Read Online The Beekeeper's Son (The Amish of Bee County Book 1) by Kelly Irvin - Free Book Online Page A

in her mind’s eye had begun to fade and curl up around the edges. Try as she might, she couldn’t summon the complete picture. Or how his voice sounded. Or his laugh. How could these things fade so quickly?
    She’d written him three times. He hadn’t responded.
    Maybe her image had faded just as quickly. Maybe he had begun to forget her as well.
    Nee. Nee. She would write him another letter.
    Right this very minute.

EIGHT
    Abigail squeezed the tongs around the wide-mouth Ball jar and lifted it from the cast-iron pot of boiling water. It felt as if her own blood were boiling, such was the billowing heat from the woodstove, combined with the sun-heated breeze that lifted a white curtain hanging in the window in Susan King’s kitchen. Almost three weeks here and she still hadn’t grown accustomed to the heat.
    Eve and John assured her she would. They claimed not to notice it at all. Even though their clothes were always soaked with sweat and their faces red with sunburn. Abigail set the jar on a wooden table that looked as if it had been built from mesquite. By Mordecai? Or Phineas, maybe? The idle thought made her glance toward the kitchen door as if her thoughts could make the King men appear.
    Which led to the next thought. Did she want Mordecai to appear? And the next. Why? Just because Stephen’s house was a pigpen and the King house was spotless. Sparse, but clean and orderly. No doubt because of Susan and not Mordecai. It wasn’t fair to judge Stephen when he had no woman to clean up his messes. No, that would be her job, the second she married him.
    Sighing in exasperation with her own inability to think of anything else, she tried to tune into the lively conversation that bounced around the kitchen among her daughters, Eve, Susan, Esther King, Naomi Glick, Frannie, Theresa King, the other cousins, and a few other women whom Abigail had met at the Sunday service. They apparently were discussing if and when another trip to town would be made. Abigail had yet to see the tiny town of Beeville. According to Eve, there wasn’t much to see.
    “I need to get flour and baking soda.” Eve snapped green beans with an efficiency born of years of practice. “And to buy material. The boys are growing so fast I can’t keep up. Their pants look like high waders.”
    “Same with Caleb,” Leila added. “Hazel’s growing like a weed too.”
    “Don’t you sound like the mudder.” Eve chuckled and handed the girl another pan of sliced cucumbers. “I know young men around here who are chomping at the bit to take fraas.”
    “No rush. She’s barely eighteen.” Abigail intervened, her hands tightening on the tongs. What was the hurry? Her daughters had time. Just as she had time. She wouldn’t hurry them into something any more than she herself needed to hurry. No matter what Stephen thought. “It’s important that we settle in and take some time to get to know everyone.”
    “I thought you were anxious for us to find husbands.” Rebekah held up a tomato. “This one is mushy. I think it’s too far gone to use.”
    Susan took the tomato and studied it. “I can salvage half of it. No waste around here.”
    The tomatoes looked good to Abigail. It amazed her what they were able to grow in this inhospitable climate. “I do wantyou to find the proper young man, but that takes time. You’ll be going to the singings here and the frolics. You have time.”
    Time might not help. There were so few families in this district and only a limited number of young men. Dread and doubt clasped hands in Abigail’s belly. Not only was she in a precarious position of having to marry before being sure of Stephen, but her girls might very well have trouble as well.
    Gott’s will. Gott’s plan.
    She turned to check the steaming tomatoes. Time to fill the jars. She adjusted the funnel and ladled tomatoes into the first hot jar, leaving a scant half inch at the top. “Who wants to get rid of the air bubbles?”
    The change of topic