The room suddenly stilled, and her words lodged into Elias’s chest.
“I won’t!” Violet went on. “I won’t marry one! I’m going to marry an Englisher who loves me. And he’ll marry me because he thinks I’m his other half, and he’ll fall so deeply in love with me that he won’t be able to breathe without me.”
“That sounds like a medical condition,” his father said.
Tears welled in Violet’s eyes, and Elias’s heart tugged toward her. This was the problem—she saw Englishers as romantic and wonderful, and she thought the Amish life was dull and drab. And Elias didn’t know how to fix it.
His father leaned forward. “Dear girl, I don’t mean to upset you,” he said quietly. “But you are very young, and life is very long. You’ll learn that there’s value in a good reputation and the ability to work hard. All those fluttery feelings are as permanent as butterflies. What remains is what lasts.”
“Well, I don’t want that!” Violet’s eyes flashed. “I don’t want duty and responsibility. I want romance and love and...and...” She pushed her bowl away angrily.
“You want an Englisher,” Elias concluded dully.
“Yah, I do.” Violet looked around the table, defiance in those blue eyes. “I won’t waste my life.”
Had this gone further than Elias thought? She was so young—it was like yesterday that she was a bouncing little girl with a lisp. And now she was just a step from womanhood, declaring that Amish life wasn’t for her. Young people changed their minds about their extreme opinions, didn’t they? This couldn’t stick!
“Do you think there is no love or satisfaction in our Amish life?” Elias asked.
“I think there is love, but I want more than just love. I want romance,” she replied.
Where was she getting these ideas from? There was plenty of romance in Amish marriages! But all she’d seen the last while was sadness and grief. He’d thought he was protecting her by holding off on finding a new wife. And maybe he was protecting himself...but now he had a teenage daughter who thought that the life of stable, devoted responsibility was boring. She should be so blessed as to find a stable and devoted husband one day!
“And you think there is no romance in a man choosing a good woman and getting to know her in a chaste and Christian way?” Elias asked.
Violet gave him a long-suffering look that told him all he needed to know.
“Well, then, I’ll tell you what,” Elias said. “I’m going to prove you wrong.”
“How?” his parents asked at once.
“Yah, how?” Violet asked.
“I’m going to get to know Delia next door. I’m going to take her out for a drive, and I’m going to talk to her about serious things. And you will see that Amish people are perfectly capable of all the romance you can imagine.”
Violet blinked at him. “You’re going to take my boss out driving?”
Elias nodded. “Yah, if she’ll go with me.”
And considering their talk earlier, he was rather confident that she would. Even if they just sat in the buggy and talked about their parenting challenges. And truthfully, that sounded like an awfully nice evening to him about now.
“Well!” his mother said with a smile. “That is nice.”
“You could do worse,” his father said with a nod.
“Dawdie, that is not romantic at all!” Violet said. “He’s only doing it to try and make a point! Do you really think my father toying with the feelings of the woman next door is a good idea?”
“I can’t rightfully say why your father is doing this,” his father said with the tickle of a smile at the corners of his lips. “But a wise man always says half of what he feels and a quarter of what he thinks, and he has fewer words to eat later.”
“What does that mean?” Violet asked.
“It means I’m going to shut my mouth and let your father ask a nice woman out for driving. We’ll see how it goes.”
Violet pressed her lips together. “I suppose we will.”
“It will go wonderfully!” His mother beamed. “I just know it.”
Great. Now his parents were invested in this—his mother, at least. Thankfully his father took more to convince about things like love and marriage. But his daughter?
Maybe after seeing Elias court Delia, she would be able to see herself finding a nice Amish man of her own. Maybe Violet needed proof that there was still life, love, and something to live for in the Amish community.
Chapter Three
The next morning, Delia stood at the bottom of the stairs. She had a pile of pancakes waiting in the oven, some fried potatoes on the stovetop, some sausages fried and a big bowl of boiled eggs waiting on the kitchen table. She could hear her sons’ footfalls and chatter overhead.
“And bring down all your laundry!” she called. “I’m doing laundry today, and I want it all sorted into piles in the basement!”
Four boys working outdoors made for a constant pile of dirt-crusted laundry. Most women in the county did their laundry on Mondays, but Delia didn’t have a husband working the farm, so she did the laundry whenever she could squeeze it in. Today, Wednesday, would just have to do. And with Violet working outside—hopefully her good attitude would remain intact—Delia was taking advantage of a morning at the wringer washer in the basement.
Aaron and Thomas came down first, their laundry baskets filled to overflowing.
“You know how it goes,” Delia said. “Whites in one pile, colored shirts and socks and whatnot in another pile, and your pants in a third pile.”
“Yah, yah...” Aaron said, and they plodded past her toward the basement stairs.
“And good morning!” she sang after them.
Thomas grunted, and Delia turned back to getting breakfast onto the table. Moses was the next one down the stairs, struggling with his basket of dirty clothes.
