The Amish Nanny's Sweetheart. Jan Drexler

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СКАЧАТЬ even though Judith seemed kinder and friendlier than Hannah. He didn’t belong here, and he wasn’t planning to stay. If Pa showed up—

      “Guy! What in the world are you doing?”

      Startled by David’s shout, Guy slammed back to reality. The horses had pulled the spreader off the straight track he thought they were on and were headed toward the barn.

      “Sorry!” he called, and waved in David’s direction as he guided the horses back to the middle of the field. At least no one would notice his distraction, the way they would if he had been plowing. He shook his head as he thought about the ribbing he would have gotten if the crops had grown in crooked rows.

      He finished the field and headed toward the barn to pick up another load of manure. Without a word, David met him at the manure pile and started shoveling. Guy joined him, eyeing his expression to gauge his mood.

      David was a good boss, and had always been more than kind to him, but even David could get riled. He expected the best work from Guy, just as he expected it from himself. Mistakes were always fixed, sloth was never tolerated and attention to the task at hand was demanded. Guy had broken that last rule too often, and he waited for David’s reprimand.

      It came when the spreader was filled and ready for the next field.

      “You weren’t driving the team back there, they were driving you.” David leaned on his shovel, his gaze on the front acres. “What were you thinking about?”

      Guy shot a glance toward the Beachey house. The first thing he had learned that summer when he was nine, his first summer with the Masts, was that David could always tell when he tried to skirt the truth.

      “I saw that new girl come out of the house.”

      David let the shadow of a grin show. “I guess a girl is a fair distraction for a fellow your age, but don’t let it happen again. When you’re driving a team, they need your full attention.”

      Guy climbed onto the seat of the spreader and clicked his tongue as a signal to the horses. He didn’t have a view of the neighbor’s house from the back field, but his mind went off on its own thoughts, anyway. Keeping the team on track, he focused on the fence post at the far side.

      David had taught him that if he picked a point and kept his eye on it, his path would always be straight and true. Almost everything David taught him had more than one meaning. He had made it clear that Guy needed to have a goal for his life and to keep his eyes on that. He was an eddy in a stream, David had complained. Always doing, but never going anywhere. But Guy just couldn’t find that centering point.

      When the horses reached the fence post, he turned them around and lined up the next goal, the crooked tree by the farm pond, just beyond the fence.

      At nineteen years old, he still had no idea what he wanted out of life.

      No, that was wrong. He knew.

      He had known ever since Pa had taken him to the Orphan’s Home on his fifth birthday. He still remembered the green suit Mama had made and how the wool had made his neck itch. He remembered the smell of the Home. The putrid odor that lingered in the dormitory rooms and drifted down the stairs. The crying that echoed in the hallways.

      “I’ll come get you when I find work,” Pa had said as he crouched in front of him, smoothing the collar of the green suit. “It may be a while, but they’ll take good care of you here.” And then Pa had patted his shoulder and left, trotting down the sidewalk back to the old dusty black automobile.

      Guy had waited for his return, and the years of aching emptiness had about killed him.

      He knew what he wanted out of life. He wanted a father who never left his boy behind. He wanted a mother who didn’t die. He wanted his family.

      But that was a dead-end dream.

      The next time Pa had come back, on an early-spring day three years later, he had smelled of alcohol. A woman had been with him.

      “Dressed in floozy clothes,” Mrs. Bender, the matron at the Home, had said with a sniff.

      The fancy woman had taken one look at him and poked Pa in the shoulder. “That ain’t your kid. He looks nothing like you.”

      Then she had leaned close to Guy, grabbing his chin and turning it one way and then the other. “Nothing like you.”

      She had released his chin from her icy stick fingers and lit a cigarette, walking toward the shiny burgundy-colored car waiting by the road. “It’s him or me, Sugar Daddy,” she had called over her shoulder as she climbed into the front seat.

      Pa had shrugged his shoulders, his eye on the woman and the car. “She won’t be around long, and then I’ll be back for you.” He had straightened his striped jacket and settled his hat more firmly on his head. “You see how it is, don’t you, Sport?”

      Pa had come by to visit a few times after that, showing up every couple of years. Twice he’d had different fancy women with him. Another time he had shown up on foot, dressed in torn clothes and dusty shoes that were cracked and showing Pa’s bare feet through the peeling leather. Every time, he had left with the same promise of coming back to get him. Guy only needed to be patient until Pa’s ship came in.

      But Guy had learned that Pa’s promise was nothing but straw. Easily made, easily broken.

      The horses had stopped with their noses at the fence, and Brownie turned his head to look back at Guy.

      “All right, all right. Hold your horses.” Guy shook off the memories and grinned as he turned the team around to start the next pass down the field. Horses holding their horses. If he’d still been at the Home, he’d have told that joke to the other boys as they shivered on their cots waiting for the lights-out call to drift up the long stairway. But he no longer belonged there. Too old for the Home, he was on his own.

      He looked at the big white house at the edge of the barnyard. David and Verna’s place wasn’t home, either, no matter how welcome they tried to make him feel. He wasn’t theirs and never would be. He didn’t really belong anywhere.

      The memory of Judith’s quiet glance sent a cool stream of peace through him. Maybe, just maybe, she could help him belong. The Penn Dutch lessons should help him become more comfortable in the community. Maybe he could put down roots here. Buy a farm. Raise a family. He let his thoughts flow to a home and family like Matthew Beachey’s, with a girl like Judith as his wife and children growing along with their love for each other. Guy shook his head with a laugh. That dream was far beyond the reach of an outcast like him.

      * * *

      Judith turned the ham frying in the cast-iron skillet then checked the potatoes with a fork. Dinner was nearly ready, and just in time. She could see Matthew heading toward the house for his noon meal.

      “Ach, Judith, you’re a blessing!”

      Annie stood in the kitchen doorway, rocking and bouncing as she held a fussy Viola in her arms. Or was it Rose? Judith couldn’t tell the two babies apart yet. They both looked like Annie, with wisps of red curls growing on their soft, pink heads. Meanwhile, Eli squirmed, trying to get down from his perch on her left hip.

      As she set him on the floor, she waited until he had his balance before letting him go on a headlong dash toward СКАЧАТЬ