Romancing Nadine Read online

  “I didn’t think about her getting into the flowers.”

  Charlotte had clipped an extra-long leash to the clothesline to allow Goldie some space to run around, but she wouldn’t be able to run away. Thankfully, the leash’s length didn’t allow her access to the vegetable garden they had just planted, but it did give her a chance to wreak havoc on the whitewashed tractor tire planter that sat in the side yard next to the crepe myrtle.

  “You’re telling Amos,” Nadine said. After a second cup of coffee and a three-high stack of Charlotte’s crispy-edged, buttery pancakes, Nadine felt a little more like herself and a lot less like the screaming madwoman from the night before.

  Charlotte sighed. “I suppose I could go over there now, but he’ll be here after lunch.”

  The surprise must have shown on Nadine’s face. Or perhaps it was the horror.

  “He’s got to get everything set up,” Charlotte explained.

  “I’m beginning to think this is a conspiracy. Are you so sure that I’m going to marry Amos because you’re determined to make it happen?”

  She shook her head. “I can see how he looks at you.”

  A normal person would ask how, but Nadine didn’t want to know. She could imagine all on her own. Amos had told her that he thought God wanted them together so she could see his look as filled with longing and expectation.

  Just another reason to hold him off. He had placed her on a pedestal before he had even met her. How was she supposed to live up to that?

  * * *

  “Are you still mad?” Amos asked Nadine. He’d been at her house now for fifteen minutes, and she had yet to say a word to him.

  “Are you mad?” she returned. She was avoiding the issue, and he let her ... this time.

  “Nah. A little sad, really. I planted flowers because you said you didn’t like to see them die and instead you had to witness them being murdered.”

  “I didn’t actually see them being destroyed,” she said. “So it isn’t as bad as all that.”

  “Jah, but you did have to identify the body.”

  She smiled; then a small chuckle escaped her. Success!

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said.

  He looked over to where Goldie romped in the sun, snapping at bugs and bits of pollen floating in the air. “Do you hate her?”

  “Why does everyone think I could hate a puppy? Am I that mean?”

  “Well . . .” He drew out the word until it seemed to have at least three syllables.

  “Amos Fisher.”

  He grinned. “All right, okay. You’re not mean, but you have been a little ... edgy lately.”

  “And you wonder why?”

  “How’s your leg today?” Best to change the subject.

  “I mixed up eight ounces of water with a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and drank it yesterday morning and it’s really helped. The bleeding has definitely stopped. Danki for asking. Though you know I wasn’t in any danger.”

  “I know, but I hated to see you hurt.”

  “Speaking of hurt,” she started.

  Uh-oh.

  “Why in the world did you say all that to John Yoder last night?”

  “What does that have to do with being hurt?” he asked.

  “Answer me, please.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to be bothered by men who wanted to court you and fishing seems like a fine way to begin a courtship.”

  “Because you yourself have tried to use that tactic on me.”

  “Why do I feel like I’m being interrogated by some government agency on bad dating?”

  “Amos.”

  “Okay, yes. Maybe. I mean, you and I are friends, right? I was just trying to protect you.” To his own ears, it sounded weak.

  “Pick back up with yes and try again.”

  “Yes, but I was jealous of the thought of you spending time with other men. There, I said it. Are you happy?”

  She didn’t look happy. She looked a little confused. “We are friends, jah? Only friends and we will only ever be friends. You understand that, right?”

  “I do.” But it doesn’t stop me from feeling the way I do about you. God brought us together. I’ve waited my entire life for you, but I’m willing to wait a bit longer.

  But he didn’t say any of those things to her. What good would it do when it wasn’t what she wanted to hear?

  “Good. Because I like being your friend.”

  The words made his heart constrict and yet soar. How could he be happy and sad at the same time? He didn’t know how it was possible, but he simply was.

  * * *

  “He can bake, fix things, draw up plans for buildings, paint pictures, and fry fish better than the restaurant there in Pryor. You should hang on to him.” Abbie bumped shoulders with Nadine and gave her a sly smile.

  “We’re friends.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s everyone’s response when I tell them that.”

  “Because we all know that if you’re courting, you’re going to keep it a secret.”

  “We’re not keeping anything a secret because there’s nothing to keep secret. We’re just friends.”

  “And he makes fantastic hush puppies,” Abbie said, taking a bite of one.

  “Charlotte made the hush puppies.”

  Abbie shrugged. “Still.”

  Still nothing, Nadine thought as she moved away to check on the girls. The adults had started pitching horseshoes, and Amos had found a couple of railroad spikes and some old coffee can lids to use as a makeshift game for the twins.

  She and Charlotte really needed to clean out the barn, Nadine thought. The previous owners had left whatever they hadn’t wanted to take with them. There were a few good items in there—a table and a couple of chairs that Abe Fitch could possibly salvage—and then there was a whole bunch of junk.

  But this was a case of the junk coming in handy, she thought as she watched the twins play.

  Goldie bounded up just as Carrie squatted down to pick up one of the plastic horseshoe shapes that Amos had fashioned out of coffee can lids. The puppy licked her face. At first, she giggled, but then Goldie knocked her down and continued to lick her while she screamed.

