LITMIR.BIZ

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She would need to get the fire going quickly, for the weather was too foul for the children to gather in the schoolyard waiting for the bell to ring.

      Then as she neared the school, she caught a whiff of smoke and lifted the edge of her shawl so she could see more clearly. Rising from the chimney was a trail of gray smoke. Lydia smiled as she hurried to the school. Her brother-in-law Luke must have started the fire for her. He was a kind man, the perfect match for Greta, her lively and sometimes capricious younger sister.

      “Luke?” she called as she entered the school and the door banged shut behind her. She hung her shawl and bonnet on the first of a double row of wooden pegs by the door. “I came early to light the fire, but I see that you...” She froze as she realized that the man kneeling by the door of the woodstove was not her brother-in-law.

      She recognized the red cap and light canvas jacket of the man she’d seen crossing the field a day earlier and felt a twinge of alarm. He must have stayed the night in the school. Homes and other buildings in Celery Fields were rarely locked unless they were businesses with wares that had proved worth stealing. Slowly the man turned and pinned her with his gaze as he removed his cap and stood up. He had several days’ growth of a beard and his hair curled over his ears. But only one man she’d ever met had those deep-set green eyes.

      “Hello, Liddy.”

      She gasped. “You,” she whispered, suddenly unable to find her full voice and at the same time realizing that she should not be speaking to him at all.

      John Amman was under the bann and as such was to be shunned by all members of the church.

      “It’s been a long time,” he added, his voice hoarse and raspy, and he took a step toward her.

      Flustered by the sheer presence of him—taller and broader than she remembered and, in spite of the weariness that lined his face, far more handsome—Lydia resorted to her habit of placing distance between herself and something she could not yet understand. She walked straight past him to the board and began writing the day’s assignments on it, her back to him.

      “Aren’t you going to say anything, Liddy?”

      Her fingers tightened on the chalk, snapping it in two. A thousand questions raced through her mind.

      Where have you been?

      Why didn’t you write?

      What are you doing here, now?

      Do you have a wife? Children?

      Are you here to stay?

      Do you know that your family moved back north?

      What happened to all your plans?

      When’s the last time you had a decent meal?

      And on and on.

      She finished writing on the board, laid the chalk precisely in the tray and dusted her hands off by rubbing them together. She kept her back to him, felt the tenseness in her shoulders and listened for his step, praying that he would give up and leave.

      But she knew better. John Amman had always been determined to get what he wanted once he set his mind to something. Slowly she turned around. He had not moved from his place next to the stove.

      “You’re the teacher now,” he said with a gesture toward the room filled with desks and the other trappings of the school they had both once attended. “Liddy?” He took another step toward her but stopped when she moved away from him.

      “You look terrible,” she replied in the voice she used to reprimand a truant student, then she clamped her lips shut. To her surprise he laughed, and the sound of it was a song she had heard again and again over the years whenever she lay awake remembering John Amman.

      “I guess I do at that,” he said, looking down at his patched and ill-fitted clothing as he ran a hand over his unshaved face.

      She placed books on desks, her back to him.

      “Are you not glad to see me?”

      The question infuriated her because the answer that sprang instantly from deep within her was, Yes. Oh, yes. How I have worried about you, thought of you, longed to know if you were well. And, most of all, wondered if you ever thought of me.

      “I am pleased to see that you are alive,” she replied, unable to prevent the words or stem the tide of years of bitterness in her voice. “As I would be to see any prodigal return,” she added, raising her eyes defiantly to his. “And now please go. The children will be here any minute and I...”

      “...don’t wish to have to explain about me?” He stepped closer and fingered the loose tie of her prayer covering. “When did you marry, Liddy?”

      She jerked the tie free and at the same time heard the school door open and shut. She turned to find Bettina standing uncertainly inside the doorway.

      “Teacher?”

      “Guten morgen,” John said, crossing the room to where Bettina waited. “I am John Amman. I expect you know my uncle and aunt, the Hadwells?”

      Bettina nodded and looked at Lydia. Lydia considered the best way to get John out of the classroom without raising further questions.

      “I am Teacher’s niece, Bettina.”

      “You are Pleasant’s daughter?”

      Lydia saw Bettina take in John’s rumpled clothing, his mud-caked shoes. Her niece was a bright girl, and Lydia knew she was trying to decide if this man was who he said he was or another tramp passing through, trying anything he thought might work to get a handout or a meal. Her eyes darted from Lydia to John and back again as she nodded politely. But at the same time she edged closer to the bell rope, ready to pull it if she deemed them to be in any danger.

      “John Amman was kind enough to light the fire, Bettina. Now he will be on his way.” Lydia was satisfied that in directing her comment to the girl she had not further violated her responsibility to shun him. She moved to the door and opened it, waiting for John to leave.

      He paused for just an instant as he passed her, his incredible eyes, the green of a lush tropical jungle, locking on hers.

      “You may as well know this now, Lydia Goodloe. I’ve come home to stay.”

      As Lydia closed the door firmly behind him she noticed that her hand was shaking and her heart was racing and all of a sudden the room seemed far too warm.

      * * *

      John had not meant to say anything about his plans. He didn’t know what his future might hold. There were too many unknowns. How would his aunt and uncle, the only family left here, respond to his return? The night before he’d watched them close up shop and head home together and been glad to know they were still there. But could he seek and be granted their forgiveness? Could he find work and a place to live? And most of all, what kind of fool deliberately tormented himself by living in the same small town where the love of his life had settled into a marriage of her own? Still, as he walked the rest of the way into town, oblivious to the rain and wind, he knew that he had spoken the truth. He had come back to stay, for in reality he had nowhere else to go.

      When he entered the hardware store it was as if he had stepped back in time. The same bell jangled over the door as he closed it. Instantly he was certain that he could easily fill any order a customer might have because everything was in the same place it had always been. Including his aunt.

      He smiled as he watched Gertrude Hadwell chew the stub of the pencil she used to figure the month’s finances. She was behind the counter, the ledger open before her, her elbows resting on either side of it as she hummed softly and entered figures into the narrow columns. She looked as if she hadn’t aged a day, adding to his sense that nothing had changed.

      “Be right there,” she called without glancing up. “Roger Hadwell,” she shouted, turning her face toward the back of the store as she closed the ledger and walked toward the storeroom. “Customer.”

      John

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