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  When the silence dragged on for a second too long, he realized they were waiting for him to say something. “Fern was like my little sister. I always watch out for family.”

  Fern’s eyes sparkled, as if she liked that answer very much. Reuben liked that sparkle very much. Until Christmas Eve, Fern had always seemed to be able to make him smile, no matter how bad a mood he was in. He’d always liked that about her. But when John had stolen Linda Sue right out from under his nose, Fern’s smiles had seemed more like gloating, and her good-natured teasing felt as if she was throwing salt on his wounds.

  Carolyn looked from Reuben to Fern and back again. “It’s a compliment that Fern thinks highly of you. Fern is as good as they come.”

  Reuben didn’t want to contradict Carolyn when they’d only just met, but Fern didn’t think that highly of him. A week ago, she had chastised him for being proud and resentful.

  He studied Fern’s face. If she disliked him so much, why was she was helping him out, making sure the girls knew all his gute qualities so he didn’t have to tell them himself? He wanted them to like him, to respect and admire him like everyone used to back in Sugarcreek. But if he’d told them all that stuff about himself, they would have thought he was bragging. Fern had done him a favor. A big favor.

  Maybe she didn’t dislike him so much.

  A wiry fraa opened the front door of the house and stepped out onto the porch. “Pretzels are fresh out of the oven,” she called.

  Sadie gave Reuben an inviting smile. “Cum. Edna Kiem makes the best pretzels. You can’t truly say you’ve been to Bonduel unless you’ve tasted them.”

  “Then we’d better go get them while they’re hot,” Reuben said, surprised at how eager he was to be charming and likable and friendly.

  Lorene laughed. Oy, anyhow, she almost broke his eardrum. “We’d better hurry, or the boys will finish them off.”

  Sadie’s smile faltered at Lorene’s laugh, but she pressed on. “I’ll introduce you to some of the boys. Matthew Eicher is always looking for gute volleyball players.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Esther said. Everything sounded like a true burden to her. “I know all the boys too. I can introduce you as well as Sadie can.”

  Reuben let himself be led along by Sadie and Esther, plus the other knitting group members. They all wanted to go into the house in a clump, it seemed. Reuben was glad he had a clump to belong to, even if it was a clump of girls. Sadie had said she’d introduce him to some boys. Maybe he’d make a new best friend tonight.

  He glanced behind him. Fern was leaning with her back against the tree, watching him walk away with her knitting group in tow. She folded her arms and flashed him a smile. She seemed truly happy that he’d made a few friends but not inclined to tag along. He’d told her that he didn’t want to be seen with her. Hadn’t she known he was just being contrary? He wouldn’t really consider leaving her out.

  Reuben stopped and turned around. The clump of girls stopped too and looked at him as if waiting for instructions. “I’ll be right back,” he said, as he jogged to the tree Fern was standing against. “You can’t say you’ve been to Bonduel until you’ve tasted Edna Kiem’s pretzels. I brought you along with me. You can’t avoid me now.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t want to be seen with me.”

  “I’ve gotten kind of used to you tagging along after me. It won’t seem like a gathering if you don’t make a pest of yourself.”

  Fern slowly pushed herself from the tree. Her eyes danced with amusement and exasperation. “I’d hate to disappoint you, Reuben Helmuth.”

  “Jah. I am the richest boy in town. You want to stay on my gute side.”

  She cuffed him on the shoulder. “That’s going to be tricky. You don’t have a gute side.”

  “Ach,” he said in mock indignation. “Be careful what you say, or I won’t let you have a pretzel.”

  She made a show of clamping her lips together and nodding obediently. “I’ll be careful, but only because I’m starving. And you’d better be nice or I’ll have to tell them about the greased pig. It won’t be pretty.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I’ll give you an extra dollop of jam for your silence.”

  “Okay, but you better hope it’s raspberry.”

