Hello? Sara? Are you okay?”
I breathed a sigh of relief at the sound of William’s voice. “Are you… awake?” I asked, belatedly realizing it was a silly question to ask someone who had pushed buttons on a phone before speaking into it.
He chuckled. At least he thought it was funny. “Yeah, I’m awake. What’s up?”
“Oh, um…” I felt myself grow inexplicably shy. “Not very much, I guess.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“It’s noisy.”
“You’ve never lived alone, have you?”
I made a face. Leave it to William to get right to the point. “I do have a roommate…”
“But she’s not there. You know what I mean. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Sara.” He paused. I saw him in my mind sitting up, leaning forward the way he did when he was thinking something. “When I moved out, I moved across the country. I’d waited months to get out, and all I could think of that first night was how far from home I was.”
“It must have gotten better.”
“It did. Maybe I got too used to it. I doubt you’ll have that problem though.”
“No?”
“Everyone short of the mayor turned up to help you move today. You’re special to a lot of people.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he answered, his voice gruff. “So, what are you reading these days?”
“The Horse and His Boy, actually.”
“The copy I gave you?”
“The copy you gave me. I’ve read it before, but it’s probably my favorite.” I rolled onto my side, facing the wall, the phone in my right hand, covers pulled snug over my shoulder.
“What do you like about it?”
“It’s like a fairy tale. A boy is lost and displaced but finds where he’s supposed to be. I like Aravis and her snotty little tantrums. She reminds me a bit of my niece. And maybe of me, if I were honest.”
“Only if you want to be.”
I smiled and closed my eyes. “You’re funny. Fine. I’ll be honest—I have snotty tantrums sometimes.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Really?” I yawned. “Sometimes I think I took the job at the shop just to spite you.”
William’s laughter warmed my ear. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”
“No?”
“Well, let’s just say I probably had it coming.”
“True.”
“Getting sleepy?”
“Maybe.” The drowsiness was undeniable, but the idea of hanging up terrified me.
“How about this,” he proposed. “Where are you in the book?”
“I think I just finished chapter nine.”
“Chapter ten, then. Hold on a moment.” A long pause, some fumbling. “You still there?”
Because I was too afraid to hang up? “Yes.”
“Okay. The Horse and His Boy, chapter 10. ‘After they had ridden for several hours…’” he began.
I kept my eyes closed and thought of Shasta and Aravis riding toward Archenland on the backs of talking horses.
When I opened my eyes, my phone had fallen to the floor. It was morning.
Levi came to pick me up an hour and a half later. “Everything okay in your new apartment?” he asked as I pulled on my coat.
“Um…did your phone battery die?”
Levi frowned. “It did. Did you try to call last night?”
“I did. It wasn’t a big deal—” I assured him. “Everything was fine.”
“Really?” He arched an eyebrow. “You’re not just telling me that to make me feel better?”
“I couldn’t sleep. Nothing earth-shattering. I’m just not used to being alone.”
“But you’re okay? You look well rested.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Did you call Jayne?”
“No. I, um…” I shifted my feet. “I called William.”
“Oh.” Levi put his hands on his hips. “Huh. Alright then. I’ve got some mail for you from yesterday.”
“I’ll look through it later,” I said, placing the items on the kitchen counter. Shall we leave?”
“After you, then,” he said, opening the door for me.
The morning, just as every other Sunday morning, left me with more to think about than I thought my mind could handle. The stern, unbending God I grew up with who demanded obedience from His children seemed so different from the God present at Jayne and Livy’s church. Their God was stern yet loving, unyielding in faithfulness, slow to anger, and quick to love.
I wanted to mull it all over, to spend time making everything reconcile in my head, but I couldn’t. I had quilts to make, projects to complete, and classes to attend. I had work. I had a brother to marry off.
Would God wait for me to get my heart straight? Was it fair for me to hope He would?
After church and lunch at Jayne’s, Levi took me home. As I tucked my gloves and scarf away, my eyes fell on my mail. There was an Anthropologie catalog, a mailing from the Art Institute about an upcoming art show, and a white envelope with my name on it.
I opened the white envelope and studied the contents. It was a bill for the ambulance—$783.24.
I sat down on the floor and reread the bill. It was true. As was the fact that I didn’t have $783.24. I thought about my options.
