12

Eugene didn’t come to school one morning. M.K. felt discouraged. Things had been going so well. She had been trying all kinds of ways to help Eugene: she stopped having him read aloud in class, saving him that painful ordeal. Instead, she had a private time with him when he read aloud.

She had been surprised to discover that he could hardly read at all. He had to read slowly, so very slowly, and the big words gave him fits. She provided reading books for him far below his grade level, to help build his confidence. For the spelling bees on Fridays, she gave him the list of words to practice on Thursday. He needed so much practice. In mathematics, her goal was to teach him to estimate, and to finish a problem by asking himself, “Does this answer make logical sense?” She gave him a box of index cards for key words and formulas. She was doing everything she could to help him.

After school let out for the day, M.K. wiped down the chalkboard. She heard the door open and turned around to see Eugene standing there. He was so tall he was scraping the top of the door, and growing still.

He scowled at her. “I’m quitting school. I already turned fifteen. I don’t need it.”

M.K. turned back to the chalkboard and calmly finished wiping the last section. She knew this was a critical moment. “You can quit school, Eugene. But you’re going to have to keep learning all your life.” She put the rag in a drawer. “You can’t spend your life quitting things just because they get hard.”

He narrowed his eyes. “It wasn’t hard with Teacher Alice. I was getting along just fine until you showed up. It’s because of your teaching. You couldn’t teach a dog to bark. You couldn’t teach a fish to swim. Or a bird to sing.”

M.K. snapped her head up. She marched up to him and pointed a finger at his chest, which took notable courage because he towered over her. “I am trying to help you. You’re a smart boy, Eugene, but your mind works a little differently than other students. That doesn’t mean you can’t get faster with reading and writing and arithmetic. You can. It’s just going to take you a lot longer and you’re going to have to practice a lot more to keep up.”

He backed up a few steps. “Maybe I don’t care.”

M.K. stiffened. “Maybe you don’t. I can’t make you care. I can only offer you a chance.” She fixed her eyes on him. “But I think you do care. I think you care very much.”

Eugene held her gaze, narrowed his eyes, and called her an unrepeatable name, then whirled around and slammed the door behind him.

Out of habit, Jenny stopped by the mailbox on her way home from school and opened it. She wasn’t sure what might be inside, but it was a bright spot of the day. Usually, all that the rusty old mailbox contained was junk mail. Today, there was a thin, gray envelope, addressed to her. Jenny stared at the letter for a long minute. Her heart leapt into her mouth and she felt a little strange, kind of dizzy and a little bit sick to her stomach. Looking over her shoulder, she hurried up to the house, dropped her lunch box, sat on the porch steps, and tore open the letter.

Hey there, Jennygirl! I was so happy to get a letter from you. Doing good here, though I sure am missing our monthly visits. Sorry to hear about Old Deborah. She was a nice old lady but she’s been old for as long as I can remember. Write to me soon now honey and tell me about school. And what is Chris doing these days? Has he still gone whole hog over to them kooky Amish? I couldn’t imagine why you’re in Stoney Ridge until I figured out that my daddy’s old house must still be empty. That’s where you are, isn’t it? Don’t you worry. I won’t tell. Makes me feel real happy to know where my babies are, safe and sound. Don’t never forget that I love you. And don’t never forget that I will always be your mama.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX OXOXOXOXOXO

P.S. Listen, honey, if you can send me some money, it would really help a lot. Cash is king here in the pokey—I need it for cigarettes and stamps and that sort of stuff.

How had her mother figured out where they were living? She had taken such care not to mention anything in her letters and not to supply a return address. She glanced at the envelope. Stupid me! The Stoney Ridge postmark would have given it away.

Chris would be furious.

Should she write her mother back?

She looked up at the sky and was surprised to see how thick the gray clouds had become. It would rain soon. She slipped the letter back into the envelope and put it into her apron pocket. Later. She would worry about writing back to her mother later. For now, it was time to start dinner.

You could hear a rumble in the late afternoon sky. Cayenne, the favorite of all the horses, was in her stall. M.K. reached over and touched her nose, and she nickered at her. She could see the horse’s breath in the cold air. There was silence, the only sound was Cayenne’s steady breathing. Her father had told M.K. once that the barn was the most peaceful place he knew. No voices, only the sound of the animals, their breath and bodies so warm.

