Love Finds You in Amana Iowa Read Online Free PDF Page B

across the heads of the men loitering in front of the wagon, waiting to move on. “Did the last person come out of the forest?”
    “Everyone is accounted for.”
    Her eyes grew wide. “But I only counted twenty-four people.”
    Niklas silently counted the heads around them and then smiled. “I believe you’ve neglected to count yourself, Sister Amalie.”
    She thought back over her counting and then sighed with relief. He was right—she had forgotten to include herself.
    As she and Niklas walked toward the rest of their community, Mr. Faust lit his pipe and smoke rolled from his lips. When he reached the circle of men he began speaking.
    “The bridge to Lisbon has been destroyed.” He lifted his hat and raked his fingers through his dark hair. “We will supper at the banks of the river tonight, and then tomorrow we will have to ford the water.”
    Amalie stepped forward. “Sister Karoline is not well.”
    Mr. Faust contemplated her words for a moment. “We can send one of the men ahead tonight to get a doctor from Lisbon.”
    She sighed with relief.
    He looked up at the sky. “We have at least two hours left of light tonight so we best be moving.”
    They all dispersed to travel alongside their appointed wagons, and Amalie walked slowly back to hers. Her stomach rumbled, ready for the supper meal. When they stopped, she would make soup for Karoline and stew for the rest of them from dried meat and their remaining vegetables.
    Her mind wandered back to Ebenezer and then forward to Amana. Friedrich and the others were sitting down for their meal now. The baas and her assistants were probably scrambling to place slices of roasted, warm meat on the platters and pour milk into pitchers for the diners. She would give just about anything for a cold glass of water or milk.
    In a few weeks she would be back in the familiarity of a kitchen. Her own kitchen. Since the time she was fourteen, she had spent almost every day cooking and cleaning. She’d spent her summers canning and the winters creating new recipes from their bounty. Some women felt confined inside a kitchen house, but she thrived in it. Sometimes, when her baas was gone for the day, she imagined herself to be a queen, reigning over the kettles and pots in her kingdom. She would never tell any of her friends about her imagined queenship—they would be right to accuse her of being proud instead of humble, even in her imagination—but it was a game she played nonetheless.
    Mounted on the side of her wagon was an oak barrel, and she ladled the water from it into a tin cup. The water had been baked by the sun, more hot than tepid in temperature, but as she sipped it, she pretended it was a glass of milk.
    In three weeks she would be in her new kitchen…and she would be with Friedrich. Was he as nervous about seeing her as she was to see him?
    As the months and then years went by, his letters became less frequent though they were always signed with his undying love for her. Over the years she’d wondered if he would wait for her, worried that by the time she arrived in Amana he would already have given his heart to someone else. Sometimes she even wondered if the years apart would sever the relationship they’d once enjoyed.
    Friedrich had always been passionate, even as a child. Instead of weighing every consequence like she did, he made his decisions on a whim; often she wished he would just sit down and think for five minutes before he made a choice that would affect his—and now her—life.
    The elders had given Friedrich the choice to come to Amana three years ago or wait for her. He’d chosen to come to the new Kolonie. Not because he didn’t love her, he said, but because he thought waiting together in Ebenezer until he was twenty-four would be torture. But now he was two years older than the age required to marry, and she hoped they were both mature enough to rationally think through their decisions instead of act upon their emotions.
    Even though