Winter’s Awakening by Shelley Shepard Gray Read Free Book Online Page A

Joshua simply nodded.
    She took his silence as an invitation to explain herself. “We’re still getting used to things here, you know. It’s not just being around the Amish. It’s living in a small town, too. It’s a pretty big change.”
    Caleb returned just then with a big smile and Lilly’s two pot holders. “My mother says danke, and if you’d like, you may come in and taste your cake.”
    Lilly laughed. “Now, wouldn’t that just be the rudest thing? I don’t expect to eat the treat I brought for your family.” Wrapping her scarf back around her neck, she pulled her coat tighter around her chest. “I better get going anyway.” With a little wave, she said goodbye then nimbly hopped over a pile of hay that had fallen.
    Joshua hardly moved as he watched her dart out the barn door, then scamper over their field to the gap in between their two hedges. She moved so easily, she looked like a deer in spring. Free and easy.
    By his side, Caleb watched her go. “She sure is a different sort a girl, don’tcha think?”
    “Jah.”
    When Joshua didn’t say any more, Caleb cleared his throat. “Sorry I was so late gettin’ here. My time ran away from me.”
    “It’s all right.”
    “It is? Oh.” With a wary expression, Caleb bent down and picked up the rake. “It was nice over there. When I arrived, Mr. Allen was reading the paper and Mrs. Allen was making chicken and frosting that cake.”
    “Sounds like our home.”
    “It was like our home. Well, more or less. ’Course, they had every light on in that kitchen. And Mrs. Allen’s chicken was stuffed in something Ty called a slow cooker.” As he scooped up the soiled hay and put it in the ready wheelbarrow, Caleb chuckled. “I don’t know how slow it was, though, you know?”
    Caleb’s prattling drew Joshua back to the present. “Maybe slow for the English.”
    “Maybe. Anyways, I tell ya, Anson in his plain clothes surely looked like a sore thumb sittin’ next to Ty. That boy had a red and blue sweatshirt on with cartoons all over it. It was something to see.”
    “Anson said he liked it there?”
    “Of course. He likes most everyone, you know.” After cheerfully tossing a thatch of hay in the barrow and scooping up another rake full, Caleb chuckled as he picked up the wheelbarrow and directed it out the door. “We might end up being friends with our new neighbors after all. Who knows, maybe this time it will be the folks in that house who cross the hedge to attend a wedding.”
    His wedding with Gretta. “Maybe. Maybe so.”
    After putting the rake away, Joshua picked up a curry comb and began to brush Jim, thick and matted with a winter coat. As Jim nickered and tossed his head, Joshua couldn’t help but smile. The horse didn’t look too charmed by his touch.
    “I don’t blame ya, boy,” Joshua murmured. He, too, thought the barn seemed a fair shade darker now that the neighbor girl had left.

Chapter 5
    She and Joshua had skated together dozens of times, and each one had been fun—but Gretta felt sure that no time would ever be as special as their very first. Oh, but that first outing on the ice had been wonderbaar ! So memorable.
    If she closed her eyes, she could still recall the crisp smell of the pines nearby. The feel of the cold wind on her cheeks. The sense that something in her life was about to change, that for the first time, she’d made an important step toward adulthood.
    Nothing since had been as special as that moment.
    She and Joshua had been thirteen and fourteen and had competed in spelling bees and arithmetic drills for years. She’d taken to helping him with his cursive. He’d helped her with her reading English. Then one winter day their teacher, Miss Millersburg, announced that they would be stopping school an hour early so theycould all go skating in the pond just over the grassy hill from their whitewashed schoolhouse.
    Everyone had cheered except for Gretta. She knew how to skate, but not very well. Her