Five

Normally, Izzy was cautious around other women, slow to warm up, even reluctant to offer friendship. But there was something about Sylvie that drew Izzy to her, something that made her feel as if they’d known each other all their lives. She could see why Luke felt a special attachment to this cousin of his. Unlike most women, Sylvie didn’t compete or compare. She just lived her life the best way she could.

Standing next to Sylvie as the women waited to head into the Smuckers’ barn for church on Sunday, Izzy felt most aware that she was not of German descent like everyone else. Sylvie was more than a head shorter than Izzy, fair and blonde next to her own dark hair and olive skin. Luke had said once that he hoped their children would have hair like Izzy’s, thick and wavy and dark. Hardly aware she was doing it, she lifted a hand to the back of her neck, tucking in the wisps that escaped her pinned knot.

No. She dropped her hand. She wouldn’t think about that. Those babies would never be. Dok hadn’t found any reason why she and Luke weren’t able to conceive and told them not to give up hope. But it looked different from Izzy’s perspective, with hope shriveling each month.

She pushed aside her feelings of self-pity as she followed Sylvie into the dimly lit barn and sat on a backless bench. She tucked her chin to her chest, trying to still her heart and mind. Waiting for the Lord. That was how Luke described this quiet time of expectation. She wondered what was running through Sylvie’s mind during this long drawn-out silence. Now, there was a woman who’d not had an easy go of life. Izzy asked her once how she had such a sense of herself, for she was different from most Amish women. More independent. Sylvie took a long time to answer, as if she was gathering her words before she said them aloud. “I suppose,” she answered, “I suppose that I’ve had to learn to trust my instincts.”

Maybe that was it. Izzy was full of self-doubt, constantly fighting an inner tug of war.

Teddy Zook, the Vorsinger, spun out the first long note of the hymn, interrupting Izzy’s train of thought, and she joined in on the women’s high reedy wobble and the men’s deep guttural sound, different octaves but the same note. With that, the service got under way. One church, one voice. No harmony, so no one stood out. She loved the moment that started the service, for all the reasons she loved being Amish. She had never wanted to stand out, never wanted to be noticed. During that moment, it felt like she was part of a whole. She felt truly Plain. Not a fairly recent convert, with a radically different upbringing from anyone else in this barn.

Her second favorite moment came later, when Luke stood to read Scripture. She was so proud of him, even though surely it must be prideful to think such a thing. After all, he was reading from the Holy Book! But he had grown so much in the last few years. Even the way he read Scripture was different than when he first became deacon. For the longest time, he kept his head tucked down, his voice low, as if he knew he didn’t deserve to be here. But something had changed in him, something had settled. His head was lifted up, his voice was clear, carrying to the corners and rafters of the barn. Sometimes she thought this might be what it was like for those Israelites as they listened to Moses. So confident in the words he read, so full of belief in the Lord God. Luke was never plagued with doubts the way Izzy was.

Today Luke was reading a long passage from the book of Philippians. “‘. . . My God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.’”

All your needs. All your needs.

How could that be true? She glanced over at Sylvie, wondering if she ever suffered from doubts about God supplying all her needs. After all, she was a widow, a single mother.

How could it be best to have children grow up without fathers? Take Joey, for example. He sat on the other side of Sylvie, swinging his shoes back and forth until Sylvie gently put a hand on his knee and his legs stilled. That dear little boy deserved a father, she thought. A good father, a loving one. A man who stuck around.

So did I, was her next thought.

Izzy shook her head, pushing away those troubling thoughts. Sylvie, as far as she knew, never indulged in self-pity. She should try to be more like her. Even during the long service, Sylvie sat perfectly still, statue-like. Izzy had to shift from side to side, wiggle her feet inside her shoes just to keep them from going to sleep. Yes, she should try to be more like Sylvie.

After the fellowship meal, as Sylvie and Izzy crossed the yard to start cleaning up in the kitchen, they passed by Ruthie and her father, David Stoltzfus. Ruthie had leaned into him to tell him something. David laughed as he wrapped his free arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. Their obviously warm relationship sparked a familiar swirl of envy within Izzy, and she fought to tamp it down.

