The Christmas Courtship

Tears sprang to Phoebe’s eyes. She didn’t know if it was her cousin’s kind words, full of hope, or just the feeling of another human being’s touch that overwhelmed her with emotion. There was no hugging in her stepfather’s home. It had been too long since Phoebe had felt someone’s arms around her, and suddenly she felt as if she might break down in tears.

“There, there,” Rosemary murmured, patting Phoebe’s back.

Phoebe sniffed and drew back, pulling a handkerchief from her dress pocket. Embarrassed and not sure what to say, she dabbed at her eyes.

Just then, Tara stuck her head through the doorway. “Apple pie came out nice. I’m going to throw the sweet potato pies in now.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Dough for the rolls is rising already. Anything else you want me to do, Mam?”

Her back to Tara, Phoebe took a moment to dry her eyes and pull herself together.

“Sounds liked you have everything under control, dochtah.” Rosemary looked up at Phoebe from her perch on the couch. “Wait until you taste Tara’s apple pie. You’ll be wanting to set a piece aside for breakfast tomorrow. You met, Tara, ya?”

“Ya.” Phoebe glanced at Tara and nodded.

“I’m Nettie.” A slightly older girl came to the doorway, giving a shy wave. She was petite and blond, with her sister’s green eyes. In stocking feet, she was wearing a blue dress and a long canvas apron that appeared to be covered with splotches of paint. “The chest of drawers will need just one more coat when I finish this one, and then it will be done, Mam. New knobs and it will be perfect for Phoebe’s room.” She gave a cautious smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t get it done before you arrived. I had two orders for quilts I had to finish before I could start on the chest.”

“Nettie found an old chest of drawers at our local farmers market in Dover,” Rosemary explained. “Spence’s Bazaar is open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. We’ll take you this week. About anything you want can be bought there—food, produce and all sorts of junk.”

“It wasn’t junk,” Nettie protested, walking over to her mother. She lifted Rosemary’s foot in its black boot to readjust the pillow beneath it. Satisfied with the position of her mother’s foot, she turned to Phoebe. “I only paid seven dollars for the chest of drawers. Wait until you see it. A couple of repairs, a new coat of paint and the handles I found in our barn, and it’s beautiful.”

“Nettie likes strays,” Tara explained. “Stray cats, stray chests of drawers—”

“You were happy enough with that stray baking pan I bought for you for a dollar last week,” Nettie quipped.

Tara wrapped her arms around her waist. “True enough.” She glanced at her mother. “Tea, Mam? For you and Phoebe. I managed to hide a couple of gingerbread cookies from Joshua. He loves gingerbread cookies,” she explained to Phoebe. “I hardly have the tray out of the oven and he’s eaten half a dozen.”

“I’m fine until supper,” Phoebe said.

“Nonsense.” Rosemary shifted her position on the couch. Like her daughters, she was dressed in a calf-length dress, hers blue, and wearing a white prayer bonnet, the ties dangling. “I’m bored. Bring us some of those gingerbread cookies and a pot of mint tea. I gather my own mint and dry it. Makes an excellent tea.” She patted the couch indicating Phoebe should approach. “Sit.” She glanced up at Nettie as Tara headed for the kitchen. “Join us?”

Nettie eyed the wood-cased clock on the wall. It was handmade, as were the end tables. “Tempting, but—Oh, my, look who’s up!” She threw open her arms as another sister Phoebe had not yet met appeared in the doorway. She balanced a sleepy toddler on each hip. “Josiah.” Nettie took one of the little boys who was dressed identically to his father in denim trousers and a blue shirt with tiny leather suspenders. “There’s my Josiah.”

Rosemary put out her arms to take her son from Nettie. “Did you have a nice nap?”

“James was still trying to sleep, weren’t you?” the unidentified sister said to the little boy she was still holding. “But big brother Josiah wouldn’t let you.”

Phoebe saw at once that the little boys who were just over a year old were identical twins.

“You must be Phoebe,” the sister said with a smile.

All of Rosemary’s daughters were pretty, but this one may have been the prettiest of them all. She was a yellow blonde with the same Stutzman green eyes, but she had a perfect heart-shaped face, thick lashes and rosy cheeks.

