She knew those kinds of stories about everyone in her community. They were like a big family to her. But she knew very little about the man standing in front of her. And he knew very little about her.

  She started with the obvious. “You can’t go.”

  “You want to travel. You have plans. I’m aware.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “Just to be clear, I have dreams, too, and they don’t involve an outdoor market or a town with thirty-five thousand people.”

  “I’ve applied to join an MDS work crew.”

  He looked at her as if she’d spoken in a foreign language.

  “Mennonite Disaster Services—they work all over the country and—”

  “I know who MDS is. Why would you join a work crew?”

  “Because I want to help, and—”

  “And you want to travel.”

  “Ya.” She tried to think back to first meeting Gideon. What could she have done differently? How had they ended up here...with her chasing him across a parking lot? “There aren’t a lot of opportunities to travel far from home if you’re a single Amish woman. I could teach, but then I’d be forced to stay in each place an entire year, and that seemed...well, it seemed a bit long.”

  Gideon stuck his hands in his pockets and studied her a moment, then walked over to the edge of the parking area and stared out across the market. Finally, he turned to her and said, “You can’t go unless I stay.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I knew you wanted out of here, but I figured you were going to live with a family member or something. It never occurred to me that you’d be joining MDS.”

  “They do amazing work.”

  “I’m aware. There have been MDS crews in Texas for quite a few years. First because of flooding. Then rebuilding houses in Bastrop, where there was a large wildfire. And finally, down at the coast, after a hurricane destroyed entire neighborhoods. Not that far from where I live, actually...where I lived.”

  Changing to past tense seemed to cause him a great deal of misery.

  “So you understand it’s important work.”

  “I do, but I’m sorry. I’m just having trouble catching up here. You’ve applied for a permanent position with them?”

  “Ya. I don’t even know what I’ll be doing. My job could be cooking or cleaning or putting up drywall. And I don’t care about that—not really. Volunteering means I’ll be helping other people, and it’ll give me a chance to see somewhere different.” She sounded pathetic even to her own ears. She sounded like a child.

  She stared at Samson, focused on rubbing behind his ears, focused on blinking away the tears that were threatening to fall.

  Gideon stepped closer, reached into his pocket and pulled out a peppermint for the horse. Slowly, he unwrapped it, then offered it to Samson.

  “It’s commendable of you to agree to such a thing.” His voice was soft and thoughtful.

  He no longer seemed angry, and that surprised her. Was he actually considering this situation from her point of view? Was he even able to do that?

  “That’s quite a sacrifice to make.”

  Becca shook her head so hard that her kapp slipped a bit. She straightened it, then said, “It’s not a sacrifice—let’s be clear on that. I should be paying them.”

  “Because it’s an escape for you.”

  “A way for me to be somewhere else and have all my expenses paid. They’ll provide a place for me to stay and food for me to eat. They even supply whatever tools you need.”

  “But you work for free.”

  “Sure. I know.” Her voice grew softer, more contemplative. She’d dreamed of this for so long that it had become like a reality—a life already lived and one that she might revisit soon. In her daydreams, she’d actually seen herself working on some person’s house that had been ravaged and made unlivable by floodwater, or whipped away by a tornado, or burned to the ground by a fire. She’d envisioned each of those scenarios many times.

  She’d even thought of being away at Christmas, of receiving a box of gifts from her family—small, homemade things, but oh, how she would treasure each one. She’d worked herself into feeling quite unsettled over that particular daydream.

  Gideon shifted his weight to his left foot, then his right—almost as if he was weighing her responses to his questions. “Why do you hate it here so much?”

  “Ha. That’s a funny question, coming from the guy who can’t wait to get away.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the market, or this town, or even Indiana.”

  “Nothing except it’s not your home.”

  “Correct.”

  She pressed her cheek against Samson’s neck, then turned, walked over to an adjacent park bench and flopped down on it. “What a pickle.”

  Gideon looped Samson’s reins over the hitching post, then joined Becca on the bench. “Yup.”

  “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

  “Right.”

  “I didn’t. I’m many things, but I am not a snoop.”

  “So how did you happen to be pressing your ear against the closed office door?”

  “I came back to do some paperwork until my dat was ready to leave, and when I heard you...well, I didn’t want to walk in and interrupt. Then you started shouting, and it wasn’t too hard to figure out the other side of the conversation. But I’m sorry. I should have walked away. It was wrong to stand there and listen to a private conversation.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  She sat up straighter and looked him directly in the eyes. He had pretty blue eyes. It was just that they were usually overshadowed by a frowning face. He wasn’t frowning now, though. His expression was thoughtful. “Seriously? You’re not going to stay mad for the next day or week or however long you’re here?”

  Gideon shrugged. “I may be a bit of a grump—and yes, I did holler at my dat, which I’ll be apologizing for in my letter home tonight—but I don’t hold a grudge.”

  “Danki.”

  “Gem gschehne.”

