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The screen door squeaked, and Ava came outside. He greeted her with his smile, but then he got a close look at her face. Concern smote him. He stood. “Is Taunte Maria all right?”
Ava paused halfway across the porch floor. “Jo, she is resting.”
His legs went weak, and he sank back onto the rocking chair’s sturdy seat. “I’m so glad.” But Ava’s eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. Something had made her cry. If not worry about Taunte Maria, then what? If he was still the eighteen-year-old Gil who’d courted seventeen-year-old Ava, he would take her in his arms, ask what had upset her, and assure her he’d do his best to help. But the twenty-two-year-old Gil did nothing. Because the twenty-one-year-old Ava was no longer his sweetheart.
His chest constricted.
She settled into the smaller chair and pushed with her toes, gently rocking back and forth. “Papa said the parents of the band members have decided they want the boys to have uniforms.”
She spoke so nonchalantly, Gil wondered if he misinterpreted the evidence on her face. He set his chair into motion, matching his beat with hers. “Jo, they thought it would make a better presentation for the judges. They all liked Mrs. Wallace’s idea of fashioning Russian-style uniforms. She made a sketch.” He pulled the drawing from his pocket, unfolded it, and gave it to her. “It’s eye-catching, isn’t it?”
Ava examined it, the rocking chair continuing its steady movements. “I like the mandarin collar. The braiding and embroidery should stand out nicely against the coat’s black fabric.”
“They’ll be gold,” Gil said.
She sent him a puzzled look. “The coats?”
“Nä.” He pointed to the picture. “The braiding, embroidery, and the buttons…they’ll be gold.”
“Ah. Jo, very nice.” She traced her finger down the page. “This is a good length, too, just past the knee.”
“The boys will wear plain black trousers tucked into their boots. Since all the boys already have a black pair of church pants, they won’t need another pair for the uniforms. This will save the families some money.”
How strange to sit here with Ava the way he used to but so stiff and formal, the way he never was. He rocked his chair a little harder, no longer staying in rhythm with hers. “But there is a problem we hadn’t thought about. I hope you’ll be able to help with it.”
“What’s that?”
She didn’t look up from the drawing. He wished she would. “Constructing the basic coat and sewing on the buttons is something all the mothers are willing to do. But positioning the embroidery and braiding so the uniforms match one another needs to be done by a single seamstress. Mrs. Schenk and Mrs. Plett offered to sew coats for my three boys who don’t have a mother, but none of the women wanted to tackle decorating all twenty coats. So…I wondered…”
Finally she lifted her attention to him. “You want me to do the decorative work on the coats?”
“Would you consider it? You were always handy with needlework. I still have the pillow you stitched for me my last Christmas in Falke.” He’d taken it with him to New York and used it as a decoration on his bed in his apartment. Right now, it was in his suitcase, where it was safe from Roald’s cats. Their claws could loosen the threads. “Do you remember it?”
An odd expression flitted across her face. “Jo, I embroidered a falcon on it. After you left, I hoped it would be a reminder of the little town you left behind.”
His heart fluttered. “It was. It also reminded me of”—should he say it?—“the girl I left behind.”
Her chair stopped abruptly. She lay the drawing on the table between them and then curled her fingers around the chair’s armrests, her focus aimed straight ahead. “I’m sorry, Gil.”
He stared at her profile. Her chin quivered. Regret smote him. He’d asked too much of her. She’d been willing to sew three jackets, but embroidering twenty of them was a much bigger task. He bounced his fist on his armrest, aggravated with himself for taking advantage of her kind heart. “Please forgive me, Ava. You already do so much. I’ll find someone else to—”
She abruptly faced him. “I’m not talking about the uniforms. Of course I’ll decorate the uniforms for the boys. I’ll help in whatever way I can.”
Gil searched his mind for some other reason she would apologize. He found none. “Then for what are you sorry?”
“For…” She swallowed and blinked rapidly. Pink flooded her cheeks. “For staying behind.”
He gaped at her, mouth ajar, too stunned to speak.
“I love Mama and Papa. I don’t regret these past years with them. But I stayed with them for the wrong reasons. Papa, and then Mama, and finally God helped me see it. I stayed out of fear of being away from them. Of losing them, the way I’d already lost Anton and Rupert. And I feared them losing me—of it being too much for them to bear after burying their sons. I thought I was doing what God wanted me to do, but I never asked Him. He and I…” She glanced down, then met his gaze again. “We haven’t been on very good terms for quite a while.”
Gil cringed. “I understand. I’ve been a little upset with Him myself for a while.”
She nodded, as if she grasped all the hidden meaning behind his simple statement. “For the first time in a long time, I talked to Him. And I listened. There are still a lot of things that don’t make sense to me. Why did my brothers have to die? Why is Mama still so sick? Why does Joseph—”
Gil’s ears perked up. What about Joseph?
The pink in her cheeks deepened to rosy red. “But I’m not afraid anymore. I’m ready to obey God and go ‘whither thou goest,’ wherever He might lead.”
