Lavinia walked slowly back into the house and set the mail down on the kitchen table.
“Anything interesting?” her mudder asked.
She shook her head. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”
“Is something wrong? You look upset.”
She shook her head. “I just feel like a walk.” She turned and left the room quickly before her mudder could ask any more questions.
What a shock it had been seeing Abe driving past in his familye’s buggy—and then seeing Naomi Zook in the passenger seat! What was that about? She pressed a hand to her heart as she walked down the road. It hurt so to see him out driving with another woman. And just days after they’d last seen each other and he hadn’t been the friendliest to her.
Allrecht, she’d been avoiding talking to him. But did that mean he should just start seeing someone else so quickly? Had she meant so little to him that he could be so…fickle? Nee, he wasn’t like that, she told herself. She was jumping to conclusions, and that wasn’t like her.
As she walked, she exchanged greetings with neighbors and friends sitting on the porches of their homes, enjoying the breeze and the approaching sunset. So many were couples having a last chat after a long, busy day, she couldn’t help noticing. Maybe it was just her mood but it felt like nearly everyone she saw was a part of a couple. Like Noah’s ark, two by two.
She walked faster and stared ahead. With harvest almost over, she was going to see more emphasis on couples as the marriage season started. She frowned. While she’d told her mudder that she and Abe were just friends, the fact was that he’d become more than that to her. She had to admit that in her heart she’d harbored the hope that he’d ask her to marry him soon.
She saw Phoebe, her teacher from years ago, sitting on the porch of her farmhouse just ahead. She smiled and waved when the woman turned and saw her.
“Lavinia, how lovely to see you!”
“Phoebe, how are you doing?” Lavinia wondered how old the woman was. She had already seemed old back when Lavinia was a kind attending schul, and Lavinia had noticed Phoebe had some problems with memory when she talked with her at church in recent years.
“Gut, gut. Are you off to see Abe?”
Lavinia blushed and shook her head.
“Always had your eye on the bu. But he was always racing about.”
She frowned. Phoebe hadn’t been in church lately. Maybe she hadn’t heard about Abe’s accident.
“I just finished grading the essays,” Phoebe told her. “You did a lovely job on yours.”
“I—I did?”
“Ya, you got an A on it, just like you always do. Such creative writing.” She waved a thin hand at her lined face. “It’s a bit warm today, isn’t it? Would you like a glass of cold tea?”
Lavinia hesitated. She hadn’t intended on staying long when she spotted Phoebe, but this talk of essays when she’d been out of schul for years concerned her.
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” she began, but Phoebe was already getting to her feet.
“No trouble at all. I fixed a pitcher before supper tonight.”
“Then that would be lovely, danki.” She frowned as Phoebe shuffled toward the front door. She wore two different-colored shoes.
When Phoebe returned, she carried two glasses of lemonade. She handed one to Lavinia then took her seat again and sipped as she looked out at the road with faded blue eyes.
The front door opened, and Ruth, one of Phoebe’s dochders, walked out. “Lavinia, I didn’t know you were out here. Mamm, you didn’t tell me.”
Phoebe stared at her and frowned. “I didn’t?”
Ruth shook her head. Lavinia hadn’t seen her in church in a few weeks and thought she looked tired and strained.
“You know what would be gut with this lemonade?” Phoebe asked abruptly.
“Nee, what, Mamm?”
“Some cookies.” She set her glass down on the table beside her chair and shuffled off again.
Ruth stared at her for a long moment and then sighed. “Her dementia is getting worse. This time of day is always hard. The doctor called it sundown syndrome.”
“She remembered me, but she told me she’d just finished grading my essay.”
“Her oldest schweschder doesn’t think she has a problem. Said they had a long talk the other day and Mamm sounded like her old self. I asked if they talked about something that had just happened or something from a long time ago. She said a long time ago, so that meant her memory was just fine. But Mamm can’t remember something from a few minutes ago sometimes.”
Lavinia stared down at her glass. “She went inside saying she’d get us cold tea and came back with lemonade. I’m sorry. It must be hard after she’s been so sharp being a teacher for years and years.”
