blow had been so quick and hard that Roland was picking himself up off the ground almost before he’d realized that he’d been struck by a flying hoof. He hadn’t lost consciousness, but for what seemed like an eternity, he hadn’t been able to think straight.
Johanna’s matter-of-fact question had much the same effect. He was stunned. “What did you say?” he stammered. Around him, the laughter and happy shrieks of the children, the red balloon that had come loose from its mooring and was floating skyward, and the sweet smell of ripe strawberries faded. For a long second, Roland’s whole world narrowed to the woman sitting beside him.
Johanna rolled her eyes. “Are you listening to me? I asked if you would marry me.”
He swallowed, opened his mouth to speak and then took a big gulp of air. “Did you just ask me to marry you?” he managed.
She folded her hands gracefully over her starched black apron. “It’s the logical thing for us to do,” she answered.
He heard what she said, but his attention was fixed on the red-gold curls that had come loose from her severe bun and framed her heart-shaped face, a face so fresh and youthful that it might have belonged to a teenage girl instead of a widow and mother in her late twenties. Johanna’s skin was fair and pink, dusted with a faint trail of golden freckles over the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks. Her eyes were the exact shade of bluebells, and her mouth was... Roland swallowed again. He’d always thought that Johanna Yoder had the prettiest mouth—even when she’d been admonishing him for something he’d done wrong.
They had a long history, he and Johanna...a history that he’d hoped and prayed would become a future. In the deepest part of his heart, he’d wanted to ask her the very question that she’d just asked him. But now that she’d spoken it first, he was poleaxed.
“Do I take that as a no?” she asked, as a flush started at her slender throat and spread up over her face. “You don’t want to marry me?”
He could hear the hurt in her voice, and his stomach clenched. Johanna’s voice wasn’t high, like most young women’s. It was low, husky and rich. She had a beautiful singing voice. And when she raised that voice in hymns during Sunday worship service, the sound was so sweet it almost brought tears to his eyes.
Abruptly, she stood.
“Ne, Johanna. Don’t!” He caught her hand. “Sit. Please.”
Clearly flustered, she jerked her hand away, but not before he felt the warmth of her flesh and an invisible rush of energy that leaped between them. The shock of that touch jolted him in the same way that his skin prickled when a bolt of lightning struck nearby in a thunderstorm. He’d never understood that, and he still didn’t, but he felt it now.
“You know I want to marry you,” he said, all in a rush, before he lost his nerve. “I’ve been waiting for the right time...when I thought you were—”
“Through mourning Wilmer?” Johanna’s blue eyes clouded with deep violet. She lowered her voice and glanced around to see if anyone was staring at them.
Roland found himself doing the same. But the children were busy climbing the mountain of straw, and no one else seemed to have noticed that the ground under his feet was no longer solid and his brain had turned to mush. He returned his gaze to her. “To show decent respect for my Pauline and your—”
“Deceased husband?” She made a tiny shrug and her lips firmed into a thin line. “Wilmer was my husband and the father of my children. We took marriage vows together, and if...” She took a deep breath. “If he hadn’t passed, I would have remained his wife.” She shook her head. “I’d be speaking an untruth if I told you that there was love or respect left in my heart for him when he died—if there wasn’t the smallest part of relief when I knew he’d gone into the Lord’s care. I know it’s a sin to feel that way, but I—”
“Johanna, you don’t have to—” he began, but she cut him off with a raised palm.
“Ne, Roland. Let me finish, please. I’ll say this, and then we’ll speak of it no more. Wilmer was not a well man. His mind was troubled. But the fault in our marriage was not his alone. I’ve spent hours on my knees asking for God’s forgiveness. I should have tried harder to help him...to find help for him.”
One of Johanna’s small hands rested on the straw bale between them, and he covered it with his own and squeezed it, out of sympathy for her pain. This time, she didn’t pull away. He waited, and she went on.
“You know I was no longer living under Wilmer’s roof when he died. His sickness and his drinking of spirits made it impossible for me to remain there with my children.” Johanna raised her eyes to meet his gaze, and Roland saw the tears that her pride would not allow to fall.
A tightness gathered in Roland’s chest. “Did he... Was Wilmer...” A rising anger against the dead man threatened to make him say things he might later regret. As Johanna had said...as Bishop Atlee had said, Wilmer’s illness had robbed him of reason. He was not responsible for what he did, and it was not for any of them to judge him. But Roland had to ask. “Did he ever hit you?”
Johanna turned her face away.
It was all the answer he needed. Roland wasn’t a violent man, but he did have a temper that needed careful tending. If Wilmer had appeared in front of them now, alive and well, Roland wasn’t certain he could have refrained from giving him a sound thumping.
Johanna’s voice was a thin whisper. “It was Jonah’s safety that worried me most. When Wilmer...” A shudder passed through her tensed frame. “When he began to take out his anger on our son, I couldn’t take it any longer. I know that it’s the right of a father to discipline his children, but this was more than discipline.” She looked back, meeting Roland’s level gaze. “Wilmer got it into his head that Jonah wasn’t his son, but yours.”
“Mine?” Roland’s mouth gaped. “But we never...you never...”
Johanna sighed. “Exactly. I’ve been accused of being outspoken, too stubborn for a woman and willful—all true, to my shame. But, you, above all men, should know that I—”
“Would never break your marriage vows,” he said. “Could never do anything to compromise your honor or that of your husband.” He fought to control the anger churning in his gut. “In all the time we courted, we never did anything more than hold hands and—”
“We kissed once,” she reminded him. “At the bishop’s husking bee. When you found the red ear of corn?”
“We were what? Fifteen?”
“I was fifteen,” Johanna said. Her expression softened, and some of the regret faded from her clear blue eyes. “You were sixteen.”
“And as I remember, you nearly knocked me on my—”
“I didn’t strike you.” The corners of her mouth curled into a smile. “I just gave you a gentle nudge, to make you stop kissing me.”
“You shoved me so hard that I fell backward and landed in a pile of corncobs. Charley told on me, and I was the butt of everyone’s jokes for months.” He squeezed her hand again. “It wasn’t much of a kiss for all that fuss, but I still remember how sweet your lips tasted.”
“Don’t be fresh, Roland Byler,” she admonished, once again becoming the no-nonsense Johanna he knew and loved. “Remember you are a grown man, a father and a baptized member of the church. Talk of foolishness between teenagers isn’t seemly.”
“I suppose not,” he said grudgingly. “But I never forgot that kiss.”
She pulled her hand free and tucked it behind her back. “Enough of that. We have a decision to make, you and I. I’ve thought about it and prayed about it. I’ve listened to my sisters chatter on the subject until I’m sick of it. You are a widower with a young son, and I’m a widow with two small, fatherless children, and it’s time we both remarried. We belong to the same church, we have