Family Blessings

“Why are you really reluctant to have your son work for me?” Jeremiah asked. “Or perhaps it is not just me? Perhaps you are reluctant to let him go?”

Pleasant looked up at him as if truly seeing him for the first time. His dark, wavy hair was the color of chestnuts. His eyes were the gold-and-green hazel of autumn leaves in his native Ohio and they held no hint of reproach, only curiosity. His expression was gentle and reflected only a deep interest in her reply.

“I will think on what you have said,” she replied. “I respect that you have seen in Rolf perhaps some of your own youth, but I would remind you that he is not you—nor your son.”

“No,” Jeremiah whispered, glancing away again. “A friend then? Could we—you and your children and I—not be friends?” He arched a quizzical eyebrow and the corners of his mouth quirked into a half smile.

“Neighbors,” she corrected.

He grinned and put on his hat. “It’s a beginning,” he said. “Good day, Pleasant.”

“Good day,” she replied without bothering to correct his familiarity. She watched him hop off the end of the porch closest to his shop and thought, And perhaps in time, friends.

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

—Isaiah 43:18–19

ANNA SCHMIDT is an award-winning author of more than twenty-five works of historical and contemporary fiction. She is a two-time finalist for a coveted RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America, as well as a four-time finalist for an RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award. Her most recent RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice nomination was for her 2008 Love Inspired Historical novel Seaside Cinderella, which is the first of a series of four historical novels set on the romantic island of Nantucket. Critics have called Anna “a natural writer, spinning tales reminiscent of old favorites like Miracle on 34th Street.” Her characters have been called “realistic” and “endearing” and one reviewer raved, “I love Anna Schmidt’s style of writing!”

Family Blessings

Anna Schmidt

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For those who nurture the children—woman or man.

Chapter One

Celery Fields, Florida, Autumn 1932

Pleasant Obermeier dropped small dollops of batter into the oil sizzling over the wood-fired stove and expertly rolled each doughnut around in the oil until it was golden-brown before rescuing each and laying it on a towel to drain. Over the years that she had been the baker in her father’s bakery in the tiny Amish community of Celery Fields, she must have made thousands of these small sweet confections. Like the loaves of egg and rye bread that she had already baked that morning, her apple cider doughnuts had remained a staple of the business in spite of the hard times that had spread across the country.

It occurred to her that little had changed about her daily routine in spite of the major changes that had taken place in her life these past three years. She still rose every morning at four and was at her work by five. Even so, her father, Gunther, still arrived before she did and had the fires stoked and ready to receive the morning’s wares. The two of them had followed a similar routine since Pleasant was no more than a girl of fifteen. Now a woman of thirty-two—middle-aged by some standards—she had already been married and widowed and had taken on responsibilities she could never have imagined a few years earlier.

Three years earlier she had married Merle Obermeier, a man ten years her senior. Then after Merle had died in a tragic accident two summers ago she had taken on responsibility for raising four children from his first marriage as well as responsibility for the large house and farm that he had left behind. But in spite of all of that, she had refused to give up her role as the local baker. There was something very comforting in the routine of the bakery. It was the one place where she could be alone with her thoughts. Even the few customers she was called upon to serve when her father was off making a delivery, or otherwise engaged as he was this morning, did not interrupt her revelry for long.

The bell over the shop door jangled and Pleasant hurried to dip up the last of the doughnuts and drop them onto the towel. “Coming,” she called out in the Dutch-German dialect common to the community as she quickly rolled the still-warm doughnuts in sugar and set them on a cake plate. Before carrying the plate with her to the front of the shop, she automatically reached up to straighten the traditional starched white prayer kapp that covered her hair and smooth the front of her black bibbed apron.

But when she reached the swinging half door that separated the kitchen from the shop, she stopped. Her customer was a man—Amish by his dress—but someone she had not seen before. Celery Fields did not see many strangers. Their customers were mostly the local village residents and the farmers who raised celery in the fields that stretched out beyond the community. Occasionally, someone from the outside world—the Englisch world as the Amish called it—would stop as they passed through on their way to nearby Sarasota. But this was no outsider. This man was Amish. She pasted on a smile. “Guten morgen.” He turned and she found herself looking straight up and into a pair of deep-set hazel eyes accented at the corners by the creases of a thousand smiles. Her earlier feeling of contentment was gone in an instant. Pleasant was wary of strangers—especially handsome male strangers. She had fought a lifelong battle against a streak of romanticism that for a woman like her was sheer folly. Tall, good-looking men like this one were not for her, regardless of how engaging their smile might be. She had long ago faced the fact that she was not only a member of a plain society—the Amish—but also that the face that looked back at her in her brief encounters with her reflection in a storefront glass was plain as well.

