all morning to see you!”
“It’s gut to see you, too, Lavina,” Lavina said with a rueful smile.
Linda laughed as she crossed the room to her eldest and kissed her cheek. “It’s gut to see you, too.” She cradled Mark in her arms. “He’s getting so big!” She turned to them. “We’re going upstairs to visit. We’ll see you later.”
Lavina watched her mudder leave the room. “I’m feeling kind of unnecessary here.”
“Oh, nee, you came at a gut time,” Mary Elizabeth told her. “Rose Anna here was just saying you and I got the mann we wanted by going after them, so why shouldn’t she?”
“I didn’t say that!” she protested.
“You schur did.”
“I didn’t mean it quite that way.”
Lavina shed her coat and hung it on a peg by the door, then walked over to the stove to pour herself a mug of hot water. She took a seat at the table opposite Rose Anna and chose a tea bag from the bowl on the table.
“So what did you mean?” she asked as she dunked the bag in the water.
“Just that you wanted David, and Mary Elizabeth wanted Sam, and you didn’t let yourselves get discouraged when things were tough. You went after them.”
“ ‘Went after them’ sounds like they were big game or something,” Mary Elizabeth pointed out.
Lavina chose a cookie and nodded. “It does.”
“Want to hear something even worse?” Mary Elizabeth asked. “She said she wants John, and she figures, since she doesn’t have him, God needs a little help from her.”
“That’s not exactly what I said.”
“Close enough,” Mary Elizabeth said with a smirk. “I moved my chair away from her. You know, just in case God sent a bolt of lightning down at her. You might think about it, too.”
Lavina laughed. “I don’t think He needs to. He’s like us. He’s used to Rose Anna being outrageous.”
“I’m not outrageous!”
“Well, outspoken, anyway.”
“Can’t argue there,” Mary Elizabeth muttered.
Rose Anna folded her arms over her chest. “The two of you just can’t stop treating me like a kind.”
“Once the boppli of the family—” Mary Elizabeth began.
“Always the boppli,” Lavina finished.
The two of them giggled and looked at her indulgently.
Rose Anna stood. “I’ll just take my immature self off so the two of you don’t have to bother with me,” she said huffily and flounced over to the refrigerator.
“Now no sulking. We didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Lavina came over to say. She patted her shoulder. “We were just teasing you. Weren’t we, Mary Elizabeth?”
“Ya.”
“I looked up teasing in the dictionary once,” Rose Anna said, lifting her chin. “It means to annoy in fun.”
“Kumm, sit down.” Lavina led Rose Anna back to the table. “I suppose it might look like I pursued David,” Lavina began. “You know he and his dat couldn’t get along, and when David had enough and moved out, I was devastated. We were supposed to get married, and here he left the community and it looked like we’d never see each other again let alone get married.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I never prayed so much in my life for him to return.”
“If all it took was praying, John and I would be together,” Rose Anna told her.
“I’m sorry.” Lavina paused for a moment. “But then one day I found out that David’s dat was seriously ill with the cancer. His mudder asked me to find David and tell him and ask him to come home and help with the farm. So I found David and he returned home, and eventually he and dat gradually made up their differences. And David returned to the church and we got married.”
“And are living happily ever after,” Rose Anna said and did her best not to sound resentful. She didn’t envy her schweschder—she really didn’t. She loved a happy ever after. It was why she read the romance novels she kept hidden under her pillow.
Lavina smiled. “Well, mostly. We have our differences now and then. But we work them out because we love each other. But my point is that I didn’t hunt him down, but I did let him know that I loved him and wanted to have a life with him.”
“Sam left home not long after David did,” Mary Elizabeth said. “Even after their dat had been told he’d beaten the cancer, by then there was still such tension between Amos and Sam. You know that Sam was just as resistant to returning home and to our church as David.”
She took a deep breath and looked at Rose Anna. “All I’m trying to say is that like Lavina, I couldn’t stop loving Sam, so I let him know and didn’t give up on us. But I didn’t set out to hunt or entrap him.”
“Well, that’s all I’m saying I’m going to do,” Rose Anna said stubbornly.
“Allrecht,” Mary Elizabeth said, but she exchanged a doubtful look with Lavina.
Rose Anna was glad when they went upstairs a few minutes later. It gave her some quiet time to come up with a plan.
Her two schweschders might be acting like their relationships had just happened, but clearly that wasn’t working for her and John. She needed a plan, a way to get what she wanted.
Lavina and Mary Elizabeth didn’t just tease her for being the boppli of the family. They also teased her for getting what she wanted—whether it was to be treated to a fancy lunch as she’d gotten Mary Elizabeth to do not so long ago. And she was gut at finding a way to get out of chores she didn’t want to do as well.
She hoped they were right this time about her getting what she wanted.
***
John couldn’t believe it, but he found himself looking out for sneak snowball attacks for the next several days.
Talk about silly.
But he wasn’t letting Rose Anna catch him unawares like that again. He climbed into his truck and drove home. Despite telling his brother he was enjoying his time as a bachelor, tonight—just like many other nights—he was going home to a solitary supper of some version of ramen noodles and some time renovating his current living space.
The small caretaker’s cottage was a step down from the apartment he’d rented with Sam. The walls hadn’t been painted in years, there was only a sagging single bed in the one bedroom and an assortment of lawn furniture in the living room.
And he’d found evidence of mice in the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink.
But it was cheap, and he didn’t need much. He had talked the owner into quite a price break by offering to do painting and repair.
The trouble was it meant adding more work onto a busy day making deliveries in his truck for one business and doing part-time construction jobs he picked up.
He knew some local Amish found jobs in tourism and such, but he preferred what he was doing for now.
When things were tough back home, his mamm had always said God would provide.
Sometimes John felt as if God had forgotten him.
He shook off the thought. No sense thinking about that now. And he sure didn’t want another dat—the important one—angry at him.
So he heated some leftovers Lavina had sent home with him the other day and tried not to think about how it must feel to be the settled husband he’d joked with David that he didn’t want