Mercy wanted to say no to driving lessons, but how could she when Sunni was opening up to Jeremiah for the first time? Though he might not be in their lives for long, it was good to see her daughter begin to trust another man.
But was Mercy ready to trust another man?
You’re agreeing to learning to drive a sleigh, not accepting an offer to go on a date with him. That little voice was becoming more annoying, but it also was correct. He’s trying to make you less dependent on him during these storms.
She was shocked the thought irritated her more. Poor Jeremiah! It seemed she could find an ulterior motive in whatever he did. Not his ulterior motive, but hers.
“Mommy, can we drive the sleigh?” asked Sunni, warning Mercy she’d been lost in her self-recriminating thoughts too long.
“All right.” She didn’t get a chance to add more before her daughter let out a cheer and began singing “Jingle Bells.”
Jeremiah was grinning as broadly. “Let me get Hero hooked up to the sleigh. It may take fifteen minutes or more because I need to get the sleigh out of the barn.”
“It’ll give me time to make up a thermos of hot cocoa and get us bundled up,” she said, excitement bursting through her. Hadn’t she come to the farm to try new things? Learning to drive the sleigh would be a great place to start.
“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,” sang Sunni at the top of her lungs as she spun about like a flat-footed ballerina.
With a wink, Jeremiah put on his hat and left. He called back that he’d pull the sleigh up to the door.
Mercy worked around her jubilant daughter and delighted in Sunni’s joy. She hadn’t seen her daughter so elated since before Grandpa Rudy’s funeral. And Mercy was happy, too. The idea of speeding over the snow in a sleigh was exciting.
She was about to wrap a scarf around Sunni’s neck when her daughter pulled away and ran to the door.
Mercy wasn’t surprised to see the sleigh looked as if it’d been hit by an avalanche and buried under boulders. The paint was scraped off the dented side, but the runners were straight, and Jeremiah’s horse was pulling it without too much effort.
“Ready?” she asked Sunni as she reached for her own scarf and the thermos and trio of cups.
Sunni threw open the door, then halted. “Where are the jingle bells?”
“All I could find,” Jeremiah said, “was this harness.”
Sunni whirled. “But, Mommy, the song is ‘Jingle Bells.’ We have to have jingle bells.”
Before Mercy could reply, the little girl whirled and ran up the stairs at a dangerous speed for a child wearing two leg braces.
Mercy steeled herself, praying she wouldn’t hear the dreadful thump that meant Sunni had fallen on the steps.
“Are you okay?” asked Jeremiah from right behind her.
She turned to discover he’d come up on the porch. “She shouldn’t go so fast up the stairs.”
“Words every mamm has said for as long as there have been stairs. We all take a few tumbles in life and are not much the worse for it, ain’t so?”
“Certainly.” She appreciated how he acted as if Sunni was like every other child.
“Why does she wear those braces...if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I don’t.” She smiled. “But I don’t know. We’ve gotten as many different opinions as we’ve had doctors for her. Most recently her pediatric orthopedist said we should worry less about what caused the weakness in her legs and concentrate on helping her walk better.”
“And run.”
Her smile broadened. “She’s learned that well.”
When Sunni came down the stairs at the same pace she’d gone up, both Jeremiah and Mercy jumped forward as the little girl stumbled three steps from the bottom. Between them, they caught her and set her on her feet.
“I know, I know,” Sunni said before anyone could speak. “I need to go more slowly and use my crutches, but we have jingle bells.” As she began singing the song again, she held up her right hand and shook it.
Jeremiah’s eyes grew wide at the sound of bells jangling.
Taking the toy from Sunni, Mercy held it out to him. It was a wooden half circle into which was set a half dozen tiny metal bells.
“What is it?” he asked beneath the little girl’s enthusiastic singing.
Mercy answered as softly, “A toy. Kids use them to make music in school. We got it as a therapy tool for Sunni last year. It helped strengthen her grip.” Showing him how fingers wrapped around the wooden handle while the bells were shaken, she smiled. “I didn’t realize she still had it.”
Jeremiah raised his voice to include the little girl. “We’ve got our jingle bells and our cocoa, so let’s go.”
Mercy watched as he went outside. Sunni followed, and he swung her up onto the sleigh’s bench. He sat beside her. They looked back in a silent urging for Mercy to hurry up.
She did and laughed as she hadn’t in longer than she could remember when Jeremiah reached to assist her into the battered sleigh. At his touch, even through his thick gloves and hers, the day suddenly had seemed warmer.
