Chapter 29
Miri pushed open Tom’s bedroom door with a low creak.
The room was hot and stuffy, the window shut tight.
Early evening sunlight pooled in through the open curtains, warming it up further like a firebox in a wood stove.
Tom’s bed hadn’t been slept in in months, since he’d been staying downstairs in the hospital bed, but it had been stripped and remade with fresh bedding when he moved down, so the room still smelled of fresh linen.
The sheets were smooth and bright, and a block quilt was folded at the end of the bed.
His pillows were piled up one on top of the other, both a little flattened.
They were clad in white cases that had some embroidery at the opening.
Those were pillowcases that had been stitched with love. By a daughter? His late wife?
A layer of dust covered the top of the dresser, and Miri put her finger through it, leaving a trail that made it look worse.
It had been her job to clean while Tom had been ailing, but she hadn’t felt right about coming into Tom’s bedroom.
He had still deserved his privacy. On top of the dresser was a crocheted doily that looked to be old, a mess of papers, a little New Testament Bible, and a folded knitted scarf that had been there for a very long time because the top of it was lightened by dust. When she moved some papers aside, she spotted a pair of women’s bifocal glasses. Miri picked them up.
“My mammi’s glasses,” Moses said. “This was the last scarf she knitted him too. He wore it to church, but he didn’t want to ruin it by wearing it outside with the cattle. Hold on.”
Moses strode across the room and pushed open the window. He put a stick of wood underneath to hold it open, and a rain-scented breeze immediately worked around the room in fragrant relief.
Miri pulled open the top drawer and peeked inside. There were some underthings, some undershirts, and in the back, behind the clothing, a pile of folded handkerchiefs, each with TY embroidered at the corner next to a little cow.
“These are beautiful.” She pulled them out. Each white hanky was embroidered with different colors in the initials, and the cows looked to be different colors and breeds too. Some had horns, others did not. A lot of love had gone into these. “Your mammi’s work?”
“Yah.”
“She knew the way to his heart.” She smiled. That was the kind of gift that Miri would appreciate too—some personalized little item related to cattle. “You should bring these home with you, Moses. I think Tom would have wanted these with one of his grandsons, don’t you?”
“I thought he wanted the farm with one of his grandsons, too, so what do I know?” Moses said. She could hear a bit of humor in his tone, but she wasn’t sure how to respond, so she opted for silence.
Moses did pick up the hankies, though, and he fingered the embroidery in the corner of the top one.
“My grandmother died when I was a kid, so I don’t remember her as well as I wish I did.
But Dawdie kept her memory alive with stories about how she used to do things.
He used to laugh when he talked about how ticklish she was.
Apparently, it didn’t take much to make her jump, and he used to pretend he hadn’t meant to tickle her when he really had. ”
Miri smiled. “He told me that your mammi made the best strudel this side of glory.”
“That’s true.” Moses sobered. “He loved her. Like he really, really loved her. He thought she was wonderful in every way, and he never talked about other girls he’d dated or gotten to know. Not a word.”
“Did they work well together outdoors?” she asked. “It’s just that he mentioned to me that a woman who could handle cattle shouldn’t be taken for granted, and I wondered if she was . . .”
“Like you a little bit?” Moses asked.
“Nee. I mean—”
“Mammi was a woman of all trades, so to speak. She was a tremendous cook, but she wasn’t scared of getting her hands dirty outside either. I never knew her as a young woman, obviously, but maybe she was like you a bit.”
“I didn’t mean anything by that,” she said.
“Mean what, exactly?” He fixed her with an innocent look, which only made her face feel warmer still. She stared back, refusing to speak, and he shrugged.
“Maybe you and I are a bit like my grandparents,” he said. “We do work the herd well together. You’ll have to work on your strudel, though.”
“But we haven’t fallen madly in love with each other,” she replied with a victorious smile, ignoring his dig at her baking. “Have we?”
“Have we?”
She rolled her eyes. “Moses, be serious, would you?”
“All right, fine,” he said. “My grandfather might not have told me how he met my grandmother, but my daet told me that Dawdie was smitten from the moment he set eyes on her.”
And Moses certainly hadn’t been that way with Miri.
“Must be nice to have that kind of power,” she murmured. “To make a man fall head over heels for you just like that.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it just takes the right man.”
She looked up and found Moses watching her, his expression softer now.
His gaze moved over her face, then dropped down to her hands.
She was suddenly aware that the back of one hand had a scratch, and even a good scrubbing had left some dirt under one nail that she’d missed. She closed both hands into fists.
“This isn’t about me,” she said, forcing a laugh. “What Amish man is going to bring me home to his family and have his sisters and mother feel like they understand me? They’ll advise him not to marry me, that’s what.”
“I don’t know. You’ve got a farm,” he said teasingly.
She shot him an annoyed look.
“I don’t want anyone marrying me for the farm,” she countered. “That’s not marrying me for me. That’s . . . using me for land.”
He nodded. “I get it. If I were in your place, I wouldn’t want that either. But all I’m saying is that there are men out there who’d like to marry you.”
Miri looked around Old Tom’s bedroom. The doorless closet held two pairs of worn pants hung up on hangers and two shirts—one white, one blue.
His two hats were on the shelf above, next to a cardboard box.
There was another cardboard box in the corner filled with what looked like old newspapers and flyers.
A chair next to it had a pile of odds and ends—wire, a couple of different wrenches, a box of nails.
Tom’s life had overflowed and filled this room back up again after his wife’s passing, but those glasses on the dresser and the hankies in the drawer told of where his heart was.
