The Amish Nanny's Sweetheart

“How are things going? David speaks highly of your help on the farm.”

Guy raised his eyebrows as he swallowed a bite of pie. “You wouldn’t know it to hear him some days. It seems I can’t do anything right.”

Especially yesterday. He had driven the wagon too close to the corner of the shed and had spent the rest of the afternoon whitewashing the scraped siding.

John grinned. “I’m sure my boys think that about me, sometimes.” He shrugged. “But how else will you learn to be a good farmer?”

Guy stared at the plate in his hand. Is that what David was doing? Teaching him to be a farmer?

“I’m not sure that’s what I want.”

John scraped the last crumbs of his pie into a pile with the back of his fork. “Don’t be too quick to decide. Ask for God’s direction.”

Guy nodded. “Sure.” Ask God. That’s what Verna would tell him.

“Meanwhile, soak up all you can from David’s teaching. You never know when those skills will come in handy, whether you stay on the farm or not.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Guy took his plate to the sink. He didn’t know how long he’d be living with the Masts. David had never said anything about him staying on past this year. But then, he never had the other years, either.

“David loves you like a son. You know that, don’t you?”

Guy glanced at John as he went back into the front room to join the Singing again. He had gone over this time and again in his head, ever since the first summer he had stayed with the Masts. David and Verna seemed to like him, but after all these years, they had never adopted him, and he knew why. He wasn’t Amish. He wasn’t good enough for them.

* * *

Judith leaned away from Luke until her back touched the wall. His hand rested next to her head as he loomed over her. She had to look up at an uncomfortable angle to see his face, but it was worth it. Luke Kaufman was one of the cutest boys she had ever seen and popular with the other fellows.

“How long will you be staying with Matthew’s family?” Luke’s blue eyes held hers in a steady gaze as he took a sip of punch.

“Quite a while. At least until the twins are a few years old, I think.”

He glanced away as a girl’s laughter rose above the conversations in the room, then focused back on her.

“Did you leave a lot of friends behind in Shipshewana?”

Judith shook her head. She and Esther hadn’t done much socializing before their brother Samuel got married.

Luke leaned even closer. “Not even a boyfriend?”

“Ne, no boyfriend.” Judith felt her cheeks flush hot. Were all boys this bold?

“Then you’ll have to let me be your first beau.” He smiled, but his eyes smoldered. “I’ll take you home from the Singing tonight.”

Judith pressed her lips together to keep from giggling. Luke leaned even closer to her, making her even more nervous, but she couldn’t move away with the wall right behind her. “You must already have a girl you’re interested in.” She turned her punch glass in her hands, not daring to take a drink. She was shaking so much inside that she would spill the punch down the front of her dress, for sure.

He shrugged. Even his shrugs were smooth and self-assured.

“No girl to speak of.” He lifted one of her Kapp strings with his finger. “Not now.”

She couldn’t stop the nervous giggle from escaping again. “Then, there was a girl?”

“No one special.” Luke breathed the words as he leaned even closer. He smelled of soap and something else that Judith couldn’t identify. Something smoky and bitter. His gaze slid from her eyes to her mouth and her stomach flipped over.

Someone clapped their hands to get everyone’s attention. “It’s time to take your seats.” Reuben Stoltzfus’s voice carried over the rest of the sounds in the room, but Luke didn’t move.

“Let me take you home tonight. Meet me at the end of the lane.”

Judith found herself nodding, but then remembered her promise to Matthew and turned the nod to a shake.

“I can’t. Matthew said he was coming for me.”

“When he sees that you’ve already gone, he’ll understand.”

Judith shook her head again and ducked under Luke’s arm to head back to her seat. “Ne. Matthew said that he wanted to take me home this time.”

“I’ll get my way.” He tugged on the Kapp string again and gave her a heart-stopping smile. “Count on it.”

As Judith slid into her seat next to Hannah, the other girl grabbed her hand.

“I saw you talking to Luke. Did you like him?”

Judith glanced down the table toward Luke. He was laughing with the fellows sitting on either side of him. Their conversation during the break had been unsettling, but she wasn’t sure why. She hadn’t had much experience talking to boys.

