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all.
    Oh, she and Sim could talk all right. Endlessly. Same as the night they fixed the water pump.
    Well, this was enough. Sim wasn’t even close to asking her for a date, so what was the use talking about all this other stuff? Who cared if there was a singing here, or a supper crowd there, or who was marrying who after Christmas?
    Just when Isaac was seriously thinking of sliding down beneath the table and crawling out over their feet, Dat came by, looking for him. Catherine blushed again. She said “Hello,” very politely, answered Dat’s questions respectfully and then let Isaac out of the booth.
    Isaac could see the pure elation on Sim’s face when Dat said he bought a pair of Belgians, and would Isaac like to ride home in the truck with him?
    When Isaac looked back on his way out of the dining area, Sim was leaning forward with that intent look of his, and if he wasn’t careful he’d have to have his back adjusted at the chiropractor’s office to put his head back in place.
    But Sim just wasn’t getting anywhere, that was the whole trouble.
    At home, Isaac decided to talk to Mam about the impossibility of the whole situation. It was Saturday afternoon, and she was taking five loaves of whole-wheat bread from the oven. Her gray apron was pinned snugly around her ample waist, covering the front of her dark purple dress. Her covering was large and white, the wide strings pinned together behind her back to keep them from getting in her way as she moved effortlessly from table to stove and back again.
    There were four pie crusts cooling on the countertop, so Isaac broke off a tiny piece. Mam yelped and came bustling over, saying, “ Doo net! Doo net. (Don’t) They’re for Barbara, for church. Don’t touch them. I’m making coconut cream.”
    “Never chocolate,” Isaac muttered.
    Like a fluffy, warm comforter, her heavy arm enfolded his shoulders as she steered him to the refrigerator and opened the door, proudly producing a wonderfully high chocolate pie, crowned with an amazing amount of whipped cream and chocolate shavings.
    Isaac turned his face to his mother’s.
    “For us?”
    So often, these wonderful concoctions that Mam made on Saturday afternoons were for someone else. Chocolate layer cakes, loaves of bread, creamy vanilla pudding were usually all “for church.”
    “For you, Isaac! Just for you!” Her words were better than Mountain Dew. What a mother!
    “Mam, did you really bake this chocolate pie for me?”
    “Yes, for you.”
    Love looked and tasted exactly like that pie. It was cool and creamy, rich, the chocolate neither too light or too bitter. He ate two wide slices, then asked Mam what she thought of Sim asking Catherine Speicher for a date.
    Mam’s eyes opened wide, she threw her hands in the air, then folded herself into a kitchen chair and said, “Good lands! You make me weak.” She shook her head.
    “He likes her. He just doesn’t have the nerve to ask her for a date,” Isaac said, scraping up the last of the chocolate pudding with his fork.
    Mam said there was more to it than that. Dates had to be prayed about and God’s leading felt. It always took patience. She wasn’t even aware of the fact that they knew each other, and besides, Sim was older, and she thought the teacher a bit fancy. For us, she said.
    Isaac told her that had absolutely nothing to do with it, look at him and Calvin. Mam nodded and said maybe that was true, and that Abner Speicher’s family was a nice family. It was just that Abner wasn’t too good with money, and now he was sick in the hospital. She made that clucking sound.
    Isaac told her money has absolutely nothing to do with it either. Did God check out money before he put two people together?
    Mam wagged her finger at him and said he better watch it, he was getting too big for his britches. She would talk to Sim about this, he needed to be careful, Catherine was … then she didn’t know what to say.
    Isaac shrugged into his chore coat, slapped