the girls’ dresses.
“He wasn’t looking for food. He wanted to talk to Dat.” Ellie glanced at the barn, glad for Dat’s ease when it came to talking to outsiders. “There was something strange about him. He was wearing Englisch clothes, but he spoke Deitsch.”
Mam’s voice was calm, as if she heard Englischers speaking their language all the time. “Maybe he has some Amish friends and learned the language from them. Did he want to buy the gelding Dat has for sale?”
“What would he want with a horse?”
“I expect an Englischer might want a horse once in a while.” Mam pulled another dress out of the basket at her feet. “When I see them tear along the roads in those automobiles, I wonder why anyone would hurry that fast just to end up in a ditch.”
“Lovina’s neighbor only did that once.”
“Once is enough, isn’t it?” Mam pulled the loaded clothesline lower to look at Ellie. “A person can be in too much of a hurry at times. When do you have time to pray, or even think?”
“For sure, I’m glad the church decided to keep them verboten. Not only are they noisy, but they smell terrible. Next thing you know, all the Englisch will be buying them.”
“Ach, not until these hard times are over.”
Ellie sighed as she pinned one of her brother’s shirts on the line. Would these hard times ever be over?
“I like automobiles.” Susan’s voice was soft, hesitant.
Ellie looked down at her young daughter. Automobiles? What would she say next?
“Why do you say that?” Ellie shook out the next shirt with a snap.
Susan leaned closer to Ellie from where she squatted next to one-year-old Danny in the grass under the clothesline, her brown eyes wide in her heart-shaped face. “Because they aren’t horses.” Her words were a whisper as she glanced toward the Belgians waiting to be hitched to the manure spreader.
Ellie pushed the clothespins down firmly. When would Susan get over this fear? Daniel’s accident had changed everything.
At this thought, Ellie paused, grasping at the line to control the sudden shaking of her hands. Her mind filled again with the horses’ grunting whinnies, the stomping hooves, the smell of fear and blood, Daniel trapped against the barn wall and then falling under those huge hooves... Ellie’s stomach churned. That day had left an impression in Susan’s mind that affected her even now, months later. It still affected all of them.
Ellie shook her head to brush away the memories and shoved the final clothespin onto the last shirt. What was done was done. She might wish things were different, but her husband was dead. That was a truth she faced every day. She refused to succumb to the stifling blanket of grief that pushed at the edge of her mind, tempting her to sink into its seductive folds.
“All done, Mam. Do you want me to help take the clothes in this afternoon?”
“Ne, don’t bother. I’ll have the girls tend to it when they get home from school.”
“Come, sweeties.” Ellie lifted Danny in her arms while Susan hopped on one foot next to her. “Time to get our dinner started.”
Ellie crossed the drive to the worn path between the barn and the vegetable garden that led to the Dawdi Haus. The house her grandparents had lived in when she was a child had sheltered her little family during the months since Daniel’s death. Susan ran ahead of her along the lane, her earlier fright forgotten.
“Plan on eating supper with us tonight,” Mam called after her. “I’m fixing a chicken casserole, and there’s plenty for all.”
“Ja, for sure,” Ellie called back, then turned her attention to Danny, who was squirming to get out of her arms. “Sit still there, young man.” She laughed at the determined expression on his face as she followed Susan.
Ellie watched the little girl skipping ahead, but her mind was full of a queer anticipation. It was as if her birthday was coming or the wild freshness of the first warm air of spring, pushing back the dark clouds of winter....
That Englischer’s grin, that was what brought this on. It did something to her, and she frowned at this thought. It didn’t matter what an Englischer did, no matter how blue his eyes were.
That grin held a secret. What was he thinking when he looked at her?
She hitched Danny up as the thought of what might have been going through his head came to her. Ach, why did an Englischer’s wicked-looking grin give her such a delicious feeling at the memory of it?
Dat and the stranger stood on the threshing floor between the open barn doors, where the fresh air and light were plentiful, but Ellie kept her eyes on the edge of the garden as she hurried to follow Susan. If she glanced their way, would she see that dimple flash as he grinned at her again?
She had to stop thinking about him. He would talk to Dat and then be gone, and she’d never see him again, for sure.
In the backyard of the Dawdi Haus, Ellie paused to pass her hand along a pair of her oldest son’s trousers. Dry already. She’d bring in the laundry before fixing the children’s dinner. After she put the little ones down for their naps, she could iron in the quiet time before Johnny, her scholar, came home. She smiled, anticipating the quiet hour or so in the shaded house, alone with her thoughts.
Opening the screen door for Susan, Ellie chanced a look at the big white barn behind her. Ja, he was still there, talking with Dat. She followed Susan into the house, letting the door close behind them with a ringing slam.
* * *
Bram glanced at the man next to him. John Stoltzfus was stern, yet quiet and confident. More like the grossdatti he barely remembered than the father he had left behind so many years ago. From the clean, ordered barn to the little girl skipping along the lane at the bottom of the ramp, the Stoltzfus farm was a world away from the home he had remembered growing up.
And a world away from Chicago. In the three days since he’d stepped out of his life in the city and walked back into his past, those twelve years had slipped away until even the stench of the West Side was a half-
remembered dream. Was he losing his edge already? It was too easy to fall into this simple, Plain life.
Bram’s thoughts followed the young woman in the brown dress as she walked past the barn toward the Dawdi Haus. When she ran her hand along the boy’s trousers on the clothesline, a door opened into a long-forgotten place in his mind. That simple, feminine action spoke of the home he had tried to forget. How many times had he seen his Mam do that same thing?
The breeze brought the scent of freshly plowed fields into the barn as the young woman opened the door of the Dawdi Haus and then glanced his way, meeting his eyes before disappearing with an echoing slap of the wooden screen door. Why did she live there? And why were there no men’s clothes hanging with the laundry?
Movement next to him drew his attention.
“So you’re coming home?”
John’s unspoken finally lingered at the end of the question, hinting at the speculation Bram knew he would be facing
