“How is Beulah doing, Ezekiel?” Delia asked.
“She’s good.” Ezekiel came up with an apple and took a crunching bite. “She was really nice to Violet...but I don’t think Violet appreciated it much.”
“Why not?” Delia asked.
“Because Violet spent all her time with the Englisher boy,” Aaron said, pulling down a container of muffins. The boys circled around and they all took a muffin each, and peeled the paper off the bottoms.
“You mean Liam, the Speicher grandson?” Delia asked.
“Yah, that’s him,” Aaron replied. “He’s visiting his grandparents and doesn’t understand even simple Pennsylvania Dutch. So we had to keep everything in English for him, and Violet flirted with him shamelessly.”
Delia rubbed a hand over her eyes. “Oh, dear... I didn’t think of that.”
“Think of what?” Thomas asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” she sighed. “And how did Liam respond?”
“He had a girl fawning all over him,” Ezekiel said. “He liked that a lot.”
“He’s trouble, though,” Aaron said. “I heard some of the other boys talking, and they said that he was arrested for shoplifting and he’s got a record now.”
“My, my...” Delia sighed. “Well, the hope was that Liam would find some positive influences with good Christian kinner.”
The boys didn’t answer—not that she really expected them to. What were they supposed to do? But Delia hadn’t anticipated that Violet would be drawn to the Englisher teenager, and she should have! She was so used to raising boys that she didn’t take note of the pitfalls waiting for girls anymore.
“I don’t even know why she likes him so much,” Moses said past a mouthful of muffin.
“Because he’s Englisher,” Ezekiel replied. “That makes him dangerous and interesting.”
“It just means he dresses weird and isn’t very good at volleyball,” Moses retorted.
The boys laughed.
“No making fun of Englishers,” Delia said with a frown. “I am not raising bullies.”
“We were nice to him, up until he started giving Violet too much attention,” Thomas said.
“What did you do?” Delia demanded.
“I told him that we were the ones bringing her home, and he’d better not get any ideas,” Thomas replied.
Delia chuckled. “Violet was well protected.”
“We did tell her daet we’d bring her home on time,” Ezekiel said irritably.
“Danke for looking out for her, boys,” Delia said. “She’s been through a lot losing her mamm, and she thinks that life is easier out there with the Englishers. She’s wrong, of course, but...she’s not very old.”
A girl trying to be strong...that’s all Violet was, and Delia wished she could just wrap that girl in her arms and take away her heartbreak and her confusion. But she couldn’t.
“Mamm burned herself,” Moses announced after a beat of silence.
“How bad?” Ezekiel asked, and the attention was turned to Delia’s hand, and then to the pie, and for a few minutes they were just a family enjoying each other’s company. Her boys were growing up to be fine young men, and she was proud of them.
The next morning when Violet arrived to start working, Delia welcomed her into the house.
“Come in, come in,” Delia said. “The boys are going to get started outside, and I was hoping you could help me out with a couple of things here in the kitchen. I burned myself yesterday, so washing dishes will be hard.”
“My daet said you hurt yourself,” Violet said. “Can I see?”
The curiosity that came with injury. Delia pulled off the piece of gauze and revealed the red blistering burn. Violet winced.
“Yah, I’ll help with dishes. That looks painful.”
“It’ll heal,” Delia said. “But I appreciate the help.”
The boys headed out to start working in the flower fields. There was a van coming to collect long-stemmed roses from the greenhouse that afternoon, so they’d have to have the stems all freshly cut and put in a water solution with sugar and citric acid mixed in to make sure the blooms would survive as long as possible.
Delia put the plug in the sink and started the dishwater. Violet took over from there.
“How was the volleyball night?” Delia asked as she wiped down a counter.
“It was fun.”
“Yah? Do you like the kinner from around here?”
“Yah. I guess.”
“Did you make any new friends?”
