Chapter One
Warmed by the sunlight streaming through the window of the newly expanded noodle factory, Marietta Helfing stretched. She felt like a cat, limber and strong, soothed by the low rumble of the motors that ran the two cylindrical noodle presses. As she carefully arranged a thin length of pressed dough on her worktable, she caught her twin, Molly, gazing at her from beside the other table, where she was also preparing to cut a large rectangle of dough into long strips.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Molly remarked as she picked up her sharp knife. “And you look like you have a lot of them.”
Marietta smiled as she, too, began to cut her dough into long strips about four inches wide. “This time last year—the day after Thanksgiving—I was going in for my surgery, and I was frightened out of my mind,” she recalled as her knife moved deftly through the dough. “It’s such a blessing to be recovered and working at full steam again, after all that time I was wiped out from chemo.”
“And I thank the Lord every day that you’re back to normal,” Molly put in as they worked. “I’m looking forward to a fine, fun Christmas, different from last year, when we had to spend so much time getting you to your cancer treatments. Another gift is being able to work side by side now that we’ve doubled our work space and equipment,” she added with a lilt in her voice. “Mamm would be amazed at the way her little business has taken off like a shot, and that we’re selling so many bags of noodles at The Marketplace each Saturday.”
“Jah, she would.” Marietta worked in silence for a while, letting a wave of wistful nostalgia run its course. She missed their mother even more than she missed the breasts she’d lost during her bilateral mastectomy, but she was determined to forge ahead—to meet the demands of the eager customers who thronged their noodle shop at The Marketplace each Saturday.
After today’s noodles were cut and drying on screens, she and Molly would bag and label the dried noodles they’d made earlier in the week, so they could load the wagon this afternoon for the drive into town on Saturday morning. It was a steady yet demanding schedule they kept these days, but Marietta felt good about paying down the mountain of bills she’d accrued following her mastectomy and chemo treatments. She and Molly would soon be banking enough income to support themselves well into their later years—an important advantage, considering Marietta didn’t intend to marry.
After all, what man could possibly want a woman who was both damaged goods and unable to bear him children?
When she glanced at her sister, who was placing the first strip of her noodle dough into the roller to flatten it again, Marietta noticed a flicker of emotion on Molly’s face. What could’ve caused such a discontented expression?
“Penny for your thoughts, sister,” Marietta said as she, too, began feeding a strip of noodle dough through her roller.
Molly shrugged, guiding the thinner strip of pastry with her hands for several seconds before she responded. “Sure is quiet without Riley and Pete around.”
Marietta’s eyes widened at her sister’s wistful remark. For several months, Pete Shetler and his golden retriever, Riley, had stayed in one of their two dawdi hauses because Bishop Jeremiah Shetler had thought it would be an improvement over his nephew’s former living arrangements. During his stay, Pete had done some much-needed maintenance around their farm as well as remodeled their noodle factory—while his active young dog had mostly dug up Mamm’s flower beds, chewed the belts on their noodle-making equipment, and found other trouble to get into.
Pete had moved into a room at his uncle’s house, however, when Bishop Jeremiah had announced his engagement to Teacher Lydianne Christner. Both men had felt it would be more convenient for Pete to live at the Shetler farm during the winter months while he did some extensive remodeling on the bishop’s place. Although Marietta appreciated the return to a quieter routine without their renter, she sensed that Molly had secretly adored the muscular blond carpenter and his rambunctious dog.
“Maybe you should pay Pete a visit,” she suggested. “I bet he’d be tickled if you took over a pan of that noodle pudding he always—”
“Why would I do that?” Molly blurted. Her tone sounded playfully defiant, but her brow furrowed. “It’s not as though anything would come of it—even if Pete took the hint and asked me out.”
“Why not?” Marietta paused, almost hesitant to continue. She didn’t want to limit her twin’s future, and yet... “Just because I’ll never marry doesn’t mean you should forfeit a potential romance with Pete. Sure, he’s clueless most of the time, but he seems trainable. And he’s awfully cute.”
“Let’s not forget that Pete refuses to join the Amish church, so a romance with him is pointless—even if he knew the meaning of the word,” Molly shot back. “Truth be told, I like Riley a whole lot better than Pete, anyway. I intend to remain here on the farm with you, sister, as we’ve always agreed upon,” she added quickly. “We’re turning thirty-five next month, so why would I want to change my life—and my attitude—to accommodate a husband?”
Although Marietta still suspected her sister had feelings for Pete, she was relieved to hear Molly’s vehement insistence upon staying at the home place. The two of them had spent very little time apart; how would she cope with life alone in their farmhouse if Molly married? Such a lonely life was something she didn’t even want to think about.
“And besides,” Molly continued as she fed another strip of her dough into the roller, “we maidels need to stick together to keep The Marketplace going, ain’t so? With Regina married now and Lydianne engaged to the bishop, it’ll soon just be us two and Jo running the place.”
Marietta nodded. Jo Fussner had been the driving force behind creating The Marketplace from a dilapidated old stable nearly six months ago. It wouldn’t be fair to saddle her with all the responsibility for managing Morning Star’s very successful Amish market, especially when she’d planned that the business venture would be a project for her four maidel friends to share with her.
“Jah, that’s a gut point. Having a husband or a fiancé has changed things for those two girls—and I really miss having Regina around on Saturdays,” Marietta put in. “Once Lydianne’s married to Bishop Jeremiah, there’ll be no working away from home for her, either.”
“Not to mention what would happen if we acquired husbands and they felt they should be involved with running The Marketplace,” Molly speculated aloud. “That would change everything, and we’d no longer have control over how business was done there.”
“Wouldn’t be fair to Jo if we married and left the management all on her shoulders, either,” Marietta put in. “Her bakery keeps her so busy nowadays, I don’t see how she’d have time to take over all of the bookkeeping, as well.”
For a few moments the two of them worked in comfortable silence, feeding the remaining strips of dough into their separate rollers so they could cut them into noodles suitable for soups and casseroles.
“I’m hoping Lydianne will keep doing our accounting at home after she marries,” Molly remarked after a bit. “Can you imagine the fuss Drusilla will make if Jo spends even more time doing all the organizing and accounting? She’s already squawking about the extra effort the Christmas season will require, and it’s not even December yet.”
Marietta laughed out loud. Jo’s mamm was known for always seeing the proverbial glass as half empty rather than half full—and indeed, Drusilla often seemed to believe she had no glass at all. “We shopkeepers will all be busier than usual, starting this weekend when—”
The backfiring and familiar rumble of a pickup truck made them look toward the window. Molly’s face lit up. She quickly shut off her roller, washed her hands, and started toward the door of the shop, laughing at the sound of a golden retriever’s raucous bark. She opened the door just wide enough to slip outside, preventing Riley from entering the noodle factory—and spoiling their morning’s work if he plunked his huge front paws on a worktable covered with dough strips.
“Shetler, we were just talking about you!” Molly called out.
“Maybe that’s why my ears were burning, jah?” Pete fired back. “Were you talking trash about me, or saying how much you miss Riley and me causing trouble all the time?”
Marietta shut off her roller and braced herself against her worktable. Molly could deny it until the cows came home, but she was sweet on Pete Shetler, and he liked Molly a lot more than he would admit, as well. Their banter continued outside for a few moments while Marietta tried to still the apprehensive fluttering of her heart.
This is all in Your hands, Lord, but you know how lonely I’d be if Molly married and left me here by myself—even if she deserves her happiness.
As the shop door opened, however, Marietta fixed a smile on her face. After all, if she’d battled cancer and won, she could face whatever changes Pete Shetler might bring into their lives—or whatever he’d come to tell them today.