Faith’s emotions felt like popcorn in a hot skillet. On the one hand, she was mortified that she’d had another full-blown panic attack in front of David. On the other hand, she was still tingling from his kiss. And below all of that ran his words, his assurance, that her condition was nothing to be ashamed of. She remembered the look in his eyes, the softness of his voice, and the tender way he’d held her.
Had all of that really happened?
She thought she might have imagined it, but now he reached for her hand, winked at her, and pulled her toward the other side of the barn where Mary and Peter were seated on a bench, the box of letters between them.
The last thing she remembered clearly—before the fog of her panic attack—was Mary fussing in the back seat, saying she certainly hadn’t expected upon waking this morning to see Peter Yutzy that day. Mary had grown markedly more perturbed the longer they’d driven, but now her look of grimness had been replaced by something akin to joy.
She smiled up at them shyly and said, “I owe you two an apology. I wasn’t very gracious when you came to see me and suggested visiting Peter.”
“It must have been very hard,” Faith said. “After all these years.”
“We weren’t sure if we were doing the right thing,” David admitted. “We asked our parents, and they said we shouldn’t get involved, that we shouldn’t meddle in other people’s lives.”
Peter was shaking his head before David finished. “If you hadn’t brought us these, if you hadn’t cared enough to pick them up and read them and try to find their owners? Well, Mary and I might not have ever cleared up a misunderstanding that took place long ago.”
“During the war,” Faith whispered.
“Ya.” Mary looked up. “And I suppose we owe you two the whole story.”
“Not here though. Let’s move to the house now that the storm has stopped. I never married, so I’m an old bachelor who had to learn how to cook or depend on the mercy of widows.” Peter laughed at himself. “I made cranberry bars this morning, and I’ll fix us some hot tea.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were gathered around the small kitchen table. Peter’s home was even more plain than most Amish homes—probably owing to his status as a bachelor. Faith noticed a stack of Budget newspapers on a plain oak desk under the living room window. “Are you a scribe?”
“I am. Started in 1972, when I moved back to Shipshe. I was devastated to find that the love of my life had wed another—”
“We should start back at the beginning.” Mary broke off a piece of the cranberry bar and popped it in her mouth. “These are wunderbaar.”
“I told you. I’m a gut cook.”
“I didn’t believe you.”
“Probably because I didn’t know how to boil water when we were dating.”
Mary’s smile grew, and it so lightened her expression, making her appear so much younger, that Faith marveled she was the same woman they had picked up just an hour ago.
“You’ve changed,” Mary said to Peter.
“In some ways. In other ways, I’m the same boy who once loved you. I never admitted that in my letters, but I should have. I should have told you how I felt.”
She nodded, plainly wanting to comment, but instead she dusted off her fingers and returned her attention to Faith and David.
“Peter and I had been dating a few months when he decided to file as a conscientious objector.”
“It was that or go to war, and, well . . . I didn’t see how I could go against my faith.”
“My heart broke when they sent him away.”
“To Ohio.” Peter peered out the window. “That seems like so long ago now, and in another way, it seems like yesterday.”
“We wrote each other every day but agreed to mail our letters just once a week. That way we’d have an entire week’s worth of letters to look forward to.”
“I wouldn’t have made it through those first few months without Mary’s letters. I was more homesick than a child visiting distant relatives for the first time.”
“Our letters grew more . . . intimate, and I became quite bold.”
“You always did speak your mind, Mary. I loved that about you.”
“Finally in one of my letters, the last one of that week in early June, I asked Peter if he thought we might marry one day.” She sipped her tea and then continued. “I was afraid he’d meet another woman in Ohio and forget all about Shipshe—and me.”
“I never forgot you.” Peter’s voice was soft, the admission simple and heartfelt.
“When I didn’t hear back from him the next week, I feared I’d overstepped.”
“Remember, we swapped letters once a week.” Peter tapped the bundle beside him on the table. “These letters you found were written at the same time that Mary asked me about marrying, which I had dreamed of but hadn’t dared suggest.”