M.K. had never felt so thoroughly exhausted in all her life. Physically and mentally. Teaching must be the hardest job in the entire world. And she was never done! Even on the weekends, she found herself thinking up a new way to help Jenny Yoder not shut down when faced with an arithmetic problem or wondering how to keep a mind like Danny Riehl’s challenged. Or how to just keep Eugene Miller attending school.

It was too much. It was all too much.

She let her mind drift off to her plan of escape: she would finish the school term, take her passport, and travel to a land without children.

Raindrops started to splatter the metal roof of the barn. A crack of thunder split the sky. The storm would soon pass by. She stroked Cayenne’s nose. She should get up to the house before the downpour started.

The barn door slid open and she turned to find Chris Yoder coming in, leading the draft horses, Rosemary and Lavender, by their bridles. He didn’t notice M.K. as he led the horses to their stalls and attended to their needs: filling buckets with water and mangers with hay. She saw him rub one of the mares’ forehead. The horse nudged closer to him, and though M.K. couldn’t hear what he said, his lips moved as though he were singing to the animal. He bent and ran a hand over each of the mare’s legs.

Such gentleness.

As he dipped the bridles into water to clean off the bits, he caught sight of M.K. and startled. “I didn’t see you there.” He looked around the barn. “I thought I might wait out the rain before heading home, but what’s the use of weather if you’re not out in it anyway? I’ll leave—”

“No, wait. Don’t go on my account. It should pass soon.” Just as she finished that sentence, a loud BOOM blasted overhead and made her jump. She shivered. “When I was little, Uncle Hank would say that thunder meant the angels were moving furniture in heaven.”

“Then that would have been the armoire,” Chris said. He hooked the bridles on the wall pegs and picked up a broom. He started sweeping down the center aisle of the barn.

It had become so dark in the barn that M.K. lit a lantern and hung it on the wall. She watched Chris for a while. “You don’t have to work all the time.”

“Yes, I do.” He swept the loose straw into a stall. “You work pretty hard yourself. I’ve seen the glow of lampshine in the schoolhouse early in the morning on my way to work.”

Someone had noticed? For some reason, the thought pleased her. “I know why I’m working so hard. I’m trying to prove than I can teach school.”

He grinned. “You’re making a little progress, from what I hear.”

That pleased her too, and she felt her cheeks get warm. “So what about you? What are you trying to prove?”

His grin faded.

She had gone too far. When would she ever learn? Just as Chris started to relax, she scared him back into his shell, like a turtle. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. My curiosity is one of my worst faults.”

The rain was really coming down now. It sounded like a work crew was hammering nails on the roof. Chris put the broom away and leaned his hips against a hay bale, facing M.K. He crossed his arms against his chest and one booted ankle over the other. “I’m trying to prove that I am my own man.”

“Was there ever any doubt of that? You seem like a person who knows who he is and where he’s going.”

He went very still, and for a long minute he frowned at her. She worried that she had said the wrong thing again. “I’m sorry. What do I know?” A cat wove between her feet. She bent over and scooped up Buzz, the long-haired cat who spent most of his day snoozing. Nuzzling the cat’s warm fur, she said, “It’s just that sometimes I . . . I don’t know who I am or what I’m meant to be doing. Fern says I have a terrible restlessness inside of me. She’s right. I want to travel and see the world and swim in the Mediterranean Sea—but I love my family and I love my church and I love my bees—and I don’t want to disappoint my father or Fern or my sisters. Or Uncle Hank.” She ran her hand down Buzz’s furry back and he responded with a low purr. “Though, Uncle Hank, of all people, would understand.” She set Buzz on the ground and looked at Chris. “But I just can’t figure out which way to go sometimes.” She was babbling. She had to wrap this monologue up. “Do you ever feel that way? Do you understand what I mean?” Please, please understand.

Chris’s face grew tight. He shook his head. “No. I don’t.”

Oh. This wasn’t going very well, and the rain wasn’t letting up at all. If anything, the thunder and lightning were coming steadily. Even the horses seemed uncomfortable, shuffling their feet restlessly. It was a very dramatic stage for M.K. to bare her soul—to practically a stranger—and she had just made an utter fool of herself.

