Her Restless Heart Page 8

  "Sure."

  "I heard you used to work on television when you were Englisch, before you joined the Amish church. You were a reporter?"

  "Yes, I remember those days well." She glanced down at her Plain clothes and smiled ruefully. "I bet people would really be surprised at how I look now. On the other hand, so many people are fascinated by the Amish these days . . ." her voice trailed off, and she became lost in thought.

  She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I got sidetracked there for a minute. I guess I really need some caffeine to stay awake today. I was up late last night—the book deadline looms. Anyway, you asked me about being on television?"

  "Were you ever nervous?"

  Jenny laughed. "Oh, my, yes! I didn't ever think of myself as a reporter. I just wanted to get the story out about how children were being affected by war overseas. Are you making notes for a talk?" she asked, glancing at the index cards.

  Mary Katherine looked at them and shivered. "This professor wants me to talk about my weaving to her class. I can't imagine talking to a lot of people."

  "I never thought about how many people might be listening to me," Jenny told her seriously. "That would have scared me to death. I just talked to one person—the cameraman."

  "But you had an important message." Mary Katherine got up and paced around the room. "You were passionate about it, and for good reason. It's not like I have some great purpose here with my talk."

  "You're passionate about weaving, and for good reason. You're good at it, you're creative, and the things you create help someone make their home a warmer, brighter place."

  Jenny tilted her head. "Look, I don't want to talk badly about your father, but I hear things and I wonder if your self-esteem isn't suffering a little from all his criticism."

  Self-esteem? That wasn't a term used often in the Plain community. Mary Katherine barely knew what it was. She knew she felt bad when he criticized her, and here, in the shop, she felt free and appreciated—and not just because the occasional customer admired her work or even bought it.

  "The class probably won't be expecting you to be some practiced speaker," Jenny pointed out. "They'll appreciate hearing how you learned, how you work."

  Mary Katherine acknowledged that with a nod and returned to sit at the table.

  "And when it comes time to talk, do what I did when I had to talk to a group," Jenny suggested. "Focus at first on one person who has what I call 'kind' eyeballs."

  "What are those?"

  Jenny grinned. "You know. Someone who looks encouraging, who seems really interested in hearing what you have to say. Like this." She mimed interest by placing her arms on the table, leaning forward, and gazing at Mary Katherine with wide eyes, her mouth hanging open just a bit, her jaw slightly slack.

  Mary Katherine stared at Jenny for a moment and then collapsed into giggles. "Kind eyeballs, eh?" she managed to say between giggles. "I'm not sure you look smart enough to be in the class."

  Getting to her feet, she picked up Jenny's cup, warmed it up with more hot coffee, and set it before her. "Here, have some more caffeine. As Jamie, my Englisch friend, would say, you are losing it."

  "I haven't met her. At least I don't remember meeting her."

  Mary Katherine laughed. "You'd remember if you had. Jamie's rather colorful. This week she has a purple streak in her hair."

  Her smile faded as she traced her finger on the wooden grain of the table. "Jenny?"

  "Yes?"

  She bit her lip and lifted her eyes to meet Jenny's. "May I ask you something?"

  "Sure."

  "I'm used to seeing Plain people leaving—"

  "But not an Englischer like me—or Chris—coming to stay?" Jenny smiled and nodded.

  "Ya. And you seem happy here. Even with all the rules. The lack of things like a computer to write with," she said, waving her hand at the notepad in front of Jenny.

  "Well, I always liked writing by hand, but I know what you mean. It seems backward to you for me to leave what I had and move here. But you see, things weren't important to me. I met this man and his three children, and we became a family. And then along came another special little someone and, well . . . what more could I want?"

  Jenny reached out and touched Mary Katherine's hand. "I'm not suggesting that all you have to do is meet the right man and everything will be fine. You have to know who you are and what you want first. I know you still don't know if joining the church and living here is right for you. Only you can decide that. Well, you and God."