I could ask Levi for help, but it was a lot of money. I couldn’t ask for that much money, and the whole point was that I was independent. I had to start figuring things out on my own.
Neither did I want to use a credit card. My family never used them, and I didn’t trust them.
I had planned to make quilts to create some financial stability for myself. Rather than go toward a car and a nest egg, some of the profits would have to go to this bill. I had already planned to be sewing quilts. Nothing had changed aside from the time when I needed the first to be completed.
The due date on the notice gave me three weeks.
I rose, tucked the bill away and headed for my fabric stash. It was time to get to work.
Glancing at the calendar on Tuesday, I noticed it was the sixteenth—and then I did a double take. Shrove Tuesday. The day before Lent.
I hadn’t observed Epiphany. I didn’t want Shrove Tuesday to pass without fastnacht kuecheles. In a moment of courage, I called Britta, Meg, and Sonnet to see if they wanted to come over to the apartment and eat them with me.
“You’re baking? I love baking. Want company?” Britta asked. “I need to get out of here for a while anyway.”
Meg said she really wanted to come but had too many things to do.
My conversation with Sonnet was short. “I’ll be there,” she said the second after the words deep fried left my mouth.
While I waited, I started the dough. After donning an apron, I added the sugar to warm water and stirred in the yeast. As the yeast proofed, I creamed the butter with the sugar.
When the bolt on the door slid back, I jumped.
“Hey, sorry, did I scare you?” Livy smiled and gave a small wave. “It’s just me.” She closed the front door after herself. “What are you up to?”
“I’m making fastnachts for Shrove Tuesday.” I wiped my hands on the front of my apron. “They’re a family tradition.”
Livy frowned. “Looks like your yeast isn’t doing so well.”
I turned to check on it. It was foaming, but only a little. “I only just put it in—” I said, but my words were cut off by the sight of Livy sticking her finger in the yeast bowl.
“The water is fifteen degrees too cold.” She shook her finger over the sink. “Optimal proofing temperature is around 110 degrees. Hang on.” She sorted through one of the drawers and retrieved a long, skinny instrument with a dial face on top. “Here’s my thermometer. You’re free to use it.”
I examined the tool. “Wow. I never thought to take the water’s temperature before. And I’ve been working with yeast for years.”
“Well…I actually have a baking and pastry certificate.”
“Really?” I dumped out the existing yeast water and made a new batch, this time making sure the water was the correct temperature.
“It was a lifetime ago.” Livy explained. “I was—well, about your age. I loved baking and thought I’d enjoy doing it professionally. It turned out to be a small step in a longer journey to figuring out what I wanted to do with my life, but I learned a lot. And I met Gemma.”
“You dated her brother, right?”
“Niko, yeah. Sweet guy, big personality…a little too big for me. He was in the culinary program as well. But Gemma and I have kept in touch, so that’s been nice.” She looked around the kitchen. “So. Do you want a hand? Have you scalded the milk yet?”
“Not yet.” I pulled a liquid measuring cup from the cupboard. “I’ve always wondered why the milk had to be scalded.”
Livy reached into the fridge and handed me the jug of milk. “The nontechnical answer is that the dough won’t raise as much if it isn’t. The more technical answer is that there’s a protein in the whey that interferes with the raising unless the milk has been held to about 185 degrees for a while without boiling.”
“Interesting.”
“That’s sweet of you to say.” She glanced at the new yeast mixture. “That looks nice and foamy. Perfect.” A buzzing noise distracted us both from the chemistry discussion. “That’s my phone. It’s probably Clay. I’ll be a while—have fun,” she said as she took her phone back to her bedroom.
Britta arrived a moment later, followed shortly by Sonnet, with Meg in tow.
“I made her come,” Sonnet explained, still hanging onto Meg’s wrist. “Girl works too hard. Needs to make time for deep-fried goodness.”
We laughed and set to work together as I shared the instructions for the fastnachts.
Britta tucked a hand towel into the waist of her jeans. “So…what are we making, exactly?
I remembered my conversation with William and Zach in the moving van. I knew it was time to be open, time to be honest, but there was no reason to blurt it out.
“They’re basically doughnuts,” I said, not choosing to elaborate.
