Gathering the Threads Page 7

  Daed stepped to the side, allowing her to brush her teeth now that she understood the plans for today. “Perhaps after a week at home you’ll feel more like yourself, and then not only will you be centered on obedience and humility, but you’ll be able to meet with the bishop again and respond as any young woman should. But you can continue to work on the ledgers for the café, and you can see Rudy whenever it pleases you.”

  She stared at him, unable to find her voice. Was she a child whose Daed had just finished his list of what she couldn’t do with a promise of ice cream and sprinkles?

  How was her Daed’s way of demanding she do as he wished any different than Nicholas insisting she do things his way?

  While the café buzzed with dozens of customers, Skylar finished loading a bin with dirty plates, cups, and utensils. Three business days had passed, and Ariana hadn’t been allowed to come to the café yet.

  A bit of guilt hovered around Skylar like an annoying fly. So what if she had put Ariana’s phone where Isaac would find it? Big deal. She smacked away that invisible guilt-fly, sending it off to harass someone else.

  One night last week after Salome had returned from the B&B and while Lovina and Isaac were out of the house, Salome told the Brenneman siblings about what life had been like for Ariana while she was living with Brandi and Nicholas. Although Skylar wasn’t in the room, she’d overheard all of it, and her insides had been on fire with rage ever since. While Skylar was getting up before dawn six days a week to earn only tips, and while she did the exhausting work of an immigrant laborer and used her skills to build a customer base for Brennemans’ Perks, Ariana was in the lap of luxury, sleeping late, watching movies with Cameron, and traveling the US with Nicholas.

  Skylar glanced at the register. Cilla was doing great taking orders and fixing people’s coffee. Skylar had recently refilled drinks for everyone at a table, so she pushed the swinging door open and entered the kitchen.

  “Hey.” Martha glanced over her shoulder while remaining at the sink. “There she is!” Martha grinned. “Our own Sky Blue.”

  Susie and Abram spoke to Skylar too, sounding cheery in their Amish brogue. On the way to the café today, as darkness lifted and a bright blue sky shined through, Martha decided it was time they all started calling Skylar by the nickname she’d had for years.

  Skylar thudded the tub on the sink, and it rattled. “Stop being all jolly and welcoming, and get to work.”

  Martha laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Skylar tossed the paper products in the trash and scraped leftover food into the composting can. She enjoyed the sense of being welcomed and appreciated. Ariana’s presence would taint that, but Skylar had at least bought herself a few days without Ariana here. Hopefully a full week. Maybe two.

  Not only would Ariana be underfoot while learning to operate the coffee machines, but she would also start suggesting different ways of doing things, all the while inadvertently pushing Skylar to the side, just as she’d unintentionally pushed Skylar out of her former life and away from the parents Skylar had grown up with.

  How long would Isaac keep Ariana away? Other than the phone thing, it wasn’t Skylar’s fault that all manner of accusations were hurtled against Ariana on Sunday afternoon. The bishop had brought up those concerns.

  Skylar had tiptoed down the back staircase and sat on a step, listening as Ariana was questioned. It had sounded to her as if their bishop had a few scores of his own he wanted to settle with Ariana. But unlike Skylar he hadn’t needed to plant evidence against her. Bishop Noah hid his agenda behind his pulpit position, or so it seemed. Skylar had seen it hundreds of times, maybe thousands, mostly through the news and history classes.

  An idea came from nowhere. If she wanted to secure the Brenneman family’s loyalty and love, she needed to lead the way for getting new plumbing into that old farmhouse. But she would have to act quickly so it would be evident the gift wasn’t Ariana’s idea. With the right timing Lovina and Isaac would know Ariana hadn’t been the one to work for that gift. Abram, Susie, Martha, and Skylar had.

  “Hey, guys, I’ve been thinking.” Skylar peered out the pass-through, making sure Cilla still had everything under control. “We know that Ariana mentioned she hoped to have the books squared away this week so we all would have a payday soon.” Skylar put the dirty flatware into its soaking vat. “But maybe we should change our plans and do something for the whole family.”

