Ruth chuckled. “Just a little bird. But we’re serious. It’s not good for your children to be without a father. You know Roland would make a good dat. Even Mam says so. Roland owns his farm. No mortgage. And such a hard worker. He’ll be a good provider. And don’t forget he’s got a motherless son. You two should just stop turning your backs on each other and get married.”
“Before someone else snaps him up,” Miriam quipped. “At Spence’s, I saw one of those Lancaster girls giving him the once-over. At the Beachys’ cheese stall. ‘Atch, Roland,’” she mimicked in a high, singsong voice. “‘A man alone shouldn’t eat so much cheddar and bologna in one week. Is not gut for your health. What you need is a wife to cook for you.’”
Johanna flushed. It was too warm in the house. She went to the door and opened it, letting the breeze calm her unease. In the yard, Grace’s son, ’Kota, hung out the back door of Charley’s buggy, and Anna’s Mae bounced on the front seat. She couldn’t see Anna’s Lori Ann or Jonah, but she could hear Naomi telling them to settle down. “It’s not as easy to know what to do as you think,” Johanna said to her sisters. “People change.”
“You haven’t changed,” Anna put in quietly. “What you felt for Roland years ago, that was real. It’s not too late for the two of you.”
Johanna looked back at Anna. “You think I should fling myself at him?”
Ruth folded her arms over her chest with determination. “It’s plain as the nose on your face that he still cares for you. If you weren’t so stubborn, you’d see it.”
“What happened before...between you and him...it hurt you,” Anna continued. “I remember how you cried. But Roland was young then and sowing his oats. Can’t you find it in your heart to forgive him?”
Not forgive, but forget. Could I ever trust him again?
“Miriam!” Charley shouted from outside. “Come take this horse! I don’t trust these kids with this mare, and I can’t stand here all day holding her. I’ve got work to do.”
“Go. Have fun,” Ruth said. “But promise me you’ll think about what we said, Johanna.”
“Please,” Anna said. “We only want what’s best for you and your children.”
“So do I,” Johanna admitted. “So do I.”
* * *
The Mennonite school, where the festival was held, wasn’t more than five miles away. Mam and Grace and the others were there when Johanna and her crew arrived. Jonah and ’Kota were fairly bursting out of their britches when Miriam turned the buggy into the parking lot, and Anna’s girls appeared to be just as excited. A volunteer came to take the children’s modest admittance fees and stamp the back of their hands with a red strawberry. That stamp would admit them to all the games, the rides, the petting zoo featuring baby farm animals, a straw-bale mountain and maze and a book fair where each child could choose a free book.
“There’s Katy!” Jonah cried, waving to his little sister. Katy and Susanna were riding in a blue cart pulled by a huge, black-and-white Newfoundland dog. Following close behind trudged a smiling David King, his battered paper crown peeking out from under his straw hat. David was holding tight to a string. At the end of it bobbed a red strawberry balloon.
“I want a balloon!” Mae exclaimed. “Can I have a balloon?”
“If you like,” Johanna said. “But your Mam gave you each two dollars to spend. Make sure that the balloon is what you really want before you buy it.”
“I want a balloon, too,” ’Kota declared. “A blue one.”
“Strawberries aren’t blue,” Jonah said loftily.
“Uh-huh,” ’Kota replied, pointing out a girl holding a blue strawberry balloon on a string.
Johanna smiled as she helped the children out of the buggy and sent them scurrying safely across the field that served as a parking lot. Despite his olive skin and piercing dark eyes, Grace’s little boy looked as properly plain as Jonah. The two cousins, inseparable friends, were clad exactly alike in blue home-sewn shirts and trousers with snaps and ties instead of buttons, black suspenders and wide-brimmed straw hats. No one would recognize ’Kota as the thin, shy, undersized child who’d first appeared at Mam’s back door on that rainy night last fall. Another of God’s gifts. Life was full of surprises.
“Over here,” Mam called. “Why don’t you leave the girls with us? I imagine Lori Ann, Mae and Naomi would like to ride in the dog cart.”
“There’s J.J.,” Jonah shouted. “Hey, J.J.! He’s climbing the hay bales. Can we—”
“I promised Naomi we’d go to the book fair first,” Miriam said, joining them. “Grace is working there all morning. Don’t worry about the horse. Irwin’s going to see that the mare gets water and is tied up in the shed. Do you mind if we go on ahead, inside?”
Quickly, the sisters made a plan to meet at the picnic tables in two hours. Children were divided; money was handed out and Johanna followed ’Kota and Jonah to the entrance to the straw-bale maze. From the top of a straw “mountain,” J.J. waved and called to them. The area was fenced, so she didn’t have to worry about losing track of her energetic charges. Johanna found a spot on a straw bale beside several other waiting mothers and sat down. Since J.J. was here, Johanna was all too aware that Roland couldn’t be far away. She glanced around, but didn’t see him.
Her sisters’ advice about Roland echoed many of her own thoughts. Years ago, she and Roland... No, she wouldn’t think about that. So many memories—some good, some bad—clouded her judgment. She had prayed over her indecision, but if God had a plan for her, she was too dense to hear His voice. Sometimes her inner voice whispered that she didn’t need another husband, that she and the children were doing just fine. But at other times, she was assailed by the wisdom of hundreds of years of Amish women who’d lived before her.
Amish men and women were expected to marry and live together in a home centered on faith and family and community. Remaining single went against the unwritten rules of her church. Even a widow, like her mother, was supposed to remarry. Mourning too long was considered selfish. Dat and Wilmer, to put a fine point on it, had both left this earth. It was her duty and her mother’s duty to continue on here on earth, following the Ordnung and remaining faithful to the community.
Johanna knew, in her heart of hearts, that it was time she found a new husband. She didn’t need Anna or Ruth or even her mother to tell her that. Looking at it from the church’s point of view, she had to first find a man of faith, a man who would help her to raise her children to be hardworking and devoted members of the community. Second, as a mother, she should pick someone who would set a good example, and hopefully a man who could support her and her children—those she already had and those they might have together. She hadn’t needed her sisters to offer that advice, either. She was very good at making logical decisions.
If she married Roland, she honestly believed that she wouldn’t have to worry about struggling to feed and clothe her children. His farrier business was thriving. She knew that Roland, unlike Wilmer, would never raise his hand to her in anger. And she was certain that he didn’t drink alcohol or use tobacco, both substances she abhorred. Johanna shivered as she remembered the last time Wilmer had struck her. She was not a violent woman, but it had taken every ounce of her willpower not to fight back. Instead, she’d waited until he fell into a drunken sleep, gathered her babies and fled the house.
She pushed those bad memories out of her head. With Roland, she would be safe. Her children would be safe. They wouldn’t grow up under her mother’s roof without a father’s direction. And Roland, unlike Wilmer, would be a man both she and the children could respect.
Two