Hannah numbly made it through the school day. If ever she had any inkling that Sawyer might feel toward her the way she felt toward him, he had thoroughly shattered it with his remarks. Clearly he thought of her as a nanny only—a very competent nanny, more so than Doris, but still just a nanny.
It took every ounce of determination to focus on the lessons. She was as wilted by her disappointment as the students were by the heat. For the last half hour of the day, she distributed colored pencils and paper for drawing and then sat mindlessly doodling at her own desk, too languid to do anything else.
She was relieved when classes were dismissed and she sent Sarah, Simon and Samuel outside for a moment so she could pack up her paperwork for the weekend. Just as she slid the last folder into her satchel, Doris pranced into the room.
“How can you move about so briskly in this weather? I’m sweltering.”
“Lately, I feel as if I’m floating on a cloud,” Doris replied. Her singsong reference to being courted by John Plank caused Hannah to feel even more dejected. “You haven’t forgotten about making snitz pies for Sunday, have you?” she inquired.
“Of course not,” Hannah confirmed. “I have a surplus of dried apples prepared, and Sarah and I will bake the pies tomorrow. I’ll send most of them home with Sawyer when he picks up the kinner tomorrow evening. However, I will need assistance bringing the rest to the Planks’ farm. Our buggy is being repaired, so my groossdaadi and I will need a ride to services.”
“It’s no bother for me to give you a ride to and from the Plank farm,” Doris offered. “Although I was hoping you could stay until everyone has left to help with the cleanup. Perhaps Joseph Schrock could give your groossdaadi a ride home after dinner, since your house is on his way?”
“Hmm.” Hannah hesitated. “I think Turner King might have room in his buggy for Groossdaadi on the return trip instead.”
“Just remember, you mustn’t breathe a word of my secret about John and me to anyone.”
Hannah snickered to herself that Doris probably had told most everyone in Willow Creek already anyway, but she agreed not to mention it.
No sooner did Doris leave the room than Jacob Stolzfus entered.
“Guder nammidaag, Hannah.” His face looked grim.
“Guder nammidaag, Jacob. Is something the matter?” she asked. She knew Abigail was playing in the yard with the Plank children, so her thoughts raced to Jacob’s wife. “Is Miriam alright?”
“Jah, she is alright for now,” Jacob confided. “The bobbel is alright, too. But the midwife saw us today and advised Miriam to restrict her activities even further. Which is why I have come to speak to you. We have an important matter we’d like you to consider.”
“Of course. What is it?”
“Once harvest is over and your teaching is finished, might you help care for Miriam and oversee the household, including taking Abigail back and forth to school, while I am at the factory? We probably can’t pay you as well as Sawyer Plank does, but since you are in need of employment and we are in need of help, it may be an opportune arrangement.”
Hannah swallowed hard. She was simultaneously filled with concern for Miriam and Jacob and their unborn child, and with a sense of dread. True, she needed an income, but did God’s provision for her have to involve running the household of the woman whose life she might have lived if she had agreed to marry Jacob Stolzfus?
Not that she ever wanted to marry him, but that was exactly the point. How was it that she now found herself in a position of overseeing Jacob’s household when that was something she deliberately turned down years ago?
“I will speak to my groossdaadi about it,” she answered. “Please know I am praying for you. Remember me to Miriam.”
On the walk home, Hannah was quiet as she thought about Miriam and Jacob. As the children continued their quest to sneak up on late-season turtles in the stream, she perched on the embankment, dipping her feet in the current. She reclined against the grassy edge and noticed a handful of leaves overhead were yellowing around their edges. It may have felt like summer, but autumn was coming. She mused that for better or worse, life was always changing.
As the coolness of the water refreshed her skin, she felt a sense of rejuvenation washing over her spirit, too. Considering Miriam and Jacob’s situation further, she recognized what a blessing it was that Eve and her baby were healthy. She couldn’t imagine what a difficult time this was for Miriam and Jacob, especially after all they’d been through.
