The Christmas Courtship Read online

  Despite missing her John-John so much that it physically hurt, Joshua was the one who made her feel as if coming to Hickory Grove was the right thing to do. And Rosemary and Benjamin’s twins. For some reason, the little boys had taken to her immediately and begun asking for her. With Rosemary trying to stay off her feet, and James and Josiah being so active, it had seemed only natural that Phoebe become their nanny of sorts. That was an Englisher word Rosemary had explained to her. It meant a woman who cared for another woman’s children. And Phoebe had embraced the job. She had been afraid spending so much time with the toddlers so close in age to her son would make her miss him more, but their sticky hugs and laughter actually eased the ache in her chest for her own child. And reminded her why she was here—to make a better life for herself and for him.

  Feeling as if she was being watched, Phoebe looked up to see Joshua standing at the edge of the woodshed. They made eye contact and she smiled. He wasn’t wearing his Englisher sunglasses today so she could see his dark eyes. He hesitated, then started toward her. He was wearing a denim barn coat, a knit cap pulled over his head and shoes that were wet and caked with mud.

  Phoebe looked down at the clunky knee-high rubber boots she’d borrowed from the laundry room. Bay had told her to find a pair that fit and wear them. She said she did it all the time. Phoebe grabbed a white bedsheet from the laundry basket. She hoped he didn’t think she looked foolish, but she’d been afraid if she didn’t wear the boots, she might have ended up with mud on the pretty blue dress Tara had given her. Phoebe had never had such a beautiful dress. In her stepfather’s home, the women all wore black even though the men wore colored shirts. She hadn’t been allowed to have buttons, either, not even hidden in her clothing. That was because women, her stepfather had explained, were far more likely to be drawn into the evils of adornment and couldn’t be trusted with blue or green dresses. Or buttons. The idea seemed silly to Phoebe, but no one in their home had ever been interested in her opinions on anything.

  That included her belief that wearing a prayer kapp wasn’t always practical in a busy household, mainly because it had to be kept starched and pristine at all times. Evidently, Benjamin agreed with Phoebe because around his house, Rosemary and her daughters often wore a scarf instead of a prayer kapp. A lot of women in their church district did so, Ginger had explained to Phoebe. And then Tara had produced a scarf for indoor use for Phoebe and a heavier wool one for outdoors. The scarf provided modesty, but was also practical.

  A sudden gust of wind came up and Phoebe gave a little cry as the bedsheet flew off the line. She grabbed the edge before it hit the grass, but then struggled to get control of it in the wind.

  “Need some help?” Joshua called, hustling across the short distance between them.

  Phoebe looked up at him through a tangle of white sheet and laughed. “Ya, because I’m determined not to get this one dirty again, else it will have to go back in the wash.”

  Standing on the other side of the clothesline from her, he managed to grab a corner, then a second as the sheet whipped in the wind. “Got it!” He pulled his side down over the line and she did the same on her side.

  “Danke.” She laughed, taking a handful of wooden clothespins. “A good day for doing laundry with the sunshine,” she told him as she clipped one pin after the other to secure the sheet to the line. “But a little tricky with the wind.”

  He just stood there nodding.

  “There we go.” She clipped the last clothespin securely.

  “There we go,” he echoed.

  Phoebe studied him standing only inches away on the other side of the sheet on the line. The same way they had stood on either side of the grocery cart that day at Byler’s store. Joshua was watching her, which made her feel both at ease and uncomfortable all at the same time. Why was he looking at her that way? As if he’d taken a bite of something and he wasn’t sure if he liked it. “Joshua...”

  “Ya?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “You can let go now.”

  “Sorry?” He leaned closer to her.

  “The sheet.” She pointed. “You can let go of it now. It would take a plow horse to rip it loose.”

  He looked down at his hands resting on the clothesline. “Oh...right.” He pulled back and laughed.

  “Good of you to help,” she said, pushing the laundry basket through the grass with her foot. She pulled a pillowcase from the laundry basket, gave it a shake and started to clip it onto the clothesline.

