The Christmas Courtship

“Haven’t seen her.”

Joshua hooked his thumbs into his denim pants pockets and sighed with exasperation. He wasn’t sure what to do. He had no idea how to find out if Rosemary’s cousin had actually been on the bus or not. For all he knew, she could have changed her mind and never boarded in Pennsylvania. Apparently, her parents were sending Phoebe to Kent County because she’d been involved in some sort of scandal. Word was she’d have a better chance of finding a husband outside her hometown. Of course, among the Old Order Amish, asking for someone’s secret apple streusel recipe could be considered a scandal, so the idea that the poor girl was coming to them in disgrace didn’t hold much water with him.

Joshua stared at a display of potato chips in front of him, wondering if he should give his stepmother a call. They didn’t have a phone in their house. The Amish didn’t have telephones. It was one of the ways they held themselves apart from others. But his family did have a phone in his father’s harness shop. Most bishops allowed their congregants to have phones for their businesses as long as it wasn’t inside the home. Sadly, more and more Amish needed cell phones for work purposes because more Amish men were forced to work in the Englisher world for financial reasons. But those phones were never left on or carried in pants pockets. They were stowed in pantry drawers and more creative places. One of his neighbors stored his in his chicken house.

Joshua saw no point in calling the harness shop and relaying a message to Rosemary in the house because if the cousin had decided not to come, how would Rosemary know? From what his stepmother had said, Phoebe came from an extremely conservative Amish community in Pennsylvania. She certainly didn’t have a telephone.

Joshua glanced at the man at the cash register again.

He was wearing a camouflage T-shirt and pants, and a bright orange knit cap advertising some kind of sports drink. Despite the clothes, he didn’t look like much of a hunter.

“You sure you haven’t seen an Amish girl?” Joshua asked. “She would have come inside. It’s too cold to wait out there. Probably wearing a black bonnet and long black cloak,” he said, trying to jog the man’s memory.

The guy placed his meaty hands on the counter and leaned forward. “Look, buddy, I haven’t seen any gal in prairie wear today. I know what your people look like. They come in once in a while.”

Debating what to do, Joshua watched the customer who’d been looking over the candy approach the register. He’d gone with the chocolate peanut butter cups. Joshua liked those, too.

A door opened in the back of the store and a woman’s voice caught his attention.

“Atch, you’re so welcome.” She had a Pennsylvania Deutsch lilt to her words. The language, which was equivalent to High German, was what his people spoke.

Joshua turned to see an Amish woman in a black bonnet and black floor-length wool cloak holding a baby bundled in a blanket. There was an Englisher woman with her who was wearing, over her head, a brightly colored scarf that covered her hair.

“I hope your father is here soon,” the Amish woman said to the other woman. Then she raised the little one in her arms and peered into his face. The baby looked to be about five or six months old. “Nice to meet you, Amir. Be a good boy for your mama.” She passed the baby to the Englisher.

“Phoebe?” Joshua called across the store. “Phoebe Miller?”

“Ya?” The Amish woman turned to him, seeming as surprised by Joshua as he was of her.

He’d had a picture in his mind of what Rosemary’s cousin would look like: a meek mouse of a girl, small, plump and plain, with dishwater-brown hair and maybe wire-frame spectacles. He supposed what Rosemary had said about her being sent away by her parents had brought him to those conclusions. But this Phoebe was neither plump nor plain. And she was no mouse of a girl. She was tall, almost as tall as he was, and pretty, with corn silk blond hair and startling blue eyes.

“Where were you?” he asked, walking toward her. His tone came out as curt, more because he was taken off guard by her appearance than because he was annoyed that he hadn’t been able to find her. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Phoebe turned to the young woman with the child and said something he couldn’t hear. The Englisher woman walked away, taking a different aisle toward the front of the store.

“Do you have a suitcase?” Joshua asked Phoebe. Now that he had found her, he was eager to get home. They had to stop at Byler’s on the way out of town to pick up some groceries for his stepmother. If he hurried, he might still have time to talk with Bay before it was time to feed up for the evening.

Phoebe picked up a large canvas duffel bag off the floor and walked toward him. “Who are you?”

“Joshua Miller.” He put out his hand to take her bag, but she pulled it out of his reach. “Rosemary Miller’s son.”

She narrowed her eyes, blue eyes with thick, dark lashes. “Her son is a little boy. Jesse,” she said suspiciously. “And then she has the babes,” she added.

He rolled his eyes, adjusting his wide-brimmed black hat to get a better look at her. That she was awfully pretty being his first conclusion. And spirited was his second. Again, not what he was expecting. It wasn’t his experience that Amish women her age questioned Amish men they didn’t know. “I’m Rosemary’s stepson. She married my father, Benjamin, two years ago. She would have come herself, but she just had surgery on her foot and she’s supposed to stay off it. My little brothers born to Rosemary are Josiah and James. Believe me now?”

“Maybe,” she retorted.

There was something about her tone of voice that nearly made him chuckle. “Anything else you’d like to quiz me on?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You’re Benjamin’s son, you say?”

“You know him?” He slid on his sunglasses, wishing he’d put on his good coat instead of the one he usually wore to the barn. This one had a tear on the sleeve. He hoped it didn’t smell like cow dung. He’d milked this morning with his twin brother, Jacob. There was something about the way she looked at him that made him want to impress her. Or at least not give a bad first impression.