She asked herself how she could have been so filled with envy for what she didn’t have instead of filled with gratitude for what she did. Didn’t she just write to Eve, asking her to pray that the Lord would provide their daily bread? And hadn’t He done just that? Who was she to request something different, or something more? From this point on, she was going to joyfully appreciate all of His blessings, in whatever form they arrived, for however long they lasted. And if that included a passing crush on Sawyer Plank, she would welcome it with open arms!
With a new vigor, she leaped up from where she was reclining and waded out to join the children.
* * *
Sawyer’s shirt clung to him like a second skin, and his grimy hair was matted around his forehead. He didn’t want to say anything else to upset Hannah, and now he figured he had the perfect excuse for keeping his distance. But when he arrived to retrieve the children, she beckoned to him from the porch.
“Kumme, sit.” She gestured. “Have a glass of lemonade. You look as if you could use it.”
“Denki,” he replied. He was relieved that whatever he’d said to aggravate her earlier in the day seemed to have passed. However, he still allowed her to direct the conversation.
She gestured toward the children on the swing. “It was too tropical this afternoon for swinging, so I promised them they could take their turns of one hundred pushes each in the cooler evening hours.”
“I see,” he acknowledged. After a moment of observation, he pointed out, “Look, it takes both of them to budge Samuel. He is finally gaining weight, thanks to you. They all are.”
“It must be the bountiful sweets I feed them at school.” Hannah sniggled, so Sawyer knew she was making light.
You’re definitely a bountifully sweet teacher, Sawyer thought. Or did he voice the comment aloud? He wasn’t sure. The children’s blond heads were the only part of them that he could distinguish in the shadow of the willow, and the evening took on a nostalgic glow. He wished Eliza could have seen how big the children had gotten, yet he was grateful Hannah was there to appreciate this aspect of their childhood.
Sawyer didn’t want to break the mood, nor did he want to give in to it. Hannah’s presence in their family had undeniably awakened emotions in him he wasn’t sure he was ready to experience. After a spell of silence, he cleared his throat.
“That’s past one hundred!” he called. “Kumme, Sarah, off the swing. You need to be up early tomorrow to help Hannah with the baking.”
Physically depleted as he was, Sawyer thought he would have dropped off to sleep the moment his head hit the pillow later that evening, but instead he lay blinking at the ceiling.
He wondered what had troubled Hannah earlier in the day and why it so suddenly lifted. Was she prone to moodiness?
He tried to think about what kinds of things caused Eliza to retreat from conversation, but he couldn’t recall. Just thinking about his departed wife made him realize his memories of her weren’t exactly fading, but they were changing. When he remembered them, they didn’t cause as much loneliness as they once did. There were times when he couldn’t picture her face as vividly, either. Even Sarah looked more like him than she did Eliza, although every now and then she’d assume a stance or make a gesture that was exactly like something her mother would have done.
His body ached, and he figured he must be overly tired or getting old. Either way, as he drifted to sleep, the only face he pictured was Hannah’s.
* * *
“Now remember,” Sarah said to the boys after their father delivered the children to Hannah on Saturday morning, “you mustn’t be underfoot in the kitchen. We have many pies to bake, and you can’t be creating a ruckus.”
“How could we forget?” Simon complained. “You’ve been talking about it for days.”
“Jah,” Samuel chimed in. “It’s as if you think you’re the only one who does anything helpful for Hannah.”
“You’re all helpful,” Hannah contradicted. “In fact, I have a very important mission for you boys. I need you to run to the coop and gather eggs, or Sarah and I won’t have enough for the crusts. Here’s a pail and cloth. Please be very careful not to jostle them.”
As they shot out of the kitchen, Sarah rolled her eyes and said with a sigh, “Buwe”—meaning boys—and Hannah had to turn her back so the girl wouldn’t see her chuckle.
“Now, now, enough of that,” she instructed. Over her shoulder she said, “If you have washed your hands, you may help me measure the flour for the crusts. We’ll do that over here as soon as I bring—”
She was about to say “as soon as I bring the sack to the table,” but when she turned to face Sarah, she saw the girl was attempting to lift the flour from the counter herself.
