The Postcard by Beverly Lewis

will do you gut.”
    Rachel sighed. “Maybe tomorrow.”
    Susanna turned, watching her daughter place freshly laundered cloth napkins, dinner plates, and the supper silverware on the wooden tray. Then, slowly, Rachel moved toward the dining room, shuffling her bare feet across the floor, feeling her way as she’d come to do.
    Maybe tomorrow . . .
    Susanna had tired of Rachel’s alt Leier— same old story. Would tomorrow ever come? she wondered. And if so, what would it take to move Rachel past her complacency?
    Somewhat annoyed, she opened the screen door and went out to sit on the flagstone patio in the waning sun, watching Annie and their lively pet run back and forth through the wide yard. They chased each other around and through the oval gazebo.
    There was a hint of woodsmoke in the air, and Susanna relished the scent, breathing it in. A flock of birds flapped their wings high overhead, and she suspected they were making preliminary plans to head south.
    She delighted in the hydrangeas just beginning to turn bright pink, spilling long and bushy into the yard beyond the house. Soon they’d bronze with age as September faded. The lawn was still green, but she could see it beginning to lose its lush color, leaning toward autumn dormancy. When had that happened? she wondered. The circle of seasons was evident all about her, an inkling of the fall brilliance—reds, oranges, and golds—to come.
    Annie was smack-dab in her springtime, while Susanna and Benjamin were fully enjoying the early winter of their lives.
    But Rachel . . . where was she ? To look at her, you’d think she was older than all of them put together! Yet Susanna forced herself to dwell on the bright side and silently rejoiced that her widowed daughter possessed a resolute spirit. The girl was ingenious when it came to needlework, especially crocheting. Why, she’d designed the prettiest pattern for several of the bow-top canopy beds upstairs and seemed right joyful in making them. When the womenfolk gathered for apple picking or canning, Rachel put herself in the middle of things, always a smile on her face. It was at such times Susanna suspected the key to bringing Rachel out of her shell was keeping her hands busy. ’Least then her mind couldn’t torment her so.
    “Come along now, Annie,” she called, chuckling at the girl’s antics. So like her mother she was, playing and enjoying the out-of-doors. Or how her mother used to be, was more like it.
    Rachel had always been the last one to come dragging into the house when the dinner bell was rung, back at the old homestead. As a girl, she’d rather have stayed outside, even all night long, than come inside to a hot house in the summer, or, as she liked to say, to the dunkel Haus— dark house in winter. Young Rachel had decided that houses were dismal places of retreat compared to the shining meadows and ample pastureland surrounding the large farmhouse. Even now, Susanna surmised that Rachel missed the farm where she’d romped through the fields of her childhood, helping her older brothers and sisters work the soil and bring in the harvest.
    Getting up, Susanna called to Annie again. “Bring Copper with you, please. Time to wash up for supper.”
    “Already ’tis?” Annie asked, eyes wide. “Seems like we just come out here.”
    “Jah, I ’spect it does.” And she headed into the house.
    Susanna found Benjamin washing up as she hurried into the kitchen. “Smells gut, jah?” she said, greeting him.
    “It’s bound to be appeditlich —delicious—if you’re doin’ the cooking.” His smile stretched across his tawny, wrinkled face. He wore his best white shirt and tan suspenders, all dressed up for supper. It was his gray hair that looked a bit oily, and she suspected he’d been out working all afternoon in his straw hat, tidying up the front lawn. The man never tired of odd jobs, whether it was around the B&B or over at the old homestead, helping his sons work the