on what?”
Jacob glanced at Alton, who nodded once. “I’m going to build you a playhouse.”
* * *
Hannah heard the conversation going on around her, but she felt as if she’d fallen into the creek and her ears were clogged with water. She heard it all from a distance. Then Matthew smiled that smile that changed the shape of his eyes. It caused his cheeks to dimple. It was a simple thing that never failed to reach all the way into her heart.
And suddenly Hannah’s hearing worked just fine.
“A playhouse? For me?”
“For sure and certain.”
“How come?”
Jacob shrugged and waited for Alton to answer the child.
“Some nice people want you to have one.”
“Oh. Cool.”
“Dat, we can’t...”
“We most certainly can, Hannah. The charity foundation contacted me last week to make sure it was all right, and I said yes. I think it would be a fine thing for Matthew to have.”
“Will I be able to move around in a playhouse? Like, with my wheelchair?”
“You most certainly will,” Jacob assured him.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“Because it don’t always fit good. Not in cars or on merry-go-rounds. Sometimes not even in buggies and we have to tie it on the back.”
“Your chair will fit in your playhouse. I can promise you that.”
Matthew laughed and stabbed his biscuit with his fork, dipped it in a puddle of syrup he’d poured on his plate and stuffed the gooey mess into his mouth.
Hannah’s head was spinning. Surely it was a good and gracious thing that someone had commissioned a playhouse for Matthew, but would it be safe for him to play in one? What if he fell out of his chair? What if he rolled out of the playhouse?
How could her father agree to such a thing?
And why was it being built by Jacob Schrock? She hadn’t thought about him in years, certainly hadn’t expected to see him again. Why today of all days, when her heart was sore from dreaming of David? Why this morning?
“Can I help?” Matthew asked.
“Oh, no.” Hannah abandoned her future worries and focused on the problems at hand. “You’ll leave that to Jacob.”
“But, Mamm...”
“We can’t risk your getting hurt.”
“I’ll be super careful...”
“And you’d only be in Jacob’s way.”
Matthew stabbed another piece of biscuit and swirled it into the syrup, but he didn’t plop it in his mouth. Instead he stared at the food, worried his bottom lip and hunched up his shoulders. Her son’s bullheadedness had been quite useful during his initial recovery. When the doctors had said he probably couldn’t do a thing, Matthew had buckled down, concentrated and found a way. There were days, though, when she wondered why Gotte had given her such a strong-willed child.
Jacob had drunk half his coffee and accepted a plate of eggs and bacon, which he’d consumed rather quickly. Now he sat rubbing his hand up and down his jaw, his clean-shaven jaw. The right side—the unscarred side. Was the injury the reason he’d never married? Was he embarrassed about the scar? Did women avoid him? Not that it was her business, and she’d certainly never ask.
“I just wanted to help,” Matthew muttered.
“Now that you mention it, I could use an apprentice.”
“I could be a ’rentice.” Matthew nodded his head so hard his hair flopped forward into his eyes, reminding Hannah that she would need to cut it again soon.
“It’s hard work,” Jacob cautioned.
“I can work hard.”
“You sure?”
“Tell him, Mamm. Tell him how hard I work at the center.”
“You’d have to hand me nails, tools, that sort of thing.”
“I can do that!” Matthew was rocking in his chair now, and Hannah was wise enough to know the battle was lost.
“Only if your mamm agrees, of course.”
She skewered him with a look. Certainly he knew that he’d backed her into an impossible corner. Instead of arguing, she smiled sweetly and said, “If your daddi thinks it’s okay.”
Hannah’s father readily agreed and then Jacob was pulling out sheets of drawings that showed a playhouse in the shape of a train, with extra-wide doors—doors wide enough for Matthew’s chair, room to pivot the chair, room to play. How could she not want such a thing for her child? The penciled playhouse looked like the stuff of fairy tales.
When she glanced up at Jacob, he smiled and said in a low voice, “We’ll be extra careful.”
“I should hope so.”
And then she stood and began to clear off the dishes. The last thing she needed to do was stand around staring into Jacob Schrock’s deep blue eyes. A better use of her time would be to go to town and pick up the Monday paper so she could study the Help Wanted ads. It looked like that wasn’t going to happen. There was no way she was leaving Matthew outside, working as an apprentice to a man who had no children of his own. She’d come home to find he’d nailed his thumb to a piece of wood, or cut himself sawing a piece of lumber, or fallen and cracked something open. Secondary infections were no laughing matter for a child who was a paraplegic.
She’d be spending the morning watching Matthew watch Jacob. As soon as he left for the day, she’d head to town because one way or another, she needed to find a job.
Hannah pushed aside her unsettled feelings and worked her way through the morning. She managed to complete the washing and hang it up on the line, and she helped her mother to put lunch on the table, all the while keeping a close eye on what was happening in the backyard.
When it was time for lunch, Matthew came in proclaiming he was an “official ’rentice now,” and Jacob followed behind him with a sheepish look on his face.
Her father joined them for the noon meal. Earlier, he had stayed around long enough to confirm where the playhouse would be built and then he’d headed off to the fields. It worried her sometimes, her father being fifty-two and still working behind a team of horses, but her mother only
