Wounded Heart (9781455505654) Page 15

  “They didn’t say that exactly, though, did they?” Carrie said. “Didn’t Bishop Daniel say they would have to pray about it?”

  “Sure they have to pray. I want them to. Yet in the end I think all it will do is let me down slowly.”

  “But what if it doesn’t? What if you went before they had a definite answer?”

  Amelia narrowed her eyes at Carrie over the spool of thread on top of the sewing machine. “What are you saying?”

  “Well, as of this moment it’s not a sin, because they haven’t received a conviction from God. All they have is their own human opinion.”

  “Bishop Daniel does go by that from time to time,” Emma pointed out dryly. “Remember when the power company came to Moses Yoder and wanted to put that windmill in his field? Daniel Lapp didn’t take two seconds to decide that it was too much like actually having electricity on the farm, even if it didn’t run to the house or the barn, and Moses had to say no.”

  “They offered him a lot of money, too.” Amelia remembered the flap it had caused in the Gmee, particularly since Moses was a deacon. She supposed that was why Bishop Daniel had to lay down such a firm line—because Moses and the other elders were examples to the entire flock.

  “But they’ve said they’re going to pray about it, not just give an opinion,” Carrie persisted. “I think you should go before they get a definite answer. Then, when you get back, you go before the church in the members’ meeting if you have to and ask forgiveness,” Carrie said. “Can you live with being shunned for six weeks?”

  Amelia and Emma both stared at Carrie, then at each other.

  “Better die Meinding for six weeks than the disease for the rest of your life,” Emma said at last. “Carrie is so smart. You could have your treatment and forgiveness, too.”

  Amelia began to shake her head before Emma had even finished speaking. “That sounds so…calculating. Like I’m deliberately trying to get away with something.”

  “You’re not trying to get away with something,” Carrie said. “You’re trying to accomplish something.”

  “Not like this. It feels…deceitful.”

  “How?”

  Exasperation welled up in her, the same as all the times she’d tried to explain to Matthew why they did things the way they did when the Englisch ways he’d seen seemed so sensible. Like having a telephone in the kitchen, where you could call if someone got sick, instead of having to run a quarter mile down the road.

  “It feels like I would be taking advantage. I know the spirit of the law, even though the letter of it hasn’t been written yet.”

  “You could see it that way,” Emma mused. “Or you could see it as that window being lifted off your fingers so you can do something with them. Like climb out.”

  Chapter 12

  Surely they didn’t mean she should deliberately disobey the bishop and the deacon and then have the nerve to ask forgiveness afterward? Amelia turned back to her seam and concentrated on matching triangles and squares under the slow march of the needle.

  Emma pulled a chair over in front of her treadle but didn’t go to work. “Have I offended you, Liewi?”

  Amelia shook her head. “Nei. It’s just that Daed has already chastised me for being too independent, and here you are telling me I should be more so. Disobedient, even.”

  “It wouldn’t be disobedience yet,” Carrie put in, giving her layout a critical eye. “Do you think I have too much peach here?”

  Emma got up and joined her. “I think the pink might be better below it and the peach at the very top.”

  Carrie rearranged her triangles and considered them. “But look. What if I do this?” She reversed the loose pieces of the block in the middle of her row. “See? Then the line of light triangles goes up and down, almost like a butterfly in the garden.”

  “But we’re not doing butterflies in the garden.” Amelia didn’t feel like she could agree with anybody today. “We’re doing a sunrise over green fields.”

  “But we still want some movement,” Carrie persisted. “If you do them all facing the same direction, it just looks frozen. But if you reverse the middle block, it looks like the colors are moving, the way the sun is in constant movement.”

  “First butterflies, now sun. Make up your mind.”

  Emma raised an eyebrow at her, and Amelia ducked her head with shame. “I’m sorry. I’m in a bit of a state right now. I probably should have stayed at the shop and made sure Melvin didn’t shoot anything else.”

