A Time for Peace (9 page)

"Only a little," Matthew told him, sobering as he remembered. "Each time I tried to trust God and know that all would be fine but I have to admit I was always a little scared until the baby was born and both it and Amelia were okay."

"I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to Hannah." Chris swallowed hard. "I almost lost it when she got shot by a man who was trying to hurt me. I'll never forget what it felt like to see her unconscious and bleeding and wonder if I was going to lose her."

He took a shaky breath and stared at the ground.

Matthew had had trouble liking this man when he first came here. Who wouldn't have been suspicious of a man a brother found up in a hayloft in the barn? But everything had been explained and at some point Matthew had realized that he didn't need to keep an eye on this stranger in their midst— his sister kept a steely eye on him. Matthew hadn't found out until later that Hannah thought Chris came here to steal Jenny away from him.

But once she'd found out that Chris didn't have ulterior motives, it hadn't been long before the two of them had fallen in love. It seemed a strange match at first—this former warrior from the
Englisch
world and his sister, an Amish woman who'd never been outside the small community of Paradise, Pennsylvania.

Hannah loved this man and he'd come to love her as well. He was a good man who took good care of his wife, his farm, his community.

Matthew didn't like to see him so worried even if it was over his sister. So he laid a hand on his shoulder and patted it—if a bit awkwardly—and did his best to think of words that would reassure.

"Women have been having babies for thousands of years—"

"That's supposed to reassure me?"

"She's had good checkups, hasn't she? Other than the baby trying to kick its way out everything's been fine? Childbirth is much less risky than it used to be."

"Yeah, but I've been reading some of the stuff in the doctor's office while I wait for her and it's scary."

He kicked at a clump of dirt and then he glared at Matthew."This thing about being in the delivery room. I gotta tell you, I'd rather be on the front lines."

Matthew couldn't help it. He laughed.

"It's not funny! I don't want to see Hannah in pain."

"But you're going to find a way to be there with her," Matthew said quietly. "You'll find a way to force yourself because she means too much to you."

Chris rubbed the back of his neck. "Maybe."

"And you're not going to want to miss seeing that
boppli
for the first time," Matthew continued. "There's no describing the feeling of seeing your child as it's being born. It's the closest I've ever felt to God. That and when I stood and said my wedding vows."

Emotion welled up in his throat. He hadn't ever said this to anyone but Jenny and Amelia. Well, that wasn't exactly true.

He'd never told Jenny the part about how he felt at the birth of his
kinner.
He couldn't tell her that. He was afraid saying it would just make her unhappy. If they had a baby together some time in the future, he'd tell her then.

As they turned to walk back to their houses, Matthew saw Chris's face brighten and he began walking faster. Curious, Matthew looked in the direction that Chris was and saw Hannah picking her way carefully toward them.

Then Chris lengthened his strides, closed the distance, and scooped her up in his arms. She laughed and lifted her face for his kiss.

A little embarrassed at witnessing their display of affection, Matthew mumbled a hello to his sister—who completely ignored him—and hurried past them.

And as he did, he heard Chris telling her, "I dreamed this happening once, you coming for me in the fields. It was that night we sat up with Daisy when she was sick because Malcolm had poisoned her."

"I remember that night. We talked for hours. You fell asleep because you'd been helping Matthew with the harvest."

"I was dreaming that you and I walked these fields and I was so happy, looking forward to being with you on our own land, starting a life together. You were glowing with the joy of being pregnant. We kissed—"

"And then you woke up and found that Daisy was kissing you!" she cried and their laughter floated back to Matthew as Chris carried her to their home.

Jenny was making the bed when her fingers touched the book tucked in between the mattress and the box spring.

She drew it out and set it on top of the quilt. Things had been so hectic since her grandmother fell ill that she not only hadn't been able to work on her latest book—she hadn't written in her journal.

It was hard to remember how many years she'd been writing in a journal. Definitely since she turned thirteen. Her early journals had been full of typical teenage angst as she used them to work through her feelings about school and boys and a summer doing missionary work with her father and missing her mom.

