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Closer were the neat rows of her gardens. Caleb had rototilled two beds for her as soon as frost left the ground. She put in seeds and the immature plants she’d started in the cold frame. The simple wooden box topped by glass acted as a miniature greenhouse. Using it added to the time the plants could grow, which was important when the growing season in northern New York was short. Now in June, the plants were thriving in the earth.
With a chuckle, Miriam tossed her dust rag on the table and checked that her simple blue kerchief was in place over her hair. Why was she inside on such a beautiful day? School was starting at the beginning of the week—the reason why she’d been trying to get her weekly chores done today—so she wouldn’t have as much time to enjoy her garden.
She glanced around the large space with its quilt walls. The ones hanging as “bedroom doors” had been pulled aside to let air circulate. It was strange to live in a place like this one, but it was beginning to feel like home.
As she walked outside, she thought of how truly blessed she was. She had gut friends, including those in the Spinsters’ Club. She laughed. So far she hadn’t shared the name and their plans to enjoy outings together with anyone else. She wondered what the reaction would be. Though she’d considered mentioning it to Caleb, she hadn’t. He was so solicitous of her, and she wondered if he would think she’d lost her mind amidst her desolation about the canceled wedding.
The grass beneath her bare feet was as soft as the breeze making loose strands dance around her face. She curled her toes into the grass and drew in a deep breath as she watched Comet, their dappled-gray buggy horse, rolling like a young colt in the pasture. He was taking advantage of the day as she was.
Pausing to pluck a couple of weeds out of the flower bed to the right of the barn door, she glanced at the battered farmhouse. It was two stories high, but the roof dropped low over eyebrow windows. Caleb had replaced missing slats on the roof and installed drywall inside the house. Because he’d had to remove everything to the studs, he’d asked her to redesign the first floor. She’d made the kitchen bigger and added a mudroom and laundry room with a door to the yard, so it’d be easier to take laundry out to the line that ran from the house to the biggest barn. He’d put a movable wall between the two front rooms. That way, when it was their turn to host church, the wall could be shoved against the kitchen wall, making enough room for the Leit.
The outer walls would be painted white, and he’d agreed the shutters should be the same dark green as the shadows beneath the pine trees. The barns were a worn red, and he’d have to repaint them, too, but for now he was concentrating his scarce free time on the house.
Miriam admired the buds on the daylilies. They soon would be blooming. She planned to transplant her perennials along the front porch, and the best time for moving daylilies was August. She could wait longer to shift the daffodils she’d found in the woods. For the first two days after she brought the bulbs closer to the house, a groundhog had dug them up. She’d convinced the irritating burrower to leave them alone by dousing the flowers with a liberal amount of chili powder mixed with water. The strong scent had kept the animal away...at least so far.
She squatted by the flower bed and went to work. Less than five minutes later, she heard buggy wheels rattling toward the barn. Wondering who was coming, she gathered the weeds she’d pulled. She tossed them onto the compost pile before she walked around the barn’s corner. If someone was looking for Caleb, she’d have to admit she wasn’t quite sure where he was. He’d had a long list of errands to do in Salem and in Cambridge, about ten miles to the south.
She stopped in midstep, surprised when Eli climbed out of the family buggy. Why hadn’t he said anything yesterday about plans to stop by?
Her breath caught when his nephew hopped out behind him. The little boy looked around with the candid curiosity of a six-year-old, and he pointed to Comet. The horse wasn’t a common color for buggy horses. If the little boy went into the pasture and frightened him, it could be—
Stop it!
She scolded herself for looking for trouble where there might not be any. She wanted to stop reacting to the sight of a young kind, thinking of things that could go wrong, but she couldn’t. Kyle reminded her of Ralph Fisher. Both were spindly and all joints as their elbows and knees stuck out from their thin limbs while they grew like cornstalks.
Eli had noticed her dismay yesterday after the church service. Nobody else had, not even her friends in the Spinsters’ Club. She needed to keep her feelings to herself to halt the questions from beginning again—such as why a teacher hated kids. She didn’t hate them; she loved them. Because she loved them, she didn’t want to be the one to put any in danger.
