Heart in Hand: Stitches in Time Series #3 Read online

  She took a seat at the table and reached for a tea bag. “He came in intending to just take the class for some therapy—he hurt his hands in an accident on his farm, remember? Then he decided he liked knitting mufflers for a charity project, and he came for quite a long time.”

  “We’re just here to learn how to make our project,” Gideon told her. “Although the coffee is worth coming for.”

  Sarah Rose took a sip of her hot chocolate and licked at the white marshmallow mustache that appeared on her upper lip.

  “May I see the yarn you dyed?”

  Taking a ball of raspberry-colored yarn from the tote bag, Sarah Rose handed it to Anna.

  “So this is the color you chose,” she said, looking at Gideon.

  He gave her a look. “You know I chose the blue that matches my hands so well,” he told her. Reaching for the tote, he pulled out the ball of blue yarn and tossed it to her.

  She examined the ball. “Turned out nice.”

  He held out his hands. “And fortunately the dye wasn’t permanent.”

  “I like it,” Sarah Rose said suddenly. “Mine’s the kind my mamm used to make me.”

  Anna smiled. “My favorite was grape. My mamm would make it for me sometimes in the summer.”

  She looked at Gideon. “What about you?”

  His eyes were warm on her. “Grape. Always grape.”

  Mary Katherine poked her head in the door. “Your class is here.”

  Gideon stood. “Well, I’m going to go brave the ladies.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  There was a loud slurping noise as Sarah Rose drained the last of her hot chocolate.

  “My daughter, the delicate young lady,” he said wryly as they walked into the shop.

  Anna introduced Gideon and Sarah Rose to the members of the knitting class and got them started on the week’s lesson, then sat in the chair beside Sarah Rose to help her cast her yarn on her needles.

  Sarah Rose chewed on her lip as she struggled with the task, but after she got the first couple of loops safely on the needles, she smiled. “I did it!”

  “You did!”

  Anna remembered the first time her grandmother had helped her do this. Quilting hadn’t interested her as much as it had Naomi, but she loved the feel of the yarn in her hands, the thing she was creating—a muffler had been her first project just like Sarah Rose—emerging from the needles with their comforting clacking noise.

  Her father insisted that he loved the muffler when he opened it on Christmas even though it was overlong, contained a number of dropped stitches, and looked slightly crooked. He didn’t mind the length, he said, and wrapped it around his neck an extra time or two. Years later, in her teens, she’d tried to exchange it with a better one, but he’d refused, insisting that he loved her first effort.

  Poor Samuel had been the unfortunate recipient of some of my early knitting as well, she thought with a smile. He’d gotten many beginner projects that made her wince today: sweaters with one arm too long, a cap that covered his eyes but he swore was his favorite for keeping his head warm. Truth was, it slipped and often covered his eyebrows. That was okay, he said. They got cold in a Pennsylvania winter, too.

  She’d teased him that there was room enough under the hat for two. Laughing, he’d pulled her close, tried to drag it over both their heads, but only succeeded in bringing their faces so close that they’d ended up staring at each other, the cold-smoky plumes of their breath intermingling. Then they’d kissed, and nothing had been the same again. They’d been schoolhouse friends one day and inseparable the next.

  “This is hard,” Sarah Rose said, breaking into her thoughts.

  “You’re doing really well,” Anna told her. “Look at how much you’ve done so far.”

  She looked over at Gideon. “I’ll help you in just a minute.”

  “No hurry,” he said, watching his daughter’s progress.

  A few minutes later, satisfied that her new student was doing well, Anna got up and moved to a chair next to Gideon. “Oh, my.”

  He held up his hands tangled in yarn, laughed, and shook his head. “Not so good.”

  She leaned forward and began unsnarling the yarn. Just as she had the day she helped him get rid of the dye on his hands, she noticed how his hands looked so strong and capable. Although she was careful not to touch him, one of her hands accidentally brushed his and her fingers tingled. Looking up, she saw that his eyes had suddenly grown intense. Quickly, she finished pulling the yarn away.

