be their last. They would go on to learn a trade and begin their vocational training.
This should have been her foster son, Irwin’s, final year of formal schooling, but she had yet to decide if he would be among the graduates. Irwin had never been a scholar. He’d come to her when he was twelve, already far behind his classmates, and each milestone in his education had been a hard-won goal. Hannah wasn’t satisfied with Irwin’s math skills or his reading comprehension, but she also worried that another year in the back of her classroom would make little difference. Irwin was tired of being shown up by younger students.
Hannah cared deeply about the orphaned boy. Although he had shown little natural ability at caring for animals or general farm work, Irwin had a good heart. She felt instinctively that he needed male guidance to help him develop the skills that would enable him to support himself and, someday, a family.
Hannah supposed that she’d done well enough for her daughters after her husband’s passing, but she was beginning to wonder if she would have been wiser to remarry, as everyone had urged her. Few widows in their forties remained single after the customary year of mourning. Maybe she’d been selfish and a little proud to think that she could fill Jonas’s shoes. What was the old saying? A woman might be the heart of the family, but the man was the head.
After the children had spilled out of the schoolhouse doors and run, walked or ridden their scooter push-bikes home, Hannah packed up to leave. There was plenty to do to prepare the school for the coming celebration, but the weather was so warm, the air so full of spring and the earth so green, Hannah couldn’t bear to remain cooped up inside another moment. This was her favorite time of the year, when new life sprang from every inch of field and forest, a time when she felt that anything was possible.
Whistling a spritely tune, a habit for which she had been chastised many times as a child, Hannah walked down the dirt lane, across a clearing and climbed the stile that marked the boundary between her son-in-law Samuel’s dairy farm and her own place. What would she do when she got home? Rebecca was at Miriam and Ruth’s place and wouldn’t be coming home for supper, and Irwin had gone off with his cousins, so it would be just her and Susanna.
When they’d parted after breakfast, Susanna had been unnaturally subdued, still unhappy about the punishment that Hannah had given her after the pizza escapade two days before. She’d forbidden Susanna from seeing David for an entire week.
Hannah had not, however, spoken to Susanna about her visit with David’s mother. In fact, she hadn’t spoken of it to anyone. Hannah couldn’t imagine what Sadie was thinking bringing up the idea of Susanna and David marrying. It was, of course, not possible. David would never learn a trade or how to farm; Susanna was unable to run a household. They certainly couldn’t be married.
Hannah pushed the whole idea from her mind, returning to thoughts of her pouting daughter. Susanna hadn’t been happy about the forced separation between her and David, but Hannah was determined to be firm. She couldn’t allow Susanna to do as she pleased. Her daughter’s judgment had been poor, and she had to suffer the consequences. Still, Hannah wasn’t angry with her, and she was determined to find something special and fun for the two of them to do together this afternoon.
* * *
“Ne, Mam. Going to Anna’s.” Susanna held up a book. “Naomi wants it.” She moved to the nearest bookshelf and began to straighten the books. “I will eat supper with Anna. She said.”
Hannah didn’t know whether to be amused or feel rebuffed. Susanna’s reply had been only mildly intoned, but her expression was a stubborn “So there, Mam!” It was clear to Hannah that her daughter was still out of sorts with her over the whole David King mishap and was determined to exert her independence. Somehow, in Susanna’s mind, sneaking out of the house and the accident with the buggy had been Hannah’s fault and not hers.
“I’m the li-bair-ian,” Susanna said. “I can’t stay here. Have to take the book to Naomi.”
Hannah folded her arms. “I see.” Clearly, what Grace had said recently was true. Susanna had always developed slower than her sisters, but at almost twenty-one, she had charged headlong into her own form of independence.
When Hannah had turned their unused milk house into a lending library for the local Amish community, she’d suggested that Susanna become the librarian. She’d hoped the responsibility would give Susanna a sense of self-worth. Despite her struggles with the written word, Susanna had taken to the job with great enthusiasm. She could read only a little, and Hannah suspected that much of Susanna’s pleasure from the library came from arranging the books by color and requiring users to print their names and the borrowed titles in a large journal.
Susanna and the whole family enjoyed providing suitable books for their neighbors, adults and children alike. But what Hannah hadn’t expected was that David King would become an almost daily visitor to Susanna’s library, or that the two of them would spend so many hours in the small building laughing and talking together. Hannah was afraid that David was borrowing so many books as an excuse to see Susanna, something definitely against the rules for Amish young people of marriageable age. The trouble was, how did she put an end to an innocent friendship?
“You’re walking across the field, aren’t you?” Hannah asked, more as a reminder than a question. “You aren’t walking down the road?”
“Ya. The pasture. I can do it by myself.”
“Be home by seven. Ask one of the twins to walk back with you.”
“By myself, Mam.” Susanna threw her a look so much like her sister Johanna’s that Hannah smiled.
“All right. By yourself, but be careful, Susanna. No talking to strangers.”
Susanna giggled and folded her arms in a mirror image of Hannah. “No strangers in the pasture.”
Hannah sighed. “No, I suppose there aren’t. But be careful, just the same.” Feeling a little out of sorts with herself, Hannah left the library and went back into the house. There, she looked around for something out of place or something that needed doing, but all seemed in order.
The house echoed with emptiness. Chores done, floors scrubbed, dishes washed and put away. Susanna had been busy today, so busy that she’d left nothing for Hannah to do. And with all her children active in their own families, Hannah knew she should have been glad for the peace and quiet. No grandchildren running through the house, no slamming doors, no tracking mud through the kitchen, no supper to cook.
Of course, she would need some sort of supper for herself. Maybe she’d start something that she, Susanna, Rebecca and Irwin could have again tomorrow. Hannah wanted to begin setting out early vegetable plants in the garden, and she wouldn’t have time to prepare a big noon meal. She went to the refrigerator, but when she opened it, there was a pot of chicken and dumplings as well as a bowl of coleslaw. A note was propped in front. “Enjoy! Rice pudding on bottom shelf. Love, Johanna.”
Hannah sighed. Why did Johanna’s thoughtful deed add to her sense of restlessness? Maybe she should walk over to Ruth’s and see if she needed help with the twins. Or, perhaps she should check on the chickens to see if Susanna had remembered to gather the eggs. Taking a basket from a peg on the wall, Hannah went back into the yard.
She was halfway to the chicken house when she heard the sound of a motor vehicle. As she watched, a familiar truck came up the lane and into the yard. Albert pulled to a stop, rolled down the window and smiled.
“Afternoon, Hannah.”
“Afternoon, Albert.” She walked over to his truck, egg basket on her arm.
“Wondered how the pony was, if you noticed any swelling in his legs or any bruising?”
She shook her head. “Ne. The pony is fine, thanks be.”
“And Susanna? She’s no worse for the tumble?” He tugged at his ball cap and leaned out the window.
“Ne, Susanna’s good.” She chuckled. “Actually, she’s not behaving like herself. She’s