God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.
—MARTIN LUTHER
After he delivered the compost to Rachael, he went home and put the flower basket on the front porch, then headed for the huge white barn behind the house. The sounds of lowing cows and bleating goats, chomping on sweet timothy grass in the nearby pasture, barely registered in his thoughts. He passed by his mother’s vegetable garden near the small wooden deck attached to the house. While his mother was a good gardener, the small patch paled in comparison to Rachael’s larger, distinct garden. It was stunning, like the woman who cared for it.
He entered the section of the barn where the calves were raised. This spring they’d had five, along with fifteen goats. He and his daed would sell them at auction in the fall, and until then, they—with the help of his seventeen-year-old sister, Hannah Lynn—would make sure they were fat and healthy.
As he approached their pen, the calves, with their thin legs and awkward gait, hurried toward him, filling the barn with their hungry moos. The smallest one was almost pure white except for the two black patches on either side of her flanks. She slipped on the loose straw on the barn floor, tumbling forward and landing on her face.
Gideon chuckled and knelt down. “Kumm here.”
The cow scrambled to her feet and went to Gideon. He nuzzled her damp nose. “It’s not fun when your legs don’t work right, ya?”
But the cow didn’t seem to care that Gideon could sympathize with her. She and the other calves were ready for their food. He dumped a bag of grain in the trough, and the mooing quickly faded into crunching as they munched on their morning snack.
“About time you got here.” Hannah Lynn walked into the barn.
Gideon turned around, brushing his hands together. Dust from the grain danced in the air. He looked at his younger sister, smelling the morning’s work in the stalls on her. She had on a pair of his old boots, the tops reaching the hem of her blue dress. The boots were about three sizes too big, but she insisted on wearing them. “I’m not that late,” he said.
“You’ve been gone over an hour. I thought you said you’d be right back.”
“Took longer than I thought.”
Hannah Lynn crossed her arms and leaned against the barn pole. “So . . . how’s Rachael?”
Gideon picked up a broom and started sweeping the barn floor. Not that it needed it—they all kept things in good shape around here. He shrugged as he pushed the broom. “Gut.”
“Ask her out yet?”
He nearly lost his grip on the broom. He wished his sister would mind herself instead of him.
She sighed. “Nee, I take it.”
“You can take it however you want.” Gideon pushed the broom harder. A cloud of dust collected in the air.
“I know. It’s none of my business.” Hannah Lynn uncrossed her arms and straightened. “I’m just watching out for you.”
“I don’t need your hovering, little schwester.”
“Then why don’t you start courting Rachael already?”
Gideon stopped sweeping. “It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?” Hannah Lynn said, taking the broom from him. “You like her. She’s available, at least from what I’ve been able to find out.” Hannah Lynn leaned her chin on the top of the broom handle. “She keeps to herself, though. Kind of like someone else I know.” She poked him in the shin with the broom bristles.
“Are you done?”
“What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid.” He snatched back the broom. “What I am is busy.”
“You are afraid.” Hannah Lynn moved to stand in front of him. “Afraid she’ll say nee.” Her eyes widened. “Or maybe you’re afraid she’ll say ya.”
He leaned the broom against the rough-hewn wall. “That’s ab im kopp. Why would I be afraid of that?”
“Because then you’d have to actually geh out with her.” Gideon turned away. His sister didn’t understand. She was seventeen. What did she know about relationships? Or rejection. Or yearning—
“Gideon.” Hannah Lynn snapped her fingers in front of his face.
Her expression came into focus. “You need to stop spinning your wheels,” she said.
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“That’s exactly what you’re doing. You care for Rachael. I’m sure almost everyone in the district knows.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Mei point is, you can’t just wait for the right moment. Or for things to happen. You have to act. If you like Rachael as much as you seem to, then she’s worth going after.”
Gideon scrubbed his hand over his cheek, feeling the stubble of whiskers he’d shave off in the morning. A sign of his singleness.
“You know what Mamm always says.”
“Mamm says a lot of things.”
Hannah Lynn straightened her posture, clasping her hands together like their mother often did. “You geh after what you want. And if it’s God’s will, you’ll get what you need.”