  “Let me give you a hand with that.” He grabbed both corners of the top of the pillowcase.

  She looked up with surprise. An Amish man who shopped for groceries and did laundry? That seemed almost beyond belief. “I can do it.”

  “I know, but I want to help you.”

  He shrugged, and she couldn’t help but notice how broad his shoulders were. She wondered how old he was. Close to her age, she thought, but she wasn’t good at guessing ages. She wondered if he was courting a girl. She didn’t think so. Else someone would have mentioned it by now, wouldn’t they? Rosemary, one of the girls or Joshua himself?

  He held the pillowcase in place on the line. “And doesn’t the Bible tell us that two hands are better than one?” he said.

  “Ya, because they have a good return for their labor.” She smiled at him.

  “Proverbs?” he asked.

  “Ecclesiastes.” The pillowcase secure, she pulled another from the basket.

  “Ya, right.” He slipped his hands into his pockets and looked down at his muddy shoes, then back up at her. “Ah... Phoebe...”

  “Ya?”

  “I wanted to ask you—how are you doing?” he asked, seeming to suddenly take an abrupt turn in what he had intended to say.

  “How am I doing?” His question seemed odd. And not one she was used to being asked. “Fine.” She focused on fastening the pillowcase, feeling uncomfortable again.

  “I mean really. Are you doing okay? I can’t—” He halted and started again. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to leave your family, your home. Not knowing anyone here. I’ve never been away from my father and brothers for more than a week and that’s when I went to Ohio to see my cousins. I couldn’t wait to get back, I missed them so much,” he said.

  The tone of his voice took her by surprise. And touched her at the same time. The emotion, the honesty in his words wasn’t something she was used to. “My family isn’t like yours,” she said carefully.

  He was watching her. “How do you mean?”

  She reached into the laundry basket and pulled out another sheet, and she was thankful to have something to do with her hands. Suddenly she was feeling overheated and wished she’d left the denim coat she was wearing unbuttoned. It was also borrowed from the laundry room. “My stepfather is...” She took a breath, glancing away. She looked back at him. “Did you need something?” She changed the subject because she wasn’t sure she was up to a discussion of her family. Which would lead to a discussion of her son.

  “Um.” He stood up straighter, moving stiffly as he helped her hang the last sheet in the basket over the clothesline. “Ya, I, um... There’s a harvest dinner Friday night at the Fishers. For...you know, unmarried folks. We’ll eat and visit, and there will probably be singing. And pie. Edna makes a fine peach pie from her own preserves. And apple. The girls are going, and...and Jacob and maybe Levi.” He held the sheet in place for her as another gust of wind came up.

  “Sounds nice,” she said, not entirely sure why he was telling her about the gathering.

  “And I was wondering,” he went on. “You’re probably not interested, but—” He exhaled and started again. “Don’t feel like you have to, I mean, you might think it’s boring, but...”

  At last, she realized where he was going with his stumbling words. “Are you asking me if I’d like to join you?”

  He stared at the sh
eet between them. “Ya, if you...if you’d like.”

  She smiled at him. She’d never been to a supper for unmarried men and women. Not a singing, either. Other church districts in her county had them. She’d heard it from other girls when she went to the market with her mother. But her stepfather hadn’t allowed her or any of her stepbrothers or stepsisters to go. The intention of such gatherings was to let young unmarried folks get to know each other. It was the way young men and women began courting and that led to marriage. At this point in her life, this sort of event wasn’t where she would meet the kind of man who would be willing to court her. Or to marry her. But it sounded like such fun. And there hadn’t been enough fun in her life.

  “Ya, I’d like to go,” she told Joshua, looking at him.

  “You would?” He took a step back, right into a puddle. Realizing what he’d done, he stepped sideways, but it was too late as the water splashed and ran into his shoes.

  She shook her head. Men did the oddest things sometimes. How did he not know to choose better footwear on a day like this? “Where are your rubber boots?” she asked, picking up the empty laundry basket.