  Nadine rushed toward her and the dog. Amos did the same. She was closest to the pup and scooped the wriggling dog into her arms. Amos grabbed the squalling toddler but held her away from him as if he hadn’t fully realized what he was doing until it was done.

  “Switch?” he asked over Carrie’s cries.

  Nadine nodded. She cupped the dog in one arm and reached for the child with the other. Somehow they managed a successful swap. She rocked the child from side to side, and suddenly it hit her that Jenna really was getting married and she might one day have a child. Nadine’s great-grandchild. The thought was warming and fantastic. Charlotte might be worried, but Nadine was excited. She could hardly wait.

  “What happened?” Abbie asked, coming over from the adult game to check on her daughter.

  “Puppy love,” Nadine explained. “Right in the face.”

  Abbie smoothed the hair back from Carrie’s forehead. “Shhh . . .” she crooned. “You’re okay.”

  Carrie launched herself at her mamm, and Nadine turned her over.

  Abbie shot her an apologetic look, as if she knew Nadine had been enjoying holding the toddler even if she was crying her eyes out.

  “Here.” Amos thrust the wriggling puppy toward her.

  Goldie was still trying to lick his face as he handed her back to Nadine. Didn’t he know that a dog was no substitute for a baby?

  She stopped fighting the pup and received a couple of good licks from the dog. “A substitute,” she murmured, then set the pup on the ground. Goldie whined for a bit, braced her paws on Nadine’s legs to regain her attention, and when that didn’t work, she bounded away, surely to get into new mischief.

  “What was that?” Amos asked.

  Nadine stepped a little closer to him so she wouldn’t be overheard
. “It’s a substitute. Goldie is a substitute for losing Jenna.”

  Amos looked from Jenna to the dog as if mentally measuring the possibility. “You think?”

  Nadine nodded. “I know.”

  “But that’s—”

  “Not a good substitute, I know. But that’s what she’s done.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “There’s nothing I can do. Pray for her, I guess.”

  “She needs something. Maybe talk to someone.”

  “Like who?”

  “Well, the first person to come to mind is Helen Ebersol,” Amos said.

  “The bishop’s wife?” Nadine waved and gave a thumbs-up as Jenna called her name and pointed at the ringer she had just made.

  “She’s a good lady. And then there are the women in the quilting circle. A lot of them have had similar family troubles. Well, maybe not similar, but you know what I mean. Everything didn’t come out to be the Amish dream for them. And they’ve managed. Maybe they can give her a little help.”

  “Maybe,” Nadine murmured. She was certain Helen Ebersol could help Charlotte; the trick would be talking Charlotte into the idea. “I guess it’s time to break up,” she said.

  He looked alarmed. “What?”

  “This.” She pointed at herself, then at him. “Little rendezvous. I think it’s time to get dessert ready.”

  “Jah . . . right,” he said, but some of the panic still remained on his face as she passed him to get the cake from the house.

  * * *

  “All in all, I would say that your sneak-attack fish fry was a big success,” Nadine said as the sun went down.

  Everyone had packed up and gone, including Jenna and Buddy. The only person left was Amos and he was still cleaning up.

  “I really didn’t mean to sneak attack you,” Amos said as he wiped out the cooker. The grease had been allowed to cool before they poured it back into its original container. Amos promised to take it to town tomorrow and dispose of it properly. Which, if she was understanding correctly, meant dumping it in the Dumpster behind the shed company. That was just fine with her. Once grease had been used to fry fish, it wasn’t fitting to be used for anything else. “I thought you would have fun.”

  She smiled at him in spite of herself. She had been trying to act at least a little put out with him all day, but somehow she could never pull it off. She supposed it was time to put that plan to bed. “It was fun, and you do fry a mean fillet.”

  He gave her a thankful nod. “I was thinking that for tomorrow we could order pizza. That would be fun, jah?”

  Tomorrow? She almost asked the question before realizing that tomorrow was puzzle night. The week was only three days old, and she had spent a portion of every one of them with Amos. Now he was going for four. But how could she tell him he was uninvited because she felt she was spending too much time with him? They were friends, after all.

  But it’s starting to become more than that.

  She pushed the voice aside. It wasn’t becoming anything but a better friendship.

  “Jah . . . pizza,” she stuttered. “That would be great.”

  “You sure?” He peered closely at her, before swinging the fryer into the back of his trailer. “You look a little green around the gills.”

  “Pizza is fine,” she said. “Jenna will really like that.”

  “There’s a new pizza place in town. The guys at the shop say it’s really good. I have to work at the bakery until four so I’ll swing by and get the pizzas, then bring them on over.”

  “Sounds like you’ve thought of everything.” And he had, so why did she feel so conflicted about something as simple as puzzle night? There was no telling, and that was a puzzle in itself.

  * * *

  As promised, Amos showed up at five-thirty with three large pizzas and another bunch of flowers to plant.

  “I don’t know why you brought those,” Nadine said as she met him around back. He had taken the pizzas into the house, then made his way around back to replant the tire tractor flower planter. “I’m beginning to think that the beast is possessed.”

