemotional, her insides churned. How could she possibly face Edwin knowing he was to marry Lydia? The pain and humiliation of having thought he was truly interested in her, then finding he was already committed to another, was greater than any person should bear.

Lydia’s giddy mood suddenly changed. A cloud seemed to pass over her face, and despite having found the containers, Eleanor felt compelled to linger a moment to inquire further.

“Are you all right, then?”

“Ja, I reckon,” Lydia said with an overly dramatic sigh. “It’s just that . . . vell. . . something has happened and I feel so terrible.” She walked toward the shelves where the canned goods and unused Tupperware containers were stacked. She reached up and ran her finger along the tops of the neat rows of canned chow-chow, applesauce, and meats. “When Edwin was away helping his sister, Fanny, and brother-in-law, John, with the farm, I met his brother, Roy.”

“Oh?”

Lydia nodded and turned around to face her. “He attended a youth gathering and asked to take me home. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, Eleanor, so I went. How uncomfortable that will be after Edwin and I marry! Roy will be ever so embarrassed since he sought me out,” she tittered. “Obviously Edwin never told him that he was courting me. So what am I to do, Eleanor?” She looked up at Eleanor with her large brown eyes. “I hate to offend him or to hurt either brother. I do love Edwin so!”

Eleanor forced a small smile. “I am sure you do, Lydia.” She reached up for the Tupperware and handed one container to Lydia. The irony of Edwin’s intended seeking relationship advice from her was not lost on Eleanor. Given the state of her own heart, she was, after all, the last person to advise another on matters related to love. “I’m sure Roy will understand when”—she paused as she tried to gain the strength to say his name—“Edwin announces your betrothal to the family.”

Delighted with Eleanor’s response Lydia laughed and clutched the container to her chest. “Oh, you’ve made me feel ever so much better! I simply couldn’t have my future brother-in-law think I snubbed him as inferior!”

When Lydia turned and walked toward the stairs, a new lightness in her step, Eleanor took a deep breath. Was that the reason Edwin had never told her about his betrothal to Lydia? Had he felt that she, Eleanor Detweiler, was inferior and therefore easy to snub? For a moment her heartache turned to anger and disappointment. How could Edwin have treated her in such a callous manner?

But just as quickly, the negative thoughts disappeared.

Carrying the plastic containers in her arms, Eleanor started up the stairs to return to the kitchen. She couldn’t blame Edwin for the way she felt. He had neither asked for her affection nor misled her in any way. He had offered friendship, not marriage. He had shown kindness, not disdain. Yet as she ascended the staircase, she couldn’t help but wonder why, despite his proper conduct that defied the need for any reproach, she still felt such an aching pain deep within her heart.