“Gut mariye,” Eli called.
She waved to him and his nephew and waited for them to cross the yard to where she stood. A siren sounded from the main road, and she flinched.
Kyle did, too, and scanned in every direction to see what sort of emergency vehicle it was.
Eli kept walking as if nothing had happened.
How bad was his hearing?
It wasn’t her business. However, the teacher in her was curious how he’d managed to get by with only his young nephew to clue him in. A few quick tests he wouldn’t know were going on would tell her the extent of his hearing loss.
“I brought plans for the school,” he said when he reached her. “Do you want to see them?”
“Ja.” She didn’t nod to confirm what she’d said. “Seeing them is a gut idea because you want my help, ain’t so?”
His dark brows dropped in concentration. He must have heard some of what she’d said and was trying to piece it together. Wondering why he didn’t ask her to repeat what she’d said more slowly, she sighed. Even her grossmammi had resisted help for years because of hochmut, but pride did nothing to help her escape the ever-narrowing walls of her world as her hearing continued to fail. Nor would it help Eli.
She spoke to Kyle. “There’s chocolate pudding in the fridge. Go ahead and help yourself to some. Have some with a glass of milk, too, if you want.”
“Can I, Onkel Eli?” he asked.
More confusion fled through Eli’s eyes, but he nodded when the little boy made motions that must have conveyed the question without words.
Miriam bit her lip to keep from saying sign language had limits because it could be understood by a limited number of people.
When the little boy skipped to the door and disappeared inside, she saw Eli’s distress before he could mask it. Didn’t he realize that, with Kyle beginning school, he needed to learn a different way to communicate? He wouldn’t be able to depend so much on the little boy.
“Let me show you the plan I sketched for the school,” Eli said, motioning toward the barn.
Was he hoping to head inside where his nephew could give him hints about what was being said?
“It’s such a nice day, ain’t so?” She sat on the cement ramp’s edge. It would be used to bring equipment into the barn, once it was no longer their home. “Let’s go over what you’ve got out here.”
She thought he’d object, but he opened a large sheet of paper and spread it across the ramp beside her. He stood so close, each breath she took was flavored with the scents of his laundry soap and bleach. Unlike her brother’s, his white shirt pulled over his head and had a stand-up collar. The tab front closed with four small buttons. Beneath the cotton, the shadows of the muscles along his brawny arms drew her eyes.
She looked away. Eli Troyer was too handsome for her own gut. She wasn’t Leanna Wagler, believing in the possibility of a storybook hero coming to sweep her off her feet and carry her off to a wunderbaar life.
“What do you think?” he prompted, looking at his drawing. “It’s a rough sketch, but it should show you what I’m planning. Feel free to tell me changes you think will make the school better.”
She looked at the page. It was far more than a rough sketch, she realized. He’d marked out on the floor plan how the desks for the scholars and another larger one for the teacher would be set. He’d drawn the interior walls as if she stood in the room and looked at each one. It allowed her to see where he intended to place the blackboard and the bulletin boards. A generously sized storage closet was in a back corner.
He pointed to the narrow rectangles in the walls. “Those are windows. The bigger ones with the dotted lines showing the space for each to swing open and closed are the doors. What do you think?” He tilted his head toward her.
All air vanished as she found her nose so close to his that the piece of paper would have barely fit between them. She couldn’t move or blink when she raised her gaze to meet the blue-hot heat in the center of his eyes. Every emotion within him was powerful and uncompromising.
Somehow she gathered enough air to ask, “Do you have a pencil I can use? I want to make a small change.”
“Ja.” He groped in his pocket and pulled out a short ruler.
“Pencil,” she repeated as she pantomimed writing. Once he’d looked away, she drew in a deep breath.
What was wrong with her? She couldn’t remember feeling like that when she was with Yost, and she’d been in love with him.
When a pencil was placed in her hand, she realized she’d drifted away on her thoughts. She kept her eyes lowered and squared her shoulders before bending over the page. The sooner she was done with reviewing the plans, the sooner she could put space between her and Eli.