“Careful—it’s open!” she warned, lunging to assist her, but it was too late. The heft of the sack was too much for Sarah, and as she doubled over trying to balance it, its contents spilled forward onto the floor.
“Oh, neh!” Hannah cried.
Sarah managed to keep it cradled in her arms until she reached the table. She hoisted it up the best she could, but at the last second, she dropped it onto the surface. It landed upside down with a plop and a poof of white. The powder covered her face and hair, and she stood in stunned silence, blinking.
At that second, from the yard one of the boys screamed, “Run!”
Hannah recognized the level of fear in his voice and bolted out the door and across the lawn in time to see her grandfather chasing something from the chicken coop with a shovel. Simon and Samuel hightailed it toward the porch, which Samuel reached first, but he stumbled on the top step and the pail flew from his grasp. Inches behind, Simon couldn’t halt soon enough to keep from tripping over him. A tangle of elbows and knees and broken eggs, the boys scrambled through the door on their hands and knees.
Hannah rushed to their side. “There, there,” she comforted them after confirming they were more frightened than injured. “Whatever happened?”
“At first, I thought it was a cat.” Simon wept. “A strange black cat with short little legs.”
“It had very sharp teeth,” Samuel added. “It screeched at us.”
“A fisher cat was after the eggs,” Hannah’s grandfather stated. She was so troubled about the children, she didn’t notice him come in. “He got four of the hinkel and would have gone after the kinner, too.”
Hannah gulped. She knew how ferocious fisher cats could be, and she thanked the Lord that her grandfather had been around to ward it off.
“But how did you know?” she asked. He had headed to his workshop earlier than usual that morning—right after he’d told her the astronomical sum Turner King estimated it would cost to repair the buggy. It was impossible for him to have heard either the animal’s or the boys’ cries.
“Bah, I keep an eye out” was all he said. He left the way he came, sidestepping the broken eggs on the porch.
Sarah called from the other room, “Are Simon and Samuel alright? Remind them not to come into the kitchen—I am still sweeping up the flour, and I don’t want them traipsing through it.”
“We’ll need that broom out here when you’re done.” Hannah sighed and picked a piece of eggshell from Samuel’s hair.
“Why?” Sarah appeared in the doorway, her hands on her hips. “What did those rascals do now?”
When the boys saw their sister’s face covered in flour, they rolled on the floor where they lay, laughing and clutching their sides.
“Stop that! Stop that right now!” Sarah demanded, stomping her foot and bursting into tears.
Surveying the situation around her, Hannah honestly didn’t know whether to join the boys in laughing or to cry alongside Sarah herself.
* * *
Shortly before Sawyer, Jonas and Phillip broke for lunch, John hobbled to the fields to assess their progress.
“You’ve made quite a bit of headway. Won’t be more than three to four weeks now.”
Sawyer was actually hoping to finish quicker than that, but he jested, “Gott willing, you’ll be back on your feet by then if you don’t break your other leg clomping out here to check up on us.”
John chuckled. “You go on ahead,” he said to Jonas and Phillip. “We old men will catch up with you. By the way, Doris Hooley is in the kitchen—she’s fixed us a full dinner. I accompanied her to town this morning to purchase ingredients for the noon meal for the leit after church tomorrow, and she’ll make those preparations here, too, so mind yourselves not to get in her way.”
Doris was there again? Sawyer wondered how many times she’d visited that week.
His uncle interrupted his thoughts. “There’s something I want to speak to you about. Something not usually discussed, but this isn’t a usual situation. There’s no easy way to say it, so I’ll come right to the point—I’m courting Doris Hooley.”
Sawyer puffed air out of his cheeks. Was John kidding him? Did Jonas set him up to say that as a prank?
“One of the reasons I’m telling you,” his uncle continued, “is because she’s bound to be here more frequently. Given our age and the fact that I’m not mobile enough to take the buggy to visit her—not to mention, we all benefit from her cooking—it seems easiest for her to come here. I wanted to be sure you’re not uncomfortable with that. You understand no impropriety would ever occur between the two of us. I hold Doris’s reputation in the highest regard.”
“Of course.” Sawyer was stumped and didn’t know what else to say.
