Chapter 25
25
The third week of September, Moses and Casey moved most of the Paradise market into the building, leaving a few booths to draw attention from the road plus the food carts outside. Friday was overcast and chilly but dry. Business had been good again. The big sign on the highway helped, but there were lots of local people he recognized—both Englisch and Amish—who came for a cup of coffee and a pastry and sat at the picnic tables and then picked up a few items, such as a loaf of bread and a basket of produce.
When Moses left the market Friday in the late afternoon before the shop closed, he drove straight to the café. It was Sara’s last night of work. The new manager, Jennifer, would take over in the morning.
Sara met him with a smile. Relieved, Moses asked if she had time to sit for a minute.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll give you an update on Jennifer.”
They sat at the back table with cups of coffee. After Sara ran through a list of concerns, most of which didn’t sound too serious, she asked, “Have you heard my news?”
“News?”
She smiled a little. “You never were very good at gossip.”
That was true. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve been courting Mark Miller for a couple of weeks. Things are getting serious already.”
“Mark Miller? Are you going to join the Amish?”
“No. He’s going to become Mennonite.”
“What about the family mill?”
“We’ll see what his Dat says. He may end up working in Holland with me. Perhaps we can take over my uncle’s restaurant in a few years.”
“Well,” Moses said. “Congratulations. I’ve always liked Mark.” If only Mark had taken Sara home from the river five years ago instead of taking Lois. It would have saved all of them a lot of heartache. “Wait.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“No. Ask.”
“What about Evelyn?”
Sara rubbed her earlobe. “They broke up a couple of months ago. You didn’t know that?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“She’s going out with—”
“John.”
Sara nodded.
So it was official. Poor Lois. Or lucky Lois. “Well, I’m happy for you and Mark. He’s a good guy.”
Sara smiled a little.
Moses smiled back. “Thank you for your work here at the café. You’ve done a good job. Thank you, too, for your—” he tilted his head—“friendship. I want only the best for you.”
“Denki.” Sara placed a hand on the table. “I want the best for you too. I hope you’ll find your person.”
He suppressed a sigh and didn’t respond.
As he waited to turn onto the highway, intending to go left and head to the warehouse, he hesitated even though there was a break in the traffic. He flipped his turn signal to the right.
When he arrived at the shop, Lois was vacuuming the carpet. She turned it off.
“How was business today?” he asked.
“ Gut .” She gave him a questioning look. “Did you forget something?”
“For sure and for certain. I’ve been forgetting it for the last five years.”
She wrinkled her nose.
A lot had happened five years ago. Moses spoke softly. “I should have gone after you to Big Valley.”
Her face grew pale as she gripped the vacuum cleaner.
“I’m sorry—”
“Nee,” she said. “It all worked out. For the best. I’d prefer not to talk about it.” Then she turned away from him and unplugged the vacuum.
“Lois?”
She heard him because she waved her hand, as if shooing him away, carrying the vacuum down the hall with her other hand. He heard her put it in the closet. And then the back door opened and closed and her key turned in the lock.
Moses leaned against the counter and took a deep breath. Once again Lois had pushed him away. But there was something there. Pain, maybe. Perhaps she truly wanted nothing to do with him, but she had cared for him five years ago. Dare he hope she might again?
Because he couldn’t deny it any longer. He cared for her. He’d never stopped. If only she’d let him apologize.
The next day was cool, but the market drew in the most visitors yet. Moses didn’t go to Delaware for the first Saturday in years. He’d asked Joey to call him if needed, but he hadn’t heard a word.
When the sausage cart nearly ran out of propane, Moses said he’d go buy some. Casey asked if he could ride along and grab a few more birdhouses to sell while Evelyn watched his booth.
On their way, Moses told Casey about his conversation with Sara.
“That’s a relief,” Casey said.
“What’s a relief?”
“That Sara has a new plan.”
“Jah,” Moses said. “I felt so bad about the accident all these years that I think...” His voice trailed off. He’d escaped the accident without any physical injuries but it had paralyzed him in other ways.
“You’ve taken too much responsibility for that wreck.”
Sara had needed a ride home that night, but Moses hadn’t wanted to take her alone in his car. He’d volunteered to drive Casey’s and leave his at the river. The two planned to pick it up the next day. “I almost killed both of you.”