“Nice imitation.”
“She’s right.”
Gideon sighed. He was tired of pretending, of acting nonchalant around his sister, who clearly saw through the façade anyway. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
He felt his cheeks flame. “I don’t know . . . anything.” He had very little experience asking out the girls in his district. Even his sister didn’t know about the time he’d asked Julia Keim to a singing. He could still remember how her face had contorted as she tried not to laugh. He’d been nineteen, and he hadn’t asked anyone else since.
Hannah Lynn was tall for an Amish woman, almost six feet. Yet she still had to look up to him. “Make it simple. Ask Rachael to geh on a buggy ride. If she says ya, problem solved.” She turned and started to leave.
She stopped and turned around in the doorway. “Then you’ll know where you stand. And you’ll have done something, instead of pining away.” She disappeared out the door.
Behind Gideon, the calves mooed softly, finishing the last bits of their meal. Gideon reached over the top of the pen and patted the smallest one on the head. He wished he wasn’t so transparent. Or that his sister wasn’t right, not to mention she sounded more confident at seventeen than he was at twenty-five. The only thing standing in his way was fear. And unless he wanted to spend his life alone, he had to stop being a coward.
Rachael spent the rest of the morning working in the garden. In a few days she would go to the flea market, and she still had a few flower arrangements to put together. She found that combining different plants and flowers in a simple container appealed to her customers more than selling the individual plants.
For the next hour, she worked on preparing a medium-sized pot at her potting bench, another structure she’d cobbled together with spare parts. Her grandfather never threw anything away, and in Rachael’s mind, that was a good thing. She’d found a small castiron tub sink, the white enamel peeled off in places, and nestled it inside a wood frame. Underneath she nailed an old pallet to the legs of the frame, which served as an extra shelf. A coat of white paint from a half-empty can she found in the back of the barn added the finishing touch.
She placed the terra-cotta pot inside the shallow sink and filled it with light-green creeping Jennie, which draped just over the pot’s edge. In a few weeks, with proper tending, the plant would hang like a leafy curtain until it trailed to the ground. Next to the creeping Jennie she added two magenta Impatiens, which gave the arrangement a pop of color. Then she placed the final touch—Swallowtail Coleus. A sturdy plant, despite its delicate, thin branches. The Coleus would grow straight up, balancing out the rest of the plants.
She stepped back and looked at her handiwork, pleased with the simple arrangement. Her stomach growled and she realized it was lunchtime.
When she went inside to make lunch, she found her grandfather in the kitchen, leaning on his cane, stretching to reach a cup from the cabinet. She hurried to him. “I’ll get that.” Rachael pulled a coffee mug from the cabinet and placed it on the counter. She frowned at him. “You should have waited for me to do this.”
“I can get a cup, Rachael.” He moved to pick it up, but she took it from him.
“I’ll get your kaffee,” she said. “You geh sit down.”
He muttered something she didn’t understand, but she thought she heard the word bossy. As he walked to the table, the thudding sound of his cane was a counterpoint to the slight drag of his left foot on the floor. He plopped onto the chair.
Rachael washed her hands before pouring him a cup of stillwarm coffee from the percolator pot on the stove. She took it to him. “I’m sorry. Time got away from me this morning.”
“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, I’m fine.” He took a sip of the coffee, a bit of the brown liquid dribbling on his chin and catching into his nearly gray beard. “You worry too much.”
“I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”
“So you keep reminding me. Every day.” He set the cup on the table. “Rachael, I appreciate you coming here. But it’s been a year since . . .” He stared at his cup for a moment.
Since the stroke. She shook off the memory of when they’d received a call from Lydia, Gideon’s mother, who had happened to be outside when she saw Grandfather collapse as he was walking to the barn. If it hadn’t been for Gideon’s family, her grandfather might be dead. “Hungry?” she asked, walking to the pantry, pushing away the horrible thought.
“Ya. But I see what you’re doing.”
“Getting the bread?” She opened the door and pulled out a loaf of homemade bread she’d baked two days ago.
“Changing the subject. I’ll take eggs and bacon, by the way.”
