Davey's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

outdoors far above being cooped up inside with Levi.
    His stomach pained him terribly as a result, of course, of his over-consumption of peanut butter cookies.
    Mam was at the phone half the morning. She was in quite a stew about Ruthie’s two year old who had the croup. She worried he’d have to be taken to Lancaster General Hospital ivver vile (soon).
    Suzie couldn’t go to school, so she sang the same song over and over as she sharpened her colored pencils with a battery-powered sharpener that emitted a high whir as each pencil was poked into it.
    “My Lord, my King, you’re my — WHIRRR — everything — WHIRRR — Glory sing.”
    Sarah could only take about two minutes of that until the cold and the wind looked positively inviting. Back outside, she looked up to see her sister, Priscilla, wading through the snow on her way to find a sled, no doubt.
    As Sarah turned in the opposite direction, she saw another familiar tall figure wading through the snow, coming over the small hill from Elam’s.
    Matthew!
    As usual, her breath caught in her throat, and her heartbeat, thought it was already elevated from shoveling snow, accelerated to an even faster rate. And, as usual, she felt her confidence slip away, afraid that this time she would need to accept that he was back together with Rose, the relationship resumed, and this time, they would remain together, inevitably being married the following year.
    She was surprised to see he was waving, his arm swinging wide with enthusiasm as he caught sight of her. She stood still, awaiting his approach, a smile playing around her lips.
    “Hey, whatcha’ doin’?”
    She lifted her shovel and turned her face to smile at him.
    “Shoveling?”
    She nodded. “What does it look like?”
    “Shoveling snow?”
    She reached out to hit his forearm playfully, and he smiled at her, his teeth dazzlingly white in his dark face, his black beanie pulled low on his forehead, his eyes warm and brown and inviting.
    “Hey, Sarah. I walked the whole way up here through the cold and the wind and the deep snow to ask you to go to the Christmas singing with me. Want to?”
    There was no shyness, no hesitation with Matthew, and she answered quickly and maybe a little too loudly with a resounding, “Oh yes!”
    Her eyes were shining, her face glowed, the tendrils of her curly, brown hair swirled about her forehead, and she could not take her gaze away from him.
    “Good. Good, then. I’ll pick you up Sunday evening. Around six, six-thirty.”
    “I’ll be ready.”
    “You have a Christmas dinner that day?”
    “Yes, of course. Though it’s a little strange with Christmas on a Sunday this year.”
    “Well, we have Monday off, too. Second Christmas.”
    “We have the Lapp Christmas dinner that day.”
    “Your mam’s side?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s cool.”
    Matthew stood, relaxed, unwilling to leave her, so she leaned on the shovel and watched his face, taking in the way his nose turned down just perfectly, the two black wings for eyebrows.
    He said, “Your hair’s a mess,” as he reached up and lifted off his stocking cap. He set it firmly on Sarah’s head, pulling it down well below her eyebrows, then stood back and laughed aloud.
    “You look really cute like that.”
    Sarah pushed the beanie up, a warmth spreading over her face.
    From the kitchen window, Mam’s paring knife slipped, wobbled, then stopped completely, her jaw sagging in disbelief as Matthew put his cap on Sarah’s head. Her mouth compressed, her eyes sparked, and her nostrils distended only a millimeter as she brought the paring knife through the potato with a new intensity.
    Did that boy have no shame? In broad daylight, traipsing right in their driveway to flirt openly with their daughter, who he knew was an easy target. In her day, in her rumspringa years, that was completely unthinkable, and here he was, larger than life, without a care in the world of what she or Davey thought.
    A sharp pain shot through her