style="font-size:15px;"> Her son ambled down the stairs, his dark hair flying out in shiny clusters around his head. “I forgot my hat,” he said, turning to head back up the stairs.
Sarah Rose shook her head and put her little arms across her midsection in frustration. “I don’t like being late.”
“Nor do I,” Ava Jane confirmed. “Eli, you have sixty seconds. Sarah Rose will count.”
She knew Sarah Rose could only make it to fifty, but Eli came rushing down the stairs, his black felt hat crooked. “Here, Mamm.”
“I’m not finished counting,” Sarah Rose whined, her eyes going big and misty.
“You can finish counting on the walk over to the Miller place,” Ava Jane said. “Now, let’s gather our things and get on the road. It’s a nice Sunday morning.”
The Millers held services in their big barn. Jacob and most of the other men of the district had helped them build it a few years ago. The women had gathered and made food for the event. Barn buildings were always an event to see.
Now the tall, sturdy building had weathered a bit but it would stand the test of time. Not like her old farmhouse. Jacob had tried to keep up with the many repairs around the twenty-acre farm, but he’d never been able to get the place the way he wanted. He loved working the land and they’d made a passable income selling produce and grain, but in spite of her family’s best efforts, she’d been forced to let some of the field go fallow. Now she sold baked goods, eggs and canned goods to make a living and tended a small garden so she could sell fresh produce and fruit at the local farmers market. She also made quilts, doilies, pot holders and aprons to help bring in extra income.
It wasn’t a bad life, but it was a tiring life. Constant worry nagged at her. She had two children to feed and clothe and, while her parents helped, she could never catch up.
Ava Jane waved to a family passing in a buggy but her thoughts went back to the day she’d seen Jeremiah in the general store. Why she’d agreed to let him come to fix her porch was beyond her. She couldn’t stop him now. She’d seen the determination in his deep blue eyes. There was something commanding about him that frightened her and made her wonder what he’d seen and done out there.
Steel. His gaze held a sliver of steel.
That had to have come from being trained to...fight and kill.
She couldn’t think beyond that. She couldn’t imagine what he’d been forced to endure in the name of justice and democracy. And yet, beyond that steel, she’d also seen a brokenness, a crack in the armor he’d had to put on.
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