  Was she really going to pretend her motives were in the right place in order to get the others to back her charade?

  Martha slid more plates into the hot, sudsy water. “I’m ready to spend the money on myself, however I want. I think we all are.”

  Skylar poured the liquid from the cups down the empty side of the double sink. “Yeah, I hear you, but it just seems that the first thing we should do is…” How should she word this? “…get new plumbing into the house.”

  Susie, holding a stack of clean plates in her arms, stopped stock-still. “Oh, Mamm and Daed would love to have decent plumbing. That is such a great idea, Sky.”

  Abram studied Skylar. He was better at reading her than she was comfortable with. Could he see right through her?

  Susie put the stack of clean plates in the open cabinet. “I have no idea what something like that would cost.”

  Since Skylar never saw the café’s financials, their upcoming payday might not be all that substantial even if they pooled their money.

  “Abram,” Skylar asked, “you worked construction, right?”

  “Ya, but I just did my job, which was roofing. We didn’t have anything to do with the plumbing. Last Saturday Jax said he’d be in today. Is he here yet?”

  She shook her head, her anxiety going up a notch. “Not yet.”

  “Well, when he gets here, ask him,” Abram said. “He’ll either know, or he’ll know where we can get a reliable estimate.”

  “Will do.”

  After calling Jax and spending several hours with him the Sunday before last, she saw no reason to balk at asking him a simple question, even if they had been skirting each other before and since then. What did he think of her after their outing? Her mood had been all over the place. She’d started out extremely irritable, but once at their destination, she had been moved to awe and landed on speechless.

  Skylar picked up a clean tub and left the kitchen. Three tables needed busing, and she began the simple task. Jax was a hard man to figure out. He reached out quickly, freely, and openly, but did he let others reach in?

  They’d driven about thirty minutes south of Summer Grove to an impoverished town with a makeshift soup kitchen. Their task had been to take two large boxes of individually wrapped sausage biscuits and chicken biscuits and pass them out, along with blankets. That was it. No one preached, although Jax offered flyers that listed places to call for specific kinds of help. Most people took the biscuits and blankets and left, but some gathered in a group, and Jax talked with them once the food was gone.

  But what shook Skylar out of her funk was when they returned to the soup kitchen. A keyboard was set up in a corner with a poor, unkempt woman hovering around it. She’d reach out for it and withdraw her hand before touching it. Skylar went to her. “You play?”

  The woman jolted. “I didn’t do nothing.” Her fingernails were yellowed and her hands brown from grime. Skylar ignored the stench surrounding the woman. The thing that had Skylar’s attention was the desire she saw in the woman’s eyes. She clearly longed to play an instrument that Skylar hadn’t cared about since being forced to leave college and move in with the Brennemans.

  The bells on the front door jingled, pulling Skylar from her thoughts. Jax walked in. Skylar stood at a nearby table cleaning it, so he had no option but to notice her.

  He nodded. “Hey, Skylar.”

  “Hi.” She glanced at the register. Cilla wasn’t there. Skylar picked up the tub and set it on her hip. “Would you like today’s special?”

  “Sure.”

  Sky
lar went behind the counter and to the pass-through. “Jax is here.” She handed the tub to Martha. “He’d like the special, please.”

  Susie pointed her spatula at the skillet. “I know what I’m fixing for him. It’s not the special.” Susie grinned. “It’ll be ready in just a few minutes.”

  Since Jax and Abram were former-coworkers-turned-friends, Jax ran a lot of errands for the café. It was easy for him to do in his truck and really difficult for them by means of a horse and buggy, so one of the ways Susie thanked him was free food.

  Skylar washed her hands in the small sink before grabbing a plastic cup and filling it with ice and water. “Here you go.” She set it in front of him, ready to get a clean, wet cloth and disappear cleaning counters.

  He took his drink to a table.