  Mary Katherine felt a stab of embarrassment. She hadn't talked to Him much lately. She'd felt He had left her, had abandoned her to live unhappily with her earthly father.

  She glanced at the clock and rose. Unlike her father, her grandmother never watched the clock and treated her like a slave. "I'd better get back to work. It was so nice to talk to you."

  Impulsively, she bent down to hug Jenny. "Thanks."

  "I know you're struggling," Jenny told her quietly as she returned the hug. "I've been there. Once you trust Him, you'll have the answers to your questions about where you belong."

  "I hope so."

  "Mary Katherine?"

  "Yes?"

  "You seem so happy since you came to work here. I think God had such a good plan for you with living at your grandmother's and working here at the shop with her and your cousins, don't you? Can you have that somewhere else?"

  Mary Katherine found herself thinking about what Jenny had said as she worked in the shop the rest of the afternoon. She was tired of being in limbo, of feeling she was living a temporary existence, caught between two worlds.

  Was it possible she wasn't seeing this last year as a sign that God had indeed been thinking of her, making a plan, looking to help her create a happy future?

  7

  Jacob studied the page in the cookbook spread open on the kitchen counter.

  Maybe he shouldn't have told his sister cooking couldn't be that hard.

  He'd made a quick survey of what he had on hand. There were always breakfast makings like oatmeal and toast and eggs. He managed those okay, although sometimes the eggs were a problem. For dinner, he often made a sandwich or ate leftovers from supper the night before, or vice versa, dinner leftovers for supper. His sisters were generous with portions, and he'd always been grateful for that.

  Yesterday, he'd poked through the freezer and found the right cut of meat to make pot roast. Then he realized he couldn't use it until he defrosted it. Now he was ready to make it for supper. He wasn't going to have to make do with a sandwich and some soup he found in the freezer.

  Except, according to the recipe in the cookbook, the pot roast needed several hours in the oven.

  He sighed. Back it went into the refrigerator while he looked to see what else he could make in a shorter amount of time. He thought about his favorite foods this time of year: meatloaf, baked chicken, chicken pot pie, macaroni and cheese.

  But as he flipped through the cookbook, he realized how many dishes required supplies and planning ahead. One section explained how to use items from the pantry. He checked his and found it was stocked with some canned vegetables and fruit from the harvest. But he didn't have a lot of supplies like flour and stuff you used for baking.

  Not that he was going to try anything as hard as baking. Just a glance at what it took to make bread or pie crust was enough to send a man screaming from the kitchen. His respect for the women in his family was growing.

  He flipped through the main dish section. There was a recipe for meatloaf . . . but it needed hamburger—and not solidly frozen hamburger.

  His stomach growled. Just for a moment, he envied Englisch men. If they couldn't cook—or didn't want to—they could just drive to a fast food place and fill up on a huge menu of items. Schur, he could hitch up the buggy and make a ride into town. But that would take longer than he wanted, and besides, buggy travel wasn't the safest with fast-driving cars on dark roads.

  He thought of the last restaurant
he'd visited. It had been that night when he'd eaten pizza with Mary Katherine, Jamie, and his friend, Ben. Pizza was a good idea. It might be Italian, but many Amish cooks made their own pizzas and other such food at home. He looked in the index to see if there was a recipe for pizza. Yes, there it was, in a section called "Quick and Easy Dinners." There were several recipes for pizza. One used something called a Boboli, a pizza crust you could buy at the grocery store. Jacob hadn't been in a grocery store in . . . well, a long time. He read on. A pizza could also be made with some dough you got in a tube like biscuits. Little individual pizzas could also be made with English muffins.

  Hmm, interesting, he thought. Pulling a notepad and pencil from a kitchen drawer, he began making a grocery list. Even if the pizza he made wasn't as good as that he'd eaten at the restaurant, it would still be a good thing to make to eat, especially on a cold winter night. It was quick, simple, and, according to the cookbook, delicious. He jotted down the ingredients.

