knot of apprehension in my stomach. What crazy girl would sacrifice her family and her church just to stay out late and drive a car?
I ran warm water into the sink and began to wash the eggs while Mamm put a couple more sticks of wood in the stove and sliced into the pile of scrubbed potatoes on the counter. Dat and the boys were out planting, now that winter had released its iron grip on the ground and the days were long enough, and they’d be hungry as bears when they came in.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
On the rug my grandmother had braided as a bride when she’d come to Mitternacht, baby Miriam kicked her legs with great energy, and Mamm glanced at her to make sure she wasn’t going anywhere. At this rate, she’d roll over and start crawling, without any of the in-between. My mother seemed to be taking an awfully long time to reply.
Oh, dear.
I ran the last several hours through my head, and when nothing popped up that would rate a talking-to, I ran through yesterday, too. I’d dropped an egg on the way out of the barn, but the birds had eaten it so fast there couldn’t have been any evidence left to tell the tale.
This silence couldn’t have anything to do with marriage and new farms, could it? I was only sixteen. I hadn’t even gone on Rumspringa yet, like several of my friends had. Didn’t even know if I wanted to. Then what—
“Gabriel Langford helped your father and brothers with the planting yesterday,” she began with a “this isn’t important but I thought I’d pass it on” kind of tone.
“That was kind of him,” I said, “though I’m sure he has plenty to do in Joshua Hodder’s fields.”
“He does. Which is why it meant something, Sophia, for him to finish there and then do nearly a full day’s work here.”
“Why would he do that? Does Joshua think that if he works him to death, he’ll be less likely to want to join church?”
“That boy’s capacity for work puts even your father to shame,” Mamm said. “Not to mention his willingness to try his hand at anything, from planting to construction.”
“Have the men got a competition going to see who can wear him out first?” I was only half joking. My friends and I complained to each other that even if Gabriel Langford was the one we most wanted to bump into, with him nto, wit it was the least likely to happen. He worked from dawn till dark, and when he wasn’t working, he was taking Deitsch lessons with Bishop Stolz, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was in meeting. Head bowed, glossy black hair combed, clothes spotless, he occupied his bench in a way that made heads turn.
Well, the heads of all the girls in my buddy bunch, anyway. I never would have believed it would be so hard to keep one’s gaze facing front and not let it slide to the men’s side of the house during worship. To ignore those long-lashed eyes and beautiful cheekbones turned up toward the preacher. To pretend not to see the sunlight make its way through a curtain or a window and light up that skin. A blemish would never dare appear on his face. What an awful thought.
Some of the boys—cornfed nobodies who had the mistaken idea they were somebody—had tried to pick a fight with him when he first came last winter, calling him “Gabrielle” and telling people he wrote poetry. That had lasted about five minutes. The boys said that Adam Hertzfeld had broken his collarbone falling out of the haymow, but his sister Katie, my best friend, told me the truth. After that no one accused anyone of writing poetry. Those boys kept their mouths shut and tried to look friendly when Joshua hired Gabriel out to their fathers’ farms.
“There’s no competition that I know of.” My mother gave me a look. “A hard worker he might be, but he’s still Englisch and no daughter of ours will be thinking thoughts about him.”
She’d brought him up, not me. “I’m not thinking thoughts.” Was that a lie? Just in case, I sent up a breath of a prayer for forgiveness. “I just wondered if he planned to join church. Have you heard anything?”
“I haven’t heard a word about his plans, nor do I want to,” Mamm said with disregard for the life of any Englisch, which