Alden was not about to wait around to see certainty become reality. He grabbed David Yoder, who was holding up a tent wall close by, probably watching over his sisters. He explained in a rapid undertone what to do. When Dave obligingly agreed to be Seth and Rodney’s “encourager,” he fled the quilt auction as fast as he could.
He had to find somewhere to be alone. To breathe. To recover from the most stressful ten minutes of his life, with a crashing disappointment bringing up the rear like the stinger in a scorpion’s tail.
Going into the schoolhouse, full of food displays and likely a good percentage of the church district’s women, was out of the question. The furniture tent was a possibility, especially now that he hadn’t blown a month’s income on a quilt. But in the end there was nothing quite as comforting as the neat stacks of used parts and farm equipment, set in orderly piles in the level lot behind the schoolhouse where, in winter, the scholars banked up snow to make a hockey rink.
It took a good fifteen minutes for the shaking in his hands to calm. And for him to recognize that his dizziness was probably the result of his breakfast wearing off.
He didn’t know how to explain his hot, red face. The closest he could come was grief.
Over being outbid on a quilt.
He could have handled it better if it had been the lady in the green windbreaker. But to lose Malena’s beautiful quilt to Cord McLean? To lose what was probably his best opportunity to show her he cared?
Head down, thankful for the brim of his straw hat, he closed his eyes and struggled to keep the tears at bay.
“Alden? Bischt du okay?”
The familiar voice of Zach Miller forced his eyes open. His friend had ambled up right beside him and Alden hadn’t even been aware of it. One shoulder bumped his, offering support.
“Ja.” He drew a breath that was more like a gasp. “I’m okay.”
“That was some show in the quilt auction,” Zach said easily. “It’s getting quite the reputation for excitement. Pretty soon people will come just for the drama, not for our school.”
In spite of Alden’s emotional turmoil, the corners of his lips twitched. “Were you there?”
“Yep. The whole family got to see my sister’s quilt set a record.” From his tone, he wasn’t sure this was such a gut thing.
“You saw who won the bidding.”
“I did. I wish it had been you. At least you’d have a use for it. I can’t imagine a movie star knowing what to do with a quilt. He’ll probably hang it on the wall.”
“I hope he has a wall, then.” He found himself strolling next to Zach without quite knowing how he’d got moving.
“I spent all yesterday with him, riding fence. He’s got walls, all right. A bunch of them in a two-million-dollar house. Someplace called Seal Beach. Pretending to be someone else pays pretty well, I guess.”
“Good for him,” Alden said morosely.
Zach eyed him. “I’m not someone who pokes his nose into other people’s business, but … whoa. What possessed you?”
Alden sighed. If only Julie were here to explain her oh-so-smart makeover theory. “I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I?”
“Well, if Little Joe had announced your wedding date in church last week, I could kind of see it. But every Amish person in that tent knows you, and half of them had trouble keeping their eyes in their heads every time your hand went up.”
Alden raised his face to heaven, but the blue skies merely smiled down on him. “I saw my mother and sisters’ faces. And even that didn’t stop me. You said it right, Zach. I must have been possessed.”
“Auction fever,” his friend said comfortingly. “It happens.”
“I always thought of myself as a rational guy. Prudent, even. Cautious with my money, always trying to get the best deal for my dollar. But in there? All that went out the window. All I could think of was keeping her quilt out of his hands. No matter what it took.”
“It’s a nice quilt,” Zach agreed. “Or is there more to it than that?”
Alden realized that he should have reined in his mouth about five minutes ago.
“I think you showed pretty much everyone in the district that you have feelings for my sister,” Zach said. “It was news to me. Was it to Malena?”
“Probably.” He prodded an antique plow blade with the toe of his boot. “She doesn’t know I’m alive.”
Zach chuckled. “She does now. Every girl in the district does. And by tonight, every girl in St Ignatius and beyond will, too.”
None of the others mattered. But he couldn’t very well say that to Malena’s brother. “How am I going to look her in the face? Maybe I’d better skip the singing tomorrow.”
“That’ll leave a seat free for Cord, I guess.”
Shock tingled down Alden’s neck. “What?”
“Apparently he’s interested in going. Something about singing glees and the nineteen forties. I don’t know. Doesn’t make much sense to me, but then, nobody is asking what I think.”