“I think there needs to be another window on either side of the door.” She drew what she wanted on the drawing.
“What are those?”
“Windows.” She gestured toward the barn. “Windows.”
“I know what you meant.” He shook his head. “Windows suck heat out of a building. If there are more windows in the school, you’ll be using a lot more propane to keep the building warm.”
“Two small windows won’t make much difference.”
“I’ve been a carpenter since I was fourteen, and I’ve learned a lot in those seventeen years. One thing I learned is that extra windows means needing more fuel to keep the space warm. No more windows.”
“But—”
“You can’t change facts, Miriam, no matter how much you want to.”
“The fact I know is kinder work better in a sunny place than one filled with shadows.” She folded her arms in front of her. “My brother trusts me to know what to do. That’s why he’s having me work with you to design the school.”
He frowned, and she wondered if he’d understood what she said. She realized he’d gotten a bit of it when he said, “Ja, sunshine and shadows. Like in a quilt.”
“I’m going to talk to Caleb about this,” she said.
At her brother’s name, comprehension dawned in his eyes. “Discuss it with him if you want.” He shrugged. “He’ll tell you the same thing I have.”
She looked away. “He’ll agree with me.” She added the silliest thing she could think of. “He does about blue flamingos.”
When she got no reaction from Eli to her challenging words, she stood and walked behind him as if looking at the sketch from another angle.
“I will be celebrating when he agrees with me,” she said.
Again no reaction.
She clapped her hands.
He glanced over his shoulder and frowned. “Why did you do that?”
His question proved he could hear sounds, which was more than her grossmammi had been able to in the three years before she died.
“I told you.” She smiled.
Her expression unsettled him. His gaze turned inward, and she guessed he was trying to figure out what she might have said. The silence stretched between them, a sure sign he couldn’t guess what she claimed she’d told him.
“Oh.” He gathered himself and said with calm dignity, “If you’ve got no other comments about the school...”
As he bent to get the piece of paper, she cupped her hands to her mouth and called out, “I’ve got lots and lots of comments. I want to paint the floor yellow and the walls purple. I want—”
He spun and stared at her before she could lower her hands. Wide-eyed, he demanded, “What are you doing?”
She met his accusing stare. “Testing you.”
“Pestering me? Ja, that’s true.”
“No!” She frowned at him. “Testing. With a t.” She sketched the letter in the air between them.
“I’m not one of your scholars. You don’t need to test me to find out what my reading ability is.”
Folding her arms in front of her, she gave him a cool smile. “That’s not what I was checking. If you want, I can teach you to read lips.”
“What?”
She touched her lips and then raised and lowered her fingers against her thumb as if they were a duck’s bill. “Talk. I can help you understand what people are saying by watching them talk.”
* * *
When he realized what Miriam was doing, Eli was stunned. A nurse at the hospital where he’d woken after the wall’s collapse had suggested that, once he was healed, he should learn to read lips. He’d pushed that advice aside, because he didn’t have time with the obligations of his brother’s farm and his brother’s son. Kyle had been a distraught toddler, not understanding why his beloved parents had disappeared.
During the past four years he and his nephew had created a unique language together. Mostly Kyle had taught it to him, helping him decipher the meaning and context of the few words he could capture.
“How do you know about lipreading?” he asked.
“My grossmammi.” She tapped one ear, then the other. “...hearing...as she grew older. We...together. We practiced together.”
Kyle came outside and rushed to them when Miriam gestured. He wore a milk mustache, and chocolate pudding dotted his chin.
When she bent to speak to him, too low and too fast for Eli to hear, the little boy nodded and took the tissue she handed him. She motioned toward Eli as she straightened.
Wiping his mouth and chin, Kyle faced him. Learn to read talking. What’s that? The puzzled boy looked from Miriam to him at the same time he made the rudimentary signs he used to help Eli understand others.
“I can help.” She put her hands on Kyle’s shoulders. “Kyle...grows up. Who will...you then?”