As she grew older, her entries became less angst-driven. And then, the summer she visited her grandmother here in Paradise, she'd written complaint after complaint about a place that seemed so foreign to her at first. No electricity? What, had she traveled back to the dark ages? No cars? She'd just gotten her learner's permit. And people dressed so quaintly . . . even if they were the nicest people she'd ever met. Even if everyone had welcomed her as the beloved granddaughter of one of their favorite people.

And the boy next door couldn't take his eyes off her. Or she, him. She wrote about him endlessly. His blue eyes were so intense. He had such muscles from the hard work he did . . . she'd watched him from her bedroom window whenever she could. And he listened, really listened, but didn't do so for what he could get from her like the boys she knew back home.

Why, she'd filled one journal with entries about him just from that first month's visit.

She'd always kept her journal tucked between the mattress and box spring—not that she'd had to hide anything from her father who wasn't nosy but just because she didn't want to leave her private thoughts out and tempt him should he wander into her room.

Now, she did the same thing. Not that Matthew had never shown any curiosity about the journal but she still kept it where she did for the same reason she had at her home with her father.

She finished making the bed and picking up the journal, carried it downstairs.

The house was quiet with the children at school, Matthew off in the barn puttering around with seed catalogs and cleaning equipment and whatever else he did in the winter and Phoebe was taking a nap. It seemed like the perfect time to journal.

A cup of tea at her side, she sat at the table and began the conversation with her thoughts. The minute she started, it seemed like her pen flew across the page. Everything that had been troubling her heart spilled onto the page: her grandmother's illness, her fear of losing her, the feeling of betrayal when she'd discovered the letter. Her dilemma of wanting so desperately to know if Matthew knew and yet experiencing anxiety about how she'd been guilty of reading the letter.

A slight sound made her look up and she saw that her grandmother stood in the doorway that connected the main house with the
dawdi haus.

But Phoebe wasn't looking at Jenny . . . she was staring at the journal on the table in front of her.

"I didn't mean to disturb you."

"You're not," Jenny said. "Come sit down and I'll make you something to eat."

She closed the journal and laid her pen down next to it. Getting up, she helped her grandmother to a chair. "Did you have a good nap?"

Phoebe nodded and wrapped her shawl more closely around her shoulders. "
Ya.
But it seems all I do is sleep."

"Rest is the best medicine. That's what everyone says, isn't it?"

She put the tea kettle on and then rummaged around in the refrigerator. "Fannie Mae brought over some split pea soup with ham. Would you like that? Or are you tired of soup?"

"Soup is fine. I've been enough trouble."

"You haven't been any trouble at all."

Jenny turned around with the plastic container of soup in her hand and paused for a moment. Her grandmother was still staring at the journal and she wore a troubled expression.

Going to the cabinet near the stove, Jenny found a saucepan and set it on the stove. She dumped the soup into it, started the gas flame beneath it, then turned to set soup bowls on the table. All the while she kept an eye on her grandmother—as much wondering why the older woman was focusing her attention on the journal as assessing how she was feeling. Each day she seemed a little stronger but the pneumonia wasn't giving up easily or quickly.

Jenny sliced some bread, set out butter, and stirred the soup several times while she debated calling Matthew in for lunch. She glanced at the kitchen clock and decided it was still a little early for him.

Once the soup was warm, Jenny ladled it into bowls and joined Phoebe at the table.

After saying a blessing over the meal, they began eating. But before long, Jenny noticed that Phoebe was just stirring her soup with her spoon.

She glanced up and saw that Jenny was watching her. She shrugged. "I'm sorry, I'm not very hungry after all."

Jenny wasn't hungry either. Split pea soup had never been her favorite, either, and besides, she kept thinking about how she wanted to talk to her grandmother about the letter. But it just wasn't time.

She set her spoon down. "Maybe you're just tired of soup."

Phoebe shrugged and stared down into the pea-green depths. She sighed. "Maybe."

"Tell me what you'd like and I'll fix it."

"No, you have too much to do." Phoebe stirred the contents of her bowl again and lifted a spoon of soup to her lips. "This is fine."