“He is nice, I guess.”

Hannah squeezed her hand. “I knew you’d think so.”

Reuben called out the number for the first song, and the group had nearly finished it before Guy took his seat again. He looked in her direction, then at his songbook. Judith kept watching him. He stared at the book, but didn’t join in the singing.

The next song was a fun one. Each verse was about two people who had a hole in their bucket, and at the end it repeated the lines from all the previous verses. By the time they reached the twelfth verse, everyone was laughing so hard they couldn’t keep singing. Everyone except the young man across the table from her.

After the rollicking fun, someone suggested a quick break. Judith stayed in her seat this time, not wanting to be cornered by Luke again.

A few minutes later, a cup of punch appeared on the table in front of her. She looked up to see Guy smiling at her.

“Denki,” she said.

He made his way around the end of the table to his seat and took a drink of his punch. Judith leaned toward him, keeping her voice low so the others wouldn’t hear their conversation.

“Why didn’t you sing with us?”

Guy rubbed the side of his nose. “I don’t talk Deitsch well, and I can’t read it.”

“So why did you come to the Singing?”

“I don’t know.” He looked miserable.

“You have a nice voice. I heard you humming along with us earlier.”

A shadow of a smile flashed at her. “Do you mind if we speak English?”

She switched languages, just as he had. “No.” She gave him a mock frown. “But you won’t improve your Deitsch if you don’t use it.” She laid her hands on the table and leaned closer to him. “Why don’t you know how to speak like us?”

“I wasn’t raised here—”

Before he could finish his sentence, the next song was announced. This one was a round, and it took concentration for Judith to keep up with her part. Half of her thoughts were on Guy, though. How could he not know Deitsch?

At ten o’clock, the singing was over. Luke and some of the other boys rushed out the door, but the girls stood in groups to chat. With a half hour to wait for Matthew, Judith started helping a few of the young people who were collecting the songbooks.

She had picked up a small stack when she met Guy coming around the other side of the table with his own hands full of books.

“I’ll take those for you,” he said.

Judith handed him the books she had gathered. “You’re speaking English again.”

Guy shrugged. “The Penn Dutch is too hard. Everyone here understands English, so why should I learn it?”

“You’d fit in with the other fellows better. Don’t you want that?”

“I’m not sure they want me around.”

“You should give it a try.” Judith stepped closer to him. “All you need is someone to teach you.”

He glanced around, then ducked his head toward her. “Could you teach me?”

He was serious, his eyes locked on hers, waiting for her answer.

“I’m not sure I’d be a very good teacher, but I could try.”

“Maybe we could get together this coming week?” He grinned. “If you can ever get away from those babies.”

Judith frowned. Did he dislike children that much? “Those babies are the reason I’m here, and I don’t want to get away from them.”

“C’mon, I was only teasing.” His cheeks turned red.

Judith grinned back at him. “I’m glad you were, because I love Annie’s children. All three of them.”

“So, when can we start the lessons?”

“I’ll have to check with Annie, first.”

He nodded and thumbed at the corners of the songbooks in his hand. “I saw you talking with Luke Kaufman earlier. Is he taking you home?”

If any boy was taking a girl home, it was supposed to be a secret, except for the girls who had steady beaus, like Waneta. Even Judith knew Reuben would be taking her home. But Guy looked at her with such intensity when he asked the question that she had to give him an answer.

“No.” She shook her head. “He asked, but Matthew is coming for me.”

“Whew,” Guy said. “I’m glad.”

He picked up a few more songbooks that someone had left on a chair and Judith followed him. If he was asking to take her home, he had a strange way of doing it.

“Why are you glad?”

“No reason.” He gave the books to Benjamin Stoltzfus, then turned back to Judith. “Except that maybe I can get a ride with you and Matthew?”

He wiggled his dark eyebrows up and down as he asked, and Judith found herself laughing at him.

“For sure, you can. Matthew will be here at ten thirty.” She glanced at the clock. “I had better get my bonnet and shawl. Meet you by the back door?”

“Yeah. I’ll wait for you there.”

