The next day, the shop was so busy Lavinia barely had time to quickly eat a sandwich at the front counter as she helped customers. When it came time to turn the sign from Open to Closed on the shop door, she and her mudder looked at each other and sighed with relief.
“It’s nice to be busy, but my, I will be happy to sit down,” her mudder said as she locked the door.
Lavinia nodded as she finished up the day’s deposit slip. She’d barely finished when Liz honked as she pulled up outside.
“I’ve got your things,” her mudder cried. “Let’s go!”
She followed her to the door, locked up, and, when she climbed into the van, sank gratefully into a seat. Ya, it was gut indeed to sit down.
As Liz pulled out onto the road and drove, Lavinia realized she’d been so busy she hadn’t had a chance to think of Abe all day. She wondered how his day had been. Had he gone out to the barn with Wayne to see his cows? Worked with his physical therapist? Had a nice lunch or a visit from a friend?
Had he thought of her?
She stared out the window at the passing scenery and wondered if she should call him or stop by to see him after supper. It seemed to her that he’d been a little distant the day before at church, and that troubled her. She’d put it down to it being his first time out of the house since his accident, but it would be gut to make schur that he was allrecht.
“Tired?” her mudder asked quietly.
She nodded. “You’re right. It feels gut to sit down.”
But there was still work to be done when they got home. Supper wouldn’t cook itself, and dishes wouldn’t wash themselves. Sadie had called the shop to say she hadn’t felt well today, so she hadn’t been over to water the kitchen garden, and she and her familye wouldn’t be coming for supper as planned.
Ah, well, it was gut to have work to do and a home to go to in the evening, Lavinia reminded herself.
She glanced out the van window as they passed Abe’s dairy farm but was disappointed when she didn’t see him sitting out on the porch.
When she turned from the window, she saw that her mudder was smiling gently at her. “Maybe you’ll have the energy to take a walk after supper,” she whispered, which made Lavinia smile.
“Maybe.”
Liz pulled up in front of their house, and they said goodbye to her and got out.
“I don’t see Daed out in the fields,” Lavinia told her mudder. “Maybe he got finished early and he’s making supper.”
They looked at each other and laughed. Amos always said he was gut at eating but terrible at cooking, and his womenfolk could attest to that. But he was always appreciative of whatever they put on the table.
Amos came in a few minutes later as Rachel set a big bowl of potato salad on the table. She’d boiled the potatoes the night before as she did the dishes and left them to chill in the refrigerator. Tonight she added cubes of ham and cheddar cheese to the potato salad to make it hearty.
Lavinia went out to the kitchen garden, gave it a quick soak with water from the hose, then brought in several big, juicy, ripe tomatoes to slice up.
They ate the simple meal with the fan stirring up the warm breeze, enjoying glasses of cold tea with it.
“Nothing better than ice cream after a hot day working in the fields,” Amos said with satisfaction as Lavinia scooped up big bowls of it and added some cookies from the cookie jar. He had two bowls before he pushed away from the table.
Lavinia insisted on doing the dishes—not that there were a lot of them, since there hadn’t really been any cooking. She glanced at the kitchen window. Still time for a walk before it got dark. She walked into the living room where her eldres were sitting reading.
“Mamm, I think I’ll go for a walk.”
“Tell Abe and Faron and Waneta I said hello.”
“I will.”
She stopped in the living room. “Daed, do you mind if I take one of your books to Abe? I’m thinking he might enjoy reading since there’s not a lot he can do right now.”
“Schur. Which one?”
“You pick.”
He put down the book he was reading and got up from his recliner. Lavinia found herself fidgeting while he took his time looking over the books in the bookcase that lined one wall. She hadn’t thought it would take so long just to pick out a book.
Finally he pulled one from a shelf, gave it a long look, then handed it to her. “Steinbeck’s a favorite of mine,” he said thoughtfully. “I think he’ll like that one. We’ve talked about this author. We both enjoy his writing.”
She nodded. “Danki.” She had no idea what Abe liked to read, so she figured she should trust her dat’s choice.
“Tell him to let me know if it’s not something he cares for,” he said. “It won’t offend me. A particular book’s not for everyone.”
