The Christmas Courtship. Emma Miller
was nice-looking, Rosemary’s stepson. Joshua was around Phoebe’s own age, maybe a little younger. He had reddish-brown hair that curled at the back of his neck beneath his black knit hat and a handsome face, with dark eyes and a strong brow. His face was clean-shaven, which meant he was unmarried. Which of course made sense since he still lived at home. She had known the man Rosemary had wed had children from his previous marriage, but she hadn’t known he had adult sons.
“Ne? Never been?” Joshua asked.
Phoebe looked up, realizing he had asked her a question. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
He gripped the end of the cart so they were looking at each other, her on one side, him on the other. He had nice hands: strong, with squared-off nails that were clean. “It’s all right,” he told her. “I talk too much.”
“It’s not that at all,” she said.
“Ne, I talk too much. Everyone in my family says so. I talk when I’m nervous and when I’m not. I talk when I’m happy and when I’m sad. When I was little my mother used to say that she put me to bed talking and I picked right up on the sentence come dawn the next day.”
Phoebe struggled to hide a smile. His cheerfulness lightened her heart. He made her hopeful that this move had been the right thing for her to do. “I’m enjoying hearing about your family,” she said. “It sounds like you all get along so well. Your father’s children and Rosemary’s. It can’t be easy making two families into one. It’s not as if you’re little ones.”
“It’s not always easy. Mornings when we have to get out of the house for church can be tense.” He shrugged. “But we’re working on it. Once a week we sit down together and eat a bunch of desserts and talk about whatever’s bugging us.” He shrugged. “Whether it’s my brother Jacob not taking his turn cleaning horse stalls or our stepsister Ginger hogging the upstairs bathroom.”
He turned down the baking aisle, still pulling the cart along. Phoebe followed.
“But my father and Rosemary are so happy together,” he told her over his broad shoulder. “They love each other. So we’re all determined to make it work. All of us,” he said with conviction.
Phoebe smiled at him again, this time making no attempt to hide it.
He knitted his brows. “What?”
She felt her cheeks grow warm. She was tempted not to tell him why she was smiling, but it wasn’t really in her nature not to answer an honest question with an honest answer. “You said your father and Rosemary love each other. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a man say such a thing.”
“Say what thing?”
“Speak of love,” she responded quietly. “It’s not very Amish, is it?”
He thought for a moment. “My father’s a man who doesn’t hide how he feels and he doesn’t mind telling you, good or bad. I guess I take after him.”
Phoebe looked up to see an Amish girl of about twenty with a woman who was likely her mother approaching them. They were each pushing a grocery cart overflowing with boxes of cereal, flour and sugar, and bags and bags of cookies, snack cakes and potato chips.
The younger of the two women caught sight of Joshua, giggled and looked away.
“Joshua?” The older woman acknowledged him and stopped her cart, blocking other customers, Amish, English and Mennonite, from continuing down the aisle. She was a small, round woman with rectangular wire-frame glasses who fluttered her hands, reminding Phoebe a little bit of a bumblebee. “How’s Rosemary doing with the foot? Staying off it, I hope?” She was speaking to Joshua, but she was staring Phoebe down.
“Doing well, Eunice. Had an appointment yesterday with the doctor.” He reached for a ten-pound bag of whole wheat flour. He didn’t seem to notice that Eunice was gawking at Phoebe. “Doctor says surgery went well. Healing fine. Back on her feet in no time, as good as ever.”
Phoebe watched him add another bag of whole wheat flour to the cart. She didn’t recall flour being on the grocery list he’d shared with her on the way from the bus station to the store.
“Who does she see? Dr. Gallagher, is it, or Dr. Parker?”
Joshua shook his head. “I wouldn’t know.” He added yet another ten-pound bag of flour to the cart.
“It’s no wonder she needed that surgery.” Eunice glanced at Joshua and then returned her attention to Phoebe.
The young woman was staring at a box of cereal but stealing glances at Joshua. She obviously found him attractive.
Phoebe was beginning to feel uncomfortable now. It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to people staring at her. She was even used to whispers behind her back. But she hadn’t expected this here. Or at least she had hoped it wouldn’t happen. And at once she wondered how much Eunice knew about her and her circumstances, as her mother liked to put it.
“Chasing after two toddlers at her age.” Eunice made a clicking sound of disapproval between her teeth. “How old will she be come next year?”
Joshua smiled sweetly at Eunice. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask Rosemary.” He leaned around Eunice. “Good to see you, Martha. Visiting your aunt again, are you?”
Martha giggled and pushed her glasses up farther on her nose. “Ya.”
“What are you doing here at Byler’s?” Eunice asked. “None of your stepsisters could make it today?”
“They could.” Joshua added a huge bag of chocolate chips to the cart.
Also not on the list, Phoebe noted.
“But I like grocery shopping,” Joshua said.
Eunice drew back with a harrumph.
Joshua leaned around Eunice again to speak to Martha. “Rosemary’s cousin is visiting, too,” he told the younger woman. “This is Phoebe.”
Martha gave a quick nod, giggled and gave her glasses another push at the bridge of her nose.
Phoebe glanced behind Martha. There was a long line of customers behind her in the aisle now, waiting to get by or move forward.
“Visiting, are you?” Eunice said to Phoebe, her face lighting up with interest. “From where? Rosemary didn’t say she had a cousin visiting. I was just there two days ago at her sickbed. She never mentioned a word.”
“We need to go, Eunice,” Joshua said, intervening in the conversation. “Have to get these things home and we’re holding other folks up.” He nodded in the direction of the customers lined up behind Eunice and Martha and their grocery carts. Then, for good measure, he reached out and gave Eunice’s cart a little push.
Phoebe didn’t know why, but that struck her as funny, and she had to look away so Eunice wouldn’t catch her smiling.
“I suppose you’re right,” Eunice huffed with obvious disappointment. She grabbed the handle of the cart with both hands and gave it a shove. “Tell Rosemary I said hello and for her to stay off that foot. Tell her I’ll be by at the end of the week.”
“Will do,” Joshua said as Eunice passed them, discernibly reluctant to move on. When Martha passed, he nodded to her.
The minute they were gone, Joshua leaned on the end of his cart, drawing closer to Phoebe. “Sorry about that,” he murmured, meeting her gaze.
She placed her hands on the handle and leaned forward, her words meant only for him. “Town gossip?”
“Editor of the Amish telegraph.” Joshua’s eyes twinkled.
He had nice eyes, brown with thick lashes. Expressive eyes.
“No news she doesn’t know and readily share,” he told her. “True or otherwise.”
Phoebe