Her Restless Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

"I know that. But she's had such fun, and it's so nice to see that with all the high-tech things kids play with these days, she enjoyed herself."
    "One of my male cousins enjoys making them." She slid the loom inside the box and reached under the counter for another bag of fabric loops to include. Such looms could be found in metal but Mary Katherine liked the homey touch of the wooden ones.
    "It's so nice the way Amish families are so close," the woman told her as she handed over money for her purchases.
    Mary Katherine tried not to wince. If only the woman had seen how one Amish father had behaved toward his daughter just minutes earlier, she thought.
    She put the quilt kit in a brown paper shopping bag and tied a length of fabric on the handle, then bagged Sally's loom and did the same with a strip of fabric with a child's print.
    "Thank you, lady, I had fun," Sally told her.
    Her mother beamed at her daughter and nodded her approval. Then she turned to Mary Katherine. "We both had fun here. I'll be sure to tell my friends to look up your store when they visit. It's become a very popular vacation destination, you know. Visiting an Amish community."
    Mary Katherine nodded. It was nice to hear. Farmland had become so expensive that many Amish had turned to other ways to make a living. The shop had been wonderful for her grandmother and her cousins.
    Business slowed as the afternoon wore on. They shifted to straightening and cleaning up for the next day. Leah took the day's earnings to the back room to count and prepare a deposit.
    "Don't forget, Nick's coming to pick us up a few minutes early tonight," she said, pausing at the back room door.
    Mary Katherine noticed that Naomi walked over to the tiny bathroom and checked her appearance in the mirror over the sink. She raised her brows at her cousin when she returned, and Naomi blushed. Hmm, she thought. Nick was one of the Englisch drivers the Amish hired to take them to and from work and on errands. She'd caught him gazing at Naomi several times and wondered if he was interested in her.
    Finally, it was time to turn the "Open" sign around and lock up for the day. Mary Katherine paused as she did, feeling a little melancholy as she watched couples and families clearing the sidewalks and heading home—whether that was local or to a motel if they were tourists.
    A young woman rapped on the glass as Mary Katherine turned the "Open" sign around. She started to say they were closed, and then she recognized the person.
    "Jamie, what are you doing here?"
    "I thought I'd come by and see if you wanted to catch some dinner, maybe a movie with me tonight?"
    Mary Katherine hesitated as she looked at her Englisch friend. They were the same age, but Jamie seemed so much older. Maybe it was because she'd been on her own for a while. Jamie wore her hair short and standing in little tufts around her gamine face, and was dressed in a thin denim jacket and short skirt even though it was chilly.
    "I had kind of a down day, thought it'd be nice to have some company. You can choose the movie."
    Her own day hadn't been down, in Jamie's words, but Mary Katherine wasn't in a hurry to head home.
    "Sure. Come inside and I'll tell my grandmother."
     

     
    Jacob surveyed the fields and felt a little let down.
    It was a gut thing to be done with the harvesting, but he was a man who enjoyed working the land, planting seed and nurturing it and watching crops grow to be touched by the sun. Hard work, but honest work, work he'd learned walking beside his dat each day from the time he learned to toddle.
    Some said that farming was becoming a dying business in these parts. But he'd never seen himself doing anything else. Generations had farmed this land, and even if he hadn't wanted to continue, he'd have felt the responsibility, the duty, to do so.
    His father had died when Jacob was in his early twenties, and so he'd taken over the duties of the farm and of his family. His five sisters were grown and