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Through the Autumn Air

By Kelly Irvin

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Chapter 1
At what point did a person realize that the special moments in life streak by in a flash, distilled into memories before they could be truly lived? Mary Katherine Ropp stood motionless in the middle of her kitchen, a platter holding a two-layer German chocolate cake covered in whipped cream-cheese frosting nestled in her hands.
The other women bustled in and out, serving two hundred wedding guests seated at tables set up in all the other rooms and spilling out across the broad expanse of the front yard. Serving spoons clinked on bowls. Pots banged. The fire in the wood-burning stove sizzled. Mary Katherine closed her eyes and inhaled the mingled scents of roasted chicken and dressing, gravy, coleslaw, freshly baked cookies, cakes, and bread.
Like every mother, she’d imagined her daughter Barbara’s wedding day since the night of her birth, nineteen years earlier. She imagined the blue dress Barbara would don. The crispness of her white kapp. The way her eyes would tear up when the bishop took her hand and put it in that of her husband’s for the final blessing.
A lump lodged in Mary Katherine’s throat. She breathed and wiped at her eyes. Oh, Moses, if only you could see this. Your youngest daughter is a bride today. She’s only a passable cook, she hates to sew, and she never knows when to stop talking, but Joseph loves her anyway.
I’m here, fraa. I see her. She sounds a lot like the girl I married. Gott has blessed us.
Mary Katherine sighed at the imagined deep, always amused voice in her ear. Of course, he was here. Even after seven years of widowhood, she could depend on Moses to be at her side. He would never forsake her.
She needed to write these thoughts down. Her notebook lay on the counter, splotches of lemonade and chocolate frosting on the outside. She took two steps toward it.
“What are you doing, Mudder?” Beulah’s voice sounded irked—which was nothing new.
Mary Katherine turned to find daughter number four standing in the doorway. Her hands were full of dirty dishes and her face beet red with exertion. “You’re in my way, and Thomas is looking for you.”
“Just taking a second to breathe.” Mary Katherine cleared her throat and edged away from the counter. Her habit of taking notes in the middle of life’s events baffled some of her loved ones. “Your bruder will have to wait until after the wedding to boss me around.”
As her oldest son, Thomas considered himself the head of the house, even if he hadn’t lived in Mary Katherine’s house in many years. When it came to bossiness, he was much more like her than his easygoing father. Her other sons, being more like Moses, let him do the bossing. For the most part.
“You know he only wants what’s best.” With her slightly rounded body, sandy-blonde hair, and blue eyes, Beulah was the spitting image of Mary Katherine when she was younger. “You’re always tired. If you moved into the dawdy haus, you’d have him and Joanna nearby. Do you really want to be alone in this big house? You know you don’t.”
Everyone seemed to know what she wanted and what she needed, except Mary Katherine. If she was tired, it was only because of the wedding preparations, not because she needed to be put out to pasture at the mere age of sixty. During the two weeks since the wedding announcement for Barbara and Joseph Beachy at the church service, she had worked nonstop. Writing wedding invitations, cleaning and scrubbing the entire house, borrowing tables, chairs, extra stoves and refrigerators, pots and pans, buying groceries and baked goods they didn’t have time to make from scratch. Lining up the cooks and the servers. Praying that the fall September weather would hold, allowing them to serve people outdoors.
Plain weddings were simple, without adornment, but the receptions were mammoth in the sheer amount of food needed to serve all the guests who’d come to Jamesport, Missouri, from Ohio, Indiana, and as far away as Texas. It might make a much younger woman tired, but Mary Katherine only felt invigorated.
That was her story and she was sticking to it. “I’m fine. Take this cake out to the tables outside.”
“Fraidy-cat!” Beulah deposited the dirty dishes on the counter but made no move to take the cake. “You can’t hide from him forever.”
“Who are you hiding from?” Laura Kauffman trudged through the door with empty serving dishes in both hands. She might be seventy-two and a little hard of hearing in one ear, but she had avoided the pasture as well. She not only served as a good friend, but an excellent example of how to live and grow after losing a husband. “Dottie? Why would you be hiding from Dottie? She’s looking for you.”
