She left the lettuce where it was and picked a couple handfuls of peas from the vines in front of her for lunch. Continuing on to the house, she paused at the sink in the back porch to wash up. The others were in the kitchen fixing breakfast.
“I want to ask Judith about the knitting pattern she brought over yesterday evening if the girls come this week,” Ida Mae was saying.
Mary set the peas on the counter. “What is the pattern?”
“It’s for stockings that you knit from the toe up, rather than the top down. I’ve never seen one like it. I was trying to figure out how it works last night, but it’s beyond me.”
“Margaret used to make stockings like that,” Aunt Sadie said. She sat at the table, paring potatoes. “Margaret Lapp, Judith and Esther’s mother. I have a pair of stockings she made. I’ll show them to you...” Her voice trailed off as she dropped her knife on the table and started to rise.
Mary put a hand on her shoulder. “You can show us after breakfast. There’s no hurry.”
Aunt Sadie sank back down into her chair. “Ja. No hurry.” She sat with her hands in her lap, a frown creasing her brow.
“What’s wrong?”
The older woman startled and looked at Mary. “What was I doing?”
“You were peeling potatoes.”
Aunt Sadie looked at the paring knife and potatoes on the table, her face vague. Then her brow cleared. “Ach, ja. The potatoes.”
Mary glanced at Ida Mae. This wasn’t the first time they had needed to remind Aunt Sadie of what she had been doing. In the six days since they had arrived, small lapses in their aunt’s memory had been frequent. Perhaps their older relative did need them to take care of her, even if she wasn’t ready to admit it.
They finished fixing breakfast in silence, each of them caught up in their own thoughts. As Mary scrambled the eggs, Ida Mae fried the potatoes and onions, the aroma filling the little kitchen.
Mary hoped the move to Indiana would be the healing balm her sister needed. The death of Ida Mae’s young, handsome beau in a farming accident six weeks ago had been a terrible thing, and even though Ida Mae had put on a brave face this morning, grief still shadowed her eyes.
At least Ida Mae’s tragedy gave Mary an excuse whenever someone questioned her own pale face and shadowed eyes. No one needed to know the real reason for her own grief, even her closest sister.
Mary set the table, laying the spoons next to the plates, carefully lining them up next to the knives. One by one she set them down, her fingers lingering on the smooth handles. She missed, ne, she craved Ida Mae’s cheerfulness. She relied on her sister to keep things going, to keep Mary’s mind off the past.
Soon, though, Ida Mae would move on. She would meet a young man, get married, have a family of children and be happy again. The same dream that Mary had shared with her sister for so many years.
She blinked back tears as she straightened the fork she had just laid on the table. Ida Mae would see her hopes fulfilled, but not Mary. She laid another fork on the table. That dream belonged to an innocent girl with dreams of the future, and she had left that girl in Ohio.
* * *
The sun was already above the tops of the trees as Samuel walked to the barn. As he shoved the big sliding door open, he scanned the building’s dusty interior, filled with equipment and clutter from days gone by. How would that Mary Hochstetter see Daed’s barn? Thinking about her coffee-brown eyes, so much like Mamm’s, pulled at something deep inside, something that reminded him of another time and another place.
A week, years ago, when he and his brother, Bram, had been sent to Grossdawdi’s farm in Eden Township. He must have been four or five years old. Grossmutti’s kitchen had been a wonder of cinnamon and apples and as much food as he could eat. Grossdawdi’s brown eyes crinkled when he smiled, and he had smiled often. The barn had been a wonderful place to play, with hay piled in the lofty mow.
Samuel relaxed against the doorframe, remembering Grossdawdi’s patient hands teaching him how to rub oil into the gleaming leather harnesses. His hand cupping Samuel’s head and pulling him close in the only hug he remembered.
He had never seen the old couple again, but he hadn’t forgotten the peace that had reigned in their home. And one quiet glance of Mary’s eyes had brought it all back.
Daed’s barn had never been as orderly as Grossdawdi’s, even now when it was nearly empty. There hadn’t been enough horses to fill the stalls since before Daed had passed on. Their driving mare spent her days in the meadow, too ornery for the girls to handle by themselves.
Samuel walked over to her stall and peered out the open side door to where the mare stood, one hip cocked and head down, drowsing in the afternoon sun as she swished flies with her tail.
Daed had left the barn a mess when he passed away two years ago. Broken harnesses still sat in a moldy pile in the corner and the unused stalls were knee deep in old straw. They had never been cleaned out when the work horses had been sold to pay off Daed’s debts. The cow was gone, too, and the bank barn’s lower level was empty except for the mash cooker.
Every time he thought about trying to bring order to the chaos, Samuel felt like he was drowning in memories and past sins. Soon after Daed’s funeral, he had started clearing out the old, moldy harnesses and had found one of the bottles Daed kept stashed away. The smell brought back sickening scenes of Daed trying to hide the bottles from him with clumsy motions. When he found another stash among the straw in one of the empty box stalls, he had given up. Let the old barn keep its secrets.
Walking on to the horse’s stall, he stopped at the stack of hay on the barn floor and pulled out a forkful. The mare poked her head into her stall, her feet planted firmly in the dried mud in the doorway between her pasture and the dim barn, watching Samuel. Her ears pricked forward as Samuel thumped the fork on the side of her manger to dump the hay off, but she didn’t move. The horse was right to be suspicious. Samuel had never been overly kind to the beast. He had never been cruel, but had only followed Daed’s example.
Daed hadn’t taken much time with the horses, using them until they were worn out and then buying new ones, and Samuel had always expected to do the same. He had never thought much about it until he saw the sleek horses in the pasture at meeting yesterday. His horse had looked sickly compared to them, and men judged a farmer’s abilities by the condition of his stock. Anyone looking at his poor mare would know what the rest of his farm was like without even having to see it. They would know how he had been neglecting his legacy.
Samuel pulled the carrot he had brought from the root cellar out of his waistband. Daed had bought the mare cheap at a farm sale the year before he died. She had been strong enough, but with Daed’s lack of care, she had never become the sleek, healthy animal the other men at church kept.
He turned the carrot over in his hand. Daed’s horse, Daed’s problem. Except that Daed wasn’t here anymore. Like everything else around the farm, the horse was his responsibility now whether he liked it or not.
“Hey there.” Samuel kept his voice soft, and the mare’s ears swiveled toward him. “Look what I have for you.”
He broke the carrot in half and her head went up at the crisp snap. She stretched her neck toward
