An Amish Family Christmas

by Leslie Gould

  “Wow.” Moriah turned toward Noelle. “Great job.”

  Noelle’s face grew warm.

  Salome put the knife down and met Noelle’s gaze. “In fact, I think you should take over the business. I could use a break, frankly. And your ideas really paid off.”

  Noelle stammered, “I’ll need help.”

  “I’ll help,” Moriah said. “It would be my pleasure.”

  Noelle smiled and simply said, “Denki.” Her mind whirled with ideas. They could try new recipes and research more packaging before March. She looked forward to working with her niece and rebuilding their relationship.

  Soon, Englisch nieces and nephews, who’d never joined the church and had driven to the market, arrived. Many gave their parents rides. Other family members who had joined the church arrived in buggies, all bundled against the biting cold. Of course there were lots of children and babies and starry-eyed newlyweds.

  For the first time in three years, Noelle wasn’t jealous. And she realized that by taking charge and planning the celebration, she was thinking about others more than herself. That truly brought her joy.

  Noelle kept an eye on Moriah as they moved to the dining area and spread plastic tablecloths over the tables. She seemed to be doing all right. She seemed to be smiling more than Noelle had seen in the last year.

  As Noelle greeted a niece who hadn’t joined the Amish, along with her husband and their new baby girl, who was Greta’s age, she thought of Jesse. He hadn’t returned Dat’s message. Would he and Greta come? Or would they stay far away from her?

  When it was finally time to eat, they all gathered around in a circle. Dat cleared his throat and said, “I’m so glad all of you were able to come on such short notice. A Family Christmas is just what this old man needs.”

  Moriah called out, “It’s what we all need.”

  Several people laughed while others murmured in agreement.

  Dat smiled and said, “On this day, we are thankful for our Lord Jesus coming to earth as our savior. Our faith in Him gives us hope. Today we are especially thankful for the peace and joy that only He can bring.” He bowed his head. “Let’s pray.”

  As Dat started the silent prayer, the dining hall door creaked open, and Jesse, holding a sleeping Greta, slipped inside. Noelle met his gaze and he smiled shyly. He made his way around the circle, and she stepped to the right to make room for him.

  Jesse shifted Greta to one arm and, as Noelle bowed her head to pray with her family, he reached for her hand. Noelle knew he wouldn’t hold it for long, not in front of her family, but she was certain he would reach for her again. And when he did, she’d call Holly and tell her the story of Noelle and Jesse.

  Of how God was bringing healing and a new hope to both of their lives.

  Baked Creamsticks

  (RECIPE COURTESY OF AMISH365.COM)

  Creamsticks

  1 cup shortening

  1¼ cup mashed potatoes

  1 quart milk, scalded

  1 cup sugar

  1 tablespoon salt

  ½ cup warm water

  3 packages yeast

  1 tablespoon sugar

  6 eggs, beaten

  11–12 cups flour

  Put shortening, potatoes, milk, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Stir until shortening and sugar are dissolved. Put warm water, yeast, and 1 tablespoon sugar in a small bowl. Add eggs and yeast to first mixture. Stir in enough flour until dough is not sticky. Cover and let rise until double. Roll out dough. Cut in 1x3 inch strips. Let rise until double. Bake at 350 degrees for 15–20 minutes. Let set until they are cold. Cut a slit on top and put in filling. Then top with favorite icing.

  Filling

  2 cups milk

  6 tablespoons clear jel*

  Pinch salt

  2 teaspoons vanilla

  2 cups sugar

  1½ cups Crisco

  Combine milk, clear jel, and salt in saucepan. Cook until thick. Add vanilla and cool. Cream together sugar and Crisco. Mix with cold cooked mixture and mix well.

  Caramel Icing

  ½ cup butter

  1 cup brown sugar

  ¼ cup milk

  2 cups powdered sugar

  Melt butter, add brown sugar, and cook over low heat for 2 minutes, stirring. Add milk and stir until it boils. Cool. Add powdered sugar.

