“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. I heard a lot of talk like that in Ohio, and yet people still avoided me.”
Lily smoothed her hand along the dog’s neck. His fur felt especially soft there. “We’re not like that here in Bonduel.”
“Your fater told you to stay away from me. It sounds like you’re exactly like that in Bonduel.” He pinned her with that brilliant gaze. “Or maybe it’s just you, Lily Eicher.”
Lily’s face felt like she stood right next to a blazing-hot cookstove. “Don’t blame me for your choices. You did something bad enough to be arrested. I would be deerich , foolish, not to be cautious around you.”
Her words didn’t seem to anger him, but they hit their mark. He slumped his shoulders in resignation. “You are right. Of course you are right. For all you know, I could be a murderer.” Then the bitterness crept into his voice. “Four feet isn’t near far enough from someone like me.” He picked up his twine and scissors and stood up. “I’ll go weed tomatoes.”
Lily felt a little hitch in her throat as she watched him tromp away. She’d been hurtful when all she’d wanted to be was right. A sense of shame washed over her. She had always tried to befriend the ones that everybody picked on, not alienate them.
The dog rolled and lifted his head. Lily pulled her hands away. She’d been petting Aden’s dog. How had that happened? The dog stood up, gave Lily a yip of disapproval, and turned away from her. He followed Aden to the vegetable patch without looking back.
It seemed she was unworthy of even the dog.
Well, good, because he was a dirty, bothersome brute. She pulled a small bottle of sanitizer out of her pocket and slathered it all over her hands, but she still felt germy and unclean. There wasn’t a bottle of hand sanitizer big enough to sterilize her nagging conscience.
Aden trudged into the house for a drink.
Mammi, it seemed, had been watching for him. She greeted him at the door with a plate of gingersnaps. “How are you two coming along out there?”
“The tomatoes are weeded, but the raspberries are going slow.” Aden grabbed a cookie and bit into it. Or tried to. He’d forgotten about Mammi’s rock-hard gingersnaps. The cookie scraped against his teeth like a pebble. “Delicious, Mammi,” he said, slipping the cookie into his pocket to be eaten when he could soak the thing in a glass of milk.
“What about Lily? Isn’t she wonderful?”
“We’ve decided to stay away from each other.”
Mammi threw her hands up in the air, which was a bad thing because the cookies on her plate flew in several directions. One bounced on the table and leveled the salt shaker. “My goodness,” she said, “look what trouble I’m in.”
Aden motioned for his mammi to stay put, got on his hands and knees, and gathered the scattered cookies.
Mammi bent over so she could look Aden in the eye while he crawled around. “You young people are so uncooperative! I feel like I have to do all the work myself.”
Aden remembered how much he loved his mammi and tried not to sound frustrated. “She’s not interested.”
“Nonsense. She barely knows you. If you stay away from her, she’ll never get to know you, and then how, might I ask, will she fall in love?”
Aden found all the cookies he could, stood up, and deposited them on the plate Mammi held out to him. “Mammi, I know you mean well, and I’m happy to let you find me a wife. I don’t want to sound picky, but do you think you could find me a girl whose fater doesn’t hate me?”
Mammi looked puzzled for a moment. “David Eicher just needs to get to know you. He smothers that girl so she can’t hardly breathe. Things will get better. Have another cookie. They’re my special recipe.”
Aden sighed inwardly and grabbed two cookies off the plate. They might as well have been golf balls.
Mammi would never give up.
He lost all hope.
Chapter Six
Aden listened as the preacher droned on