minutes later John wandered into the kitchen to poke his head into the refrigerator. He plucked out a beer and popped the top while he watched Sam running water over his hand.
“So how’d it go talking to Mary Elizabeth?”
“Not so great.”
“How’s the hand?”
“Fine.”
John took a gulp of beer and peered at his hand. “Doesn’t look like it.”
He shrugged. “I must have banged the cut open driving home.” He pulled a couple of paper towels from the roll and wrapped it around his hand. He opened a kitchen drawer with his uninjured hand and rooted around in it. “Have you seen the antibiotic ointment?”
John shook his head. “Maybe in the bathroom? First aid kit?”
Sam went into the tiny apartment bathroom and found the kit. Inside was a half-empty, old tube of ointment and a roll of gauze. He squirted it on the cut then bound it with the gauze and taped it.
“Need any help?” John called from the other room.
That was just like John . . . always asking if you needed help after the job was done. Oh well, at least he hadn’t had to have him breathing beer fumes all over him as he did first aid. “No, I got it. Thanks.”
He wandered back into the living room and stretched out on the sofa. Maybe watching the rest of the game on television would take his mind off the disaster with Mary Elizabeth that afternoon. He considered the beer John sat sipping as he relaxed in the recliner.
No, he wasn’t going to start drinking when he’d had a bad day. That was the way to an even bigger problem. Feeling a little depressed, he focused on the screen. “So who’s winning?”
* * *
Mary Elizabeth hurried into the house. “Got caught in the rain,” she said as she rushed past her parents sitting in the living room. “Going to change.”
She raced up the steps to her room, grateful to see Rose Anna’s bedroom door was shut. Her youngest schweschder would be curious about what had happened at David and Lavina’s farm today, and she just didn’t want to talk.
Tiptoeing past her door, she slipped inside her room and quietly shut the door. What a relief to be home, in her room, where she could regain her composure. Peeling off her sodden bonnet and kapp, she pulled off her dress and underclothes. She turned on the shower, stepped into the tub, and felt the tears start.
She’d held them back during the drive home, determined not to let Sam see how much he’d hurt her. But now she let them fall. They were tears of hurt but of anger, too, and she never got angry. Gut Amish maedels didn’t get angry, she chided herself. They were supposed to be above such behavior, to serve God and family and community and above all, forgive those who hurt and angered them.
Even men like Sam who’d abandoned them so close to the time after harvest when they’d expected to marry.
She swiped at the tears on her face. When would she feel less hurt? Less angry? When would she forgive?
Feeling defeated, she stood under the spray until the water ran cool before she shut it off and stepped out to dry herself. She pulled on her nightgown then sat on her bed and drew a comb through her still-damp hair.
There was a knock on her door. “Kumm,” she called and her mudder opened the door. “I thought you might like a cup of tea. You looked cold when you came in.”
Mary Elizabeth smiled as her mudder slipped into the room. Sometimes she thought her mudder didn’t look old enough to be the parent of three grown dochders. She was still as slender as a maedel, her complexion smooth and creamy, her hair the same blonde without a strand of gray.
She set the comb aside. “Danki, I was,” she said as she took the mug from her. “The shower helped me warm up some.”
Linda sat down next to her on the bed, took the comb, and began drawing it through the long blonde tresses. “Did you have a gut day?”
How could she answer that? She nodded. It had been gut until she had the quarrel with Sam. “The men got everything done they wanted to just before it began raining.”
“Sam brought you home.”
She must have heard his truck. “Ya.”
Her mudder touched her cheek and made her look at her. “You’ve been crying.”
Mary Elizabeth blinked rapidly. She didn’t want to cry again.
“What kind of tears were they? Hurt or anger?”
She found herself smiling wryly. “Both. I’m afraid I argued with him.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“You know me.”
“He hurt you. I’m schur he wasn’t surprised that you were angry with him.”
“He was, a little.”
Amish couples didn’t often share with their parents that they were dating but after Sam left, her mudder had found her crying and Mary Elizabeth hadn’t been able to hold back why.
“But I shouldn’t have said the things I did. I should forgive him.”
Her mudder kissed her forehead. “It’ll come, dear one. It’ll come.” She rubbed her back. “Why don’t you put on a robe, go sit by the fire in the living room and dry your hair?”
“I think I’d rather just climb into bed.”
“Allrecht.”
“Mamm? Before you go, tell me the story again, the one about you and Daed.”
Her mudder laughed softly and gathered her into her arms like she was a little kind. “You always loved that story, you and your schweschders.” She fell silent for a moment and gently rocked Mary Elizabeth.
“Once upon a time there was this boy, this tall, handsome blond boy with the most beautiful gray eyes, who went to the same schul with me but he never really saw me. It was the last year of schul—I think we were about thirteen or fourteen. All the other maedels thought he was so handsome, too, but he didn’t seem interested in any of us. He was so serious about his studies, you see. He wanted to learn everything he could. At recess he’d even sit there on the sidelines and read these big books about farming while we were playing volleyball or just talking and laughing.
“And then one day this big dog came running on the playground outside the schul. I don’t know where he came from, but he ran into a group of us and all the maedels went running, screaming, and before I could run away the dog knocked me down and I thought he was going to bite me. Your daed chased him away and helped me up, and he pulled out a bandanna and wiped away my tears. And he looked at me, really looked at me. And we couldn’t stop looking at each other.”
“And one day when you were old enough he asked you to marry him.”
“He did. And we had three beautiful dochders and lived happily