  “What?” Carrie dropped a peach triangle, looking horrified. “Was sagst du?”

  “Oh . . .” Amelia blew out a breath, like a winded horse. “A nail got stuck in the air nailer, and it shot a wild one by accident into the lumber pile. No harm done.” Except to her nerves.

  “But aside from that he’s doing all right?” Carrie sounded diffident. “Maybe it’s none of my business.”

  “A woman’s husband is her business, I would think,” Emma said.

  “But his work isn’t. I shouldn’t have asked, should I?”

  “You’re not talking to the man in charge of that RV company,” Amelia pointed out with a smile. “It’s just me. Of course you should ask. And other than shooting the odd length of board, he’s doing fine.”

  Even from her seat at the sewing machine, Amelia could see Carrie’s long breath of relief. “Have you been worried?” Amelia asked gently.

  Flushing, Carrie nodded. “It’s so difficult for him. Working with his hands, I mean. He’s just not cut out for it.”

  “Some aren’t,” Emma agreed, still gazing thoughtfully at Carrie’s blocks. Was she trying to see the butterflies that Carrie saw? “God gives us all different skills, even if they’re not ones we can use right where we are at the moment.”

  Amelia looked up as she clipped her threads. “God always gives us what we need.”

  “Sure He does. But maybe Melvin needs to put himself where he can use the skills God has given him.”

  Amelia nodded. “I was thinking just today what a shame it is that a man can’t get a job talking for a living.”

  “You can if you’re Englisch. Look at those people on the radio, talking all day long.”

  “I meant in Whinburg. In the church.”

  “So what does it say if God puts you among His people but gives you skills that are only useful outside?” Emma had turned, looking at the piecing from a different angle.

  “How would you know you had them, if you were in the church and never thought to use them?” Carrie asked.

  “Melvin knows he can talk better than he can shoot nails,” Amelia pointed out. She lined up her next seam and set the needle going. “That doesn’t mean he can do that to make his living.”

  “Maybe God is going to make him a minister,” Emma said.

  “Oh, goodness.” Carrie’s voice sounded muffled. “Don’t say that. I mean, I know we must all be willing, but…don’t say it.”

  “Not ready to be the minister’s wife for the rest of your life?” Emma teased. “It won’t kill you. And if anyone could do it, Melvin could.”

  “That is up to the Lord,” Carrie told her. “Don’t you go hurrying Him.” She picked up the triangle of pale peach and laid it in its place. “I really think we should do it this way.”

  “However you like,” Emma said, relenting. “Have your butterflies if it makes you happy.”

  Carrie’s quick glance over at her reminded Amelia that they were supposed to be making this one for Emma, so her preferences ought to come first. “Are you sure?” Carrie said. “It’s your quilt, too. If you think it’s better the other way, then that’s how we’ll do it.”

  “No, no.” Emma waved a hand and went back to her treadle. “You see colors and patterns better than I do. If it were words we were arranging, that would be different.”

  “Or people’s lives,” Amelia muttered to her bobbin race.

  “I heard that,” Emma said.

  “I just can’t believe you both advised
me to disobey.” Amelia eased a seam into place. “You’re supposed to be helping me.”

  “Leaving the cow myelin out of it, the elders have no problem with you going to Mexico with your own money?” Emma asked.

  “If I had the money, they’d have no problem with it—even the flying part, it seems, since they allowed old Joe to do it when there was no other way to get there. The church just can’t finance something that hasn’t been proven. Which is reasonable.”

  “So if you found the money and went for the treatment, then came back with the disease in remission or stopped, you’d be useful to the church again.”

  Emma’s thinking echoed her own. “Ja.”

  “So I think that outweighs the cow myelin problem. And even if you have to ask forgiveness in front of the church, they would see as time went on that it is a proven cure. And maybe the next person wouldn’t have it so hard.”

