LITMIR.BIZ

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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 of me that he can’t wait to ask for my hand in marriage? Sadie silently groused. This wasn’t the first time a man had indicated, in so many words or actions, he thought of Sadie as a friend and nothing more. Something similar had happened with Albrecht Smoker and with Roy King, both of whom had actually walked out with her before deciding they weren’t interested in continuing a courtship. Having grown up with seven brothers, Sadie wondered if there was something about her personality that caused men to feel comfortable around her but not drawn to her as a romantic prospect.

      Either way, she regretted exposing her unrequited emotions to Harrison and she’d finished out the week at the furniture store feeling ridiculous in his presence. They’d stopped eating lunch together and she’d walked four miles home in the dark rather than accept a ride from him again. Not that he’d asked. He must have thought she was pathetic, because he’d gone as far out of his way to avoid her as she had to avoid him ever since. The way Sadie saw it, she’d be doing them both a favor by not attending his wedding.

      “Harrison will have so many relatives there I doubt he’ll even notice my absence,” Sadie told her stepmother, retrieving a stack of plates from the cupboard. “Besides, ever since I qu—I agreed to give my hours at the shop to Sereta, you’ve been telling me I need to find another job.”

      “Jah, but I meant a job in Little Springs.”

      “Your cousin’s nephew needs help. And it’s only temporary.”

      Cevilla chewed her lip and Sadie knew she’d made a good point. Her stepmother’s cousin’s nephew Levi was a widower with four-year-old twins. He owned a Christmas tree farm in Maine, where his mother had been minding the children for him, but she’d passed away in July. Apparently, the other nannies he’d employed hadn’t worked out and now he was coming into his busiest season. After Christmas he was moving back to Indiana so his in-laws could help raise the twins, but until then, he was in desperate need of someone to care for them.

      “I suppose that’s true,” Cevilla reluctantly admitted. “Besides, you’re old enough to choose what you want to do.”

      “I want to go,” Sadie firmly stated. “I really do.”

      Cevilla nodded but added, “Your brieder will miss having you here.”

      Sadie had three older brothers, who were married and lived locally in Pennsylvania, and four younger brothers at home, whom she doted on. “Tell them not to worry, I’ll be back with their gifts just in time for Grischtdaag,” she joked, but Cevilla was serious.

      “I’m going to miss you. Maine is so far away,” she said. “You’ve never even left Lancaster County.”

      That was because even when she’d had the opportunity, Sadie hadn’t wanted to leave. But now she felt like she couldn’t get far enough away. She set the last plate near her place at the table and crossed the kitchen to embrace Cevilla.

      “I’ll be back before you know it,” she assured her stepmother. And by then, hochzich season will be over and I’ll be able to hold my head up in front of Harrison again.

      Levi Swarey firmly grasped the hands of his four-year-old twins, Elizabeth and David, as they skipped along beside him on the way to his mother’s daadi haus across the lawn from his own home. Her death had hit him hard and he’d rarely been inside her house since she’d passed away in July. Afterward, the women from his church district had visited to collect her clothes for donation and give the place a good scrubbing down. They’d said they washed all the linens and stowed them away in the closet, so Levi figured that besides making up a bed there was little for him to do before Sadie moved in, but he wanted to double-check that she had everything she would need.

      “I can smell Groossmammi,” Elizabeth announced tearfully moments after they entered the empty house. “I want her to kumme back.”

      “Groossmammi can’t kumme back. She’s in heaven with the Lord and with Mamm,” David said solemnly, repeating the explanation Levi had given the children countless times since his mother died.

      Levi said, “Jah, and all three of them would want you to wilkom Sadie, so we need to make sure the daadi haus is cozy and clean. It looks pretty nice in here to me, what do you two think?”

      “There’s a big spiderweb in the corner.” David pointed to the wall above the thickly cushioned armchair. “Sadie might be afraid of spiders.”

      “That’s not a spiderweb. It’s a cow web,” his sister corrected him.

      “You’re right, it is a cobweb,” Levi agreed. “I’ll get the broom.” He headed toward the kitchen. The broom wasn’t hanging on its nail beside the refrigerator. Neither was it in the pantry, so he checked the bedroom, where he found it propped against the wall. He returned to the living room to discover David balanced on the back of the sofa. The boy jumped up and swiped at the cobweb with a doily he must have removed from an end table.

      “Absatz!” Levi shouted for him to stop as he lunged forward and grabbed his son from the sofa. “How many times have I told you not to climb on furniture?”

      David’s lower lip quivered and tears bubbled in his eyes. “I was only trying to help wilkom Sadie, Daed.”

      “And he took his shoes off so he wouldn’t get the couch dirty,” Elizabeth defended him.

      Levi picked David off the sofa and set him on the floor. Settling onto the cushion so he could be eye to eye with his son, Levi said, “I understand you wanted to help, but you could have fallen and broken your leg. And that would have broken my heart.”

      David’s expression was one of anxiety as much as contrition and Levi knew he was overreacting. Again. He couldn’t seem to help himself. As Levi sat there in his mother’s house, it was almost as if he could hear her scolding him, What happened to Leora was a baremlich thing, suh, but it’s time you started trusting the Lord.

      He did trust the Lord. But trusting the Lord didn’t relieve Levi of his responsibility to keep his children safe. He hadn’t been able to protect their mother—on the contrary, it was his carelessness that had led to her death when the children were toddlers. He wasn’t going to make that mistake with his children, no matter who thought he was overly protective.

      And plenty of people did, which was why he’d lost the four nannies he’d had since his mother passed away. Levi’s mother was the only person other than himself he trusted with their care, and he even caught himself looking over her shoulder, especially as the twins grew older and became more mobile.

      “I know you’re sorry,” he told David. “But remember the rhyme I taught you?”

      The twins duly chorused, “Keep safe and sound with both feet on the ground.”

      He insisted on this rule because of Leora’s accident three years ago. She had been cleaning the windows when she must have lost her balance. After falling

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