Read Crossing for Free Online

pillowcases.”
    Shad grinned. “I doubt very much that you were thinking of God. You don’t meditate nearly as much as you should, at least according to the bishop.” He came to sit by her. She was his favorite sister as he was her favorite brother, perhaps because the two of them were much alike.
    Rebecca Braun was an attractive woman of twenty-eight. She wore the traditional unadorned garb of Amish women—a dark dress, white fichu, and white apron. Her devotional cap covered most of her coal black hair. Her eyes mirrored Shad’s, a dark blue with a hazel green tint. She had an oval face with a mouth that was full and attractive but too broad for actual beauty.
    “So did you leave the fields to come in here and see if I’ve magically produced a suitor this morning, Shad?” she asked pertly.
    Shad shook his head in feigned disgust. “You’re never going to get a husband, Becky. Look, Lois is only thirteen and she’s got her hope chest full, and Judith’s just a year older and her hope chest is packed full. Yours looks suspiciously empty, and you’re years older than them.”
    Rebecca shrugged her trim shoulders. “I know. But if I should find a man that I would want to marry—which is highly unlikely, considering what I have to choose from—but anyway, if that happens I’ll just steal my sisters’ hope chests. I’m the eldest; I have the right, don’t I?”
    Both of her sisters protested loudly and shrilly.
    Adah said, “Oh, do be quiet, girls. Can’t you tell by now when your sister is teasing you?” Adah was a tiny woman, with red hair and green eyes. Though she was modest and quiet, she was fully capable of taking her children in hand.
    Shad watched Rebecca. A mischievous grin played on her wide mouth as her sisters kept complaining to their mother. Rebecca was a self-sufficient, self-contained woman, but with a lively spirit. She had a temperament that could swing from hearty laughter to deep, honest anger. And she had a wry sense of humor that was sometimes embarrassing to her family.
    “Don’t worry, Judith, Lois. Becky’s too picky. Your hope chests are safe.” Shad told Rebecca, “You turned down Chris Finebaum, and every girl in the community was after him. Dorcas Chupp stole him from right under your nose.”
    “He’s boring.” Rebecca yawned ostentatiously, patting her mouth. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a man that can’t talk about anything but crops and the weather. I want a man who is entertaining.”
    “Oh, you want to be entertained? You should marry a juggler like that one that came with the medicine show last year.”
    “Father is put out with you,” Judith said. She had red hair and green eyes, much like her mother. At fourteen she was already a serious young girl who was thinking forward to the time when her courtship would begin. “He says you’re frivolous.”
    “That’s right,” Lois agreed piously. “Father has always told you to take the young men in the community more seriously, Becky.”
    “That’s the trouble. They are too dead serious, deadly bore serious.”
    “Shad!” Judith said accusingly. “Tell her!”
    “I do try,” Shad replied with mock seriousness. “I’ve tried to teach my sister how to catch a husband. It doesn’t take. Now she’s twenty-eight years old and has run off three good men that I know of.”
    “Three.” Adah sighed regretfully. “And they were all so fond of you, Rebecca.”
    “Oh, they managed to get over me soon enough,” Becky said cheerfully. “All three of them married only a few months after I ran them off.”
    “For shame, Becky. Shad has a point and you know it,” Judith put in. “A good Amish girl marries early and has children.”
    Shad shrugged. “You all might as well face up to it. Becky isn’t your typical Amish woman.”
    Lois was still naive in many ways. “Becky, don’t you want to find a good man and get married?”
    Becky picked up the pillowcase and put in two