Dottie Manchester, the Jamesport Branch Library’s only librarian and Mary Katherine’s closest English friend, meant well, but she had a one-track mind and a penchant for taking the long road to make a short point. As much as Mary Katherine enjoyed a good chat, she didn’t have time right now. “I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment.”
Beulah snorted and Laura chuckled.
“So to speak. You could eat the cake instead of serving it.” That bit of wisdom came from Jennie Graber, who stood at the sink washing dishes in an enormous plastic tub. She too had been a widow until she remarried a few months earlier. That she was exceedingly happy was apparent in the smile on her heart-shaped face and the sparkle in her pale-blue eyes. “You should pay attention. There might be someone else looking for you. Weddings make minds turn to romance.”
The women giggled in a chorus that made them sound like young girls at their first singing, not mature woman from every stage of life—from just married to a widowed great-grandmother. Mary Katherine couldn’t help herself. She rolled her eyes. “The last thing an old Plain woman thinks about is romance.”
Not so. If memories of Moses’ sweet kisses rushing through her like a warm summer breeze could be called romantic, she was guilty. But she would never admit such foolishness, not even to her dearest friends.
“Speak for yourself.” Laura plucked a roll from an overflowing basket with knuckles swollen with arthritis. “Besides, I think I spied a certain old Plain man staring at you during the service.”
“You’re talking about Ezekiel, aren’t you?” Jennie was eager for her friends to find marital bliss again. “He did look distracted during Solomon’s message.”
“You’re dreaming. Ezekiel thinks of nothing but his kinner and his restaurant.” Hoping her own distraction during the minister’s message hadn’t shown as well, Mary Katherine wiped tiny drops of sweat from her warm forehead with the back of her sleeve. Ezekiel had been a widower for about ten years. He was a kind man with a generous laugh. He always refilled her tea glass when she ate at the Purple Martin Café and always asked about her day—but then he did that with everyone he served. “Anyway, I have too much to do to worry about such silliness.”
A smirk on her face, Beulah swiped a dollop of frosting from Mary Katherine’s cake and stuck it in her mouth. She smacked her lips. “If you think marriage consists only of silliness, you’ve been a widow far too long!”
This from her own daughter. Another round of giggles rippled through the kitchen.
“I reckon I’m better off out there than I am in here.” Mary Katherine headed for the door, dodging Beulah’s outstretched fingers. “I’ll deliver the cake myself. I’ll be back. In one minute. In one piece.”
God willing.
She strode through the doorway and into the fray. The front room was filled wall to wall with tables covered with white tablecloths and chairs occupied by friends and family—some she hadn’t seen in years. No time to visit now. She edged through, cake platter held high.
“Mary Kay! Mary Kay!” Dottie’s high voice carried over the dozens of conversations that created a low-pitched, continuous roar. She squeezed through the narrow aisle between tables, her husband, Walt, right behind her. His portly figure struggled with the tight fit much more than Dottie’s skinny frame. “Congratulations, my friend. You did it! You married off number ten. You’re done.”
“Yep, thanks for inviting us. It’s a joy to watch all your kids get married. You must be relieved to marry off the last one.” Walt laughed and his belly—which reflected his love for his wife’s pecan pie—shook. “And you know they’ll stayed married. Not like us English folks with a 50 percent divorce rate.”
They were the only Englishers invited to those weddings. Their friendship stretched back years to the first time Mary Katherine ventured into the library to do research on covered wagons on the Oregon Trail. Dottie had helped her find sources and quickly. A mother with ten children waiting at home didn’t have time to dally. Dottie approached research like she did everything else—full steam ahead. A friendship had blossomed.
“Danki. Right now, I’m up to my kapp in food.”
“Joseph and Barbara look so happy. I always cry at weddings.” Dottie dabbed at her smooth pink cheeks with an embroidered hankie. “They’re a perfect couple.”
