LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      “If you go to Maine now, you’ll miss hochzich season here,” Sadie Dienner’s stepmother, Cevilla, protested as she mixed water with flour to thicken the juice of a roast into gravy.

      Jah, that’s exactly my plan, Sadie thought. “I’m happy for Sarah and Rebekah, but we aren’t exactly close friends,” she said. “It’s not as if I’m a newehocker in either hochzich.”

      She hardly expected to be asked to be a wedding attendant; the brides were each four years younger than twenty-five-year-old Sadie and she rarely saw them except at church. Sadie’s closest friends had been married for years and she was painfully aware that once Sarah and Rebekah married their suitors this fall, she’d be the only single woman in Little Springs, Pennsylvania—with the exception of Elva Wyse, a ninety-two-year-old widow. And Elva had been married three times, so it wasn’t as if she was considered a spinster.

      “What about Harrison? Won’t he be hurt if you don’t attend his hochzich to Mary?”

      Not nearly as hurt as I was when he told me he was marrying her. The news had come as a shock to Sadie, who had long imagined marrying Harrison herself. In fact, he was the primary reason she wanted to flee Little Springs during wedding season. Not because she still entertained any romantic feelings toward him, but because her pride was wounded and the prospect of attending his wedding was too humiliating to bear.

      Sadie cringed to remember what a fool she’d made of herself after Harrison and Mary’s wedding was “published,” or announced in church, a few weeks back in mid-October. The Old Order Amish youth in her district fiercely guarded their courtships, keeping them as secret as possible, so Sadie had assumed Harrison was interested in her and no one else. Come to find out, she was wrong on both counts.

      “I didn’t know you were courting someone from another district! All this time I thought—I thought you liked me,” she’d wailed to him at work the Monday after his wedding was announced.

      Perplexed, Harrison furrowed his brows. “I do like you. We’re friends. I consider you a gut pal.”

      “A pal?” Sadie spit out the word.

      “Jah. In some ways, I like spending time with you more than with Abe or Baker,” Harrison had said with a grin, as if Sadie should have felt complimented she outranked his other buddies.

      “But what about all the times you gave me a ride home from work?” Sadie sniffed, half enraged and half heartbroken, astonished he didn’t return her romantic affections.

      “What about it? We live in the same part of town. I’d do that much for anyone.”

      “Wh-what about the gifts?” The catch in Sadie’s voice meant she was dangerously close to tears.

      “Gifts?” Sadie could practically see the light dawning across his features. “Oh, you mean the Grischtdaag gift last year?”

      “As well as the birthday present in March,” Sadie reminded him, referencing the leather-covered diary Harrison had given her. The same diary in which she’d written all her dreams about him marrying her. “I thought those gifts meant something.”

      “They did. They were a reflection of how much my familye and I appreciate your work at the shop. Listen, Sadie, you’re a valuable employee and—”

      “Not anymore I’m not!” Sadie shot back. She already felt pitiful enough; she couldn’t stand to listen to a consolation speech about the merits of her productivity at his family’s furniture store when she’d hoped to hear declarations of love.

      “What do you mean?”

      “I mean I’m quitting,” she declared. Her mouth made the decision before her mind thought it through, so she added, “You’ve said sales are waning and you’ve been struggling to pay two clerks. Sereta Miller is supporting her eldre and suh. She needs the job more than I do, so I volunteer to have my hours eliminated. Would you like to tell your eldre or do you want me to tell them?”

      Harrison shook his head as if Sadie was speaking gibberish. “It’s only a temporary lull. We expect business to pick up again in December. There’s always a surge after Thanksgiving.”

      “By then, you’ll be married and I’m sure your new wife will be glad to help out at the store,” Sadie said with a shrug. At that point, she couldn’t quite bring herself to acknowledge Mary by name.

      That was nearly a month ago. Since then, Sadie had ruminated long and hard about how she had misinterpreted Harrison’s gestures. She had convinced herself he was interested in her romantically but was too shy to ask to be her suitor. What a joke that was! He apparently hadn’t been shy about asking Mary to become his wife.

      Why isn’t any man ever so enamored

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