  He looked up sheepishly at her and pointed. “I think maybe on your feet.”

  They both laughed.

  Chapter Four

  As the wagon turned into a long driveway, Phoebe shifted on the bench seat and patted the white prayer kapp Rosemary had given her. It was a gift, her cousin had insisted. A precious gift to Phoebe not just because of the symbolism of a woman’s prayer kapp, but because she had never in her whole life received so many heartfelt gifts. It seemed as if every day, in her bedroom in the girls’ wing, something new was left on her bed, with its crisp white sheets and finely stitched quilt. There was the blue dress she was wearing, a white apron for everyday use and another for special occasions, a pretty little hair comb and a brush. And this morning she had found a pair of rubber boots that fit her feet...and weren’t Joshua’s.

  The thought made her smile and she looked up to where he was seated on the front plank bench of the wagon, the reins in his capable hands. He was talking to his twin brother, Jacob, seated beside him, but he kept glancing over his shoulder at her. He kept making eye contact. Smiling. They were identical twins, Jacob and Joshua, but she had no difficulty telling them apart because Joshua’s eyes lit up each time he looked at her.

  Phoebe glanced at Ginger sitting next to her on the middle bench in the wagon. She was chattering nonstop to Nettie and Tara, who were riding on the back bench. The girls were talking about a boy who was supposed to be at the harvest dinner tonight. Someone’s cousin. The girls all thought him quite handsome, and Bay was determined to get him to ask her to ride home with him. Ginger was so beautiful with her blond hair and angelic face that Phoebe thought she’d have no trouble convincing this boy from Lancaster to ask her to go with him. In fact, she doubted there would be any man there tonight who could resist her beauty and charm.

  The wagon hit a bump in the driveway, jostling them all, and Ginger and her sisters squealed and then burst into laughter. Phoebe held tightly to the side of the wagon to steady herself but remained silent. She liked all of the Stutzman girls and they had been nothing but kind to her, but sometimes she couldn’t help but feel the divide between her and them. Losing her John and then giving birth out of wedlock made her feel old, if not in years, then in experience.

  “Sorry for that,” Joshua threw over his shoulder. “I keep telling Jeb he needs to fill that hole in. Guess I’ll have to show up with my own shovel and get it done.” He glanced back to Phoebe. “Jeb is one of Edna and John Fisher’s sons. I’ll introduce you. We’re pals.”

  Phoebe nodded but said nothing. She was so excited she didn’t know what to say. Her first singles gathering! She couldn’t have been more thrilled if she’d been sixteen. The thought of good food, good company, laughter and song made her heart sing. And according to Joshua, their church district was supportive of their young folks and held these get-togethers regularly. What a beautiful place Hickory Grove would be to raise her John-John.

  A buggy pulled into the driveway behind them and an Amish boy leaned out the window, hollering to the Stutzman girls in the back of the wagon. “Yoo-hoo!” he called, pulling off his knit cap and waving it at them.

  “Len Troyer!” Ginger shouted, raising up on one knee. She used Phoebe’s shoulder to steady herself as she turned to him. “You best get back in that buggy before you take a tumble and fall on your head.”

  “I’ll do it if you promise to ride home with me tonight.”

  “Early in the evening to already be asking a girl to ride home with you,” Nettie shouted to him.

  “Say you will, Ginger. Make me a happy man,” Len called good-naturedly.

  “Ne, I’ll not say yes yet, Len,” Ginger threw back. “What if I get a better offer?”

  All four Stutzman girls burst into laughter again.

  “I’ve had enough of this gaggle of geese,” Jacob declared from the front bench. And with that, he leaped out of the moving wagon. The moment his boots hit the ground, he cut in front of the wagon and took off running up the driveway.

  “It’s all meant in good jest. The teasing,” Joshua explained to Phoebe, glancing at her. “Want to sit up here?” He patted the place his brother had just vacated.