Who would help him when Kyle wasn’t nearby? He was sure that was what she’d asked. It was a question he’d posed to himself. More and more often as Kyle reached the age to start attending school.
“How does it work?” he asked.
“You watch my lips. We start with simple words. It is how my grossmammi... I learned.”
Watch her lips? Simple? He would gladly have spent days watching her lips. His gaze was drawn to those rose-colored curves too often. Now she was giving him the perfect excuse to stare at them...
He shook his head.
“You...no help?” she asked, and he realized she’d confused his refuting of his own thoughts as an answer to her kind offer.
Before he could answer, Kyle pulled on his sleeve and motioned, Help you. Her help you.
As his nephew pointed at Miriam and then at Eli, Kyle’s signals couldn’t have been clearer. Kyle wanted Eli to agree to the lessons.
Not for the first time, Eli thought about the burden he’d placed on Kyle. Though Eli was scrupulous in making time for Kyle to be a kind, sometimes, like when they went to a store, he found himself needing the little boy to confirm a total when he was checking out or to explain where to find something on the shelves. If he didn’t agree to Miriam’s help, he was condemning his nephew to a lifetime of having to help him.
That wouldn’t have been what his brother would have wanted. Milan and his wife, Shirley, had expected their son to play with friends and go to school and learn to assume responsibility for the family’s farm. The farm had been sold so he and Kyle could start over by Harmony Creek, but he could ensure his nephew had the chance to be a kid. Was Miriam the way God was answering his prayer for help? If so, he needed to agree.
“All right,” he said. “You can try to teach me to read lips.”
She gave him a nod and a gentle smile, not the superior one he’d worried she’d flash at him. “...next Monday. You and Kyle—” she pointed at his nephew and at him, matching Kyle’s motions “—supper. After we eat...”
“All right.”
“Tell me.”
For a second he was baffled, and then he realized she wanted him to repeat what she’d said so she could be certain he’d grasped the meaning of her words. His confusion became surprise. Why hadn’t he considered such repetition was an easy way to avoid mistakes?
“You invited Kyle and me to supper,” he said. “After the meal, you’ll start teaching me to read lips.”
“Gut,” she said as his nephew held his fingers in an okay sign. Satisfaction sparkled in her cat-green eyes as if she’d enjoyed a bowl of cream. “Be prepare...work.”
He hoped he wasn’t going to prove to be an utter failure as he’d been with helping his brother make sure the wall was safe. Miriam seemed so confident she could teach him. He didn’t want to disappoint her when she was going out of her way to help him.
Kyle threw his arms around Miriam and gave her a big hug. He grinned, and Eli realized how eager the kind was to let someone else help Eli fill in the blanks.
“You’ll have a gut time at school, ain’t so, buddy?” Eli asked, trying to cover his trepidation at losing Kyle’s help.
Kyle tensed. No go. Go later.
Eli knelt in front of his nephew. “You’ll be fine. You’re going to enjoy school.”
When Miriam nodded and said something, Kyle looked dubious.
The little boy shook his head. Stay together. Eli and Kyle. No go now.
“You’ll be fine,” he repeated. “The day will go so quickly you won’t realize it because you’re having fun with learning and your new friends.”
Kyle touched one ear, then the other.
It took every sinew of strength Eli had not to flinch. That was a signal he hadn’t seen the little boy make often, but he knew what it meant. Kyle was scared something bad would happen, as it had to Eli and his parents.
“It’ll be okay. Miriam will be watching over you so you don’t have to worry about getting hurt, ain’t so?”
He raised his eyes toward her, expecting her to confirm his words. Instead, Miriam eased out of the little boy’s embrace, her smile gone. She said something, but Eli didn’t get a single word. She rushed away, vanishing into the barn where she lived with her brother.
What had he said wrong? One minute she’d been working to convince Kyle that going to school was something he wanted to do. The next she was fleeing as if a rabid fox nipped at her heels. Was it the thought of being with the scholars? Again, Eli found himself wondering why anyone who was so uneasy around kinder was going to be the settlement’s teacher.
