Chapter 39
Miri brought her things home and hung her dresses with the conveniently split skirts back in the closet in her bedroom.
It was strange to think that it was all over so soon.
All of it—her farm, her cattle, her hopes .
. . Moses. She wasn’t even sure where to categorize Moses, but she missed him in a soft, sore place in her heart.
“I’m glad you’re home,” Mamm said from the doorway.
Miri looked back mutely. She couldn’t say the same. She wasn’t glad to be home. She was heartbroken, and she’d relished that space of her own where she could unfurl her wings a little bit and be a grown woman on her own land. Coming back to her room in her parents’ house felt stifling.
“Danke, Mamm,” she said.
“Aent Dina came by for some pie. Do you want to come visit?”
Miri’s first instinct was to say no—she had wounds to lick and some peace to make with her reality—but Aent Dina might be able to answer a few questions.
“Yah, I will.” Miri left her bag open on the top of her bed. “I’ll finish this later.”
“I made cherry pie, your favorite,” Mamm said with a little blush of pleasure. She was misinterpreting Miri’s new enthusiasm, but that was all right. “And Aent Dina is working on those cute little knitted frogs. I think she could sell them. Maybe the two of you could work on that together.”
But it wasn’t the waiting pie or Aent Dina’s knitting that brought Miri down the stairs. Aent Dina sat at the kitchen table, her knitting in hand as she measured a small knitted triangle. When she was satisfied, she started casting off her needle.
“You should dress your frogs in Amish clothes,” Miri said.
Aent Dina looked up with a smile. “These? I make them for the kinner.”
“But it would look cute in a cape dress,” Miri said.
“You might be right.” Aent Dina nodded. “I’ll try it.”
“We’re so glad you came by, Dina,” Mamm said. “Let me cut that pie. I’ve been hankering for a piece all morning. But I made it specially for Miri since it’s her favorite.”
“Are you back for good?” Aent Dina asked Miri soberly.
“It looks that way,” Miri replied.
“I’m sorry, dear.”
“Danke.”
“I went to see my sister to help you, but it looks like I came back too late.”
“Help me how?” Miri asked, and she slid into a chair next to the old woman.
“I wanted to find out why Old Tom might have left you the farm,” she replied. “And my sister was best friends with Adelheide.”
“Wilhelm’s mother?” Mamm asked, putting two slices of pie on pretty china plates in front of both Miri and Aent Dina.
“Yah.” Aent Dina picked up the fork, then put it back down with a tinkle.
“I only knew part of the story, you see. I knew that Tom Yoder left the faith and went Englisch. It was a whole scandal. His family was distraught. His father was enraged, and his mother cried at the drop of a hat. My parents were both overly anxious we’d do the same—me or Abram or the other siblings. ”
“Why did he leave?” Miri asked.
“Why does anyone leave?” Aent Dina shrugged.
“He thought life would be better past the fence, I suppose. And in all those five years, he didn’t come back to visit.
It was like he just disappeared. Then one day, Adelheide went to the city for an appointment or something and came back with Tom in tow. ”
“How?” Mamm asked.
“That’s why I went to see Liz. She and Adelheide had been very good friends, and I wanted to know what happened there.”
Aent Dina picked up the fork again and took a slow bite of pie. Miri jiggled her knee under the table, waiting.
“And?” Miri finally burst out.
“It’s sad, really,” Aent Dina said, swallowing.
“I was right that Adelheide had been in love with Tom. In fact, he’d been writing her letters, and she’d been keeping them a secret.
Tom had seen Adelheide as a friend—a connection to the community, perhaps—but nothing more than a friend.
She, on the other hand, was so smitten with Tom that she was willing to do just about anything to bring him home.
She thought if he just came back, they could move their relationship forward. ”
“How did she get him to come back?” Miri asked.
Mamm sat down at the table opposite Aent Dina, and she covered her mouth with her hand, eyes wide.
“Adelheide told Liz about it, then swore her to secrecy, of course. And Liz kept her secret, even from me. Anyway, Adelheide went to Tom’s apartment that he was renting in the city, and she sat outside his door until he came home from work.
He was sharing it with three other men who worked construction, too, and Liz said that it was such a mess inside the apartment that Tom was embarrassed.
Three bachelors living like bachelors do, cooking right out of tin cans on the stove, and no one cleaning up after.
There were piles of clothes waiting to be washed and a floor so filthy that Adelheide almost cried.
But she told Tom she wasn’t helping him clean up that mess.
She said he needed to come home to where things were neat and clean and there was proper food cooked with love.
Apparently, Tom had been rather short of funds at that point, and he agreed to come back. ”
“So the timing was right,” Mamm said.
“The timing was perfect,” Aent Dina agreed. “And Adelheide thought that maybe he’d see what a lovely life he could have with a wife at his side. She cooked him meals, baked him his favorite German chocolate cake, and she mooned after him like a schoolgirl.”
“Did anything come of it?” Miri asked.
“Nee. He didn’t even notice. He kept calling her his sister. Then he went to a hymn sing and spotted Loretta out there among the flutter of cape dresses, and he was smitten. He took her home from the singing, and they were engaged in a matter of weeks.”
“Poor Adelheide,” Mamm said.