  *Clear jel is a thickener that can be found in most bulk food stores. If you don’t have access to clear jel, cornstarch is an appropriate substitute.

  ****

  Keep reading for a special sample of Piecing It All Together by Leslie Gould.

  Enjoy this sneak peek at Piecing It All Together by Leslie Gould!

  PROLOGUE

  Jane Berger

  December 23, 2016

  Nappanee, Indiana

  The clock in the quilt shop chimed six times as Jane Berger’s hands rested on her manual typewriter. She still had bolts of fabric and books of patterns to put away, plus a tray of coffee cups to wash.

  Outside, the snow fell as if God were sifting sugar over the Indiana landscape. She needed to get home and start a fire in her wood stove, but first she had to finish her monthly column for the Nappanee News.

  She glanced at her notes on the origins of the town. The first settlers to the region were the Miami Nation, but they were forced out by the Iroquois in the 1700s. Soon after, the Potawatomi Nation settled in the area. By the time the first of the Amish and Mennonites arrived in the early 1840s, the Potawatomi had been gone for a few years, sent to Kansas on the “Trail of Death.”

  Jane shivered. She didn’t want to touch on that particular story, not now. What happened to the Native Americans was so shameful that she found it heartbreaking to even think about, although she vividly remembered stories from her childhood that examined the topic in depth. Someday she would need to pass down the story about a particular Potawatomi woman to just the right person.

  But she wouldn’t think about that now. She’d concentrate on the story for Arleta, a woman who came to Jane’s quilting circle from time to time.

  Arleta had moved back to the area a year ago after marrying a local bachelor. The woman had been a widow and had two children in their teens, who’d grown up in nearby Newbury Township. Arleta’s previous years spent in the Nappanee area hadn’t been happy ones, and although she was trying to stay faithful, she feared the same unhappiness now, for herself and her children.

  “The past is never dead” was something Jane had heard from time to time. Jah, the past was always with us. She firmly believed that. But she also believed that nothing ever stayed the same. Sometimes life changed for the better. Sometimes for the worse.

  The town of Nappanee wasn’t platted and named until December 1874, when the railroad arrived. By then, Jane’s ancestors had been farming on their land, where she currently sat, for over thirty years. She was a fifth-generation descendant of those original Amish settlers.

  The word Indiana meant “land of the Indians” and the word Napanee seemed to be a Native American word too, although the meaning wasn’t clear. The spelling was later changed to Nappanee.

  She’d attended an Englisch elementary school as a child, and she remembered learning that Nappanee was the only city name in the United States with four letters of the alphabet that were all repeated twice. She’d always loved saying the word—Nappanee—because of the way it rolled off her tongue.

  Jane continued writing, explaining how the land Nappanee now sat on had once been a marsh. She wrote that when the railroad came through, a group of people had a vision for a town, and they built it, structure by structure. The townspeople had cared about education, industry, and shipping crops to a wider market. Good had come, for all of them, from change.

  She prayed for the same sort of change to come to Arleta’s life. She prayed that the women in the quilting circle would be a blessing to Arleta and her family too.

  Jane prayed extra hard, knowing the woman was married to Vernon Wenger. He was a harsh man with a
quick temper. She prayed for Arleta’s teenaged children too. Both were on their Rumschpringe. Running around was a tricky predicament with Vernon as a stepfather.

  Jane left her prayers with God and cleared her mind from her present-day thoughts. Then she continued to write as quickly as she could, the keys clicking, one after the other, creating words, sentences, and paragraphs. Sometimes Jane wrote about a place, such as the town of Nappanee. Other times she wrote about a person—a pioneer or another resident of the area from a different time who had made a difference in the community. There was nothing Jane enjoyed more than writing, than piecing the past together. Although quilting was a close second.

  Once again, Jane became so caught up in the past that it was as if she was living there. She waited at Locke Station, thankful her family could now ship out their onions, potatoes, and mint to a larger market. She stepped onto the platform and looked down the new train tracks, anticipating all the changes the railroad would bring. Change might not be a typical topic for an Amish woman, but Jane ended the column with that image of change coming to Nappanee anyway.