Sylvie slowed, watching them, and then spoke softly the words that were on Izzy’s heart. “Imagine if all fathers were like David Stoltzfus.”

“I wish my own father . . .” Izzy stopped, allowing her sentence to trail away unfinished.

Sylvie glanced over at her. “Wish what?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Don’t mind me.” She felt her cheeks grow warm.

Sylvie turned to face her, a question on her face. “If you ever want to talk about—”

“I don’t.” Her stomach tightened at the surprised, slightly hurt look in Sylvie’s eyes. She didn’t mean to be so abrupt, but she wanted to put a stop to this conversation before it got started.

“I didn’t mean to pry, Izzy. I just meant that I know all about wishing for a different kind of father.”

Sylvie’s voice was so full of kindness and understanding that Izzy felt a little ashamed. She wasn’t the only one who came from a troubled background, even among the Amish. Lately she seemed to get constantly snagged by self-pity. She had to stop dwelling on the very things that had been denied to her. The mind feasts on what it focuses on. One of Fern’s favorite sayings.

Izzy met Sylvie’s eyes with a smile in return. “We’d better get to work.” There was an enormous stack of dishes piled on the kitchen counter. Sylvie scrubbed and rinsed, Izzy dried. Each time they made a dent in the pile, someone would arrive in the kitchen with another stack.

When the kitchen had emptied for a moment, Izzy asked Sylvie how Jimmy Fisher was working out at Rising Star Farm. While the women had served lunch to the men, she’d noticed Jimmy said something to Sylvie that made her laugh.

“He’s working hard, that’s for sure.” She handed a dripping plate to Izzy.

“Beware,” Izzy said, rubbing the dish with her rag. “Jimmy is quite a charmer.”

Sylvie grinned. “There’s nothing charming about Jake’s junk.”

“Joey likes him?”

She lifted a soapy hand to seesaw it in the air. “Getting there. It’s good for Joey to be around another man.”

“But Jake was good to him, wasn’t he? Tried to be a father to him?”

“A father? I don’t know if he tried to be a father. More like a kind old uncle.” Sylvie shrugged. “And my father hardly ever spoke to him, but to bark at him for the smallest things.” She rolled her eyes. “Listen to me. On a Sunday, fresh out of worship, and here I am running Jake and my father down. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” She gave Izzy a knowing look. “That’s from the Good Book.”

It was? It sounded more like something Fern would say, but Izzy was hardly the one to ask about Bible verses. Most everything about the Bible was still new to her ears.

Not a moment later, into the kitchen came Fern, holding Katy Ann in her arms. The baby’s eyes were dropped at a sleepy half-mast. These long Sundays took a toll on little ones. “Luke’s staying behind to help get the benches into the wagon. I’m going to head home now—catching a ride with Edith and Hank. If it’s all right with you, I’ll take Katy Ann home for a nap.”

Izzy set down the rag and took a few steps toward Fern. Katy Ann held out her arms for her. She loved those moments, when her little girl reached for her in a way that revealed their mother-child bond. She held her close, gave her a hug and a kiss. “Sounds good. I’ll finish up here and be home soon.” She handed Katy Ann back to Fern with a thank-you.

Behind Fern, Edith appeared at the kitchen door, blocking the flow of traffic as women were bringing dishes into the kitchen to be washed. People naturally stepped aside when they saw her coming. They had to—Edith would step aside for no one. The pinched expression on her face as she glanced at Sylvie was a reminder to all that she was not a favorite. “We’re leaving now.” She turned and left without another word, and the kitchen traffic started up again.

Later, as Izzy waited for a young boy to bring Bob in from the pasture and hook him up to her buggy, she looked at the sun, already dipping to the west toward midafternoon. The October days were growing short.

My God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. All your needs.

All your needs.

Down the long empty country road that led to Windmill Farm, those words kept circling in her mind. Maybe that was the heart of her problem. She hadn’t prayed for this longing out of fear that, what she considered a need, God would consider to be only a want. After all, Katy Ann belonged to her, just as much as if she’d borne her. Asking for more seemed indulgent. But maybe that wasn’t how God felt about the topic. Luke was always telling her that the Bible said to pray about everything.

Dare she ask?

