Next door was the fabric shop, and they ducked inside.
“Good morning!”
It was Lovina Glick, the owner of this shop. Thomas often helped her with mucking out the temporary stalls for her draft horses when she was forced to drive her own buggy into town for the day. Normally, her teenaged son drove her and picked her up again in the evening.
Lovina’s gaze landed on Rue, and she looked up at Thomas and Patience in surprise.
“Who is this?” she asked in German.
“This is...” Thomas swallowed. “My daughter.”
“Your—” Lovina’s gaze whipped over to Patience, and Thomas could see that he’d have to explain right quick.
“My daughter is from my Rumspringa,” he said in German, his voice low. “And this here is Patience Flaud—our new schoolteacher. She’s completely unrelated.”
“Ah...” Lovina came out from behind the counter and nodded slowly. Her gaze flickered up to Thomas’s face, and he could see the disappointment there. She’d been a good friend of his mamm’s back in the day, and Lovina had stepped up to be a sort of mother figure to them in their own mother’s absence. “I don’t think I have a right to ask more than that, Thomas. Not now that you’re grown.” She paused, and again he saw a flood of disappointment in her eyes. “So what do you need, then?”
Her sudden distance stung.
“We need to buy fabric enough to dress her,” Thomas said.
“And you’ll burn that, I suppose.” Lovina’s mouth turned down as she gestured to Rue’s sundress. “But yes, I understand. She needs to be dressed properly.”
Thomas cleared his throat. “We need enough fabric to make—how many dresses?” He turned to Patience.
“Three to start,” Patience said. “She’ll need more later, of course. But those will need to be warmer for winter.”
“Do you want three different colors?” Lovina asked. “Or all the same for now? It might be good for character to keep them the same—take away the temptation to glory in oneself. It’s best to quash that early. I’ve raised four daughters of my own, mind.”
That was aimed at Patience.
“All good girls, I’m sure,” Patience said with a smile. “I’m glad you can help me to sort this out, then.”
Lovina’s gaze moved down to Rue once more, and she cocked her head to one side, chewing the side of her cheek. Thomas knew that look from Lovina—that was her look when she was planning on fixing something, and Rue was the problem to be fixed.
Rue squirmed under that penetrating gaze and squeezed Thomas’s hand a little bit tighter.
“You’ll need a pattern, I take it?” Lovina turned to Patience, Thomas officially out of the conversation as they moved into more technical requirements.
“Yes, a pattern, thread...” Patience moved away with Lovina. “I brought my own needles, and I have some extra hook clasps, but we might need an extra package of those anyway...”
“You’re our new teacher, then?” Lovina’s voice this time, and Thomas sighed. He was glad Patience was here to take over this womanly task. He wouldn’t have known where to start, and Lovina wouldn’t have made it easy on him, either. In fact, if they were alone, she might have demanded a few explanations. She’d been more like an aunt in his teens, and she’d take his moral failing personally.
“I like that one...” Rue moved over to a bolt of fabric with a floral pattern, and she smiled up at him shyly.
“No, Rue,” Thomas said. “That’s fancy.”
She didn’t know what that meant yet, and he didn’t have the energy to try to explain it to her in a way she’d understand. So he walked with her over to the fabric in solid colors—blue, green, pink, purple. All sober and muted. Rue’s gaze kept moving back to the brighter patterns.
“Patience will choose for us,” Thomas said.
“Will it be a princess dress?” Rue asked, her eyes brightening.
“No. It is an Amish dress.”
“I can be an Amish princess.” She beamed up at him, and he simply stared at her, because he had no answers. The Amish didn’t have princesses, and he couldn’t give her something she’d like better. That was the hard part. He was offering her a life of humble work, of prudence and piety. How could that compare to her fantasies?
The bell tinkled again over the front door, and Thomas looked up to see two more Amish women come inside with two little girls. He knew the women by sight—one was a school friend’s older sister. The other was a distant relative of the bishop who had moved to their community when she got married. One of the little girls looked about the same age as Rue, and the girls moved in the direction of the Amish-approved fabrics. The women nodded a friendly hello to him.
The little girls wandered ahead of the women, fingers lingering on the fabrics as they passed them. The smallest girl reached them first, and she startled when she saw Rue, concealed behind some tall bolts of fabric.
“Hi,” Rue whispered.
The little girl frowned, and then started to smile when her older sister plucked at her sleeve.
“Stop,” her sister remonstrated in German, and tugged her in the other direction. Both girls then turned their backs and headed back toward the women.
“I want to play with her,” Rue said, loudly enough to be heard, and it was then that the women took notice. They looked at Rue, up at Thomas, and then steered their girls away from her.
“Englisher child...” he heard one whisper.
“With Thomas Wiebe, though? Who is she?” Their whispers carried, and Thomas felt his stomach clench in anger.
“You know about his mother...” the other woman replied.
And then he couldn’t hear anymore, but they cast a couple of sidelong looks in his direction. They wouldn’t ask him directly—they didn’t know him well enough for that.
