Her Restless Heart Part 12

Mary Katherine nodded. "I have been. But it's a big decision, and he keeps trying to rush me."

"Well, he shouldn't. It has to be your decision." He grinned. "And doesn't he know that pushing won't do any good? It just makes you dig your heels in."

She smiled back. "You do know me, don't you?"

When he saw her shiver again, he called to his horse and started the buggy rolling again.

Once they were parked, he hurried them into the restaurant. It was warm inside, the air filled with the scents of the season: turkey, squash, pumpkin, apples, and cinnamon.

"Are you warmer?"

She wrapped her hands around the cup of hot coffee the waitress brought, breathed in the steam, and nodded.

Their meal came, they said a silent prayer of thanks, and she began eating. He had waited to ask her the question that had been nagging at him for the last half hour.

"I'm just curious," he said, trying to sound casual. She'd been upset enough today. "Tell me why you're hesitant to get baptized."

She closed her eyes as she shook her head, then she opened them again and stared at him, hurt.

"It must be nice to be so sure of things." She laid her fork down on her plate.

"What do you mean?"

"You belong here. You have a home. A family."

"Mary Katherine, you have those, too."

She shook her head sadly.

"I know your father isn't the easiest man to get along with."

There was a ghost of a smile on her face. "Really?"

"I've heard things."

"Folks, is there something wrong with the food?" their waitress interrupted to ask. "I notice you're not eating, miss," she said to Mary Katherine.

"It's fine," she told the woman. "I just-stopped for a minute."

It wasn't the Plain way to waste food, Jacob thought, or to possibly offend by not eating. But he wondered if perhaps he had just upset her again on top of what the bishop had done, and she just couldn't eat. Women were funny that way. A man could eat any time, any place-matter of fact, as he chewed a bite of meatloaf he found himself getting distracted by the idea of making it from the recipe in the cookbook after he went to the grocery store.

Mary Katherine put her forearms on the table and looked at him. "May I ask you a question?"

"Schur."

"I remember you joined the church two years ago."

"That's right."

"Was it easy for you? The decision to join the church, I mean."

Surprised, he nodded.

"Tell me why."

He shrugged and spread his hands. "Why wouldn't it be? This is my place. My family's worked the farm for generations. My family and my friends are here. My church . . . I didn't need to look elsewhere when I found Him here."

She withdrew at that. He could see it, the drawing into herself, the blank look that came down over her face.

"You don't understand," she whispered. "You don't understand."

"Then help me," he said quietly. "Tell me what I don't understand."

8.

Mary Katherine stared at him for a long time.

"Do I need to wipe my chin?" he asked, lifting his napkin.

She shook her head and smiled slightly. "I-" she began, and then she hesitated. "I don't know where I belong."

He looked surprised. "What do you mean?"

"You know I've always been a little different," she told him, feeling a little sheepish. "I was always daydreaming when we were in schul, drawing and not paying attention."

Frowning, she looked down at her plate, then lifted her eyes. "My father was always lecturing me about my grades."

"Well, it doesn't seem that how you did with your studies kept you from doing well with your weaving."

"Dat thinks it's just-"

"Just what?"

"Laziness," she said flatly. "Making products for the Englisch for them to have even more to decorate themselves and their homes."

"Ah, I see." He nodded thoughtfully.

"You, too?"

Jacob held up his hand. "I didn't mean I agree with your father. I meant I can understand some things about you."

Wary, she folded her arms across her chest. "Like what?"

"I'm sure it hurts that he said those things to you," he told her. "That he dismissed something so important to you. Even words that aren't meant to hurt can cut deeply."

She saw something happen then, some emotion that flitted across his face and was just as quickly gone.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," he said, too quickly for her to believe him. It wasn't that she thought he lied-he just didn't want to tell her.

"I'm proud of you."

Now it was her turn to be surprised. "Proud of me? Why?"

"You didn't let it stop you from doing what you clearly love."

"It wasn't all me. I mean, my grandmother probably wouldn't have let me. She doesn't just encourage us. She tells us everyone has a gift, and we're obligated to use it to thank G.o.d and to glorify Him."

Jacob nodded. "Leah is a very wise woman."