  But that still didn't help with supper tonight. He flipped more pages and found a recipe for macaroni and cheese, one of his favorites. Macaroni, Velveeta cheese, milk. He brightened. He had those. Velveeta was a popular item in the Amish household. And from what he read, after boiling the macaroni, it just took about a half hour for the dish to bake and be ready to eat. He could handle that. It was likely there was something to snack on while he waited.

  He filled a pot with water, set it on the stove, and turned on the flame beneath it. When the water boiled, he poured in the macaroni, stirred it, and nodded with satisfaction. Not so bad, so far.

  Next, he had to cut up the cheese. He got out a knife and started cubing the cheese. A loud sizzle—water boiling over in the macaroni pot—made him jerk up his head, and as he did, the knife slipped and sliced his thumb. Blood welled up. He pressed down on his thumb to stop the bleeding as he rushed to the stove to move the pot off the heat.

  His hand touched the metal handle, and he hollered and jerked it back, muffling an uncharacteristic curse. He stuck his burned fingers in his mouth, but that only made them hurt more. Grabbing a potholder from a hook near the stove, he moved the pan away from the heat for a moment while he turned the flame lower. He stirred the macaroni, tossed the potholder on the counter, and turned to run cold water over his burned fingers. As he did, he saw that the slice on his thumb wasn't as bad as he'd feared.

  There was a funny noise—a whoosh!—and an orange color moved at the periphery of his vision. He turned and saw the potholder in flames. He must have set it down too close to the stove. Snatching up the thing, he threw it in the sink and ran water over it. When the flames died down, he plucked up the blackened, sodden mess and threw it into the kitchen garbage can.

  Sighing, he searched for the first-aid kit in a nearby cabinet and tended to his wounds. A Band-Aid, some burn ointment, and he was good as new. Well, nearly every inch of his hand throbbed, but with a spirit of determination, he snapped the lid to the kit shut.

  Backtracking to the stove, he turned off the flame. This time, when he touched the pot handle, he used another potholder and carried the pot to the sink. Draining the water was a bit tricky. He'd seen his sister use a thing he thought was called a colander but he wasn't sure he had one and besides, how hard could this be? A few macaroni slipped over the edge of the pan and slithered down the sink like fat white worms rushing to a watery grave.

  He left the pot in the sink while he found a baking pan and dumped the macaroni into it, then the cheese. After checking the recipe, he added pats of butter and milk and stirred it all with a big wooden spoon he found in the silverware drawer. There, ready for the oven. He opened the oven door, put the pan on the rack inside, and set the oven to 375 degrees.

  Collapsing into a kitchen chair, he sighed. Yup, an apology was definitely due Rebecca. He'd made one dish—one—and he felt exhausted.

  Sitting in the warm kitchen, the scent of cheesy macaroni scenting the air, he drowsed.

  Something was burning. He woke, coughing at the smoke that was coming from the oven. Jumping to his feet, he ran to fling the door open. The top of the macaroni was dark brown, almost black. He turned off the heat, gingerly removed the casserole with potholders, and set it on the kitchen table.

  Sighing, he sat down again and regarded the dish. "Honey," he called out. "Supper's ready."

  Mary Katherine sat with the women and tried not to fidget as the worship service dragged on.

  The thing was, she used to enjoy the service. She loved the singing, the way the lay ministers spoke about the Bible, visiting with friends she had little time for during the week because she—and they—worked so hard. Sometimes on the alternate Sundays, when there was no worship service, she visited with them, but mostly she enjoyed quiet time with a book or staying in her room sketching a new design to weave.

  She became aware someone was staring at her from the men's side. He was here. She'd avoided him the last two Sunday services, but she had the feeling she wouldn't escape him today.

  "Stop that!" Naomi whispered.

  Startled, she glanced at her cousin. "Stop what?"

  "You keep sighing. What's wrong?"

  "He's here. No, don't look!" she hissed when Naomi looked over at the men.

  "But I thought you liked him."

  "You're looking at the wrong man."

  "Oh."