“It hurts to see her confused and trying to remember,” Ruth said slowly. “The doctor said not to try to make her remember things because it just makes someone more upset. I’m going to a support group of other caretakers of eldres and learning ways to cope.” She smoothed her apron and smiled ruefully. “Sometimes she forgets she’s lived in the dawdi haus for years. I guess it’s gut that we’re both widows. I imagine it would be a shock if she walked into her old bedroom I shared with my mann when he was alive and found him there.”
Phoebe returned without the cookies she’d gone to fetch, wearing a different dress than she’d had on when she went into the house. She frowned as she looked out at the road. “It’s not like Johnny to be late.” She walked over to take her seat.
Lavinia glanced at Ruth, who didn’t look surprised that Phoebe was looking for her mann, who’d died five years earlier.
“I suppose it’s no secret we’re courting,” Phoebe told Lavinia with a smile. Then her frown returned and she turned to stare down at the road again. “I hope nothing’s happened. People are so careless driving their cars around buggies.”
“Lavinia came to see you,” Ruth said quickly, distracting her. “You remember Lavinia.”
“Did such a gut job on her essay,” Phoebe said. She reached over to pat Lavinia’s hand. “You worked so hard on it.”
“I think we should send Lavinia home now,” Ruth told her. “It’s getting dark and it’s a schul night. She needs to get home and go to bed.”
Phoebe nodded and rose. “See you at schul tomorrow, dear.”
Lavinia hugged each of them and left. She looked back as she reached the bottom of the porch steps and watched Ruth gently leading her mudder into the house.
The scent of honeysuckle and late-blooming wild roses drifted on the evening breeze as she walked home. Her headlong rush to get out of the house to walk off her mood hadn’t been such a gut idea after all. Now she felt sad. Melancholy, even.
Hmm. There was a word she didn’t use often to describe how she felt. Phoebe would be proud she’d remembered a word from one of the vocabulary workbooks they used in schul.
She went into her house and found her eldres sitting in the living room reading.
“Have a nice walk?” her mudder asked.
“Ya. I’m feeling tired, though. I think I’ll go to bed and read for a little while.” She kissed them both on the cheek and climbed the stairs to her room. Tomorrow was soon enough to talk to her mudder about them finding some time to give Ruth a break from caring for Phoebe.
But while she’d told her eldres that she was going to read a book, the one on her bedside table didn’t appeal. As she lay in her narrow bed waiting for sleep, she couldn’t help thinking about how Phoebe had forgotten she’d gone into the house for cold tea and cookies…but she hadn’t forgotten her mann.
Lavinia wondered how long Phoebe would look for her Johnny.
And how long she would think about Abe.
* * *
Abe pulled into his driveway and sat there for a long moment.
Going for a drive to see Lavinia hadn’t been the best idea. He sighed and turned to get out of the buggy, figuring that might be easier than getting in. He was wrong. He bumped his arm in the cast and then felt pain radiate up to his knee when his left foot landed a little too hard. Gasping, he waited for the pain to subside before trying to pull his wheelchair from the back of the buggy.
“Hey, wait a minute and I’ll help you!” Wayne called to him.
Abe decided to let him. As he waited, he realized the gift bag with the box of chocolates had fallen out of the buggy. He bent down to pick it up and managed to smack his forehead.
“Here, let me get that for you.” Wayne retrieved the bag and placed it on the front seat before he unloaded the wheelchair and set it beside Abe so he could sit in it. Then he put the gift bag on Abe’s lap. “Gift from an admirer?” he teased. When he saw Abe’s face, his grin faded. “Sorry. Things didn’t go as planned?”
Abe shook his head. He didn’t elaborate, and Wayne didn’t pursue the subject, telling him that he’d done the evening milking as he pushed him toward the house.
Once inside, Abe thanked him and rolled himself into his bedroom. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, but soon after, there was a tap on his door and his dat stuck his head in. He started to say something when he saw the gift bag Abe had tossed on the bedroom dresser.
“You didn’t give them to Lavinia?”