The cake plate teetered dangerously as the pyramid of doughnuts shifted and a few of the confections tumbled from the plate to the top of the counter. To make matters worse, both she and the stranger reached to rescue them at the exact same moment. His smile turned to laughter as their fingers brushed. But then their eyes met and his smile faded. He withdrew his hand as if it had been scalded. Certain that it was her expression of horror that had sobered him, Pleasant hurried to restore order. He was, after all, a customer.

“Clumsy,” she murmured as she rescued two doughnuts that had made it to the floor and discarded them. When she stood up again, he had picked up the single doughnut still on the counter and seemed unsure of what to do with it. She held out a trash bin and after a moment’s consideration he popped it into his mouth. Then he closed his eyes and savored the warm sweetness of it. “So you are the baker,” he said.

Unnerved, she set the plate on top of the counter and covered it with a glass cake cover. “How may I help you, Herr … .”

“Troyer,” he said. “Jeremiah Troyer. I am Bishop Troyer’s great-nephew.” He smiled at her as if he expected this to be welcome news. He did have a most engaging smile.

“Are you and Frau Troyer visiting the bishop then?” she asked politely, refusing to permit his charming smile to disarm her while she gathered background information and was clear about what he wanted.

“I’ve just moved here,” he replied. “And I am not married, Fraulein Goodloe.”

“I am Frau Obermeier,” she corrected. “My husband passed away two summers ago.” She forced herself to meet his gaze. “Welcome to our community, Herr Troyer.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. “Is your father here?”

“Not at the moment. May I be of some help?”

He seemed to consider this and then plunged in to tell her his story. “Perhaps your father mentioned that I intend to open an ice cream shop,” he explained. “I’ve also taken a position with the Sarasota Ice Company and bought the property next door.” He waited for her to speak and when she said nothing, he continued, “I might have use for some of his wares in my ice cream shop, and when I spoke with your father last night …”

“You want to sell our baked goods right next door to us?” Pleasant’s polite smile faded. In many ways Pleasant was a far better business manager than Gunther Goodloe had ever been. Gunther tended to be softhearted when it came to delayed payments or supplies not delivered as promised. Pleasant had no such problems. And when it came to the prospect of a competitor moving in on them, she …

The smile flashed again. “Actually, Frau Obermeier, I need cones for my ice cream and I was hoping that your father might help me concoct a recipe that would make my cones different from those of any potential competitors. But he assures me that you are the expert when it comes to baking.”

“Ice cream cones,” she murmured, fully understanding his interest now. This was business. Well, it would certainly be a change from the basic breads and rolls she turned out day after day. “How many were you thinking of ordering?”

Jeremiah laughed and the sound was like music in the otherwise subdued surroundings. Oh, he was a charmer, this one.

“Why, Frau Obermeier, we are not talking of a single order here. Once we come upon the perfect recipe, I shall need a steady supply of them.”

Pleasant saw Merle’s sister, Hilda, approaching the bakery. Her heavyset sister-in-law huffed her way up the three shallow steps that led from the street to the door and entered. “Pleasant,” she said, addressing Pleasant but looking at the stranger. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. I am Mrs. Obermeier’s sister-in-law, Hilda Yoder.”

“I am Jeremiah Troyer and I’m pleased to meet you, Frau Yoder. Your husband owns the dry goods store?”

“Yes, that’s right.” In spite of the fact that Hilda often made a point of reminding others that pride was viewed as a sin by people of their Amish faith, she couldn’t help preening a bit to have her husband known.

“I was coming to call on him next,” Jeremiah reported. “And since Herr Goodloe is not here at the moment, perhaps I should stop back later this afternoon.”

“That might be best,” Hilda said before Pleasant could answer.

Jeremiah put on his stiff-brimmed summer straw hat and tipped it slightly toward Hilda and then Pleasant. “Give my regards to your father, Frau Obermeier,” he said. “And please accept my deepest sympathies to both you ladies for the loss of your husband and brother,” he added before leaving the shop and heading across the way to Yoder’s Dry Goods.

Pleasant did not realize how closely she was watching him until Hilda lightly touched her arm and cleared her throat. “What are those boys up to now?”

Through the open front door Pleasant could see Merle’s five-year-old twins—Will and Henry—wrestling with each other in the dusty street. “They’ll spoil their clothes,” Hilda chided, but Pleasant only laughed.

“Oh, they’re just playing, Hilda. Clothes can be washed, you know.”

“Of course, you would think that,” Hilda replied stiffly, making it clear that in her view, Pleasant knew nothing about properly raising children—especially a pair of rambunctious five-year-olds. “It just seems to me with all you have to do at the bakery, you are certainly busy enough without adding extra loads of laundry to your chores.” She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “I understand that Gunther intends to do business with the bishop’s great-nephew and apparently it somehow involves you—some foolishness about needing you to make ice cream cones.”