Could she be bold enough to pray for a baby of her own? Such a prayer seemed too much to ask. How could she ask? Yet how could she not ask? It was the desire of her heart. It was her greatest need.

My God will supply all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. All your needs.

Dear Lord, she prayed, help me believe that to be true.

Jimmy ran down his mental list of jobs to do at Rising Star Farm—an endless list—and prioritized them. The garden needed tilling, but that would have to wait until the ground warmed up. The apple orchard needed pruning before the sap started flowing, so he’d get to work on those trees, doing a little each day. But first, he had something in mind that he wanted from the old barn . . . dubbed by Jimmy as Jake’s Junk Shop.

He pushed a wheelbarrow through a small pathway, brushing cobwebs out of his face, almost holding his breath from the dank musty stench. He went as far into the dim barn as he could, until the wheelbarrow couldn’t fit any farther in. Then he started to grab all the copper he could reach and toss it in the wheelbarrow. He wasn’t sure if Jake had had any organizational sense—he doubted it—but at least the copper seemed to be heaped in the same general center area of the barn.

He carted out all that he could find and wheeled it over to Luke’s Fix-It Shop. Teddy Zook was inside the shop, setting a chair leg into a vise grip.

Luke held a bottle of wood glue in one hand and gave Jimmy a wave with the other. “Come on in. This is your mother’s chair we’re trying to fix. The legs keep splitting.”

Jimmy recognized that old chair. It was his mother’s favorite kitchen chair. Over the years, every single leg had broken, but she just kept getting it fixed. One of these days, the whole thing would collapse on her. “When you have a minute, I brought a cartful of copper over. I thought you might have some use for it.”

“Copper?” Luke didn’t even look up as he squeezed glue into the cracked chair leg. “What for?”

Teddy looked up. “What kind of copper?”

“All kinds. Jake used to haul it home from tag sales. I’m trying to sell it.”

“Sell it to me?” Luke said. “No way. You’re turning into Hank Lapp. He brings me all his junk too. Look out at that trampoline in the sheep pen. Bet he got that from Jake. I don’t want any more junk.”

“Junk?” Jimmy said. “Oh no no no, my friend. Copper is no junk. It’s valuable. Costly.” So far, it was the only thing Jimmy had found among Jake’s junk that was worth something.

“Only if you want it.”

“People do want it. Gutters, downspouts, mailboxes, trimming for their lanterns. I’ve seen the trend, all over Colorado. I’ve seen copper sinks in farmhouses. There’s a shortage of copper, right as we speak. I’ve even heard of copper thieves, stealing trim right off houses.”

“What?” Luke said. “Copper thieves?”

“He’s right,” Teddy Zook said. “Folks love copper. I get requests all the time for copper trim on woodwork.”

Luke and Teddy walked outside to look through the wheelbarrow. Luke picked up a long, narrow copper pipe. “But what would you do with it?”

“Hammer it down and resell it,” Teddy said, as he rummaged through the wheelbarrow. “Think about all the ways to use copper. Roofs on birdhouses. Trim on mailboxes. It’s a hot commodity, Luke. You need to get out more.” He picked up an old battered teakettle. “A little polish, get those dents out, and this could be something Alice might like.”

Jimmy gave Luke a smug smile. “See? What did I tell you?”

“How much do you want for it?” Teddy said.

“The teakettle?”

“No. The whole kit and caboodle.”

Jimmy rubbed his chin. “I could part with it for, say, two hundred dollars.”

“I’ll give you fifty,” Teddy said.

“Sold!”

On the way back to Rising Star Farm with an empty wheelbarrow, Jimmy felt pretty pleased with himself. Fifty bucks was nothing to cough at, not when he’d barely had a dollar to spare in the last few weeks. He was wrapping up his first workweek at Rising Star Farm, and he’d made a dent in getting the farm in better condition. A small dent, but it was a start.

When he handed Sylvie the wad of fifty dollars, she looked at him, amazed. “You mean, someone actually paid you for something out of that old barn?”

“Yup. Teddy Zook bought it all.”

She handed Jimmy back the wad of money. “You keep it. Keep the money from anything you can sell. Keep all of it.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not? Consider it as an incentive to sell more of Jake’s junk.”