  "Help me avoid him."

  "I'm not going to do that."

  "What kind of cousin are you?"

  Naomi opened her mouth, but when she received a quelling look from one of the older women, she shut it.

  The second the service was over, Mary Katherine was up like a shot. Now all she had to do was grab her coat and sneak out.

  "Mary Katherine, I'd like to talk to you."

  She felt herself cringe at the voice behind her. A familiar voice. A voice—or rather, a person—she'd hoped to avoid.

  Turning, she forced her stiff lips to smile. "Bishop Yoder. It's gut to see you."

  He nodded but didn't return her smile. "You as well. Shall we step out onto the porch and talk?"

  "I'll get my coat."

  Worship services were being held in the Stoltzfus home. Suddenly cold, she slipped into the nearby bedroom, found her coat, and pulled it on. Grabbing her purse, she headed out to the porch. But her feet slowed as she approached the front door, and she stalled and stood in the doorway, trying to gather her nerve.

  The bishop was standing there in a corner of the porch, his back to her. He wore a black felt hat with a wide brim, and his gaunt form was clad in a black overcoat. A cold wind sent the edges of his open coat flapping.

  Mary Katherine hurried outside. He was old—it seemed to her that he had always looked old and wrinkled—and she had no wish for him to get chilled. And the sooner she got it over with, the better.

  When he heard her footsteps, he turned and regarded her, looking at her over wire-rimmed glasses. His scraggly beard was almost completely white and flowed to the middle of his chest. He stroked it as the men in the community often did, looking thoughtful.

  "I'm glad to see that you're still attending services," he said. "I know you've been reluctant to get baptized."

  "As is my right until I am sure," she told him politely.

  "Ya. When do you think you'll be ready?"

  He was smiling, his mouth visible inside his crinkly long beard, but the smile didn't reach his cold blue eyes.

  "I don't know."

  "Child, I want to help you. I've known you since you were born. Tell me why you feel you can't commit to joining."

  How could she explain to him what she didn't understand herself? Searching for words, she became aware that people were leaving the house now, heading home, walking just a few feet away.

  Mary Katherine noticed that Hilda, a woman known as a gossip, didn't bother to hide her curiosity as she walked past.

  She held onto her temper. "I'm not doing anything wrong."

  "I've heard things in the community," he sai
d in a disapproving tone. "You're not running around and being wild, but you are associating with an Englischer who looks . . . unusual."

  "Jamie's a nice girl," Mary Katherine rushed to say in her defense. "Don't blame her for my hesitation. She's been a good friend to me."

  "But instead of going to youth activities in our community, you're staying at her apartment in town."

  "Are you listening to gossip, Bishop?"

  He frowned. "I've never known you to be disrespectful, Mary Katherine."

  "I'm not being disrespectful," she insisted. "I—"

  "This is why I don't encourage friendship with some Englischers," he interrupted, overriding what she was saying. "The Bible says, 'Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial?' "

  She held on to her temper by the skin of her teeth. "Just because someone is Englisch and her hair and clothing is a little unusual—"

  "Unusual? That's what you call it?"

  "She's making a design statement."

  He gave a snort of derision.

  That riled her. "Well, she's creative, and she's just expressing it. She's a nice person, and I'm not ashamed to be seen with her."

  His eyes hardened. "You're different than you used to be. Maybe it wasn't a gut thing that you moved out of your family's house."

  Mary Katherine drew herself up and stared him down. "If my grandmother hadn't gotten me out of there when she did, I'd have left long ago and never come back. And the way I am now? I'm proud of the person I've become with her help."

  Turning, she blinked away angry tears and ran down the steps. There was no way she wanted to go inside and upset her grandmother.

  A hand touched her arm and she shoved it away and turned. "Leave me alone—" she stopped and stared not into the bishop's face but Jacob's.

  "I called to you, but you didn't hear me. Are you all right? What did he say to upset you?"

  She swiped at her tears with her hands. "Just the same old thing: When am I going to join the church?"