“I will.” She kissed his cheek. “I’ll see you later.”
She tucked it into the pocket in her dress and left the house. It felt gut to be outdoors after being cooped up indoors all day at the shop. The air was still warm, but there was a breeze as she walked. It carried the sweet scent of honeysuckle twining over a fence beside the road. Some of her neighbors were sitting on their porches enjoying the weather after supper. She waved to them as she walked.
Abe’s house came into view. She saw him sitting on his front porch. Her heart sped up as she walked toward it, but as she drew closer she saw his shoulders were slumped and he was staring at his arm in the cast and frowning.
Oh my, she thought. Someone looks like he isn’t having a gut day. She hesitated, debating whether she should stop and visit. She decided to stop. She’d missed seeing him at the singing the night before and wanted to know how he was doing. It had to be hard sitting around the house not being able to do much.
* * *
Abe sat on his front porch and tried to shake off a bad mood that had lasted all day. He’d started it with a morning doctor appointment. Not his favorite start, by any means. He’d much rather have been working with Wayne in the cow barn, no matter how hard the work or what the weather.
And he had to go to the appointment with his mudder. Like he was a little bu. She’d insisted, and since Wayne was busy, it wasn’t like he could argue with her. He needed help with navigating in his wheelchair, and she had so many questions about his injuries that he’d given in. At least his dat wasn’t coming along. He’d decided to help Wayne in the cow barn, and Wayne had told Abe privately that he wouldn’t let the older man overdo.
So after Liz had delivered her morning passengers to their jobs in town, she stopped and drove Abe and his mudder to the doctor’s appointment. The drive turned out to be the only bright spot in the morning. Abe hadn’t been for a drive since he’d come home from the hospital, and it was nice to get out and about.
But after X-rays, the doctor had come into the exam room frowning and said the break in his arm was taking longer to heal than he expected and the cast might have to be on longer than he’d estimated.
Abe had ridden home feeling depressed, and his mudder’s offer to fix him his favorite meal for lunch hadn’t brightened his spirits. He’d gone to his room to rest and, ya, to sulk.
A drizzly rain began falling and instead of cooling things off, it made the afternoon more humid. The battery-operated fan wasn’t of much help. He fell asleep but tossed and turned and had a bad dream of being held down. No wonder, he thought. The heavy cast weighing down his arm was surely what had caused the bad dream.
With a sigh, he sat up and got himself into his wheelchair. Wayne was taking a break and having a cold drink with Faron at the kitchen table. Waneta walked in carrying a battery-operated ice-cream maker and grinning from ear to ear.
“What are you going to do with that?” Abe asked her.
She gave him a quizzical smile. “Make ice cream. I always do this time of year.”
“It’s just a lot of trouble. Isn’t it easier to just buy it at the store?”
“It’s a gut way to use up milk,” she reminded him. “Which we happen to have a lot of. Back when I came to the farm as a new fraa, I made ice cream and sold it in a stand at the front of the house. My fresh strawberry was the top seller.”
“It was the best,” Faron said with a nod.
“Brought in some extra money that helped out.” Waneta set the pinewood bucket on the table and went to the sink to wet a dishrag and begin wiping it off.
“Mamm, you don’t need to be doing that,” Abe said. “We’ll be fine. You already do so much making the cheese and selling it at the farm stand.”
“It’ll be fun,” she told him. “Hand me that recipe box behind you.”
Waneta began flipping through the box that was as old as he was. “I think I’ll start off with the strawberry, since they’re ripening.” She pulled a pad and pencil from a kitchen drawer and began making a list. “Wayne, can you set up some things for me on Saturday?”
“Schur.”
Abe figured his dat must have caught his expression. He shook his head at Abe. “Don’t try to stop her. Once she gets an idea in her head, she won’t let go of it.”
He sighed. His dat knew his fraa for schur.
Abe scooped up the mail, tucked it at his side in the wheelchair, and rolled himself out onto the front porch. He began opening the mail and found it was mostly bills. The thick envelope from the hospital made his hands shake. For a long moment, he couldn’t open it, just as he hadn’t been able to open one that had come sometime back. This one was bigger in size—likely the final hospital bill. Then he forced himself to do it. There was no putting it off.
