Free Brightest and Best by Olivia Newport

other Amish boys near his age. She slowed her pace as she followed Lindy.
    “My
daed
says I will go to school, but only for one year,” a boy said. “He doesn’t want to get involved in trouble, but I think it’s silly.”
    “Mine will keep my brothers and me home,” another boy said. “And I’m glad. I’m too old for school! My brothers know everything they need to know to help on the farm.”
    Ella loitered on the fringes of the booth as Lindy patted David on the shoulder in thanks and took her place among her display of colorfully painted birdhouses, children’s toys, and quilt racks.
    The boys were nearly unanimous in their opinion that it was ridiculous to think they needed to go to high school. One after another, they voiced the same opinion.
    Everyone except David, who said nothing.

    James watched his wife’s face gladden at the array of goods around them. The six pies she baked for the auction sold within minutes of putting them on display. It was the same at every auction, whether spring or late summer. Everyone new Miriam Lehman’s pies were the best in Geauga County.
    A few moments ago, they had been arm in arm. Now Miriam had slid her arm out of his elbow to lean her head toward Mrs. King’s, both of them pointing at quilts hanging from a web of lines strung between poles. James smiled, letting her go without protest. She deserved this day of pleasure and friendship, and he was glad to give it to her.
    They were fourteen and finishing the eighth grade when they first began to look at each other with particular interest. They weren’t even old enough to go to Singings, but they knew. James was certain first, and Miriam a few weeks later. They were young, but they would be together.
    They were sixteen when they began going to Singings, and James refused to offer a ride home to any other young woman. Miriam was the one for him.
    The day after her eighteenth birthday, they married. His father helped him acquire a small farm. Someday, James had thought, he would expand the acres. Someday, when he and Miriam had a houseful of children, sons and daughters, the promise of the future.
    Then the children did not come.
    At the beginning of December, James and Miriam would celebrate their forty-fourth anniversary and a life together that unfolded differently than either of them imagined in those early years.
    They were
aunti
and
onkel
to dozens of children, the offspring of their siblings. Betsy and Lindy had always shone luminous even among their own siblings. While James still wondered what it might have been like to raise children of his own, his heart was at its most tender when he thought of the sisters.
    One passed and the other chose the
English
world.
    Still James loved them both.

    Margaret draped the quilt over the end of her bed.
    She hadn’t intended to purchase anything more than a few token jars of tomatoes to supplement what she had grown in her own yard, but when she saw the precise arrangement of green, blue, and purple triangles and flawless stitching, suddenly she wanted the quilt more than anything else she saw all morning.
    Margaret had gone to the Amish auction accompanied by her ulterior motive—to understand more about these puzzling people who might—or might not—be the subject of considerable drama in sixteen short days. If they kept their children out of school, Margaret was sure the blame would be assigned to her failure to persuade them. If the first day of school passed peacefully, it would be no doing of Margaret’s. She had no delusions of sincere victory because she had no conviction of the merits of the challenge.
    The superintendent said he wanted a woman’s touch in the matter. A woman’s touch was personal and warm. What good could come from a heavy-handed approach? Margaret would work her way down her list of names and addresses and pay a call to each family, beginning Monday.
    The quilt looked lovely in the bedroom, though Margaret would take some time deciding if