After we combined all of the ingredients and set the dough to raise for an hour, we moved to the living room.
As the subject of conversation turned to spring break plans, I realized the opportunity to share my background might present itself sooner than I expected.
“Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is going to be speaking in Seattle,” Britta explained, her eyes bright. “We’re all going to drive up for a few days over the break—my mom, my sister, my grandma, and me. Make a trip to Weaving Works and the Fiber Gallery.”
“Sounds like fun.” Meg folded her arms. “My parents aren’t much for breaks or vacations unless it means going back to Japan to visit family. Which is fun, you know, if you don’t mind plane travel.”
“You should think about some kind of adult Space Camp,” Sonnet suggested. “Maybe the flight simulator things would help the friendly skies seem a little friendlier.
“I like boats,” Meg offered.
“So, Sara, what are you doing over break?” Sonnet leaned back and stretched. “Seeing family? They’re not in town, are they?”
I was hoping for an opportunity but didn’t expect one to smack me between the eyes like that.
“No, they’re south of here, outside of Albany,” I said. “I don’t suppose I have many plans. I’ll probably be working a lot.” I took a deep breath, hoping to steady myself. It didn’t particularly work, but I pressed on anyway. “I haven’t seen them since I moved here. See…my family is Amish.” The words came out in a rush, but they must have been understandable from the looks of surprise on my friends’ faces. “I left home and came here. My brother had already left, so he’s my family. But everyone else…Well, I can’t really go back.”
“Oh.” Britta tilted her head. “Wow, so…Amish?”
I nodded.
“You grew up Amish and got into design school?” Sonnet lifted a hand. “Props. Does anyone say props anymore?”
“I never know what anyone’s saying anymore,” Meg admitted. “Though I’d be more likely to say something about how it’s an impressive achievement or something like that.” She smiled at me. “Which it is.”
“So how did you do it?” Britta asked. “You have such a great design aesthetic, but…”
“But you don’t imagine my family was all that fashionable?” I filled in what she wouldn’t say with a laugh. “No, but we would go to town, and I’d see beautiful clothes and others much less so. I smuggled magazines and catalogs home and hid them under the floorboards.”
“You too?” Meg laughed, covering her mouth as she did so. “My parents would have been horrified to know I was studying the—how did my mother put it once?—oh yeah, the ostentatious clothing of vapid women.”
“Then there’s my mother, the not-quite-ex-hippie,” Sonnet crossed her arms across her lap. “She’d look at shots from fashion week and tell me who’s high in each picture.” She held up her hands. “It didn’t work, but mama tried.”
“I’ve always wondered,” Britta said, picking up a throw pillow on the couch and hugging it to herself, “if Amish people really made Amish friendship bread.”
“Gemma asked me that once.” I shook my head. “We bake with sourdough starters a lot—we’re all for things that don’t require refrigeration. But we don’t call anything Amish friendship bread or even just friendship bread for that matter. At least, not where I live.”
Britta stretched, arching her back. “Cool. Good to know. So how’s your project coming?”
And that was it. What had I been afraid of this whole time? What had held me back?
After the dough finished rising, I rolled it out, and the four of us took turns cutting out circles with overturned drinking glasses and mugs. Sonnet readied the oil, and after thinning out the insides with our fingers, we dropped each one in. Meg used tongs to pull them out and placed them on top of paper lunch sacks to blot off the excess oil. When they had cooled enough to touch, we dredged them in granulated sugar, though Britta suggested a spiced sugar variation that included cinnamon and a hint of cardamom.
“This is good,” Sonnet announced around bites. “Like, really good. I’m glad you grew up Amish, if only to bring these into our lives.”
I laughed, relief washing over me. “You’re welcome. Glad I could oblige.”
The store was unusually busy Wednesday afternoon.
Not that I minded. A part of me was still a little mortified about calling William Saturday night, even three days into my workweek. Mortified and something else, not that I could quite identify the feeling. Nervous? Overwhelmed? A thousand reactions battled for supremacy in my head, and they didn’t fight fair.
The crowds started to thin out around five. I watched William’s placement in the store out of the corner of my eye, despite my intentions not to. However, he retreated to the workroom for a rebinding project, leaving Zach and me to check over the shelves and put away everything customers had pulled out.
