sound like your mother because she’s right. I’m right,” Ellie insisted. “You want a wife and a family, don’t you? You want to father children and live our faith?”
“Of course. I just don’t—” He sighed. “I guess I don’t know how to find that.”
“Exactly. So what I’m thinking is that you need some help.” She poked him with her finger. “You need someone to make a good match for you. You can’t just look for a pretty face. You have to look deeper than that and find what’s important in a partner. You need the matchmaker’s help. You need Sara Yoder.”
“You think I need a matchmaker?” he scoffed, meeting her gaze.
“Why not?” Ellie shrugged. “She’s very good at it and it’s not as though you’re a hopeless case. You have a lot to offer a woman. You have a trade—two trades, if you count blacksmithing.”
He frowned. “I’m a terrible blacksmith.”
“Okay, but you’re a decent rough carpenter. And you know something about farming. You have that promise of land from your grandfather, and you own a horse and buggy.” She studied him carefully. “And you have a good heart and a strong back,” she allowed. “You’ve never been afraid of hard work.”
He flashed her a grin, recovering some of his equilibrium. “Not to mention that girls think I’m handsome.”
“Humph.” She puckered her lips. “Prideful, the bishop would say. And a show-off.”
“I am not,” he protested, rising to his feet.
“Red and blue blinking lights on your buggy?” She shook her head and sighed. “Thomas, I’m serious. You need to talk to Sara.”
He thought for a minute. It had never occurred to him to hire the services of the local matchmaker. He’d always thought matchmakers were for people who couldn’t get a date. That certainly didn’t apply to him. He’d walked out with more girls in the last ten years than he could count. But Ellie was a sensible woman. Probably the most sensible he’d ever known. He knew he’d do well to take her advice. “Do you really think Sara could help me find a wife?”
“Absolutely. But pray on it. With your history, even Sara Yoder will need all the help she can get.”
* * *
“Why do I think the two of you invited me here for something other than my rhubarb pie recipe?” Sara Yoder asked as she took a chair at Hannah’s kitchen table. Hannah, her dearest friend as well as a cousin, had sent one of her grandsons with a note to ask if she could come over at four.
Since the weather was pleasant and the two houses were less than a mile apart, Sara had walked. She liked being active. She was usually up by six and going until long after the sun had set. Not that it had done much for her figure. Despite her busy lifestyle, she remained hearty. She supposed it was partly that she loved to eat and partly because her mother had been substantial in size.
At the back door, Hannah’s widowed daughter, Leah, recently returned from a long stay in South America, had taken Sara’s denim coat and black outer bonnet and given her a big hug. Sara hadn’t gotten a chance to get to know Leah yet, and she was pleased that she was there this afternoon.
“I’m so glad you could come,” Hannah exclaimed as she dropped into a seat across from Sara. “We’ve been making vegetable soup and canning it. Cleaning out the cellar. Soon enough we’ll have fresh vegetables again and I never like to save canned goods from one year to the next. I have a couple of quarts of soup for you. Too many to carry, but Leah can drive you home.”
Leah wasn’t Amish anymore, although in her plain blue dress and navy wool scarf she appeared so. When she’d married Daniel Brown several years earlier, she’d joined the Mennonite church. The Mennonites, close in belief to the Amish, were not as strict in daily lifestyle and permitted motor vehicles. Sara assumed that the small black automobile in the yard was Leah’s.
Smiling, Leah brought a pitcher of cream and an old pewter bowl filled with raw sugar to the table. “Tea is such a treat,” she said, joining them and pouring the first cup of tea for Sara. “I can’t get enough of it. They have wonderful coffee in Brazil, but it was impossible to find decent tea.”
All of Hannah’s daughters were known for their liveliness and independence, but Leah was the one who residents of Seven Poplars saw as the most independent. After her marriage, Leah had left Delaware to follow her new husband to do missionary work among the indigenous people of the Amazon. There, in an isolated outpost, the young couple had operated a school, a store and a basic medical clinic. Then tragedy had struck. Leah had lost both her husband and her child to a deadly fever. Unwilling to leave her adopted community in need, Leah had remained more than a year until another team could be sent as replacements. Now, she’d returned to her childhood home to pick up the pieces of her life.
Leah might have been the rebel of the Yoder girls but, of all of Hannah’s daughters, she was certainly the prettiest, Sara decided, looking across the table at her. Her red hair, blue eyes and flawless complexion made her a real beauty, more attractive even than Violet Hershberger, who was considered the cutest and most eligible girl in the county. But Leah’s almond-shaped eyes held a depth of sorrow that gave her a fragility of spirit not evident in Violet or any of the other young women in the county. Leah seemed cheerful and strong enough physically. She laughed as readily as her sisters, but Sara could sense a vulnerability in Leah that tugged at her heart. It was obvious that she was still in pain from her loss, but Sara could see that she was making an effort to be a part of the world again. And she seemed to be succeeding.
Sara considered herself a sensible woman, one not easily swayed from the right path by emotion or hasty decisions. But she couldn’t deny that she felt drawn to this girl and felt an instant desire to do whatever she could to help her. “It was nice of you to invite me for tea, but did you ask me here for the reason I suspect?” Sara asked.
Leah smiled and her cheeks blushed. “I think it’s time I wed again and my family’s in agreement.”
“I’m glad you called on me, then. I’ve brokered a few Mennonite marriages, though you may have to be patient with me while I talk with some friends at the local church.”
“Actually,” Hannah said. “Leah has decided—” She broke off abruptly as her youngest daughter, Susanna, came into the kitchen with a basket of clothing she must have just taken in off the clothesline. Susanna had been born with Down syndrome and she and her husband David, also mentally challenged, made their home with Hannah and her husband Albert.
“The wind is picking up, isn’t it?” Sara said to Susanna. She could smell the wholesome scents of sunshine and spring breezes on the clothes the young woman carried in the basket.
Susanna, red cheeked and beaming, nodded. “Ya. Almost blew me over.”
“Ach, Susanna. You’re about to lose your scarf.” Hannah rose and went to her daughter, untied the navy cotton scarf and retied it in place over her daughter’s braided and pinned up auburn hair.
“Danki, Mam.” Susanna giggled, her round face creasing into folds of pleasure. “As soon as I...” Susanna’s forehead crinkled as she struggled to find the right words and pronounce them correctly. “Fold the sheets,” she managed. “David’s gonna show me new kittens in the loft. He said ‘Susanna, you help name them.’” She nodded excitedly. “They need names!”
“That