Alden’s despondency abruptly kindled into something hotter. “Cord McLean no more belongs at Bontragers’ tomorrow night than I do in a movie theater.”
Zach shrugged. “Nothing in the Ordnung says that an Englischer can’t come to singing. In some places back east, they’re even welcome in church, and the preacher gives the sermon in Englisch.”
But Alden didn’t care about other places. He cared about the Siksika, and Cord McLean weaseling his way in where he didn’t belong.
“I can’t take it,” he muttered. “I’m going to hitch up and go.”
“Do Rose and the girls have a ride home?”
“They brought the family buggy. I’ve got the wagon for the things I bid on.”
“All right. If I see one of them, I’ll tell them.”
He managed to nod before he made his escape across to the pasture, where Joseph was surprised to have his enjoyment of the grass interrupted. “Come on, mei freind,” he told the animal as he led him over to the wagon. “I’m no company for anyone just now. But you’ve got broad shoulders, haven’t you?”
Joseph nodded as Alden backed him in, then fastened the buckles, and ten minutes later they were on their way. At a much faster clip than the horse was accustomed to.
Malena didn’t know how she got through the rest of the auction. She moved like a puppet—pegging quilts up and then taking them down. Up, then down. She had no idea who bid on what, or what the amounts were. Not after the sale of lot six. She had never felt so verhuddelt in all her life—not even this past Christmas, when Joshua had found a baby in a basket on the back porch.
When the buyers began trickling in from the cashier’s shed, she asked Julie Stolzfus, who looked as pale and wide-eyed as she probably did, to take over her job pegging up the quilts with Ruby. As the person in charge of the quilt auction, it was now time for her to check the buyer’s receipt and hand over a quilt to its new owner.
Glacier Lily’s buyer didn’t show up after the woman who had won the bid for lot five took her quilt. Which was just as well, for the woman was so thrilled that she could hardly stop talking. Lot seven came and went, and by the time the bidding began on lot eleven, Earth and Stars—she was seriously beginning to wonder if Cord was coming for his quilt at all.
He had to come. They couldn’t very well accept his two thousand dollars and not give him the quilt.
Her quilt. Her beautiful Glacier Lily, that she had so hoped—
No, she couldn’t let that thought roost in her mind. Alden had been forced to stop bidding and thank goodness for that. She was glad he’d dropped out. It was an outrageous amount of money, and only someone like Cord McLean would spend it in such a reckless way, good cause or not. She had been astounded that Alden had wanted the quilt enough to spend two hundred dollars, for pity’s sake.
But as the bidding had climbed, she’d become more and more frantic. She’d wanted to shout, “Stop! You can’t afford to bid against him!”
But of course she hadn’t. It wasn’t her place. She wasn’t his wife, or even his special friend.
As it was, the whole debacle would be talked of for months. He would never hear the end of it, and worse, every eye would be on her, looking for signs of Schtaat. Pride. The quilter whose work had set a record at the school auction.
Is she getting a swelled head? people would ask among themselves.
More important, will she raise the prices of her quilts? That’ll show she thinks she’s somebody now.
Malena nearly groaned aloud. Hadn’t Rose predicted that very thing the other day in the quilt shop? Maybe she’d better have a word with her about knocking a hundred dollars off the price of the one in the window. Maybe—
“Are you going to give that to me, or make me work even harder for it?”
She came out of her panicked reverie to find herself once again holding the Glacier Lily protectively against her chest, like a baby, with no memory of having picked it up. She raised her gaze to see Cord McLean standing there, hipshot, a cocky grin on his face. Behind him was the man with the big camera on his shoulder.
In one movement, she brought the quilt up high enough to hide everything but her eyes.
It was now protecting her.
“Ease up, Kyle, my friend,” Cord said over his shoulder. “Shoot her from behind while we do this, okay?”
“I don’t want to be in your film,” she got out, her breath beating on the thin plastic around the quilt.
“No one will know it’s you,” he assured her. “There are half a dozen girls wearing dresses and bonnets just like yours.”
The seafoam green had been popular among her and Rebecca’s buddy bunch, all right. But none of them had intractably curly red hair that always managed to escape their Kapp. And it wasn’t a bonnet. Bonnets were black, and worn when you went to town. But she had no voice to correct him.
