The Amish Sweet Shop by Emma Miller

Author:Emma Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

Monday. 3:20 p.m.

She saw it the second she stepped outside with the day’s trash a few days later, the attention to detail and vivid colors so startling she actually thought it real for a moment. But when it didn’t take flight as she inched closer, she knew the bird on the quilt shop’s back step had actually been whittled out of wood.

Setting the garbage bag at her feet, Sadie squatted down for a closer look, her mind’s eye soaking up every last detail.

The round orange belly . . .

The dark gray–feathered back that seemed to gather together to create a tail . . .

The perfect yellow beak . . .

And the dark, almost brooding eyes . . .

Every minute detail was so spot-on, so authentic, she half expected it to burst into song the way its living breathing counterparts did outside her bedroom window during the spring and summer months. Instead, she lifted it up off the concrete, and held it at eye level to afford a second and even closer inspection.

Slowly, carefully, Sadie turned the bird over only to suck in a breath as her gaze came to rest on two words written in pencil across the underside. “For Sadie?” she whispered. “But who would—”

She let the rest of the question go as an image of the person responsible for the whittled surprise stepped into the forefront of her thoughts. She wanted to be angry, to be strong enough to stand up, throw the garbage bag into the dumpster, and then march herself back inside the shop for a long overdue talk with Miss Jenny. Yet every time she really looked at the bird in her hands, she knew she couldn’t be angry. Not really, anyway.

Did she wish Miss Jenny would stop this whole secret admirer thing once and for all? Of course. But she’d tried to make the woman understand her displeasure after the letter and it had gotten Sadie nowhere. Instead, after a day or so with no mention of men in relation to Sadie, the book of quotes and poetry had shown up on the back step with her name written neatly on the inside cover. Same writing, same pencil.

Miss Jenny, of course, had denied leaving the book for Sadie. And Sadie, in turn, had let it go in favor of keeping the reins on her own growing frustration. It wasn’t the ideal way to handle it, but Miss Jenny was stubborn, plain and simple. Besides, it was because of that book that Sadie had taken the full forty-five-minute lunch break suggested by Miss Jenny—a lunch break that had culminated in ice cream and some real conversation with the handsome Amos Yoder.

She knew, too, that she should probably say something about the bird—and maybe she would—but for now, its detailed beauty was actually starting to part the very clouds that had hovered over her mood since Amos stepped out of the woods. In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t matter whether or not Amos had overheard the awful things the Englisher had said about Sadie.

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