“I’m Ginger. And this, in case you didn’t know,” she said, looking at the little boy in her arms, “is James. Right?” She tickled the little boy, who giggled. “Are you James?”

The sound of the child’s laughter struck Phoebe as sharply as if someone had plunged a shard of glass into her chest. “Would he come to me?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat. Suddenly she missed her little boy, her sweet son, so much that she physically felt their separation. She opened her arms to James. Her John-John was only two years older than the twins.

“Want to go to Phoebe?” Ginger asked her little brother. She passed him to Phoebe and the little boy gave no protest.

“There we go,” Phoebe murmured, pulling the little boy against her in a hug. He looked up at her with big brown eyes, his father’s eyes. “What a good boy,” she said softly, shifting him onto her hip.

“Joshua around?” Ginger asked her mother.

“Somewhere,” Rosemary responded, offering a little horse to Josiah from a basket of wooden toys beside the couch.

“Need me to watch the boys?” Ginger asked her mother.

“I should finish that coat of paint on the chest of drawers before supper.” Nettie tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “But I can stay and watch the boys.”

“You can both go about your business,” Rosemary insisted. “Phoebe and I can certainly handle two little boys. Can’t we?” she asked her son, and he climbed down from her lap, the unpainted toy still clutched in his tiny hand.

“Mam, the doctor was serious about staying off your foot for a couple more days,” Nettie warned. “Benjamin said—”

“Benjamin worries more than a grossmama.” Rosemary plucked another wood toy from behind the cushion on the couch. This one appeared to be a goat. “Phoebe’s here. She can give me a hand.”

“Ya,” Phoebe agreed, fighting tears. She missed her young son immensely, but somehow holding little James gave her comfort.

Spotting the toy in his mother’s hand, James wiggled in Phoebe’s arms and she reluctantly lowered him to his feet. “They walking yet?” she asked as she set him gently on his feet.

“Ya, since they were ten months,” Rosemary answered proudly. She waved Ginger and Nettie away. “Shoo. We’ll call you if we need you.”

Alone with Rosemary and the toddlers, Phoebe lowered herself to the polished, wide-plank wooden floor. “Would you like that goat, James? What a fine goat,” she cooed as he took it from his mother’s hand.

For a moment the two women were silent as they watched the boys play. The little ones jabbered to each other, but Phoebe could tell how close they were to speaking their first words. Her John-John had babbled the same way, practicing sounds before finding the words.

“You’re missing him?” Rosemary asked softly. “Your son?”

Her tone was so kind that again Phoebe had to struggle to contain her emotion. “Very much.”

“How old is he? It’s John, isn’t it?”

“Ya, John. But I call him John-John most of the time.” James dropped his toy goat, and Phoebe scooped it up and offered it to him, pretending to make it nibble on his chubby hand before she passed the toy to him. “He’s three now,” she said. It felt good to talk about him. About her cherished little boy that her family spent most of their time trying to ignore. Trying to pretend he didn’t exist.

“A happy child?” Rosemary pressed. “Easygoing?”

“Ya, and smart.” She looked up at her cousin, her eyes glistened. “And sweet. He’s already trying to be helpful. Just yesterday I was folding dishcloths and he wanted to help.” She chuckled at the memory. “He made a mess of it of course, but I let him try.”

“It’s the only way they learn,” Rosemary said, chuckling with her.

The women were both silent again for a moment, watching the boys play. Rosemary produced several more hand-carved wooden toys. They were unadorned with paint, but still beautiful and easily recognizable even to a child. There were two chickens, a cow and an animal that took Phoebe a moment to identify.

“Is that...is that a llama?” Phoebe asked, watching Josiah try to push the wooden animal beneath the pillow his mother rested her foot on.

“It’s an alpaca, a cousin of the llama.” Rosemary laughed. “Our vet, Albert Hartman, raises them. Lives over Seven Poplars way. Used to be Mennonite but now he’s Amish. Married to my friend Hannah. Anyway, Benjamin took the twins to see them a few weeks ago and our boys were fascinated. I’m just waiting for a trailer to pull up in the barnyard and for Benjamin to unload a herd of alpacas.”

Phoebe grinned at the idea.

“Apparently, they can be quite profitable,” Rosemary went on. “Or so Benjamin was telling me. I think he was trying to butter me up.”

