Seasons in Paradise. Barbara Cameron

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      Mary Elizabeth hurried to her side and hugged her. Worry turned to joy in a moment.

      “What’s going on?” Rose Anna wanted to know as she walked into the room.

      “David and I are having a boppli!”

      Rose Anna screamed and joined in on the group hug.

      Their dat found them like that, bound in a group hug in the middle of the kitchen.

      “What is going on?” he asked approaching a bit warily.

      Linda pulled away, wiping her eyes on a tissue. “Jacob, we’re going to be grosseldres!”

      “Lavina?” he asked, looking at her for confirmation.

      “Ya, Daed.”

      He held his arms wide and all the Zook women piled into them.

      Mary Elizabeth knew she would remember this moment for the rest of her life.

      * * *

      Her journal slipped out from under her pillow when she climbed into bed.

      Mary Elizabeth stared at it for a long moment. She hadn’t written in it for a long time, but something made her tuck it under her pillow every morning anyway.

      She pulled the quilt up around her and flipped to the last page she’d written on. The page was blotched and in places the ink had run. No wonder. She’d been crying as she wrote about the visit she’d made to see Sam. All the hurt came back now as she stared at the page. He’d refused to return to their community, said he was sorry that she was upset but he wasn’t returning to the community.

      She’d cried that day. She’d cried as she wrote in her journal. And she felt tears welling up now as she held it in her hands.

      Did it matter that he hadn’t met her gaze that day and avoided looking at her every time he saw her at his bruder David’s farm since then?

      She blinked away the tears, determined not to spend one more second, one more tear over him. Closing the journal, she turned to put it on the bedside table, but the moisture in her eyes caused her to misjudge the distance and the book fell on the floor. Leaning over, she picked up the book and the slip of paper that had fallen from it. She set the book on the table and leaned back to look at the paper. “My wish list for my mann,” she read.

      She remembered when she’d written it. Katie, a friend of hers, had told her she’d made such a list once. Mary Elizabeth had thought it was silly at the time—the kind of thing that daydreaming maedels did. And it was actually a little arrogant. After all, she’d heard all her life that God set aside the right person for you so telling Him what you wanted was telling Him how to do His job, wasn’t it?

      But she’d sat down and composed such a list. And a short time later she’d found herself looking at Sam Stoltzfus one day and realizing he was everything she’d put on her list.

      So she put the list in the journal and forgot it. After all, she had the real thing.

      But everything had changed. She sat up in bed, reached for a pen on the bedside table.

      And took a deep breath and began a new list.

      * * *

      “So did you hear the news?”

      Sam sat on the grass in the shade of a tree and pulled a bottle of iced tea from his lunch box. He drank half of it down and recapped it before he looked at Peter. “What news?”

      “Leah is opening up a second shop.”

      Sam grinned. “I had no idea you’d taken up quilting.”

      Peter scowled at him. “Don’t be a jerk. She needs help doing some renovations on the shop—it’s next to Stitches in Time.”

      “How do you know?”

      “Heard it from my mudder—who heard it from Fannie Miller who heard it from—”

      “Never mind. In other words, from the Amish grapevine.”

      “Right. Anyway, Leah’s mann died last year, so he can’t help her like he used to. So I stopped by to see what I could do.” He took a big bite of his sub and chewed. “If you’re interested, this could be our first project together.”

      Sam looked at him. Peter sat there looking so calm, eating his lunch and talking about making the renovations on Leah’s shop the first project.

      Of the company, he’d asked Sam to think about joining him just two days ago.

      “You’re serious.”

      “Very.”

      “You’d give all this up.” He waved his hand at the controlled chaos of the construction going on around them.

      “Dead serious.”

      “You move fast.”

      “Got to jump on opportunities, you know?”

      “You sure do. You talked about starting your own company just two days ago.”

      “Told you, been thinking about it for some time. Then this came along. I’m thinking it’s a sign. God’s giving me the go-ahead.”

      “It’s one job.”

      “And then we’ll get another.”

      “You can’t know that.”

      Peter just looked at him. “You can’t know we won’t.”

      Sam didn’t have any answer to that. He kept eating his sandwich even though he was getting pretty tired of eating bologna. It had been on sale, and pennies counted when your budget was as tight as his was.

      “So why’d Leah decide to open another shop? Seems like she’s pretty busy already with Stitches.”

      Peter finished his sub and started on an apple. “She says it’s a craft shop. Women from a local shelter are going to sell their stuff they sew there.”

      “Shelter?”

      “Yeah.”

      Sam searched his memory. It seemed to him that the last time he’d seen Lavina and Mary Elizabeth, they had talked about teaching quilting at a women’s shelter.

      “So, you in? Leah wants us to get started next week. We can do it a few afternoons a week after we get off here. Then we can see how it goes with other work, quit this job when we have enough business coming in.”

      Sam stared at the sandwich in his hand, at his patched work pants. Things had been tough since he’d moved into an apartment with John. Rent was high, then there was gas and insurance and the payment he made to David on the truck. Some extra money would come in handy. It wasn’t the farming he loved, but it was work.

      “That СКАЧАТЬ