  It only took Phoebe a moment to contemplate the suggestion, and when he offered her his hand, covered in a leather glove, to help her over the front bench, she took it. Managing to keep her balance and not trip over the hem of her cloak, she dropped onto the bench beside him.

  The Stutzman girls continued to call back and forth to the young men in the buggy behind them. Now there were two more boys hanging out the windows.

  “Len’s a good guy,” he explained. “Only I’ll warn you, no matter what he says, don’t agree to let him take you home.”

  Phoebe felt her cheeks grow warm. She doubted anyone would be asking her to ride home with him tonight or any night. These young men weren’t looking for someone like her, a woman with a child and a past. Even if she had confessed her sin before God and her congregation and been granted forgiveness. Because forgiveness was something some people found hard to find in their hearts, no matter what the Bible said. That had been evident with her stepfather. And many other folks in her community.

  But tonight all of that was far from her mind. Tonight, she was happy and she was going to enjoy every moment of that pleasure. “And why shouldn’t I ride home with him?” Phoebe asked, her tone teasing.

  Joshua leaned closer so only she could hear him. “He tried to kiss Ginger this summer. Unsought.” He raised his eyebrows. “Ginger likes to be silly and have a good time, but she will set a boy straight pretty quick if he tries to take liberties. And she tells everything to anyone who will listen. Len Troyer hasn’t been able to get a girl to ride home with him in months.” He sat up, then thinking of something else he wanted to say, he leaned close again. “Except Faith King.” He grinned. “But her mother rode home with them. Seated between them in his courting buggy, I heard.”

  Joshua’s smile was infectious, and Phoebe smiled, too, studying his face in the semidarkness. He was dressed like all of the other young men his age: homemade denim britches, boots, a denim coat and a black knit cap. But in her mind, he stood out. And not because she found him handsome. There was just something about him that made her smile every time she laid eyes on him. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought she was smitten with him. But was that even possible, after all she had been through? Wasn’t she beyond the attractions of youth? She did want to marry of course, partly because it was a woman’s duty but mostly because she knew her son needed a father. But it had never occurred to her, not in all the days since her John’s death, that she could ever care for another man. The idea intrigued her, and also scared her. Could she truly give her heart to another?

  Just then, the canopy
of dense tree limbs gave way to an opening. Phoebe’s breath caught in her throat as the darkness burst into light with hundreds of twinkling bright lights in the trees beside the farmhouse. “Oh, my,” she breathed.

  Joshua looked up, nodding in the direction of the strings of lights in two hickory trees that illuminated an area set up with picnic tables. Young women who had arrived earlier were setting up a table of food and stacking plates and laughing and talking together while a cluster of young men stood off to the side, watching them and occasionally calling to them.

  “Ah, the Englisher Christmas lights.” He pointed at them. “John Fisher has a thing for them. Buys more every year after Christmas when they go on sale.”

  “He has electricity?” Phoebe asked in awe as she continued to stare at the lights that seemed like bright stars in the dark sky.

  “Of course not.” Joshua chuckled. “A generator.” Pulling gently back on the reins, he slowed the bay and headed toward a two-story barn. There were already six buggies and several wagons parked in front of it. “John can be fancy sometimes, but not that fancy. And it took him a full year to convince Bishop Simon to let him have those twinkle lights.”

  “Our bishop would never have allowed such a thing,” she breathed, craning her neck to look at the lights as they rolled past the house and into the barnyard.

  “It was John’s wife, Edna, who convinced the bishop. There are so many of our communities that are having a hard time getting single folks to come to gatherings like this.” He shrugged. “Instead, we find other ways to entertain ourselves. Ways less godly. Less safe. Drinking alcohol and such. Especially boys,” he added. “Edna told the bishop that there was no reason why a singing or taffy pull couldn’t be godly and still fun. She also pointed out to him that there is nothing in the Bible that forbids twinkle lights.” He laughed as he reined in the horse and the wagon rolled to a stop. “And here we are.” He sounded almost disappointed now.