Chris rose to his feet and crossed the space between them and put his hands on her shoulders. M.K. had never seen eyes so blue, the purest cobalt, like windows to the soul. For a split second, the way he was looking at her, the nearness, she was certain he was going to kiss her. She had never let a boy kiss her before, had never wanted to be kissed before. When she had observed Sadie and Gid kissing—which she had done on plenty of occasions—she thought kissing seemed ridiculous, involving odd noises and a lot of awkward nose bumping.

Ruthie had kissed a couple of boys—but only the ones she had fallen in love with. She had described kissing that made her stomach flip-flop and her palms sweat and her head start to spin. M.K. told her she might be confusing kissing with coming down with the flu.

But standing so close to Chris right now, kissing took on a different light. Chris Yoder wasn’t a boy. He was a young man. He looked away, then looked back, and gave her shoulders a gentle shake. Something flickered behind his eyes. “I don’t feel sorry for you. Not at all. You don’t realize what you have here. You have something that most people would give their eyeteeth for in a heartbeat. A family, a place of belonging. A purpose—you’re needed in that schoolhouse.”

He was practically nose-to-nose to her. Her heart was thumping so loudly she was sure he could hear it. He brushed his fingers over her cheek. She had never felt anything like it: a touch more quiet than a breath.

“You might be the prettiest girl in Stoney Ridge, but if you don’t have the smarts to appreciate that—all that—then you don’t deserve the life you’ve been given.” He reached behind her and plucked her dad’s black slicker, hanging on a wall peg. As he slipped it over his head, he said, “Jenny will be pacing the front room like a circus lion if I don’t get back soon. She hates storms. Tell your dad I’ll bring this back in the morning.” He slid the barn door open, just enough to slip through, then he disappeared.

Through the opening, M.K. watched Chris run down the driveway in the pelting rain. How dare he! How dare he speak to her like she was a child. Why, he was using the very same tone she had used to scold Eugene Miller barely an hour ago. Chris Yoder had a regular way of dousing any momentary warmth she might have felt for him.

Insults. That’s all she was getting today. Eugene told her she couldn’t teach a dog to bark and Chris told her she didn’t have much smarts. Boys! So rude.

Then a small smile crept up on her face. Chris had said she was pretty. The prettiest girl in Stoney Ridge.

No one had ever called her pretty. They had called her nosy and sneaky and overly imaginative. Not pretty.

Jimmy Fisher had just delivered another one of his mother’s notes to Hank Lapp. He didn’t know what was in this note, but he didn’t really need to know. Hank read it and started sputtering away about how insensitive and heartless some females could be. Jimmy’s mother, he meant. It wasn’t hard to figure that she must have spurned Hank again.

Those dogs of Hank’s really irked Jimmy’s mother. Granted, Edith Fisher was a woman who was easily irked, but these dogs set her teeth on edge. Hank would promise not to bring them to the Fishers’, and that would last a time or two, until he arrived at the door surrounded by yellow fur and black noses. Doozy always smelled like he needed a bath, which he did. Add four little Doozies to the mix. It was too much for any woman to bear! Edith had declared. And Hank was spurned again.

Jimmy listened to Hank’s rants and raves for a while, until Hank got distracted by a tool he had just spotted underneath a buggy part. “DADGUMIT! I’ve been looking for that screwdriver for days.”

With Hank’s head under a buggy, it was a perfect time for Jimmy to slip out undetected. He headed over to the house to find M.K. Wooing her wasn’t working out quite the way he had hoped—mainly, because she didn’t seem to realize he was wooing her. A few days ago, he brought a bouquet of flowers and she asked if he was heading to a graveyard. He stopped by the schoolhouse and invited her for a hamburger at the new diner, and she said she had just eaten. Jimmy was flummoxed. Never, ever, ever had a girl turned down an opportunity to spend time with him.

Tonight, he had crafted a new plan. He was going to look for an opportune moment—hidden from Fern and Amos’s sight—and kiss M.K. One kiss from Jimmy Fisher, and she would be his. He was an expert kisser. Ruthie had said those very words, right before he broke up with her. He always felt a little bad about that timing. Unfortunate.

Fern turned Jimmy away at the door. She said that M.K. was out. Nothing more. Just out. As he walked down the driveway, he wondered if it was just his imagination, or if Fern seemed more prickly toward him than usual. As prickly as a cactus.