  “Maybe.” And maybe Emma should go in with Melvin and they could both talk for a living. “But I still can’t find the money.”

  “You could if you sold the shop.”

  The words fell into Amelia’s quiet front room like a flurry of hail on the roof. “I’ve already thought of that. But how would I make my living when I got back?”

  “You and Enoch started from nothing before. You could do it again.”

  “And have two competing pallet shops in Whinburg?”

  “A little competition is good. Didn’t you say that man from the seed company is interested? If you get a good enough offer from him, maybe you could afford the Mexico trip and start a new business, too.”

  She didn’t want to be in business in the first place, never mind start up another one. But God had given her this row to hoe, and it was up to her to do the best she could with it. All she needed was equipment. If she got a good price for the shop, there might be enough left over for an air compressor and a nailer, and enough lumber for Daed and her brothers to build her a shed right here on her five acres. It would be small, but if she let some of her smaller customers know, they might come along with her, leaving the industrial customers for Mr. Bernard Burke.

  “She’s thinking,” Carrie said to Emma.

  Yes, she was, God help her.

  Because to do this, He would have to.

  BERNARD BURKE, OPERATIONS MANAGER.

  Amelia laid the card gently on the desk next to the phone. It was Wednesday, David’s day off, and the regular sound of nails being driven into wood sounded from the shop, meaning that Melvin was too busy to interrupt. He’d started on a hundred-piece order right after he’d come in, and the sound of the air nailer had hardly stopped since then.

  If she picked up the phone and dialed the number on the card, she couldn’t go back. She would have set herself on a course that had no exits, only a finish line.

  Lord, help me to know Your will. Am I looking through a window You have opened, or is it just my own will I see? How can I risk the Bann unless I know that this is the course You want me to take?

  She waited, but no answer came. No sign but a car that rolled down the street, a rooster tail of slush coming up off its back tires. Even through her window, she could hear the sloppy sound it made.

  Was that Englisch car a sign? Call the Englisch man?

  If a buggy had gone by instead, what would that have meant?

  She picked up the card again. Looked at the phone.

  Opened the drawer and dropped it on the stack where it had been sitting for weeks.

  Sat.

  Sighed.

  When the phone rang, she jumped like a pheasant flushed out of a hedge. It took two more rings before she could calm her breathing enough to speak.

  “Whinburg Pallet and Crate, this is Amelia Beiler speaking.”

  “Mrs. Beiler?” a male voice asked, though she had just given her name.

  “Yes.”

  He cleared his throat. “Right. Sorry. You said that, didn’t you?” When she didn’t respond, only waited, he went on, “This is Bernard Burke, from the Lincoln Seed Company. Remem—” At her intake of breath, he stopped. “Mrs. Beiler? Are you okay?”

  No, she was not. Amelia wilted into her chair, the fingers in her good hand feeling as rubbery as the ones that didn’t respond to her anymore.

  “Mrs. Beiler?”

  “Yes…yes, Mr. Burke, I’m well. I…I was just thinking about you.”

  He chuckled, a sound that should have been comforting but was tinged with nerves. “In a good way, I hope.”

  “Yes, it was.” Calm down, Amelia. The poor man probably just wants to place an order. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I was wondering…I’m going to be down your way in the next couple of days, and…I wondered if— I mean, would it be convenient— Were you still thinking…?” He stopped. “I’m making a right fool of myself here.”

  “It must be difficult dealing with a female voice when you’re used to talking with Enoch,” she said in an attempt to put him at his ease. He was such a big man, too. You think he’d feel as though he owned the earth.

  “No, no. It’s your voice I was wanting. You, I mean. Uh, not like that. I mean I wanted to talk to you.”

  His embarrassment was catching. She felt her cheeks heat up, as though it had communicated itself to her over the phone line. “What about, Mr. Burke?”

  “I wondered if I…if you’d be…” Another breath. She could practically hear him counting to ten. “I wonder if I might take you out to lunch one day this week.”

