Things were awkward between them the next morning. She was hormonal and weepy—which she tried to hide behind a studied politeness. He was stiff and quiet. Normally, she would have fled to her aunts’ for comfort, but she definitely was not ready to see Bertha yet.
It was a relief to go to work, but she struggled to get through the day.
When she got home that night, what she wanted to do was to lay down on the couch and sleep, but there was dinner to fix, and as a wife and mother, it was up to her to fix it. Or at least, that was how it felt.
She was deep into food prep when she heard a voice.
“Don’t,” Joe said.
Rachel turned away from the kitchen counter, where she had been getting ready to make hamburgers from a couple of pounds of fresh ground chuck.
“Why?”
“Because you’ve worked all day, you’re pregnant, you’re tired, and you don’t need to try to cook dinner on top of everything else. Remember the meltdown from last night? I don’t want to repeat that.”
“But we need to eat.” Rachel did not want to discuss her meltdown. “And I don’t want to go out. I’ve been all over Tuscarawas County today, asking questions and trying to track down information.”
“What happened?” Joe asked.
“Someone dug a six-foot-deep trench in the spillway of Henry Yoder’s pond while he and his wife were visiting their daughter in Pennsylvania. Drained the whole thing. Nothing but dead fish lying there in the mud when they got back.”
“That was a lot of bother for someone to go to.”
“Hours of digging just for meanness. It will take months for the pond to fill back up, and that was the main source of water for his cattle.”
“Is Henry also part of your aunts’ church?”
“Yes. I wish I could figure out a motivation, but nothing I come up with makes sense.”
“Well, I’ve had an easy day compared to yours,” Joe said. “All I’ve done is work on my car.”
“Working on your car couldn’t have been that easy.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, Bobby was helping you, wasn’t he?”
Joe laughed, and that made her feel better. “Okay, so I spent most of my time trying to keep him from killing himself with my tools, but let me fix dinner anyway.”
“You don’t have to ask me twice.” Her feet hurt, and her back too. This business of having a little person growing inside her was taking a toll. She was feeling the effects, especially in her waistband that was becoming too tight. Even buying a larger size of slacks wasn’t working anymore. She really needed to get a maternity uniform.
She sat on a stool at the kitchen counter and secretly unbuttoned her waistband.
Joe tucked a dish towel into his belt, washed his hands, and began a complicated business of whisking up sauces and spices and then folding it all into the meat.
“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked. “I just planned to fry the meat into patties for hamburgers, but you always do something special to make it taste better.”
“I learned this at my mother’s elbow,” Joe said. “Darren did too.”
“Darren can cook?”
“When he feels like it. The thing is, when we were boys and Mom and Dad were working in Africa, we didn’t always have the best food to work with. Mom had to get inventive to make things taste good. We didn’t have television or that many things to entertain us, so helping her in whatever kitchen we were using was about as entertaining as it got somedays.”
“What kind of things did you cook?”
“We had to improvise a lot. I actually got pretty good at hunting small game by throwing rocks. Mom would clean whatever I brought home and figure out a way to make it edible. Learning to hunt like that might have helped my pitching accuracy later on. Who knows? It’s amazing what you can get good at when you’re hungry. Darren never developed the knack, but he was always tagging along. I made him carry my bag of rocks for me.”
“Speaking of Darren…”
He followed her glance, looked out the window in the kitchen, and saw his brother walking up the driveway.
“Can you get the door?” He continued to knead the seasonings into the ground chuck. “My hands are messy.”
She opened the door, without trying to force her waistband closed. Her shirt tail covered things enough for modesty.
“Hi, come on in, Darren. Your brother is making burgers.”
“Are you using one of Mom’s recipes?” Darren sounded hopeful.
“Yep,” Joe said. “Want to stay and eat with us?”
“Sure would!”
After forming the burgers, Joe put them on a grill they kept on the small back patio. A pot of canned baked beans warmed beside them—to which he had added a dollop of honey and a half teaspoon of allspice. Rachel found some Vidalia onions, which she sliced, and Darren tossed a salad. Bobby brought out the potato chips, and soon the four of them were digging in.
“Nothing against Amish food,” Darren said with his mouth full, “but every now and then a man needs a good burger. It’s hard to find one around here. Lots of noodles, chicken, and pastry, but not much in the way of burgers. You should open a restaurant.”
“Yeah, right,” Joe said. “I’ve got about three things I can make well and that’s it—burgers, baked beans, and sometimes I do a pretty good job of grilling a cheese sandwich.”
“And peanut butter sandwiches, Daddy,” Bobby said. “You make good ones of those.”
“You should open a restaurant and call it Joe’s Bar & Grill,” Darren continued as if he hadn’t heard Joe’s objection.
Joe laughed. “Like nobody has ever used that name before.”
“I’m afraid the aunts would have a problem with the ‘bar’ part of it. They’re teetotalers,” Rachel said.
“Can’t you just picture Bertha coming in like Carrie Nation with an axe—smashing up all the liquor bottles?” Joe asked. “Now, there’s a mental image.”
“She might do it too,” Rachel said. “Bertha’s never been shy about expressing her opinion.”
“Seriously, Micah,” Darren said, “There might be a niche here in Amishland for a good hamburger joint. Maybe a sort of sports bar.” He glanced at Rachel. “But without the bar.”
“I know absolutely nothing about running a restaurant.”
“A lot of athletes own them,” Darren said. “They might not do the cooking, but they oversee them and lend their name to them. It could be a great business opportunity.”
Rachel saw Joe freeze at the words “great business opportunity.”
Joe’s younger brother had sponged money off Joe for years, using it for one failed “great business opportunity” after another. Her husband had come to the sad conclusion that Darren didn’t have the grit to stick to anything long enough to make it a success. His brother always seemed to think that his big break was right around the corner, if Joe would just lend him a little more money.
Their impromptu dinner had been going well until Darren started taking the idea of Joe starting a restaurant a little too seriously.
“You could have a baseball theme,” Darren enthused. “You could name the hamburgers after baseball terms. Like Micah’s Slider…or Joe’s Grounder. Or…”
“Hate to burst your bubble, but restaurants need start-up money,” Joe said. “And I don’t have it.”
Darren stopped mid-sentence. “What do you mean, you don’t have it?”
“The financial guy Henrietta set me up with? He ruined me,” Joe said. “Took off to parts unknown with my money and that of several others.”
“But the house…?”
“Sold at a loss.”
“You mean it’s all gone?” Darren seemed dumbstruck. “Everything you made down through the years? All those big contracts!”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Any chance of getting it back?”
“Not much.”
“Man, I’m sorry, bro. I hope someone gets hold of that guy and makes him swim with the fishes.”
“Can we go swimming with the fishies, Daddy?” Bobby glanced up from his plate. “Can we?”
“Sure.” Joe tousled his son’s hair. “We’ll take fishing poles along too, for good measure. Okay?”
“ ’kay.” Bobby went back to his meal.
“Be careful what you say in front of my son, Darren,” Joe said in a low voice. “He’s only six.”
“Right. So. About that business opportunity we were discussing…”