Read Online Susanna's Christmas Wish by Jerry S. Eicher - Free Book Online Page A

had been sweet on each other—quite sweet, that they had planned to marry, Herman had known, so why did it bother him to hear it from Matthew?
    Herman led Bruce inside the barn, pulled his harness off, and turned him loose in the field. Toward the west he noticed dark clouds hanging low in the sky. Snow clouds, no doubt. Early this year. They might even get another light dusting tonight, from the way things looked.
    Watching Bruce take a lumbering run around the pasture, shaking his mane Herman wondered, was his young marriage in trouble? How could that be? Susanna loved him, didn’t she? It certainly appeared so. Even with the trouble over their different family Christmas practices, she was being a model of submission and virtue, although she did have that initial flash of anger. It was understandable Susanna should struggle with letting go of what she was used to. That was normal, and they would surely adjust.
    But Matthew’s words were troubling. But it wasn’t just Matthew. It was the side of Susanna Matthew had shown him. Matthew probably hadn’t intended that, mumbling on and on about the good times he and Susanna had once had.
    “I’m not saying things could have turned out differently between us,” Matthew had said. “Because they couldn’t have. I could never give Susanna what she deserved. A home among the people. A place she felt safe in. A husband who didn’t always have ideas about leaving…” Matthew’s voice had trailed off.
    Herman had tried to be patient, not understanding why he was being told this. He was willing to listen if it soothed Matthew’s obviously troubled spirits.
    “Very early on, I think I knew Susanna was too gut for me, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull away from her. She was so alive and so in love with me. And if I let myself go, I imagined the same thing for me. But in the end, our relationship was all imagination on my part. It could never go much beyond our evening drives home in the buggy with her snuggled under the blanket next to me.”
    Herman had winced at that line. Susanna hadn’t done much snuggling up to him when he drove her home during their dating years. But she did now. He had always taken her reserve before their marriage as virtue, but apparently it hadn’t been. Had her feelings for him changed after the wedding? Or was she reliving a love from the past when she nestled next to him? Perhaps she was trying to recapture what she’d lost?
    He looked at the dark clouds in the west and shook his head. He was a simple man with simple tastes. These things were too deep for him. The heart of a woman was a mystery he’d never given much thought to, but now it seemed to matter a whole lot. Something hurt inside his chest that had never throbbed like this before.
    As he looked around, the voice of Matthew came drifting back. “The moment I finally knew it was over was at the most unexpected time. I never told Susanna this. In fact, it took me months to get enough courage to admit to myself that it was over for us. That we could never be what she wanted us to be.”
    Herman had said nothing as he fiddled with a piece of straw. He apparently wasn’t expected to say anything. The words were spilling out of Matthew.
    “It was on a summer Sunday afternoon. We had taken a walk down to the pond behind her daett’s place. Susanna had never looked so lovely as she did that day. I could hardly look at her, awestruck by thinking she might really become my wife. The moment has finally come, I thought. This is what I want to do more than anything else in the world. Marry this woman. Have her by my side for the rest of my days. So what if I have doubts about giving her what she wants? Love would be more than enough. I gave myself to the emotion of the moment—which I now know is all it was.”
    Herman had waited. Clearly there was more to come, but he hadn’t been sure he wanted to hear this. What Matthew was already saying was hurting things inside of him he hadn’t