  This pattern of small talk and then going separate ways was the agreement they’d made since their heated argument before Thanksgiving. When he’d learned she was a recovering addict, he was disappointed not only in her but in himself for liking her, for being drawn to someone who was similar to his mother. Jax and Skylar agreed to speak, even to be friendly if others were around, but they also avoided each other in nonchalant ways so they didn’t make the Brennemans aware or uncomfortable. They were remarkably good at it. They’d continued that even after their Sunday together. There was no reason not to. She’d needed some support. He gave it. Things had returned to normal, as they should’ve.

  Several people entered, and Cilla came downstairs from the loft and returned to the register. “May I take your order?” she asked.

  Skylar picked up pitchers of water and tea, ready to refill people’s drinks.

  “You know…,” Jax said as she passed his table.

  She paused, listening.

  “Since that Sunday I’ve been thinking a lot about that woman and the keyboard.”

  “Me too.” Skylar topped off his water. “I was thinking about her when you walked in.”

  Watching the woman long to touch the keyboard, Skylar had decided she didn’t care what the rules were. She plugged it in and turned it on. “It’s okay,” Skylar had told her. “It is.” Skylar played the first chord of “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri, and her heart went wild. Her fingers begged for more, and she played the whole song, her chest pounding like the beat of war drums.

  She’d then backed up, feeling rather sheepish, and gestured for the woman to play. As the woman began playing “You Are My Sunshine,” her face radiated with a kind of artistic joy that Skylar had forgotten existed.

  “I wanted to know her story,” Jax said. “How did someone so skilled at music end up homeless? There’s always a long, painful story. What’d you think?”

  “That I take too much for granted. The longing in her and her pleasure when she was playing…I’d forgotten how much music meant, you know?”

  “Have you played since moving in with the Brennemans?”

  “Other than that time, no.” She shrugged.

  “No easy way to be allowed to play an instrument in an Amish home, is there?”

  “True.” But more than that, she’d lost the stomach for it. Once her dad had started coming around to see her when she was a child, he had either taught her piano lessons or paid a very skilled person to give her lessons. After everything shook out the way it did, she had no interest in playing. “I better get back to work.” She started to walk off. “Oh, do you have any idea how much it would cost to put new plumbing in an old farmhouse?”

  “The answer depends on lots of things—the type of pipes the person chooses and how much pipe there is to run and whether all of it needs replacing or just some of it. Why?”

  “My Amish parents have the worst plumbing ever. You never know from one day to the next if there will be running water in the kitchen to cook or clean or if there will be water for a shower. It’s ridiculous.”

  “It sounds as if the goal is to do it as economically as possible.”

  “That’s a completely safe assumption.”

  “Does any area have plumbing that isn’t an issue?”

  “The plumbing that goes to the wringer washer has the fewest issues. The kitchen is the worst, followed by the only full bathroom in the house.”

  “It’s been an adventure, then, right?”

  Skylar sat. “Don’t push your luck, Jackson Montgomery. I’m being polite. Make fun of my fight to get a hot shower in winter—or any shower for that matter—and I will not remain so.” Would he know she was teasing?

  “Sorry.” He held up his hands, a wry smile on his lips. “I know a plumber.” Jax pulled his cell from his pocket. “I’ll ask if he could do it for cost.”

  “You can’t ask that of someone.”

  “I can if it’s my uncle who owes me several favors.” His fingers flew across the screen of his cell. “I helped him roof his house a few months back and his son’s house last summer—free labor.”

  She would never be this nice to anyone. She would, however, put a forbidden phone where it could be found by someone’s parents.

  “But he owes you a favor, Jackson, not strangers.”

  “I’ll decide how to use the favor. But he would need an assistant, and it can’t be me.”

  “Mark would be the best bet for helping out. He’s sort of a jack-of-all-trades, and he has the most time on his hands right now.”

  He typed something else, but before he pressed Send, Skylar put her hand over the screen of his cell.

