"You talking to me?" Susan looked from him to Martha and back. "My back has been hurting lately-"

"Not you. Martha." Jacob's face turned another shade deeper into a red that reminded Martha of Beeville's volunteer fire engine. "I mean you can play, too, but-"

"I have to help out with my daed." Martha still didn't look at Jacob. Susan wanted to grab her by the kapp and force her to make eye contact. But she didn't. Meddling in courtship was not considered a nice thing to do. "He's still lame, you know?"

"He'll be fine. I'll take care of him." Heat scorched Susan's face. "What I mean is, I'll make sure he gets fed and has a comfortable place to sit."

"Nee, really I should-"

"Really you should play volleyball." Susan snagged the washrag from Martha's hand. "Go on, now."

"The game hasn't started yet."

"Go. Show Hazel how to use the sparklers. Obviously this oaf can't handle it."

"Hey, who are you calling an oaf?"

"Go on, get out of my kitchen. I have food to cook."

Martha scurried past Jacob, who made a show of backing away so as to give her room to get through the door. His hangdog expression made him look an awful lot like Butch with his ham bone.

A lot like Mordecai the first time he set eyes on Abigail Lantz.

Romance was in the air. Susan sighed. It was lovely to see in young folks.

It would be nice to see it in older folks too.

When had she become so dissatisfied with her life? She'd been perfectly happy to be a teacher. Well, almost. When had the longing become so strong?

When Levi Byler drove up to her school with his load of kinner, that's when.

Hogwash and balderdash.

She whirled and picked up a wooden spoon to stir a fresh batch of lemonade. Ice would be nice. Being content with Gott's plan would be nice.

"Mighty hot today."

She stirred so hard the lemonade sloshed over the side of the gla.s.s pitcher and ran down her hands. Breathe. She turned, the spoon still in her hand. "July in South Texas."

Levi clomped into the kitchen, leaning heavily on gray metal crutches. He paused but continued to sway. A small Band-Aid over his left eye seemed to be the only outward indication of the other wounds he'd received from Bobbie McGregor's horse.

"I heard there might be some lemonade in here."

"Indeed there is." She snagged a plastic tumbler from the shelf, turning her back to him so he couldn't see the rosy heat that surely meant red blotches crawled across her neck and cheeks. "Have a seat on the porch and I'll bring you a gla.s.s. They took all the ice for the ice cream maker."

"I think the girls are making more of a mess than they are ice cream." She heard no clump, clump of his crutches. He still stood there. "I reckon I can carry my own gla.s.s of lemonade. No need for coddling."

"Which hand were you planning to carry the gla.s.s in?" She let her gaze fix on his crutches. "It's not coddling. It's neighborly."

He opened his mouth, then closed it.

She managed to pour the lemonade without spilling a drop. She almost chortled at the thought. Lord, take this silliness from me. "I'll carry it to the porch. You first."

"Nee, you first."

A standoff. The man was stubborn.

She tromped past him and through the doorway without looking back. Butch followed her, making a wide berth around the stranger on crutches. On the porch she settled Levi's gla.s.s on the bushel basket turned upside down between two haggard-looking lawn chairs so used that the seats hung low in memory of the many users' behinds that had sat in them in days past.

Butch headed directly to the ice cream maker. The hund had a fondness for ice cubes. The girls shooed him away, but not before Hazel tossed him a cube he caught neatly in his wide mouth.

Abigail had disappeared to unknown parts, leaving Nyla, Ida, and Hazel to take turns cranking the ice cream maker. They seemed to be arguing over whose turn it was. Susan could remember what it was like to consider it a badge of honor to crank the ice cream. Now her shoulders and arms were thankful to let someone else wear the badge.

"Have a seat. Do you want some cookies to hold you over until the barbecue?" She swished at the seat with her ap.r.o.n, dispersing a cloud of mosquitoes that buzzed her ears as they departed in an angry huff. "I have peanut b.u.t.ter and sugar."

"Nee. Keep me company for a bit."

For a second it seemed the mosquitoes still buzzed her ears, making it hard to understand. "What?"

Levi eased into the chair, his face creased with pain. "Keep a man company. I could use some adult conversation. All Martha ever says to me is Rest, rest, rest, and How's the pain, how's the pain, did you take your pill? Why didn't you take your pill?"

His mimic of his daughter's high-pitched, anxious voice was nearly perfect.

"She's concerned for your well-being because she loves you."

"I know that." He sniffed. "The boys are too busy to talk. Between the shop and the farm, I barely see them at the supper table and then they fall into bed, tuckered out from carrying the load that is heavy on their shoulders."

"They all have broad shoulders, just like you do."

Had she just commented on his broad shoulders? The earlier heat returned, this time in scalding measure. "I mean-"

"Sit down. You're giving me a crick in my neck."

Susan sat. Silence ensued, broken only by the girls' giggles at the other end of the porch. The late-afternoon heat bore down on her. Sweat trickled down her temples. She took a surrept.i.tious swipe at it. A horsefly buzzed her nose. She swatted it away. "Did you know Bee County wasn't named for bees?"