Before Pleasant could think of any appropriate response to her sister-in-law’s comment, Hilda had left the shop, carefully skirting her way around the boys as she returned to the dry goods store.

“Boys, stop that,” Pleasant called to the twins who rolled to a sitting position and blinked innocently up at her.

“Yes, Mama,” they chorused.

Pleasant felt the familiar tug at her heart to hear any of Merle’s children call her “Mama” without even thinking about it. That triumph—especially with Rolf and Bettina, the older two—had required a good deal of patience on her part and she treasured each and every use of the title. Always shy and withdrawn, even somewhat sickly while their father was alive, the two older children had blossomed under Pleasant’s care. Rolf and Bettina never missed school and were often seen taking care of some chore or another around the large house. The twins—only toddlers when their mother died—had accepted her without question from the day she moved into the house.

Her heart melted as it always did in the presence of the identical boys. “Come here,” she said, stooping down and holding out her arms to receive them. Giggling, they ran to her, colliding with her at the same moment so that they nearly knocked her off balance. “Look at the two of you,” she fussed as she tucked their shirts into matching homespun trousers and slicked down identical cowlicks with fingers she wet on her tongue. “Now please try to stay clean,” she pleaded as they scampered away.

It was at times like these that thoughts of Merle sprang to mind unbidden. He had had such a difficult youth as he often reminded her when he thought she was being too soft with the children. His own father had shamed the family by running away with his wife’s sister when Merle was only a little older than Rolf was now. Merle had been forced to leave school and take a job in addition to managing the small family farm in order to support his mother and siblings. Knowing his painful past made the fact that Merle would never see how well his own children had turned out all the more poignant. And yet, she realized, that in the year she had been married to him, never had she witnessed a moment of such unconcealed love between Merle and any of his children as she had just enjoyed with the twins. Merle Obermeier had been a bitter man and in a year of marriage she had made little progress toward softening his ways.

She was about to close the shop’s front door to prevent the dust from the street from blowing in when she saw Jeremiah Troyer exit the dry goods store and wave to her. She waited until he was in front of the bakery and then asked, “Did you need something more, Herr Troyer?”

“I came back to give you this,” Jeremiah said, his tone easy and calm as he held out a folded piece of paper to Pleasant. “It’s one of the recipes used by someone I knew back in Ohio. I’d like to consider something similar to this for the cones,” he told her. “It’s important to set one’s product apart from that of the competition.”

“You had an ice cream business in Ohio then?” she asked as she stepped onto the front stoop and accepted the recipe.

“Not exactly. You see, Frau Obermeier, as a boy I was ill with rheumatic fever, and my uncle—my father’s eldest brother—thought it best that I take a job in town since I was too weak to work in the fields. The only person hiring was Peter Osgood, the pharmacist. He bought the cream and eggs for making the ice cream he served in the soda shop in the front of his drugstore from our farm. One day he mentioned that he was looking for a young man to help make the ice cream.” Jeremiah shrugged. “I was already making the delivery of eggs and cream. It stood to reason that I might as well stay to do the work, and so I was hired. I was there for ten years.”

Pleasant fingered the rough thick paper he’d handed her for a moment. His childhood held some similarities to that of Merle’s thin and awkward eldest son, Rolf. “Mr. Osgood knows you have his recipes?”

Jeremiah laughed. “I didn’t steal them. He handed them to me himself at the train station when he came to see me off and wish me well. In fact, you may have the opportunity to meet him one day. He’s promised to come for a visit.”

“And your father did not mind that you …”

A shadow of deep sadness flitted across his handsome features. “My father died when I was thirteen. My brothers and sisters and I were raised by our uncle.”

“I see.” Another thing that he and Rolf had in common. She looked up at him.

“And that’s probably a good deal more than you need or want to know of my childhood,” he said with a wry smile.

Pleasant pocketed the recipe and turned to open the bakery door. “I’ll give this to my father when he returns and let him know that you stopped by.” For reasons she didn’t fully understand, she hesitated. “Good day, Herr Troyer,” she said softly.

“And to you,” he replied and he headed down the steps and on to the empty building he’d purchased to turn into an ice cream shop.

Almost as soon as Pleasant had entered the bakery, Hilda was back, her brow knitted into a frown of disapproval. “What was that paper he gave you?” she asked as she ran one finger over the display case and clucked her tongue at the dust she found there.

“A recipe for me to give Papa,” Pleasant replied. “And now if you’ll excuse me, Hilda, I have …”

“That man is trouble,” Hilda muttered as she followed Pleasant into the kitchen. “He has this habit of laughing and smiling far too easily. In these hard times what does he find to be so happy about? You’ll want to stay clear of him,” she warned.

