She had done everything she could to try to persuade them both to listen to the other, but she had failed, and now it was too late.
Leah bent to pick up Shep and put him back in the buggy, but the little dog jumped out again, clearly thinking it was a game. Shep ran forward to the horse, who snorted a warning at him. The black dog was fascinated with the other animals on the farm, even the barn cats that had rewarded his curiosity with a scratch on the tip of his black nose.
“Stay, Shep,” she said.
The little dog obeyed with an expression she was familiar with from Mandy. An expression that said, All right, even though I don’t want to.
Sort of how she felt trying to make conversation with Ezra Stoltzfus. The last time she’d talked to him, words had flowed nonstop from both of them. Now it felt like they were strangers. With a start, she realized that was exactly what they were. She’d changed in many ways over the past ten years; surely he had, too.
If she needed proof, she got it when Ezra said in the same cool tone he used to greet her, “To be honest, Leah, I didn’t expect to see you in Paradise Springs ever again.”
“I wasn’t sure I would ever get back here.” She needed a safer subject, one where she didn’t have to choose each word with care. “How are your sisters?”
“Ruth is married.”
“She married before I left.”
“True. She has seven kinder now.”
“Did she choose names for them from Old Testament books as your parents did?”
His grin appeared and vanished so quickly she wondered if she’d truly seen it. “She decided to start with New Testament names.”
“And how is Esther?”
“She is at home. Mamm moved into the dawdi haus after Daed died, and our baby sister is now giving orders to the Stoltzfus brothers to pick up after themselves and help with clearing the table after meals.”
She hesitated. Asking about his siblings was not uncomfortable, but asking him how he was and what he was doing seemed too personal. That was silly. It wasn’t as if she was going to quiz him about whether he was courting anyone. She’d never ask that. It wasn’t their way to discuss possible matches before the young couple had their plans to marry announced during a church Sunday service. Even if such matters were discussed freely, she wouldn’t ask Ezra such a private question. Not now when every nerve seemed on edge.
“What about you, Ezra?” she asked, keeping her voice light. “I don’t see another shop here. What keeps you busy?”
“I took over the farm.”
“As you planned to. Have you started your cheese-making business yet?”
His gaze darted away. Had she said too much? Or was he simply unsettled by each reminder of how differently her life had turned out from what she’d talked about while his had followed exactly the path he wanted?
He bent to pat the head of the little dog, who had inched over to smell his boots, but Shep shied away.
“Shep is skittish around people he doesn’t know,” she said. “He usually stayed inside except for his walks when we were in Philadelphia.”
“Is that where you’ve been? Philadelphia? So close?”
She nodded, picking up the dog and holding him between her and Ezra like a furry shield. She was astonished by that thought. When they were growing up, she had never felt she needed to protect herself from Ezra. They’d been open about everything they felt and thought.
“Philadelphia is only fifty or sixty miles from here, and buses run from there to here regularly. Why haven’t you come back to Paradise Springs?” he asked, and she noticed how much deeper his voice was than when they’d last spoken. Or maybe she’d forgotten its rich baritone. “Why didn’t you come back for a visit?”
She gave him the answer she had perfected through the years, the answer that was partly the truth but left out much of what she felt in her heart. “I wanted to wait for my brother to come back with me.”
“Did he?” Ezra glanced around the parking lot. “Is he here?”
Tears welled in her eyes, even though she’d been sure she had cried herself dry in recent days. “No. Johnny died two weeks ago.” She regretted blurting out the news about her brother. How could Ezra have guessed when she wasn’t wearing black? She was unsure how to explain that she had only a single plain dress until she and Mamm finished sewing a black one for her.
Ezra’s face turned gray beneath his tan, and she recalled how Johnny and Ezra had been inseparable as small boys. That changed when they were around twelve or thirteen years old. Neither of them ever explained why, though she had pestered both of them to tell her.
“What happened?” he asked.
She crooked a finger for him to come away from the buggy. Even though the accident had happened shortly after Mandy was born, she didn’t want to upset the kind by having her listen to the story again. Mandy was already distressed and desperate to return to Philadelphia and the life and friends she had there, but Leah hadn’t considered—even for a second—leaving her niece behind with Mandy’s best friend’s family, who offered to take her in and rear her along with their kinder.
Mandy and she needed each other, because they had both lost the person at the center of their lives. Now they needed to go on alone. Not completely alone because they had each other and her parents and her two older sisters and their spouses and their extended family of cousins, aunts and uncles in Paradise Springs. And God, who had listened to Leah’s prayers for the strength to live a plain life in the Englisch world.
Leah paused out of earshot of the sleeping girl and faced Ezra. The sunlight turned his brown hair to the shade of spun caramel that made his brown eyes look even darker. How many times she had teased him about his long lashes she had secretly envied! Then his eyes had crinkled with laughter, but now when she looked into those once-familiar eyes, she saw nothing but questions.
“Johnny was hurt in a really bad construction accident, and he never fully recovered.” She looked down at Shep, who was whining at the mention of his master’s name. The poor dog had been in mourning since her twin brother’s death, and she had no idea how to comfort him. “In fact, Shep was his service dog.” She stroked the dog’s silken head.
“Why didn’t you come home after Johnny was hurt?”
“He said he didn’t want to be a burden on the community.” She thought of the horrendous medical bills that had piled up and how she had struggled to pay what the insurance didn’t cover. Johnny’s friends told her that they should sue the construction company, but she had no idea how to hire an attorney. Instead, she had focused on her quilts, taking them to shops to sell them on consignment or to nearby craft fairs.
“No one is a burden in a time of need.” Ezra frowned. “Both of you know that because you lived here when Ben Lee Chupp got his arm caught in the baler, and the doctors had to sew it back on. Everyone in our district and in his wife’s district helped raise money to pay for his expenses. We would have gladly done the same for Johnny.”
“I know, but Johnny didn’t feel the same.” She
