“Nay,” she said, taking her time to answer. “I suppose not. But it’s a new idea for me, that I marry a friend, rather than someone I was in love with.”
Micah felt a rush of pleasure. “How do we know we won’t discover love for each other if we don’t give ourselves the chance?”
Her dark eyes grew luminous. Her bobber jerked and then dove beneath the surface of the creek, but Ellen didn’t seem to notice the tension on her fishing pole. “You think that could happen?”
He grinned. “I think that there’s a very good possibility that that’s exactly what might happen.”
They walked back to her lane just as twilight was falling over the farm fields. “Danki, Micah,” Ellen said. “The fishing was fun. I’d forgotten how much I liked it.”
Her first moments alone with him, when they’d left the house, had been awkward. But then they’d fallen back into the easy rhythm of their younger days with none of the clumsiness of the situation that she’d feared. Being so comfortable with Micah made her wonder if maybe they could be happy together. What if Micah was whom God had intended for her all along?
“You should take these,” he said, holding a string of three perch.
“You caught two of them. Don’t you want to take them home to fry for breakfast?”
He still held them out. “Three measly fish for the five of us? Not worth the trouble of cleaning and cooking them. No, you’d best take them.”
“Danki for the fish, too, then. Dat loves fried fish for breakfast.”
“You’re welcome. And you are going to think about walking out with me,” Micah reminded. “Right?” He stood there, fishing poles in hand, smiling at her and completely at ease.
“Jah, I will.” She smiled at him. “God give you a restful sleep.”
“And you, Ellen.” He used no courting endearments, but she liked the way he said her name, and she felt a warm glow inside as she savored it. She didn’t want to spoil the feeling and was afraid that he might linger, might want to sit with her on the porch or stay on after her parents had gone to bed. Instead, he bestowed a final grin and strode off whistling in the direction of his own home.
Ellen walked slowly up the driveway and through her father’s barnyard, inhaling deep of the scent of her mother’s climbing roses and the honeysuckle that grew wild along the edge of the hedgerow. She drank in the peace of the coming night. Crickets and frogs called their familiar sounds, and evening shadows draped over the barnyard, easing her feelings of indecision. How wonderful life is, she thought. You expect each day to be like the one before, but the wonder of God’s grace was that you never really knew from one hour to another what would come next.
A single propane lamp glowed through the kitchen window, but the house was quiet. Simeon, Neziah and the boys had left. The only sign of movement was a calico cat nursing kittens near the back door. But the light meant that her parents were still up. Her father was too fearful of fire to retire and leave a lamp burning. Ellen stepped inside, the string of fish dangling from her finger. “Mam?” she called softly. “Dat?”
“Out here.” Her father’s voice came from the front of the house.
Their home was small as Amish homes went, but comfortable. When her father and his neighbors had built it, he and her mother were already past the age when they expected to be blessed with children. A big kitchen, a pantry, a living room, bath and two bedrooms comprised the entire downstairs. Her room was upstairs in an oversize, cheerful chamber with two dormer windows and a casement window that opened wide to let in fresh breezes from the west. She also had a small bath all to herself, a privacy that few Amish girls had. Growing up, her girlfriends, most from large families, had admired the luxury, but she would have gladly traded the cheerful room with its yellow trim, clean white claw-foot tub, fixtures and tiny shuttered window for a bevy of noisy sisters crowded head to foot in her bedroom.
The double door near the staircase stood open, and her father called again to her from the front porch. “Come, join us. And bring another bowl for beans.”
Butter beans, Ellen thought. The family often sat on the porch in the evenings this time of year and shelled butter beans. She and her mother canned bushels of beans for winter. Quarts of the beans already stood in neat rows in the pantry beside those of squash, English peas, string beans, corn, tomatoes and pickles. She wrapped the fish in some parchment paper and put it in the propane-run refrigerator. They’d keep until morning when she or her father would clean them. She washed her hands, found a bowl and carried it out to the porch. Her parents sat side by side in wooden rocking chairs, baskets of lima bean hulls and bowls of shelled beans around them.
“Catch any fish?” her father asked.
“In the fridge. If you clean them, I’ll fry them up for our breakfast.” Ellen took the chair on the other side of him. Her chair. Her mother sat still, her chin resting on her chest; she was snoring lightly. Her mother often drifted off to sleep in the afternoon and early evening. She didn’t have the vigor that Ellen was used to, and she worried about her. “Has she been asleep long?”
“Just a little while. Company wore her out.” He dumped butter beans still in their shells into Ellen’s bowl. “Course, you know how she loves to have people come. And she adores children, even those rascals of Neziah’s. Nothing makes her happier than stuffing a child with food, unless it’s singing in church. Your mother always had the sweetest voice. It was what drew me to her when we were young.”
Ellen nodded and smiled. She knew what her father was up to. They were so close that she was familiar with all his tricks. He was deliberately being sentimental about her mother to keep Ellen from talking about what she’d sought him out for. He knew that she was unhappy with the ambush that had happened at supper, and he wanted to avoid the consequences. But she suspected that he’d be disappointed if she let him get away with it, so she went straight to the heart of the pudding.
“You shouldn’t have asked the Shetlers here for supper to talk about this courting business without talking to me first,” she admonished gently. “I can’t believe you didn’t wait to see whether I was in favor of this or not.”
“Ach...ach, I was afraid you’d be vexed with me. I told your mother you would.” He gestured with his hand. “But it is such a good solution to Simeon’s problem and ours. And how could I refuse him? He came to me at midday, told me what was on his mind and said that he’d already approached you with the idea and you were in favor. Then he invited himself and his sons to supper.” He shrugged as if to say, what could I do? “He’s a good neighbor and an old friend.”
“Friends or not, I’m your daughter, and who I will or won’t marry is a serious matter. If you knew I wouldn’t approve, you shouldn’t have done it,” she said, unwilling to surrender so easily to being manipulated.
She had the greatest respect for her father’s judgment, but he’d always fostered independence in her. Even at a young age, he’d treated her more as another adult in the home than as a child. Maybe it was because her mother had always been an uncomplicated and basic person, content to allow her husband and the elders of the church to make decisions for her, while his was a keener mind that sought in-depth conversation. Or perhaps it was because she’d been the only child and he doted on her.
In