The Amish Clockmaker (28 page)

“What do you mean?” he asked, his gaze fixed on hers, terrified of whatever she might say next.

She glanced around and then lowered her voice. “It's your mother,” she whispered.

Clayton exhaled, his heart filled with relief. As long as Miriam's problem wasn't with him, they could find a way to work it out.

“She's not exactly thrilled to have me around,” Miriam added.

“Don't be silly. She's fine with having you here.”

Miriam gave him a stern glance. “You're not around all day, Clayton, so you don't know what it's like. She doesn't want me doing any of the cooking, and she hovers around like a persistent bee whenever I try to do any cleaning. I finally decided to try pitching in outside, out of the way. Then yesterday she told me she didn't want me doing any barn chores either. Other than working in the garden, that doesn't leave much.”

He was sorry to hear this, but he wasn't exactly surprised. Despite having raised six daughters,
Mamm
had always been very protective of her position as matriarch of the house.

“Like yesterday afternoon,” Miriam continued. “Your nephew Titus came by with his little sister to deliver some supplies for the animals. I was helping them put stuff away when we realized the storage area was kind of a mess, so the three of us set about cleaning and organizing the tack. Then all of a sudden your mother showed up and told me I shouldn't be out there at all.”

“Uh… well, in your condition maybe… ”

Miriam cut in, relieving Clayton of having to find the right words to complete his sentence.

“I'm just having a baby, Clayton. Women have been doing this since the dawn of creation. I am not going to faint dead away from washing and organizing a few halters and lead ropes.”

“
Ya
, but… ” Clayton let his words fade. He had no idea what a woman should or shouldn't do when she was with child.

“I'm perfectly capable of doing my fair share of the chores around here.”

“Well, maybe what she was talking about was just climbing up the ladder to the hayloft,” he ventured, feeling as if he were being stretched between two forces larger than himself.

“She told you about
that
?” Miriam's eyes widened in anger.

Clayton sensed his own temper flaring. “Told me about what?”

“That she doesn't want me on the ladder to the hayloft.”

“Miriam, I don't see why—”

“I like the hayloft. I told you that already. I like it up there.”

“Yes, but the ladder is—”

“The ladder is just a ladder! Did you not just tell me this home was now my home too?”

Clayton let out a long breath. “I did.”

“And did you mean it?”

“Of course I meant it.”

“Then if I want to clean
our
tack supplies, I should be able to. And if I want to climb up and sit in
our
hayloft, I think I should be able to do that too. Believe me, the time will come when I won't be able to do either. I'm smart enough to know when that time gets here.”

She was right. He could see that now. “I'll talk to my mother. But do be careful on the ladder. And don't overdo it. Will you promise me that?”

She nodded as she crunched on another cracker, which she swallowed hastily. “I don't think Lucy likes me very much. She wishes you had never said yes to my parents.”

For a second Clayton could only sit there and stare. Then he glanced behind him to make sure his mother wasn't coming down the stairs. He lowered his voice. “That's not true. She likes you very much. She always has.”

“You mean she used to like me. Until I ruined your life. And hers, apparently.”

Instinctively, Clayton reached for Miriam's shoulders to force her to look at him. “You did
not
ruin my life. You didn't ruin hers. She doesn't wish I had never said yes to your parents. She's just adjusting to having a new person around. Give her time.”

Miriam shook her head. “She doesn't like me, Clayton. I can see it in her eyes.”

“What you see in her eyes is grief over losing my father. That's all. Okay? The rest will work itself out in time. And if it doesn't, well… ”

“Well what?” she asked, sounding hopeless.

He met her eyes and gave a slight grin. “Well, there's room out back for a little
daadi haus.
If I have to, I'll build one for her and move her out there myself.”

Miriam giggled, and the sparkle that flashed in her eyes for the briefest of moments made Clayton's heart sing.

“And even if she did feel that way, I don't,” he continued, growing more serious again. “I don't, Miriam. You married me, not her. And I have no regrets. I never will.”

Tentatively, he reached and drew his wife close. It felt awkward at first, but then she relaxed and rested her head on his chest.

“Sometimes I think I am dreaming,” she whispered.

“Me too,” he said, speaking the words into her hair.

T
WENTY
-T
WO

M
iriam had visited Clayton in the clock shop a number of times over the years, more so when she was younger and didn't have an outside job. As a teenager, sometimes she would bring down a plate of cookies or a basket of muffins and then just linger in the showroom for a while, listening to the gentle ticking that filled the air or running her fingers along the beautiful edges and lines of the
Englisch
clocks that surrounded her. As she grew older, she had come less and less until she hardly ever showed up any more. Clayton couldn't remember the last time she'd been there.

Now, as he heard the back door swing open just before noon, he found himself almost feeling nervous. Would she still love it here? Would she enjoy working alongside him? Would she, too, find the days flying by with all that was to be done?

Fortunately, she'd come during a lull in customers. Clayton was at the worktable, putting the finishing touches on some complicated mechanics, so he set down his tools, stood, and was about to head into the back room to greet her when she appeared in the doorway, an oversized lunch pail in her hands.

