Sarah's Orphans (33 page)

“Oh, I don't know—”

“Perhaps this is a conversation you'd rather have with your
dat
.”

He heard her whisper the news to his father, and then his
dat
was on the phone, and it was as though Paul were sitting beside him in the barn, asking how and when he realized he wanted to be a farmer.

“Want to tell me about her?”

No doubt he'd had this conversation many times—after all, Paul was the youngest of seven brothers, and all of his siblings were married, every one of them.

“I hardly know where to start.”

“Well, what kind of person is she?”

“A kind one. Always puts others first, maybe too often.” He found himself sharing about Sarah's parents, how one had died and the other left. He described how Sarah and her brother had stepped into the gap and had been attempting to run the house and the farm with no resources and little experience.

The church had helped. And
Mammi
had shown up.

He hesitated and then decided there was no point holding back if he wanted his father's advice. So he explained about Mateo and Mia and the process Sarah had been through to foster them.

His father didn't speak for a moment, and then he said, “Sarah sounds like a special woman.”

“
Ya
, she is.”

“And you live next door to her?”

“I do. Sometimes it feels as if we have one large farm instead of two separate ones. Her
bruders
and I help one another with crops and animals and such.”

“As you should—a Plain community is committed to being one body, son. Regardless of what happens romantically between you and…”

“Sarah.”

“Between you and Sarah, you need to commit yourself to helping the family.”

“Of course.”

“You've told me plenty about the family, about their situation, but there's something you're not telling me. Why this one? Why is Sarah different from any other girl you've met over the years?”

“She makes me smile.”

He wanted to tell his dad everything. The first time he'd seen Sarah in the store, how she'd struggled down the steps with a twenty-five-pound sack of flour and a big canister of oats. How she had refused any help. The look of tenderness on her face when she spoke to Mia, her patience with the boys, her strength and determination. He wanted to describe her hands, her eyes, how unself-conscious she was. He wanted to share the way she'd looked earlier, sticking out her bottom lip as she studied the boys' map for her garden.

Instead of saying any of that, he repeated, “She makes me smile,” and then he groaned at how he must sound.

His father laughed, and then he turned serious. “This life we choose is difficult.
Ya
, it may be Plain, but it certainly isn't simple. When you choose the one that you want to spend it with, choose carefully.”

“Of course.”

“She makes you smile? I'd say that's a pretty
gut
place to start because your
fraa
is more than someone who fixes your meals and births your children. She's someone who bears your burdens with you.”

“She's so small, you wouldn't think she could bear many burdens.”

His dad began laughing again. “The size of the girl isn't nearly as important as the size and strength of her heart.”

The size and strength of her heart.

Never assume that you'll have tomorrow.

His father's and
Mammi
's advice echoed through Paul's mind, bounced off the walls of his heart, and stole his sleep for the next twenty-four hours.

By Friday afternoon, when the boys came over to check on the pigs, he had figured out what he wanted to do. He had already written out the note, folded it, and stuffed it in his pocket.

He had thought the afternoon's chores would pass quickly, uneventfully, but he was wrong. The boys set about moving the piglets to the cattle pen as they were prone to do for several hours each afternoon. They had read that allowing the pigs to range about would make them more content and also help to increase their weight.

Mateo thought Isaac had the gate, and Isaac thought Mateo had it. Fortunately, only two of the piglets escaped before Luke slammed the gate shut.

“They're headed toward the cornfield!” Luke called out.

Mateo and Isaac were over the fence in no time, sprinting after the escaped pigs. Though they had only had them a short time, the animals had put on a good amount of weight already, but Paul knew from experience that pigs were fast and incredibly intuitive.

Isaac had closed the gap on his escapee. At the last possible second, he made a flying leap toward the pig, who abruptly stopped, squealed, and turned right.

Isaac closed his arms around empty air and landed on the ground with a thud.

“It's getting away!” Luke shouted. He had taken a seat on top of the fence and was calling out directions like a rodeo announcer. “Better head yours off, Mateo!”

“Where did he go?” Mateo had circled the barn and lost sight of his prey. He came to a halt and looked left and right.

“He's headed for the trees.”

Mateo didn't bother to answer. He pivoted to his left and took off after the blur of pale pink headed toward a small stand of trees.

In the meantime, Isaac had caught his piglet near the water pump. He slowly walked back, both of them completely covered in mud.

“This one's gaining weight for sure. I can barely carry him.”

Luke opened the pen, and Isaac dumped his captive in with the others. The piglet squealed once and sped off toward his littermates.

Isaac attempted to brush mud from his clothes, shrugged, and climbed up on the fence next to his brother.

“Shouldn't you two be helping Mateo?” Paul asked.

“Nah. Mateo's the fastest kid in our grade.”

