The next morning, I got up an hour earlier than usual so I could get some time in with January before work. Step one was to begin establishing mutual trust between us, and to do that I had to present opportunities for January to need to trust me, which meant introducing the tiniest bit of fear and then quickly showing the horse that she had nothing to worry about. Though over the coming days I would likely try a variety of triggers, such as a crinkly plastic bag or a shiny aluminum pan, this morning I brought in a big red rubber ball I’d borrowed from Stephen last night. All I did was hold the ball near January, which she did not like at all, and then I waited until she settled down and rewarded her with a carrot. After that, I moved the ball closer to her, waited, rewarded, then put it on her back, waited, rewarded, and so on. After twenty minutes, she was okay, to a point, with the giant ball. Really, it was more that she was okay with me in spite of there being a rubber ball between us, which was exactly the response I wanted. She had decided to put her confidence in me even though there was a giant red round thing in the stall. I would likely have to repeat the process the following day. My goal was to have her not react to the stimuli but respond to me.
Our morning session had been a success, and though I was a few minutes late getting to work, nobody else was around to notice. Owen and I shared the farrier shop, and he wasn’t even there yet. When he showed up a few minutes later, I learned he’d been at the main house getting some filters from his mamm to use with our coffeemaker down here.
Amos and Mahlon worked in the welding shop, which sat farther down the row, on the other side of the barn. Though they sometimes forged new products in the shop, more often they were doing repair work on existing items, such as buggy wheels, axels, farm implements, and swing sets. I had put in a little time there myself when my apprenticeship first began, but thanks to my years of welding experience in Daed’s buggy shop, it had become obvious early on that those particular skills weren’t the ones I needed to practice. That’s how I’d ended up apprenticing almost exclusively on the farrier side of things, which was more than fine with me.
Today I had a steady stream of horses to shoe, but the work went fast, and my last client was gone by three. After that, I put my tools away, did a quick cleanup with Owen in the shop, and then I was finished for the day. Though I was eager to work again with January, there were two other tasks I needed to do first. One was to return Patch to Trudy Fisher. The other was to take Priscilla to the cemetery to see her mother’s grave.
Trudy’s cart was still in the buggy shed where she and I had stashed it, so I retrieved Patch and hooked him up to it, and then I hooked Willow to my own courting buggy. Priscilla came out, ready to go, just as I was finishing. I still didn’t know if she’d overheard my conversation with Amanda the night before, but judging by her calm and friendly demeanor now, she had not. Feeling relieved, I gave Willow a final pat and we set off, with me leading the way in the cart and Priscilla following behind in my buggy.
We arrived at the Fishers about four thirty. As I handed Patch over, I told Trudy and her uncle all about what we’d discovered and worked on over the past few days. They both seemed quite impressed, and when I brought Trudy and Patch out to their pen to show her the exercises she would need to do, she took to them right away. Within half an hour, I was confident that girl and horse would be fine together from here on out.
Trudy’s Uncle Vernon was so impressed with what I’d managed to accomplish that he tried to pay me extra for it after all. I refused—a deal was a deal—but somehow by the time Priscilla and I were ready to go, the back storage rack of my buggy was weighed down with an entire flat of fresh-picked strawberries, five big jars of pickles and preserves, two loaves of bread, and a shoofly pie.
Priscilla had been quiet during much of the stopover, but as we drove away, I detected a sly smile on her lips.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, really. What?” I pressed. She looked like the cat that ate the canary.
“It’s just… well, I think Trudy has a little crush on you.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“Ya, she does. And trust me, I would know.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked with a laugh. “I assume you’re speaking from personal experience?” I expected her to laugh in return at my mention of her long-ago attraction to me, but she didn’t.
“Don’t make fun,” she said instead. “It’s not a joke when a young girl has her first crush. And yes, I do mean from personal experience.”
My laugh sputtered away. Had her little crush on me back then been more than just a girlish passing fancy?
“Oh. I didn’t mean…that is, I…I wasn’t making fun of you,” I sputtered. “That was such a long time ago, and I…” My voice fell away. I was just making things worse.
She turned from me, sighing gently. “It’s all right, Jake. I know you thought I was just a rough-and-tumble tomboy who hung around the blacksmith shop because I liked the horses.”