Pleasant decided to ignore this last remark. Ever since Merle’s death, Hilda seemed to have assumed the need to speak for him. Pleasant could almost hear her late husband issuing the same warning to keep her distance. It occurred to her that Merle would not have liked Jeremiah Troyer. Pleasant could not say how she knew that or what the basis for Merle’s dislike might have been. But she knew beyond a doubt that he would have offered her the same warning that his sister offered now. And as Hilda prattled on about the foolishness of even thinking of opening an ice cream shop in the middle of a depression, Pleasant could not help but think that perhaps she would be wise to take heed of such signs.

Amish communities around the country had long ago established the habit of holding their biweekly Sunday services in private homes or barns around the district. In fact, many districts were composed of no more than twenty-six households, making sure that each family would host services at least once during the year. In Celery Fields, they still had a way to go to reach twenty-six families. The community was still growing and for the second time that year, the service was to be held at Pleasant’s house. The simple wooden benches stored on a special wagon and moved from house to house as the services did had arrived on Saturday and now stood lined up in the two large front rooms of the house.

In the two years that had followed her husband’s death, Pleasant had made a number of changes that most everyone in the small community applauded.

For one thing, the citizens of Celery Fields no longer dreaded gathering in the house that Merle had always kept cloistered and shuttered even in the stifling summer heat. On the day of Merle’s funeral, friends and neighbors had arrived to find the windows and doors of the house thrown open, exposing the somber and shadowy interior of the house to the light. Pleasant had stood together with Merle’s four children on the wide front porch, greeting each new arrival. Further, when time came for setting up the benches—usually all crowded into the small front room at Merle’s insistence—Pleasant had suggested spreading them into the adjoining dining room and giving people more room.

Then there was the matter of how she had handled the children—three boys and one girl. It was well-known that she had married Merle more because he was her one chance at ever finding a husband than because of any deep love for the man. For his part, Merle had made it clear that he had chosen her for equally practical reasons. She had managed her father’s house after the deaths of her mother and her father’s second wife. She had practically raised her two half sisters, and even now she continued to help her father in the family’s bakery business. Merle had needed a mother for his four children and someone to manage the impressive house he’d built on the edge of the acres of celery fields he farmed. Theirs had been more of a business arrangement than a marriage. And that had suited them both.

Pleasant thought on all of these matters as she listened to the service, trying hard to keep her focus on the children and the responsibilities God had given her rather than the broad back of Jeremiah Troyer seated just two rows in front of her. When the service finally ended she hurried off to make sure that her oldest son, Rolf, had put out hay for the horses waiting to take the churchgoers home later, and then headed around the side of the house toward the kitchen.

On her way, she was struck by what a truly beautiful day God had given them. She took a minute to pause and close her eyes as she drew in a breath of the sweet warm October air. She could smell the herbs thriving in flowerbeds she’d planted herself all around the perimeter of the house. She almost felt as if she could smell the sun itself as the warmth of its rays bathed her face. She silently offered up a prayer of thanks for all of the blessings that God had seen fit to bestow on her as well as a plea for forgiveness for all the times she had complained about the life she’d been given. If she opened her eyes and turned away from the house and the bounty of its herbs and flowers, she knew that she would find herself looking out to the fields that stretched out for acres beyond the house. Merle’s legacy for his children that had once thrived lay fallow now, the furrows parched and cracked. Still, the land and house were paid for so she thanked God that she and the children had food and shelter and, in these hard times, she felt truly blessed.

In the kitchen Hilda and several women were working in an easy and familiar rhythm. While the men reset the benches, the women prepared platters of fried chicken, mixed up a variety of salads and cut up pies still warm from the morning’s baking. Pleasant joined her good friend, Hannah Harnisher, to help slice the heavy loaves of bread she’d baked the day before and lined up on one counter.

Hannah had once been married to Pleasant’s brother, but after he died she had married Levi Harnisher. The couple had met a few years earlier after Hannah’s son had run away with the circus—a circus then owned by Levi. Pleasant and Gunther had gone with Hannah to Wisconsin to retrieve the boy and the journey had forged a lifelong friendship between the two women—one they had not shared before that journey.

Pleasant had been different in those days. Life had dealt her a number of disappointments early on—her mother’s death, her father’s remarriage bringing two new siblings into the household. And then her brother had married the beautiful Hannah and the two of them had been so very happy. In those days, Pleasant had viewed each event as further evidence that she had been abandoned by those she loved. Then she had gone to Wisconsin with Hannah and along the way had gotten to know a group of women—circus folk—changing her outlook forever. With these new and unlikely friends she had discovered humor in the face of hardship and kindness in the face of the prejudice that is born of ignorance.