  She almost laughed. They sounded like two normal people having a normal conversation. In that moment, she realized they’d been at odds with one another since the moment they’d met in her dat’s office. Had that been only a week ago? It seemed as if they’d been locked in battle for a much longer period of time.

  “I haven’t been much of a friend,” she confessed. “I’ve been looking at you as my ticket out of here, and when you didn’t line up with my plans...well, my reaction was as bad as your hollering.”

  “Why is it that I can see you stomping your foot, but it’s harder to picture you raising your voice?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re not wrong.”

  “Maybe we should try again.” He held out his hand in a very Englisch way, causing her to laugh. “My name’s Gideon Fisher. Nice to meet you.”

  Slipping her hand into his, she tried to match his light tone. “And I’m Becca Yoder, assistant manager for this fine outdoor market. It would seem that’s a title I’m going to keep.”

  Their eyes locked, and her hand slipped from his.

  Gideon cleared his throat and looked away. “Surely, we can think of some solution that would work for you and for me.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  Gideon stood, then reached out a hand and pulled Becca to her feet. “I need some time away from here. Some time to think. How about we talk about this tomorrow morning?”

  “Okay.”

  “Meet you at JoJo’s Pretzels? Eighty thirty?”

  “I can’t believe you know where JoJo’s is.”

  “Been there three times already.” He waited for her to nod in agreement; then, without another word, he unwrapped Samson’s reins, climbed into the buggy and drove away.

  Leaving Becca to wonder what they could possibly have to talk about and how this would end in any way that wouldn’t break her heart.

  * * *

  Gideon spent that evening working in Nathan’s barn. First, he mucked out Samson’s stall; then he spread fresh hay, filled the gelding’s oat bucket and made sure there was fresh water. When he’d finished those chores, he found a piece of discarded wood, sat on an old bench and began whittling.

  Nathan found him there an hour later.

  “Didn’t realize you were a whittler. If I’m not mistaken, that’s a fine reproduction of Samson.”

  Gideon stared down at the piece of wood. He hadn’t realized what he’d been doing, what he’d been creating. “It calms me.”

  “Want to talk about what you need calming from?”

  Gideon shrugged, then glanced up and met Nathan’s gaze. He didn’t know the man well yet, but he had a pleasant personality. He didn’t gossip about the neighbors whose goats constantly escaped into their pasture, often eating some of his crop before anyone realized they were in the wrong place. He also didn’t complain, though it was plain that his arthritis made grasping his coffee cup difficult in the mornings.

  Now he picked up a piece of sandpaper and began working on a four-foot piece of maple wood with a circumference of about six inches.

  “Are you making a walking stick?”

  “Ya. I hear tourists love Amish-made items.” He winked at Gideon. “Though it would be more accurate to say that Gotte made this piece of wood. I’m merely caring for it.”

  They sat silently for a while as Gideon whittled and Nathan sanded. It helped, the silence did. Helped his emotions to calm and his mind to line up the questions he needed answers to.

  Whittling had always come easy to him. He enjoyed being alone and allowing the silence around him to soothe his soul. The whittling was like a gift and one of the few things that set him apart from his eight siblings, whom he’d been born in the middle of. Thinking of his bruders and schweschdern, he remembered the time his bishop had spoken to him about middle-child syndrome.

  The bishop had explained that the idea was that middle children often felt as if they didn’t fit in with the older group or the younger group. They felt caught in the middle. At the time, Gideon had laughed and assured the bishop that he was fine. He could remember being angry about it afterward, though. Why did the bishop and his parents and even his siblings assume there was something wrong with him? Maybe there was something wrong with everyone else.

  Or maybe his bishop had been onto something, because even here, even fourteen hundred miles from home, he still felt as if he didn’t quite fit.

  Turning the wood over in his hands, he had the sensation that someone had handed it to him fully carved. He had very little to do with it. What was it Nathan had said? Gotte made this... I’m merely caring for it. Those words, they gave Gideon the courage to speak to Nathan. He cleared his throat, but he didn’t look up. He kept his eyes on the horse that was taking shape.

  He explained about his parents, how they’d wanted him to come to Indiana. How they had arranged the job at Amos Yoder’s market. He told the old man how uncomfortable he was there, how different it was from farming in a rural Texas community. And he even spoke of Becca and how his emotions around her confounded him.

  “Can’t say as I’ve ever reacted to a woman that way before,” he admitted. “One moment, I’m so aggravated at her that I’m sure the buttons on my suspenders are going to pop off. The next, I’m laughing at something she said or did.”

  When he’d finished baring his soul, the old man didn’t offer any advice, which was a point in his favor. Instead, he simply nodded as if everything that Gideon had said made sense.

  It didn’t make sense. Even he could admit that.

  “No words of advice?”

  “Oh. I wasn’t sure you wanted any.” Nathan grinned as he wiped the walking stick clean with an old cotton cloth. Then he reached for a bottle of linseed oil, splashed a little of it onto another cotton cloth and began rubbing the oil into the wood. The process was mesmerizing. It was like watching a watercolor painting come to life. The grain of the wood began to shine, and the beauty of the wood became apparent to Gideon, even from a distance of three feet.