“I know I said she has the reputation of being desperate, but that’s not how I see her, now that I’ve gotten to know her. She’s made many sacrifices to help our family lately, especially given that the boys are not always receptive to her. Jah, she’s a terrific cook and she dotes on me, but what I enjoy most is that I can talk to her about things. She offers a perspective only a woman can give. And she makes me laugh, which I haven’t done for years.”
“I see,” said Sawyer, who understood too well what his uncle meant. “Then you have my blessing.”
“Denki,” John replied. “Now, at the risk of embarrassing you all the more, I’m going to give you a piece of advice.”
“If the grass looks greener on the other side, fertilize?” Sawyer joshed, growing uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation.
“Who told you that gem? Jonas?” John howled. “Neh, my advice is that you’re too young to stay a widower for the rest of your life. You owe it to the kinner. Trust me, it only gets more difficult to raise them alone as they grow. But more than that, you owe it to yourself. There’s no substitute for the kind of companionship—the kind of love—a woman and man share, especially a husband and wife. You know that.”
Sawyer did know there was no substitute for that kind of love, which was exactly why he didn’t expect he’d find anything quite like it ever again. But perhaps John was right. Perhaps it was time for him to consider marriage for the sake of the children. He couldn’t expect Gertrude to live with them forever, and there was no denying how much healthier and happier they were with Hannah in their lives. Granted, he’d known her only a short while, but he and Hannah shared a growing affinity for one another. He wondered if, with more time, she might consider the possibility of an enduring relationship.
As they slowly made their way to the house, John seemed to read Sawyer’s thoughts. “If you’re considering courting someone, you should ask her soon,” he suggested. “After all, you know what they say. ‘One of these days is none of these days.’”
“That’s interesting advice from someone who’s moving so slowly he might as well be going backward,” Sawyer joked.
“Hey!” John shouted, swinging his crutch. “I can’t help it. I’m injured!”
But Sawyer had already bounded into the house, where Doris had lunch waiting for them.
* * *
“Now how are we going to make the pies?” Sarah howled when she realized the boys hadn’t managed to salvage a single egg.
Hannah was less worried about the pies than she was about the fact she and her grandfather had only two chickens left to see them through the winter.
“We will borrow some from Grace Zook,” she stated calmly. “Simon and Samuel, please run to their house and tell her I need six more eggs for pie crusts for church dinner tomorrow. Grace will be happy to share.”
“But what if that fisher cat is lurking?” Simon asked.
“It isn’t. Groossdaadi scared it off.”
“What…what if it’s hiding?” he persisted.
“It’s not. Her groossdaadi killed it,” Samuel answered knowledgeably. “With the ax he uses for chopping wood.”
“Your groossdaadi killed a cat?” Sarah wailed, and a torrent of tears streamed from her eyes.
“Hush!” Hannah raised her voice and clapped her hands. “It was a weasel, not a cat, and Groossdaadi didn’t kill it with an ax—he chased it away with a shovel. It’s gone now, but if it makes you feel better, I will walk with you.”
“Can we carry the shovel?” Simon inquired.
“It’s ‘may we carry the shovel,’” Sarah corrected.
“Hush!” Samuel ordered her. “You’re always doing that. You’re not our teacher.”
“Kinner!” Hannah exclaimed, exasperated. “I am going to the Zook house myself. Sarah, you are going to finish sweeping up the flour in the kitchen. Samuel and Simon, you are going to scrub the broken eggs from the porch and parlor. When I return, each of you is getting a bath.”
Lord, give me patience, she prayed as she trudged through the field. Inhaling deeply, she mused that she suddenly had a new appreciation for her grandfather’s mandate that “children should be seen, not heard.” Her frustration was short-lived, however; when she spotted a hawk circling above, she wished the children were there to witness it with her, and she hurried home to tell them about it.
“Did her hinkel lay enough eggs?” Sarah asked anxiously.
“I don’t know. She wasn’t home,” Hannah replied. “But don’t worry—there’s still plenty of time. We’ll check back in a little while. Kumme, get the boys. You all may wash off in the stream. That’s more fun than taking a bath any day. I’ll carry a large walking stick so Simon doesn’t fret about the fisher cat.”