At times Mary Katherine had despaired that any man in his right mind would consider Barbara a good catch. It would take another man like Moses, and those were few and far between. Finally, Joseph had accepted the challenge. Love truly was blind. An occasion to be celebrated to be sure. A strange void bloomed in Mary Katherine’s midsection, like a hole that seemed to grow deeper and darker as the day progressed. Forcing a smile, she shifted the platter to one hand and waved. “I don’t know about perfect but they’ll do.”
Dottie wore a flowing, dark-purple broomstick skirt and a white, long-sleeved, Western-style blouse with pearl snap buttons. It matched Walt’s purple Western shirt with its white piping. He wore blue jeans pressed with a seam down the middle and black cowboy boots. Why a librarian and an accountant chose to dress like cowboys remained a mystery to Mary Katherine.
“I need to talk to you. Bob Sampson put his building on Grant Street up for sale yesterday.” Dottie’s voice rose with uncontained excitement. Her turquoise chandelier earrings shook. “It would be perfect for our bookstore. He’s including the furniture—a bunch of wooden shelves and tables and that wooden counter he had by the front door.”
Our bookstore. The words had a sweet ring to them—sweet and bitter like life itself. “I told you, I’m not able to commit to another store yet.”
It had only been a year since Amish Treasures caught fire right before local businessman Lazarus Dudley took over its lease. Jennie and Leo Graber wanted her to help with their newly opened Combination Store. Everyone wanted something from her. Cake held high, she dodged a gaggle of toddlers and zigzagged around two teenagers who stopped to talk in the middle of the aisle.
Dottie and Walt stuck to her like bubble gum on the sole of her favorite sneaker. “I love the idea of a bookstore, don’t get me wrong, and working with you would be wonderful. It’s just not possible right now.”
Maybe ever. It had taken years to save the money to join three other families in opening Amish Treasures. Their investment went up in smoke and flame, six months later. She didn’t have the funds to share in ownership of the Combination Store, but she could contribute goods for sale there as a start. It was finding the time to sew that was the problem.
“It would be more than wonderful.” One hand patting the jewel-encrusted comb that held back her shoulder-length silver hair, Dottie took Walt’s hand as if to anchor her to the floor in her euphoria. The two wore matching plain silver wedding bands. “I mean, me with you. I have savings. Tourists and local folks alike will flock to a store with Amish fiction, romances, mysteries, and travel books and cookbooks and cards and such. We’ll earn back our investment in no time. I have a business plan. A good one.”
They’d said the same thing about Amish Treasures.
“It’s a good investment.” Walt removed his black cowboy hat, revealing his shiny, perfectly round, bald pate. “I’ve run the numbers several times. The square footage is perfect for a bookstore and Bill’s asking price is decent. Not a steal, by any means, but fair.”
A bookstore was more problematic than a craft store. Tourists loved Amish quilts and toys and jams and jellies. They came to Jamesport seeking Amish-made products. People didn’t read as much as they used to do. Plain folks didn’t often read the fiction written by English authors about them. It was hard to believe readers found their simple lives that interesting. “Can we talk about this later?”
“Meet us there Saturday afternoon to see the space.” Dottie stopped short of saying pretty please with sugar on it, but her thrust-out lower lip and puppy-dog eyes said it for her. “Just look at it, okay? For me?”
“I have a quilting frolic Saturday. When does Bill need an answer?”
“He says he has a couple of other offers. He’ll wait one week for us, but then he’ll have to consider them.”
“It can’t hurt to look at the space, but not Saturday morning.” It couldn’t hurt, could it?
“You’ll come with us, won’t you, Walt, after your appointments?”
“Anything for you, sweets.”
“We’re set, then.” Dottie stretched on tiptoe and gave her husband a big smooch on the cheek, leaving pink lipstick behind. “You can skip out of your quilting frolic by two. We’ll see you at three.”
“I want some more chicken and stuffing.” Walt swiped at his cheek with an abashed look on his face. “I think the wife needs another plate, she’s gotten so skinny she might blow away. She worries too much about her girlish figure. The more of her I see, the better I like it, personally.”