  Chapter Eight

  Reuben tried not to get too excited as he oiled the leather on Dawdi’s buggy. He hated to admit it, but he was really starting to like knitting day. Fern sometimes came early and often stayed late, and always came outside for a visit with Reuben, no matter how bad the weather was or how occupied he was with chores. She said she liked helping him with whatever he was working on and didn’t mind the hard stuff. She was stronger than most girls and definitely not afraid of work.

  He frowned to himself. He was comfortable around Fern, but he’d be wise to keep his distance. She was John’s sister, after all, and if John could so easily betray a friend, there was no telling what Fern could do. Reuben’s chest tightened. Maybe it was unfair to Fern to think of her like that. Since she’d been in Wisconsin, she’d been nothing but honest and forthright with him, even when her opinions were completely wrong. At least she wasn’t afraid to tell him what she thought.

  He shouldn’t punish Fern for John’s sins. She’d always been a gute friend to him, even if John hadn’t.

  Reuben wiped his hands and tossed the rag on Dawdi’s workbench. Why was he even thinking of Fern? She was like a kid sister to him and certainly not the reason he liked the knitting group. Every time the knitting group met, one pretty girl after another would come outside to talk to him, as if they’d planned it or something. They didn’t know about Linda Sue, so they didn’t act sorry or embarrassed for him. They just wanted to talk. Sadie had said they all wanted to get to know him better.

  Sadie was very pretty, with yellow hair and sky-blue eyes. She didn’t smile as much as Fern did, but her dat was the bishop and he owned a large dairy. The best thing about Sadie was that she was very interested in Reuben. Before he’d started dating Linda Sue back home, lots of girls had been interested. When it came to what girls were thinking, Reuben never had to guess. They fawned over him. That was all there was to it.

  Except for Fern.

  She acted as if he were an annoying brother she needed to keep in line. Reuben swiped his hand across his mouth. Fern was John’s little sister and the daughter of a pig farmer. What did she know?

  Why did Fern pop into his head while he was thinking of Sadie and all the other appealing girls in the knitting group—like the Yutzy sisters? They were wonderful nice. He liked that they were tall, maybe even a little taller than Fern. Reuben was six foot three. He towered over the short girls.

  He pressed his lips together. Linda Sue was short. He hadn’t minded so much a few months ago.

  Lorene and Esther weren’t bad either. Lorene’s laugh could have stopped traffic on the highway, and Esther didn’t have a nice thing to say about anything, but at least they didn’t know about John and Linda Sue and couldn’t feel sorry for Reuben. Things were starting to look up.

  He’d had a gute time at the gathering last week. Not only was the knitting group extremely welcoming but three or four of the boys seemed eager to be his friend, even though he was older than most of them. They’d been impressed with his volleyball and ping-pong skills.

  Edna Kiem, the fraa who made delicious pretzels, had told him he was too old and too good-looking not to be married yet. She didn’t have to tell him that piece of bad news. If it hadn’t been for John King, Reuben would have been married this fall.

  Gmay had been different this week too. He had tried to be friendlier, and two or three of the boys in the district had invited him to sit by them. Maybe people here would come to admire him the way they had in Sugarcreek before Linda Sue dumped him like a stinky diaper.

  The barn door swung open, and Reuben felt sort of warm around the edges as Fern strolled into the barn. Her smile seemed to light up the entire space, and her bri
ght eyes always held some sort of happy memory. She was wearing her brown dress today, and her eyes looked like two vats of bittersweet chocolate. Besides her church dress, Fern had two dresses to her name. The brown one and a navy-blue one. Reuben couldn’t decide which he liked better.

  She looked pretty good for an annoying kid sister.

  He furrowed his brow. With that apron tied around her waist, she also looked extra skinny. “Are the Schmuckers feeding you anything? Or are you just a picky eater?”

  She smirked. “What are you talking about?”

  “You look like you’re wasting away.”

  “I eat. I even had one of your mammi’s cookies the other day.”

  He smiled. “At least you’re willing to try new things.”

  “How are our babies doing today?” she said, coming close enough that he could count the freckles that dusted her nose and smell the sharp scent of clean soap that always hung about her.