“When I didn’t receive a package that week, I couldn’t imagine what had happened. At first, I thought the mail had been delayed, but then doubt took hold—fear took hold. For several days I worried and fretted. Worked myself up into quite a state. Obviously, I’d revealed my feelings too soon. I was mortified. Finally, after five days and no word, I wrote to him again.”
“Uh-oh,” David said as he reached for another cranberry bar.
“Exactly. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was too embarrassed and too . . . Well, it sounds silly to say, but so heartbroken that my emotions were guiding my actions. You know how it is to be a youngie.” She cocked her head and looked first at David and then Faith. It seemed she was about to say something, but instead she pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. “I wrote a single page, strongly worded letter, ending our relationship and telling Peter I’d rather not hear from him again.”
“Because you didn’t receive a letter for a week?” Faith was having trouble wrapping her mind around this. It seemed like such a simple misunderstanding. Why would Mary act so rashly if she’d really cared for Peter? “Any number of things could have happened to cause him not to write. Breaking off the relationship seems like an overreaction.”
“Have you never overreacted? Had your feelings so sorely bruised that you were all emotion?”
Faith slowly nodded, remembering how she’d felt after her original date with David. She stole a glance at him as he nodded slightly, and she knew—she was positively certain—he was remembering the same thing.
“It was childish, I admit. But I was certain he no longer cared for me.”
“I didn’t blame her. It was confusing—to receive the letter confessing her feelings followed so quickly by another saying she’d changed her mind. But I understood that Mary was young, and I was not a very confident young man. Honestly, I didn’t know what she saw in me to start with.”
“Your goodness, Peter. I saw your goodness.”
They stared at each other for a moment, until David finished off his cranberry bar and asked the obvious question. “So what happened when you came back, Peter?”
“I stayed in Ohio for more than a year. That was where I was assigned due to filing as a conscientious objector. Farm work was better than serving overseas. I had no desire to be anywhere near a battlefield. When we were released from our assignment, the family I was staying with—”
“The Nicholsons.” Faith could imagine the family and their hound dog barking at a rabbit hidden underneath a pot.
“Ya. They were gut people—Mennonites. We’d become friends of a sort, and I couldn’t see my way to leave them in the middle of harvest season. So I stayed a few extra months. I was in no hurry to come home by that point. My mamm had written that Mary had published her intentions to wed Clyde.”
“He was a gut man too.” Mary’s chin came up a fraction. “We shared thirty-seven years together. Had seven kinner and now thirty-two grandkinner.”
“I’m glad, Mary.” Peter folded his arms on the table and studied the little group in front of him. “Whenever I thought of you over the years, I prayed that you had known a happy life—a full one—and it sounds like you have.”
“What about you, Peter? Why did you never marry?” Faith glimpsed light out the window, relieved to see the sun peeking through the clouds. The storm she’d suffered through, the one that had terrified her only minutes ago, had vanished. Like most spring storms, it was there and gone.
“Well, by the time I returned home, my parents had their hands full with the farm and my younger bruder . . . He was disabled and could be difficult to handle at times.”
“Thomas.” Mary pressed her hands to the table. “I’d forgotten about him. He was such a sweet child.”
“His teenage years were difficult. He’d become frustrated because he couldn’t do certain things. By the time he turned thirty, he had settled down some, but during his teenage years, I couldn’t imagine marrying. Afterward it seemed too late. Not that I’m complaining. My life has been full and hard, but also gut.”
“What happened to Thomas?” Mary asked.
“Passed a year ago—cancer. He had a gut life, though. He was a gut bruder.”
They stayed a few more minutes. Then David admitted he needed to get home, and Mary said the grandkinner would be wondering about her. Faith was exhausted from the events of the afternoon.
They’d climbed into the buggy when Peter asked them to wait. He went back in the house and returned with a scrap of paper, handed it to Mary and said something too low for Faith to hear. But as David turned the buggy toward Shipshewana, Faith thought she heard Mary humming in the back seat.