He heard a woman’s voice and turned to locate the source. Coming down the orchard path was M.K. in her beekeeper’s getup, with her big netted hat tucked under her arm. By her side was Chris Yoder. Jimmy raised his hand, getting ready to yell out to them, when he saw M.K. turn toward Chris, her face animated, talking to him intently. Her hands waved in the air, the way they did when she got excited. Chris was loping beside her, hands in his pockets, but he was listening carefully to her. Jimmy could hear M.K.’s voice float all the way down the hill. Then he heard Chris’s laughter join with M.K.’s.

What story could M.K. be telling? What could have possibly made Chris Yoder laugh? Whatever it was, why hadn’t M.K. told Jimmy that story? Jimmy felt strangely unsettled.

M.K. snapped open a fresh sheet and watched it settle gently over her bed. She smoothed the wrinkles and tucked in the corners. She had always loved the feel of cool clean linen beneath her hands, had always loved to crawl between crisp sheets at night.

Why couldn’t these simple pleasures be enough for her? They were more than enough for Ruthie and Sadie and Julia. What was wrong with her? Yesterday, she was helping Fern tackle the basket filled with clothes needing ironing. The sweet smell of steaming cotton filled the room. Treading carefully, M.K. asked Fern if she ever wanted to see parts of the world.

“No.” Fern kept ironing. “We should want nothing more than the life God has given us. The problem with you, M.K., is you lack contentment.”

Contentment. She didn’t have it. Not much of it, anyway. In truth, it sounded boring. Cats and dogs were content, and they slept all day.

Fern acted as if gaining contentment was as easy as taking a vitamin pill and M.K. knew it wasn’t.

So M.K. took her scooter out to pay a visit to Erma and ask what she thought about contentment. “Personally, I think everyone should be able to seek their own contentment,” M.K. said, as she helped Erma gather ripe grapes from her vineyard.

“The only problem with that thinking,” Erma said in her calm way, “is that if one can’t find contentment at home, one is unlikely to find it anywhere else.”

Oh. Oh. Could that be true? Did the fact that M.K. had been discontented living in Stoney Ridge mean she was doomed to a life of discontent?

Then, typical of Erma, she turned the whole thing around. “Mary Kate, I have discovered that I am happiest of all when I have learned to be content at home.”

Jenny hated arithmetic. She always just wrote any old numbers down before, so she wouldn’t have to think about it. Even if writing stories became fun when Teacher M.K. gave them their handmade books, there was no way she could make arithmetic fun. The teacher had an oven timer on her desk and Jenny kept one eye fixed on it. As soon as it went off, math would be over for the day and they could be excused for recess.

Jenny ran behind the far maple tree and sat on the ground, leaning against the tree. This was where she spent every recess and every lunch. She definitely did not want to spend her precious free time with Anna Mae and her group of giggling girls. Besides, they had never asked her to join them.

Jenny pulled out a paper and pencil from her pocket.

Dear Mom, I miss you a LOT.

She chewed on her lip, thinking. What else could she say to her mother? Chris would be upset with her for tipping their mother off to where they were living. He thought their mother would never be able to stay out of jail for long. The counselor at the rehab center explained that using drugs short-circuited your brain so you weren’t the same person anymore. Jenny refused to believe that her mother couldn’t change. She believed in her, even if no one else did. When she had asked Old Deborah what she thought about that, a sad look covered her sweet wrinkled face. “I believe God can work miracles, Jenny. But our faith is in God, not in people.”

I know you probably don’t feel very good, but remember: you can do it! You got clean before and felt really good, remember? Keep getting better and better.

Chris is working really hard to fix up Grandfather’s house. He has done so much! It is still awful because no one was in it for a long time, except for a creepy bat. The house looks a lot better than it used to. Chris has big plans for the house because he wants to be a horse breeder. He really likes it in Stoney Ridge. Maybe when you are better, you can come live with us. The Colonel left the house to Chris and to me. Old Deborah said so.

Love, Jenny

P.S. I am trying to save as much money as I can to send to you. Please quit smoking! It’s not good for you.