“Sara could have killed all three of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“She reached over the back seat and tried to grab the steering wheel.”
Moses didn’t remember that. He did remember Sara, unconscious, and Casey, writhing in pain with his leg twisted beneath him, both on the ground as he stumbled from the car.
“As you were going around that curve.”
“I was going too fast.”
“Maybe a little, but you wouldn’t have wrecked if she hadn’t grabbed the wheel.”
Moses’s heart raced. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I tried to. That night, right before they put me in the ambulance. I told the police too.”
Perhaps that was why the police hadn’t charged him. He’d taken a breathalyzer test at the scene of the accident and passed it with 0.0 percent. He hadn’t been drinking. But he still feared he’d be charged with reckless driving. Perhaps Casey’s testimony had saved him.
Maybe he wasn’t entirely at fault for the accident after all. Maybe Sara hadn’t become harsher after the accident. Maybe she’d been that way all along.
Casey asked, “Do you remember how your Dat reacted at the hospital?”
“I’ll never forget.” Moses tightened his grip on the steering wheel to keep his hands from shaking. His Dat had yelled, “You could have killed yourself. What were you thinking? Never would I have expected this from you.” Moses had been devastated. His parents had always been supportive and encouraging. Always trusting. When he’d made a mistake, they’d corrected him and then talked him through what to do next time. One time, he’d been helping a farmhand and had fallen in front of a draft horse. Moses rolled just in time and escaped being crushed. Dat had been shaken but not angry.
But the car accident was different.
“He really loved you,” Casey said.
“Not that night.” Moses exhaled. “I disappointed him horribly.” Dat had hired a driver a week later to take both of them to the river and collect Moses’s car. It was as if he didn’t trust Moses to drive home alone. And then Dat passed away several months later, and Moses realized how much stress he’d been under with Mamm’s memory problems and his businesses. Moses had contributed to his stress. He doubted his Dat would have died so young—at sixty-nine—without all of that.
“No, your Dat really did love you. Especially that night,” Casey answered.
Moses didn’t see it that way—although now the article about Paul’s death came to mind. If Moses had been that baby in the car, his parents had already been impacted by one horrible accident Moses had survived. He eased his hold on the steering wheel. Perhaps the accident five years ago had triggered his father’s memory—and his fears.
He’d carried the weight of that night for so long. Perhaps he could finally forgive himself.
They reached the farm supply store and Moses had the six tanks of propane refilled. Then they stopped by Casey’s workshop. As they pulled away with the birdhouses in the back, Moses asked, “Are you happy with your woodworking booth and managing the market? Is that what you want to do?”
“Oh, I’m happy enough.”
“What would you rather be doing?”
“Honestly?”
“Jah.”
“Farming.”
That had always been Casey’s dream. But after he broke his leg so badly, it seemed as if farming wasn’t an option for him anymore. “Do you think you can do it now?” Moses asked.
“Jah. My balance is better. So is my stamina. Sure, I limp, but I help Dat with the seeding and dragging and manure spreading. I do as well as he does, if not a little better.”
“Can you take over the farm from him?”
“Nee. My oldest brother is leasing a place—he’ll come back and take over the farm when Dat retires.”
Moses thought about the farm on Meadow Lane that Scotty was trying to sell. If Moses had a couple million dollars he’d buy it for Casey. Or for Lois. He glanced over at his friend. Moses hoped Lois might take him back, and yet, would Casey be the better husband for her? “You should ask Lois out.”
“I couldn’t do that to—”
“To her?”
Casey shook his head. “I couldn’t do that to you.”
Moses’s heart lurched. He turned toward the shop and drove between the cherry trees, their golden-green leaves shimmering in the sunlight.
“You have a grocery store, a café, a shop, and two markets. You’re set business-wise and financially. What do you want? Where is your heart right now?” Casey asked.
Moses turned toward his friend. “Down this lane. In that shop. My heart is Lois. It’s always been Lois. But she won’t have me.”
“Have you asked her?”
“I’ve tried to talk with her.”
Casey pointed to a buggy parked close to the shop. A man climbed out. “You need to tell her how you feel. And soon. Because that looks like Bishop Stephen, with support, going in to talk with her.”