  Amos knelt down by the tire and started making a hole for the flowers. “Oh, come on now, she can’t be that bad. I mean, how could something so cute be possessed?”

  “That’s the devil’s trick, see? He puts his minions in cute disguises to deceive us. He is the great deceiver.”

  “Jah. The Bible does tell us that.”

  “And it also tells us that Lucifer was God’s most beautiful angel. See the connection?”

  He nodded as if he did, but Nadine knew he was just trying to appease her.

  She wiped a hand across her forehead. “Heavens! I sound like I’ve lost my mind.”

  “Maybe you should think about getting away for a couple of days. Maybe go back to Yoder.” He looked up at her, but the sun was shining on his face. He just squinted at her for a moment, then went back to planting flowers. In minutes, he had it completely redone.

  He pushed himself to his feet, his joints cracking and popping as he did.

  “It looks like it never even happened,” she said.

  He grinned. “So what about it?”

  “Going back to Yoder?” She shook her head. “I can’t go away for that long.” She truly was worried about Charlotte. Her daughter-in-law was becoming more and more unpredictable these days.

  “Then how about an afternoon away? We can go over to Honor Heights Park in Muskogee. The azaleas are in bloom.”

  “I’ve heard about that,” she replied. She had heard that it was one of the most beautiful things on earth. Hundreds of azaleas all in bloom in a gorgeous park filled with trails and shade trees. It sounded a little like a piece of heaven on earth.

  “It really is something to see. I’ve got friends that are headed that way tomorrow. We can make a day of it.”

  She wanted to tell him no. She needed to tell him no. She was about to spend the next few hours with him eating pizza and putting together a puzzle. That was day number four in a row for the two of them spending time together. Did she really want to make it five?

  But it wasn’t about that. It was about the flowers. Jah, she really wanted to see them. And there was only a short time before the blooms gave way to the green leaves that would grace the plants for the rest of the summer. Besides, if a bunch of people were going, it would be like an outing with the rest of the seniors’ group. And that’s what this would be like as well.

  “Is there room?” she asked.

  “They have a van at the ready.”

  “Jah,” she finally said, confident in her decision. “Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  “I thought, when you said they had a van, that it meant they had rented one.” And a lot of other people were going.

  “Nah, this is Pete. He and I used to work together at the shed company. He’s going down to the VA hospital to check on his dad, and I asked him if we could ride along.”

  “But—” There had to be some reason for her not to go, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of one.

  This was too much like a date, and she and Amos weren’t dating.

  “Friends do stuff together all the time,” Amos said.

  “Jah.”

  He propped his hands on his hips and pinned her with a knowing look. “If I were Charlotte, would you be hesitating right now?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  He smiled. “Then get in the van.”

  Pete Wilson was tall and thin with a smooth bald head that gave way to a fringe of reddish hair. There was not a trace of gray in those strands, and Nadine couldn’t figure out how old the man was. Not that it mattered.

  “Everything okay?” he asked as they climbed into the back seat.

  “Fine,” she and Amos said at the same time.

  The van was one of those old-timey styles from the sixties, with a blunt face and a VW in a circle on the front. Not at all the type of vans she was used to.

&
nbsp; “Cool van, jah?” Amos asked as they drove down the road.

  “It’s very nice.” And it was. She was certain it was an old van, but the outside was covered in shiny paint and the inside showed no signs of wear.

  They were sitting side by side on the bench seat behind the driver. If Pete thought it was weird that they had climbed into the back together and no one was sitting in the front, he didn’t say anything. But it made Nadine wonder what Amos had told his friend about their relationship.

  Something, she was sure, because Pete had turned the music on the radio to a station that played soft music, like the kind Englisch people would slow dance to, and he kept looking in the mirror every so often as if checking to see what they were up to.

  It was only a twenty-minute drive, but it seemed to take much longer.

  Pete dropped them off at the park entrance with a promise to pick them up in four hours.

  “Four hours?” Nadine asked. “What are we going to do for four hours?”

  Amos smiled. “We’re going to walk, take pictures of the flowers, and picnic by the water.”

  “And how are we going to do all these things?”

  He patted the bag he had slung over one shoulder.

  “Pictures?” she asked as they headed up the hill.

  He pulled out a couple of disposable cameras.

  “I’m not sure those are approved by the bishop.”

  He stopped, his mouth turned down at the corners. “Cephas Ebersol is a great man. But he doesn’t need to know everything we do. And besides,” he said as he started up again. “We’re only going to be taking pictures of the flowers.”

  Nadine supposed that if it was okay for them to paint a picture of a barn, then snapping photographs of flowers shouldn’t be any different.

  “You need to relax, Nadine. You’re too high-strung over nothing.”

  It was her turn to stop. “High-strung? Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  His words cut like a knife. She started walking again. This whole thing would have been easier on a tractor, but she wasn’t about to say so. He might think her high-strung. Was that really how he saw her? It stung. That wasn’t the person she wanted to be. These were her last years on earth. She wanted to enjoy herself. Jenna was fine, Charlotte was ... well, Charlotte wasn’t fine, but she was an adult and she would make it through. These should be the best and most carefree years of Nadine’s life.