She stood still for a moment, listening to the sounds Isaac made at the back of the house. Just as she put down the bread plates and poured tall glasses of cold milk, he hurried back into the kitchen wearing clean work clothes, his hair slicked back from his thin face.
“I hope you don’t mind if we eat in the kitchen. It’s just you and me tonight,” Molly said. “I waited for Mamm, but she must have gotten held up.” Her mother usually served the last meal of the day in the more formal dining room, around the big wooden table that was large enough to seat twelve for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Isaac returned to the chair he’d been sitting in moments before and leaned his crutches close by. “Ya, sure. Here is fine,” he said, taking a sip of milk.
She pulled the rack of reheated chops out of the stove. “I hope you like stuffed pork chops.”
“I do. They’re my favorite,” he murmured, watching her.
She placed the largest chop on Isaac’s warmed plate. “Would you like some cinnamon?” A bottle of the tangy spice hovered over the generous mound of homemade applesauce Molly had served him.
He nodded. “Sounds gut.” He tucked his napkin on his lap.
Molly carried the two plates she’d prepared to the table and placed one in front of Isaac before sitting across from him. “Salt and pepper is on the table if you need it.”
He glanced at the salt shaker close to him and then glanced back at her, a slight smile turning up the corners of his mouth. “Before we pray I want to thank you for all the help you brought to the shop today.”
“I’m glad we could contribute,” Molly said, not wanting to delve into her own motives too deeply. She owed him. That was all. He wasn’t the only one who could be a hero.
“You did more than help. I would have never been able to get the shop as clean and organized as it is now without all those additional hands. I owe you, and the kind people of Pinecraft.”
“All I did was call my brother-in-law, Mose. Once he heard about your situation, he made the calls and did the rest.”
“So Mose is family?” Isaac asked.
“Ya, he was married to my sister, Greta, but she went home to be with the Lord three years ago.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
She was surprised by the sound of sincerity in Isaac’s voice. Memories of Greta, her smile, the way she found good in everyone, came rushing back. Molly took a deep breath and ignored the pain prodding her heart. With a jerk of her head, she nodded. “Thank you, Isaac. I still miss her, but Gott had a plan. We don’t always understand, but we will once we can sit down and talk with Him.”
“Let’s pray so we can eat,” Isaac suggested, and bowed his head.
Moments later Molly lifted her chin and found herself grinning as Isaac tore into his food with the gusto of a starving man.
“That strawberry cheesecake on the counter looks special. Somebody’s birthday today?” he asked, his eyes shifting back to Molly. He sliced off a large piece of pork chop and stuck it into his mouth.
“Ya. Mine.”
“Happy birthday! How old are you?”
She dipped her head, ashamed to admit she was so old and still not married. “Twenty-one, but it’s no big deal. Mamm and I usually just celebrate alone with a home-cooked meal when it’s one of our birthdays.” Molly clasped her hands in her lap, putting on a bright smile she didn’t feel.
“Birthdays are always special, Molly. Especially when it’s your twenty-first.”
“Ya, I guess,” she murmured, her appetite disappearing. “It’s such a big deal, Mamm didn’t bother to show up for the event,” she muttered.
“I’m sorry.”
Molly tucked into her potatoes, determined to change the subject. “Ya, well, it doesn’t matter.” Not to Mamm it doesn’t.
* * *
A half hour later Ulla placed her purse on the cleared kitchen table, along with a small bag from the new bookstore in town. “I’ve been with John all day,” she said casually. “How was your day, Molly?”
“Fine.” Molly stayed quiet. Isaac had gone to bed, and she’d been left to finish the last of the cleaning up.
“Have you heard from Samuel today? He wanted to know when you two could start courting.”
“I have no interest in Samuel, Mamm. I told you this already.”
“Well, he has an interest in you, and I think it’s time you begin to show an interest in him.”
Molly ignored her mamm and left the kitchen, her head held high. It was her birthday, and all her mother could do was talk of Samuel Bawell. She had forgotten her birthday completely. Not that her forgetting was anything new or surprising. She often forgot Molly existed, unless there was a chore to be done that she didn’t want to do herself. Molly was still treated like an unwanted child, and she was tired of it.
Greta had always been her mother’s favorite daughter. When Greta died in childbirth, Beatrice and Mercy, Mose and Greta’s tiny daughters, had taken her sister’s place of importance in her mother’s heart. Molly didn’t blame the girls. They were beautiful, like their mother, not plain like her. The bobbels were blessings from Gott. She adored them like any devoted aunt would. They were innocent children and had no idea their grossmammi played favorites and made her younger daughter feel inferior.
Molly closed her bedroom door and leaned against it. Tears began to flow until her eyes burned with grit. She hated when people wallowed in self-pity, and here she was feeling sorry for herself, with a great big hole in her heart.
In the dark she walked across the small room and sat at her dressing table. With the flick of her wrist, she turned on her lamp and pulled the pins from her kapp and bun. She massaged her scalp, her blond hair falling like a heavy curtain down her back. Reluctantly she looked into the mirror. Her eyes were puffy, her lashes dark with tears. Her nose was red in the semidarkness of the room. She pulled her grossmammi’s brush through the tangles on her head and winced as it caught in her hair. She ignored the pain and lifted her hands to braid the long strands into a thick plait.
She stared at herself in the mirror. No longer a girl, but a woman of twenty-one now. An adult...limited by one leg shorter than the other, unmarried, not being courted by a man she could love, still living with her mamm. Failure looked back at her in the brown eyes of the woman she’d become.
She turned off her lamp, knocking over her dressing-table stool as she rose and blindly moved toward the tallboy dresser against the wall. In the dark she grabbed a nightgown from the drawer. The soft cotton gown smelled of lilacs, homemade washing soap and good, fresh air.
Tomorrow things were going to change. She’d come up with a new plan for her life. She’d learn to stand up for herself. She had to, or she’d fast find herself married to Samuel Bawell.
* * *
The next day the bell over the door rang, announcing another customer. Isaac was filled with excitement. He’d been busy selling, renting and repairing bikes all day. He’d sold his last two secondhand golf carts and left a voice mail with his supplier, telling him he needed to purchase two more used carts for repair and sale. After today he’d have no problem paying next month’s bills and still have money left over to buy a few supplies.
He looked up and was surprised to find Molly wandering around the shop. Today her pale pink dress put a healthy glow to her cheeks. She looked pretty, but then she always looked fresh and tidy to him. Even last night, with her joy robbed by her mother’s