I was on the phone with a customer trying to find a first printing of A.A. Milne’s And Now We Are Six when the bell over the door rang. I didn’t even turn to look, assuming Zach would handle that particular visitor.
“That’s alright, I’ll wait,” said a familiar voice.
I took down a message and double-checked the number before hanging up and turning around.
And finding Arin at the counter, waiting for me.
“Hi,” I said, sounding much more breathless than I would have liked.
“Hi. I missed you. Are you getting off work anytime soon? I thought you might let me feed you.”
I tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I’m not off for another half hour, but after that? I like food.”
“I can hang out for half an hour. It’s a cool place. I like the ladder. You’ve got that chair in the corner—can you recommend a read?”
I studied him for a moment. “Hmm. Well…have you read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel yet?”
Arin winced. “Sounds a little too…confrontational for my taste.”
I walked to study our display table in the center of the store. Arin followed, eying the selection. “Birds of the World. That sounds interesting.” He lifted the book and flipped through the pages.
I struggled for words. “You like birds?”
“Everyone likes birds.” He closed the book. “I’ll take it.”
“You don’t have to—”
“It’s on sale—thirty percent off. I also don’t want to be the guy who reads a book in a bookstore for half an hour before putting it back on the shelf…or table, I guess.”
“Okay.” What was I going to do, talk him out of buying a book?
William came out of the workroom while I was ringing up Arin.
“Hello, sir.” Surprised, I watched as he came and leaned on the part of the counter next to Arin. Friendliness was not a characteristic of William’s that showed up much, particularly where Arin was concerned.
“Hello back,” Arin answered with the same nonchalant, hip attitude.
So hip I didn’t feel qualified to be in the room. I swiped Arin’s card anyway.
“So. Birds.” William said.
Arin nodded. “I like birds.”
“Good book for you then. How are things?”
“Not bad. Gonna take Sara for some dinner when she’s off.”
I ripped off the first receipt from the Visa machine and pushed it toward Arin. “Want to sign this?”
“Got a pen?”
William reached into his pocket. “Here’s one.” Never mind there were a dozen on the counter.
“Thanks, man.” Arin signed and handed me back the copy before turning to William. “Things good for you?”
“Good. Can’t complain. Hey—have you seen Sara’s new place yet?”
I really wished Sonnet was here, watching this. At the very least she’d be able to fully tell me what was going on. To say there was a weird vibe was a complete understatement.
“No,” said Arin, standing taller. “I haven’t. Sara—did I know you were moving?”
“I don’t remember,” I answered honestly.
“Yeah, well, it’s nice,” William said.
The customer copy of the receipt printed a moment later. I tore it off too and all but shoved it in Arin’s direction. “I’m going to dust the counter,” I said. “You both need to scoot.”
I reached under the counter and pulled out my can of Pledge, spraying a line right in front of them.
They both jumped back, and I swiped at the counter with my dusting cloth. Much better.
Arin retreated with his albatross of a bird book to the chair while William busied himself with the shelving out of my view.
William returned to the counter twenty minutes later. “Take off early.” He rapped his knuckles against the wood. “Have a good time. See you tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” I echoed.
I left work shaking my head. I didn’t understand men.
Sitting across the table from Arin, separated by bowls of pho, I decided to be a bit more direct than I had earlier in the day. “I just thought you should know,” I began, pushing my noodles around with my chopsticks while watching his face, “I mean, since I’ve been telling my friends lately… well, I’m Amish. I mean, my family’s Amish. I’m not anymore,” I rushed to add. This wasn’t going well. “But I was raised Amish. I was kind of keeping it secret for a while, and I decided not to anymore.”
Arin’s stunned expression reminded me why I’d been so hesitant to tell people in the first place. I think he even scooted farther back in his chair before sitting up straighter. “Amish? Really?”
Hadn’t I just said so, repeatedly? “Yes.”
“Huh. Is this,” he sputtered as he gestured around the tiny restaurant, “okay? Do you have, like, dietary restrictions? I mean, you eat beef, right?”
“Um…” I frowned, unsure of how to respond. “My family farms. We raise livestock, among other things. We’re not vegetarians.”
“Oh. Right on.”
I looked down at my noodles before taking another bite. This would be a long meal.