As Judith went toward the kitchen, she glanced back. Guy had picked up the end of one of the benches, ready to help Benjamin carry it out to the church wagon. After talking with Luke at the break, she had been breathless and feeling a little bit like she was dabbling in deep, unknown waters. But that exchange with Guy...it had been more like talking to a friend she had known for a long time.

Hannah was in the bedroom, putting on her bonnet. Her black shawl was already wrapped around her shoulders.

“You’re ready to go home?” Judith asked, reaching for her own bonnet.

“Ja.” Hannah peered into a small, round shaving mirror fastened to the edge of the towel rack on the washstand, pinching her cheeks to bring some color into them. “Luke asked me to remind you that he’ll be waiting for you at the end of the lane.” She turned to Judith with a smile. “He has a brand-new courting buggy and can’t wait to try it out.”

“But I told him that Matthew was coming for me. I don’t need a ride.”

Hannah laughed. “No girl ever needs a ride!” She grasped Judith’s hand. “My brother is looking for a wife, and I have a feeling you’re just the girl he’s been waiting for. If you step carefully, you and I could be sisters before you know it.”

Judith withdrew her hand. “I’m not ready to be married. This is my first Singing, and I want to get to know other people before I settle down to one fellow.”

Hannah picked up a pair of mittens from the bed and pulled them on. “If Luke is set on you, there will be no changing his mind.”

“I’m still not going to let him take me home. Matthew asked to be the one to do it on my first night out, and I want to go home with him.” Judith found her own mittens tucked in the folds of her shawl. “Besides, Guy Hoover is going to ride with us.”

Hannah faced her. “Guy Hoover? You don’t want to get involved with him.”

“Why not?”

Hannah shook her head, her face set in a frown. “He isn’t one of us. Never has been, and he never will be. He’s an outsider.” She turned toward the door, then gave one last shot. “He doesn’t belong here.”

Judith’s fingers chilled as if she had plunged them into a snowdrift. Hannah’s animosity toward Guy was shocking, and not what she had expected from her new friend.

If Guy was an outsider, that explained why he didn’t know Deitsch. Judith tugged her mitten on. New friend or not, Hannah was wrong. She would do everything she could to help him feel welcome in the community.

Chapter Two

Spring was in the air on Tuesday morning as the weekend’s cold spell gave way to warmer breezes and fitful sunshine. Guy turned the team at the end of the field, then threw the lever to start the manure spreader’s gears as they made another pass. When David had given him this early-spring job of fertilizing the fields, Guy had chosen to do these acres first. Why? He grinned to himself as he drove the horses toward the fence on the other end. Because from here he could watch the Beacheys’ farmyard across the road.

He had only seen Judith once since the Singing two days ago. Just a glimpse, but he knew she was there. Ever since he had said goodbye to her when Matthew let him off at the end of the Mast lane that night, the only thing on his mind was to see her again.

Judith. Even her name sang in his mind.

He shook his head at himself, frowning. Why would he think he had a chance with her? The prettiest girl around, and new in the community, to boot. The boys were going to buzz around her like bees in a flower garden.

Guy turned the horses at the other end of the field and started back across. There, finally, he was rewarded with the sight of a figure in a blue dress and black shawl. She carried a basket and headed toward the chicken house. And disappeared. He hadn’t even seen her face, so he knew she hadn’t seen him.

After two more trips along the length of the field he saw her again. This time, she had let the shawl slip back from covering her head and held it loosely around her shoulders. She carried a basket full of eggs in her other hand as she picked her way along the wet path to the house. With her white Kapp gleaming in the bit of sunshine that had made its way through the cloud cover, she was a lovely sight. Blue eyes, he remembered. Dark blue and thoughtful. She dodged a mud puddle with a graceful step, hurried the rest of the way to the house and disappeared behind the closed door.

He stared at the door. Hannah Kaufman had brown eyes, full of laughter and beautiful. At least, he had thought so until he found out the laughter was at his expense. He had no business getting mixed up with an Amish girl, even though Judith seemed kinder and friendlier than Hannah. He didn’t belong here, and he wasn’t planning to stay. If Pa showed up—

“Guy! What in the world are you doing?”

