And, when he’d thought nobody would notice, he’d been watching her every motion since she’d stepped out of her brother’s buggy.
The bishop’s voice, raised as he asked everyone to pray, intruded into Eli’s thoughts. As he moved to kneel, facing the bench where he’d been perched, his eyes cut to her again.
He got caught, because his gaze connected with hers. For a single heartbeat before she turned to kneel. It’d been enough for him to confirm she’d been surprised by her brother’s suggestion they work together. He didn’t see dismay, though.
Lord, please make this collaboration a gut one so the work we do together is a reflection of the hopes of this settlement.
Keeping his prayers focused on the future was the best way to avoid thinking about the past and another pretty woman who’d dumped him like yesterday’s trash. He glanced at his nephew beside him. He owed his brother and sister-in-law a huge debt for failing to protect them, and he intended to repay it, in part, by raising their son as they would have wanted.
Eli kept reminding himself of that obligation as the service came to an end. He needed to make a comfortable home for the little boy and earn a living to put food on their table. Once he finished, he’d look for more work.
As he’d done in Delaware, he made an excuse to avoid staying for the meal. If he met his neighbors one by one, he’d be able to get to know them well enough to guess what they were saying. In a crowd of almost thirty people, picking out individual voices and words was impossible.
Kyle looked disappointed as he glanced at the other kinder, but he didn’t protest.
Eli draped an arm over his nephew’s shoulders, surprised again at how much the little boy had grown in the past year. He’d inherited the Troyer height, and if he kept shooting up as he was, he’d be taller than Eli by the time he was a teenager. When they reached their buggy and Kyle climbed in, the little boy leaned forward and grabbed onto the sleeve of Eli’s black mutze coat.
Astonished, Eli asked, “What is it?”
Someone talk to you.
“Who?”
The little boy pointed in the direction they’d come.
Eli’s next question went unasked when he saw Miriam standing behind him, about ten feet away. By herself. Her friends were putting food on the tables set in the grass. Knowing he shouldn’t be paying attention to such details, he couldn’t help noticing how Miriam’s dress was the exact green of her eyes. Her white kapp glistened as light sifted through the heart-shaped top, and her apron of the same shade seemed to glow in the sunshine.
She said something as she walked toward the buggy.
He assumed it was a greeting because she gave him a polite smile.
“I know Caleb wants us to work together,” he said.
She blinked, and he guessed she’d expected him to chat about the weather or the church service before getting to the subject of the school. She couldn’t know how difficult it was for him to make small talk.
“Ja,” she said.
So far, so good.
“Miriam, I want to say danki for what you did at the store.”
“You already...”
He hoped she’d said something about him previously thanking her for helping Kyle.
“It means a lot to me for someone to come to my nephew’s defense as you did.”
“...little boy, and he...nothing wrong.” He was surprised when Miriam peered past him and into the buggy.
“Looking for something?” he asked. Too loudly, he realized when she winced.
After four years he should be used to that reaction from people when his voice rose with the strength of his emotions. He wasn’t.
“I was...no matter.”
Or at least that was what he thought she said as she stepped aside as Kyle jumped out of the buggy and gave her a big grin. Her expression grew uncertain and wary.
Of his nephew? Why?
Unsure how to ask that, he said, “I don’t know if Caleb told you my nephew is living with me. His name is Kyle. He’ll be one of your scholars. School starts next week, ain’t so?”
When she forced a smile, it looked as if her brittle expression could shatter. She seemed to shrink into herself, acting as if she were allergic to Kyle and him.
He thought again about how she’d jumped to his nephew’s defense at the grocery store. Why had she changed from that assertive woman—too assertive, many would say, for a plain woman—to a meek kitten who acted afraid of her own shadow?
“If you want to play ball with the kinder for a few minutes, Kyle,” he said, “go ahead. Just come when I call you.”
Kyle punched the air and ran off to join a trio of other boys and two girls near his age.
Knowing he should keep an eye on his nephew, though there were plenty of adults around, Eli couldn’t stop his gaze from shifting toward Miriam again and again. She stared at Kyle and the other kinder as if they were a nest of mice about to invade her home.
Shock rushed through him. Why would Miriam Hartz agree to teach the settlement’s kinder if she didn’t like kids? Hadn’t Caleb told him that she’d been a teacher in Pennsylvania? He had missed something, something her brother said or she did. No Amish woman who stood up for a little boy as she had displayed such an undeniable distaste for kinder. Why had she cringed away from Kyle?
As she noticed him appraising her, she said something he didn’t hear and hurried toward the house and her friends. He’d better figure out her odd actions if there was any chance of Miriam and him working together successfully. He wished he knew where to begin looking for an explanation for her peculiar behavior.
Miriam stood by the window offering the best view of the rolling foothills of the Green Mountains at the horizon. When she’d first arrived at the Harmony Creek farm, the hills had been a sad gray brown. The bare trees had grown thick with leaves and bushes until the hills looked as if they were covered with tight green wool.
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