“Yeah, that pig doesn't have a chance.”

The piglet had circled back toward the pen.

“Maybe you can chase him in,” Paul called.

But the pig had other ideas. He sprinted left, then right, and then left again, almost as if he was aware that Mateo was gaining ground.

Isaac and Luke had begun cheering Mateo on.

“You can do it!”

“You almost had him that time.”

“Don't give up.”

Paul remembered Sarah saying that Mia slept better if she'd had more errands to do. He wished she could see the boys now. They would probably fall asleep with their head on their dinner plate. Mateo made one final lunge at his pig as he started up a hill beside the house. The pig turned around and squealed, and then Mateo was on him, laughing and telling him to calm down.

Paul went back to work in the barn while the boys did the various chores related to the pigs. They were certainly earning their share of the profits—which it seemed they would have plenty of at the rate the pigs were growing.

He caught up with the boys an hour later, as they stood by the pump attempting to brush the mud off their clothes.

“I'm telling you, Sarah's going to make you take a bath,” Luke said.

“Not if we can get it out of our hair.” Isaac dumped a cupful of water over Mateo's head, who shook it off and then returned the favor.

Now they looked wet and muddy. Paul wasn't sure it was an improvement, but he shrugged and pulled Luke aside.

“I was wondering if you could take something to Sarah.”

“Of course.” Luke's eyebrows shot up when Paul handed him the folded note. He grinned and said, “I guess this is private.”

“Now that you mention it, yes, it is.”

For his answer, Luke grinned even wider and stuck the note in his pocket.

CHAPTER 61

I
would think you have that memorized by now.”
Mammi
chuckled and continued slicing ham for their luncheon the next day.

It was their off Sunday as far as church, but they had been invited to eat at Suzie Troyer's. Sarah was looking forward to seeing Becca and catching up with news of her pregnancy. Her friend was now only six weeks away from delivering if Sarah had the date right.

She suspected, by the way
Mammi
was grinning, that Paul had been invited as well.

Everyone was in bed except for
Mammi
, Sarah, and Andy, who was once again out with a friend.

“I can't think how to answer him.”

“Probably a simple yes or no will do.”

Sarah sat down at the table and smoothed the note out with the palm of her hand. “He wants to take me on a picnic tomorrow after we return home from the Troyers'.”

“And…”

“He doesn't mention the children, so I assume it would be just the two of us.”

“Most dates do involve only two people.”

“Oh, I don't think it's a date.”

“No?”

Sarah felt her cheeks coloring. “Honestly, I don't know. I haven't been asked on many dates, so I'm not an expert at it.”

“Why is that?”

“Why aren't the boys interested?”

“I suppose I was wondering why you aren't interested in the boys.”
Mammi
brought over two mugs of herbal tea and placed one in front of Sarah. Sitting down across from her, she pulled off her left shoe and rubbed her foot. “What about when you were younger?”

“While the other girls were beginning to go to singings and picnics, I was dealing with
Dat
. He…well, he didn't make such things easy.”

“I'm sorry. I wish I had been here then to help you all.”

Sarah sipped the tea and stared at Paul's note. “
Dat
accused me of being pregnant once.”

Mammi
didn't interrupt. She let the story unwind. Sarah loved that about her grandmother. She was a good listener.

“I was so offended and a little scared. I wasn't even interested in boys at the time, and I would have never done anything inappropriate.”

“Of course you wouldn't.”
Mammi
made a
tsk-tsk
sound.

“I was shy and somewhat insecure, I suppose. It was when
Dat
accused me that I first began having eating problems. In my mind, I couldn't control my family life, but I could control what I did or didn't eat. And maybe…I can see now that maybe I was trying to punish them a little.”

“I remember Deborah writing me that you'd gone away for a while.”

“To a center the bishop found. They helped me a lot. I learned that what I was struggling with had a name—anorexia. My emotions interfered with my being healthy. In my mind, if I could stay small enough, my father would never accuse me of such a thing again. But then, later, it became difficult to eat normally even if I wanted to. At the center, I learned to distance myself from issues here in my home, and the doctors helped me find more constructive ways to cope with my
dat
's problems.”

“You were quite young then.”

“I was. It seems like forever ago and yet also like yesterday.” Sarah turned her mug left and right. “My
dat
was only worried about me and my future, though it came out as an accusation. The odd thing is, now that I'm in the role of parent, I understand that urge to worry about every possible thing.”

“Still, he should never have accused you.”

“It could be why I didn't date. I always was quiet and shy in school. I spent most of my time with a couple of other girls. When they began drifting toward boys, I didn't.”

“And then you went on a mission trip.”

“I still think about that trip to Texas. Helping the people who were in the path of Hurricane Orion changed me. It made me realize my problems weren't the only problems.”