The air was so saturated with humidity that Hannah allowed the children to lollygag longer than usual in the water, so by the time they returned to the house, her grandfather was knocking around, grousing about how hungry he was.
She quickly browned half a dozen pork chops, placed them into a glass dish, covered them with onion, Worcestershire sauce and homemade cream of mushroom soup, and then slid them into the oven for baking. After eating, she and Sarah washed, wiped and put away the dishes while the boys helped her grandfather clean his workshop and stack the firewood he split for the autumn.
The third time they journeyed to the Zooks’ farm and found no one there, they sat on the grass in the shade before making the trek back home.
Samuel suggested, “Couldn’t we take the eggs from the coop and leave a note?”
“Of course not!” scolded Sarah. “That’s stealing!”
“It is not!” Simon contradicted. “We’d leave a note. Besides, Hannah said Grace Zook would be happy to share. What do you think, Hannah?”
“I think the three of you have been clucking more than the hinkel today!” Hannah laughed. “Come close, so I can give you a big hug beneath my wings.”
She lifted her arms and they moved closer to snuggle, despite the heat. She squeezed them so awkwardly that they toppled over into a pile on the grass, laughing like mad. They lay there a long time, their heads touching, telling each other stories about the clouds, until Hannah abruptly sat up.
“Listen,” she said. “Doesn’t that sound like the Zooks’ buggy coming down the lane?”
* * *
As drained as he was from laboring in the heat, Sawyer had a hunch Hannah was even more depleted. When he approached their home, he spotted the boys throwing a ball to each other on the grass. Sarah was slumped forlornly on the swing.
“Difficult day?” he questioned Hannah.
“Oh, she’s upset because there was a mishap with the eggs,” she explained. “We had to borrow from the neighbor, and by the time we had them in hand, it was too late to make the pies for church dinner tomorrow.”
“Neh,” Sawyer said. “I meant did you have a difficult day?”
“Me? Why do you ask?”
“For one thing, I could see from a mile away that Sarah was pouting, which is enough to try even the most patient person’s nerves. And for another…” He hesitated. “Either you’ve gone gray in the past few hours or there was an explosion in your kitchen.”
“Ach!” Hannah exclaimed, reaching to touch her hair. “It’s flour. I called on Grace Zook looking like this, as well. She never mentioned it.”
“She was probably too distracted by the grass,” Sawyer joked, pulling a few blades from Hannah’s tendrils.
She giggled so hard she started to cough. “I have to admit, we’ve had our challenges today.”
“Did the kinner misbehave? I will speak to them if—”
“Neh, they were fine. It’s nothing I couldn’t handle. I think this oppressive humidity wears on us all, don’t you?”
Sawyer wasn’t convinced the weather was to blame for his children’s behavior, but he had every confidence that if Hannah said she handled it, the issue was resolved.
“There is one thing I’d like your permission to do, however,” she requested. “You know how eager Sarah was to help me bake pies for tomorrow’s dinner, and you can see by how readily she just relinquished the swing to her brothers that she’s thoroughly disappointed.”
Sawyer glanced in the direction of the willow and nodded.
“Would you allow her to stay overnight with me? As soon as you boys skedaddle, she and I will get to work on the crusts. I won’t let her stay up too late—I’ll just let her complete the first few pies with me. She’ll be a big help, and we’ll bring her to the service with us in the morning.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Sawyer acknowledged. “But we both know she’ll be more of a hindrance than a help. And I don’t want your groossdaadi’s rest disturbed.”
“My groossdaadi is a sound sleeper—he’s deaf, remember?”
“You have so much baking to do before dawn. Sarah is the last person you need distracting you.”
“On the contrary, teaching her will help me stay focused on what I’m doing. Please, Sawyer, for me?” she entreated, batting her eyelashes and clasping her hands in exaggerated petition. “Please?”
“How can I say neh?” he replied, reveling in their chitchat. “But remember, if you wind up wearing apple slices in your hair to church services tomorrow, I tried to warn you I thought Sarah would get in the way!”