Come to think of it, they’d never really discussed Jimmy’s salary. “Well, then, only if you’ll consider it as my wages.”

Her violet eyes widened. “Then I hope you can sell it all. Every last bit of junk.” Before she turned away, she winked at him.

Those winks! What did they mean? Jimmy was thoroughly confused by them. It was on his way across the yard that evening that he wondered if she’d agreed so readily to his offer because she couldn’t afford to pay him anything at all.

Sylvie busied herself by dicing up apricots to add to a cornmeal cake. Two weeks ago, the Bent N’ Dent had an entire box of badly dented apricot cans, marked only twenty cents each, so she bought them all. Joey had already grown tired of canned apricots, so she was trying to find creative ways to use them. She glanced out the kitchen window to see Jimmy Fisher emerge from the barn leading Prince by the halter, Joey bobbing alongside him. After the construction of the henhouse, Joey could not be detached from Jimmy. He watched for him to arrive in the morning. He shadowed him as he did his chores. It pleased Sylvie and worried her, both.

Joey opened the gate to the paddock, and Jimmy led Prince in, unhooking the lead from his halter. The horse danced around inside, eager to be free, before he took off charging down to the far end, almost as if he was going to hop the fence and take off, but at the last minute he made a sharp turn to gallop back to the other end. The three-legged dog hopped over to join them as Jimmy latched the paddock and stooped down to ruffle his head.

Then she watched as Jimmy put his heel on the lower rail and leaned forward to rest his elbows on the top rail. Joey tried to copy him, but he couldn’t reach the top rail, so he had both elbows on the lower rail and his bottom high in the air. It made him look silly, such a little boy trying so hard to be a man, and had Sylvie smiling through a sudden prickle of tears. She whipped the batter so hard with the wooden spoon that some spilled over the edges and she stopped suddenly. Whipping all the air out would only make this cornmeal cake as heavy as a stone.

He should have a father, Sylvie thought for the thousandth time. A boy deserved a father. Every child did.

Luke walked through the orchards to check on Amos’s trees. He felt his friend’s presence most keenly up on this hillside, remembering the care Amos had given those fruit trees—planted by his great-grandfather, tended by subsequent generations. Amos wasn’t particularly fussy about most things—Windmill Farm had needed a lot of repairs when Luke first arrived. But when it came to the orchards, Amos babied them like they were saplings. Today, Luke was marking the branches to be pruned during the month of January, just the way Amos had taught him.

Luke missed the dear old man. Amos and David had become fathers to him, filling that seemingly bottomless hole in his life. They were the reason he knew he could love Katy Ann as if she were his own and be the father she needed—because Amos and David had done that for him.

As he crested the hilltop, he saw a car pull up the driveway and park in front of the yarn shop. He winced in a grimace, then checked himself, when he saw Izzy’s mother, Grace, emerge from the car. She had come a long way in the last year and he wholeheartedly supported her recovery. She showed a lot of interest in Katy Ann, which he hadn’t expected of her. She was a new and improved Grace Mitchell Miller, often surprising him in good ways, yet he had a hard time not thinking of her as the old Grace. It shamed him to be so judgmental, yet he was. He supposed the cause of it was feeling protective of Izzy for a lifetime of neglect. He, of all people, should have an empathy for someone making a fresh start.

As he watched, he saw Izzy come out of the yarn shop with the baby in her arms. Katy Ann reached out for Grace. Again, he winced. He disliked this routine: Grace would offer the baby a piece of candy, something he and Izzy would never let her eat. Too sugary, too filled with junk. He’d objected to Izzy about it and it hadn’t gone well. “Why can’t your mother bring something healthy to her? Something that doesn’t cause cavities on her brand-new beautiful little teeth? A carrot, maybe.”

Izzy had rolled her eyes at that. “It’s my mother’s way to relate to Katy Ann. We’re not going to interfere.”

Maybe not, but he drew the line at letting Grace babysit Katy Ann.

“Luke,” Izzy would remind him, “she’s never even offered. She can sense you don’t trust her. So stop worrying about things that haven’t happened.”

