Miriam's Quilt by Jennifer Beckstrand Read Free Book Online

away, but Seth motioned for her to lean closer. She inched slightly nearer and allowed him to whisper into her ear, as Miriam watched in stunned humiliation.
    He pulled away from the clerk. “Thanks,” he said. He gave Miriam a half smile and marched out of the drugstore as if he had only come in to deliver a message.
    The clerk turned to Miriam and waved her hand dismissively. “Okay, give me the money and I’ll take care of it.”
    Miriam smoothed the creases of the bill and laid it on the countertop. As soon as the money fell from her hand, she made a beeline for the door and burst through it. She risked a look around. As far as she could tell, Seth had completely disappeared. Releasing the stagnant air in her lungs, she raced to her buggy and never looked back.
    * * * * *
    “Hullo, Miriam.” David Herschberger leaned on the counter of the combination fruit/pretzel stand and grinned at her. Flour dusted his shirt and trousers. Susie said he didn’t make the pretzels but still managed to make a mess of himself by the end of each day. David’s parents owned the stand, and not only did Susie work here, but she was a close friend of their daughter Esther Rose. Being May, it was still too early in the season for much in the way of local produce, but pretzels were in demand all year round. The stand offered plenty of dried fruit and jams, as well.
    David, the same age as Miriam, was as skinny as a flagpole. Ever since he’d started in as a teenager, he’d grown to the sky, but his weight stayed the same, so he got taller and taller and skinnier and skinnier. They all teased him for having a bottomless stomach and a hollow leg. One of his friends had started calling him “Hollow Davey,” and the name stuck.
    “Hollow,” Miriam said, “could I take Susie for a few minutes?”
    Susie and Esther stood with their backs to the booth’s opening, rolling out and shaping pretzels with quick, precise movements. Susie made dozens, hundreds, of pretzels every day. She could form a perfect twist with her eyes closed.
    She glanced at Miriam and furrowed her brow.
    “Oh, sure,” Hollow said. “Supper rush ain’t for another hour yet.”
    Susie rinsed her hands and dried them on her apron.
    “Take these.” Hollow grabbed two pretzels from the basket and wrapped them in a napkin. “And the honey mustard,” he said, pointing to the small containers on the counter.
    “Denki.”
    “Anything for the Bontragers,” Hollow replied.
    Susie wasted no time leaving her booth. She scooped the food from the counter, grabbed Miriam’s hand, and led her to one of three red-stained picnic tables sitting in the middle of the grass a hundred feet from the pretzel stand.
    Susie had always seemed so delicate to Miriam, like the exotic orchid that her cousin Rebecca kept in her kitchen. Her skin looked as white and smooth as fresh cream, with eyes like a doe’s set against her thin face. Today her eyes looked even bigger, in contrast with her hollow cheeks and lips pulled tight with worry.
    “You have something to tell me?” she said. “You look like you have something to tell me.”
    “How are you feeling?” Miriam said.
    “Not bad today. Hollow gives me an extra pretzel now and then. They help.” She laced her fingers together. “Do you have something to tell me?”
    Miriam unfolded the letter in her hand and took the flowered stationery from the envelope. “This is from cousin Hannah.”
    “Hannah? Did you tell her?”
    “Of course not. I told her it is a friend of mine.”
    Susie pursed her lips. “She will know it is me.”
    “We can’t worry about that. Hannah has no reason to think that it is you, and even if she did, Hannah is no gossip. I asked her to keep quiet about it. We will have to trust her.” Miriam patted her sister’s ice-cold hand. “She keeps in contact with Mamm’s cousin, Katie Martins in Ontario. Katie’s children have grown, and she is willing to take you in. They say they can find a gute Amish