After the door closed behind Hunter, Pearl dramatically clasped her hands together. “Ach! What a relief that is! I was beginning to think we weren’t going to be able to sell our goods at the festival.”
Hosted by a neighboring town right off the main interstate, the Piney Hill Christmas Festival was an enormous, commercial Englisch endeavor attracting thousands of passersby shopping for Christmas. Part of its appeal was the “Christmas Kingdom”—an elaborate prefabricated “Santa’s Workshop” where children could have their photos taken with Santa. The bishop didn’t prohibit the Amish leit from selling their goods at the festival, as long as they only rented space at booths hosted by the Englisch and didn’t staff the booths themselves.
“Jah,” Faith said, tentatively optimistic. “Although there’s no guarantee we’ll sell enough at the festival to make the down payment, without it, we wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
“It’s a gut thing Hunter is in town again, both for Ruth and for us,” Pearl gushed, hanging her shawl on a peg inside the hall leading to the kitchen. “Hasn’t he grown into a fine, strapping young man?”
Although Hunter’s mature physique hadn’t escaped Faith’s notice, she didn’t know quite what to make of his personality. He definitely seemed more personable just now than he’d been on the road earlier that morning, and bringing her eggs was a nice gesture, but that might have been at Ruth’s urging. Before Faith could respond, the phone rang and Pearl grabbed the receiver. “Yoder’s Bakery, how may I help you?”
Landlines and electricity weren’t allowed in Amish homes, but the Ordnung permitted them to be used for business purposes in their district, provided the buildings were owned by the Englisch. The bakery utilized both electricity and a phone, but neither service would be continued in the overhead apartment once the current tenant moved out, making it permissible for Faith to live there.
After hanging up, Pearl waved a slip of paper. “Another pie order for Thanksgiving! Two apple and one sawdust. If this keeps up, you’ll have to start turning down orders.”
“Not if I want to keep the bakery, I won’t. I’ll bake every night until midnight if I have to.”
Although one of her chores growing up included baking for her family, Faith hadn’t always enjoyed the responsibility. But while she was recovering from surgery, she began experimenting with dessert recipes. She soon discovered that even among the Amish she possessed an unusual talent for making goodies, and she reveled in the process of creating savory treats. That autumn, she made cakes for her second-oldest brother Noah’s wedding to Lovina that were so scrumptious several guests requested she bake for their special occasions, too. Faith’s business was born.
Sharing a kitchen with Henrietta proved to be impractical for both of them, however, so eventually Faith rented her current space. The bakery was the one good thing that resulted from her surgery, and she had no intention of letting it go without doing everything she could to raise the income for the down payment for her lease. So, when an Englisch customer called to say he couldn’t pick up his large, unpaid order by the time the bakery closed at five, Faith continued to make pies to freeze for Thanksgiving until he showed up. It was six thirty by the time she finally locked the door behind her.
A frosty gust nearly blew her outer bonnet off her head as she pedaled uphill in the dark toward the big farmhouse. She meant to purchase a new battery at the mercantile during her dinner break, but she’d been so busy she didn’t stop for an afternoon meal. Ravenous, she hoped her family hadn’t worried about her when she missed supper.
“There you are,” Henrietta said when Faith entered the kitchen. Her cheek was smudged with flour and she was jostling her youngest son on her hip. Utensils and ingredients were spread in disarray across the table. “Didn’t you remember you were going to help make the bread for dinner tomorrow?”
The following day was their Sunday to host church worship services and they would need to serve a light dinner to everyone in attendance. Henrietta usually provided the traditional after-church meal of bread with “church peanut butter,” homemade bologna, cheese, pickles and pickled beets. An assortment of desserts were supplied by other women in the district.
“Ach! I forgot,” admitted Faith.
“You mustn’t put earning money before the needs of the church,” Henrietta scolded.
Faith hung her head. She wouldn’t have stayed so late waiting for the customer if she’d remembered she promised to help bake bread after supper. Still, the fact that she’d forgotten indicated her priorities were on her business, not on the church.
“I’m sorry,” she earnestly apologized. “I’ll make the bread as soon as I’ve had something to eat.”
“Something to eat? Your ant works in a bakery all day and she expects us to believe she hasn’t had anything to eat,” Henrietta cooed to the infant, who drooled when she tickled the fold of skin beneath his chin. “Do you believe that? Do you?”
Unsure whether her sister-in-law was joking or not, Faith ignored her comment. She opened the icebox and removed a bowl of chicken casserole to eat cold, along with a serving of homemade applesauce.
“Did I tell you my sister is visiting for Thanksgiving?” Henrietta asked while Faith devoured her supper. “My mamm and daed can’t make the long journey, but I haven’t seen Willa for so long that I pleaded with her to kumme anyway. She’ll have to travel alone, which is difficult for her. She’s not as...strong-minded as you are, but she misses me, too, so she’s willing to make the effort. It will be wunderbaar to have another woman in the house, someone I can talk to.”
Maybe she was overly tired, but Henrietta’s comments nettled Faith and she had to work to temper her response. “That’s nice. I’m sure we’ll make room for her somewhere.”
Then she washed, dried and put away her dish and utensils before rolling up her sleeves to prepare the dough. It would be midnight before she finished baking after all.
* * *
Although Hunter felt his lower back seize up as he lifted Ruth into the buggy on Sunday, he met the challenge without a word of complaint. The Amish only missed church in cases of severe illness or extreme circumstances, and according to Ruth, her injuries weren’t going to keep her from worshipping on the Sabbath.
“Do you remember the way to the Yoders’ farm?” she asked. “It’s their turn to host.”
Hunter hadn’t forgotten. He’d spent many Sunday afternoons fishing in the creek behind their property with Noah and Mason Yoder when he was a youth. As the horse pulled their buggy over the familiar hills and alongside the pastures and farmlands on the rural end of Willow Creek, he was flooded with remembrances of more carefree times.
After church service, men whose names he’d forgotten but whose faces were etched in his memory affably welcomed Hunter to the men’s dinner table. By then, his legs were throbbing from sitting on the cold, hard benches in the drafty barn the Yoders used for a gathering room. He ate even quicker than the other men, who were all aware someone else was waiting for a turn at the table and hurried to vacate their places. Hunter wanted to return to Ruth’s home and warm himself in front of the woodstove, but he didn’t see his aunt and mother anywhere. Undoubtedly, Ruth was chatting with friends while his mother helped the other women clear tables and clean dishes.
Figuring if he couldn’t warm his aching legs, he could at least stretch them, he slipped away from the men conversing in small clusters and awkwardly navigated the uneven terrain leading to the creek a few acres behind the Yoders’ house.
He didn’t notice until too late that a woman was already there, leaning against a willow, pitching stones sidearm into the current. He couldn’t turn around without being rude and he couldn’t keep moving without drawing