“No more curtain,” she commented, looking up over her head to where it used to hang.

“I took it down once
Daed
… once I started handling the store all on my own.”
Once I could no longer run and hide from the curious stares of my customers.

Miriam looked around, taking everything in. “The place seems smaller without your father in it,” she said, her eyes landing on the far side of the worktable. “I suppose that doesn't make sense. It should seem bigger with one less person here.”

“I know what you mean, though,” he replied, realizing in that moment he hadn't moved his father's chair. It still sat there at the far end of the table, as if
Daed
might return any second, take a seat, and get back to work. “I feel that way too every time I come in.”

Clayton reached out a hand and took the pail from Miriam, noting the familiar anticipation in her eyes as she gazed toward the showroom area ahead. Though it wasn't a huge space, they had managed to get the most out of it. Mounted practically floor to ceiling were all of the wall clocks, interspersed here and there with the grandfather clocks. At the center were glass-fronted cases that held the mantel clocks, carriage clocks, Chaucer clocks, table clocks, chronometers, and other small, non-mounting timekeeping devices.

To Clayton's delight, Miriam moved there now and began doing what she'd always done when she came to the store: stroll along the displays, walking slowly and admiring each clock individually. Both Plain and fancy clocks were available, but Miriam lingered only over the fancy ones, pausing at the prettiest and most ornate and studying them with awe.

All around, gentle sounds of ticking and clicking filled the air like a symphony, though Clayton rarely ever noticed or heard it anymore. He knew some people didn't like the sound, that they considered it more a distracting, untimed cacophony. But he could never understand that. He loved the way his shop sounded. He also loved the way it looked, the dozens of swinging pendulums like tiny little hands waving hello each time he glanced their direction. He even loved how the room smelled—fresh cut wood, varnish, linseed oil, all of it. The whole shop entranced him. From what he could tell of Miriam's smile, she seemed to feel the same way.

Thank goodness.

There were still no customers by the time she'd made the rounds of the room, so Clayton suggested they lock up for half an hour and eat outside at the picnic table. As they headed off together, he explained to her how the schedule usually worked, saying he and
Daed
used to eat lunch at home every
day but that for the past year or so there seemed to be a lot more tourists coming to Lancaster County, especially in the summer and fall, and because many of them seemed to be interested in Amish-made clocks, traffic at the store had been steadily increasing.
Mamm
would send something down with them in the mornings, and they would close for a quick half hour at midday, eating out here under the trees or in the shop, depending on the weather.

They sat across from each other now, and Clayton watched as Miriam unloaded the food she'd brought, a delicious spread of red beet eggs,
boova shenkel
perogies still hot from the stove, sliced apples, and crackle top cookies. Thinking of their conversation earlier, he didn't ask if she'd made any of it herself, but he had a feeling at least the cookies were hers.

“This is great,” he said before biting into the fried potato-and-meat pie.

“It really is,” she replied, and when he looked up at her, he realized she wasn't talking about the food. She was gazing at their surroundings—the beautiful old oak tree, the grassy slope of the lawn, the cloudless blue sky. “I never noticed you sitting out here before—and I grew up right next door.”

Clayton swallowed. “That's why I like it. It's kind of hidden, even though it's in the middle of everything.”

It pleased him deeply that she liked this little part of the homestead as much as he did. As she picked at the food in front of her, taking tiny bites here and there, he considered telling her about the last time he'd come here with his father, when the man had deeded him this rectangle of land as a vote of confidence.
Daed
had said it was “just between the two of us,” but Miriam was his wife now. Had
Daed
suspected that Clayton would ever end up married, he probably would have added, “and your future spouse too, of course.”

But before he could begin his tale, Miriam began to speak, and the conversation headed in another direction.

“Brenda had the most beautiful backyard. Did I ever tell you that?” she said, her eyes taking on a dreamy, faraway look. “She had this one thing… She called it a pavilion but it was really just a screened-in gazebo. I used to love to go out there and sit in it whenever I had a break. It was so lovely, looking out over the pretty flowers and trees and even a little man-made pond. Can you imagine that, Clayton? Having a pond dug in your own backyard just because it's pretty?”

He wasn't sure how to respond, so he just gave her a nod and took a big bite of perogie. Truth was, he couldn't imagine a more
Englisch
thing to do. What was so wrong with taking a walk to see a God-made pond?

Miriam gave a heavy sigh and the wistful look on her face faded away. Both made Clayton uncomfortable, so before he lost her again, he launched in about work and she seemed happy for the distraction.

As they finished their meal, he filled her in on the basics of manning the front counter—how to handle the customers, how to fill out the paperwork, what to do with the money, and so on. She seemed to take it all in stride, and from the questions she asked, he realized that her past work experiences were going to be helpful to her here—not just her year at the furniture store, but even the short-lived job with Brenda Peterson. More than most Amish women, Miriam had spent time with finer things. As he'd already told her, she knew what
Englischers
wanted.