He’d asked for the same thing for breakfast. She’d made him oatmeal instead. “You mean tuna salad, ya?”
“I’m tired of rabbit food.”
“Rabbits don’t eat tuna. And you know the doctor said you have to watch what you eat.” Rachael took two plates from the cabinet and set them down. She picked up a head of lettuce from one of three large bowls on the counter. They were filled with fresh vegetables, some that she’d picked from her garden. “That includes fat, salt—”
“And everything that tastes gut.” He put his right hand on the table. His left remained in his lap. “What I wouldn’t do for some ham, eggs, hash browns, bread slathered with butter . . .”
Rachael ripped a few pieces of lettuce and placed them on the bread. Her grandfather’s crankiness was a good sign. When she’d first arrived to help after his stroke, he’d been depressed, had some mild memory problems, and found it difficult to balance. Now he was as ornery as he’d ever been. She opened and drained a can of tuna, then placed the fish on the bed of lettuce.
“What about apple pie?” he asked.
She glanced at him. “Not on your diet, Grossdaadi.”
“It has apples in it.” He winked.
Rachael smiled and brought him his sandwich. “Do you need anything else?”
“I need to talk to you.” He patted the chair next to him. “Sit.”
She sat, alarm pooling inside her. “Are you okay?”
He pushed at the plate. “Ya. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’ll be just fine by myself now. I know it was touch and geh for a while, and I’m glad your parents could spare you to come and help me out.” His voice turned gruff. “It’s been nice to have another person around for a while.”
She wanted to reach out and pat his hand, but he wouldn’t appreciate it. He never showed affection, an unusual quirk she’d accepted. A widower for over five years after being married for almost fifty, he’d lived alone for a long time. Her parents, who had moved to Indiana shortly after they married, couldn’t move back to care for him. But she could. And she wouldn’t let him be alone again.
“It’s time you went home, Rachael.”
She just wished he didn’t make it so hard sometimes.
“I’m not going home.” Rachael stood and went to the sink. She rested her hands on the edge of it. “My place is here.”
“Your place is back with your mamm and daed. Your bruders and schwesters. Don’t you miss them? Don’t you want to be with your friends instead of an old mann?”
She spun around and looked at her grandfather. How could she think about what she wanted when he needed her? She had no intention of going back to Indiana, not anytime soon. “I belong here.”
“Humph.” He picked up his sandwich. “You’re as stubborn as your daed.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
When they finished lunch, she could see he was tired. “You should take a nap.”
“Nee.” He started to get up from the table. “I think I’ll geh out to mei barn. I haven’t been there in a while.”
“But—”
He held up his hand. “You’re already telling me what to eat. You’re not gonna tell me how to spend every second of mei daag.” He grabbed his cane. “I need some air.”
She started to say something, then bit her bottom lip. He was right. She couldn’t order him around like he was a child. But she couldn’t stop worrying about him, either. She peeked through the back door of the kitchen and watched as he hobbled to the barn, saying a quick prayer that he wouldn’t do anything overly strenuous. Or overly foolish.
When he disappeared into the barn, she closed the back door and finished cleaning the kitchen.
Later, she stepped onto the front porch, breathing in the fresh air, the scent of flowers wafting from the garden mixed with the earthy smell of the Beilers’ farm next door. She thought about what her grandfather said. But she didn’t want to go home, even though she missed her family. She belonged in Middlefield right now, helping her grandfather, making sure he had fresh vegetables to eat and didn’t overwork himself. She couldn’t stop him from tinkering in the barn, but she could be here if he needed her help.
If she set aside her worry, she knew she wasn’t being fair to him. After her grandmother died, he would spend hours in the barn, going through the things he’d collected over the years, sometimes forgetting to eat or get adequate sleep. His deteriorating health had led to the stroke that nearly killed him. But as long as he didn’t do too much, there was no reason why he shouldn’t be surrounded by his collections, the things that made him happy. Still, he didn’t need to be alone.
Indiana could wait. Her father had asked her, his oldest child, to be there for his father. She would keep that promise to make sure her grandfather was safe and healthy.
And possibly surprise him with a small sliver of apple pie for tonight’s dessert.