“So, we go outside, and then what?”
“We would look,” the girl said, brows furrowing. Emma had the distinct impression she was thinking something about how silly this grown-up was.
“Where?”
“Where you were when you lost it,” the girl said with an air of strained patience.
“And how would you know where that was?”
Ruthie sighed, as if her patience had run out. “I’d ask you.”
Emma sensed she was a very bright girl, and so she simply waited, saying nothing more. For an instant her gaze flicked to Caleb, who had subsided into silence and was watching intently.
It didn’t take the girl long. Her furrowed brow was cleared by dawning realization.
“You mean that’s what you’re doing? Finding out where to look?”
“Exactly.”
“Oh.”
The child appeared satisfied, and Katie smiled at her. Caleb said nothing to her, but directed Ruthie to finish her schoolwork and spoke to Katie about putting away clothing.
“Mrs. Stoltzfus’s daughter was kind enough to wash them. You should honor that by taking proper care.”
Something flashed in the girl’s blue eyes, but she only said “Yes, Father” and disappeared through a doorway at the back of the room.
The girl knew, Emma realized.
If there was one thing Emma had learned today in her preliminary interviews with a few of the residents of the village and the surrounding farms, it was that Caleb Troyer was on the figurative radar of every unmarried woman around.
It might well be that it was that sense of intense community that Amish life fostered brought on much of the generous help he was given, help with the girls and with the chores commonly relegated to the female domain, but it hadn’t taken Emma long to figure out that many of those women also had an eye on stepping into his late wife’s shoes.
Not that she didn’t understand perfectly. She was, after all, the one who had gone all wobbly the moment she’d spotted him standing in the back of his shop.
But Caleb seemed oblivious to their interest, much to their sorrow.
And to her own relief.
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