"I wish I was more like her," Mary Katherine blurted out. "She's so calm, and she just knows what to do, what to say. I-" she pressed her fingertips to her temples. "I just have all these questions inside my mind."

"You say you feel different than others here. But you grew up here. You went to schul here. Your friends and family are here."

She nodded.

"Do you think you belong in the Englisch world?" Mary Katherine's eyes swept around the room filled with tourists. "I don't know. I just don't know."

Jacob reached out his hand and, without thinking, she put her hand out and he clasped it. "There's no rush," he told her. "There's no rush."

"Are you seeing him again?"

"Anna!"

She wrinkled her nose at Naomi. "It's just a simple question."

Naomi looked up from her st.i.tching. "There's nothing simple about your question. You're prying again."

"You want to know, too."

She tried to look stern but ended up laughing. "She's right, Mary Katherine. I want to know, too, but I'm much too polite to ask."

Mary Katherine looked over from her seat at her loom. "Then I'll save you from yourself and not answer. Honestly, both of you. Jacob and I are just friends."

"You see him nearly every day," Anna pointed out as her knitting needles worked busily on one of the darling little cupcake hats that were selling like . . . cupcakes as she always liked to joke.

Her cousins were right, of course. Jacob seemed to find every excuse to see her since that day they'd gone to lunch. Several times he had come into town on business for his farm-he said-and had stopped by to see if he could take her to lunch or just to chat at the shop. They went for a lot of buggy rides and talked and talked. In fact, they'd gone for so many rides around the countryside that she'd teased him that he was giving her the tourist tour.

"You're smiling."

Naomi's eyes were warm when Mary Katherine looked at her. "I guess I am," she admitted. "He's a friend," she said. "A nice male friend. He was very understanding when I said I was just too unsure about whether I wanted to join the church."

"I don't understand-"

"Anna," Naomi warned, frowning at her.

"But-"

"We agreed to leave Mary Katherine alone about this."

Anna sniffed and her knitting needles clacked even faster. "We didn't agree. You told me to leave her alone. You're so bossy sometimes. Like you're the oldest or something. I'm the oldest. Why, I was even-" she stopped and looked away.

"Anyway," she said after a moment. "You're hardly a wise old woman."

"Did somebody call me?" Leah asked as she walked over to where the girls sat in front of the fireplace.

"Now, Grossmudder, you're wise-"

"But you're not old," Naomi finished for her.

"I'm a grossmudder," Leah told them. "Obviously that makes me old."

"No it doesn't," Mary Katherine said, glancing over from her work. "After all, a woman can be a grandmother in her late thirties."

"Well, I'm not in my late thirties, I'm in my early fifties," Leah said, sitting down in a chair and stretching out her feet. "I'm feeling very old and tired today. I find myself looking forward to closing and going home to my supper and my bed."

Mary Katherine exchanged looks with her cousins. She didn't remember ever hearing her grandmother talk like this.

Her grandmother noticed their looks. "It's just been a long winter," she said. "And we've been very busy all season. Not that I'm complaining. G.o.d's been very good to us."

The door opened, and Daniel strolled in.

"Daniel! This is a surprise."

He walked over to them, took a seat beside Leah, and handed her a package. "I'm playing mailman."

She glanced at the address and beamed. "It's from your mamm."

"Hurry up! Open it!" Anna said, putting her knitting needles in her lap.

"Patience, patience," Leah admonished. But she was tearing the brown wrapping paper off impatiently.

Inside the box were several big oranges and a conch sh.e.l.l. She lifted one of the oranges to her nose and inhaled deeply. "Oh, this smells wunderbaar. Here, girls, smell it!" She pa.s.sed it to Naomi, who was nearest. Naomi sniffed at it and pa.s.sed it to Anna, who pa.s.sed it to Mary Katherine. She tossed it back to Daniel, who caught it neatly.

"I see you haven't lost your arm," Daniel said.

"I don't play baseball much these days," Mary Katherine told him, laughing. "But I used to trounce you at the game, that's for schur!"

"I let you slide into home that last game, as I remember."

"Ha! Your memory is aging faster than you are," she scoffed.