When I woke up the next morning, I felt thick with sleep. I drifted back, remembering that it was Saturday and I didn’t have responsibilities with the children until later in the afternoon. Somewhere in the distance I could hear Janie arguing with Rachel, her voice shrill and insistent about some injustice that had been done to her. Beeps sailed up from the video game Ben was playing. Sleep tugged at me, pulling me down. There were things I was supposed to do. It had been days since I’d sent a letter home, and I’d promised Janie a trip to the library. I was going to call Aunt Beth to talk to her. About what? Then I remembered. I had promised Josh something last night, and I was worried about it. Aunt Beth would help me.

The phone rang, slicing through my last remnants of sleep. I looked at the clock. The red numbers glared at me: eleven thirty. I bolted up in bed, my heart hammering. I had never slept so late before.

I hurriedly stepped into the jeans I had left on the chair the night before. Pulling on a T-shirt, I padded to the bathroom to wash up. There were dark smudges under my eyes from the mascara, and I scrubbed them with a soapy washcloth, closing my eyes against the sting. My hair was a mass of tangles, and my face was pale and puffy-looking. The dark romance of the night before felt different with this disheveled reflection facing me.

I yanked my hair into an untidy ponytail and went downstairs. Rachel looked up from the newspaper spread on the kitchen table when I entered the room.

“Did you like the club?”

“Yes,” I said, shaking cereal into a bowl. “The music was wonderful. And loud!” I brought the cereal and a mug of juice over to the table, and sat across from Rachel.

She moved the newspaper aside and leaned forward. “Eliza, I’m sorry about last night. I don’t want you to think I don’t trust you.”

“I understand why you’re worried,” I said. “Josh and I talked about it, and we don’t want anything to happen that would get in the way of our friendship.” Rachel looked relieved.

After my late breakfast I was happy to have the list of tasks Rachel gave me. These last couple of weeks with Josh had been fun, but it was a dangerous fun. It brought me to places that I wasn’t ready for.

Later in the afternoon, while Ben was out with Sam at a ball game, I gathered the scant gardening tools and took Janie to the yard. I felt better now than I had in the morning. My head was clear, and I was being useful.

While I helped Janie fill the watering can, I thought about Josh and the jumble that our relationship was becoming. Our friendship had been a comfortable place, but maybe it was inviting because it held the possibility of romance. And now the romantic feelings were pulling at me, tempting me. Then there was the warning from Rachel that a serious relationship could send me home.

So maybe friendship with Josh was the answer. But I wondered if it was possible to go back in time. Once I’d felt the allure of a courtship, would I be able to settle for friendship? I didn’t know the answers, but I knew that Josh and I needed to talk. When he called, I’d tell him how I was feeling and see if he had the same concerns.

I practiced in my head what I would say. But as it turned out, I didn’t have to say anything because Josh didn’t call.

On Sunday afternoon I helped Beth make dinner and listened to her story about the first time she used a cash machine. “I put in the card John gave me, and I just thought that money would come spewing out. There was a man behind me who said, ‘It wants your PIN number.’ Then I got all distracted thinking about how a machine could ‘want’ something. Pretty soon a line formed behind me, and a manager was walking toward me to see what the trouble was. And I just started pushing these random buttons to try to get my card back so I could go home. Oh, I just felt ridiculous.”

I thought about the way Beth laughed at her own predicaments, and I tried to think if there was anyone else in the family like that. Aunt Miriam was positively dour most of the time. And my mother enjoyed a good story, but always seemed too busy to tell them. “No one in the family tells stories the way you do,” I said. “No one in the family is funny.”

“Your mom was,” said Beth. “Before she went away, that is. In school she’d imitate the teacher or pretend to fall asleep during boring lessons. I’d bury my face in my apron to hide my laughter.”

Here was yet another story about my mother that I couldn’t reconcile. “Why do you think she stopped being funny?” I asked.

“I’ve wondered about that myself,” said Beth. “Things started changing when she came home. First there was her baptism, then the celery got planted and she and your dad were ‘published.’ I think life just got more serious for your mom.”

I smiled as I thought about Amish wedding feasts and how rumors would fly around the district when celery appeared in the garden of a family with a marriageable daughter. Then, during Sunday services, the deacon would announce or “publish” the intent of the couple to marry, making it official. It was nice to talk about these customs. I wondered if Beth felt the same way.

“I was happy that Amos picked Becky,” Beth was saying. “He was always nice to us girls, and he had a kindly way about him. Before she went away, he used to come by most nights and shine the lantern in her window to call her out for courting. When she came back home, the first thing she did was send me to Amos to let him know she’d be waiting for the lantern.” Beth sighed. “And I remember one day I saw your mom smiling at your dad while he was holding Margaret in his arms. I thought she looked positively grateful to have him.”

I was flooded with warmth, thinking of how my parents loved each other. I chopped vegetables for the salad while Aunt Beth mashed potatoes in a big blue bowl. “Where’s your young man tonight?” she asked.

I concentrated on the tomato I was slicing. “I don’t know.”

“Uh-oh,” said Beth. “I don’t like the sound of that. Do you want to talk about it?”

I told her about Rachel’s warning and about dancing with Josh and bundling in the car afterward.

“That’s all right,” said Beth. “You’re allowed to do those things during rumspringa.”

“Well, while we were dancing, we said some things to each other that seemed right at the time. But now I’m all mixed up about it.”

“What did you say?” Beth prodded gently.

“He told me not to go back home, and I said ‘I won’t.’”

“Did you mean it?”

“I don’t know. At the time I felt like I meant it. Then later I thought about what I’d said. It’s the same as saying ‘I won’t be Amish.’”

“Yes it is,” Beth said.

“The next day I felt awful about it, and I decided that when he called I would have a talk with him, about maybe not being so serious in our relationship right now.”

“Did you?”

Tears gathered in my eyes. “Well, that’s the thing. He didn’t call.”

Beth’s sigh was like a gust of wind. “Oh, Eliza,” she said. “Boys may act full of bravado, but they’re pretty insecure at this age. He must be as nervous about what you said to each other as you are.”

I nodded. “So why didn’t he call?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s waiting for you to call him. I’m sure the last thing he wants to do now is have Rachel answer the phone when he’s calling you.”

That did make sense. Before everything got tangled up with the promises and the closeness, we had sworn that Rachel couldn’t know about our feelings.

In the next room, Uncle John groaned and turned off the TV. “Is it over?” Beth called.

John appeared in the kitchen, shaking his head. “Down by one run in the bottom of the ninth. First and third. Nobody out. The Cubs can’t score one lousy run.”

“Well, you’ve both had some disappointments,” said Aunt Beth in a hearty voice. “So I think we should eat.”

I sat at the table with my aunt and uncle, who I hadn’t known existed two weeks ago, and who now welcomed me to their table as family. It had been a confusing weekend, but this was something that felt just right.