  He cleared his throat and turned toward the long worktable where their latest project sat. “A few of the marigolds have begun to sprout, and the tomatoes too.”

  They’d filled eggshells with peat and vermiculite and propped them up in some egg cartons, then planted marigold, tomato, and bachelor button seeds in the shells. When it got warm enough to transplant everything outside, they wouldn’t even need to take the seedlings from the eggshells. The roots would spread out on their own and into the soil.

  It was a gute thing that Mammi made something she called Eggs Benefit almost every morning for breakfast. They had plenty of eggshells for planting.

  Fern fingered the tiny, pointy leaves that were just coming up from the tomato seeds they’d planted. “It was genius to plant them in eggshells.”

  Why did it please him so much to see Fern happy? “That is the first compliment you’ve ever given me.”

  She laughed and cuffed him on the shoulder. “It is not. I give you plenty of compliments. At the gathering last week, I said you were a wonderful-gute volleyball player.”

  “You scolded me for almost killing you when I spiked it.”

  “You did almost kill me. I wanted to make you aware in case you wanted to try it again.” She picked up the watering can from the table and gave the marigolds a little drink. “Denki for seeing that they get enough sun. That can’t be an easy job.”

  Reuben nodded, pasting a forlorn look on his face. “I stand here all day, moving the table with the sun shining through the window. I only stop to eat when the sun goes down.”

  Shaking her head, Fern gave him an indulgent smile. “I’m sure you do. I hope I don’t find you in here one day, weak from starvation, still pushing that table back and forth across the floor in search of the sunlight. I’d feel very guilty if you died for our tomatoes.”

  Two weeks ago when Reuben had suggested they start seeds for the garden, he had known it would be something Fern would enjoy. He hadn’t even wondered how long she was planning on staying in Bonduel, or if she needed to get back to Sugarcreek to help with the family farm. She had told him she was going to stay until he had forgiven John, but she’d have to go home sometime. Her family needed her help on their farm, as well as the money she brought in with outside work.

  Maybe he should pretend to forgive John for Fern’s sake. She couldn’t afford to stay here indefinitely, even if Reuben had pledged never to forgive her brother.

  Of course, he didn’t want Fern to leave anytime soon—not that he especially wanted her to stay, but she would want to see her tomatoes and marigolds blooming in Anna’s garden. It would make her very happy.

  Reuben took a couple of steps from Fern and turned his gaze away. She could leave anytime she wanted, as far as he was concerned. What did he need with an auburn-haired fireball lecturing him about forgiveness and compassion every time she opened her mouth, even if it was a nice mouth, most often curved into an irrepressible smile? It was almost as if she liked him no matter what he did or said. She smiled at him when she should have been angry. She laughed even when he was trying to be rude. He didn’t know whether to admire that quality or be offended that she never took him seriously.

  “What will you be doing today while the knitting group knits?” Fern said, bending over to examine the egg carton that was supposed to be sprouting bachelor buttons. “You know you’re always welcome to join us.”

  Reuben smirked. “I don’t think so. Girls in big groups see a boy as an intruder. I wouldn’t dare.”

  Fern gave the bachelor buttons some water. “Then what will you be doing while we knit blankets for all the poor children in the county?”

  “I’m planting peas.”

  Fern’s eyes sparkled. “One spring my mamm planted peas, and the rooster scratched every one from the ground and ate it.”

  “I don’t wonder that your mamm did not take that well.” Fern’s mamm didn’t stand for any nonsense, even from a chicken. Come to think of it, Fern was quite a bit like her mamm. She didn’t put up with a lot of nonsense from anybody. Reuben found it aggravating.

  “Mamm had spent the last of our weekly grocery money on those seeds. So she chopped off that rooster’s head, took the peas out of his stomach, and replanted them. We had roast chicken for dinner.”

  Reuben chuckled. “The other chickens learned a valuable lesson.”