He checked himself again. He was too hard on Grace. She was trying, after all. Imagine if he ever met Izzy’s father—he would blast him for abandoning his family, for letting his child grow up in the foster care system. What kind of man was that? He could almost hear David’s voice, gently correcting him. “Life isn’t quite so black and white, Luke. Most people do the best they can.”

Maybe so. Probably not. Not taking care of your children . . . it just wasn’t enough to say you did the best you could. You had to do better.

At first light on a cold but sunny morning in early November, the low-beamed kitchen of Rising Star Farm was already humming with life. Sylvie had a tray of biscuits baking in the oven, its sweet scent competing with the sizzle of sausage, seasoned with sage and red pepper, frying on the stovetop. Upstairs, Joey was clomping around in his room, looking for clothes. The rooster let out his cry, the cat scratched at the back door, the three-legged dog got up from his warm spot near the stove to bark at both of them, then lay back down. She opened the door to let the cat in and paused for a moment. All the way from the barn, she could hear the horses start whinnying, impatient for breakfast. First one whinnied, then another answered back. Jimmy Fisher must be in the barn, forking hay into a wheelbarrow.

She smiled. A new day had begun.

After Jake died, the house had seemed so quiet. Far too quiet. She had poured all her energies into the horses. Doing so cheered her out of her doldrums.

Joey, now dressed, hopped down the stairs in his usual way and appeared at the kitchen door. “Something smells good.”

“It is. Your favorite. Sausage and gravy over biscuits.” The biscuits! She spun around and grabbed the oven mitt, then pulled the biscuit tray out. Not bad. Not great, but not bad.

“Just a little burned on the edges,” Joey said. “Did you get distracted again?”

She laughed. “I sure did, honey. Listening to all the sounds of morning.”

Some gentle taps at the front door gave her a start, but then she realized it was Jimmy Fisher’s signature knock. Seven short knocks, like he was tapping out a tune. As she walked to the door, it occurred to her that she was starting to become familiar with Jimmy’s ways. They were happy ways. His nature, it was cheerful. She hadn’t been around a lot of lighthearted people in her life. Her mother could be happy, but only so long as her father wasn’t home. Being around a genuinely happy person . . . it was quite nice.

Sylvie opened the door and saw Jimmy standing there with his hat on his chest. “Good morning, ma’am. I just finished feeding the horses and couldn’t help but feel overcome by the most delicious smell, wafting down from the house.”

“Sausage and gravy over biscuits,” Joey said. “It’s my favorite.”

“Mine too.”

Jimmy flashed Sylvie a double-dimple smile that was practically bouncing in his eyes, and what could she do but invite him in? Her eyes followed him as he strode past her and into the kitchen. The man did have a way about him. A dangerous way, she could almost hear her father warning her.

The lure of the scent of sizzling sausage and his empty belly proved too much for Jimmy. Each day, the aroma of Sylvie’s cooking had pulled him to the kitchen like a magnet. So far, she’d never welcomed him in. Though he’d lived near the old house most of his life, he’d never been inside. Not one single time. Jake, being a bachelor, was given a pass from hosting church, plus his mother had always warned them to stay away from the house. Jake was to be avoided and was definitely not the type to tolerate boys messing around on his property. Jimmy had never doubted her.

This morning, he caved in. When she answered his knock, he briefly wondered if he should invent a lame excuse for interrupting her breakfast. But then he got a stronger whiff—was that the smell of biscuits baking?—plus, he was a terrible liar. He just went ahead and invited himself to breakfast, and she was too nice, or maybe too surprised, to refuse him.

He took a few steps inside the house and stopped. For a building this large, the old house had a cramped front hall—no more than a stairwell, really, that received no sunlight at all. As Jimmy stood there, his eyes adjusted to the dimness: a rack on the wall was filled with old hats and bonnets; a buck’s head hung close to the ceiling, its antlers festooned with sweaters.

To the right was the kitchen. He swept the room in a glance. This room held a charm and warmth that came only from a woman’s hand. Neat and tidy as a well-kept cupboard, filled with the usual necessities of living. Copper pots hung off a rack above a large stove. On top of the stove were two freshly baked loaves of bread. Clean rags, neatly folded, hung on a wall rod. In the center of the kitchen table was a vase filled with some kind of flower, and a small candle.

