“Now, now,” Samuel said gently. “Let an old man treat you right, my dear. It does me good.”
And she realized that it did. By showing kindness to a new teacher who was very near the age his own kinner would have been, she was letting him be the daet he’d so longed to be. So she let Samuel pull the bag out of the back of the buggy and carry it into the schoolhouse for her. Then he headed back out to his waiting buggy and was on his way again.
Patience stood in the center of the schoolroom, the air cool and quiet, and lifted her heart to Gott.
Give me purpose, she pleaded. I have so much love to give, and no one to take it. I might not ever have a family of my own, if that is Your will, but give me purpose and people to love, anyway.
This was her classroom—may Gott bless the kinner who passed through these doors, and may Gott fill her aching, lonely heart.
Thomas left Rue with Mary that day, with some solemn promises on Rue’s part to obey the older woman without question.
“All right?” he’d asked her. “You do as Mammi says. If I come home and find out that you haven’t...”
“Then what?” Rue whispered.
And he really didn’t have an answer to that, so instead he shook his finger meaningfully, bent down to kiss the top of her head and headed out to work.
His mind wasn’t on the bedroom set he was building, though. He knew the work well enough that he didn’t need to think too much about it as his hands went through the motions. He was sanding and getting the wood ready for the first layer of stain.
Thomas rubbed the sandpaper over the headboard, back and forth, a fragrant powder of wood falling to the ground and clinging to his pants and the hairs on his forearms. He normally felt calmed and soothed in his work, but today his heart seemed to beat with the weight of all his grief.
He loved her... Oh, how he loved her...
But he needed a mamm for his daughter and a family of his own, and yet his heart couldn’t let go of the woman he’d so recklessly fallen in love with.
The day crawled by, and Amos and Noah took care of customers and let him stay in the back workroom, avoiding people for the rest of the day.
But then in the afternoon, Noah came into the workshop.
“Thomas, Ben Smoker wanted to talk to you,” he said.
Ben Smoker—the family that didn’t want his daughter to play with their girls. Susan had made herself clear enough to Patience, and Ben had stood behind his wife. Rue was too much of a danger for their kinner, it seemed, and the last week had left Thomas with a tender spot in his heart when it came to the way his daughter had been treated.
Thomas stopped the sanding and shook the wood powder off his arms. “What does he want?”
“He just—” Noah started, but then fell silent when Ben appeared at his side.
“Thomas, how are you?” Ben asked with a friendly smile, but when he saw Thomas’s face, the smile faltered. Thomas hadn’t even bothered to try to look friendly. He didn’t have the energy today.
“I’m fine. You?” Thomas asked, forcing the pleasantries out.
“Look,” Ben said, coming closer and glancing over his shoulder as Noah left the shop once more. “I feel badly for how things went when you last came to help me out with that gate.”
“It’s fine,” Thomas said with a sigh. He had no intention of fighting over it. They’d made themselves clear.
“Susan put together some winter clothes for your daughter,” Ben said. “She dug them out early. She wanted to make sure Rue had what she needed.”
“She needs friends, Ben,” Thomas said curtly.
“Yah.” Ben nodded a couple of times. “Maybe we can sort something out in that respect, too.”
Rue didn’t need friends who had been guilted into spending time with her, either. Rue needed real, honest love—like the kind she’d been getting from Mary and Patience.
“I dropped the bag of clothes by your place before I came to town,” Ben said. “Rue was very polite and well mannered. I thought you might like to know that.”
“Yah, that’s good to hear,” Thomas agreed.
“Your rooster attacked me, though,” Ben said with a low laugh. “I thought you were going to eat that bird. He’ll be tough as rubber by the time you get him in a pot.”
“I can’t cook him,” Thomas replied. “Rue’s attached to him.”
“She named him, I think?” Ben asked.
“Toby. That’s Toby the rooster.” Thomas met the other man’s gaze, and for the first time, he realized, he was having banter with another daet. It felt good—better than he imagined it would.
“I got overly attached to a turkey when I was a kid,” Ben said. “I named it and begged my daet not to kill it for Christmas dinner.”
“Did he save it?” Thomas asked. Was there an elderly turkey running around their farm because of a small boy’s love?
“What? No...” Ben shrugged. “We’d raised that turkey specifically for Christmas dinner. So my daet butchered it. It took me a full year to forgive him, though. And by the next Christmas, I still carried a small grudge against him. But we had a family of ten kinner to feed, plus the guests who’d come by. That turkey was food, and there was no getting around it.”
A family with ten children... That was the kind of family an Amish man dreamed of. That was the kind of family that would give Rue the siblings who would help her feel her place in this community. They’d belong to each other... Or that was what he’d thought, at least. Thomas looked at his friend thoughtfully for a moment.
“Do you wish he’d saved it?” Thomas asked, at last. “I mean, you know that they had to eat it, and all, but do you