  The clock struck the half hour, and she rolled the second sheet of paper out of the typewriter, stacked the two together, and then slipped them into a manila envelope. She addressed it from memory, put on the correct number of stamps, and left it on the desk as she took off her reading glasses and let them dangle from the string around her neck. Then, she put away the bolts of fabric—mostly solid colors. Maroon and sapphire blue. Black and forest green, though there were a few modest floral prints.

  Besides offering her stories for the entire community, she was especially blessed that so many of her customers appreciated her historical knowledge. Not only did it allow her to share her stories verbally, but it also encouraged customers to come to her with ideas for new stories, ones she hadn’t heard of before but was happy to research.

  She washed the mugs at the sink at the back of the shop, looking out the window into the darkness as she did. At least she didn’t have far to travel to reach her little home. It was just across the lane.

  After she slipped on her warm coat, pulled on her gloves, and secured her bonnet, she picked up the envelope off the desk. As she stepped out into the blast of the icy wind and swirling snow, she held on tightly to the envelope until she reached the mailbox. With another prayer for Arleta and her family, Jane slid the envelope inside the box and raised the flag.

  Another story in the mail, ready for her readers.

  She’d lived on her family farm her entire life, all sixty-three years. For the last thirty, she’d lived in the Dawdi Haus on the other side of the lane. Her brother had built the large quilt shop four years ago. Before that, she’d run the business from the front room of her house.

  She was grateful for the life she had: the column for the paper, the quilt shop, the women who shopped there. Jah, God was good.

  As Jane reached her front porch, she turned toward the shop and wondered about the next column she’d write. She prayed silently for a story and then for the next woman the Lord would send her way. One who needed the sort of perspective only a historical tale could provide, who needed to seek the Lord’s will in her life.

  Make me an instrument of your truth, Jane prayed. It was a desire that stayed consistent, past or present.

  Perhaps there were some things that stayed the same, after all.

  CHAPTER 1

  Savannah Mast

  December 23, 2016

  Oakland, California

  The countdown was on. In one week, Ryan and I would be at our wedding rehearsal at Grace Cathedral, getting ready for our New Year’s Eve wedding the next day. Dreams did come true. I’d soon be Savannah Woodward instead of Savannah Mast.

  I pushed away from my desk and stepped to my office window, gazing out toward the Bay Bridge. It wasn’t that I had a view, just a glimpse of the ribbon of asphalt lanes suspended over the water. Just enough to encourage me to leave and head to San Francisco for the rest of the afternoon. It was the day before Christmas Eve, and my boss, Mr. William Hayes, had already left an hour ago.

  I worked as a manager for a nonprofit health company, mostly guiding my team in their attempts to control costs, while Ryan worked across the Bay at the medical center as an administrator in the information systems department. He was on track, according to some, to become a vice president of the organization.

  After stuffing my wedding to-do list in my bag, I sent Ryan a text. On my way! Then I slipped into my raincoat and straightened it over my skirt and blouse. As the heels of my boots clicked down the hallway, my phone pinged.

  Wait, Ryan had replied.

  What did he mean? Surely, he wasn’t having a last-minute meeting.

  Why? I texted back.

  Something’s come up. . . .

  The ellipses gave me an ominous feeling. Is everything all right? I typed.

  I waited in the hallway for him to reply. I was getting worried. Finally, I texted, Ryan?

  When he still didn’t reply, I took the elevator down to the street level, pulled up my hood against the December drizzle, and walked the six blocks to my apartment. I hoped Ryan would text back soon. Perhaps a system server was down, or the electronic charting software had crashed. Or the pharmacies had gone offline.

  I sidestepped a thirtysomething woman wearing a rain poncho and a beanie, panhandling on the corner, and then dodged two men wearing designer suits who were deep in conversation.

