Summer Promise by Marianne Ellis Read Free Book Online Page B

send Leah and some produce to you first thing tomorrow morning.”
    â€œI’ll look forward to it,” Miriam said. “Thank you again, Rachel.”
    Miriam turned and walked with quick steps back toward the road. With every step she took, it seemed to her that her heart felt lighter than it had in many months.
    Perhaps Rachel is right,
she thought.
Perhaps I should laugh more.
    Now all she had to do was to figure out how.
    * * *
    From the window of her upstairs bedroom, Leah watched Miriam walk swiftly down the Millers’ drive. Leah had flown through setting the table for dinner, hoping against hope that the two women would call her back outside so that her
aenti
could share what she had decided about Leah working at the farm stand. That hadn’t happened, though. So, after giving the table a final check to make sure everything was as it should be, Leah had dashed upstairs. Her bedroom was in the left front corner of the house, and her windows faced both front, toward the drive, and to the side, over the kitchen garden.
    I’m not really spying,
she thought.
I just want to see what Aenti Rachel and Miriam look like.
Were they smiling or serious? And which expression might mean that Leah would be allowed to work at the farm stand?
    But being able to see her
aenti
and Miriam hadn’t helped matters one single bit. As a matter of fact, the more she studied them, the more clear it became to Leah that she couldn’t figure out what Aenti Rachel and Miriam were talking about at all. Miriam looked so sober and serious.
So sad,
Leah thought. Then, she was laughing in the blink of an eye. But it was what happened next that caught Leah’s attention and held it fast. As she watched, Aenti Rachel reached out and laid her palm against Miriam’s cheek.
    Now I
know
they’re not talking about the farm stand,
she thought. And she knew something else. She knew that her aunt cared for Miriam Brennemann very much. For this was Aenti Rachel’s
special gesture
, the one she used as a way of offering comfort or consolation when no words would suffice.
    For as long as Leah could remember, Aenti Rachel had touched Leah’s own cheek in just that fashion whenever Leah felt bad,
really
bad. Whether it was the flu she’d had just last year, the one that had left her feeling so miserable she wanted to cry like a baby, or the time she had been daydreaming while doing the dishes and let her favorite cup—the one that had once belonged to her mother and was one of the few mementos she had of her—slip from her fingers and fall to the floor, shattering into pieces too numerous to count. Leah had been horrified by the accident, too upset even to cry. She’d simply stood in the kitchen, gazing down at the shards of crockery surrounding her bare feet. She could have walked on the pieces and not bled, she had thought, her body was that numb.
    And then Aenti Rachel was there, in the kitchen doorway, taking in the situation with one glance, taking charge at once.
    â€œ
Ach
, Leah!” she had softly exclaimed. “Stay still. I will clean this up.”
    Quickly, Aenti Rachel had retrieved the broom and dustpan and swept the shards from around Leah’s feet. Then she had gone for Leah’s slippers in case there were pieces of crockery too small to see that still might cut. It was as Leah braced herself, one hand on her
aenti
’s shoulder, that the words—and tears—began to flow.
    â€œIt was the only thing I had of Mamm’s, and now it’s gone.”
    â€œI know,” Aenti Rachel said. “I know it feels that way. You treasured the cup, and I am sorry you have lost it. But you have many things of your mother’s, Leah. When you are calmer, you will see.”
    But Leah would not be consoled. She had moved through the rest of that evening in a fog of misery, longing only for the moment when she could go to bed and close her eyes. But as she reached to