A softball bounced on the ground next to her. As Jenny leaned over to pick it up, Eugene Miller ran up to her. She braced herself. You never knew what was going to pop out of Eugene’s mouth, and it usually wasn’t very nice, though he hadn’t actually been unkind to her. Not yet, anyway. She tossed the ball to him, expecting him to catch it and return to the game.

“Nice throwing arm,” he said. “Why don’t you come play? We need a good shortstop.”

She looked up sharply at him, thinking he was making a crack about her height. She had heard all kinds of smart-aleck comments about her small stature: Thumbelina, Oompa Loompa, Shortcake, Peewee, Itsby Bitsy. If Eugene thought “shortstop” was a new nickname to Jenny, he was sorely mistaken.

But he actually seemed sincere. When she hesitated, puzzled that he was being nice, he put his hand out to help her up. “Come on.”

Under Eugene’s shaggy bangs were bright blue, smiling eyes. Even though his complexion was marred by acne, he had an attractive smile that made dimples in his cheeks. She was surprised to realize how cute he was, up close like this. She shook her head to erase the absurd idea.

She looked at his hand, waiting for her. She folded the letter to her mother and put it in her pocket. The letter could wait. She took Eugene’s hand and jumped to her feet.

It had taken Jimmy Fisher more time than he had expected to figure out where Chris Yoder was living. It was strange that no one seemed to know. He was sure someone at Windmill Farm would know, but Amos was away at a farm equipment auction and Hank didn’t have any idea where Chris lived. Even Fern didn’t know—and she knew just about everything. He finally tracked down M.K. and she knew. He should have known. M.K. knew all sorts of facts about people in Stoney Ridge that no one else knew.

That afternoon, Jimmy rolled into the long narrow driveway of Colonel Mitchell’s old house and found Chris replacing rotted boards in the covered wraparound porch floor. Jimmy couldn’t find a hitching post to tie the reins of his horse and buggy and finally decided on a tree branch. He waved to Chris, who had stopped sawing a board when he saw Jimmy drive in. “Looks like you could use a hand.”

Chris looked surprised. He hesitated, then said, “I wouldn’t refuse it.” He handed the saw to Jimmy across the sawhorse.

Jimmy waved away the saw. Instead, he picked up a hammer. “You keep cutting boards and I’ll nail them in place. There’s an excellent chance I would lose a finger or two by cutting. I’m not known for paying too much attention to details. Too risky.” He held up his hands and bent a few fingers down, as if he was already missing a few. “It’s killing my career as a classical pianist.”

He got a laugh out of Chris at that. That meant a lot to Jimmy, to get a laugh out of a serious guy like Chris Yoder. He had the impression that Chris didn’t laugh much. Jimmy would change that, if they were going to be friends.

The two worked side by side for the next hour or so, not speaking unless it pertained to the porch. When all of the rotted boards had been replaced, a small girl brought out a pitcher of water and two glasses. Jimmy had seen her at church and at Windmill Farm once or twice. He had figured out she was Chris’s sister, Jenny, but he had a hard time believing she was in eighth grade. She reminded him of an elf. She stared at him as she handed him a glass, as if she had never seen anyone who looked like him before. It was a stare he was accustomed to by women of all ages. He knew he was handsome, had known it all his life. He wasn’t being proud. It was just a fact. He gave Jenny his most charming smile and she practically gasped. Her little feet barely made a noise on the steps as she hurried away. She wrenched the door open. It banged shut behind her.

Chris and Jimmy sat on the new porch floor and gulped the water down.

“Did you just happen to be passing by?” Chris asked. “How did you figure out where I live?”

“M.K. Lapp told me.”

Chris took a sip of water. “Know her well?”

“I do. Very well. I’m planning to make her my missus.”

Chris started coughing, as if he had taken in a sip of water down the wrong pipe. Jimmy whacked his back with enthusiasm. He was always trying to be helpful.

“I owe you a favor,” Chris said. “You saved me more than a half day’s work.”

“Glad to help,” Jimmy said. He turned around to look at the old house. “Looks like you’ve got a lot of work to do. I could try and come over now and then to help.”

“I could use the help, but I can’t pay you cash. If there’s some other way I can return a favor, let me know. I don’t like to be beholden.”

Jimmy took another swig of water, his mind working. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He looked at Samson, grazing in the paddock. He grinned. “Well, now, if that’s the case, we might just be able to figure something out.”