Free Fire in the Night by Linda Byler Page A

girls all married before twenty. What are you waiting on?”
    Fannie snapped a dishcloth and folded it meticulously, without looking at her.
    “There’s no hurry.”
    “Sure there is. A girl blooms like a rose at age sixteen, and it’s all downhill from there.” She laughed ridiculously, becoming hysterical at her own joke.
    Sarah smiled weakly, and decided one ill-mannered person could erase weeks of gratitude for the wonder of human companionship. She decided to stand her ground.
    “I have dreams of becoming an old maid and having my own dry goods store.”
    Her words carried well, reaching Mam’s ears as she ducked behind a washer to conceal her wide grin and jiggling shoulders.
    Fannie finished and left hastily, splashing clumsily through the rain in her large black Skechers, her bonnet stuck haphazardly on her head, no doubt flattening the questionably white covering beneath it.
    Inside, Mam shook a finger at Sarah.
    “Now, Sarah!”
    “Well. She could have stayed quiet. She’s simply so nosy. It’s ridiculous.”
    “Her heart’s in the right place, though.”
    “You sure?”
    Mam didn’t bother answering but asked Sarah if she really wanted to be an old maid.
    “You should say ‘single girl.’”
    “Or leftover blessing? No. I don’t want to be alone all my life. Of course not. I want my own house and yard and garden. Just like you. But…well, Mam, you know how it is.”
    “Is it still?”
    Sarah nodded, which produced a drooping of Mam’s kind features.
    “You do try and let him go? Out of your thoughts?”
    “Yes, Mam. I do. Seriously, the harder I try, the worse it gets.”
    Sarah launched into a colorful account of her burned hand, the way Matthew reacted, Rose’s innocence, her guilt. But she stopped the story there, reserving the attractive blond young man and hiding him from her mother’s scrutiny, knowing disapproval was forthcoming.
    They folded soft towels, the clean-smelling linens, and were careful to test the heat in the dryers containing the dresses and black aprons.
    “Well, Sarah, you know I’ll always tell you the same thing. This time is no different. Pray, pray, pray. Always. You will discern God’s will for your life once you have given up your own will, and I’m afraid Matthew is simply that. Your own will—wanting something you can’t have. You know how much human nature tends to run along those lines. Just like Aesop’s fables. Remember the story of the fox who wanted the grapes that were out of his reach?”
    “And when he finally acquired them, they were sour, and he wondered why he’d wanted them in the first place,” Sarah finished for her mother, nodding good-naturedly.
    Jim, the driver, was gruff and short with them on the way home. He required a twenty-dollar payment, saying he had insurance to pay, and he sure wasn’t making any money hauling people to the Laundromat.
    Mam handed over the twenty-dollar bill, but her eyes sparkled too brightly, and she slammed the front door with plenty of muscle behind it.
    Sarah ducked her head and splashed through the rain with the hampers of laundry, happy to put it all away in the drawers and closets, thankful to have clean, dry clothes, for now.
    Surely the rain would stop soon. She paused by the window of her room and saw the muddy churning waters of the lower Pequea Creek had risen way beyond its banks. She shivered, a foreboding clutching her reason.
    The new barn was stately, built solidly in the old pattern. The exterior’s new ribbed metal siding was white, the color of the old barn. New cupolas proudly straddled the peak of the roof, the weather vanes turning as the wind changed direction, guarding the Beiler farm with their resilience. Look at us, they seemed to say. We’re new and better, here for the next hundred years.
    Sarah smiled and was glad.
    The old stones and timbers were gone, but good had come of it as well, Dat said. The new barn was better. The ventilation design, the materials—everything