  Jackson looked up. “Problem?”

  “A couple. Maybe you’re too nice, for one.”

  Frustration flickered through his dark-brown eyes. “You can rest your concern, but it’s always a pleasure to offer help and then have your character questioned.” He set the phone on the table. “I really like Abram, Susie, and Martha, so I go out of my way to help them, and I volunteer to work with the homeless only during winter, when they need it the most and construction work is extremely slow. I can put up boundaries, Skylar, and saying no is as easy as saying yes for me. You should know that.”

  She should. He’d had no problem telling her no and giving her strict boundaries. “You’re right.”

  “But?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t say it out loud. But you said it. I just didn’t quite hear you.”

  “You reach out, but I’ve not yet seen you let anyone reach in.”

  “You have an example of something I did that gave you that idea?”

  He was either very giving, as he was with the Brennemans, or he cordoned himself off, as he had with her. But then again, he had picked her up two Sundays ago when she needed him. “No, not really.”

  “Did you study this in college, or is it from the latest Vogue?”

  She’d angered him, and she imagined that much of his reaction was because her addiction problem reminded him of his mother’s, and maybe Skylar had sounded motherly while questioning him. Or maybe he simply didn’t appreciate someone with a drug issue noticing some little issue he had. “I guess it’s just as well that we usually avoid talking.”

  “It’s looking that way.” He picked up his phone. “Second thing?”

  “I don’t know that we can come up with the money. You might be wasting your time.”

  “I’ll let him know that.”

  Skylar stood. “Thanks.”

  Cold winter air seeped into the barn as the cows lowed. Daed hummed as he worked. Mark cracked silly jokes here and there. If Abram were here instead of at the café, he would smile a lot, thinking plenty but saying very little.

  Wonderful memories flooded Ariana, reminding her of why she loved this simple life. Cows were lined up and eating contentedly. The fresh hay and oats filled her senses.

  Some of her earliest memories had taken place in this barn. She used to be her Daed’s shadow, and he had allowed it, being patient and kind even when she made his workload harder day after day. Then, around six years old, she fell in love with baking and the challenge of help
ing Mamm get something good on the table when money was so sparse. So she stopped coming to the barn. Looking back, it seemed strange how skilled she was at knowing what could be paired to make something good for the family. She couldn’t do any of it herself for several years, but she shared her ideas with her Mamm, and Mamm responded and often used the ideas, which made Ariana even more determined to come up with other recipes and dishes.

  And yet, despite her and her family’s best efforts, they were still poor.

  “Hey, Ari,” Mark called, a hose in hand as he rinsed the udders of another cow. “You have company.”

  He’d no more than said the words when she was nudged from behind. She stumbled, trying to stay upright. Mark’s laughter echoed against the walls of the barn.

  Daed came out of the milk house, an empty milk can in hand. “Daisy missed you while you were gone.”

  Her Daed was wrong about the phone and maybe the café, but they’d had a good few days, and neither seemed so angry or disappointed in the other.

  Ariana turned to face the cow…again. She rubbed Daisy’s forehead. “You need to stop this and go on out with the other cows that have been milked.”

  Daisy pressed her long hard head with its soft fur against Ariana’s chest. “Ya. You’re a good girl. Now go.” Ariana backed up, waving her hands toward the door of the barn that led to the pasture. Daisy stepped forward and nudged hard.

  Ariana fell, landing on her backside. Her right hand landed in the squishiness of manure. “Ewwww! Daisy!”

  Mark roared with laughter as the cow moved in closer, breathing in Ariana’s face and not giving her any room to get up. Ariana tried to push the cow away, which made Daisy try to nuzzle against her.

  “Great. A little help, please!”

  Daed put a rope around the cow’s neck while Mark helped Ariana stand. “Denki.”

  Mark opened his mouth to say something, but all he did was laugh.

  Daed pulled the cow a few feet away from her. “You have a nice aroma for the start of the day.” He smiled. “You can go get a warm shower if you like.”