He made a show of taking the quilt from her, smiling over her shoulder at the camera. “Glacier Lily will look amazing in my house,” he told it in what must be his actor’s voice. “It will always remind me of Lincoln County, the Siksika Valley, and of a pretty Amish quilter whose name I can’t say.”
Let me out of here.
But she couldn’t leave. She had work to do. “Cord, a line is forming behind you. Please let these ladies collect their quilts.”
Thank goodness he was still acting. Like a gentleman, he laid the quilt over one arm and walked away with it, the camera following every move.
“That was Cord McLean.” The woman in the green windbreaker, who had won the bid on Earth and Stars, was goggle-eyed. “Was that your quilt he outbid me on?”
“Yes.” Malena checked the receipt and handed over the quilt, managing to remember to smile.
“You’re so lucky,” the teenager with the woman said on a sigh. “Now you’re connected to him through your art.”
“I don’t think an Amish girl is allowed to be any such thing, honey,” the woman said.
Malena only gave a weak tremble of the lips that she hoped looked like a smile, and the pair walked off. At least the woman looked happy with the quilt she’d won the bid on.
The auction ended at noon, but it took until nearly one to check everyone’s receipts and clear the shelves in the back of the purchased quilts. Four still remained, looking lonely without their fellows.
“It happens every year,” Ruby said. “People don’t want to carry things around, I guess, and leave them here until closing.”
“But the flower sale is next,” Malena said. “They could get lost in all the coming and going.”
“I know.” Ruby shrugged. “But we can’t very well stay here and guard them. Let’s leave them with Mamm. That way, when they go to pay, it will save them a trip back here. I’m starving. Want to get some lunch?”
“Ja. We’ll each take two.”
Sadie promised to keep the quilts safe, and their little group headed for the schoolhouse, where the food vendors, both Amish and Englisch, were selling not only neatly wrapped baked goods, fruit, and vegetables, but there was a counter for hot food, too. Remembering what Susan had said, Malena sampled the Zook brothers’ new goat cheese. Definitely delicious. But what was really satisfying was a Reuben sandwich from the hot food counter, melting with cheese and stuffed with so much pastrami and sauerkraut she could hardly get her mouth around it.
The sandwich hadn’t been named after Dat, of course. But she enjoyed it partly because of its name.
At the sink outside, she found herself washing her hands next to Julie Stolzfus. Who looked troubled.
“I want to talk with you about something,” she said hesitantly. “Do you mind if we don’t go back in right away?”
“Not at all.” It felt gut to stand in the shade of the oak tree that had sheltered the schoolhouse for years before she’d even been born. Mothers with small, exhausted children sat in the grass under it, enjoying the shade and people watching, greeting friends, and talking among themselves. Sara Fischer was one of them, and there was Mamm, laughing as baby Deborah tasted a spoonful of ice cream and withdrew in horror at the cold.
The Yoders’ ice cream freezing contraption, which ran on a gas-powered engine, stood under a canopy right next to them, chugging away while David Yoder and his mother did a brisk business. Malena tried not to appear as though she was looking over the line of customers for Alden.
“Are you waiting for someone?” Julie asked.
Malena blushed. “Neh. Someone said they’d buy me an ice cream cone, but we didn’t really set a time. I heard it was strawberry cheesecake.”
“Ja, it is.” Julie nibbled on the inside of her cheek, then seemed to make up her mind. “Please don’t think I’m butting in. I’m not, truly. But I thought you’d want to know that my brother has gone home.”
Another girl might have asked, Why would you think that?
Another girl might have said, Who is your brother, again?
But Malena had never been very good at prevaricating. Not with words. And certainly not in her face, which Mamm had often said was more than a window to her soul—it was an open door, letting everybody see exactly what was inside.
All she said was, “Oh.” But Julie could still read her face.
“I’m sorry. I’m sure he is, too. I know he really wanted to buy you that ice cream. But after this morning—”
When she didn’t go on, Malena said, “The auction?”
Julie took a breath, then blew it out. “This is me talking. I don’t know what he really thinks. But he made a spectacle of himself. I think he’s afraid to face you.”
“Why should he be afraid? We’re friends.”
“Yes. That’s the problem.”
Malena was beginning to wonder if she was going to have to shake whatever Julie wanted to say out of her, the way she shook Grossmammi’s stubborn Pippin to make an apple fall. “There’s a problem?”