  “Now, if you’ll hand me the ball of yarn I’ll rewind it and get you started again.”

  He picked up the ball from his lap and went to hand it to her, but he dropped it and it rolled under his chair. Anna bent to catch it, but he’d done the same thing and they knocked foreheads together.

  “Ouch!” they cried simultaneously and sprang back to rub their foreheads.

  Sarah Rose giggled, then slipped from her chair to retrieve the ball and hand it to Anna.

  “I’m doing real good,” she said in a lofty tone, climbing back into her chair and resuming her knitting.

  Anna rubbed at her forehead. “You certainly are.” She turned back to Gideon. “You’re not usually this—” she paused, searching for the word.

  “Klutzy?” he asked, rubbing his own forehead.

  She bit her lip, trying to stifle her smile as she rolled the yarn back on the ball. “There, now just go back to what you were doing but slower and with . . . a little more attention.”

  “I got distracted,” he said in a low voice.

  She blinked at him, and then understanding dawned as he continued to stare at her. Feeling flustered, she got to her feet. “I need to check on the other students.”

  Betsy, a stay-at-home mother with two children, had knitted twice as much as Anna expected. “You’ve made great progress!” Anna told her.

  “I’ve been taking some time to myself lately,” Betsy told her, grinning up at her as she knit. “Both my boys are in school all day now, and I finally have a little time to do something I enjoy.”

  “I remember those days,” Thelma said. A whirlwind in her seventies, she was newly retired from working at the phone company. “I was always so busy taking care of the kids and the husband—he was like a fourth kid himself—and the house. I never had the chance to have a hobby. Now, the hubby says I’m busier with all my hobbies than when I worked. I come here to knit, to quilt. There’s that Indian cooking class I take at the senior center.”

  “You’re making me tired thinking about all you do,” Anna said with a laugh.

  “And you, young fella, you came here with your daughter. Are you a single parent?”

  Oh no, thought Anna. Here come the questions, the prying. She hadn’t thought Thelma was that kind of woman. She cast a glance at Gideon, and he shook his head and shrugged, as if indicating that everything was okay.

  “Sarah Rose and I like to do things together,” he said, taking a moment to study his work. “I didn’t want the two of us to always be doing things like toss a baseball.”

  “It’s nice when fathers do things with their kids,” Thelma told him, nodding. “And not just toss a baseball.”

  “Daedi says he thinks we kids should all learn how to do all kinds of things.”

  “He’s a smart daedi.” Thelma smiled.

  Anna saw how Thelma’s eyes grew sad.

  “How does this look, Anna?” Ella wanted to know.

  A shy, quiet wisp of a woman, Ella was taking the class more to learn how to relax, she’d told Anna, than to create things from it. She ate lunch at her desk and took the time later in the afternoon once a week to take the class.

  Anna was determined that she’d have some fun, not just learn to relax.

  Although this was a great solution she’d come up with since classes weren’t offered in the evening at Stitches in Time, it had probably made her feel even more stressed. So far, Ella was beginning to relax because she said she couldn’t multitask h
ere in the shop when she was knitting. Anna had to admit that she needed this multitasking explained. How much calmer to do one thing at a time—and do it well.

  Sure, there were a few times when people needed to do two things at once. If you had to care for your new baby at the same time as start supper, that was when you quickly put together a casserole or a roast with vegetables or a big pot of soup and it cooked at the same time.

  This sense of having to always do two things at once was one of the things that seemed to stress the Englisch the most and made them envy the Amish. When they walked into the shop, they reacted with yearning, wanting to learn how to quilt or knit or sew or pick up their UFOs—unfinished fabric objects—like a quilt they’d started and let sit gathering dust.

  The class members were welcome to get up and visit the restroom or fix something to drink or snack on a cookie any time that they liked. However, Anna had found that the students liked stopping for a break together a few minutes and chatting before turning back to their projects.

