“Does your daet pay for everything for your mammi?” he asked.
“Not everything,” she replied. “She has some money of her own, but when we need to, we put things on his tab. He doesn’t mind.”
“Hmm.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just wondering,” he replied.
“Should he not take care of his own mamm?” Sarai asked.
“Of course he should!” he replied. “It’s not that. I was just wondering if maybe we should have been doing something like that for my dawdie.”
“Oh...” She was silent for a moment. “I don’t know. He eats with us fairly often, so he isn’t suffering, I can assure you.”
“I didn’t think he was,” he said. “But we’ve got to think ahead, that’s all. I mean, if he won’t come back with me.”
The problem was his family could never afford to simply have a tab running for Dawdie that they paid off every month. There were doctor appointments and his mother’s root canal and various other fixes that needed done around the farm. The bit of extra money Arden had been able to save up on his own, he’d tucked away for a wedding. When Mary dumped him, he knew what he needed to do with that money. He needed to make things square with Job Peachy.
When he was a teen, he’d damaged Job’s brand-new buggy. Job had no idea it was Arden, but that didn’t make a difference. Arden had wanted sincere regret and confession to Gott to be enough, but it wasn’t. Making this truly right would also include making restitution. He’d have to pay Job the full amount for the buggy he’d totaled that fateful night. Although, Arden didn’t even have enough money set aside for that. He’d simply have to give Job the money he had and promise him more as he was able to set it aside.
Restitution was the hard part. And Arden couldn’t avoid doing the right thing any longer.
But when he glanced over at Sarai, another thought was simmering in his mind, too. He was thinking that, pretty as she was, and as much as she made him want to grow three inches of height just to better protect her, she was used to a certain level of comfort that he’d never be able to provide. If Gott hadn’t blessed him with enough money to make his own sins right, then Redemption was going to have to remain firmly in his past.
So whatever protective, softer feelings were starting to stir inside of him, he’d better tamp them down now. He owed her father too much as it was. Sarai Peachy was worried about him leading on susceptible women, but his heart was far more vulnerable than she gave him credit for.
And so was his lashed conscience.
Chapter Five
When they got back to the house, the sun was still high in the sky. The day was hot, and it felt good to step out of the buggy and let a breeze cool Sarai’s back in the shade beside the buggy shed on Dawdie Moe’s farm. A cow and her large calf were by the fence, and they mooed at Sarai. She looked at them for a moment, then turned back toward Arden. He had started to unhitch the horse.
“What did you mean when you said that there’s always a game going on?” she asked.
Arden chuckled, then headed around the back of the buggy and grabbed the bags. When he reemerged, he said, “It’s ironic that I’d be the one to break this to you, Sarai, but you are uncommonly beautiful. That’s why the men pester you.” He carried the bags, one in each hand, and he jutted his chin toward Mammi’s property next door. “Let’s get moving.”
Uncommonly beautiful. No one had ever used those words to her before. Her mother had told her that she was “sensibly put together by Gott Himself” and shouldn’t get her head all puffed up about length of limb or brightness of eye.
Sarai fell into step beside Arden. He wasn’t flirting now, and he certainly wasn’t one of the men trying to get her to smile, so she felt more comfortable with him.
“My mamm always said that any woman is beautiful to a hungry man so long as she’s got a platter of fried chicken in her hands,” Sarai said as they walked through the short grass, grasshoppers jumping up out of the scrub like little bullets, shooting out of the way.
Arden barked out a laugh. “Yah, I suppose she’s right. But some girls don’t require the chicken. That’s all I’m saying.”
Sarai rolled her eyes. “Eventually, given enough time, he’s going to want the chicken.”
“Probably.”
Sarai laughed. “At last, we agree.”
But his compliment still sat warm in her heart. He thought she was uncommonly beautiful—and he said it without any attempt to win her over. Perhaps he’d be able to give her some honest advice about men, too. Perhaps they both could learn something that would benefit them later.
When Sarai and Arden walked up to the house, she spotted her grandmother, bending over in the garden, picking cucumbers, dropping them with a soft thunk into the plastic bucket that Moe held out for her. Most of the garbage had been cleaned up from around the yard, and a pile waited beside the drive.
Sarai paused and watched the older people while Arden carried the bags of supplies over to the stable. Mammi dropped another cucumber into the bucket, and then both old people leaned over the top of it, peering inside.
Sarai couldn’t hear what they were saying from here, but then they turned and saw Sarai. Mammi Ellen smiled and waved, and she and Moe came out of the garden rows, stepping carefully over the leafy cucumber plants. As Mammi came to the last row to step over, Moe held a hand out, and she took his fingers as she made the last hop.
Yah...only old friends...of course! But Sarai could see a spark of something significantly more than that. An old friend wouldn’t be offering Mammi his hand or looking at her with such tenderness in his eyes.
Sarai looked over to where Arden stood, his gaze fixed on the roof.
“We need a ladder, Arden,” Sarai said.
“Yah. Do you have one?”
“It’s inside. I’ll get it.”
Sarai followed Mammi Ellen and Moe into the house, the screen door clapping shut behind her. The older folks moved into the kitchen, and Mammi brought the cucumbers to the sink and turned on the water.
“We’ll have cucumber salad with dinner tonight,” Mammi said.
“I do enjoy a good cucumber salad,” Moe said appreciatively. “I can help with the peeling, Ellen.”
“Oh, I know, Moe,” Ellen said as Sarai went down the cellar stairs. She could hear their voices filtering down to her. “You have the touch when it comes to peeling...”
The ladder was leaning against one wall, and she grabbed it. It was tall, but too unwieldly for her to carry by herself. She banged it against a couple of steps on her way up, and then the door opened. She expected to see Moe at the top of the stairs, but it was Arden instead.
