Jeb's Wife by Patricia Johns

Author:Patricia Johns [Johns, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2020-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The next day Leah left the house right after breakfast to go up to the cottage and weed the garden there. If they were going to be self-sufficient that winter, she’d need to can as many fruits and vegetables as possible, and she was feeling optimistic again.

She’d seen Jeb and Simon off as they headed to town, and even Simon seemed happier, and they could put all of this behind them. And then if Menno tried to get some money out of them, at least this most dangerous debt would already be paid. Simon would be safe again. They could shut out the Englishers and focus on a good Amish life.

God, let this go smoothly . . . she prayed in her heart. It was so close to being over. Simon was so close to being free.

Teaching in Rimstone, she’d never imagined what Simon was up to. It almost seemed like blissful ignorance now. When she was finishing up the school year with the kinner, she’d been thinking about the garden mostly. She’d assumed her brother was doing just fine, just as his letters assured her. Her worry had been that she didn’t trust Simon to plant the way she’d instructed him to do it.

All the same, she missed the kinner at the little Amish school in Rimstone. They’d filled her days for an entire school year, watched them grow and helped them learn. There was one little boy, Benjamin, who had kept her on her toes. He’d struggled with the schoolwork, and he’d been a constant distraction to his classmates. He was the youngest child in his family, and there was quite a gap between him and his next older sister, much like the gap between herself and Simon. He reminded her of Simon at that age—the impish little smile, the glittering eyes. He was bound for trouble, but he was oh, so charming as he broke every single rule, and it was hard to be angry with him. But being the youngest by so many years meant that Benjie’s mamm could focus on him. Unlike Simon, he did have parents ... and hopefully his parents could get him in line better than she’d managed with her little brother. Because being endearing wasn’t going to help Benjie. And the adults in his life softening to that dimpled smile wasn’t going to keep him out of trouble. If she’d known this last school year what she knew now about her own brother, she might have been harder on the boy.

When Leah was finished with the garden she let herself into the side door to replace the gardening tools. She’d weeded, hoed, and watered the rows of vegetables. There were cabbage, peas, green beans, cauliflower—those were all doing well despite a bit of neglect. The broccoli didn’t seem to be flourishing, though. That row looked stunted, even a little shriveled.

Leah washed her hands in the mudroom sink and peeked into the kitchen. There were dirty dishes in the sink, a loaf of bread left out on the counter to get stale.

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