“She was heartbroken, of course. She’d taken a risk to bring Tom home, and he went and fell in love with Loretta instead,” Aent Dina said. “She was so upset that she decided to leave Shepherd’s Hill and go settle elsewhere.”
“But she obviously didn’t.”
“She almost did. She had something arranged with a distant cousin—Liz doesn’t recall the community—and Liz had been beside herself with grief at losing her best friend.
I remember that. And the night before she was set to leave, she went with Liz to a hymn sing, told Tom he was an ungrateful lout, and then promptly met Cornelius Schrock, your grandfather, who was at that singing looking for a wife of his own.
” Dina gave a satisfied nod. “And the rest is your family history.”
“Did Loretta and Adelheide get along after that?” Miri asked.
“I never noticed any animosity between them,” Aent Dina said.
“Adelheide had Cornelius, and she adored him, but Liz told me that one day after they were both married to other people, Tom apologized to Adelheide. He said he knew he’d been insensitive, but that he was grateful to her for bringing him home the way she had.
He said that he wanted to make it up to her somehow. ”
“Surely he could have employed one of her sons, or—”
“Adelheide was a proud woman,” Aent Dina said, shaking her head. “She told Tom that all was fine, and she needed nothing more from him. And that was that.”
Aent Dina fell silent and pressed her lips together thoughtfully.
“I was thinking it over, though, and I knew Tom quite well too. He adored Loretta—we all knew it—but he knew that it was Adelheide who brought him home, and he’d never have returned or met Loretta if it weren’t for her.
And you, my dear girl, look an awful lot like your grandmother. ”
“Does she?” Mamm asked. “Wilhelm always said she favored his mother, but I knew her as a much older woman.”
“Spitting image,” Aent Dina said. “Short, with that little pert nose and the shape of her face. Even the way she puts her hands on her hips when she’s thinking about something—that’s Adelheide through and through.”
“You think Tom was trying to make things up to Adelheide’s memory before he died?” Miri asked.
“That’s my thought,” Aent Dina agreed. “He knew he owed her, and Tom was a gruff old man who wasn’t very good at these things. Plus, dear girl, you are a better farmer than both the Yoder boys combined.”
Miri felt some heat come to her cheeks at the compliment. Not much good it would do her now. She’d be housebound for the future, no doubt.
“I think it all worked out the way it was supposed to, though,” Mamm said. “Tom married Loretta, Adelheide married Cornelius, and they both had big, healthy families. Gott didn’t mean for Tom and Adelheide to marry.”
“I agree with you there,” Aent Dina said. “Sometimes, no matter how much we want something, Gott has other plans.”
“Tabitha said something today,” Miri said. “She said that sometimes to stay on the narrow path, we have to walk single file.”
Aent Dina nodded slowly. “Sometimes. I never married, as you know. I’ve been going single file all my life.
But my friends have married and lost husbands, and some have married again.
There are always seasons in life when we walk single file.
Some of us for longer than others. But there’s no shame in the single life, Miri. We just have to trust Gott’s plans.”
And it would seem that Miri would need to make peace with being on her own. Aent Dina certainly wasn’t lonely, even without a husband or children. She had friends, family, and a whole community who loved her.
Aent Dina picked up a finished frog from her bag and looked at it thoughtfully. “Do you think I should put a cape dress on it? Won’t that be disrespectful? To the dress, I mean.”
The conversation turned toward knitted frogs, leaving Miri to her thoughts.
Grandmother Adelheide had once been in love with a man who wasn’t meant for her, and she’d had to let go. But there had been a whole life of love and family afterward. Gott hadn’t forgotten Adelheide.
Aent Dina had never married, but Gott hadn’t forgotten Dina either. Both women had lived lives filled with love and meaning and fulfillment.
Gott, please give me love, she prayed in her heart. I thought I almost had that with Moses . . . but if he isn’t for me, like my grandmother experienced with her first big love, then please give me cattle. A whole herd, all mine.
Perhaps with a herd to grow and nurture, and some land on which to farm, Miri could be happy in her own way. With Gott’s help to get over Moses, that was. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to feel friendly toward any woman who married him, though.
Call her petty and jealous—maybe she was!
But her stubborn heart had become stuck on Moses, and she doubted it would change.
She was confident there had been a genuine connection between them.
But cattle . . . they were less complicated.
Old Tom had been right about that. Cattle could be counted on when people were fickle and changing.
So she would pray for cattle. It seemed safer.
There was a tap on the door, and Miri went to answer it, leaving the older women to chat together. She pushed open the screen door, and a teenaged boy stood there in bare feet, his straw hat pushed back on his head.
“Hi, Miri,” he said. “I got a letter for you.”
“From who?”
“Moses Yoder,” the boy said. “He said to tell you that the bishop said he should keep his distance, so that’s why he sent the letter instead of coming himself.”
Miri accepted it and gave the boy a nod. “Do you want pie?”
“Yah, wouldn’t say no to pie!”
He came inside, and Mamm dished him up a slice while Miri slipped into the other room and tore open the envelope.
Dear Miri,
The bishop told me to keep my distance from you, so I’m trying to obey that. But I need to talk to you. It’s important. Come for dinner tonight at my grandfather’s farm. The food will probably be barely passable, but we’ll have some privacy to talk.
I’ll start cooking right after chores, so come by around six, and there should be something edible.
Please come.
Moses