Tillie almost stumbled as she made her way into the living room to find Levi Yoder.
“Hello, Tillie.”
“I wasn’t expecting you,” she said. She wasn’t expecting anyone, for that matter.
“I thought I would drop by and bring you back all the Christmas decorations you left at my house.”
She rocked the baby and shook her head. “You didn’t need to bring them back.”
He shrugged and looked down at the sack. “They’re yours.”
“Jah. I suppose.”
He set the bag down on one end of the sofa and clasped his hands together. He released them, then clasped them together once again. It was as if he had just gotten them and he had no idea what to do with them yet.
“Thank you for trying to cheer up my holiday,” he said. His voice sounded unused and a little rusty.
“We all have to do what we can for one another.”
It was the Amish way.
“Jah,” he said. “But I still appreciate it. And what you said yesterday, about being friends . . .” He stopped as if he wasn’t sure how to continue.
Tillie patiently waited.
“I want that very much,” he finally continued. “And maybe I might one day want more than that.”
“Maybe?” That didn’t sound very confident. But it was better than what she had fifteen minutes ago.
He closed his eyes as if he’d messed it all up, then slowly opened them again. “I’m pretty sure. See, I haven’t been widowed that long.”
“I know.”
“But when I think of never seeing you or Emmy again it makes my heart and my stomach ache. When I thought about you marrying Melvin, it almost killed me. So I’m pretty sure.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she whispered. Was he proposing that they might have something more one day? How did a woman respond to that sort of talk?
He might not have been definite, but she was thrilled all the same.
“Say you’ll be my friend,” he said. “You’ll ride home from church with me and go on picnics with me in the spring. Tell me that you want to see if there’s more to us than what we’re seeing right now.”
“I’m in mourning,”
“Me too. But I’m willing to wait if you are.”
She smiled at him as her heart soared. It wasn’t true love, not yet, but he wanted to be with her. Well, he was pretty sure he did. And seeing everything that they had been through over the last few months, pretty sure was all right with her.
“I would like that,” she said.
“But for now we can be friends,” he said, outlining a little more of their relationship. “I do want you to come visit. And I want to come visit you. I know Melvin hasn’t been gone but a few days. And—I’m making a mess of this.”
She shook her head. “You’re doing just fine.”
“We can take our time,” he said. “Get to know each other.”
“That sounds like a great idea.”
“And who knows,” he said, casting a loving look at her daughter. “A couple of years from now, we might have ourselves another Christmas miracle.”
With a little bit of hope and a whole lot of prayers, she felt certain they would.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Two years later
“Tell him I need to talk to him,” she told Hannah. “I need to talk to him now.”
“Calm down, sister,” Hannah said. “I’m sure whatever it is it can wait until after the ceremony.”
Tillie shot her sister a look that could have wilted bitterweed out in the fields. “If it could wait, I wouldn’t be asking to see him now. So will somebody go get Levi?” Her voice was getting louder. She needed to talk to him. Now. Before the wedding. Before the wedding was very important.
Leah nodded at Hannah and disappeared out the door of the upstairs room at their parents’ house.
It had taken a year of mourning, getting to know each other, and making good with the church before Levi felt comfortable enough with their relationship to ask her to marry him. Last year’s Christmas had been filled with making plans to get married. This year it was all about the wedding.
But she couldn’t marry him until she told him one very important thing. Really important thing. Not even a small wedding such as theirs. It was his second wedding, and as far as the church was concerned, hers as well. She may not have married Melvin in an official way, but they’d had a child together, and that counted for a lot where Amos Raber was concerned. Second marriages were half-day affairs, not full days like first weddings, but that was fine with Tillie. She’d had to wait two years to marry Levi, and she didn’t want to wait any longer to start their life together.
After she talked to him, that was.
An eternity passed before Levi eased into the room, Leah right behind him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. His brow was puckered into a frown.
Tillie cast a furtive glance at her sisters and grabbed Levi’s elbow. She pulled him closer to the window. It would’ve been better if it was just the two of them alone, but she couldn’t make her sisters go out of the room. Well, she could, but if she did, they would forever be bothering her about what she said to Levi right before they were supposed to get married.
“I need to tell you something,” she said.
He