But Jenny saw the faint look of distaste flash across her grandmother's face. She glanced down into her own bowl and thought—not for the first time—that split pea soup was a disgusting color—that yellowish-green called chartreuse. Stringy pieces of ham popped up here and there, floating on the thick soup.
Erk,
she thought as she let the spoonful of green sludge drip from the spoon to land with a plop into her own bowl.

And here she got teased about
her
cooking. Obviously split pea wasn't Fannie Mae's specialty.

She rose, picked up the two bowls, and set them in the sink. Turning, she folded her arms across her chest. "Now tell me what you'd like to eat. You've been sick. Maybe your appetite needs tempting."

"Oatmeal," Phoebe said suddenly.

She could make that. Annie wanted oatmeal every morning.

"Not oatmeal," Phoebe said as Jenny got the box out of the cupboard. "Oatmeal cookies."

"You want oatmeal cookies for lunch," Jenny repeated slowly.

"Why not? Oatmeal's eaten for breakfast, isn't it? And oatmeal cookies are just baked oatmeal. With some good things in them like the oatmeal and eggs, right? I remember you said Hannah brought some over but I wasn't hungry for them before."

Jenny nodded. "Yes, she did. Lots of them, as a matter of fact. But I'm not sure there are any left." Saying a quick prayer that there were, she looked in the cookie jar. Sure enough there were half a dozen left. "I guess there's no harm in eating dessert first."

"I want cookies for lunch," Phoebe said decisively. "And ice cream. We have some ice cream, don't we?"

"Sure." There was no harm in humoring her, thought Jenny, but before she went to get it, she put the back of her hand against her grandmother's forehead. It was cool.

"What flavor? We have vanilla, chocolate chip, and strawberry."

"Vanilla," Phoebe said promptly.

Jenny lifted the carton of ice cream from the freezer and then, just as she started to turn, the chocolate chip spoke to her. With a sigh, she picked it up as well and took it to the table.

"I guess we eat healthy enough we can have dessert first," Jenny said as she scooped out vanilla ice cream.

"Dessert first? This is all I want," Phoebe said with satisfaction as she accepted the bowl. She picked up one of the cookies on the plate before her and placed a spoonful of ice cream on the cookie, then topped it with another cookie. "See, I'm having a sandwich. Happy now?"

Jenny laughed. "An ice cream sandwich isn't the kind of sandwich I should be getting you to eat."

Phoebe bit into one and sighed. "Wonderful. I'll eat extra vegetables later, okay?" She looked over as Jenny put several scoops of chocolate chip into her bowl.

"It was calling my name," Jenny said, putting a spoon of ice cream into her mouth. "Whatever you do, don't let the children know we did this. I'd never hear the end of it."

They sat there enjoying their ice cream and Jenny noticed that Phoebe was looking like she'd perked up a little. Maybe letting her eat the ice cream had been a good idea.

She'd been thinking a lot about how she was going to ask her grandmother about her discovery of the letter. Her emotions had gone all over the place from feeling betrayed to being angry to feeling disappointed and then distrustful and back and forth again. But she wasn't sure whether her grandmother was well enough . . . what if she caused a relapse?

Before she could open her mouth, they heard the door open and shut and Matthew strode in. His eyebrows went up as he took in the scene.

"I didn't realize we were having a party," he said. "What's the occasion?"

"
Grossmudder
is tired of soup. Especially split pea soup."

Matthew glanced at the stove with anticipation. "We have split pea soup?"

"Fannie Mae made it. I didn't call you for dinner because I thought it was too early."

"It's never too early for dinner." He went over and took a taste with the big wooden spoon Jenny had used to stir it.Turning, he grinned. "Mmm. More for me if you two aren't going to eat it."

Jenny laughed. "You remind me of Mikey. He'd eat anything."

"Mikey?"

She rose. "Old television commercial. Go wash your hands and I'll fix you a bowl."

Phoebe nearly made it through the second ice cream sandwich. She set the uneaten portion down on the plate and yawned. "I'm going to go lie down for a while," she told them and shook her head when Matthew asked if she wanted help getting back to bed.