Startled by David’s shout, Guy slammed back to reality. The horses had pulled the spreader off the straight track he thought they were on and were headed toward the barn.

“Sorry!” he called, and waved in David’s direction as he guided the horses back to the middle of the field. At least no one would notice his distraction, the way they would if he had been plowing. He shook his head as he thought about the ribbing he would have gotten if the crops had grown in crooked rows.

He finished the field and headed toward the barn to pick up another load of manure. Without a word, David met him at the manure pile and started shoveling. Guy joined him, eyeing his expression to gauge his mood.

David was a good boss, and had always been more than kind to him, but even David could get riled. He expected the best work from Guy, just as he expected it from himself. Mistakes were always fixed, sloth was never tolerated and attention to the task at hand was demanded. Guy had broken that last rule too often, and he waited for David’s reprimand.

It came when the spreader was filled and ready for the next field.

“You weren’t driving the team back there, they were driving you.” David leaned on his shovel, his gaze on the front acres. “What were you thinking about?”

Guy shot a glance toward the Beachey house. The first thing he had learned that summer when he was nine, his first summer with the Masts, was that David could always tell when he tried to skirt the truth.

“I saw that new girl come out of the house.”

David let the shadow of a grin show. “I guess a girl is a fair distraction for a fellow your age, but don’t let it happen again. When you’re driving a team, they need your full attention.”

Guy climbed onto the seat of the spreader and clicked his tongue as a signal to the horses. He didn’t have a view of the neighbor’s house from the back field, but his mind went off on its own thoughts, anyway. Keeping the team on track, he focused on the fence post at the far side.

David had taught him that if he picked a point and kept his eye on it, his path would always be straight and true. Almost everything David taught him had more than one meaning. He had made it clear that Guy needed to have a goal for his life and to keep his eyes on that. He was an eddy in a stream, David had complained. Always doing, but never going anywhere. But Guy just couldn’t find that centering point.

When the horses reached the fence post, he turned them around and lined up the next goal, the crooked tree by the farm pond, just beyond the fence.

At nineteen years old, he still had no idea what he wanted out of life.

No, that was wrong. He knew.

He had known ever since Pa had taken him to the Orphan’s Home on his fifth birthday. He still remembered the green suit Mama had made and how the wool had made his neck itch. He remembered the smell of the Home. The putrid odor that lingered in the dormitory rooms and drifted down the stairs. The crying that echoed in the hallways.

“I’ll come get you when I find work,” Pa had said as he crouched in front of him, smoothing the collar of the green suit. “It may be a while, but they’ll take good care of you here.” And then Pa had patted his shoulder and left, trotting down the sidewalk back to the old dusty black automobile.

Guy had waited for his return, and the years of aching emptiness had about killed him.

He knew what he wanted out of life. He wanted a father who never left his boy behind. He wanted a mother who didn’t die. He wanted his family.

But that was a dead-end dream.

The next time Pa had come back, on an early-spring day three years later, he had smelled of alcohol. A woman had been with him.

“Dressed in floozy clothes,” Mrs. Bender, the matron at the Home, had said with a sniff.

The fancy woman had taken one look at him and poked Pa in the shoulder. “That ain’t your kid. He looks nothing like you.”

Then she had leaned close to Guy, grabbing his chin and turning it one way and then the other. “Nothing like you.”

She had released his chin from her icy stick fingers and lit a cigarette, walking toward the shiny burgundy-colored car waiting by the road. “It’s him or me, Sugar Daddy,” she had called over her shoulder as she climbed into the front seat.

Pa had shrugged his shoulders, his eye on the woman and the car. “She won’t be around long, and then I’ll be back for you.” He had straightened his striped jacket and settled his hat more firmly on his head. “You see how it is, don’t you, Sport?”

Pa had come by to visit a few times after that, showing up every couple of years. Twice he’d had different fancy women with him. Another time he had shown up on foot, dressed in torn clothes and dusty shoes that were cracked and showing Pa’s bare feet through the peeling leather. Every time, he had left with the same promise of coming back to get him. Guy only needed to be patient until Pa’s ship came in.

But Guy had learned that Pa’s promise was nothing but straw. Easily made, easily broken.

