Emma Blooms At Last Read Online Free Page A

the eight o’clock church service that preceded the wedding. As one of Abby’s sidesitters, Emma was hoping to help with some of the work before she spent the entire morning seated beside the bride.
    The next couple of hours sped by. The ladies from around the neighborhood had cooked for so many weddings that the flurry was well organized. Lois Yutzy carried in the white tiered wedding cake she’d made in her bakery, where several women had also helped her bake the bread for today’s feast. While Lois arranged the cake on the eck, the raised corner table where the wedding party would sit, Beulah Mae Nissley was supervising her husband, Preacher Abe, and Abby’s brother, Preacher Sam Lambright, as they constructed the metal steam table. Amanda Brubaker’s twoolder daughters were setting silverware bundles and glasses on the dinner tables, while other women began slicing loaves of fresh bread.
    Emma looked up from the silverware she’d been wrapping in paper napkins and hurried over to open the greenhouse door. “That’s quite a load of pies!” she said as Rosemary, her neighbor, pulled her tall-sided cart inside. After marrying Matt Lambright a couple of months ago, Rosemary was already off to a busy start with her home-based baking business.
    â€œJah, my new oven can handle a dozen pies at a time,” Rosemary replied pertly. She smiled as her toddler, Katie, and her young sister-in-law, Beth Ann, burst in to help set the table. “It seems that no matter how many pies I make for Lois’s shop, they sell out every day. And, of course, Matt, Katie, and Titus work hard at being my taste testers.”
    When Rosemary wheeled her cart toward the dessert table, Emma felt a stab of jealousy. After having learned the hard way that Matt didn’t love her, Emma was wishing he hadn’t moved his sheep to the farm next to her house when he’d partnered with Titus Yutzy. All of them seemed so
happy
—and that rubbed her the wrong way, too.
    Get over it,
Emma chided herself. It did no good to regret the years of affection she’d wasted on Matt. When she realized it was after seven o’clock, she decided to go home to be sure Mamm and Dat were dressed and almost ready to head over to the Lambrights’. What with her two sisters’ families staying with them, her parents were easily distracted.
    When Emma stepped outside, however, she spotted James walking between their parents. He called to her with a knowing grin, “The folks were ready early, so they wanted to come on over—to greet folks as they arrive, you know. Our sisters and their tribes will be along shortly.”
    There was no missing the bright excitement on Mamm’s and Dat’s faces. They’d been waiting for years to see their only son married, and they couldn’t be happier that he was so in love with Abby Lambright. “Jah, better claim your seats early,” Emma teased as she met up with them. “It might well be standing room only at Sam’s place today.”
    â€œIt’s the wedding everybody hereabouts has been waiting for,” her dat exclaimed as he clapped James on the back. His dark eyes sparkled in his wrinkled face. “And we’ll be planning for
your
wedding next, Emma. Ain’t so?”
    â€œJust saw the Brubaker fellows coming up the road, matter of fact,” her mother chimed in. “And sure enough, Jerome’s driving a matched pair of Percheron mules. Looks like a successful man come courting, if you ask me.”
    Well, I didn’t ask you!
Emma almost blurted. It was bad enough that Abby and James had paired her with Jerome Lambright to serve as their sidesitters today—another obvious matchmaking ploy. There was no time to respond to her parents’ remarks, however. She guided them off the lane and onto the frosty grass to make way for some other families’ incoming rigs.
    Then two tall black mules trotted up