Texas a few weeks after Emma’s wedding. Even Luke, who had been his best friend, hadn’t heard from him in years.
A wave of desolation threatened, but Rebecca brushed it aside. From the first time she laid eyes on him, she had known Jesse was hers. God would not give her a love this strong if He didn’t mean for them to be together. One day Jesse would come to her. But how much longer would he make her wait?
Empty basket balanced on her hip, she skipped up the stairs and into the house.
“What about Daniel Burkholder?” Emma asked as she handed a basket of warm biscuits to Rebecca and nodded toward the laden table, where fragrant ribbons of steam wisped from bowls heaped with food. “Katie Miller told me he fancies you.”
Rebecca stood at Emma’s kitchen window, admiring the sun-drenched grass in the well-kept plot of yard surrounding her sister’s house. Poppy mallows dotted the untended field between the house and the road, their purple blooms swaying in the ever-present breeze. She located the men in the opposite direction, standing near the back fence, their heads turned toward a herd of cattle that grazed in the field beyond. Luke was saying something to Papa, whose round-brimmed straw hat bobbed as he listened. At their feet Lucas squatted in close inspection of something on the ground.
Wishing she could be outside with the men instead of inside the hot kitchen, she turned her back to the window and arranged her features in a scowl. “He smells constantly of onions. I can’t bear him.”
“You like onions.” Maummi’s knife expertly sliced through a plump red tomato on the cutting board.
“To eat, yes, but not to smell. When he took me home in that tiny buggy of his after church one Sunday, I nearly choked.” She set the biscuits on the table and stood back to examine the spread, her hands on her hips. “Emma, you have enough food for a barn raising.”
Turning from the high work counter, Maummi focused on the table. “‘The path to a man’s heart winds through his stomach,’” she quoted with an approving nod. Then she fixed her gaze on Rebecca and gave a little sniff. “You would do well to remember that, granddaughter.”
Rebecca turned away before her grandmother could see her eyes rise toward the ceiling. She’d never enjoyed kitchen work the way Emma did. The pie resting on the corner of the second work counter bore evidence to her lack of cooking skill. The top crust bubbled unevenly because she hadn’t properly slit the crust to vent the steam, and the rim around the crust had browned nearly black because she forgot to watch it in the oven. She hoped the taste would make up for its appearance, because Maummi had stood at her elbow directing every ingredient.
“Emma already has Luke’s heart. They’re married, aren’t they?”
“Catching a man’s heart is only the beginning.” Maummi slid thick tomato slices onto a plate with the edge of her knife. “Keeping him happy is where a dull wife fails.”
Rebecca chose to ignore the veiled reference to her and instead dropped her gaze toward her sister’s bulging belly. “Luke appears to be happy.”
A blush colored Emma’s cheeks, and her hand cupped her stomach in a gesture common to every pregnant woman Rebecca had ever seen. Her time was at least three months off, but already she looked nearly as big as she had when Lucas was birthed. Even so, she was beautiful as always in her loose-fitting blue gown and with her braided hair wrapped around her uncovered head. Rebecca ran a hand down her own black skirt and battled a surge of envy. When Emma left the church to marry Luke, she had left behind the proscribed Amish black dresses and kapps. Though Rebecca tried not to begrudge her sister the ability to wear beautiful colors, she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to don a pretty dress and maybe a matching bonnet like those she saw ladies wear on the infrequent times when Papa allowed her to accompany him into Hays for supplies.
The thought flooded her with guilt. Bishop Miller would accuse her of vanity.
And he would be right.
“We were talking about you, not me,” Emma said. “So Daniel smells of onions. What of Samuel Schrock?”
“He’s too young. He’s barely past his sixteenth birthday.” Rebecca avoided her sister’s gaze by adjusting the placement of a plate at the long table. “And besides, he’s taken with Amy Bender. I