A few days after Josh and I went to the city, the doorbell rang as I was setting the dinner dishes in the dishwasher. I heard footsteps and the low rumble of formal voices; then Janie was by my side pulling on my arm. “Hurry, Eliza, there’s a boy to see you. And it’s not Josh.”

Rachel stood at the doorway, talking to the visitor and watching me approach. Sam was there too, and he stepped aside as I came near, so that I found myself face-to-face with Daniel.

He stood in the hallway, looking so old-fashioned in his suspenders and black buttonless coat, holding his hat in both hands. His smile was big and wide, and a rush of heat flooded through me at the sight of him. He looked like home.

I was vaguely aware of Sam and Rachel stepping away from the door. Rachel said, “You can visit with your friend in the living room.” Shooing the children away, she and Sam left me alone with Daniel.

He spoke first. “Can you at least say hello to an old friend?”

“I’m sorry. I’m just so surprised.” I stepped forward and reached up my arms, feeling his body envelop mine in a hug.

“How did you get here?” I asked, stepping back.

“My cousin Gary was coming out this way to see a friend, so I took a ride with him. I would have let you know, but it was so last minute that you wouldn’t have gotten the letter in time.” He looked down at the brim of his hat. “Was it wrong for me to come?”

I tried to shake my head, but it felt like I was shaking my whole body. “Of course not.” I reached forward to take his hat, and realized there was no hook to hang it on. I tried not to look foolish holding his hat in my hands. He, too, was looking around. I watched his eyes scan Sam and Rachel’s home with a combination of awe and suspicion. I wondered if I had looked the same way when I’d first come here five weeks ago. It was hard to remember that this place had seemed unusual.

I wanted to tell Daniel about these amazing weeks I had spent, and to hear news from home that hadn’t yet reached me through the post office.

“How long can you visit?” I asked.

“About two hours. Gary’s coming back to get me around nine o’clock.”

I handed him his hat. “Wait here,” I said. “There’s a place we can walk to for coffee. I just have to tell Rachel I’m going out.”

Within minutes, I was walking beside Daniel, his hand cupped lightly around my elbow. I glanced up to see him smiling at me. “So how does that English clothing feel?” I looked down at my green blouse, jeans, and sneakers.

“Actually, it took some getting used to. Blue jeans are pretty stiff, it turns out. But it’s fun deciding what to wear each day, trying on new things and seeing how I look.” I paused for a moment, and then asked, “So, how do I look?”

“Just like an English girl,” said Daniel.

“I look like an English girl?”

“No, it’s just like an English girl to ask a boy how she looks.” He waited a moment before adding, “You look nice.”

He glanced around as we walked. “The houses all look the same.”

I shook my head. “Well, they’re not,” I said. Then I remembered that I had felt the same way the first time I had seen this street. But eventually each house started to look different. There was the house with the red door, where the neighborhood children always gathered in the evenings, and the house with the colorful flowers that the silver-haired woman tended so lovingly.

“That’s what they say about us, you know,” I said. “The tourists in town. And the English people who don’t know any Amish. They say we look alike because of our clothes. But if they looked more closely, if they knew us, they’d see that we’re all different. Just like these houses.”

Daniel turned to look at me. His expression was both impressed and amused. “Are you trying to show me that this fancy world is making you wise?”

“It was just an observation.” Then I smiled. “Anyway, I was always wise.”

Daniel nodded his agreement. “That’s why I’ve been staying around.”

I stopped, and Daniel’s hand slipped from my arm. “Are you staying around?” I asked. We stood there for a moment on the sidewalk.

“Well, I’m not keeping company with anyone else.” He put his hand back on my elbow, and we started walking again.

“You’re allowed to keep company,” I said. “Remember, we’re not courting.”

“I know. And when I find someone like you, she can be my girl.” His words settled inside me like a spicy meal. If Daniel were with someone else, it would be easier for me to continue to be with Josh, to see where this new relationship might take me.

