“And your girlfriend reins you in the rest of the way?” Sam asked him with a grin.
“Ya,” Peter said, chuckling. “Say, she sent along some oatmeal cookies. Want one?”
“Are they any better than the last batch?”
“She’s getting better.” Peter held out the bag.
Sam took one and bit into it. Or tried to. It was hard as a rock. “You’re right,” he mumbled around a bite. He hoped he hadn’t chipped a tooth. “Look, Boss is waving us back to work.”
When Peter glanced over, Sam tossed the cookie aside and hoped a squirrel had better luck.
“So anyway, I told Leah I’d see if you could stop by with me after work today to take a look at things.”
Sam had known Peter for a long time, but he’d never seen him move so quickly on anything.
“Schur.”
“Maybe you can give me a ride there?”
“How would you have gotten there if I hadn’t said yes?”
Peter set his lunch box in the front seat of the truck. “Knew you would.” He loped off to the ladder set against the house, climbed up, and moved out of sight.
Chuckling, Sam put his own lunchbox into his truck and returned to work installing windows. Like many of his fellow Amish men, Sam had never been inside Stitches in Time, Leah’s quilt and crafts shop. Peter led the way and seemed a lot more at ease in the land of fabric and crafts and . . . the bustle and chatter of women.
Two of them, very familiar, stood at the front counter. To his utter shock, one of them was Mary Elizabeth.
“Peter! Sam!” Leah cried. “So glad you both could come by today! I want to get started quickly on the new shop. Mary Elizabeth, do you want to walk over with us? She’ll be helping us coordinate with the women sewing the crafts we’ll sell in the new shop,” she explained.
Sam stood silent, absorbing the information. He wondered how much they’d see each other while he and Peter did the renovation.
“Schur.” Mary Elizabeth looked at Sam. “I’d like that.”
Leah took them next door, a whirlwind chattering nonstop the whole way. Leah had granddaughters, but Sam had always thought she had enough energy and drive to run circles around much younger people.
“As you can see, the last tenant left quite a mess.”
Sam looked around at the broken shelving, the holes left in the walls by fixtures being pulled out.
“First thing I want to do is put an entranceway into Stitches so customers can move back and forth through both shops,” she began and then she was on a roll.
Peter took notes and Sam took measurements. Mary Elizabeth observed and said nothing—new behavior for her. Sam didn’t think he’d ever known her to be quiet this long. An hour later, Peter and Sam had what they needed.
“I’ll have an estimate for you in two days,” Peter promised.
“Remember I need to be open by September 1.”
Sam felt his stomach clench. How would they get everything she wanted done by then if they were working part-time? But when he glanced at Peter and got a warning look, he kept his mouth shut.
“Allrecht, I know what you’re thinking,” Peter said as they climbed into Sam’s truck.
“So now you read minds as well as think you’re Superman and can work two jobs?”
Peter fastened his seat belt and leaned back in his seat. He tapped his notebook on his knee. “How about we go for a pizza and work up a bid and a work schedule?”
“Pizza?” It was days before the next payday.
“I’ll buy. You can get the next one.”
“ ’Cause we’ll be rich then, right?”
Peter laughed. “Ya.” He opened his notebook and started jotting something down.
Sam drove, concentrating on the traffic, a mixture of people heading home after work and tourists who weren’t always paying attention to driving but were instead checking out the scenery.
And all the while he drove he wondered if they got the job how he was going to handle coming into contact with Mary Elizabeth at the new shop.
* * *
“You’re up early,” Linda said when Mary Elizabeth walked into the kitchen the next morning.
She went straight for the percolator on the stove. “I spent a lot of time at the quilting class yesterday, then with Leah at the new shop. I don’t want to get behind in my work.”
Her mudder flipped pancakes onto a plate then set it in front of her. “You won’t. You sew quickly.”
“Ya, but I’m working on making my stitches smaller. That takes time.”
Linda sat down at the table with a cup of coffee. “You always were impatient. Why, you were even born a month early.”
Mary Elizabeth grinned as she cut into a pancake. She’d heard that many times. “Mmm, these are gut.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” her mudder said automatically. But she smiled.
The back door opened and Lavina walked in.
“Two early birds.”
Lavina clapped a hand over her mouth and ran for the bathroom. When she emerged a few minutes later her face had a slight greenish tinge. “You had to mention . . . well, let’s just say you mentioned early birds and I thought of what they eat.”
A funny expression flashed over her face and she bolted for the bathroom again.
When she returned to the kitchen a second time she had a damp washcloth in her hand. She sat and held the cloth to the back of her neck.
“Is there anything I can get you?” Linda murmured, reaching over to rub her back. “Maybe some crackers and a glass of ginger ale.”
“You have ginger ale?”
“I bought some right after you told us you were going to have a boppli.” She rose, filled a glass with ice, and brought it and the bottle of ginger ale to the table.
“If I’m half the mudder you are, I’ll be happy,” Lavina told her fervently.
“You’ll be a gut mudder. You always helped me with your schweschders. Some other mudders warned me sometimes the oldest kind can be jealous of the other kinner, but not you. Once I found you giving Rose Anna her bottle when I walked into her room. She’d woken from her nap, you saw she was awake and got her bottle out of the refrigerator.” She smiled at the memory. “Well, time to wake Rose Anna,”