He didn’t have time to figure it out. He needed to calm his nephew. “Looks like we’re both going to start school next week,” Eli said, patting him on the back.
Kyle gave him a distracted nod and kept staring at the door Miriam had used. Why was he acting as oddly as she had?
Had what Miriam said upset the little boy?
“What did she say as she was leaving?” he asked as he tucked the page with the school drawing into his pocket. “Did you hear what she said?”
He nodded.
“What was it?”
The little boy started to open his mouth, then clamped it closed. Shaking his head, he ran to the buggy and climbed in.
Eli sighed. Kyle had heard something he didn’t want to repeat. It’d happened a few times before, and Eli had discovered how useless it was to badger the little boy again to help him understand. Kyle always found a way to avoid answering him.
But Eli now did have one answer. He wasn’t going to come to regret his decision to let her teach him lipreading.
He already did.
Chapter Four
Drying her hands, Miriam crossed the barn toward the open door at one end. The beep-beep-beep announced the delivery truck from the lumberyard backing toward where a dozen men and boys waited in eager anticipation. The school’s concrete foundation had been poured and given time to cure. Now they would work together to build walls and rafters. Once they had the skeleton in place, Eli would install shingles, clapboard, windows and doors before he finished the interior.
Spending time with Eli while he finished the school wasn’t going to be easy. Having his nephew hanging around was going to add to the stress, but she needed to get used to it because other kinder would be coming to the barn for school on Monday.
And, in the fall, though she wouldn’t be the teacher, the kinder would arrive every day to the school right across the road from her house.
Her heart contracted with the pain that never went away. Ach, how she’d longed for the family she thought she and Yost and Ralph would be! Even if the Lord hadn’t blessed her and Yost with more bopplin, they would have had the three of them.
Then it was all gone.
Tears welled into her eyes, but she dashed them away. Crying for what was impossible was absurd.
She’d been blessed when Caleb invited her to come with him to help build a new settlement. Their parents and four older siblings, who were well established in their lives, had remained behind in Lancaster County. God had brought her to this point. He must have a reason for it. She must have faith that someday she would understand, and she would be able to accept why her joy had been torn away.
“Gut mariye,” called the irrepressible Annie as she peeked past the front door. “Anyone home?”
“Komm in!” Miriam was glad to push aside her uncomfortable thoughts.
Dwelling on the past was useless. Dreaming of the future was more fun, but just as useless. She needed to concentrate on the present where she’d found three wunderbaar friends.
It was time to put sorrow behind her. She had to believe God had something better for her, something she couldn’t even imagine yet. Wasn’t that what faith was all about? Believing God would get her through the rough times?
Annie bounced into the barn followed by her twin. “Are you ready for a Harmony Creek Spinsters’ Club meeting?”
“I’m ready to enjoy a visit from you anytime. Are you here for a meeting?”
“Of course not.” Leanna rolled her eyes as she untied her bonnet. “Sarah had to work today. But the men are having a work frolic, so we decided we should, too.” She put a basket on the table. “It was Annie’s idea.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“Because you know I have gut ideas?” Annie asked.
“No, that would be a surprise,” her twin teased with affection. Motioning after she set two more bags on the table, she added, “Komm here, Miriam, and see what we’ve been able to dig up.”
Miriam wasn’t surprised when the twins began to unload schoolbooks and stack them on the table. Each grade level was printed with a different color cover, and she saw they had several for most grade levels. She already had the teacher’s editions. Caleb had packed them, figuring someone would use them along Harmony Creek. She wondered if he’d assumed he could persuade her to teach again...at least temporarily.
She tapped her cheek in thought. “We’ll need workbooks. I wonder where we can order them.”
“Is there a bookstore in the village?” Leanna asked.
“Not that I’ve seen, but Caleb may know where one is.”
“Or go to the library and order the books from a computer there.” Annie’s eyes twinkled.
“I’m not sure the bishop would approve.” Miriam sat at the table and began to sort the books out by grade. “Maybe Sarah could ask Mrs. Summerhays if she knows where we can place an order without using the internet.”