CHAPTER 3
“It’s a fine filly you brought through last night.”
Matthew heard his fater’s praise through the tired fog in his brain as he leaned against the barn rail watching the new mother mare clean her baby with diligence.
“Jah, danki.”
His dat clapped him on the shoulder, and Matthew heard Simon laugh when he jumped. He glared at his younger bruder and longed for the warmth of Laurel’s arms about him, a fair fantasy to ward off the chill of the icy morning.
“I thought I’d best mend fence with you buwes today out in the north pasture. It should keep us busy until suppertime,” his fater mused. “Your mamm’s baking beans and bacon.”
Matthew nodded, then recalled his planned clandestine meeting with Laurel and the bishop. He snapped to abrupt alertness. “Uh, Daed, nee—I mean, um, it’s so cold. Why not let Simon and me have at the fences and you could stay in with Mamm and shave a few more shingles for the front roof? Besides—I, uh—have been wanting some alone time to talk with Simon. . . .” Matthew lowered his voice to a whisper. “The buwe’s been asking questions about girls lately.”
“Hmm? You don’t say . . .”
“What was that?” Simon asked, jumping down from the fence rail.
Matthew caught him by the back of his jacket. “It’s all right, Simon. Perfectly normal. Let’s get going and give Dat a break.”
Simon opened his mouth, and Matthew closed his eyes, waiting for the words to come that would reveal his love for Laurel. But to his cautious surprise, he opened his eyes to see Simon simply give an exaggerated yawn.
Matthew’s stomach dropped back into place and he gave his bruder a wry grin.
They headed out to harness the horses while their father went back inside the main house. Matthew cuffed Simon lightly on the shoulder when their dat was out of sight. “Danki, little bruder.”
Simon scowled. “I’m younger than you be, but I ain’t no snitch.”
Matthew laughed aloud. “Gut. I wouldn’t want you any other way.”
John Beider entered the warm and fragrant kitchen to find his wife, Ellie, putting the final touches on a cheerful wicker basket with dark green tissue paper. She smiled at him briefly, but he could tell by the way she hummed that her mind was already on ahead to the women’s quilting frolic being held that day.
“I could run you over to Deborah Esch’s for the doings, if you’d like,” he offered, but she brushed him aside with a quick buss on his cheek.
“It’s a faster walk and I’m running late already. Mind you stir the beans now and then.”
She bustled to the door and was off in a flurry of her thick cloak. John sighed aloud at the sudden silence of the haus. I hate to be alone . . . always have, right, Lord? The sudden echoing report of a shotgun from a distance outside startled him, and he smiled grimly to himself. Somebody hunting nearby most likely. He used to like to hunt—once upon a time, and long ago. But the thought stirred up a flurry of unpleasant memories within him and he blew out a breath of exasperation; there were some places in his mind that he knew better than to tread upon....
“Time I shaved a few shingles,” he muttered aloud, trying to comfort himself with the sound of his own voice. Then a knock at the door gave him welcome diversion. He squinted through Ellie’s window curtains and broke into a smile. It was Tab King, a grizzled elder of the community who was always ready for a talk. John began to whistle. The day began to look up a bit.
Laurel relaxed into the comfortable hubbub of Deborah Esch’s kitchen. A large, wooden quilting frame had been set up, taking up nearly every inch of the room, but the women of the community jostled about with gut cheer as they found seats around the beautiful quilt and took up their needles with the ease of long expertise.
Laurel was glad to recognize the pattern in the fabric as Christmas roses. The quilt was for Grossmuder May, the elder and healer of the community, who had been feeling a bit poorly herself the last few weeks with the onset of truly cold weather. The quilt was sure to bring her warmth and a blessing as it represented a truly communal effort. The centers of the roses were red, but the quilted petals were pieced from the scraps of many sewing baskets, displaying a year’s worth of the fabric of the everyday life on the mountain.
Laurel found a seat and was about to draw her needle through a piece of light blue chambray when a pleasant voice made her hand freeze over the fabric.
“May I sit next to you?”
Laurel looked up with a hasty smile at Matthew’s mamm. “Jah, of course.”
Naturally, in such a small community, the Beider family was often encountered, but when her fater was present, Laurel usually stuck to basic politeness. She’d never had a conversation of any length with Matthew’s mother.
Laurel scooted her chair over, accidentally elbowing a rather cranky auld woman, Ruth Smucker, on her other side. She muttered a hasty apology and ducked her gaze away from the dark green eyes of Frau Beider—Matthew’s eyes. Laurel sought for the whereabouts of her aenti as a possible diversion, but Matthew’s mamm was already speaking.
