* * *
Completely humiliated, Trina slinked home. After spending most of the morning and afternoon outside with the boys, her appetite was raging in a way she hadn’t experienced since before her mother took ill. But there’d been no way she was going to sit down at a table with that smug, controlling Seth Helmuth. She respected that Amish people abided by their church’s Ordnung, and without knowing what it said herself, it was possible she might have accidentally violated one of its precepts. But she’d felt like a criminal when Seth demanded she recite the song like that. She hoped he felt utterly ridiculous when he heard how it went!
In the kitchen, she removed her jacket and hung it on the peg beside the door. Almost immediately she took it back down and put it on again. It was freezing in there. Now she was cold as well as hungry. How was she going to go grocery shopping? The stores within walking distance closed by the time Seth returned home and she didn’t have a car. What was she going to subsist on? Water and Willow Creek’s superior fresh air?
She went into the parlor and lit a fire in the woodstove. Then she looked around for her handbag, which contained half a packet of crackers with peanut butter she’d bought at the train station. When she found it, she gobbled a cracker and then brought the rest into the kitchen where she put the kettle on to fix a cup of the tea Martha had left for her. Once the water came to a boil, Trina filled a mug, put the crackers on a plate and sat down next to the woodstove.
Even with her jacket on and the warm cup in her hands, she was shivering, so she retrieved the quilt from her bed and wrapped herself in it before returning to her chair. The silence was punctuated only by the ticking clock and Trina understood why her mother had felt like time stood still in Willow Creek. Trina had only been there two days and it already seemed like a lifetime. It was enough to make her want to pack her bags right then.
Of course, Trina’s mother had had a far more significant reason to leave Willow Creek behind: Abe Kauffman. But as miserable as her mother’s life with Abe had been, she’d rarely spoken against him in detail. Patience had only described how, after her own mother died, her father changed.
“Mind you, he never lifted a hand against me,” she told Trina. “But he wouldn’t lift a hand toward me, either. Not to help me, not to embrace me. He hardly spoke a word to me. It was as if I didn’t exist—as if I had died when my mother did. All that existed was his bottle of beer. So, in a way, I felt as if he’d died, too. At eight years of age, I felt orphaned.”
No wonder her mother had never wanted to return to this house. When Trina was young and used to ask her mother if they could visit Willow Creek, Patience’s face would cloud with sadness as she said no, it was better for everyone if they didn’t. “We’re happy right where we are, aren’t we?” she’d ask Trina, and Trina always answered yes because it was true. As long as they were together, they were happy. Trina sniffed as she realized her mother would never be with her again. Did that mean Trina would never be happy again, either? She knew she couldn’t allow herself to dwell on such thoughts or she’d never make it through her time in Willow Creek, so she prayed the Lord would give her peace and then she went to draw a bath.
But before she reached the washroom, there was a knock at the door. In the kitchen, Trina peered through the door’s glass pane to see Seth holding a plate wrapped in tin foil in one hand and Martha’s basket from yesterday in the other.
“Yes?” she said coldly after opening the door.
“My groossmammi sent these for you,” he replied, lifting the items in her direction.
Since they were from Martha, Trina couldn’t refuse them. “Please tell her I said denki.” She reached for the plate but Seth held on to the basket, stepping into the kitchen uninvited.
“How’s the mouse situation?” he asked. “Did the trap do the trick?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t checked.”
He set the basket on the table, crossed the room and pried the cupboard open. To Trina’s relief, he announced, “Neh, nothing yet.” Then he closed the cupboard and rubbed his arms. “Seems a little cold in here. I can show you how to get a gut fire roaring if you’d like.”
Trina didn’t know why he was suddenly being so congenial, but she wished he’d leave. Not just because she was still miffed, but because the aroma of the meal he brought was making her feel even more famished and she could hardly wait to eat. “Actually, I’m rather warm,” she said, tossing her ponytail.
“I imagine you are,” Seth replied, his lips twitching. “Wearing a quilt has that effect on people.”
Trina rolled her eyes and shrugged the quilt from her shoulders. She folded it into a misshapen square, which she held in front of her stomach to muffle the growling sound it was making. “I suppose I could add another log to the fire.”
“I’ll grab a couple more from outside, since the bin in the parlor is probably low,” Seth volunteered and exited the house before Trina could object.
As soon as he left, Trina lifted an edge of the tinfoil from the plate and dug into the casserole with a fork. When Seth returned, her mouth was full, but she mumbled, “Denki for bringing those in, but I’ve gone camping before, so I’m capable of stoking the fire myself.”
“Is that what you think being Amish means? It’s like going camping?”
Why was he suddenly defensive again? “No, that’s what I think lighting a fire is like,” Trina clarified after swallowing. “If you’ve built one outside, you can build one inside.”
“Actually, that’s not necessarily true. Kumme, let me show you.”
She reluctantly put her supper down and went into the parlor with him.
“Ah,” he said when he opened the door to the woodstove. “Look at this.”
Trina crouched down beside him. She watched his hands gesturing as he spoke, oddly aware those were the same strong hands that had lifted her the day before.
“You’ve done alright with the kindling, but you’ve piled the logs too tightly together,” he explained, not unkindly. “There needs to be a little room between them for the oxygen to get through. Otherwise, the logs won’t take and the flame will burn out like it has now. It’s better if you stack them like this.”
As she listened to him, it occurred to Trina he would make a good teacher. She glanced sideways at his face, noticing the reddish undertone to his short beard. She wondered if it would feel like his wool coat had felt against her cheek. Suddenly her skin burned and she knew she couldn’t attribute its warmth to the fire now crackling in the stove.
“Denki,” she said, standing up.
Seth rose, too, saying, “I want to apologize if I embarrassed you when I asked you to tell me the song you taught the buwe.”
If Trina’s face hadn’t felt hot before, it would have now under Seth’s earnest gaze. “It’s alright,” she conceded, and suddenly, it was.
She realized if a virtual stranger—especially one who had traditions that were different from her own—came to watch her children, she’d give them guidelines about what the kids could and couldn’t do. In fact, when she used to babysit as a teenager, parents always told her what the house rules were. It wasn’t personal, she’d just taken it that way because of Seth’s comments about her being Englisch. But maybe she was the one who was being defensive because he was Amish, instead of vice versa. Or maybe it was a little of both.
“I respect the way you’re raising your kinner and I want to instruct the buwe according to your guidelines,” she said. “Do you have a few minutes to talk about that now?”
“Jah.” Seth grinned, and his jawline visibly softened as he sank