“I tried to tell him. An ice cream is one thing. But nearly two thousand dollars is a whole other thing.”
Malena gave up. “Just spit it out, Julie. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“I told him, start small. With an ice cream cone. Something she likes. Then go from there. I never meant he should go crazy and do—that.” She waved at the auction tent, where the flower sale was getting under way.
“Are you telling me … you gave Alden advice on …” She hardly knew how to finish. Color was already tingling into her cheeks and down her neck.
“On beginning a courtship. Letting you know he likes you. Once he’d bought you the ice cream, then I was to ask you if you’d like a ride home with him after singing tomorrow.”
Only he’d gone home. Before any of that could happen.
Maybe he didn’t want to face her after making a spectacle of himself, like Julie said. Or maybe the whole thing had shown him that liking her would only get him into trouble. That she wasn’t worth what it was going to do to his reputation, even now. Who knew—maybe liking her would result in his losing business. Because once again, she was too much. Too noticeable. Not humble and self-effacing like an Amish woman was supposed to be.
“What do you think, Malena? Is that still possible? A ride home?”
With God all things are possible. But in this situation, it seemed, she was going to have to take that on faith.
“I don’t think so, Julie,” she said at last. “Cord McLean wants to come with us. So we’ll have to babysit him. And make sure he doesn’t bring his camera crew with him.”
And after that, she didn’t have the heart to rejoin the other girls at the picnic table. So she simply walked away and in a minute, lost sight of Julie’s woebegone face in the crowd.
Alden had used a rope and pulley assembly he’d built to lift the iron stock and the drill press out of the wagon, and then made Joseph comfortable in his stall at the back of the shop until it was time for them both to go home. It wasn’t even three o’clock. So he’d opened up the shop, put the rack of wrought-iron kitchen implements outside the door to attract walk-ins, and busied himself getting organized for the jobs he had lined up the following week.
He tried to imagine how he would feel if he now owned Malena’s quilt but couldn’t pay the rent. But that was a dead-end road, wasn’t it? He didn’t own it, and the money would be in the bank on the thirty-first. He couldn’t say he was happy about either fact, though.
Maybe the unhappiness could be laid at Cord McLean’s door. Was it really true that he was coming to singing? But Zach had said so, and if anyone would know, it would be him.
Alden sighed and laid out the three work orders, one of which was shoeing the second string of the Rocking Diamond trail horses with Doc MacDonald. It would take a couple of days. The pay was gut, and if he could just avoid the movie star, he would be satisfied.
Someone stepped into the doorway and cast a shadow into the shop. Someone in a dress.
He looked up with a businesslike smile, expecting an Englisch tourist, and blinked the sun dazzle out of his eyes. His stomach did a backflip.
“Alden?” Malena said. “Are you open?”
“Ja. Figured I might as well be, since I was here.”
“Why did you leave so early?”
“Why did you?” And how did she get here?
“I asked first.” She stepped inside, still in the sunbeam, which made the curls escaping her Kapp look like they were on fire.
“I was disappointed about losing the bidding,” he blurted. Even if he’d wanted to try to save face, she could probably see the truth written all over him. Besides, saving face was a prideful habit.
“I’m glad you lost,” she said fiercely, taking two steps toward him as he stood at the order desk. “If you’d been unable to pay your bills because of me, I’d have been so upset, you can’t even imagine.”
“It wouldn’t have been because of you,” he said. “The money goes to the school.”
“But it was my quilt. Honestly, Alden, I’ll make you one if you want it. You don’t have to bankrupt yourself.”
She made it sound so easy. As though creating beauty like that didn’t matter very much. When all those hours of work made it matter deeply. At least, to him. Funny to think that maybe to her, it really was just a quilt.
He had to change the subject, and right now.
“How did you get to town?” He moved away from the desk, from her, and wandered over to the smithing furnace, which of course was cold.
“Cord gave me a ride.”
That was the last thing he’d been expecting. When his mouth opened but nothing came out, she smiled.
“I know. I was walking through the parking lot heading for the road, and he was putting Glacier Lily in the cab of his truck. Thank goodness the camera people were already pulling out.”
“Maybe he figured that if there was no camera, there was no point in staying.”
“Maybe. It wouldn’t surprise me. But he asked if I was leaving and could he give me a ride home. I said I was going into town, so he dropped me off at the variety store.”
