Chapter 4: Whispers at the Quilting Bee

The bishop’s parlor had been cleared of its heavy oak furniture, leaving only a wide expanse of polished floorboards. Across the center stretched the quilt frame, propped on four sturdy legs, holding taut the top of a nine-patch pieced from every shade of calico in the district. Women gathered like bees around honeycomb, each with needle and thread flashing in the lamplight. The air smelled of starch, lamp oil, and Sister Leah’s molasses cookies cooling on the sideboard.

Marybeth Yoder found her usual place on the north side of the frame. She smoothed her apron, threaded her needle, and bent close to her work. The first stitch always felt like crossing a threshold—once the needle dipped through the layers, the room and its voices melted into rhythm. Normally the chatter soothed her. Tonight it pressed heavy.

Anna Stoltzfus plopped down beside her with the graceless cheer of a farm cat falling off a fence. “You’ve got the neatest stitches in Lancaster County,” she whispered, elbow nudging Marybeth’s ribs. “I swear you could quilt the bishop’s sermon into cloth and not a soul would see the seams.”

Marybeth gave a polite smile. “A quilt isn’t for show. It’s for warmth.”

“Mm,” Anna hummed, eyes sharp as pins. “And who’s keeping you warm these days?”

Heat flared in Marybeth’s cheeks. She bent her head closer to her block, hoping the lamplight would make her blush seem nothing more than exertion. “Anna, please.”

But Anna thrived on the scent of secrets. “I only mean,” she said airily, “Elijah Miller’s name has been on every tongue since he returned. And tongues wag faster than they should.”

Before Marybeth could scold her, the door opened. Three men entered carrying a trestle table from the barn. At the front walked Elijah, sleeves rolled, forearms shining from the evening air. He bore his half of the weight as if it were no burden at all, shoulders broad as the lintels he planed smooth. His hair curled damp at the temples from exertion.

Marybeth’s stitches faltered. The needle tugged the cloth uneven, puckering the patchwork. Sister Ruth, ever vigilant, peered over spectacles. “Child, don’t tug so tight. You’ll spoil the square.”

Marybeth murmured an apology, forcing her hands steady. But Elijah glanced across the room. Just a flicker—nothing bold, nothing untoward—but enough to pull her chest taut like a line of quilting thread. He set down the table, nodded once in solemn courtesy, and left with the others.

The moment he was gone, whispers buzzed like hornets. “He’s stronger than before.” “Earnest, too.” “And unmarried,” a voice added, lingering on the word as if it were a challenge.

Marybeth stitched harder, each pull of the thread a prayer: Set a watch before my heart.

Anna leaned in, smirking. “You’ll have to work quick, before Sister Miriam sets her cap. She’s already planning which quilt to bring to the next frolic.”

Marybeth’s laugh came sharper than she intended. “If Sister Miriam wants him, she can have him.”

The older women chuckled knowingly. “That’s what girls always say,” Sister Ruth said, “until the Lord makes them say different.”

Marybeth bent her head lower, but her ears burned. She imagined Elijah in the workshop, hands steady on the plane, smoothing wood the way she longed to smooth her heart.

The quilting stretched late. Candles guttered low, and women sang hymns soft as crickets. The bishop dozed in his rocker, chin sunk to chest, while the younger children napped in corners. Marybeth lost count of her stitches, though her fingers never faltered. Her mind wandered to the creamery, to the thunderstorm that had trapped her and Elijah in Widow Lapp’s springhouse, to the butter paddle hidden under her pillow.

Anna nudged her again. “You’re somewhere else,” she whispered.

“I’m here.”

“You’re not.”

Marybeth forced her gaze to the cloth. “You imagine too much.”

“Better that than feel nothing,” Anna said lightly. Then, more serious: “Just don’t let the whole district imagine along with me.”

When the bee ended, lanterns lit the path outside. Marybeth stepped into the cool night, basket of scraps on her arm. Crickets shrilled in the hedges. She longed for quiet, but Anna’s words echoed with the others: unmarried, cap set, don’t tug so tight.

At the hitching post stood Elijah, adjusting the harness on Brother Yoder’s mare. He looked up as she passed. Again, only a nod. But his eyes held hers a fraction longer than courtesy required. Enough for her pulse to skip.

Anna’s voice cut through the dark behind her: “See? Even his nod puckers your cloth.”

Marybeth quickened her steps, refusing to give Anna the satisfaction of reply.

She reached home late. The house was still, her mother already asleep. Marybeth undressed in the dark, slid beneath her quilt, and reached under the pillow for the butter paddle’s smooth handle. Cool wood warmed quickly in her palm. She held it as if it might still carry Elijah’s touch.

Whispers pressed at the edges of her thoughts, as persistent as crickets. Desire, she realized, was a needle: it pierced clean, left holes even when pulled free, and stitched her into patterns she had not chosen.

Sleep came heavy, but not without dreams. And when dawn broke over the cornfields, she knew two things with painful clarity:

Whispers, once loosed, cannot be sewn back in.
Some stitches change the pattern forever.