This time, when the women fell into silence again, it was a comfortable one. All of Phoebe’s apprehensions about coming to Hickory Grove, her fears that her cousin and family would judge her for her past, were suddenly gone. For the first time in a very long time, she felt at peace. She felt God’s nearness and the belief that she was doing what He wanted her to do.

“I want you to know, Phoebe,” Rosemary said slowly, “that Benjamin and I think it was very brave of you to come here.” She met Phoebe’s gaze. “It was the right thing to do for your son.”

Phoebe gazed into her cousin’s green eyes. “It was kind of you to welcome me.” She hesitated. “Considering—”

“Considering what?” Rosemary asked, sounding annoyed with her. “You stumbled. Who of us hasn’t?”

Phoebe looked down at her hands folded in her lap. “It was more than a stumble. What I did was a sin.”

“Did you love the boy’s father?”

Phoebe was surprised by her cousin’s forthrightness, but she probably shouldn’t have been. Rosemary’s family, the environment she raised her family in, was so different than that of her own. “Ya,” Phoebe murmured, tears welling in her eyes, against her will. “I loved him, and he loved me. We had made plans to marry, John and I. He—” Her voice caught in her throat. She took a breath and went on. “He had put a deposit down on a farm. We were going to live near a creek,” she managed, remembering how happy she had been the day he had taken her in his wagon to see the property. “And then he...he died. A cave-in in his father’s silo.” She lifted her hands and let them fall into her lap. “And then I had John-John and that was that.”

“I understand what our preachers speak of, but don’t know that I believe that it’s ever a sin to love,” Rosemary said thoughtfully.

“Ne,” Phoebe argued, taking a toy sheep from the basket and offering it to James. “I sinned. We sinned.”

“And then you confessed before your bishop and your church,” Rosemary countered. “And no more need be said.”

Phoebe looked up and saw that Rosemary’s eyes were misty. And Phoebe knew in her heart of hearts that everything really was going to be all right.

Chapter Three

Joshua looked up from where he was stacking wood in the wood box as his sister walked into the living room. He was on his knees beside the massive redbrick fireplace. With the cold snap, they’d been burning more wood than they would typically, and he wanted to be sure there was plenty for the evening. With their new guest in the house, he imagined that after supper, when the harness shop was closed and the animals settled for the night, the whole family would retire to the living room. Here, Rosemary and her daughters might knit or do some mending while Joshua, his father and brothers looked over seed catalogs or farm magazines. Tara would probably make popcorn, and they’d sit around together and talk. Someone might tell the family about an exciting or funny or sweet story about a customer at the harness shop. Someone else might relate the antics of one of the animals in the barnyard or news from their community. Occasionally their father would read a story from the Bible or relate a tale from his childhood in the wilds of Canada. It didn’t matter what they did or what they talked about—all that mattered was spending an hour or two together as a family. And Joshua wanted Phoebe to be able to experience the comfort of a crackling fire and the sense of wholeness he felt when he sat with his family here in the living room in the evening. Because something told him, something he saw in the depths of her blue eyes, that she didn’t have enough of that comfort in her life.

“I’ve been looking for you.” Bay Laurel stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips.

From out in the kitchen, he could hear the hubbub typical of that time of day. The women were bustling around the kitchen getting supper on the table, and the men were finishing up with chores, coming and going and settling the animals for the night. The house smelled of fresh bread baking and...contentment.

“I see you fetched Mam’s cousin.” She tilted her head in the direction of the kitchen. When he’d entered the house a few minutes ago, his arms full of firewood, Phoebe was helping prepare supper with his sisters. She had been busy opening canning jars of spiced pears and apples. Rosemary’s table was never anything fancy, but the food was always hearty and some of the best he’d ever eaten.

“Ya, I picked Phoebe up at the bus station.” Joshua stacked two more logs in the wood box to the right of the fireplace. He’d chosen apple wood to burn this evening. It had come from one of the trees he and Jacob had cut down from the old orchard in the far northern corner of the property. He loved the smell of apple wood burning. He thought Phoebe might, too.