* * *
David spent much of the evening thinking about all that had transpired. He wanted to give Faith space, but he didn’t want to wait too long. He had no intention of letting her slip through his fingers a second time.
Mary and Peter’s story held an important lesson—one he had needed to hear. A person’s path in life could turn on the smallest decision. He’d made a mistake when he assumed Faith didn’t care for him after the fiasco of their first date. He’d mistaken embarrassment for lack of feelings.
Everything had changed when they stepped beneath those kudzu vines, when they found the box hiding in plain sight.
Had Gotte directed their steps that day?
Had He been nudging them back onto the path they’d left several years ago?
The older couple’s situation replayed in David’s mind over the next few weeks. Peter had known that Mary cared, but he’d been so insecure that he’d readily believed she could stop caring. One phone call could have straightened out the entire thing. Instead, they allowed their fears to drive their actions.
He and Faith were no better.
They had let a misunderstanding build a wall between them, but now they could peek over the wall and see one another. The letters between Peter and Mary had brought them back together. Gotte had brought them back together, and now David dared to believe that Faith did care for him.
He hoped she did.
There was only one way to find out.
The next day, he left her a message at the phone shack, and the day after that he stopped by the animal clinic to see if she’d like to go to dinner with him Saturday. He didn’t push—didn’t rush their relationship. Instead, he thought of the long game. Over the next two months they grew closer, their friendship strengthened, and his feelings for her blossomed more than he could have possibly imagined.
By the time the summer days were at their longest, David knew it was time to step out in faith and act on his feelings.
He arranged to pick up Faith at four on the first Friday afternoon in June. He’d only worked half a day so he’d have time to prepare. He took the old push mower out behind his work area and mowed the grass between the tiny houses and the large elm tree. The shade would be perfect as the sun slanted west.
Joseph and his wife, Betty, had travelled back to Pennsylvania because her mamm was having surgery. David’s mother had come to help with the children while they were gone. David walked into the kitchen, stared into the refrigerator, and then asked what type of food he should pack.
“Let me take care of that,” his mamm said.
“That’s not what I intended. You have enough work with the kinner.”
“I do.” His mamm stood and walked over to the kitchen counter where Betty kept her small but well-used collection of cookbooks. “But this is important. You’ve never taken a girl on a picnic, have you?”
“Only with the group.”
“Group outings are fun, but I suspect you and Faith have moved past that now. In fact, I suspect you’ve fallen in lieb.”
David sank into one of the kitchen chairs. “Is it that obvious?”
“To me it is, but then I’ve known you—”
“My whole life.”
“For sure and certain.”
“She’s special, Mamm. I know we had a rocky start, but that was because I was young and foolish. My pride was hurt after she refused to talk to me, after the House of Mirrors.” He’d been fiddling with a piece of junk mail—a postcard of sorts announcing a sale at the Fabric Bin. He looked down and saw that he’d torn it into tiny pieces. “Oh, sorry.”
“Not a problem, dear.”
“I look back on our first date, and I can’t believe how naïve I was. And stupid! I never even stopped to wonder why she might react the way she did.”
“You were both young then, and you’re both older now—more mature.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “I noticed a gray hair or two this morning.”
“Well, you know what they say about that . . . It’s the beginning of wisdom. Go do whatever you need to, and I’ll take care of your picnic dinner.”
True to her word, his mamm had a full basket waiting when he returned to the house. The thing weighed a ton. Had she packed enough for a family of six?
“Why’s this so heavy?”
“I put in two quart jars of tea—one sweetened, one unsweetened. Plus dishes and lots of food.”
“Danki.” He kissed her on top of the head, hoisted the basket in one hand and the faded quilt she’d put on top of it in the other. Faith mentioned once how much she liked flowers, so David picked a few sunflowers and stuck them in an old Coke bottle he’d filled with water. He wedged it between the basket and blanket in the back seat of the buggy, hoping it wouldn’t tip over.
Hoping there wouldn’t be an emergency at the vet that would cause her to cancel.
Hoping he’d have the courage to tell her how he felt.