When she sat beside him, he unlashed the reins from the dash and showed her how to hold them. He told her to loop the reins up between her pinkie and the next finger, grip them in her fist and let them go out between her thumb and first finger.
“That gives you the most control,” he said, adjusting her hands slightly. “Hero is well trained, so call his name, and he’ll go.”
“And to stop him?”
“A simple ‘whoa.’ You don’t have to tug on the reins. He’ll stop right away.” Again, he aligned her fingers. “There you go. Whenever you’re ready.”
She made the mistake of looking at him to ask another question. His face was so near to hers their misted breaths mingled in the cold air. As her gaze locked with his lustrous blue eyes, she knew she should look away before he got the wrong idea.
Or the right one.
Even that thought couldn’t convince her eyes to turn from his handsome face. As close as they sat, she could see the faint shadow of whiskers along his jaw. Her fingers tingled, teasing her to tear off her gloves and stroke that firm line. She caught a motion from the corner of her eye. His hand was rising to cup her cheek. She leaned toward it, eager to feel him against her.
“Jingle bells! Jingle bells!” sang Sunni abruptly.
The cheerful song brought Mercy to her senses. Jeremiah, too, she guessed, because he quickly slanted away from her and urged her to give the command to go.
She did, and the horse moved at a walk toward the road. Her thoughts sped far faster as she pondered what would have happened if Sunni’s innocent singing hadn’t intruded. Trying to convince herself it was better she didn’t know, she wondered when she’d started being dishonest with herself.
* * *
“Hold that board right there,” Jeremiah urged Sunni, who kept a suspicious eye on the hammer and nail he was positioning. It was the first board for the roof of a chicken coop. After finishing his barn chores, including milking and feeding the calves delivered earlier in the week, he’d wanted time outdoors.
He smiled at Sunni. The little girl didn’t trust him completely, but she didn’t scurry in the opposite direction when he approached as she had before they drove the sleigh along the twisting creek that slept beneath a sheet of ice. When, during her midmorning break from her schoolwork, she’d come to watch him building the chicken coop, a simple box with a door and shelves for the hens to lay on, he’d pretended as if nothing significant had happened. Maybe if he acted as if she’d sought him out right from the beginning, he wouldn’t send her fleeing again. He kept up a steady narration of everything he did, and Sunni had inched closer and closer.
Then she began asking questions, barely giving him time to answer before she fired another one—or two—at him. She asked about the coop and the chickens that would live inside. She wanted to know what color he planned to paint it and what he intended to name the chickens. He answered questions about what the chickens would eat and where they would sleep and when the rooster would crow.
Asking her to balance the board might threaten the status quo, but Jeremiah kept reminding himself with God’s help, anything was possible. Even persuading a kind he didn’t mean her ill will. He was curious if Sunni’s skittishness was for the same reason as Mercy’s.
What do you know about women? he asked himself. He’d believed Emmarita when she said she was coming back. He hadn’t guessed she was seeing her Englischer at the same time Jeremiah was escorting her home from youth events. She’d jumped the fence, and unlike two of his brothers’ wives who had done the same, she hadn’t returned...though he’d waited several months to make sure. When he heard she’d married her Englischer, he knew he needed to put the past behind him. He listened to the hopes of having a farm of his own, the hopes God had put inside him. It was easier to heed that portion of his heart when he closed off the part filled with pain at Emmarita’s betrayal.
Focusing on his work, Jeremiah made sure Sunni’s fingers weren’t close to where he was hammering. She’d become silent, but the fact she was standing there seemed like a precious victory.
“Mommy!” Sunni suddenly shouted and released the plank.
Jeremiah grasped the board to keep it from swinging out and striking the kind. His heart hitched, and he knew he couldn’t blame his heart’s reaction totally on fright for the little girl.
His gaze riveted on Mercy as she walked toward them. Her cheeks were burnished by the cold to the same shade as her lips, which appeared delightfully kissable. The image of his hands framing her face while he sampled her mouth was so real he lowered his eyes and swung the hammer, barely missing the nail and his thumb in his work glove. He set down the hammer, knowing, when he was that distracted, he might not miss next time.
“What are you making?” Mercy’s tone hinted that she hadn’t noticed how distracted he was by her.
He wasn’t sure if that was gut or annoying.
“It’s a chicken choop,” Sunni answered.
“A chicken coop,” he corrected with a smile.
“But...” Mercy looked hastily away, but not fast enough because he saw her cheeks redden more.