“But you were a rough-and-tumble tomboy who hung around the blacksmith shop because you liked the horses.”
“Yes, but that’s not the only reason I lingered in the shop.” She swung her head slowly back to face me. “I hung around because of you.”
And there it was. Though she’d been just a child back then, her feelings for me really had run deep—or at least as deep as they could have at that age. I felt terrible for having ridiculed her now.
“That’s so sweet,” I said by way of apology. “I shouldn’t have laughed.”
“It’s okay,” she replied, and then she grew silent.
My mind, however, was now racing with questions.
“So what was it that you…that attracted you to me?” I asked, unable to stop myself. I wasn’t fishing for compliments. I really just wanted to know.
To my relief, Priscilla smiled. Then she shrugged.
“You saw me,” she said.
“I saw you?”
“Ya. I was practically invisible to everyone, but not to you. You always said hello to me. Always. Sometimes it was all you said, but you said it. You saw me.”
For some reason, her words saddened me. Had she really grown up feeling invisible? “Of course I did. Like I told you the other night, you were a neat kid.”
She took that in and then continued. “As a little girl, I thought you were so nice. I guess as I grew older, it just kind of struck me one day that you had even more going for you than that. Like…” Her voice trailed off, and with a glance I could see that her cheeks were flushed a pretty pink.
“Like what?” I prodded, trying to keep my tone light but really wanting her to keep talking. “Go on. Don’t stop.”
She smiled, waving away her embarrassment. “Like, I don’t know…” Again, her voice trailed off as she seemed to dig around in her memory for an example. “There was this one time you came over to help Owen fix a busted axle on the family wagon. I was about twelve then, which would have made you sixteen. I remember I was sitting on an old tire swing in the front yard, just watching, and you had to pick up a big heavy pile of iron rods all by yourself. I’d already thought of you for years as Owen’s nice friend who always talked to me about horses. But that day, I don’t know.” She shook her head, a slight smile coming to her lips. “You were just so strong. And handsome. And kind. I’d never really looked at you that way before, but that day…I guess you could say you came to change an axle and ended up stealing my heart.”
She grew quiet after that, and after a long moment, I thanked her for telling me. I didn’t remember that particular event myself, but I did recall the time period, and how it seemed that little Priscilla had begun looking at me in a not-so-little-girl way. Somehow, I had never imagined that the tomboy could fall for anyone—at least not very deeply, especially given her young age. Clearly, I had underestimated her feelings for me back then.
Curious, I was about to ask at what point her love had finally begun to wane when I remembered the tragedy of her young life. That adoring little girl had been forced to grow up very fast, no doubt leaving things like childish crushes far behind.
I changed the subject instead, and to my relief, conversation flowed easily as we drove. Priscilla seemed more talkative than usual, and I wondered if that was because she was nervous about our destination. This wasn’t going to be easy for her, to see her mother’s grave. But until we got there, I intended to seize the opportunity and keep her talking. After all, just like with horses, the more I could learn about her, the better able I would be to help her.
In answer to my questions, she began to tell me about her life in Indiana and some of her relatives there. I could see she was fond of the aunt and uncle in LaGrange who had taken her in six years ago, but her eyes really sparkled when describing a beloved great-aunt who lived next door to her maternal grandparents, on a small apple orchard in Elkhart. Priscilla did not bring up the widower who was also in Indiana, waiting for her answer on a marriage proposal. I really wanted to know more about him, but I couldn’t figure out a way to broach such a personal topic, so I had to leave it alone for now.
Instead, I asked her if she’d made any decisions about staying in Pennsylvania beyond the end of the summer, and she replied that that was presently on hold, that she was still waiting for God’s guidance regarding why He had wanted her here in the first place.
“Any word on the nanny job?” I asked, thinking of our chance encounter yesterday afternoon when she’d been on her way back from the interview.
“Ya, they left a message this morning. They went with someone else.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s just as well.” She shrugged. “I didn’t really want it anyway.”
I reminded her of what Amos had said that first night at dinner, about how instead of getting an outside job, maybe she could take over more of the duties at home, freeing Roseanna to put in extra hours at the quilt shop.
