“What don’t you like about him?” Delia asked. “You haven’t even met him.”
“He sent his daughter over first, didn’t he?” Thomas said. “He wasn’t even brave enough to do it on his own.”
“No, Violet came over on her own,” Delia said. “Her father didn’t want her working, and I kind of stood up for her there. She wants to work, and I think that some work is good for a girl.”
“I’m sure there’s enough work over with her grandparents,” Ezekiel said.
“I thought you all liked her.”
“We do. We’re just trying to figure out what’s going on here,” her eldest son replied. “Mamm... Is Elias courting you?”
“Elias is going to spend some time with me,” Delia said firmly. And that was the honest truth. “That’s what he’s doing. And I like him. I hope that the four of you will be polite to him and find something you like about him, because in the past you’ve been very negative about any man who might have shown me some interest. And that isn’t fair.”
“What’s his financial situation like?” Ezekiel asked.
“That’s not your business!” Delia replied. “You cannot go around asking grown men about their money. I’ve raised you better than that.”
“It certainly is our business if he wants to court our mamm,” Thomas said. “If he’s broke and looking for a farm to sell—”
“Boys, that’s quite enough!” Delia said. “You just make up the worst-case scenarios in your minds and decide it’s the truth. You don’t know Elias!”
“Do you know him?” Aaron asked, and suddenly he looked a whole lot older than his fourteen years.
She sighed. They were always like this, and she either had to take these boys in hand, or she’d be a very well-protected widow for the rest of her days.
“I used to know him,” she said. “And we’re both parents raising our kinner after a death, and we understand each other—we know what that is like.” Suddenly her chin trembled, and she felt tears welling up inside her. She hated when she got weepy like this at the thought of their loss. “It’s harder than you boys think.”
“Oh, Mamm...” Ezekiel sighed. “We don’t mean to make you feel bad. Maybe we can do more around here, right, guys? We can do more?”
“Yah, we’ll do more,” the boys echoed their elder brother.
“And we’ll keep the kitchen cleaner, too,” Moses said. “I’ll sweep out the mudroom when we’re done eating, like you asked.”
“And we’ll do the dishes, too,” Aaron said. “Without you telling us.”
“She’s been doing men’s work, you know.” Thomas turned to his brothers. “And it’s no doubt she’s tired. We men will take care of it. Mamm should be inside and getting more rest. There’s four of us. We can make that happen.”
It was sweet of him, but he was wrong about one thing. They were boys, not men.
“You absolutely cannot,” Delia said. “You are four boys, and you will not be running this farm on your own. We have a business to run together.”
“But you said—” Aaron began.
“Never you mind what I said. Sometimes I get sad, is all, and we will continue working together. But if you four would work a little harder at keeping our home clean, I would appreciate that, too.”
“What about Elias?” Moses asked.
The boys all turned toward her, and Delia sighed.
“Elias will be spending time with me, boys,” she said. “And you will not be chasing this man off. I think it’s better if we talk about your worries and concerns. And we’ll be doing that going forward.”
Ezekiel and Thomas exchanged a sly look, and the other two boys looked toward them. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement, and she was relatively certain it was one she wouldn’t like.
“Okay, Mamm, if he’s going to be coming around, then we will get to know him,” Ezekiel said with exaggerated calmness, and Aaron and Thomas both smiled placidly as if they were innocent little lambs. She knew that look—they were trying to fool her.
“We will?” Moses demanded, his gaze snapping fire. “Since when? I don’t see why—” Then he let out a yelp. Someone had kicked him under the table, and Ezekiel looked at him meaningfully.
“Of course we will, Moses,” Ezekiel said in that same overly calm voice. “Now, let’s eat up.”
Great. These boys weren’t going to let it go that easily, and Elias was in for some trials, she had no doubt. But they’d be going out of their way to hide it from her and to keep her blissfully ignorant. At least Elias wasn’t really courting her, and she smiled faintly to herself. She’d make the most of this opportunity, and the next time a man was really interested in her hand in marriage, her boys would be ready for it. They thought they were outsmarting her, but it was the other way around. These boys would learn how to talk about their feelings if it was the last thing she did.
Elias shot his mother a smile as she dished up some chicken stew into a bowl. She had gotten smaller and more delicate with age—her hair a soft silver—but her face was nearly unlined. She wasn’t as strong as she used to be, and since her cancer treatments, he and his siblings had all gotten a lot more protective of her. That was part of why he could understand Delia’s boys’ reaction to her dating. He knew what that protective instinct felt like personally.
His father rooted through a box of tools that they’d tried to pack up today. There was always something his daet was looking for in their packed boxes.
“Bernard, you should just pretend those boxes don’t exist,” his mother said. “They are packed. It’s done.”
“I’m not leaving that door half-fixed,” his daet replied, but he smiled at his wife all the same. “You knew I was a stickler when you married me, Judith.”
His mother laughed at that and shook her head, passing Violet a dish of stew. “At least eat with us, first.”
Elias’s father came to the table and took his seat at the head. Elias sat down next to him, and Violet across from Elias, and they waited while his mother dished up the last of their bowls before taking a seat herself. They all bowed their heads in silence for a moment and then began to eat.
“So how was your first day of work?” Elias asked his daughter.
“Fine.”
“Are you finding it hard?” he asked. Back in Indiana, he worked in a canning plant, and they lived on an acreage. But Violet didn’t do much outdoor work besides taking care of the chickens and a bit of kitchen gardening. He hadn’t wanted her to start a job like this—hard manual work. He’d rather see her become an excellent cook and seamstress so that she could be ready to find a husband and get married in a few years.
