“Jah, it’s not as though the small towns around here have many motels,” Bram put in. He flashed a brown-eyed smile at Mary and Martha. “It seems our wives had the right idea all along, wanting to run a B and B. We only married them so they could support us on their profits!”
Martha and Mary laughed and returned to the kitchen. Within minutes they had carried more bowls to the table they’d set with simple blue woven placemats and dishes with a deep blue floral pattern. Leah sat down in the chair Jude pulled out for her, between their hostesses, and Jude took his place between Bram and Nate, across the table. After they’d bowed their heads in silent prayer, Leah surveyed their dinner hungrily.
“It’s a real pleasure to sit down to meat loaf and pot roast with gravy,” she said happily. “And the best part is that I didn’t have to cook!”
Nate chuckled as he handed the platter of roast beef to Jude. “Bram and I have discovered that we get a lot fancier fixings when the girls are cooking for guests—”
“Not that we go hungry when it’s just the four of us,” Bram hastened to put in. He smiled endearingly at the young woman to Leah’s left. “But I’ll admit that our wives have a talent for making meals big enough that we eat twice from what they cook once.”
“Planned-overs, instead of just leftovers,” his wife explained.
“Mostly because we enjoy spoiling our guests with big breakfasts more than we like to fuss over dinner and supper,” her sister explained. “By the time we clean guest rooms and help Bram with sales at the auction barn, there’s not a lot of time and energy left to cook the big meals our mamms fixed when we lived at home.”
“But our mamms weren’t working at two other jobs on top of managing their households and kids,” Nate pointed out, smiling indulgently at the redhead to Leah’s right. “One of these days when the kids come along, Bram and I will hire extra help so our wives won’t work at the auction barn.”
“And that’s when we might have to give up being innkeepers,” Mary said with a shrug.
“But for now, we enjoy every moment of entertaining our guests,” Martha added, grinning at her sister. “We’re living our dream, the four of us. We’ll have these days to look back on when we’ve become parents, knowing we allowed ourselves some time to do exactly as we chose . . . even if the bishop and our parents are starting to hint that it’s time we took on adult responsibilities—”
“And gave them grandkids.”
Leah smiled. Mary and Martha were effortlessly finishing each other’s sentences, the way Adeline and Alice did. After she’d filled her plate with a slice of meat loaf, some pot roast, mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, and fried apples, she felt compelled to ask the redheaded, fun-loving twins a question. “So tell me,” she began as she cut into her meat loaf, “did you girls give your parents fits when you were young? Mary, did you pretend to be Martha? Or were you sweet and well-behaved, always following the rules?”
Across the table, Nate and Bram burst out laughing. Their dark hair and eyes made a handsome contrast to their fairer wives’ features, and their mirth filled the dining room.
“When we first met Mary and Martha, they played that very trick on us,” Bram recalled fondly.
“Jah, and I walked away from their place in a big snit, believing we’d never be able to trust them if we courted them,” Nate added. “Even so, I knew Martha was the woman for me—”
“Even if she sorta played us false—set us up by secretly calling Mary on her cell phone so she could be in on the game,” Bram put in. “But their parents set them straight—and the girls set me straight about a few wild-hare ideas—”
“And not long after that, we were engaged,” Nate said with a satisfied nod. “So now we’re living the dream, like Martha said.”
Leah shared a long gaze with Jude. Was it too much to hope that someday Alice and Adeline would grow into sensible, responsible adults, as Mary and Martha had? She didn’t think the two redheads could be much over twenty, if that old, yet they were managing a successful bed and breakfast business while their husbands of about the same age also ran independent businesses. “My dream is to live in a home where our sixteen-year-old twins no longer crave English boys—or the cell phone that one of those boys provided,” she admitted with a sigh.
“The girls’ disrespect for Leah is the main reason she and I came here for a few days,” Jude admitted sadly. “Adeline and Alice seem to have lost touch with everything our Amish faith holds dear, even the basic courtesies their mother—my first wife—instilled in them when they were children.”
“Rumspringa can be rough on parents, I suspect,” Martha said softly. “Although when you’re fully immersed in having your run-around years before you commit to the church, you’re not always aware of the havoc you wreak. We were seventeen going on eighteen when we switched places on Nate and Bram—and meanwhile caused our parents a wagonload of worry. Yet we didn’t see our behavior as rude or unacceptable.”
“Our mamm and dat came down hard on us, to hold us accountable for our deception,” Mary put in as she rose to refill the empty potato bowl. “Teenagers have to be told what their parents expect of them—and also reminded that the world doesn’t revolve around them. If our parents had let us run wild, I don’t want to think about the sort of trouble Martha and I might’ve gotten into—”
“Not because they were bad girls, understand,”
