JOHN HANDLED THE reins with ease, but his head ached with tiredness and he told himself that was the reason the faint nearness of Tabitha was sending his mind spinning. He glanced at her sideways, out of the corner of his eye, and noticed her slender fingers were pressed white against the rim of the foil-covered pie dish.
“Don’t be nervous,” he said gently.
“Ach, how did you know?” She turned her blue eyes full in his direction, and he pulled his hat down a bit, focusing hard on the road.
He shrugged and clicked to Tudor to pick up the pace. “I just know.” He thought his words sounded odd, so he added hastily. “I suppose it’s from having a sister.”
Tabitha sighed. “Rob’s always been an only child, but I’d like to think he knows me well.”
John ignored the strange feeling he had in the pit of his stomach at her wistful words. “Of course he knows you,” he said more roughly than he intended. He was about to apologize when an oncoming red minivan suddenly swerved dangerously close to Tudor. The horse reared as the van sped past, and John struggled to maintain control of the buggy.
He heard Tabitha’s faint cry as the wheel teetered on the edge of the roadside and the grass, and then Tudor reared again and came down in the field adjacent to the road. John’s heartbeat thrummed in his ears as the buggy came to an upright stop.
He turned to look at Tabitha, and something moved within his spirit. He knew in that moment, as sure as he knew his own name, that he loved her beyond a shadow of a doubt. Part of him wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it and the other part wanted to sob—so much so that he felt tears swell at the back of his throat. He had to choke out words of normalcy. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, her lashes damp with her own tears, and she sniffed. He kept the reins in one hand and reached in his pocket for his clean handkerchief. She took it with a broken laugh.
“I’m going to have a collection of your linen soon.”
“It’s all right.”
It’s all right. . . it’s all right. The refrain echoed in his mind, and he bent his head in misery. But it isn’t all right and never will be again.
Tabitha reached shaky hands down to lift the pie from the floorboards near her feet. She lifted the tinfoil and stared at the meringue, which had stuck to the covering in the tumult of the near accident.
“Ach, John, it could have been so awful,” she whispered.
She glanced at him, his hat blown off, and his black hair clinging to his high-boned face; he looked as shaken as she felt. She reached out almost instinctively and touched the strong bones of his hand where he held the reins.
He didn’t move but spoke hoarsely. “Derr Herr was watching over us. It is by His mercies that we are safe.”
“Ya,” she agreed, then withdrew her fingers from his and gave an impulsive swipe at the underside of the tinfoil, longing to break the somberness she felt emanating from his big frame.
She popped her finger in her mouth and tasted the meringue, then offered the tinfoil to him. “Have a taste. It’s not bad.”
He turned with visible reluctance, then put out a long finger to catch a piece of meringue. He held it poised over the foil.
“Go on,” she said, striving to keep her tone light. “Taste it.”
She watched him obey, putting his finger to his lips, and then giving a brief suck. His throat worked, and he gave her a rather sad smile. “It’s gut,” he said low.
“Gut,” she said briskly. “So will you take me home since I have no pie for Rob’s mamm?”
He stretched his arms out and gathered the reins tighter. “Nee. We’re going to have our visit as promised. Ann Yoder needs to know what a jewel she’s getting as a future dochder-in-law.”
She drank in his words as he scooped his hat up from the floorboards, then eased Tudor back onto the road. She spoke softly. “Danki, John. I—it means a lot to know you think well of me.”
“Why?”
“Why?” She paused, feeling nervous, then latched on to the most sensible reason she could come up with. “Because you’re Rob’s best friend, of course.”
“Of course.”
She looked at his profile. He appeared stricken for some reason and decidedly grim. She decided not to speak again until they turned down the lane to the Yoder homestead.
“Maybe she’s not home,” she ventured.
“At this time of the morning? She’s home.” His voice seemed to have regained its normal strength of tone, and she felt better inside, not stopping to examine why.
“She’s home,” he continued. “And apparently still in her nacht clothes.” She watched him gesture with his chin and Tabitha saw Frau Yoder bolt from the clothesline around the back of the house. Her arms were filled with sheets and she was wearing a shockingly pink nightgown that trailed against the ground.
“Ach, we need to leave, John.”
“And have her thinking you saw her and might gossip about her—uh—penchant for vibrant color? Nee. We’ll give her a few minutes, then knock at the door like everything is perfectly normal.” He pulled the buggy up to the hitching post and set the brake. Then he climbed down and came round to help her down. But first he calmly took the pie dish and walked it up front to Tudor.
“John!” she exclaimed, knowing what he was about to do.
“What? Old Tudor had a bad scare too. He deserves a bit of the spoils.”
Tabitha crossed her arms over her chest and listened to the slurping sounds of the great horse as he sucked down the lemon and remaining meringue. John came back with a pie plate licked clean. “Here you go, madam. I’d wager you don’t really even need to wash it.”
She caught the wicked glimmer in his dark blue eyes and couldn’t resist the laughter that bubbled to her lips as she accepted the dish. “You’re a bad man.”
“You have no idea.”
She put the plate on the seat, then stretched out a hand to be helped down, but he caught her around the waist instead, swinging her down to the ground with ease. She ignored the strange thrill she felt as she found her feet and concentrated on John’s broad back as he mounted the steps with apparent familiarity to knock on the front door.
Hasty footsteps from inside shook the floorboards of the old porch, and Ann Yoder soon opened the door. Tabitha half hid behind John, expecting the same reception she’d received when she’d brought the last pie.
But, to her surprise, a hastily dressed Frau Yoder, with her kapp slightly askew, answered the door and smiled up at John.
“Where have you been lately, John Miller?” she asked. “I was beginning to think that you forgot about me.”
“Never that,” John said bending his broad back to embrace the woman. Then he caught hold of Tabitha’s wrist and pulled her forward. “And here’s Tabitha Beiler. She was intent on bringing you a lemon meringue pie, but we—had a bit of a tussle and the horse got the best of it.”
Tabitha’s toes curled inside her sensible shoes as Ann Yoder peered up at her.
“Hmmm . . . brought me a blueberry pie not long ago—wasn’t half bad, though the girl’s family is . . . well . . . not my favorite in the community. And that’s being honest, it is.”
Tabitha glanced down at the floorboards of the old porch with sadness. Would this woman ever accept her, especially as someone who was courting with Rob?
And then John spoke with quiet seriousness. “You can always do the right thing in life, Frau Ann . . . it’s never too late for that, no matter the past. You can choose to change your feelings of not favorite or favorite.”
Tabitha blinked as Ann Yoder seemed to consider the weighty words and finally gave a faint nod. “Fair enough, John, but admit that I know you, have known you since you was a boppli—and you mean something more than just me and pies and this girl.”
Tabitha looked up at John and noticed the grim set of his handsome profile and could only wonder what was churning in his powerful mind.