  She was pouring herself a cup of tea when Thelma sidled up to her and asked, “So, this Gideon is a widower, eh?”

  Surprised, Anna blinked and then nodded.

  “So maybe the two of you are interested in each other?”

  Such things were usually very private in her community, but Anna knew they weren’t outside it. Not that the Amish didn’t gossip—they weren’t perfect, after all. But she wasn’t accustomed to talking about anything so personal.

  “Gideon is a friend,” she said.

  Thelma suddenly clamped her mouth shut and gestured with her head toward Sarah Rose. “Little pitchers,” she said and moved away.

  Sarah Rose stepped closer. “You’re my friend.”

  Anna looked down at her and nodded. “You and your dat are both my friends.”

  “But I’m yours first,” Sarah Rose insisted.

  Someone moved on the periphery of Anna’s vision. Looking up, she saw Gideon watching her, his expression conflicted. She felt the same.

  Knowing how vulnerable she was feeling judging by her behavior of late, Anna wanted to be sensitive to her.

  “Yes, I’m your friend first,” she said quietly.

  Sarah Rose smiled. She looked up at her father. “May I have a cookie?”

  “One.” He watched her. “Now she’s going to spend some time deciding which cookie is the biggest.”

  “It’s the ones Mary Katherine makes. Maybe you should tell her.”

  His mouth quirked into a grin. “I’ll tell her.”

  He started to walk past her, and then he stopped and became serious. “Thank you for what you did. Sarah Rose obviously needs a friend right now.”

  More than you? she wanted to ask, but she didn’t.

  6

  Naomi yawned as she walked into the back room where Anna was working on an order.

  “I came to get some coffee to wake up,” she admitted as she sat down with a mug. I stayed up too late last night.”

  “Wedding plans?”

  “I was sewing my dress.”

  Anna bit her lip and then looked at her cousin. “I’d like to make it up to you.”

  “Make up what?” Naomi sipped her coffee and tried to stifle another yawn.

  “I’ve felt terrible since I didn’t pay attention while you were telling me about your wedding plans the other day.”

  Naomi shrugged. “It’s okay. Wedding plans are interesting only to the person who’s getting married.”

  Anna reached for the cookie jar and set it before Naomi. “Have some. You’re getting thin.”

  “Nick said that, too,” she admitted, reaching into the jar and taking out a couple of Snickerdoodles. “It’s not deliberate. Sometimes I just get busy lately. I’m not trying to lose weight for the wedding.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Naomi nodded. “Nick was asking me that the other day. He says he knew some Englisch friend who made herself really sick doing that, and he wanted to make sure I didn’t.”

  Anna smiled as she selected a cookie. “I never thought Nick would be the mann God set aside for you, but now I can’t see you marrying anyone else.”

  Silence stretched between them, and the room grew so quiet the ticking of the kitchen clock could be heard.

  “I can almost feel you wanting to ask something.”

  “It might be too personal,” Naomi said at last.

  “That’s never stopped me,” Anna told her.

  Naomi laughed, then her expression grew serious. “I saw Gideon leaving the shop with his daughter when I came back from running errands.”

  Anna set the cookie jar back on the counter. “He was taking the knitting class with Sarah Rose.”

  “You’ve seen a lot of him lately.”

  “No, I haven’t. He’s come to the shop to buy the kits and then for a lesson.”

  “And you went to his house after church one day to help him get the dye off his hands.”

  Anna regarded her. “Keeping track?”

  Naomi colored, but she kept her gaze level. “He’s the first man you’ve even looked at since Samuel died.”

  Rising, Anna put her mug in the kitchen sink, and Naomi did the same. “It hasn’t been personal. It’s been business. Shop business.”

  “I see.”

  Laughing, Anna gave her cousin an impulsive hug. “No, you don’t. You’re in love so you think everyone else should be.”

  “They should,” Naomi said staunchly.

  “I remember how it felt,” she said. “I know how it is to feel like everything’s wonderful and you want it to be that way for everyone else.”

  She stopped, not wanting to sound bitter or unhappy.

