Rachel was helping her mother get ready for the midday Sunday meal that the Mast family would be hosting that day. Worship service was held every other Sunday in the homes of those who belonged to the church community. Services would start at nine sharp, and continue until noon or whenever the preacher finished his sermon. Then everyone would take a two-hour break to share a light dinner before afternoon services resumed. Technically, no work and no cooking was done on the Sabbath, but no one would begrudge a woman adding a little bacon to the beans that had been simmering all night on the back of the woodstove.
Normally, Rachel wouldn’t attend the Amish church, but her mother wasn’t that far from her chemo treatments. She’d not regained her full health, and Rachel, who knew her mam wanted everything to be right for her friends and neighbors, needed to help this morning. Rachel had sisters, and Aunt Hannah could always be counted on, but Rachel wanted to do her part.
Rachel and her mother had gone for many years without talking to each other because of Rachel’s life choices, and now that they were close again, Rachel wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. She felt that they’d dodged a bullet with the cancer. Her mother’s doctors said that everything looked good, but they’d come too close to losing Esther for Rachel not to appreciate every opportunity she had to be with her mother.
And, if there was cooking to be finished off this morning, it was better that Rachel do it. Not being baptized, she wasn’t required to live by the ordnung, the rules that each Amish church community followed.
“You remember the ingredients for my sugar cure?” her mother asked as Rachel used a butcher knife to slice off pieces of bacon from the larger section of meat she’d placed atop a barrel kept in the smokehouse for just this purpose. “Watch your fingers, child. That knife’s sharp.”
“You can cut yourself just as easy with a dull knife as a sharp one,” Rachel replied. “Isn’t that what you always told me? And, ya, I remember the recipe for your rub.” She recited back what she’d been taught since she was ten years of age.
“It came to me from my grandmother and her mother before her. Don’t forget it, and don’t share it with your guests. It’s our special family recipe.”
Rachel carefully rewrapped the side of bacon in clean cheesecloth and got back on the basket to hang it from the overhead hook again. There the precious meat would be safe from vermin and from the cats that her dat sometimes let sleep in the smokehouse to discourage mice from nesting in here.
The sound of buggy wheels on the frozen ground made Rachel glance out the one small, barred window. The blue-tinted and bubbly glass was old with a swirling bull’s-eye pattern, but she could still see through it well enough to recognize the young man getting out of Mary Rose’s buggy. He helped her down with the baby, and then led the horse to the open shed that had been prepared for the horses. The previous day’s beautiful fall weather had given way to gray skies and the threat of rain, and possibly a light snowfall, and her father didn’t want to see any horses tied outside in the cold on such a day.
“That’s Rosh Hertzler helping Mary Rose,” Rachel mused aloud. She turned to her mother. “How well do you know him?”
“Well enough to know that he’s sweet on Mary Rose,” her mother answered tartly. Rachel’s surprise must have been evident because her mother laughed. “What? You don’t think that a young woman as pretty as Mary Rose might have admirers?”
“Ya, of course,” Rachel answered. “But . . . her husband only died a week ago.”
“Two weeks, or near as. And Rosh was smitten well before that. I think he’s always liked her, and now there’s opportunity.” She shrugged her thin shoulders. “Life goes on, daughter. She’s a woman alone with a child to look after. Mark my words. She’ll be married within the year.”
“But to someone like Rosh? He’s . . . he’s younger than she is, too young to be married.”
“He’s of legal age. Nineteen, two months ago. We were invited to his birthday supper. He’s a nice boy; he’ll make a good match for someone. He’s good to his mother, and you can always tell a man’s character by how he treats his mother.”
Rachel watched through the little window as Rosh tied up Mary Rose’s horse and removed its bridle. He had a gentle way with the animal. “He doesn’t strike you as a little odd?”
Her mother seemed to think about it for a moment. “You mean the way he’s always roaming the woods? They say he’s a bee charmer. His mother says he robs wild bee colonies of their honey and never gets stung. Not once in his life, to her knowledge. I suppose you could call that odd.” She laid the slices of bacon out on a platter and examined them. She leaned close and sniffed the meat, then smiled and used the butcher knife to cut the strips into smaller pieces. “And Rosh is the only boy in the family. He’ll probably inherit his father’s farm in time. Runs right alongside the Studer acres.”
“He just seems so . . . young,” Rachel repeated.
“He’s not got his full growth. Time will fix all that.” She chuckled. “Sometimes, you still seem very young to me.”
When her mother drew the knife over the bacon, her
