A Home for Lydia (The Pebble Creek Amish Series) by Vannetta Chapman Page B

around the cabins the day before that she’d gone home looking as if she’d crawled underneath them. Today she was wearing a clean dress and a crisp apron. The light brown hair that tended to escape at will was tucked neatly under a fresh kapp , and her face didn’t bear a single smudge of dirt. It occurred to him that she was of marrying age, and he wouldn’t have her as an employee for long. The thought annoyed him more than it should have, so he pushed it away.
    Lydia glanced first at Miriam, and he thought she wouldn’t answer, but finally she sat up straighter and began ticking points off on her fingers. “We aren’t centered in the middle of town. We aren’t a retail store. We don’t have Drake’s resources. And we wouldn’t operate the way he does even if we did.”
    “Excellent points, especially the last one.”
    “So why did we go?”
    “Because he has customers and we don’t.”
    “If that’s what we have to do, I’m not interested.”
    “Are you interested in having a job?”
    Lydia opened her mouth to protest, but then she clamped it shut again. Instead of responding, she folded her arms tightly across her chest and glared at him.
    Gabe cleared his throat but waited for Aaron’s nod before he spoke up. “Lydia is right that there’s little about the man to admire.Miriam and I were on the committee assigned to work with him before Amish Anthem was built. He’s incorrigible.”
    “And yet he’s successful.” Aaron reached for his kaffi .
    “Apparently,” Gabe conceded.
    “It’s obvious he is whether we like it or not.” David stopped eating and sank into a chair. “We might not agree with his methods, but customers weren’t standing around with their hands in their pockets. They were handing over money as fast as Drake’s minions could put it in the register.”
    “How does this affect us?” Lydia’s voice was as sharp and brittle as the small rocks layering the parking lot outside the window. “How does his store, which is disgusting and a disgrace to all we call being Plain, help us in any way?”
    Aaron was still standing near the end of the table. He put down his kaffi and stuck his hands in his pockets. The notes in front of him said it all, but he didn’t need to look at the notes. All he’d needed to know was if his plan was possible, the plan that had first rooted in his heart when Elizabeth had handed him the badly drawn picture.
    Seeing Drake’s store had confirmed that his ideas, and what had been done previously in his hometown in Indiana, could be transferred here to Wisconsin. But he couldn’t do it alone. He’d need help.
    How did he explain it all to them? And why did he suddenly care so much?
    Miriam was the one who opened the door for him. “You weren’t looking at what Drake was doing. You were looking at his consumer base.”
    “ Ya . Partly. Mainly.”
    “I still don’t understand,” Lydia said.
    “Good students listen and learn, like you did in class, Lydia.” Miriam was smiling now as she handed Rachel to Gabe and stood to cut a piece of the breakfast cake. “We went to Amish Anthem today to learn if it was possible to be successful commercially, with the Englisch , in this area.”
    Aaron nodded again. He thought of interrupting her, but he decided it might be better if his plan came from her rather than from him.
    “But we operate cabins,” Lydia pointed out. “A place for people to stay.”
    “And yet they are empty.” David glanced out at the vacant parking lot.
    Silence filled the room as they all considered the truth of his statement.
    “In our meetings, Drake bellowed on and on about the Amish experience—how he wanted to allow people to live the Plain life. It was ludicrous, because he stepped from his private jet straight into the downtown Cashton council room, never straying to the dirt road of a farm.” Gabe leaned back, Rachel cradled in the crook of his arm. “Maybe he was onto something, though.”
    Miriam turned toward