The Amish Quiltmaker’s Unattached Neighbor (The Amish Quiltmaker #6)

Chapter 5

A da pulled three bundles of goat cheese from the fridge and handed them to Joanna. “ Denki for coming. I can’t keep up with the house and the farm and the goat cheese by myself, and Le Chez needs their order by two today.”

Joanna took one of the cheesecloth bundles and set it on one of three sushi mats they used to roll the cheese into logs. “You know, you could ask Beth to help you. She’s not half bad with the rolling.”

Ada scoffed. “I’m lucky if I can get Beth to milk the goats every morning, and she hates to get her hands dirty. I’d much rather do it myself than ask Beth.”

“Beth has grown up a lot since Menno and I got married. She might surprise you.”

Ada placed the second cheese bundle on another sushi mat. “ Ach , vell , she would definitely surprise me if she did anything without being asked or without complaining.”

Joanna started rolling her cheese into a log and glanced at Ada. “You’re too hard on her, I think.”

“If anything, I’m not hard enough. If I had succeeded in making her feel guilty, she’d have changed by now, but she’s as lazy as ever.”

Joanna scolded Ada with her eyes. “If it’s not working, why do you keep doing it?”

Ada threw up her hands. “I’m open to ideas. I feel more like Beth’s mater than her schwester .”

“Mamm wouldn’t have given up on her.”

Ada frowned to herself. Joanna didn’t understand. Ada did her best. Beth wouldn’t or couldn’t step up and help Ada more. “I know I have my faults—impatience being one of them—but I think I do a gute job of running this house, especially since you and Mary have left me.” She held up her hand before Joanna could apologize or defend herself. “I wouldn’t want it any other way. All I care about is my family, and you and Mary are wonderfully happy. No need to apologize for that. But I’m always froh when you drop by to help with some of the cooking. I love seeing you and the girls.” Ada glanced out the window where Joanna’s two dochters , Rosie and Lily, frolicked around the backyard with Pepper and the goats. Every child, no matter how old, deserved affection and unconditional love. “I’ll try to be more patient with Beth.”

“You just have to make your mind up to do it. You’ve never failed at anything you’ve tried.”

Ada grunted her disagreement. “At least I’m not Enos Hoover’s mater . Beth could have it a lot worse.”

Joanna giggled. “That’s setting the bar quite low. From what you’ve told me, few people have it worse than Enos Hoover.”

“I’ve never seen anyone quite like Tabitha.”

Joanna shook her head and clicked her tongue. “It explains why Enos is the way he is.”

“Does it?”

“If your mamm did nothing but insist you were a failure, what would you do?”

Ada cut her cheese log in half. “I’d either moan and mope and hate myself, or I’d be more determined than ever to prove I could succeed.”

“That’s exactly what Enos is doing, I expect. Trying to prove his mamm wrong. It makes me wonderful sad.”

“It makes me irritated,” Ada said. “I don’t want to feel sorry for him. I want to crush him.”

Joanna gave her a wry smile.

Ada huffed out a breath. “You know what I mean. There’s no satisfaction in defeating someone who’s so wounded to begin with.”

Joanna’s eyes danced with amusement. “There shouldn’t be satisfaction in defeating anyone at all.”

Ada pounded her log of cheese with her fist and made a dent in it. “There should be, if he deserves it and he’s completely wrong and he’s arrogant enough to think he’s smarter than every woman in the gmayna .”

Joanna sprinkled Ada’s special herb mixture on her finished log of cheese. “Enos doesn’t sound like a wounded animal to me.”

“So you’re saying I shouldn’t feel guilty about crushing his dreams?”

“You should feel very guilty, but Enos doesn’t sound like the kind of man who will let you get away with anything. Maybe you’ll be the one to get crushed.”

“Well, that would be very rude of him.”

Joanna grinned and looked at Ada with a searching eye. “It sounds like a very interesting quarrel you two have going. I’m eager to see how it turns out.” She wrapped her finished cheese in the special paper and set it in the fridge. “Have you figured out who that Tyson guy is yet?”

“ Nae , but I suspect it was Cathy who sent him. She’s on the city council, so she probably knows all those weird laws. I bet she asked Tyson to come over and give Enos a property law lesson.”