  Amelia nearly dropped the receiver.

  When she finally got it under control, she had to smother the urge to laugh. Once she started laughing, she might never stop until Melvin came out to see what was going on. Did it never rain but pour?

  “M-Mr. Burke, I’m afraid I could not do that,” she finally said when she had herself under control. “It would not look right, you see.”

  “Do you have a better offer?”

  Again she reined in a shriek of laughter. “I would not say better, though I believe he is a good man. But—”

  He made a noise, something like an explosion. “Mrs. Beiler! Miz…Amelia— Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. I wasn’t asking you for a date!”

  Now that blush came back with a vengeance—so much that she felt she might actually catch fire, right there in her chair. How could she have been so batzich—so filled with pride that the first thing she thought of was that a man would want her?

  She could not bear it. She should just hang up this phone right now, lock herself in the toilet, and never come out again.

  Bernard Burke stepped bravely into the breach. “What I meant was, I’d like to take you to lunch so that I could lay my proposal—er, I mean, my proposition before you. A business proposition. That is, if you were still giving thought to selling the shop.”

  She had asked for a sign, and here in the plainest terms was an answer.

  Too bad she’d made such a complete and utter fool of herself first. What man would want to talk business with such a ninny?

  “I have given it a little thought,” she managed. “I was just looking over your card this morning.”

  “Then maybe I could pick you up tomorrow—say around eleven-thirty? We could talk more openly if we went to a restaurant, and I’m partial to the Dutch Deli out there on the county highway.”

  “Oh, no, that would not be good.” Carrie’s little sister Melinda worked in the kitchen there. Imagine the furor in the church if she happened to walk by the service window and saw Amelia in the company of an Englisch man, cozily eating lunch with their heads together, having a very private conversation.

  “Well then, do you have a preference? I like just about anything.”

  “I’m afraid I could not have lunch with you no matter where it was, Mr. Burke. Everyone knows everyone here, and it would look very bad.”

  “But I only want to talk business.”

  “I know, and so do I. But the trouble is, people would think— I mean, they would very likely as
sume that—”

  “Folks would talk,” he said heavily. “I s’pose that’s the case anywhere. If I took my accountant to lunch here, there’d be those who’d gossip and say I was having an affair. Which is impossible—that woman is old enough to be my mother, and she’s way too smart to be seen with the likes of me.”

  In spite of herself, Amelia smiled. “Could we talk business right now? If this is a good time for you.”

  “Sure, if that’s what you want. I’m just sitting in the truck in the parking lot on my lunch break, watching it snow.”

  From what she remembered of the Lincoln Seed Company’s checks, they were based in a town about fifty miles west. “Oh, dear. More snow is coming, then?”

  “Forecast is for more tonight, then a big dump of it on the weekend.”

  And church on Sunday all the way out at Old Joe’s. She’d better ask her father if she and the boys could ride with them.

  “So then, Mr. Burke,” she prompted him.

  “Right. Well, I’ll just pretend I’m sitting across the table from you and I’ve just buttered you up with a great big Reuben sandwich. The Dutch Deli makes the best in the county.”

  “It was delicious.” Smiling, she played along. “And so is this coffee.”

  “I haven’t really had a good look at your shop, but I’ve been there a time or two and been impressed with the operation. You keep your equipment in good repair, the place is as clean as a whistle, and it seems you make a pretty good living.”

  “We get by.”

  “Sure you’d say that, but to make a practical offer I’d need to know about how much it brings in in a year. Ballpark.”

  “Would you like to see our tax return?”

  “If we go any further, that accountant I mentioned would probably want to, but for now just a rough estimate.”

  “Last year we had a net profit of forty thousand.”

  He whistled. “Not bad for a little place.”

  “Our customers are local, but we also have some big outfits in Lancaster, so it balances out.”

  “In that case, Mrs. Beiler, I’d be willing to make you an offer of a hundred thousand for the business.”