Keys of Heaven by Senft Adina

Author:Senft, Adina [Senft, Adina]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: FaithWords
Published: 2015-02-03T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Corinne asked Sarah and Caleb to stay for supper, even though the next day was Friday and they’d be back again as usual. But Sarah was glad. While the fear had subsided, her spirit was still unsettled and she couldn’t think of anything that would help more than Corinne’s warm gaze and Amanda’s steady shoulder at her side as they peeled potatoes and shredded carrots and red cabbage for a colorful slaw.

“The taxi is coming tomorrow morning to take Zeke and Fannie back up to Mount Joy,” Amanda said. “I’m glad you could stay so we can all be together this last night.”

Something she said snagged Sarah’s attention the way the cleavers on the hillside did her skirt. She rinsed the potato and picked up another one. “Zeke and Fannie? But Silas is going with them, isn’t he?”

“Apparently not,” Amanda said in a low voice. “Miriam and Joshua invited him to stay another week—more, if he wants. Joshua has been planning to remodel the old bathroom in their house for ages, and with another pair of hands he could get the job done this month.”

“Is that the only reason he’s staying on?” Sarah asked carefully, focusing completely on the smooth movement of the peeler.

Amanda blushed. “I don’t know. I hope—I mean, it would be prideful of me to think that—that—” She stammered to a stop.

“Has he said anything to you?” Sarah’s voice was nearly a whisper now, since the men were washing up just outside at the double sink.

“That’s the trouble—we talk all the time,” Amanda said in a rush. “But there is nothing to it. He remarks on the weather. I say how the garden is doing. He wonders if Dat will get the third planting done before it rains. I say I’m working on a quilt to go in the auction in the fall. But nothing about—about—nothing personal.”

Poor Amanda. Sometimes, before a boy finally decided that a girl might be the one for him, he spent more time hemming and hawing and making conversation than he did courting. When Michael had come along, all thoughts of other men had fled from Sarah’s mind. Conversation with Michael wasn’t difficult. It was a joy—two souls who couldn’t wait to discover each other, to peel back the layers of their characters to reveal the hidden fears and hopes inside. Conversation with Henry was a little bit like that—though why that should be was a mystery. She seemed to have jumped right into his life and learned some of his secrets—and he hers—without even trying. Sometimes she’d even made those discoveries in anger, which was even stranger.

“Maybe some men have a gift from God,” she said to Amanda. “Conversation isn’t easy for everyone, you know. Just be patient and make it easy for him to come to you. Be the listening ear and the welcoming smile, and you will be the one he wants to tell things to.”

“I try,” Amanda whispered. “But I don’t want him to think I’m forward.”

“Nobody could think that of you,” Sarah assured her.

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