I hurried to change the subject. “It’s nice being so close to town. When I have time off I walk here to go on errands, or to read at the coffee shop. That’s where we’re going,” I said, pointing to the Bean Scene. I knew that Josh was working, so there was no chance that I would run into him while I was there with Daniel. I felt a little twinge at this thought. I wasn’t courting either of these boys, so I wasn’t betraying them. But I knew there was something untruthful in not wanting them to know about each other.

The shop was quiet. Two men played chess at a table in the corner, and a woman with fuzzy yellow hair was bent over a notebook at the end of the counter, a stubby pencil making frantic scribbling sounds. Beside her, a student was typing on a laptop. Each one looked up as Daniel and I walked in. Their stares lingered on Daniel, but he seemed not to notice. He looked the place over as I pointed to the menu board and the day’s choices.

I walked up to the counter, and felt Daniel hesitate before following me. “Jasmine tea,” I told the clerk, a girl with spiky hair and silver rings on all her fingers, even her thumbs. Daniel was beside me now, holding his hat in one hand and groping for his wallet with the other. “I’ll have the same,” he said. He flinched a bit at the price before he set his hat on the counter and pulled a bill from his wallet.

I was anxious to get to a table. I had never seen Daniel so fumbly before, and I wanted to be near the old Daniel again. At home his presence filled up a space. His smile was smooth as cream, his movements easy as a glider. I touched his arm and nodded toward a table, by the wall. He sat down and sighed. I pulled an extra chair up to the table, and he set his hat there, grinning gratefully. He looked as out of place as a surgeon in a cornfield.

“So,” he said, “tell me about this fancy world.”

I didn’t know where to begin. “Well, there’s so much to do here. And so many choices.”

“What kind of choices?”

“Like when you’re done working, you can go to a movie, or hear music, or shop. People find so many different things to do with their time.”

“Well,” said Daniel, “they seem to have a lot of time to fill.”

I nodded. I’d thought of this often. “Every chore is easier here, so work gets done more quickly.” Daniel listened intently, his eyes meeting mine in a way that tugged at me.

“And what do you like to do?”

“Oh, I love the movies,” I said. “The sound seems like it’s coming right from the people’s lips, even though they’re not real people, just moving pictures of people.” I pushed aside the thoughts of Josh sitting beside me in the movies. “And they’re all different. Some are funny. Some are scary. Sometimes they make you cry.”

I took a long drink from my tea and then told him about TV and the shows called sitcoms and the reality shows that aren’t very realistic. I told him about the appliances in Rachel’s kitchen and the video games the children play with. I started to tell him about the music I listen to, but that was too connected to Josh, so instead I asked him to tell me about home.

Daniel leaned back in his chair and told me about who was courting, and who had gotten into trouble, and who had asked about me. “Your friends all miss you.”

“I miss them too. How are Annie and Kate?”

“Well, Annie and Marc are finally courting.”

I smiled. “She wrote me about that. I’m sure she’s keeping him on his toes.”

“Jah,” Daniel agreed. “But he’s up for the challenge. And Kate enjoys her work in town, but she’s lonesome for you.”

My chest warmed at his words. I looked into my teacup, watching the leaves swirling on top, breathing in the flowery scent. “It’s funny,” I said. “I’ve spent time with other kids our age here, but it’s not the same. I feel like I’m a novelty to them. It’s not like home, where we know each other so well.”

Daniel leaned forward. “I thought it might be like that. It must be hard being in a place where you’re different.”

I nodded. “Sometimes.” I thought to say more, but something about Daniel’s posture, his gentle prodding, seemed a little too eager.

His fingers tapped on the table edge. Finally he spoke.

“Come home, Eliza. Come home with me.”

Catching my breath, I pushed back my chair. It made a stuttery sound on the wood floor. The clerk with the silver rings looked up for a moment, and then returned to the book she was reading. “Is that what this surprise visit is about?” I asked. “Were you hoping to find me homesick and miserable?” Then I thought of something else. “Did my mother send you here to bring me back home?”

