Danny enjoyed the sound of Emma’s voice, even when it was only two words. There was something about seeing her in the garden that set his day on a solid foundation.
Emma.
He’d loved her so many years ago, when he was only a boy. Then he’d gone away, and she had married. Her life with Ben had been a good one, by the looks of things, and he understood fully how much she must miss her recently deceased husband. Danny’s own life was solitary, though he was grateful to be surrounded by a good community.
On various occasions, he’d heard Mary Ann insist that he was one of God’s many blessings, that the Lord Himself had sent Danny home to Shipshewana to be their help and neighbor.
Emma didn’t seem as sure.
They’d had a hard year. Emma’s father-in-law, Eldon, and husband, Ben, had both passed within a few weeks of each other as winter turned to spring the year before. Danny was glad he’d returned when he had, in the middle of the winter, when the snow was still falling and the land lay fallow. He’d thanked the Lord more than once that he’d had a few months to spend with Ben before he’d died. Long enough to know there were no ill feelings between them.
“Gardening, I see.”
Emma glanced up after she’d pushed some stray hairs back into her kapp. He’d only glimpsed the brunette curls that were now mostly gray. But Emma’s caramel-colored eyes looked the same as when she was sixteen.
She must have stopped growing about that age, because she still only reached his shoulder. And though she’d put on a little weight over the years—what woman didn’t after five children—she carried it well. Emma looked healthy, and in brief moments, she looked happy.
When she glanced his way, the dismay in her eyes amused Danny, and it also kicked his pulse up a notch. He wasn’t a young man and wasn’t sure why he reacted this way when he was around Emma.
“Indeed.” She smiled tightly. “Every afternoon, as the sun creeps toward the horizon, you’re bound to find us here.”
“We love our time in the garden,” Mary Ann said.
Danny raised an eyebrow, but Emma only shook her head and threw an endearing look at Mary Ann. The garden was her passion, not Emma’s. Mary Ann obviously did enjoy her time in the garden. Then again, she was sitting on a bench, not sweating over a vegetable patch.
Emma had confessed one night that she was grateful she could still work in the garden. And she was grateful Mary Ann was still sitting on the bench.
Since Danny didn’t know how to respond to either of them, he placed his walking stick next to Mary Ann’s bench and turned back to the task at hand. Without asking what she needed, Danny moved to the other side of the row Emma was working on and held back the plants she was trimming.
They worked in silence for another ten minutes. When they’d reached the end of the row, he wiggled both eyebrows and asked, “Where to next? Carrots and onions, or another floweredy row?”
Danny knew the name of every bloom in their garden, but sometimes he felt self-conscious about the years and years of knowledge stored in his mind. Like the stack of notebooks in his office, he didn’t think what he’d learned and seen should be displayed in every conversation. Sometimes it was good to be the clueless old guy who lived next door.
Emma wasn’t buying it. She snorted and said, “Don’t play ignorant, Danny. I saw your piece in The Budget on using indigenous plants throughout your yard.”
“Ya?”
“I’m pretty sure you have an encyclopedic knowledge of gardening, among other things.”
When Danny only blinked, Emma dusted her hands on her apron and turned in a circle. “I need to work the ground around the carrots and add a bit of fertilizer.”
“Want me to bring some from the barn?”
“Nein. I have some in the bucket at the end of the row, but there’s no need for you to—”
“I’ll fetch the bucket and meet you at the carrot patch.”
Emma glanced at Mary Ann, but she appeared to be ignoring them. Her cane was raised, and she’d plunged it into a boisterous stand of flowering mint. She was attempting to coax a butterfly into settling on the polished oak walking stick.
So they turned to the vegetable section, and that was when Emma froze. She pressed her fingers to her lips. Danny followed her gaze and saw a young lad, probably fifteen. He was sneaking out from the back of Emma’s barn. As his scrawny frame came around the corner, he looked right at them.
For a moment, their eyes connected, and then he sprinted away, like a young buck in flight.
Emma dropped the gardening tools and rushed after him.
Danny caught up with her when she was halfway to the road. “We’ll never catch him.”
“Probably not.”
“Amish?”
“Ya.”
“Any idea what he was doing there?”
“Nein, and I don’t need this right now.”
“Best go see if he took anything.”
They reversed direction and headed to the barn.
“The door isn’t latched, and I always make sure to fasten it.”
“He probably doesn’t know you bring in the horses every evening. In some counties, they’re left in the pasture.”
“This early in the year? Ach! It’s still too cold in the evenings.”
As he walked into the darkness of the barn, Danny’s mind was flooded with memories of Ben, Eldon, and his own father. For so many years, their families had been intertwined like the mint mixed with the tomatoes in Emma’s garden. The barn smelled like the memories of those he’d loved—wood chips, hay, oats, and leather.
“Do you keep any money in here?”
“Nein.”
“What’s in the office?”
“Old files. Ben’s things. Nothing anyone would want to steal.”
“He was here for something.”
“Maybe he was hiding out.”
“Maybe.” Danny crouched down near a bit of stray hay.
Emma shrugged, but Danny pointed toward the farthest stall. The door was cracked open a hair’s width. Danny held up his hand for her to stay put.
Instead, she strode in front of him, across the barn, and to the stall. When Emma saw the bedroll, camp stove, and extra set of clothes, she backed up until she’d reached the opposite wall and stood against it, as if for support.
“Do we have an Amish runaway living in our barn?”
“Or he could be a hobo.”
“Whatever he is, what are Mamm and I going to do about it?”