  “Well, I wouldn’t turn down any advice. Plainly, I’m at a loss as to what to do.”

  “About which thing?”

  “Any of them.”

  “Ah.” And still Nathan didn’t offer any words of instruction.

  Gideon felt like laughing. How many times had his parents offered advice, or his older bruders? He’d always rolled his eyes and wished they’d stop talking, wished they’d stop assuming they understood what he was going through.

  “How can anyone really understand what someone else is going through?” Nathan’s words so closely mirrored Gideon’s thoughts that he was taken aback.

  “Pardon?”

  “What I mean is, I’ve been on this Earth a long time. Eighty-seven years, to be exact. But I can’t say that I’ve had to deal with the things you’re struggling with now. My life was very different from yours.” He continued rubbing the oil into the wood, turning the walking stick this way and that.

  Gideon returned to his whittling, shaping the horse’s ears and eyes.

  “Life passes so fast, like a runaway horse pulling a buggy.” Nathan smiled, though he didn’t look up. “That happened to me once. I thought I’d broken the horse—but truthfully, I didn’t want to spend any more time training it. So I harnessed it to an old buggy of my dat’s. Before you could say Shipshewana, that horse and my dat’s buggy were down the lane and dashing across the fields, trampling a good bit of corn.”

  The old man’s voice was soft as the night, almost lyrical. Gideon found himself easily picturing the runaway horse.

  “We called him Geronimo.” Nathan looked up now and smiled. He held out his hand—wrinkled by time, veins prominently close to the surface, age spots spread across his skin like a tan. He held out his hand and then motioned toward himself as if to welcome the horse home.

  He laughed, dropping his hand. “He was a fine horse, and I miss him still. I really do.”

  Gideon understood that the horse wasn’t the only thing Nathan was missing. How would it feel to be eighty-seven and to have the bulk of your life behind you?

  Nathan stood, put the linseed oil back on the shelf, carefully folded the cloths he had used and then set the walking stick next to the others he had worked on.

  Gideon thought that was that. He thought Nathan had no wisdom to share, only feelings for what had been lost.

  Nathan didn’t leave, though. He sat next to Gideon on the bench, his palms pressed together as if in prayer. Somehow, sitting that way—sitting shoulder to shoulder—made listening easier for Gideon.

  “I can’t tell you what job to take or not take, whether to follow your parents’ wishes, what your feelings for Becca might be. I can’t tell you any of those things, my friend.”

  Gideon tried for a laugh, but it came out as more of a croak. His hands stilled on the piece of wood. His heart, his very soul, seemed both wary and eager to hear something Nathan hadn’t yet said.

  “I can tell you that eighty-seven years pass like a spring storm—here and then suddenly gone. Not so long ago, I was a young scholar, carrying my lunch pail to the first day of school. Then I blinked and I was twenty-five, nervous and in love and worried that Mary would say no to my suggestion that we marry.” He kneaded his left hand with the right, attempting to ease the tightness there. “And then it seemed as if the very next moment, I was sitting beside her bed, praying for Gotte’s mercy, praying for a few more days.”

  We’re born, we fall in love, and then we die? Yikes.

  Was that Nathan’s idea of a pep talk?

  But Nathan wasn’t finished. He stood, then placed his hand on Gideon’s back. “Give love when you can, respect when you should and always—always—put first things first.”

  Gideon sat there a long time after Nathan left, no longer working on the piece of wood, not even aware of the passage of time. When he finally went into the house, Nathan was already in his room with the door closed, down for the night, asleep—he assumed.

  Sleep didn’t come so easily for Gideon. He lay in his bed, stared at the ceiling, tossed and turned. He worried and wondered and thought of—then discarded—several ideas.

  Nothing was as simple as he’d pretended it to be. Becca wasn’t a selfish young woman wanting to escape the confines of a too-close family.

  She wanted to work on a mission trip.

  She wanted to dedicate a portion of her life to helping others.

  And what did he want? He wanted to have the life he’d always had, to be left alone, to work the fields and not have to deal with people or commitment or change.

  That realization didn’t help him feel any better. He might be selfish, but didn’t he have a right to live the life of his choosing?

  How could they both have what they wanted?

  He remembered Nathan’s words. And when it seemed about time for the rooster to crow, when he was certain that he’d worried the night away without a moment of rest to show for it, he finally slipped into an uneasy slumber.

  Chapter Five

  Gideon was still hearing Nathan’s words as he trudged into the Davis Mercantile the next morning.

  Give love when you can. What did that even mean? He had a feeling Nathan wasn’t referring to romantic love, though Gideon wasn’t at all sure that he felt anything even close to love for Becca. He barely knew her. And she could be so aggravating.

  Maybe Nathan had meant it in a love your neighbor sense.

 

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