“Jah. But it was just a way to help her feel better about herself.”
“Help her feel better, or help you feel better? Because Phoebe has always known who she is and what she is and isn’t capable of.” Edna leaned forward again. “Let me tell you something about Phoebe. As a preschooler she was a bright, outgoing, confident little girl.”
Seth smiled as he got an image of Phoebe as a kinner.
“Then she started school and it became clear she was having trouble reading and writing. The teachers tried to work with her, to give her special attention and instruction, but nothing helped. And then people began to treat her differently. Not that anyone was deliberately cruel, mind you, they were only doing what they thought was best for her. They over-explained things to her, slowed down their play as if she couldn’t keep up with others around her and gave her only simple chores and tasks to perform. In short, they treated her as if she were slow-witted. And this included her own familye.”
Edna waved a hand. “The thing is, she was still that same bright, clever girl. But she no longer had any confidence in herself. She became confused and frustrated and tried to make up for it in other ways. She tried to pretend she was right-handed like most of her friends. And she tried to perform tasks faster and better than others to prove she was okay, only to turn clumsy and self-conscious in the process.”
Is that why those little accidents she’d had in the early days of her stay had affected her so much?
“Because everyone back in Bergamot knows she can’t read or write and has now pigeonholed her that way, I thought a complete change of scene might give her a chance to see if she could stand on her own in a way she was never allowed to at home.”
He nodded. “I can see that.”
She raised a brow. “Can you? Because as soon as you learned about her inability to read, you began to treat her differently, to treat her as if she was a kinner who needed guiding and looking after rather than as the independent woman you’d seen her as before. In other words, just like everyone back in Bergamot.”
Seth stiffened. She was being too harsh.
“Oh, perhaps it wasn’t quite that bad. She ran the household much as she had before, but you did hover over her more, check on her progress with certain tasks, go over your lists a little too thoroughly.”
Had he really been that bad?
She narrowed her eyes. “And did something happen when you took her to town to do the marketing on Friday? She didn’t say anything but I could tell something wasn’t sitting well with her.”
Seth rubbed the back of his neck. “Nothing she should have taken offense at. I did go into the grocery store with her, though, and help her check items off the list.”
She raised a brow. “You just checked items off the list?”
“I may have helped grab an item or two.” And corrected a few of her selections.
Edna nodded. “I thought as much. After the way she’d handled that first trip to the grocery—her first time shopping alone by the way—you couldn’t trust her to take care of it on her own.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her,” he protested. “I just wanted to help.”
Edna gave him a challenging look, as if she wasn’t sure she believed him. Then she seemed to change the subject. “The summer Phoebe helped me and Ivan get through his illness, she played chess with him to help take his mind off what was happening. She said her grossdaadi had taught her the basic moves. She asked Ivan to play to win so that she could learn to be a better player. She told him it made her feel gut when someone forgot she was slow and challenged her.”
“She’s not slow.”
“Of course not. But she was sixteen at the time and folks had been treating her as if she were slow most of her life—again, not to be cruel but to be what they considered helpful. She and Ivan formed a special bond over those chess games—she gave him a purpose that he sorely needed, and for that I will be forever grateful. But Ivan gave her something as well. When he learned she could do origami, he asked her to teach him. His hands were weak and shaky but she patiently worked with him. And in those last days, when he couldn’t do much of anything at all, he asked her to work on her creations at his bedside because watching her relaxed him. And she went all-out, finding complex patterns and working on them nonstop.”
Edna paused for a moment, then continued. “I watched her gain a measure of self-confidence that summer. It didn’t last but the seed had been planted.”
She stood. “I thought you should know why letting her win that game of chess affected her so strongly.”
Seth remained where he was when she’d gone. Had he really treated her so differently after he learned about her challenges with reading and writing? After all, he hadn’t interfered with the way she ran the household. Except that he had checked behind her on several occasions.
And perhaps he hadn’t been as subtle with the shopping Friday as he thought he had. And he’d read the menu to her with the tone one would use for a little one. He saw the tension he’d sensed in her on that trip to town Friday from a different perspective. How could he have done that to her, made her feel small? No wonder she didn’t want to return here.
Then he remembered Levi’s words. He’d let her leave without telling her that he wanted her to come back. And more important, how he felt about her.
That was one mistake he could correct.
Chapter 36
Phoebe worked beside Mamm and Rhoda in the kitchen. Even though she’d been home for three days, Mamm hadn’t quite grown accustomed to not hovering over her but she was getting better. It helped that Phoebe herself no longer retreated at the first sign of dismissal.
She’d made the decision yesterday not to return to Sweetbrier Creek. It was probably cowardly of her, but she couldn’t bear the thought of having Seth prove one more time that he didn’t think she could handle herself like any other adult. She also didn’t relish the idea of watching him court another woman, no matter how perfect for him that other woman was.
She’d called yesterday as promised to give him her decision. To her surprise it was Edna who answered the phone. It threw her for a minute—she’d just assumed it would be Seth waiting for her call. But she recovered quickly and let Edna know of her decision. She could tell by Edna’s tone that she was disappointed but to her surprise her friend didn’t try to change her mind. In the end it actually felt rather anticlimactic.
She finally took herself to task. Of course Seth hadn’t been the one to wait for her call. From his reaction when she’d mentioned the possibility of her not returning, his only concern would be the inconvenience of having to find another fill-in housekeeper. His mind had probably already moved on to how quickly he could marry Fannie and remove the need for a housekeeper altogether.
“There’s a car coming up the drive,” Rhoda said, interrupting Phoebe’s gloomy thoughts. She turned to Phoebe. “I thought you’d decided not to go back to Sweetbrier Creek.”
“I have. I didn’t order a car.”
“I don’t think anyone did. It looks like there’s a passenger. We have a guest coming.”
Phoebe’s heart leapt. Surely it couldn’t be—
Rhoda and Mamm quickly slipped into their coats and stepped outside, ready to greet their visitor. Phoebe followed behind more slowly.
As she stepped outside she noticed Daed and Paul standing in the doorway of their workshop.
The car pulled to a stop and Seth stepped out holding a large brown paper bag.
His gaze went straight to her face.