“Met her, did you? She’s nice,” he went on, not waiting for Bay to respond. “Smart, but not too serious. Not full of herself. And kind. She was helping an Englisher lady at the bus station when I got there. Not all girls would do that. Help a stranger. Did you get a chance to talk to Phoebe? Did you like her?”

“Ya.” Bay drew out the word. “I liked her well enough. Joshua, I was hoping we could get together today. Maybe after supper, once everything is cleaned up?”

He moved the last of the logs from the pile on a piece of tarp on the floor to the wood box, and then scooted over in front of the fireplace. He thought he’d go ahead and start the fire, so it would be burning well by the time the family gathered together in the living room.

“We’ll have to see about that,” he hemmed. It wasn’t that he wasn’t eager to sit down with Bay. He just wasn’t sure that tonight was the night for him and Bay to go off on their own. Not with this being Phoebe’s first night there. It wouldn’t be right for Bay and him not to be with the family. “Might have to be tomorrow. I told Levi that after morning chores, I’d give him a hand clearing out that section of the barn he and Dat are making into a work space for their buggies. But after that...” He gave a nod, indicating there would be time then.

His father had been in the business of making harnesses and other leather goods since he was a young man. That experience had expanded into running a large retail shop here in Delaware. But Benjamin Miller had always had a place in his heart for buggy making. His grandfather had been a buggy maker. Now that he had boys old enough—and trustworthy enough, he teased them—he was interested in trying his hand at building buggies. He planned to build one for his family first, then maybe one for Rosemary’s married daughter, Lovage, whose family was growing. Joshua’s brother Levi was keen on the idea. Though Levi was a hard worker and good with leather, his heart wasn’t in the harness business, so he was eager to get the work space created so he and their father could start their first project.

Bay folded her arms over her chest. “Josh, we need to get all of our hens in a row before we go to your father with our plan. We need to go over the numbers. How much we plan to spend on seeds, how many plants that will yield. What we think we can sell them for—” she ticked off. “Everyone is in the potted plants business. I think we need to consider adding some indoor varieties—indoor plants folks can take in after the growing season. I know there’s a risk...”

Joshua nodded, trying to give his sister his full attention and not let his mind wander. But it was hard. He just couldn’t stop thinking about Phoebe. And not just about how pretty she was, but how much he liked her. How he’d liked her from the moment he first met her, the moment she’d spoken. Something was calming about her voice, something about her manner that just made him feel... He didn’t know how to describe it. She just seemed like no one else he knew. None of the young women he knew, at least. Most girls her age were so flighty and hard to have a real conversation with.

Not that he had a lot of experience with women, not his stepsisters, his age. Sure, he occasionally drove a girl home from a singing, the Amish version of a date. In July he’d taken his friend Caleb Gruber’s sister-in-law home from a taffy pull and then a picnic, but it hadn’t been anything serious. She’d gone back to Kentucky, and he heard she was courting a blacksmith’s son. But none of the girls he’d taken home were as mature as Phoebe. Not that she seemed old to him, though he suspected she was older than him by a year or two. She just seemed wiser than the young women he knew. More levelheaded.

“Do you know how old she is?” Joshua asked suddenly. “Phoebe, I mean.” It wasn’t until he spoke her name that he realized Bay must have still been talking.

The look on Bay’s face left no doubt in his mind. She narrowed her gaze. “If you’re not serious about wanting to build this greenhouse and garden shop with me, Josh, you need to tell me now. You need to—”

“No, no,” he interrupted, getting to his feet. “Of course I’m serious about it. And I want to add the lean-to onto the barn so we can sell our plants, I just...” He grabbed a bundle of kindling and went back to the fireplace.

“You just what?” Bay asked, taking on a stern tone of voice. She sounded like his older sister Lovey now. Lovey’s voice always changed when she became annoyed with someone. “What’s got you so preoccupied?” She lowered her voice. “What’s the reason for all this talk about Cousin Phoebe?”

He knelt on the redbrick hearth and began to stack the larger pieces of kindling on top of the smaller pieces, taking care to leave plenty of open space between them to allow the fire to breathe. “No...no reason,” he said, suddenly feeling self-conscious. He’d never felt this way about a girl the way he thought about Phoebe. Fluttery in his chest. He knew he was attracted to her. He’d been attracted to girls before, but this was different. This wasn’t just about a pretty face.