Someone knocked loudly on the door, then let themselves into the house. “Yoo-hoo, is anybody home?”

“In here.”

Cathy Larsen wandered into the kitchen with her giant yellow purse and her electric blue sunglasses. “I’ve come to transport your cheese to Le Chez. I know I’m early, but I also wanted to get in some good gossip time before I left. I don’t repeat gossip, so you’d better listen close the first time.”

Joanna laughed. “I like your attitude, Cathy.”

Cathy pulled out a chair and sat at the table. “I have to repent for gossiping every Sunday before I go to church so the good Lord won’t smite me while I’m sitting in the pew. But I think He understands. If it weren’t for us old wives, there would be no tales, no recipes passed down from generation to generation, no home remedies for croup, and no glue to hold the community together. In my own small way, I’m doing the public a service. But please don’t thank me.”

Ada dusted her goat cheese roll with vegetable ash and smoothed it with her small spatula. “What gossip have you heard lately, Cathy?”

Cathy leaned forward. “What are you putting on that cheese? It looks like ashes from the fireplace.”

Ada smiled. “It’s called vegetable ash, and it gives a beautiful contrast to the white cheese. It’s perfectly safe to eat, and it doesn’t really taste like anything.”

Cathy looked impressed, in her grumpy sort of way. “Where are the girls? I have a present for them.”

Joanna squinted out the window. “They’re playing with Pepper and the goats, but I don’t want them to know you’re here until I finish the cheese, or they’ll be underfoot.”

“And how is the bun in the oven?”

Joanna laughed. “That’s an odd expression.”

Cathy searched around in her purse. “It’s something we old people say because we’re too prim to say pregnant .”

“I feel nauseous all the time, but at least I can function. Mary is in bed all day.”

“That’s too bad. My pregnancies were like that. I couldn’t look at food without throwing up, and I craved toilet paper.”

“Toilet paper?”

“Yeah, it was weird, I know. After I ate a whole roll, Lon put his foot down and made me go to the doctor. The doctor put me on some vitamins, and that cleared up the problem.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Joanna said.

Cathy pulled a protein bar from her purse and proceeded to try to tear open the wrapper. “I learned something new today, and I thought I knew pretty much everything. I met Tabitha Hoover at the Bent and Dent this morning, and she is a piece of work.”

“Was she by herself?” Ada asked.

Cathy kept working on her protein bar wrapper. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, no. She keeps Enos at her beck and call. She called him a bad son, ungrateful, and irresponsible all in the matter of one minute. If I had been Enos, I would have left her at the store and made her walk home. I don’t know how he stands her.”

Joanna grabbed a pair of scissors from the drawer and cut open Cathy’s protein bar. “She’s his mater . He has to honor her. It’s one of the commandments.”

“There’s a difference between honoring your mother and being a doormat.”

Ada didn’t know why, but she felt compelled to defend Enos. “He isn’t a doormat. I think he’s trying to be kind and long-suffering.”

Cathy leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “ Suffering is the right word.”

Joanna shrugged. “Jesus said to turn the other cheek.”

Cathy grunted. “I know, but what if you run out of cheeks? I’ve always wondered about that. My pastor can’t give me anything like a satisfactory answer. Enos might be trying to be a good son, but he’s stuck with a difficult mother. At some point he’s going to have to cut her loose.” Cathy shot Ada a stern look. “I warned you. There’s still time to change your quilt blocks.”

“I am in no danger of marrying Enos,” Ada said.

The front door slammed, and Beth and Sadie burst into the kitchen. “ Ach , Ada, we’ve got some terrible news,” Sadie said.

Sadie tended to be dramatic. Ada wasn’t going to panic just yet. “What is it?”

Beth curled her fingers around Ada’s upper arms. “Enos Hoover has hired Arthur Tripp and his cultivator.”

Ada drew her brows together. “I assumed he was going to plant alfalfa.”

Beth nodded as if alfalfa was a dread disease. “He’s planning to plant mostly alfalfa . . .”

Sadie jumped in. “But he wants to plant six acres of potatoes.”

Ada’s heart dropped like a stone in the lake. “On my six acres?”

Sadie pulled the bonnet off her head. “ Jah . That’s what Arthur Tripp told me, and he’s starting first thing tomorrow morning.”