  The barn door creaked open, and Dawdi came strolling into the barn. This morning, he’d already milked the cow, fed the chickens, and gathered eggs for breakfast. Dawdi did more in an hour that most Englischers did all day, even as old as he was. His wrinkles piled up on themselves when he smiled. “Gute maiya, Fern. Have you come to do some knitting?”

  “Jah,” Fern said, glancing at Reuben as if he was supposed to know some secret about the knitting group. “We are making baby blankets for the hospital.”

  “You must be wonderful eager to get those blankets done,” Felty said, eyeing Reuben with the same look on his face that Fern wore. “You meet three days a week. Your pile of blankets is going to be wonderful tall.”

  Fern nodded. “We hope so. Many people need a gute blanket. A blanket can be such a comfort. It can make you forget about your troubles and forgive the people who have wronged you. It can make you feel loved and accepted and not so sad anymore.”

  Fern was putting a lot of stock in a blanket. But Reuben wasn’t a knitter, and Fern knew a whole lot more about blankets than he did.

  Dawdi picked up one of their eggshell pots. “I knew it wouldn’t take these tomatoes long to sprout. Reuben pushes this table back and forth, back and forth all day, chasing the sun from the upper windows. He’s very dedicated to your plants.”

  Fern gave him a smile that might have knocked over a fourteen-year-old schoolboy. It was a gute thing Reuben was not a schoolboy. He wasn’t about to be knocked over by Fern King. “Reuben has always been very kind to me,” Fern said. “Even if he is a little cocky.”

  She had to throw that in there, didn’t she? Fern was incapable of saying something nice about him without trying to cut him down to size at the same time, always delivering her criticism with a stunning smile. Today, she was too aggravatingly adorable to make him mad. A wisp of curly, auburn hair had escaped from her kapp, and it dangled temptingly at the nape of her neck, just begging Reuben to touch it.

  He stifled a chuckle, folded his arms across his chest, and gave Fern his I’m-barely-putting-up-with-you look. Her smile only got wider. “If I weren’t cocky, I’d be boring, and girls don’t like boring.”

  “That’s true,” Dawdi said. “I attracted your mammi’s attention with the license plate game. We used to sit by the stop sign on the highway and watch for license plates every Saturday. Annie had never known such excitement.”

  Reuben couldn’t help himself. He reached out, curled the errant lock of Fern’s hair around his finger, then let it go, boing. Fern’s eyes glinted with surprise and amused exasperation as she pressed her fingers to her neck and tucked the wisp of hair under her kapp. Reuben watched it disappear with regret. />
  She fumbled with her words for a moment. “The . . . the license plate game?”

  “Dawdi plays the license plate game every year,” Reuben said, “trying to find all fifty states before December thirty-first.”

  Dawdi pulled a small spiral notebook from his trousers pocket and showed it to Fern. “It’s only April, but I’ve already found twenty states. Of course, I always get the easy ones first. One year after Christmas, I had a driver take me to Milwaukee to finish my list. We found Nevada and Rhode Island parked right next to each other. I almost shouted right out loud I was so excited.” He tucked the notebook back into his pocket. “Canadian provinces are extra credit. That’s the kind of excitement we get around here.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open,” Fern said. “We probably see more plates in Ohio than you do up here.”

  Dawdi smoothed his fingers down his white beard. “Jah. It’s true. I’ve considered moving to Florida for that very reason. Disney World is loaded with plates. Or Yellowstone Park. I hear you can find every license plate in one day there. But the harder they are to find, the more the excitement builds through the year.”

  “I’ll start carrying a pen and paper wherever I go,” Fern said.

  “It only counts for my license plate game if I see the license plates personally,” Dawdi said, “but you can always start your own game.”

  Fern nodded. “Looking for license plates and knitting baby blankets will keep me wonderful busy.”

  Dawdi thumbed his suspenders. “That reminds me. Ben and Emma’s little one is sick today, and Anna went to see what she could do to help. She said to put you in charge of the knitting group, and the girls told me to tell you they are starting the timer. I don’t know what that means, but Esther Shirk seems pretty huffy about it. Her nostrils started flaring, so I thought I’d better deliver the message.”