  Her gaze went to the window. The day was gray and chilly. If she wasn’t careful, it would be too easy to let it put her in a melancholy mood. She tried to watch those when she was at work and out in the community. People tended to try to cheer you up or tell you how it was God’s will. Her grief—her coping . . . well, it was her business.

  She knew her moods still went up and down like one of those amusement park roller coasters the Englisch were fond of. Best to keep it all inside and deal with it in the privacy of her home.

  “Who knows what God has planned?” she said, keeping her voice level.

  “Maybe He’s sending Gideon to you.”

  Anna saw the hope in Naomi’s expression. She loved her cousin for her eagerness to believe that Anna might have a second chance at love, but hope was a dangerous thing. Gideon had been in love with Mary as deeply as she had been with Samuel. She doubted he was any more ready to become interested in her than she was with him.

  And he had a troubled little girl to deal with, one who had so recently acted a bit . . . jealous of her father for being friends with her.

  Unless God showed her very clearly that He was sending Gideon to her for more than friendship, Anna felt it was just friendship that Gideon or his daughter were intended to have with her.

  Naomi just had romance on her mind. Brides wanted it for everyone.

  Especially her cousin.

  Lunch was over and Anna seldom lingered at the table in the back room, but something compelled her to sit there, thinking.

  “Don’t worry about cleaning up,” she told her cousins. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “What is it?” Mary Katherine wanted to know. “You seem distracted.”

  Frowning, Anna shook her head. “Is it my imagination, or is there something different about Grandmother today?”

  “I didn’t notice anything,” Naomi said. “What’s different? She’s not looking sick or losing weight, is she?”

  “She seems a little distracted. Happier. Lighter. I just heard her humming.”

  Naomi laughed. “That’s not a bad thing.”

  Anna stood and began gathering the dishes. “I didn’t say it was. What do you suppose is making her look that way?”

  “I’m the one who got accused of wanting everyone to be in love,” Na
omi told Mary Katherine.

  “Comes from being in love,” Mary Katherine told her. “I was like that before my wedding, too.”

  She put the carton of potato salad back in the refrigerator. “And that’s why I’m looking that way,” she said quickly. “Not because I’m expecting.”

  “We didn’t ask.”

  “Yet today. Do you know how often the two of you’ve done it lately?”

  Anna cast a guilty glance at Naomi, but she was staring at the ceiling.

  “You two!” Mary Katherine shook her head and laughed. “I’m going back to work.”

  They made quick work of cleaning up, and then Anna pulled out the order information and sat down to complete the paperwork.

  “Need any help?” Leah asked when she walked into the room a short time later.

  “No, I’m nearly done.” She glanced over when Leah poured herself a cup of coffee. “You don’t usually drink coffee in the afternoon. You say it keeps you awake.”

  “I need it to stay awake this afternoon,” she said. “I was up later than usual.”

  “Oh?”

  “Mmmhmm,” she said noncommittally and walked out of the room, humming a hymn under her breath.

  Maybe we’ve had a better month than usual with shop business, Anna thought. That might explain things.

  “Anna! Guess who’s here?”

  She looked up and saw Naomi fairly dancing in the doorway. “Who?”

  “Nick!”

  “Okay,” she said slowly. She liked Nick but didn’t think a surprise visit was something to be so excited about. Maybe for Naomi, but not her.

  “He has something to show us.”

  She pulled Anna’s jacket off the nearby peg, thrust it at her, then grabbed one of her hands to draw her along toward the front of the shop. “Come on, Grandmother said we can go with him.”

  “Where are we going?” Anna asked.

  “It’s not where. It’s how.”

  Leah gave them an indulgent smile, but Mary Katherine was nowhere to be seen. The minute they stepped out of the shop, however, Anna saw her cousin climbing into a buggy parked at the curb.

  Nick had always dressed in a businesslike but unobtrusive way—simple dark slacks, a white dress shirt, and a black tie—for his work as a driver serving the Amish community and tourists.