“Oh, you.” Dottie blushed as she turned back to Mary Katherine. “We’ll talk to you later. If you need any help cleaning up, let me know. I’ll drag Walt over here.”
“We have it covered. I’ll talk to you later, though.”
“Jah, you will, because right now you need to talk to me.” Thomas, who looked so like his mountain-of-a-father, Moses, blocked the doorway. He kept his voice low as he glanced around, but his scowl said he meant business. At thirty-six and the father of six himself, he took his role as head of the house seriously. “Have you started packing yet?”
“Let’s get another plate.” Still hand in hand, Dottie and Walt melted into the crowd. Dottie knew all about this skirmish, and she also would surmise that Mary Katherine wouldn’t want an audience. She would be right.
Mary Katherine stepped closer to her son. “Nee.”
“Mudder.” He grumbled, but at least he didn’t raise his voice. “We’ve talked about this.”
He talked about it. “Suh.”
“Don’t get your dander up with me.” Shaking his head so hard his blond beard swayed, Thomas sighed. “You cannot live alone in this house. It’s not right. It’s time you moved into the dawdy haus at my place. The kinner love having their groossmammi around, and you know Joanna likes your company.”
It also opened up her house for son number two, Dylan, and his wife Samantha, and their four children, and Samantha’s parents, who lived with them. They needed a bigger place. Besides Dylan worked the farm. It would save him time and effort to live on the homestead. It all made sense, but her heart simply refused to acquiesce. The empty nest loomed in front of Mary Katherine yet again. Besides, Thomas’s wife, Joanna—she’d never told a soul this—rubbed her the wrong way more often than not. Mary Katherine didn’t want to live with her. She had ten children. Did it have to be Thomas? Not something a mother said aloud.
She tightened her grip on the cake platter and lowered her head, preparing to bulldoze her way past her son. “I’ve lived in our house my entire adult life.”
“You lived here with Daed.” Thomas had his father’s deep voice, his blond hair and blue eyes, but his personality was all Mary Katherine’s. Stubborn as the flu. “But that time has passed. You can tell your stories to the kinner like you did us when we were little.”
His smile said he remembered story time sitting on his daed’s lap in the rocking chair next to the fireplace with the same tenderness she did. It seemed eons ago, but at the same time, only yesterday.
“We’ll talk about this later.” She edged forward. Thomas’s expression turned stony. His feet were planted, his arms crossed. Mary Katherine stared back at him, refusing to waver. “This isn’t the time or the place. You don’t want to spoil your schweschder’s wedding, do you?”
“I don’t think that’s possible.” His scowl deepened. Mary Katherine tugged at his arm and tried to squeeze past him. They did a two-step dance through the door and onto the porch. Thomas leaned into her. “Mudder, this conversation isn’t over.”
She kept moving. Thomas took her arm. She tried to shrug him off. At that moment he must’ve realized how this looked to their guests because his stance shifted and he let go of her. She stumbled forward, gaining momentum fast. The cake flew from her hands.
“Nee, nee!” She flailed, trying to regain her grip, then fell into the open space. In that split second she caught the look of surprise on Ezekiel Miller’s face. He had one boot on the top porch step, the other in midair.
His eyes, the color of caramel candy, widened behind black-rimmed glasses. His mouth dropped open. His arms came up. The cake hit him square in the face and slopped down his long, brown beard spun through with silver threads.
Mary Katherine toppled into his open arms. They teetered on the steps for a split second. White frosting glopped onto the front of his pale-green shirt. The dark chocolate of the cake clung to the frosting. Its silky texture slid across her cheeks. She tasted the sweetness of powdered sugar and butter, then chocolate—until that moment her favorite.
Together, they tumbled down the steps and landed in the grass. Stunned, Mary Katherine gasped for breath and coughed. Cake spewed from her mouth. Into Ezekiel’s face. His good black hat tumbled back, revealing a bald pate fringed by dark, curly hair with those same silver highlights.
She lay on top of his sprawling body.

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