“I want what your grandparents had,” Miri said. “They loved each other so much that people talk about it still. My parents are like that. Daet and Mamm are united in everything. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them disagree for long. And my grandparents . . .”
She thought back on her grandmother Adelheide Schrock.
She’d been gentle and kind and seemed to know Miri’s grandfather better than he knew himself.
She’d wordlessly set a mug of coffee in front of him, and her dawdie would say, “Yah, this is perfect . . .” as if he’d asked for it.
But he hadn’t. Mammi had just known. Was it the years spent together that put them into such a rhythm?
Dawdie had died first, and Mammi followed that same year, as if living apart just wasn’t possible for them.
“Your grandparents?” Moses prodded.
She pulled herself out of her memories.
“It was real love. The honest kind that just kept on,” she said. “I don’t want a man to marry me for the land. I won’t take those vows unless it’s the real thing—someone who loves me like Tom loved Loretta or like my grandparents loved each other.”
“Yah . . .”
“But I’m not holding my breath,” she concluded.
“Miri,” he started.
“It doesn’t matter, Moses,” she said. “That’s why I need the farm, right? I’ve got to have something I can pour myself into. But I’m not using it to lure some poor man into matrimony.”
“I wouldn’t give up so easily, if I were you,” he said.
Her cousin Amanda hadn’t given up. She’d gone out and found herself a husband against all odds.
But Miri wasn’t like Amanda. Miri wasn’t a woman who could bake such delicacies that it made up for her other rough edges.
She couldn’t make strudel like Loretta. Romance seemed to require some mysterious ingredient that Miri had never discovered. No one had seen her that way.
“I’m fine, Moses,” she said. “I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable by talking too plainly.”
Moses shrugged, his warm gaze still resting on her face. “Don’t give up. That’s all I’m saying.”
With Moses looking at her like that, it was possible to forget her scratched hands, her split skirt, and the fact that she was no man’s sweetheart and likely never to be.
But she’d been serious when she said she’d never marry a man who wanted to get his hands on her farm.
Her heart could never take it. Not even for Moses.
Maybe especially not for Moses. If she was being honest with herself, her heart would break.
“We’re here to find some answers about Tom’s choice,” she reminded him. “Not delve into the finer points of me not getting married.”
Moses smiled faintly.
“If there had been more feelings between your grandfather and my grandmother before they married other people, I don’t think it much mattered anymore,” she added, looking around the room. “Do you?”
Moses went to the closet and pulled down the cardboard box from the upper shelf, setting it on the white sheets of the bed. He pulled back the ragged flaps, and Miri went over and peered over his shoulder. She shut her eyes for a moment, memorizing the musky, hay-tinged scent of him.
Nee, she couldn’t let herself feel any more for Moses—that was dangerous ground. If anyone wanted this land, it was Moses Yoder. And his family would gladly push him into a marriage for the sake of it.
She opened her eyes and looked down into the box. There were three kapps, a black bonnet, a worn pair of leather gloves, a tattered, hardcover Ausbund . . . Moses pulled out the hymnbook and opened the front cover.
To my darling Loretta. For a lifetime together. Tom
1956
It was like every corner of this bedroom held memories of Loretta and the life they’d built together.
If he had harbored any sweet feelings for Adelheide, there was no evidence of it here.
Nor should there be. This was the home he’d shared with his wife, where they’d raised their kinner, where their grandsons had come to help keep the farm running.
And even twenty years after Loretta’s death, she was still here almost tangibly.
Tom hadn’t forgotten her. He’d gotten a little less polished, rumor had it.
He’d gotten rougher around the edges without his wife there to bring out the best in him. But he hadn’t married again.
He could have. He’d been seventy when his wife passed and still spry. He’d only started to slow down once he hit his mideighties. There were widows enough in these Amish communities, or even older women who had never married. But he’d never bothered and never responded to interested women either.
“We won’t find any answers to Tom’s friendship with my grandmother here,” Miri said.
“I think you’re right,” Moses said. He looked tenderly around the room.
Miri dropped her gaze, attempting to afford him some privacy with his emotions. He put the handkerchiefs into the box with the other items from his grandmother.
“Let me put Tom’s clothes into a bag for you,” Miri said. “And Loretta’s glasses are still on the dresser.”
For the next few minutes, they gathered up the last of the personal effects, and Miri helped Moses carry it all down to his buggy.
These items belonged with Moses’s family, and she was sure they would be glad to have them.
But she had to wonder if his father still wanted him to convince her to give up, or if, as Moses said, his daet would feel bad about those words.
Moses began hitching up his horse, and Miri helped him on the other side.
“You know, Moses,” she said as they finished, “if we aren’t going to find answers here in the house, maybe we’d best talk to someone else who knew your dawdie and my mammi when they were young.”
Moses looked over at her. “Like who?”
“Aent Dina springs to mind,” she said.
Moses nodded. “Yah, it might be time to talk to the older folks some more and see what they know.”
There were answers somewhere, and this conflict wouldn’t be settled until they found them.
“See you in the morning,” Moses said as he hoisted himself up into his buggy.
“See you.”
As the buggy rattled up the drive, Miri felt the loneliness settle around her again. She looked toward the house, then up toward the cattle barn, where Bitsy would be drowsily chewing her cud. Maybe she’d go sit with her heifer for a little while.
But then another buggy turned into the drive, just as Moses’s left. She knew that buggy better than any other. Her eyes stung with grateful tears. Her parents had come to visit.
Even with all of the drama of late, she knew her parents loved her. They saw the best in her, and tonight she could do with some family comfort.