Reading through page after page of charges for things he didn’t understand made his head hurt. The total on the last page made his eyes widen.
His dat wandered out to the porch to take a seat in a rocking chair.
Wordlessly, Abe handed him the bill and watched his dat’s expression.
“Wow.”
“Ya,” Abe agreed.
“Well, I’ll see that the bishop gets this,” his dat said as he folded the sheets of paper and stuck them back into the envelope. He gave Abe a sharp look. “You’re not to worry about this, sohn. You know the community takes care of its own. We’ve all gotten together and helped with hospital and doctor bills like this in the past. Now it’s your turn to be helped.”
“Don’t want to be a burden,” Abe muttered.
“Did you think Luke was a burden when he was kicked by one of his horses and had to have surgery? Or Lovina when she had appendicitis?”
“Nee.”
“Nee. You and your mudder and I contributed to the fund to pay those bills, and we’ll do so again in the future as church members need it.”
Waneta walked out to join them on the porch. She wore a frown as she sat in the rocking chair next to her mann. “Abe, I went upstairs to bring some of my fabric down from my old sewing room, and I found that the roof is leaking again. I put a bucket under it, and Wayne said he’d get up on the roof tomorrow when it’s had a chance to dry out.”
Abe sighed and shook his head. “What else?”
“We should have had Wayne check to see if the repair Abe went up to fix was done before he fell,” Faron said. “Didn’t think of it.”
“I didn’t either,” Abe said slowly. “I wasn’t finished.”
Faron patted Abe’s hand on the arm of his wheelchair. “Wayne and some of the men from church will take care of it.”
His eldres went into the house a little while later, leaving him to sit and watch the cars and buggies traveling the road in front of the house.
After some time, Wayne came to talk to him about the day. He sat in one of the rocking chairs and told Abe about the milking totals and the new driver who’d picked up the day’s output.
He stopped suddenly. “Say, I think that was Lavinia waving to you.”
“What? Where?”
“There, in Liz’s van.”
Abe glanced down at the road and saw the back of Liz’s van.
“You should have gone to the singing last night,” Wayne said slowly. “Ben was flirting with her.”
“Ya?”
Wayne frowned. “I was driving Katie Ann home, or I’d have offered her a ride.” He stopped and looked like he didn’t know what to say.
“What?”
“Ben took her home in his buggy.” He stared at his hands resting on his knees. “I know the two of you have been looking close lately.”
Abe shrugged. “We’re friends.” He held out his arm in the cast. “She came to see me a lot at the hospital. She was here when I fell off the roof.”
Waneta stuck her head out the front door. “Supper’s ready.”
Wayne pushed the wheelchair inside the house and left them. Abe tried to eat but wasn’t much interested in eating. He let his mudder’s chatter wash over him and escaped as soon as he could.
Sheer boredom sent Abe back out onto the porch after he ate. That, and it was cooler than inside the house. At least the drizzling rain had stopped.
“Hello there!”
Lavinia climbed the steps to the porch.
“Hi.”
“Thought I’d stop over and see how you’re doing.”
He shrugged. “Just watching the world go by.”
She nodded. “I know it’s hard sitting here not getting to do anything but wait to heal.”
“Nee, you don’t,” he said.
Surprised, she nodded. “Nee, you’re right. I haven’t had anything as bad as what happened to you. Few people have. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”
“You can’t fix me, Lavinia. Even the doctors can’t.”
Alarmed, she stared at him. “Did you get bad news?”
Abe shook his head. “I haven’t had any new bad news, if that’s what you mean.” He sighed and looked out at the road. “I’m sorry, I’m not feeling well, and I’m just not gut company right now. I need to lie down. Maybe we can see each other tomorrow.” He began wheeling himself toward the door.
“Let me help you,” she said.
“I can do it myself.” He banged his arm struggling with the door, but pride wouldn’t let her hold it for him.
“Abe, what’s going on?” His mudder hurried toward him.
“It’s nothing.” He headed toward his room. He heard his mudder talking to Lavinia, but he pushed himself forward and shut the door.