“I don’t know Benjamin, but my mother knew who he was when Rosemary wrote to us to tell us she was remarrying.” Phoebe stood there in the convenience store aisle still gripping her bag, now with both hands.

“Are we related?” he asked. “You know, having the same name.” The moment the words came out of his mouth, he regretted them. Of course, she knew what he meant. He’d just introduced himself as Joshua Miller, and she knew who his father was. Of course, she knew they shared the same surname.

“Ne, we’re not related, just the same last name. Lots of Amish Millers.”

He nodded, strangely relieved that they weren’t related by blood. “We’ve got Millers in Hickory Grove we’re not related to. People are always getting my father confused with Al Miller,” he explained. He watched the woman with the baby walk down the aisle next to them. “You know her?” he asked quietly, nodding in the Englisher woman’s direction.

Phoebe glanced in the stranger’s direction, smiled and then looked back at him. “Met her on the bus. Her name is Daneen. She’s from New Jersey, come to Delaware to see her parents. I was just holding the baby for her while she washed her hands.”

It occurred to Joshua that some Amish girls might be uncomfortable helping out, or even speaking to someone who looked so different from them. Most Amish women had very little contact with Englishers...of any sort. He was impressed. And intrigued. And feeling a little out of sorts now because she seemed very worldly to him. Not in a bad way, just more experienced in life. And he was pretty certain she was older than he was.

He cleared his throat. “So, um...you think it’s safe to ride to Hickory Grove with me?” he asked. “Now that you know Rosemary must really have sent me.” He put his hand out for her bag again.

“I suppose so. But I can carry it myself.” She walked past him, headed for the door.

“See you found your girl,” the guy in the camo called to Joshua as he followed Phoebe past the checkout register.

Joshua put his head down and didn’t answer, but the thought went through his head... Maybe I have.

Phoebe stood behind the grocery cart watching Joshua place multiple boxes of cereal in the basket.

“I know this looks like a lot, but my brothers and I, we can eat.” He flashed her a grin as he put two more boxes into the cart. He was up to eight: three boxes of bran flakes with raisins, three boxes of wheat biscuits and two boxes of something with marshmallows. He’d said that his little stepbrother, Jesse, loved marshmallows. “My dat has five boys and one daughter. My sister’s married. She and her husband decided to stay in New York when we moved here two years ago. My twin, Jacob, and I are the youngest. All five of us boys live at home. Then there’s Rosemary’s children. Even with my stepsister Lovey married and living down the road, there are the four girls, then Jesse and the babies.” He tugged at the cart and she gave a push. “That means twelve of us at every meal, plus the two littles, and that’s if Lovey and her husband, Marshall, don’t come by, which they do all the time.” He chuckled. “We had to build a second kitchen table so we could all sit down to eat at the same time.”

Phoebe smiled to herself as he went on. Even though she knew she’d done the right thing in leaving Pennsylvania, she’d still been nervous about coming to Rosemary’s and meeting her extended family. She hadn’t seen her cousin in years, and then to come under these circumstances, it was more than a little overwhelming. And then when it wasn’t Rosemary who came to pick her up, but her son. Her stepson. That had really set Phoebe off-kilter. At the bus stop, Joshua had seemed annoyed with her, at least at first, because he couldn’t find her. But it had been the right thing to do, to hold Amir for Daneen while she used the ladies’ room. Phoebe knew what it was like to try to do day-to-day tasks with a baby in your arms all the time and no one to help you. And she’d only been in the ladies’ room for a few minutes.

Phoebe glanced at Joshua again. She had liked him at once. Despite his irritation with her back at the bus stop, he seemed to be good-natured.

He pulled the grocery cart forward and began to put bags of rolled oats into it. She’d never seen an Amish man grocery shop by himself before. Her stepfather had never stepped foot in a grocery store, let alone shopped on his own.

“...a lot of confusion the first few weeks after we arrived from New York, the twelve of us,” Joshua was saying. “Lovage didn’t come with us, straight off. She stayed to see her mother’s farm sold.” He’d been talking since they left the bus station. Which was fine with Phoebe because then she didn’t have to talk. Not talking meant not having to answer questions.

“But then we found our footing.” Joshua added some granola bars to the cart. “Hickory Grove is a nice place. I think you’ll like it. We do.”

She smiled at him as he went on. He was nice-looking, Rosemary’s stepson. Joshua was around Phoebe’s own age, maybe a little younger. He had reddish-brown hair that curled at the back of his neck beneath his black knit hat and a handsome face, with dark eyes and a strong brow. His face was clean-shaven, which meant he was unmarried. Which of course made sense since he still lived at home. She had known the man Rosemary had wed had children from his previous marriage, but she hadn’t known he had adult sons.

“Ne? Never been?” Joshua asked.

Phoebe looked up, realizing he had asked her a question. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

He gripped the end of the cart so they were looking at each other, her on one side, him on the other. He had nice hands: strong, with squared-off nails that were clean. “It’s all right,” he told her. “I talk too much.”

“It’s not that at all,” she said.

“Ne, I talk too much. Everyone in my family says so. I talk when I’m nervous and when I’m not. I talk when I’m happy and when I’m sad. When I was little my mother used to say that she put me to bed talking and I picked right up on the sentence come dawn the next day.”