Wild Indigo by Judith Stanton

frowned. “Please don’t.”
    She dropped it down. Somehow she had pushed the game too far. “What must you think of me?”
    She bit into her lip. Jacob Blum was a man, a father, a pillar of the town. Why was she always and ever again a silly girl in front of him? “I was frolicking like a fox cub.”
    â€œA vixen. A very pretty one,” he insisted.
    She shook her head. “I have always been too wild.”
    Sudden tenderness softened his handsome countenance. She couldn’t fathom why. Misconduct was her besetting sin. She couldn’t hope to hide it from him now.
    â€œOh, Retha. Not too wild.” As if to comfort her in her dismay, he calmly draped the gown across a black-sleeved forearm. “We will use this soon enough. I will just put it on the bed.”
    He stepped down into a room beyond the parlor and disappeared. Alone for the first time since morning, Retha examined her surroundings. Except for the scattered instruments and broken glass, the room was immaculate. Its paned windows opened to the east, but smaller ones in adjoining rooms admitted the last slant of evening sun. Yellow light warmed brass fittings on desks and glanced off glass cobblers’ lamps on shelves.
    Off those, that is, that had survived her assault.
    Hastily she stooped to pick up his tools, not knowing what they were or what they were for, and replaced them at the lipped edge of the slanted desk. She wrinkled her brow. The shards of glass were another matter. She gathered up her skirt and was cautiously depositing them in it when she heard Jacob’s tread behind her.
    â€œNever mind that.” He gave her a reassuring hand up, helped her transfer the broken glass onto a pewter plate, and brushed up the rest with a rag. Feeling useless, she stood by, eyes fixed on the wide planks of the polished floor. A slippered toe peeked out from under her new skirt. She withdrew it from her husband’s view and sighed, resigned to confessing her sins.
    â€œI have been careless.”
    For a moment he said nothing. The day’s heat radiated up from the floor, off the walls.
    â€œHow do you like your new home?” he asked after what seemed to Retha a long and possibly angry silence. But his voice was mild, even.
    She breathed with relief. He was giving her a fresh start. “’Tis beautiful, so clean, Brother—Brother—Jacob.”
    He snorted with amusement, overlooking her clumsiness. “An illusion, you can be sure of that. Let’s see. The Ernsts have had my children for”—he studied the face of a gleaming watch he took from a waistcoat pocket—“all of nine hours and forty minutes. Their house is now a shambles.”
    Retha looked up. Surely he was joking. “They were at the wedding the whole afternoon.”
    â€œMy point exactly. They need much less time than that.”
    She scanned the immaculate room. “This is no shambles.”
    â€œAh. The Single Sisters’ other gift to us was cleaning up the house. It hasn’t looked this good since Christina—”
    Breaking off awkwardly, he took a step away. Retha could see his throat work. Since Christina what? she wanted to know. Would he say died , or would he say went home , as Moravians usually said? She had been at the funeral herself, and it had been a sad, sad day, those three lost children and the large, grief-stricken man. Even she had felt sad to see a kindly woman gone home so young.
    Retha studied her bitten-off nails. At least theweeks of doing laundry had removed the last traces of dyes, she thought, waiting to hear more about Christina Blum.
    After tense moments Jacob gripped her elbow, inclining his head toward the kitchen, and guided her toward it.
    â€œCome. They left us a repast as well.”
    She made a face. “I could not eat another bite.”
    Yet more than the thought of food, she resisted his touch. It made her feel strange in ways she didn’t