“She had…company.”
“Company?” Then his dat understood. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Me too.” Abe levered himself onto the bed and used his good hand to push the chair away from him.
“Want to talk about it?”
“Nee!” Then he sighed. “Sorry. It’s my own fault. It’ll teach me to take out a bad mood on someone. Lavinia decided not to put up with me, and I don’t blame her.”
Faron sat on the end of the bed and stared at the cane he held in his hands. “Well, get some rest. Things have a way of looking different after a gut night’s sleep.”
Abe didn’t see how a gut night’s sleep was going to change the fact that Lavinia was seeing Ben, but there didn’t seem to be any point in debating it. His dat patted his shoulder and then got up. “Need any help?” he asked, leaning heavily on his cane.
“Nee, but danki. See you in the morning.”
The next morning, Abe woke up before dawn. He couldn’t say a night’s sleep had changed his depression about Lavinia, but he pushed himself to get up, get dressed, and go out to the barn to help as best as he could.
“Did you check the weather report?” Wayne asked.
“Nee. Not today.” He’d been too busy feeling upset over Lavinia. A gut farmer couldn’t do that.
“Some bad weather expected this week.”
Abe’s spirits plummeted. “Great. Just what we need.” He looked out at his fields. Like many dairy farmers, he grew some of the hay, corn, and soybeans he needed to feed his cows.
He remembered seeing a cartoon strip in a newspaper years ago. The main character was a little man who always walked hunched over and had a dark cloud looming over him. He frowned and felt anxiety build in himself in spite of the cloudless blue skies overhead.
Wayne must have sensed his growing tension. “No need to worry before it gets here,” he said calmly as he looked up along with Abe. “We can’t control the weather. We can only pray and deal with whatever comes.”
Abe sighed. “I know. I just don’t need anything else to worry about.”
“Then don’t.”
He gave a snort of laughter. “As if it’s that easy.”
Wayne shrugged. “It is.”
“Look, I’m trying not to worry about things.”
“Don’t try. Do.” He went back to checking the milking equipment.
Abe stared at him for a long moment. Wayne had always been so practical about everything, his faith seemingly resolute. They were gut friends because they were so much alike—or had been until Abe had fallen off the roof. Now he knew he worried more than he should.
He looked around. “Well, looks like you’ve got things under control here. Maybe I should go see if Mamm needs my help with the farm stand.”
Now it was Wayne’s turn to snort. “Your mudder can juggle ten things at once.”
He knew Wayne was right, but checking on her made him feel like he was doing something, so he rolled out to the front of the house where she’d set up a table with an umbrella to shade it. Partway down the drive, he heard a loud mechanical racket and rolled his eyes.
Schur enough, his mudder had gotten his dat to set up the contraption that he’d put together to make ice cream back when they’d taken over the farm from his own dat. It was a battery-operated whirligig of a thing with a big wheel that turned and churned a bucket of ice cream and made a clamor that could be heard out to the roadside.
“That thing is as noisy as I remember,” he shouted over the din.
Faron grinned. “You never complained when you got to eat the ice cream it made. And it always attracts customers.”
“How old is it anyway?”
His dat shrugged. “Older’n you, but it still works.”
The machine coughed and made a whirring noise and then ground to a stop.
“Just needs a little oil,” Faron said.
“Needs a decent burial,” Abe muttered, and his mudder poked him with her elbow. But he thought he saw her grin.
Faron squirted oil in various places and tinkered with it for a few minutes, and the thing belched to life.
Customers began parking their cars and walking up to stare at the machine.
“How’re you making it run?” one man asked. “Don’t see an electric cord.”
“Battery,” Faron told him, gesturing at it. “Beats hand cranking.”
“Eh?” the man yelled.
“Battery,” Faron shouted over the din.
Soon a crowd was gathered around, enjoying the creamy confection Waneta dished up with a big smile. Faron tucked away bill after bill in the small metal cash box.
Abe just shook his head at them. They looked like they were having the time of their lives. He glanced up at the sky and hoped the weather wouldn’t be as bad as predicted this week.