“No,” he said firmly. “It’s neither of those things.”

“What then?”

Daniel pushed his empty mug aside and leaned toward me. “This is my rumspringa, too. All around me, everyone my age is driving in cars, going to parties, watching those movies you tell me about.”

“But you can do those things, too.”

“I know.” Daniel looked down at the table. When he spoke, his voice was so low I had to lean forward to hear him. “But I want to do them with you.”

The rush of honesty from Daniel’s words wrapped around me like a shawl.

“Oh, Daniel,” I said.

“Is that all you can say?”

I tried again. “Please don’t make me responsible for your happiness.”

He reached for his hat and ran a fingertip along the rim. “Aren’t we all, Eliza? Aren’t we responsible for the happiness of the people we care about?” I looked down, flooded with shame. “It’s the way I feel about you,” he added.

My hand crept across the table. My fingers slipped inside of his. “I know you do,” I said. “But right now I’m just so anxious to be a part of all this. Can you give me some more time?”

Daniel’s smile was a small one. It didn’t travel up his face. “I guess I have no choice.” He gave my hand a light squeeze before releasing it and setting his hat on his head. “Let’s go. Gary will be here soon.”

On the way home he didn’t reach for my elbow as he had before. We walked in silence. Back at the house we sat beside each other on the bench near the front door, waiting for Gary’s car. The breeze carried the scent of honeysuckle, and lightning bugs flickered over the lawn. There was something calming about sitting side by side on a summer night, and I found that I wasn’t ready for Gary to drive up. I wanted more of this peaceful time beside Daniel. I asked him the question that had been waiting in my head.

“Why haven’t you written to me?”

“I’ve written you a dozen letters. I just haven’t mailed any of them.”

“Why not?”

“I read your letters, and each one tells me something I didn’t know before. Everything I write seems so silly. You know about the services and the barn raisings. What should I write you about?”

I cleared my throat before I spoke. My words slid out gently. “Write about you. I want to know about you.”

“Okay,” he said with a smile.

“Do you know the last thing I look at every night?”

He shook his head and waited.

“The carving of the bird in her nest that you made me. I keep it on the nightstand, and every night before I close my eyes I look at it. It keeps home in my thoughts.”

Daniel slipped his arm across my shoulder, and I leaned in to him.

“Then keep looking at it, Eliza. Keep me with you while you’re here.”

A soft horn interrupted us, and we got up slowly. I could feel his breath on my face as I looked up at him. “Do you think you’ll be coming back again?”

Daniel shook his head. “There’s no place for me to hang my hat here.”

I nodded my understanding.

“I’ll be waiting for you, Eliza,” he said. He picked up my hands and held them in his. “But I don’t know how long.”

Before I could answer, he stepped off the front stoop and headed for the car. He didn’t turn around to wave.

Later that night, after the children were in bed, I sat at my desk thinking of what Daniel had said. I hadn’t asked him to wait for me, and his last words sounded a little like a threat. But they were delivered to me in Daniel’s soft, earnest way, and I realized that he was only being truthful, a quality I had been lacking lately. I knew then that I didn’t want Daniel to wait for me. I wanted him to move along so that I could do the same. But I didn’t know how to tell him that.

Thoughts of home rushed back to me. I had been trying not to think about that faraway world, but now Daniel’s visit made me realize that I missed my friends. I sifted through all the letters that I had put aside, wanting to see the words, the handwriting. The voices of Annie and Kate and Mary and Sally sang in my ears. Then I saw my mother’s letter, the one I had shoved to the bottom of the pile. I opened it up and read it again.

The name Beth Winters gave me no hint of recognition. The words on the page held a warning that this was to be a secret between my mother and me. But my mother was not a secret-keeper; she was up front and no-nonsense. I sat back, blank and wondering.

I went to bed knowing that tomorrow I was going to find Beth Winters.