And what had happened in those five miles that she wasn’t mentioning? He’d seen them together. He gazed down at the work orders without seeing them. “Do you need something?”
“I need to talk to you. But on the way…”
Something in her tone made his stomach twist like a wrung-out dishcloth. “What happened?”
A flush burned into her cheeks. “He kept his hands to himself, if that’s what you mean. But he asked me out. Can you imagine?”
He sure could. The sheer nerve, the complete wrongness of it made the air back up in Alden’s lungs.
“He said he still had the private cabin booked because his trainer isn’t here. He asked if I wanted to come over and watch one of his movies tonight. The carriage-racing one. He’d have the cook bring us dinner and we could eat on … our laps, I guess.”
He thought of the Miller dinner table, of their own at home, full of conversation and laughter and sometimes argument, but always love. Who asked a girl out just to watch TV and not talk? You asked her out on a date to get to know her, not to show off the fact you were in a movie.
Mind you, the last thing Alden wanted was for Cord McLean to get to know Malena at all. She was Amish. A church member. Surely she wasn’t considering it. “What did you say?”
“I said no, of course. What do you think? I told him Dat would never allow it. And then he said that he’d come over and talk to him, reassure him that everything would be above board.”
Alden could just imagine Reuben’s reaction to that.
“So is he going to?”
“He would have, so I had to think of something else, really fast. He’s used to getting what he wants. I had to find a way to make him stop this foolishness once and for all, or he’d never quit asking. Just like in cowboy training. The man never stops until he gets his own way.”
“So … what did you do?”
The flush deepened in her face.
He waited, unsure whether he wanted to hear the answer. I said yes after all.
She took a deep breath. “I said I couldn’t, tonight or any night, because I had a boyfriend.”
He stared at her. “You do? I’ve never heard a word.”
“That’s because he doesn’t exist. Yet. So I came here to ask you, and hope to goodness you won’t make a liar out of me.”
Her words echoed in his head, but he couldn’t make them make sense.
“None of our friends have to know. You know how the Youngie are. Private. We don’t go flaunting our special friends in singing or making a big show of holding hands in public. Well, except for Susan. And she doesn’t seem to care about anyone’s opinion but Simeon’s.”
Alden didn’t care two hoots about Susan’s pursuit of Simeon King. He was still trying to recover from the fact that Malena Miller was asking him to be her special friend, not because she liked him, but because she needed a way to fend off Cord McLean.
“Please?” Those eyes the color of alpine gentians gazed up at him, pleading. “Just for two weeks. Just until he’s gone. And then we can go back to normal.”
Normal was never going to be normal again.
“What … would I have to do?”
Her shoulders relaxed and the strained look around her eyes began to smooth out. “Well, I haven’t really thought it through. Drive me home from singing, I guess, to start with? Julie said you wanted to ask.”
So his sister had done her part, even after he’d fled the school grounds. He had better make her something nice this week, as a thank-you.
“That’s what gave me the idea,” she went on. “I thought maybe you were the one person who wouldn’t laugh and tell me I was going overboard.”
“I don’t think you are,” he said. “What about your family, though?”
“I’ll just say as little as possible. Maybe you might come in Sunday night, for a snack. After all, you stayed for Kaffee the other day. Mamm wouldn’t be very surprised.”
She might if she knew what her daughter was up to. But Alden’s mind was moving now, like the wind across the grassy meadows. Two weeks. He had two weeks of being Malena’s fake boyfriend. Of being as close to her as he could ever dream, but had never really believed could happen.
In two weeks, could he show her his heart? Would she discover that, like him, she wanted a real relationship, not a fake one? That she could run toward him, not simply away from somebody else?
Alden made up his mind.
“All right,” he said, with a smile. “Special friends it is, for two weeks. Let’s think about ways we can show him we’re a couple. On Sunday we’ll make some plans, nix?”
Malena’s relief and delight were a glow that warmed his spirits like a fire on a winter morning. “I could just hug you.”
A sound assaulted his ears—one he’d heard before. “Now’s your time. I can hear his truck coming. Let’s stand in the doorway and give him something to think about.”
And just as the big Ford went past, Malena flung herself into his arms.
For the first time, Alden held her, warm and vibrant and full of life. It almost made up for the fact that it was all an act.
For now.