Beth paced around in a circle. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing. Tyson said he put a stop to the whole thing.”

Ada looked at Beth as if she’d grown an extra ear. “ You sent Tyson Carruthers?”

Beth clapped her hand over her mouth and burst into laughter. “Oops. I wasn’t going to tell.”

Sadie joined in the laughter. “Beth, you are the worst at keeping secrets.”

Ada stopped Beth with a sharp look. “Beth, please explain.”

“Well.” Beth couldn’t contain the giggles. “Tyson’s dad is an attorney, so on Sunday night I called and asked him to help me. He looked it up on Google and said the six acres belongs to us. So I asked him to come over yesterday morning and talk to Enos.”

Ada ground her teeth together. “You should never ask someone to lie for you.”

Beth frowned. “Did he say he was a lawyer? Because he wasn’t going to do that. He wants to be a lawyer, but he’s still just taking classes at the community college.”

Ada pursed her lips. “I guess he didn’t call himself my attorney. He said he was my representation. Enos didn’t believe him.”

“Yes, yes, that was the word. He said it’s illegal to impersonate an attorney.”

Ada rolled her eyes. “I’m glad he won’t get arrested.” She frowned at Beth. “Why are you hanging around an Englisch boy? No good will come of it.”

Beth swatted away Ada’s concern. “He has a girlfriend and asthma. I’m not interested in a boy with asthma.”

Cathy stared at Beth indignantly. “What’s wrong with asthma? Plenty of very nice people have asthma.”

Beth didn’t respond to Cathy. She pulled a chair out from under the table and sat down. “Why is Enos planting potatoes if the land isn’t his? Tyson was so sure.”

“Enos is clever. Maybe he’s figured out a way around the law. And maybe he’s planning to chop down my fence after all.”

Cathy’s face puckered like a dried apple. “I’ve been here ten minutes, and you’ve called him long-suffering, clever, and kind. If you don’t stop saying nice things about Enos, I’m going to have to insist you choose a new quilt block. I can’t stand to think that insufferable woman might be your mother-in-law.”

Ada ignored Cathy. She would not marry Enos in a million years. He was too . . . he didn’t have any . . . he wouldn’t . . . Ach , she simply wasn’t going to marry him. “Even if he plants potatoes, he won’t be able to water them. I’m not selling him my water rights.”

Cathy finished off her protein bar. “I’m letting Enos rent two of my water shares this season.”

Ada almost came out of her skin. “You’re what?”

Cathy peered at Ada and clutched her purse a little tighter. “No need to get huffy. I feel sorry for him. He’s only got one foot and a difficult mother. He’s a stranger in a strange land, like Moses, though I’m pretty sure Moses had two feet and a nice mother. Enos’s life has been a hard row to hoe, and I want to help him out. Besides that, I’ve made it my mission in life to spite his mother, and this will make her very mad.”

“Did you stop to consider that it makes me very mad?”

“Sorry, I can only care about ticking off one person at a time, and right now, it’s Tabitha Hoover.”

Well, wasn’t that just the most aggravating thing! “Don’t you see I’ll have to reconfigure my entire pivot irrigation system?”

Cathy shook her head as if it should be obvious. “Of course you won’t. Enos can’t afford to put up a new fence. He’s going to leave the old one where it is. It gives him a nice dividing line between his alfalfa and potatoes. You don’t have to double-water Enos’s crops, but you also don’t have to move the sprinkler system.”

Ada stabbed her knife into the third bundle of cheese. “What am I going to do now?”

Cathy shrugged. “I’m sorry, Ada, but that’s not my problem.”

Beth was more helpful. “We could plant something there before Enos does.”

“It’s a gute idea,” Ada said, and Beth look pleased. “But Dat has rented a tractor for next week. I don’t know if we could get them to come early.”

Beth scrunched her lips. “It’s probably Arthur Tripp driving it.”

Cathy fished in her purse again and pulled out a small blue tube. “The solution is super glue.”

Ada propped her hand on her hip, very out of sorts with Cathy and not eager to listen to anything she had to say. “Super glue?”

“It’s what all the environmentalists are doing nowadays. They glue themselves to the road or a tennis match or a tree. The police have to come in and scrape off the glue so they can clear the road. You could glue yourself to the fence in protest.”

