Johanna's Bridegroom. Emma Miller

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      “How about some biscuits?” Johanna asked, walking beside Roland. “If you have flour, I could make you some.”

      “Ya! Biscuits!” J.J. cried.

      Roland tugged at the brim of his hat. “I wouldn’t want to put you out. You’ve already—”

      “Don’t be silly, Roland. What are neighbors for? I can’t imagine how you and J.J. manage the house and the farm, plus your farrier work, just the two of you.”

      “Mary helps with the cleaning sometimes. I’ll admit that I don’t keep the house the way Pauline did.”

      “It won’t be the first messy kitchen I’ve ever seen. Let me bake the biscuits,” Johanna said, eager now to treat Roland as she would any neighbor in need of assistance. “And whatever else I can find to make a meal. If it makes you feel any better, Jonah and I will share it with you. It’s the least I can do for your gift of a hive of bees.”

      “A gift you’re more than welcome to.” He offered her a shy smile, and the sight of it made a shiver pass down her spine. Roland Byler had always had a smile that would melt ice in a January snowstorm.

      “The thought of homemade biscuits is tempting,” he said. “There’s a chicken, too, but it’s not cooked.”

      She forced herself to return his smile. “You and the boys do your chores and give me a little time to tend to the meal,” she said briskly.

      “Don’t say I didn’t warn you about the kitchen. I left dirty dishes from breakfast and—”

      “Hush, Roland Byler. I think I can manage.” Chuckling, she left him at the barn and walked toward the house.

      * * *

      An hour later, the smell of frying chicken, hot biscuits, green beans cooked with bacon and new potatoes drew Roland to the house like a crow to newly sprouting corn plants. The boys followed close on his heels as he stopped to wash his hands and splash cold pump water over his face at the sink on the back porch. Straw hat in hand, Roland stepped into the kitchen and was so shocked by its transformation that he nearly backed out the door.

      This couldn’t be the same kitchen he and J.J. had left only a few hours ago! Light streamed in through the windows, spilling across a still-damp and newly scrubbed floor. The round oak pedestal table that had belonged to his father’s grandmother was no longer piled high with mail, paperwork, newspapers and breakfast dishes. Instead, the wood had been shined and set for dinner. In the center stood a blue pitcher filled with flowers and by each plate a spotless white cloth napkin. Where had Johanna found the napkins? In the year since Pauline’s death, he hadn’t seen them. But it wasn’t flowers and pretty chinaware that drew him to the table.

      “Biscuits!” J.J. said. “Look, Jonah! Biscuits!”

      “Let me see your hands, boys,” Johanna ordered.

      Jonah and J.J. extended their palms obediently, and Roland had to check himself from doing the same. Self-consciously, he pulled out a ladder-back chair and took his place at the table. Both boys hurried to their chairs.

      On the table was a platter of fried chicken, another of biscuits, an ivory-colored bowl of green beans and another of peaches.

      “I thought it best just to put everything on the table and let us help ourselves,” Johanna said. “It’s the way we do it at home. I found the peaches and the green beans in the cellar. I hope you don’t mind that I opened them.”

      “Fine with me.” Roland’s mouth was watering and his stomach growling. Breakfast had been cold cereal and hard-boiled eggs. Last night’s supper had consisted of bologna and cheese without bread, tomato soup out of a can and slightly stale cookies to go with their milk. He hadn’t sat down to a meal like this since he’d been invited to dinner at Charley and Miriam’s house the previous week. Roland was just reaching for a biscuit when Johanna’s husky voice broke through his thoughts.

      “Bow your heads for the blessing, boys. We don’t eat before grace.”

      “Ne,” Roland chimed in, quick to change his reaching for a biscuit motion to folding his hands in silent prayer. Lord, God, thank You for this food, and thank You for the hands that prepared it. He opened one eye and saw that Johanna’s head was still modestly lowered. He couldn’t help noticing that the hair along her hairline was peeping out from under her Kapp and had curled into tight, damp ringlets. Seeing that and the way Johanna had tied up her bonnet strings at the nape of her neck made his throat tighten with emotion.

      Refusing to consider how pretty she looked, he clamped his eyes shut and slowly repeated the Lord’s Prayer. And this time, when he opened his eyes again, the others were waiting for him. Johanna had an amused look on her face, not exactly a smile, but definitely a pleased expression.

      “Now we can eat,” she said.

      Roland reached for the platter of chicken and passed it to her. “You didn’t need to clean my dirty kitchen, but we appreciate it.”

      “I did need to, if I was to cook a proper meal,” she replied, accepting a chicken thigh. “It’s no shame for you to leave housework undone when you have so much to do outside. I’m only sorry you haven’t asked for help from the community.”

      “We manage, J.J. and I.”

      “Roland Byler. You were the first to help when Silas lost the roof on his hog pen. You must have the grace to accept help as well as give it. You can’t be so stubborn.”

      “You think so?” he asked, stung by her criticism. Personally, he’d always thought that she was the stubborn one. True, he had wronged her and he’d embarrassed her with his behavior back when they’d been courting. He’d tried to apologize, more than once, but she’d never really accepted it. One night of bad choices, and she’d gone off and married another.

      “Dat?” J.J. giggled. “You broke your biscuit.”

      Roland looked down to see that he’d unknowingly crushed the biscuit in his hand. “Like it that way,” he mumbled as he dropped it onto his plate and stabbed a bite of chicken and a piece of biscuit with his fork.

      “Gut chicken,” J.J. said.

      “If you don’t eat all those biscuits, you can have one with peaches on it for dessert,” Johanna told the boys. “If you aren’t full, that is.”

      “We won’t be, Mam,” Jonah said. “I never get tired of your biscuits.”

      And I never get tired of watching you, Roland thought as he helped himself to more chicken. But he was building a barn out of straw, wishing for what he couldn’t have, for what he’d thrown away with both hands in the foolishness of his youth.

      Johanna’s kind acts of cleaning his kitchen and cooking dinner for them had been the charitable act of one neighbor to another, nothing more. And all the wishing in the world wouldn’t change that.

      Chapter Three

      At nine the following Saturday morning, Johanna stood in the combined kitchen-great room of the new farmhouse that her sisters Ruth and Miriam shared. Ruth and СКАЧАТЬ