He pointed to the delicate white flowers. “Late bloomers?”

“Early. They’re narcissus bulbs. You can force them to bloom if you keep them indoors, in a sunny spot. It’s a trick my mother taught me.”

“Why not just wait until spring? Why force anything to bloom before its time?”

She gazed at him for a moment. “Are you talking about flowers? Or life in general?”

He sputtered a moment, unsure of how to answer her. She did that a lot to him, turned his questions around so they were staring right at him.

“I guess because it might hasten spring along.” She leaned over to sniff them. “Best smell in the world.” She lifted the pot and held it to him.

He sniffed, then grinned. “It’s nice, kinda perfume-y. But nothing in the world beats the smell of biscuits in the oven.”

He watched as she set the vase back down, right in the middle of the table as if there were an X on the spot. The morning sun slanted through the windows, casting a paned pattern on the floor—which, by the way, was spotless, even with a small boy and a three-legged dog in the house. Clearly, this was the kitchen of an industrious woman who cared about her home. From the outside appearance of the place, he would never have guessed it.

He sat at the table’s end. His plate was soon heaped with a split-open flaky biscuit, brown on the edges, just the way he liked it, slathered with sausage soaked in creamy gravy. He swallowed a bite of biscuit, nearly speechless at its goodness. Along with the delicious taste, he felt a queer emptiness. Here he sat at Jake the Junkman’s table, with his wife and boy surrounding him. Was he sitting in Jake’s very seat?

He raised his gaze to look into Sylvie’s violet eyes. “Sylvie, this is delicious. I’ve had a lot of biscuits and gravy in my day, but it’s never tasted like this.” He sat back as she stole away his empty plate to refill it.

Over her shoulder, she said, “No different than any other Plain woman’s biscuits and gravy.”

“Not true.” It might have looked the same, but it didn’t taste the same. “The seasoning—it’s different.” Brighter, bolder, stronger. Like Sylvie, he realized. “Where’d you learn to cook like that?”

“I worked in a diner for a while.”

“You left the Amish?”

A slight hesitation. She lowered her eyes as she set his dish in front of him, flicking away a crumb on the linen cloth. “My sister, she needed looking after. So I left with her.” She lifted her eyes to Jimmy. “But I came back. I always intended to come back. I never was one to leave, not like my sister did.”

“So she didn’t return with you?”

Her eyes darted toward Joey. “No. She left. I don’t think she’ll be back. Being Amish . . . it didn’t suit her. She was always restless, never happy. She said it felt like she was wearing a dress that was two sizes too small. It never did fit.”

“Are you in touch with her much?”

“No. Not in a long, long time.”

Jimmy never liked that side of being Amish. Depending on the bishop, once a person left the community, they were out. He didn’t think David was the type to draw a hard line to those who left, cutting them off from their family. But it sounded like Sylvie’s church had a different view.

At the table, Jimmy stayed for morning devotions with Sylvie and Joey before he went back to the barn, stomach full of good food. Soul satisfied with God’s good Word. It surprised him when Sylvie said she had no Bible to read, so he volunteered to quote aloud a psalm by heart and she was impressed. He didn’t mind seeing the glint of admiration in her eyes.

That was one thing his father had taught him—the importance of memorizing Scripture. He could hear his dad’s deep voice even now, gone twenty years. “You’ll never know when you’re in a tight spot and you don’t have a Bible handy.” His dad would tap his forehead. “Best to have it stored away up here, so it’s always there when you need it.”

He hadn’t thought about his dad for a long time, but being home, back in Stoney Ridge, had rekindled a lot of memories. His dad was a gentle man, soft-spoken, prone to ups and downs. More downs than ups, as Jimmy vaguely recalled. He remembered his dad had stayed in bed a lot, for weeks at a time. His mother had no patience for his father’s low times, as she called them. She wanted him to be strong and sturdy, but he just wasn’t made that way. The harder she pushed, the weaker he became. Toward the end, his low times became longer and longer, more severe. Until he just gave up the fight.

Jimmy saw how hard Sylvie worked, how lonely a life she had. What must it have been like for his mother to raise two young boys, to manage a small farm alone, while her husband was confined to bed? Not so easy.

Strange, to feel sympathy for his mother.