Chapter 1.
Ettie Smith leaned over the worn kitchen counter, squinting down at the bright red filling pooling inside the pie crust.
“It’s raspberry, Elsa-May. Not strawberry. Not cherry. Raspberry. I can’t have you going around telling people otherwise.”
Elsa-May sniffed from her chair at the table where she was knitting.
“I never said it was strawberry. I said it smelled like strawberry. There’s a difference.”
“There is not.” Ettie pressed the crimped edges of the pie crust with the back of a fork. “You’ve been wrong about pies since 1973, when you mistook rhubarb for apple and gave poor Judd Stallwell the hiccups for a week. I think he was allergic.”
Elsa-May’s needles clicked steadily. “You’re exaggerating again. He didn’t have hiccups for a week. Can’t fix a man who eats first and asks questions later.”
Ettie slid the pie into the oven, and then wiped her hands on her apron. “And you can’t fix a sister who starts knitting mittens and ends up with socks big enough for a Clydesdale.”
Elsa-May stared at her knitting. “They’re not socks. They’re roomy pink mittens. I thought making them a bit larger would be practical.”
Ettie stared at Elsa-May’s new knitting glasses. “I don’t know what you’re seeing but whatever you’re knitting is white.”
“They’re pink, Ettie.”
Ettie sat down in front of her. “Your glasses are tinted pink. That’s why you can’t see colors properly.”
Elsa-May chuckled. “There’s nothing wrong with looking at life through rose-colored glasses. Makes everything feel better.” She looked over at Ettie. “Makes you look better.”
At that moment, the cat leapt onto the windowsill with a soft thump and a flick of her tail. On the way up, she swatted Elsa-May’s ball of yarn, sending it rolling across the floor.
“Hey!” Elsa-May leaned down and grabbed it before it got near the hot stove. “I ought to knit you a muzzle you bad kitty.”
The cat, unfazed, sat tall and peered out the window like she was waiting for something—or someone—to appear.
Snowy lifted his head from the rug in the corner and let out a single tired bark.
Elsa-May gave the cat one last glare, then returned to her knitting. “You didn’t have to bake this morning.”
“I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit around thinking about Lydia. It kept going round in my head. One moment she’s there, and the next…”
“She’s gone,” Elsa-May said, softly.
“And Jacob,” Ettie added. “He’s only fourteen or thereabouts. He’s not a child, but he still needs his mother.”
“He’s staying with the grandparents now. I found that out yesterday.”
Ettie nodded slowly. “It’s just… not natural. Dying at that age.”
“A lot of people die young.”
“I know, but not all of them drown in a creek wearing Englisher clothes.”
Elsa-May paused her knitting. “You think she was murdered?”
Ettie thought about it for a while. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t sit right with me.”
Elsa-May frowned, her needles still. “There were no police involved that I know of—nothing suspicious. So just don’t get all weird again. Don’t go making a fool of yourself again.”
“I wasn’t—what do you mean again?” Ettie asked.
“Like when you said the bishop’s buggy was stolen, and he’d only parked it behind the outbuilding.”
“It looked stolen.”
“It was parked, Ettie, parked! It hadn’t gone anywhere.”
“Well, we did have an incident with stolen buggies, and I wasn’t wrong about that.”
Elsa-May glanced up at the ceiling. “Ancient history. Now, what will we wear to the funeral if our clothes don’t dry in time?”
Ettie frowned at her sister. “What do you mean? We’ll wear our Sunday best of course.”
“I don’t know. We washed our Sunday best dresses early this morning. I thought the sun was going to come out, but in case it doesn’t—what will we wear?”
“Oh no,” Ettie muttered. “You didn’t. You washed our Sunday dresses? Mine too?”
“I had to. They had gravy spots!”
Ettie glanced at the clock on the wall. “We leave in two hours, Elsa-May.”
“I know this, Ettie. I just said they’re on the line. What more can I do? I can’t force the sun to shine.”
Ettie walked to the back door with a sigh, opened it, and looked out. The dresses were still hanging on the clothesline, limp and damp. Fog clung to the field beyond the yard and the sky remained gray. “They’re wet. I can see that from here. They look like they just came out of the washer.”
“It’s breezy, so it’s still possible they might dry in time,” Elsa-May shot back.
“It’s foggy!”
Elsa-May didn’t answer.
Ettie closed the door with a thud. “We’re going to show up at a funeral looking like we slept in the barn. In our second best clothes.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Ettie. I’ll wear my brown dress and you can wear something else.”
“You cannot wear the brown one. It’s got a crooked hem. Wear something else.”
“I feel brown is a good color for a funeral. I’ll pin it up or something.”
Ettie shook her head. “That won’t work. You’ll probably poke yourself with the pins or trip, and they’ll stick into you.”
“Then I’ll sit carefully and walk slowly.”
“You always walk slowly,” Ettie grunted.
Elsa-May gave a little shrug. “Lydia always said my brown dress made me look sturdy.”
Ettie sighed. “She meant wide.”
“Well, wide’s sturdy too.”
Ettie groaned. “I’ll have to wear my dark blue dress. I should be wearing my Sunday best. If Lydia can see us from heaven, she’s going to be shaking her head.”
“She’d understand.”
“She’d laugh. And then she’d tell you to stand in the back row where no one can see your crooked hem.”
They sat for a while, and Ettie did her best to calm herself. There was nothing she could do now.
“For the next funeral, I’m going to hide the dress I want to wear.”
Elsa-May kept knitting. “I was only trying to help. You don’t have to be so bossy.”
“Me? Bossy?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not the one—” Ettie stopped mid-sentence as Kelly the cat hopped onto the table between them. Ettie promptly picked her up and placed her on the floor.
The cat strolled over and made herself comfortable beside Snowy, who gave a half-hearted grunt but didn’t move a muscle.
“You were saying, Ettie?”
Ettie sighed and shook her head. “Nothing.”
Elsa-May leaned across the table. “Nothing to say?”
“Too much to say, that’s the problem.”
“Well, as Mamm used to say, if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything.”
“I suppose you thought you were doing the right thing. I just imagined myself going to the funeral feeling comfortable, wearing my best dress.”
“It’s not your funeral, Ettie. What does it matter what you wear? Who will even care?”
“Only me, I suppose.” Ettie stood and opened the back door again. She looked toward the clothesline one last time and murmured, “Let that breeze pick up, let the pie bake through, and let Maggie be five minutes late.”
