An Amish Picnic by Amy Clipston

Author:Amy Clipston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2020-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 2

On Monday morning, Nina went about her job as a maid at the inn, cleaning the four guest rooms, which had all been booked for the weekend. Business had been steady for months now, which not only put her family in a good mood but also confirmed that their move from Wisconsin to Birch Creek hadn’t been a mistake. For a while there, they hadn’t been sure.

Nina had been homesick as well. Then she’d met Martha, and after that, Ira, and it hadn’t taken long for Birch Creek to feel like home.

Her brother, Levi, and his new wife, Selah, who both worked at the inn, made an excellent team, both as business partners and as a married couple. After helping to plan Cevilla’s wedding, Selah had switched jobs with Nina, finding her niche as a hostess and event planner. That suited Nina just fine. She didn’t want to deal with the guests. They always made her nervous, and when she was nervous, she was clumsy.

She’d spent yesterday and this morning trying not to think about Ira or continuously feel the pinch of pain in her heart because he hadn’t asked her to the singing. She hadn’t been all that successful. He was still in her mind, but at least he was at the back of it instead of consuming her thoughts. Still, she had a difficult time keeping him there. Being in love, especially a one-sided love, was tougher than she’d ever imagined.

When she finished cleaning all the rooms, she went downstairs and decided to break for a snack. She put away her cleaning supplies in the large cabinet in the mudroom, and then she walked behind the inn to the house she shared with her father, Loren, and her grandmother, Delilah. Selah and Levi lived there, too, but they were in the process of building their own house next door.

In the kitchen, Selah and Grossmammi were busy baking muffins for the guests they expected that afternoon. Check in was at three, and they were booked solid until Sunday morning. Sundays had been a concern for a while because most guests left on Sunday morning, and that was when the family attended church services every other week. Then Levi devised a self-checkout system, and his process turned out great. Their guests—many of them there to simply experience Amish Country and enjoy the peace and quiet of Birch Creek on the outskirts of the busier communities in Holmes County—had been honest.

Nina washed her hands and opened the pantry door. She sighed as she searched for the homemade peanut butter and grape jelly. When she found them both, she sighed—again.

“All right, that’s it.”

Nina spun around at her grandmother’s impatient tone. “Huh?”

“You’ve been sighing and moping since Saturday night.” She set her spoon on the spoon rest next to a bowl of batter and marched to the table. “Sit,” she said, pointing at a chair.

“Grossmutter, I—”

“Nina.” She looked at her over silver-rimmed glasses that matched the color of the hair peeking out from under her kapp.

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