  Oakland was home to all kinds. I’d enjoyed my time in the city on the east side of the Bay but looked forward to living across the water. My father had been horrified—even more so than when I enrolled at UCLA—when I moved to Oakland. He still remembered how it had been in the late eighties, when he first moved to Northern California from Indiana. He remembered the crime, the drug trafficking, the robberies, the killings.

  It wasn’t that there wasn’t still crime in Oakland—there was in any big city—but it wasn’t as bad as it had been. Like many other places on the West Coast, it was being gentrified, which meant housing costs had skyrocketed. Hardly anyone could afford rent in the area anymore, a horrible affront to those who used to call Oakland home.

  I reached my building, a brick three-story complex, and walked up the staircase to the second floor. After digging my keys from my bag, I unlocked the door as I checked my phone again. Still no text from Ryan.

  I turned on the lights, pulled the blinds against the darkness falling outside, took off my raincoat, and placed my bag on a chair. I unzipped my boots, feeling a little lost with the recent change of plans. Should I put on my sweats? Or stay in my skirt?

  I pulled off my boots and stepped into my fuzzy slippers. Then I checked my phone again. It was now 4:50. It had been thirty minutes since Ryan texted me last. Even with an emergency, it wasn’t like him to not respond.

  Something’s come up. . . . What did he mean by that?

  I held my phone in the palm of my hand, weighing my options. I sent him another text. Can you talk?

  He didn’t answer that one either, so ten minutes later, after I changed into my sweats and a long-sleeved T-shirt, I called him. He didn’t answer, so I left a voicemail, trying to sound as upbeat as possible. “Hey, I hope everything’s okay. Call me ASAP.”

  I dropped my phone on the couch and sat down to watch HGTV, barely concentrating on the Love It or List It episode. Every few minutes, I checked my phone. No text. No call. No nothing. An hour later, I called Ryan again.

  Just as I expected it to go into voicemail, someone picked up. “Hello?” It was a woman’s voice.

  “Hello,” I managed to say. “I need to talk to Ryan.”

  “With whom am I speaking?” she asked.

  I stuttered out, “Sa-van-nah. And with whom am I speaking?”

  She laughed. “Guess.”

  I stifled a gasp. It was Amber. His ex. Why was she in town?

  And she obviously knew it was me. My picture would have come up on the screen when she answered t
he call.

  She called out, “Ryan. Phone!”

  After a long pause, she said, “Sorry, he can’t talk right now. He’ll call you back.”

  My heart raced as the call disconnected. What was going on?

  UNABLE TO EAT or sleep, I stared at the TV for the next six hours, along with bombing Ryan with texts and phone calls. There hadn’t been an emergency. He was with Amber, the woman who’d dumped him three years prior. I’d met her once when she crashed a work party of Ryan’s a year ago. She had a memorable face and body—beautiful and svelte. And an unforgettable deep and sexy voice.

  People seemed to either love her or hate her, and whenever her name came up, everyone went silent. She was older than Ryan by five years. I’d had more than one person tell me, quietly, that she was the reason he’d become an administrator by the time he was twenty-eight. Why he was on track to become a VP by the time he was forty.

  She’d pursued him relentlessly, then dumped him and left for Washington, DC, where she took a job at a health policy think tank.

  Why had she returned? Why had he agreed to see her?

  Ryan had been so honest and vulnerable when he’d told me about how she’d broken his heart. Life had broken my heart too, which made me sympathetic toward him. And made me feel, all the more, as if I could trust him. He wouldn’t break my heart the way Amber had broken his—I was sure of it.

  Or at least I had been.

  Eventually, I forced myself to stop texting and leaving voicemails, knowing I sounded as desperate as I felt. I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Amber had come back for the holidays and decided to take the opportunity to apologize to Ryan for how she’d treated him. And maybe he thought seeing her would be freeing before he and I married. Perhaps there was some other reason. Surely he would call any minute and explain what had happened—even thank me for being understanding.

  At some point, I fell asleep on the couch, under the baby blue afghan Mammi Mast had crocheted for me years ago. I awoke just after five in the morning and checked my phone, expecting to see a text from Ryan sent hours before. There was nothing.