“You know she came here because she had to,” Bay intoned.

He concentrated on stacking the wood just right so the fire would catch on the first try. “I don’t care about that sort of thing. Men don’t care about gossip the way women do.”

“Joshua, it’s not—” She didn’t finish her thought.

Bay was quiet for a moment, quiet long enough that he glanced over his shoulder at her. She was still standing in the doorway. Her arms were crossed over her chest again. She didn’t seem pleased with him, but he wasn’t exactly sure why. Did she really think he wasn’t serious about wanting to build the greenhouse? Sometimes it was hard to know what women were thinking.

Who was he kidding? He almost never knew.

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll go over the figures tomorrow. Supper’s about ready. You’d best wash up. You know how Mam is about coming late to the table.”

“Just about done here,” he answered, crumpling a piece of newspaper to push beneath the neatly stacked kindling.

He heard her turn to go, then stop in the doorway.

“Joshua,” she said softly. “It would be best if you didn’t—” She went quiet midsentence again.

“Best I not what?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at her.

She shook her head. “Never mind,” she said. “Wash up.”

“Ya,” he answered, getting to his feet. He needed to clean up any mess he’d made, and then if he was quick he’d have time to get upstairs and not just wash his hands, but brush his hair, too. And maybe even put on a clean shirt. Not that his shirt was all that dirty, but there was nothing wrong with a man wanting to look his best at his parents’ supper table, was there?

“You were looking for me?” Joshua walked into the parlor where Rosemary was sitting on the couch, her foot in the black orthopedic boot, propped on a stool. He had a mug of coffee in his hand, the last from the pot that Tara had insisted he take when he’d cut through the kitchen in search of his stepmother. It was Jesse who had said his mam wanted to speak with him.

Rosemary looked up from the sock on her lap that she was darning. “Joshua.” She smiled at him and then snipped a thread that ran between the gray sock and her needle with a pair of scissors. “Come in. Fence ret up?”

After breakfast, his father had sent him to the corner of the north pasture to repair a sagging fence. It was his father’s belief that fences were best mended before the cows got out. It had been cold and windy outside, and Joshua’s hands had gotten stiff even though he’d worn work gloves. But he hadn’t minded tackling the task alone because it had given him some time to think. With such a large family, time alone wasn’t easily found, and he’d welcomed it. He’d spent a bit of time in prayer as he worked, then had run numbers in his head for the plans for the greenhouse. Eventually, his thoughts had drifted to Phoebe. He just couldn’t help himself. This morning she’d come down to breakfast not in the black everyday dress she’d been wearing when he’d picked her up at the bus station, but in a blue dress that looked just like one of his sisters’ dresses. In fact, he was fairly certain one of them had loaned or given it to her. In the blue dress, Phoebe’s eyes had seemed even bluer, her cheeks rosier. And she’d been smiling. Hockmut, or pride in English, wasn’t a good thing among the Amish. He hadn’t thought she was being prideful, only that the pretty, calf-length dress with her white apron made her feel happy. And happiness was never discouraged among their people.

“Fence is standing tall again,” he told Rosemary, reining in his thoughts. “It was bent coming into our pasture, not going out. Deer maybe? Population’s heavy this year and winter has come earlier.”

“Ya, I’ve seen them in the field with the horses at sunset.” She rolled the mended sock into its mate. “Looking for feed, I suppose.”

Joshua sipped from his mug. The coffee had cooled down but was still good. Black and nice and strong the way he liked it. “Ya, corn probably,” he agreed, feeling awkward. Except for church services, the parlor was more the women’s domain than the men’s. Especially since Rosemary had had her surgery. “Thought you were allowed to start walking.” He pointed to her foot.

“Just resting a bit before dinner. Your father thinks I’ve been on it too much. A little swelling, nothing more.” She gave a wave. “He worries too much.” She added the socks to a growing pile on the end table beside her and he watched her fish another pair from a basket at her feet. “I wanted to ask you a favor, Joshua.”

He stood a little straighter, slipping one hand into his pocket. He could smell the aroma of roasting turkey wafting from the kitchen. They were having turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner. With buttermilk biscuits. He couldn’t wait. “Sure. What do you need?”