Ada shook her head. “What’s to keep Arthur Tripp from just going around me?”

Cathy furrowed her brow. “True. And then you’d be stuck until the police came or the glue wore off your hands. I’ve always thought the best way to treat the gluers is to leave them stuck to whatever they’ve glued themselves to. They’d regret it when they had to go to the bathroom.”

“I could ask Tyson to talk to Enos again,” Beth said.

Sadie sighed. “It didn’t work the first time. I don’t think it’s going to work the second time. But he’s very cute.”

Cathy blew air from between her lips. “Enos doesn’t care if Tyson is cute.”

Ada caught her breath as an idea came to her. “I could set up a tent in the middle of the six acres so there’s no room for Arthur Tripp to drive around me.”

“That’s a wunderbarr idea,” Beth said, clapping as if she thought Ada was brilliant.

“Clay and Mary have an eight-man tent. It’s big enough to get in Arthur’s way.”

Cathy narrowed her eyes. “Who is this Arthur person? Would he feel guilty about running you over? He might get out of his tractor and drag you away by your hair. They do that with the environmentalists.”

Ada fingered the hair at the base of her neck. That would hurt. “I don’t know, but I think it’s worth trying. I could give it three or four days until Arthur and Enos both gave up.” She’d have to reconfigure the pivot irrigation system so it didn’t run over her tent, but surely Dat, Clay, and Menno could take care of that in a few hours.

Beth leaned forward, her eyes alight with panic and concern. “But, Ada, you’d have to camp.”

Ada’s stomach dropped to her toes. “I know.” She hated to camp. Camping was uncomfortable and dirty, and she liked being within ten feet of a bathroom, a bathroom with a flushable toilet. She refused to relieve herself in the great outdoors. She swallowed hard. Did she want her six acres back or not? Did she have the courage to see this through, or would she give up when things hadn’t even started to get hard?

Beth’s concern was deep. “How long do you think you’d have to camp?”

“Only a few days,” Ada murmured. That was more wishful thinking than reality. “Or, I guess until Enos gives up.”

“Ha,” Cathy said, making everyone in the room jump. “You think Enos is going to give up? You’ll be camping out there for months.”

Ada was feeling less and less charitable toward Cathy. “If you hadn’t given him your water shares, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Cathy brushed an imaginary piece of lint from her shoulder. “He’s borrowing them, and I feel sorry for him.”

Ada looked at the calendar on the wall. “I don’t have to outlast him forever. His planting window will be gone in a week or so.”

Sadie shook her head. “Nope. Sorry. We plant summer potatoes in March, but you can also plant winter potatoes through May.”

Ada contemplated camping until May and just about lost her resolve. “Who invented winter potatoes? And why do they hate me?”

Beth hooked her arm around Sadie’s shoulders. “Don’t you worry, Ada. I can make the cheese and milk the goats and clean the toilets while you’re gone. I’ll take care of everything.”

Ada couldn’t even trust Beth to feed the dog every day. There had to be another way. Surely, surely Enos didn’t know about winter potatoes, and surely Arthur Tripp was booked solid for weeks helping Amish farmers get their crops in. “Maybe I’ll only have to camp for one night, and then Arthur won’t be available anymore.” Again, wishful thinking, but it was the only plan she had. “I doubt he can afford to pay Arthur Tripp to come back again and again.”

Cathy zipped her purse and stood up. “Look on the bright side, I always say.” Cathy never said that.

Joanna placed a hand on Ada’s shoulder, a look of amused concern in her eyes. “You’re going to be camping for quite some time, you know.”

Ada finished the last cheese log and placed all three in the small cooler Cathy used to transport their cheese. It was everything Ada could do not to glare at Cathy as she handed her the cooler. Cathy was kind enough to take their cheese to the fancy restaurant every week, and she didn’t ask for any payment in return. But it seemed disloyal for Cathy to help Enos, especially since Cathy rarely felt sorry for anybody and never felt sorry for Ada.

Ada squared her shoulders. She didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for her, and she was pretty sure Enos didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him. So Ada wouldn’t.

She would fight for what was hers, and not feel sorry for either of them.

Enos wouldn’t want it any other way.