He wasn’t going to pretend not to understand. She’d agreed on the day he taught her to drive not to look for secret intentions behind every word or deed. He wished she’d trust him.
Though he wanted to ask why she always painted him with such negative intentions, he said, “Mercy, didn’t your daed tell you it may be several weeks before he gets an answer from his siblings?”
“He did.”
“But you are working to fix up the main house. Sunni was telling me that you’re painting the living room.” He saw mamm and daughter exchange a glance, but couldn’t guess what it meant. He hoped nothing. “Like you, I don’t want to wait until everything is decided. If I do and they sell me the farm, I must not be so far behind on fixing up the place I can’t get a decent crop in the fields or have a place to put it when it’s harvested.”
“I know.” She raised her eyes to meet his, and he realized he’d misjudged her reaction. She wasn’t angry. She was frustrated her family hadn’t made their decision. “I’m sorry this is dragging on.”
Stepping around the coop so it wasn’t between them, he put his hands on Mercy’s shoulders. “It’s not your fault.”
“Thanks for saying that, but every time the phone rings, I hope it’s my father with news.” She grimaced. “I’m tempted to silence it and let the answering machine get the calls. That way, I’d only have to check once a day.”
“Why don’t you?”
Her eyes brightened. “I think I will. I’m tired of being on a ladder and having to rush down to answer it. In case it’s Dad.” A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “I almost tipped over the paint can yesterday. If I had, Sunni and I would be green now.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad color on you two,” he replied in mock seriousness. “And we could use a bit more green with this snow.”
The little girl giggled, and Jeremiah let his lips tilt up in a grin.
“I’ll leave that to the leaves,” Mercy said.
Groaning at her pun, he felt the tension dissolve around them. They might have different goals for the farm, but they were stuck in limbo together while her family debated.
“Why don’t we keep doing what we’ve been doing?” he asked. “Any fixes we do will benefit whoever gets the farm.”
“That makes sense.”
“And we don’t have to walk around on eggshells.”
“Eggshells?” asked Sunni, looking around as if she expected to see a pile waiting to be picked up. “Where are they?”
Again, he and Mercy chuckled, and Sunni joined in.
Jeremiah rested one hand on the top of the coop. “Whether you or I or someone else ends up with the farm, me building a simple chicken coop won’t make any difference. It seems strange to live on a farm without chickens.”
“You can’t be thinking of putting them out here now,” Mercy said, wrapping her arms around herself as a frigid gust rocked the trees beyond the barn.
He shook his head. “Ordering chicks was another thing I did before I left Paradise Springs. They’ll be shipped once the weather warms up. By fall, they should be providing eggs.” He gave her a wry grin. “Sorry they won’t be laying in time for Easter.”
“Don’t worry,” Mercy said. “We’ll have eggs to dye for Easter.”
Sunni looked relieved, but grimaced when Mercy reminded her schoolwork waited in the house.
As her daughter went inside, Mercy asked, “Do Amish kids dye eggs for Easter?”
“Some do. My mamm hid plastic eggs filled with jelly beans for us to find.”
“I assume you have church services on Easter.”
“Ja. Good Friday is a fast day until noon, so we can spend the morning in prayer. On Easter, we rejoice together.”
“Mennonites consider it a time to be with family, and we have services on Friday and Sunday.” She patted her hands together and glanced toward the house. “I should make sure Sunni is doing her schoolwork.”
Gut sense told him to let her go, but he didn’t want to let the moment end. “You’ve got a lot of questions about Amish folks.”
“If I stay here, I’m going to have Amish neighbors.”
He almost said if she ended up with the farm, the settlement could be in jeopardy. He needed to stay and help it grow. There wasn’t any reason to repeat what had been said already. They knew what was at stake, so why belabor it?
“Why don’t you come with me to a service?” he asked. “This Sunday is a church Sunday. I think you’ll get plenty of answers to your questions there.”
“I didn’t know your services were open to outsiders.”
“They are, but few non-Amish are willing to sit on hard, backless benches for three hours to listen to sermons in High German.”
“I don’t understand that language.”
“Visitors have someone to translate for them. I think you’d find it interesting, Mercy.” Please, God, let her say ja. He didn’t want to consider why it was suddenly so important to him that she agree, but it was.
“Thank you, Jeremiah. We’ll come.” Her smile banished the cold around him...and inside him.
When she walked away, he was glad she hadn’t expected him to say something else. He wasn’t sure what he would have said, but he was certain anything he blurted out would reveal the farm was no longer the main reason he was glad he’d come to Harmony Creek.
She was.