An Amish Courtship

Mary jumped, whirling to face him. Her face was pale, and her hand clutched at the front of her apron.

“Are you all right?” Samuel took a step closer to her, but stopped when she moved away. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Ne.” She shook her head. “I mean, I’m all right. I just wasn’t expecting anyone to be there. You surprised me.”

Her hands trembled, and she clasped them together.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

She nodded and smiled, but the smile was stiff. “I’m picking some vegetables for dinner. Esther and Judith are having such fun with their new dresses. Aunt Sadie is teaching us all sorts of sewing tricks that I’ve never known before.”

She chattered on as she turned to the peas. Her voice became more natural, and her trembling hands stilled as she worked. When she got to the end of the row, he lifted the basket of vegetables and carried them to the back porch.

After dinner, he would work on the pasture fence. A few loose boards near the gate needed to be tightened, and a few more around the perimeter needed to be replaced. When he finished with that, they would return home...

“Do you think they would want to come?”

Mary’s question brought his attention back to her one-sided conversation. He was too used to ignoring his sisters’ chatter.

“Where?”

“To the quilting in Eden Township on Thursday.”

Samuel set the basket on the porch step. “Why would they want to go to another quilting?”

Mary’s hands became fists that perched at her waist. “You weren’t listening to me, were you?”

One look at her pursed lips, and he was done. Caught. He’d never be able to get anything by her.

“I missed the part about the quilting.” He stared at her brown eyes. A trick he had learned from Daed. Put up a bluster. Make them think you are right, no matter what happens.

She met his stare, her eyes narrowing. He shifted his gaze to the peas, lifting one as if to inspect it for brown spots.

“You missed everything.” She sighed and brushed some dirt off her apron. “On Thursday, the Eden Township group is meeting at your sister Annie’s house. Aunt Sadie is planning to go, and we wondered if Judith and Esther would like to come along.”

Annie. A pain he didn’t know he held washed through him at the thought of her curly red hair. She had left...how long ago? Almost two years? It had been soon after Daed passed away. He hadn’t spoken to her since, and he never even thought of taking the girls to visit her. Why had he ignored her after she left to marry the deacon’s son?

Because Daed would have been angry when she went behind his back, and he had followed in Daed’s footsteps without even thinking.

“Ja.” He made the decision quickly, before he could think of all the reasons not to go to Eden Township. All the reasons to avoid mending the family ties. “And I’ll drive you all in our buggy.”

“You don’t need to do that. We can take Chester.”

“I’m going to drive. I have something to do down there, too.”

Samuel lifted the basket and followed Mary into the kitchen. He needed to mend more than just the pasture fence. Daed had never apologized for anything he did, no matter how deep the wounds ran. But he wasn’t Daed, and he wasn’t going to act like him anymore.

He paused as Judith’s and Esther’s happy voices drifted into the kitchen from the back room. It was past time to apologize to Annie and her husband, and he had two days to prepare himself to face Bram.

* * *

“I can’t wait until Thursday,” Judith said.

The dress pieces had been cut out of the new fabric before dinner, and now, while Samuel mended the pasture fence and Aunt Sadie napped in her room, the girls sat together in the sewing room, each with pinned pieces to sew together.

“How long has it been since you’ve seen Annie?” Ida Mae asked.

“She left home two years ago.” Esther snipped the end of her thread as she finished the shoulder of her dress, then tied a new knot to begin sewing the side seam. “She had met Matthew Beachey when he came to one of our singings, and they courted secretly for months.”

“It wasn’t a secret to us,” Judith said.

Esther smiled, her sewing forgotten in her lap. “She was so happy with Matthew. When she came home from one of their buggy rides, we’d be waiting up for her. She’d tell us all about what they had done and where they had gone. Most often, he took her to his family’s house after dinner to play games with his brothers and sisters in the evening, or he’d take her for a ride around Emma Lake. It sounded so romantic.”

“Why was it such a secret?” Mary drew her thread through the seam. She had chosen the more difficult task of inserting the sleeves into the bodice of Judith’s dress.

“She was afraid that if Daed had known she was seeing someone, he would have put a stop to it, the way he had tried to do with Katie.” Esther’s voice dropped, remembering. “Katie ran away with her beau to get married in Ohio, but Annie didn’t want to run away. She didn’t want to be separated from us.”

Mary shifted in her chair. “But the bishop wouldn’t allow them to marry without your daed’s permission, would he?”

“I don’t know how Annie did it, but Bishop Yoder in Eden Township came here to talk to Daed, along with Matthew and Deacon Beachey. They wanted Daed to give his permission for the marriage.”

Judith looked up from her sewing. “Ach, remember how angry he was?”

“He was so angry that Matthew left without Annie.”

“I remember how she cried,” Judith said. “She was afraid she would have to run away like Katie did.”

“But Matthew came back when he heard Daed had died. It was after the funeral, but not too much time had passed.” Esther sighed. “Samuel acted just like Daed, until Annie told him she was going to marry Matthew with his permission or without it.”

“He stomped off to the barn then, didn’t he?”

“But he gave her his permission first.” Esther picked up her sewing again. “We haven’t seen Annie since that day. We didn’t go to the wedding, and we never go to visit the Eden Township folks.”

“But she lives so close,” Mary said. “I can understand that you wouldn’t see Katie, living in Ohio the way she does, but Annie is only a few miles down the road.”

“Even so,” Esther said, “we’ve never gone for a visit, and she hasn’t come here.” Esther stopped to thread her needle. “I hope we get to see Bram on Thursday. He’s our other brother, and also lives in Eden Township.”

“I do, too,” said Judith. “I was only five years old when he left home, and I hardly remember him.”

Mary sewed basting stitches in the right sleeve and then gathered them before she pinned the sleeve to the bodice. She had never met a family like the Lapps, where the scattered family members didn’t try to see one another, even when they lived in the same area. But if Samuel had been as angry as the girls said when Annie left...

Rethreading her needle, Mary tried to imagine Samuel being angry. She had seen him embarrassed, and a bit grumpy, but angry? She imagined his eyes darkening, his mouth twisting, his hand reaching toward her... Her vision suddenly blurred, swirling so that she couldn’t see the needle’s eye. She took a deep breath and started counting.

There was nothing to fear from Samuel. He was a neighbor. Judith and Esther’s brother. She would never be foolish enough to be alone with him in a secluded place. She would never let herself be at the mercy of any man again.

She started over. One, two, three, four... She fixed her eyes on the wooden planks of the floor in front of her toes. Ten, eleven, twelve... Her breathing slowed and she relaxed. Twenty-five, twenty-six...

Safe. She was safe in Aunt Sadie’s home. Safe with the girls and Ida Mae, without any men around to intrude.