The horses had stopped with their noses at the fence, and Brownie turned his head to look back at Guy.

“All right, all right. Hold your horses.” Guy shook off the memories and grinned as he turned the team around to start the next pass down the field. Horses holding their horses. If he’d still been at the Home, he’d have told that joke to the other boys as they shivered on their cots waiting for the lights-out call to drift up the long stairway. But he no longer belonged there. Too old for the Home, he was on his own.

He looked at the big white house at the edge of the barnyard. David and Verna’s place wasn’t home, either, no matter how welcome they tried to make him feel. He wasn’t theirs and never would be. He didn’t really belong anywhere.

The memory of Judith’s quiet glance sent a cool stream of peace through him. Maybe, just maybe, she could help him belong. The Penn Dutch lessons should help him become more comfortable in the community. Maybe he could put down roots here. Buy a farm. Raise a family. He let his thoughts flow to a home and family like Matthew Beachey’s, with a girl like Judith as his wife and children growing along with their love for each other. Guy shook his head with a laugh. That dream was far beyond the reach of an outcast like him.

* * *

Judith turned the ham frying in the cast-iron skillet then checked the potatoes with a fork. Dinner was nearly ready, and just in time. She could see Matthew heading toward the house for his noon meal.

“Ach, Judith, you’re a blessing!”

Annie stood in the kitchen doorway, rocking and bouncing as she held a fussy Viola in her arms. Or was it Rose? Judith couldn’t tell the two babies apart yet. They both looked like Annie, with wisps of red curls growing on their soft, pink heads. Meanwhile, Eli squirmed, trying to get down from his perch on her left hip.

As she set him on the floor, she waited until he had his balance before letting him go on a headlong dash toward his mother.

“You never told me what a job it is to try to cook with a toddler underfoot.” Judith opened the oven door to check on the green bean casserole. She had quickly learned that this dish was one of Matthew’s favorites.

Annie knelt to put her free arm around her son. “And soon enough there will be three of them running around the kitchen, all wanting to help.” She smiled as she pulled her son close and kissed his cheek.

Judith took four plates from the cupboard and set them on the table, watching Annie. Even though her sister hadn’t slept much last night, with the babies awake and crying at all hours, Annie still kept her good humor. Her face looked tired, though, and Judith was afraid she might fall asleep at the dinner table.

“When I put Eli down for his nap, I’ll take care of the girls so you can get some sleep this afternoon.”

Annie’s eyes widened. “Would you? I don’t remember when I last slept for more than a few minutes at a time.”

Matthew’s feet stamped in the porch outside the kitchen door, Judith’s signal to finish setting the table.

She smiled at Annie as she laid the silverware next to the plates. “I’d love to take care of them for a while. Tiny babies are so sweet.”

Annie cooed at Viola, who was still fussing. “They are sweet, but exhausting.” She kissed Eli’s brown curls as Judith lifted him into his tall stool at the table. “I don’t know what I would do without you here.”

Judith pulled out a chair so Annie could sit down next to her son. “If I wasn’t here, someone else would help you. There are plenty of girls in the church who would have been glad to come.”

“Did you get to know any of them at the Singing on Sunday evening? I didn’t have a chance to ask you about it yesterday.”

Judith drained the potatoes. She was serving them boiled, since she hadn’t had time to mash them. She added a lump of butter to the pot and shook salt and pepper over them.

“I had met Waneta Zook at the morning service, and she introduced me to Hannah Kaufman. There were others there, but I don’t remember all of their names.”

She set the green bean casserole on the table and put the ham on a serving plate. Just as Matthew came in, still damp from washing up on the porch, she dumped the potatoes into a dish and set it on the table. She sliced a loaf of bread while Matthew greeted his family, then she put it on the table and stepped back to evaluate her work.

“Ach, the peaches. I forgot to get them from the cellar.”

“It’s all right,” Matthew said, pointing to her chair. “I’m too hungry to wait for them.”

After the prayer, and when Judith had gotten the peaches and put them on the table, she sat down next to Eli. Annie had cut up some potatoes and a few green beans and put them on his plate, but they were already nearly gone, so Judith cut some ham into bites for him.