“I suppose you don’t know my secret?” The older woman’s voice was low, and Laurel swallowed at the strange words.
“Nee . . .”
“It’s simple really—your mother and I, we were gut friends before she passed on.”
Laurel stared into the intense green eyes and blinked, trying to recollect ever seeing Frau Beider anywhere around when her mamm had been alive.
“Don’t look so puzzled, my dear. It was a secret friendship . . . well, because of our men folk and the silly hindrance of the feud they’ve kept going all these years.” She shook her kapped head. “Ach, I mean no disrespect to your fater—your mamm felt the same way I did and you seem very like her with your strawberry-blond hair and blue eyes. You remind me of how dearly I miss her.”
Laurel wet her lips as the other woman’s kind words reached to warm her to her core. Would Matthew’s own mamm be a possible ally in a future marriage, or more blessed still, would she be like a second mother to Laurel herself? “I—I didn’t know. I miss her too, so very much.”
Frau Beider seemed about to speak again when Ruth Smucker gave Laurel a sharp nudge with a bony elbow. “Hiya, quit your mumbling amongst yourselves. I can’t even catch a bit of gossip, and I’ve dropped my needle through. Fetch it for me, girl.”
Laurel stifled a sigh. She was far too tall to go crawling beneath the quilt frame to get dropped needles so she caught Lucy’s eye as the child ambled past with a handful of cookies.
“Lucy,” she called. “Frau Smucker’s needle’s gone through. Would you get it, sei se gut?”
Laurel watched her little sister scamper to obey, crawling happily between chairs and beneath the stretched quilt to bob up triumphantly a few moments later with the missing needle. Frau Smucker took it without a word of thanks, but Laurel patted her sister’s hand.
Lucy dawdled beside her for a moment, staring at Frau Beider, and Laurel began to grow anxious at what might come out of the little’s girl’s mouth.
“Lucy, why don’t you . . .”
“You’re Matthew Beider’s mamm, right?” the little girl chirped.
Laurel clutched her own needle with suddenly damp fingers.
“Jah,” Frau Beider smiled. “Matthew and Simon’s mamm. And you’re Lucy.”
“My dat doesn’t get on well with your family, I don’t think,” Lucy said matter-of-factly, and Laurel longed to sink into the pegged hardwoods beneath her feet. But Matthew’s mamm simply smiled and nodded.
“Jah, that’s so, little Lucy.”
Frau Smucker leaned over with a snort. “Little girls should be in the front room playing. I still can’t hear what you’re talking about over that child’s squeaky voice.”
Laurel frowned in affront, trying to think of a pointed but respectful response on her sister’s behalf when Matthew’s mamm leaned across the quilt.
“Perhaps, Ruth Smucker, you should try listening for the gut of what others say, though I would imagine that would be difficult for you to hear as well.” Frau Beider’s voice carried, and Laurel struggled not to giggle as Ruth Smucker’s rather toothless mouth opened and closed like a gasping rainbow trout at the faint rebuke.
Laurel couldn’t imagine what the grumpy woman might have retorted had their hostess, Deborah Esch, not sailed past to grasp Ruth’s arm. “Fresh gingerbread and tea, Frau Smucker? I’ve got a little table all set up in the side room—away from the kinner and the noise.”
Ruth Smucker rose with a sniff and a glare and allowed herself to be led away while Laurel glanced back to Matthew’s mother. “Danki, for defending Lucy.”
Frau Beider laughed. “The Smuckers are meaner than catfish through and through—a little reminder for the good now and then won’t ruffle the hairs on her chin much.”
Lucy crammed a cookie in her mouth and stroked Laurel’s hand. “I thought only men had beards.”
Laurel did laugh then, though only a bit, because respect for her elders was so ingrained in her being. Yet she couldn’t help but see the shine of a smile in Matthew’s mamm’s own eyes. She felt as if she’d connected with the older woman somehow. She relaxed into the moment, and the morning seemed to fly by as all of the women worked hard to finish the quilt.
Then Laurel remembered the time. She nearly jumped from her spot when she saw that it was approaching 1 PM.
“Uh, Frau Beider, I’m sorry. I must—um . . .” Go and make secret plans to marry your sohn. Laurel frowned in desperation, but Matthew’s mamm smiled with indulgence.
“Run along, child. I remember what it was to be young and restless at sitting all day. It has been a pleasure.”
Laurel nodded and murmured a farewell before carefully circumventing her Aenti June in the large kitchen. She grabbed her cloak from a wall peg and slipped out the back door and into the light snow.