“Ya, I was thinking about that too. I’d be happy to do it as long as it’s something Roseanna wants as well. I know money’s tight for them right now, and they could use the extra cash.”
It was an odd statement for her to make, and I was quiet for a moment as I considered her words. From my perspective, I couldn’t imagine anything to be less true. How could money be tight for the Kinsingers when Owen and I had a steady stream of customers in the farrier shop from morning to afternoon?
I said as much to her now, and her response surprised me. Though work was steady on the horseshoeing side of the business, she said, things weren’t going nearly as well over in the welding shop.
Kinsinger Blacksmith and Welding had always had more farrier customers than anything else, but I hadn’t realized quite how unbalanced the situation had become until Priscilla said that as far as she could tell, there was barely enough work on the welding side for two people. Considering how skilled both Amos and Mahlon were at what they did, that was a real shame.
She and I both grew silent after that as my mind was busy going over this new information. There had been a lot of times lately when Mahlon wasn’t even around, but I’d just thought he was off doing deliveries or something. Now I felt kind of dumb for not seeing this before. More than likely, he’d either been out trying to drum up more business or looking for a side job that might carry him through this current financial crunch. These thoughts concerned me, but I decided to put them out of my mind for now, as we were nearing our destination.
Once we crested the hill and the cemetery came into view, I could sense Priscilla’s body stiffening next to me. This couldn’t have been easy for her, and I half expected her to tell me to turn the buggy around and take her home. She didn’t say a word, however, and soon we were pulling to a stop over on the grass alongside the fence.
We climbed out of the buggy and then just stood there for a moment, staring at the rows of headstones. It occurred to me that she wouldn’t know where to begin to look for her mother’s headstone because she hadn’t visited the grave before. To look upon the long field of the departed and not know where to start would surely be daunting.
“I can help you find her marker,” I said gently.
She took a step away from me and moved toward the rows. “I know where she is.”
I stared after her a moment before suddenly realizing that of course Priscilla would know where her mother was buried. Sharon would be right next to Daniel. Priscilla had no doubt been to her father’s grave, perhaps many times.
I didn’t sense that she wanted me to accompany her, so I looped Willow’s reins around a fence post and leaned against it as my horse bent her neck to nibble weeds.
Priscilla stopped about thirty yards away at a section of the cemetery that enjoyed a bit of shade from a towering oak. I watched as she knelt on the grass in between two small, raised rectangles of carved stone. A gentle breeze toyed with the strings of her kapp, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was lost in the moment, her body perfectly still. She wasn’t close enough for me to see the features on her face, so I couldn’t tell what effect being at her mamm’s grave was having on her. I just hoped it wasn’t serving to feed any guilt she still had about how her mother died.
I wanted to give Priscilla enough time here, but as the sun sank lower in the sky, I began to wonder if we were lingering a bit too long. Visiting the grave of a loved one could be a good thing, a healthy way to find closure and be reminded of faith and our belief in eternity. But it could be a bad thing as well, an opportunity to wallow in sorrow and grief, nursing the ache of loss.
After waiting as long as I thought I should, I finally strode with quiet purpose to where Priscilla knelt, coming to a stop behind her. Looking down, I read the two stones, each of which held exactly four lines of information: name, date of birth, date of death, and age at death. I was aware of the fancy-type headstones that Englischers often used, but our cemeteries were always like this. Identical stones, identical listings, and nothing else. It was our final act of humility and community, to be buried in such a way that no headstone was ever more elaborate than any other.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded without looking up. “We can go,” she said, but she made no move to rise to her feet. Instead, she reached toward the stone bearing her mother’s name and touched her fingers to the etched words there, almost as though she were laying her hand on her mamm’s fevered brow. Then she got to her feet and, without turning to me, began to walk back to the buggy.
It wasn’t until we were pulling out onto the road that she spoke again.
“Danke, Jake. I know you had a lot to do today. It was kind of you to bring me here.”
“You’re welcome. Did you find what you were looking for?”
She hesitated a moment, causing me to glance over at her. She was staring out at the passing fields of green all around us. “I guess you could say that.” When she looked back at me, I could tell she had indeed found some sort of answer at her mother’s grave, but I had no idea what it was.