Levi's woolly gray eyebrows danced over his dark-emerald eyes, causing the bandage to buckle and smooth. "Don't reckon I did."

"Nee, it was named for Bernard E. Bee Sr., who served as secretary of state and secretary of war for the Republic of Texas."

"The Republic of Texas?"

"Jah, Texas was a country. More than once I think. I can't keep the Texas history all straight the way Mordecai does."

"So this tidbit of information came from Mordecai. Figures."

"What do you mean?"

"He does love a good piece of trivia, your brother does."

"He does."

They both chuckled. The silence that followed didn't seem as uncomfortable.

Topics of conversation were as scarce as rain in the summer in South Texas during the long drought that seemed to perhaps have pa.s.sed this year. Kinner. A person could never go wrong with the weather and kinner. "I think your concern for Martha that you mentioned at the school picnic is no longer a concern."

"How so?"

"What do you think of my nephew Jacob?"

"Seems like a decent young man."

"He is."

"And?"

"They might be playing volleyball together about now."

Levi tapped his boot on the wood slats under his feet. "I always liked a good game of volleyball." His tone was wistful.

"You'll play again. Before you know it."

"My horse-training days are over, though."

Susan certainly hoped so. "Leave it to the younger folks."

"Are you saying I'm old?"

"I'm saying neither one of us is as young as we used to be." Too old for courting, it seemed. "That can be a good thing."

"How so?"

"An older person knows what he wants and has enough experience to recognize if what he wants is something he should have."

"I know I have enough kinner."

Maybe Mordecai was right. Maybe Levi's thoughts had run parallel to her own. To the heart of the matter. How could he know this was so important to her? Or was it a shot in the dark? "Every one of them is a gift from Gott, don't you think?"

"He gives and He takes away."

"Because He knows what is best."

Levi grunted, whether from pain or agreement Susan couldn't say. "I think a person should keep his heart open to the possibility that he hasn't seen all that Gott can do with a situation. Gott's plan is enormous, mammoth, and so incredibly vast that we have no idea how great and gracious it truly is."

"Now I know where Mordecai gets it."

"What? His faith?"

"His gift of words."

"All our gifts come from Gott, including kinner. He decides when enough is enough."

The silence settled again. Susan let the cooing of mourning doves settle the tremor in her chest. She had overstepped her bounds. How did she know when enough was enough? Levi had his nine kinner. She had none. Would being mudder to a brood that large fill the void in her heart where her own kinner surely should be?

"I expected to see Lupe and Diego running around here when I came home." His gaze dropped to his hands in his lap. He bent his head as if studying something. He had something silver, a tool, in his hand. He turned it round and round. "Surprising how a person can get attached to strays."

That was the truth, whether the stray was a hund with a black patch around one eye that gave him the rakish look of a pirate, or kinner who taught her that a hund was called a perro in their language. "I keep thinking they'll show up again. Jesse is searching for them at the detention center. He goes up once a week to take donations."

"More likely one of those Border Patrol agents has caught up with them and carted them back to the border."

Or they made it to San Antonio and found a way to start a new life. The life their grandmother sent them here to find. Susan and her family might never know the truth, but it was nicer to think of the fine possibilities rather than the dark and painful ones. A person had to have hope. For a better future. For herself and for others.

She fought the urge to squirm in her chair. His squeaked as if he'd given in to the desire. "Don't get me wrong."

"Wrong about what?"

"I understand wanting children. Catherine and I wanted them, all of them." Pain painted the words a white-hot color. "Until the last one. Gott forgive me."

Susan forced herself to look at his face. His raw pain etched lines around his eyes and mouth. His gritted teeth made the pulse jump in his jaw. His Adam's apple bobbed. He cleared his throat but said nothing more.

A mockingbird trilled and chirped its lament in the mesquite tree that offered a poor excuse for shade over the buggy parked in front of the house. Susan breathed in and out, in and out. "Gott does forgive you. He knows what it's like to lose a loved one."

"He does, I know. But it perplexes me that I should have so little faith that I can't get past this one thing. Our days are numbered on this earth. We pa.s.s through. My fraa is in the arms of her loving Savior. Why do I give it a second thought?"

"You wish to avoid such pain in the future, I imagine." Every inch of her fingers ached with the desire to squeeze his hand. She focused on the mockingbird's tune. "It can't be done. With every opportunity for love and happiness comes the chance that we might instead encounter pain and loneliness and despair."

"How did you get so wise?"

"Following Mordecai around?"

"I doubt that. More likely it was the other way around."

"I read a lot."

"Figured as much."

"Why do you say that?"

"The way you talk. It's not like most Plain women."

"I suppose it isn't." She wouldn't apologize for a voracious appet.i.te for words. It held her in good stead in her job of teaching. "But Gott gave me a brain. I see no shame in using His gift."

"Nor I."

She swallowed an inexplicable lump in her throat. "What is that in your hand?"

His gaze lifted to hers. "What?"

"In your hand, what do you have?"