Courting Her Secret Heart

by Mary Davis

  She resisted the urge to release a contented sigh. “What about you? Won’t you get cold?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll be fine. It’s not far.”

  Far enough to get cold. But she didn’t argue because she was cold, and his coat was so warm.

  The trio walked in silence and entered through the kitchen side door.

  “Mutter.” Hannah tried to keep her tone light, but Deborah could hear the concern in it. “There you are. I didn’t know you went outside.”

  “She was out by the pond.” Deborah rubbed her hands together.

  Hannah and Lydia exchanged worried glances.

  Then Hannah spoke in a level but firm voice. “Joanna, take Naomi and Sarah into the other room.”

  Naomi opened her mouth to protest but was silenced with a stern look from Hannah. The three shuffled out.

  Miriam swung on her coat, grabbed the milking bucket and crossed to Amos. “Would you walk me out to the barn?”

  The late-afternoon milking gave Miriam an excuse to leave the house and take Amos with her. Deborah recognized the chore as an excuse. Why was Miriam deciding now to show an interest in Amos? He wasn’t even interested in her anymore. But he hadn’t put up a fuss and allowed Miriam to easily take him away. A little too easily. Jealousy reared up inside her. She tamped it down.

  Amos glanced back over his shoulder on his way out.

  Chores and romance aside, something more important was going on. Something unpleasant. Deborah turned to her older twin sisters. “Why was Mutter outside without a coat? She was freezing.”

  Lydia’s weak giggle wasn’t convincing. “Oh, Mutter is fine. She goes out all the time without her coat. One would think she was an Eskimo. You don’t need to worry about her.”

  Vater hobbled into the kitchen on his crutches. “You found her.” He put his arm around Mutter’s shoulder. “Let’s get you warmed up.”

  Hannah took Deborah’s coat off Mutter and handed it to Deborah. “You should probably return Amos’s coat to him. We wouldn’t want him to get sick.”

  From under the sink, Lydia pulled out the tin washbasin and set it on the floor in front of a chair. They would put Mutter’s feet in warm water and give her some hot tea.

  Vater gave Deborah a pointed look. “Ja, Deborah. Amos will be needing his coat.”

  So many questions festered on her tongue. The three of them obviously knew something about Mutter. Deborah didn’t know exactly how to phrase those questions, so she left. She would ask later.

  When she got out to the barn, the sound of milk swishing into a bucket met her ears. The cow stall blocked her view of Miriam. Was Amos with her? Deborah hoped not. She breathed a sigh of relief when she found him in the tack room, where his cot was. The kittens tumbled around on the floor of the toasty room. “I brought you your coat.” She reluctantly took it off and put on her own. His warmth was gone. She missed it.

  “Danki.” He took it and put it on. “Can I ask you a question?”

  Oh, dear. He was going to ask where she’d gone today. “I guess so.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What’s wrong with your mutter?”

  Deborah squinted back at him. “Nothing is wrong with her.”

  “Ne. I didn’t mean that to sound disrespectful.”

  “Well, it did.”

  “What I meant is that she’s not like other women. She’s different. Forgetful.”

  “Aren’t we all forgetful from time to time? Haven’t you ever gone into another room and forgotten why you were there?” Deborah knew she did on occasion.

  “This is different. This goes beyond those little things. She’s called me Bartholomew at least three times and David a few times. I know Bartholomew is your vater. But who’s David?”

  Her mutter’s brother. “Haven’t you ever accidently called someone by the wrong name? Hasn’t your mutter called you by one of your brothers’ names? Most all mutters do.”

  “This is different. I can tell she thinks I am David. Who is he?”

  “Her brother. He was older than her by ten years. He died when she was fifteen.”

  “She mistook me for David when I first arrived. She stands in the yard like she doesn’t know why she’s there. Then one moment she looks at me as though she’d never seen me before, then the next she suddenly remembers me.”

  Her mutter had looked at Deborah like that. Deborah had thought that with so many daughters, her mutter got confused about which girls in the community were hers, and that memory challenges came with age.

  Amos faced Deborah squarely. “That’s not normal.”

  Her mutter wasn’t normal? She’d just chalked it up to her mutter being a little quirky and ditzy. She felt overlooked and that no one truly cared whether Deborah was around or not. Now that she thought about it, other mutters didn’t seem that way. With Deborah being gone during the day so much this past year, she hadn’t noticed her mutter declining.

  Amos put a hand on her shoulder. Deborah’s concern for her mutter numbed her response to his touch. He seemed so sincere, so caring. “I’m afraid she might get hurt or lost or worse. What would have happened if you hadn’t found her?”

  Her mutter did seem worse than usual. Especially since Vater’s injury.

  “Do you think my vater’s injury could have anything to do with it?”

  “It was pretty stressful for her. Would be for anyone to have a loved one injured.”

  Deborah didn’t like to think of her mutter as anything less than 100 percent. She hadn’t really thought that there was anything seriously wrong with her. Deborah would watch her mutter closely and stay at her side for the next couple of days.

  What she saw, and the conclusion she came to, caused her stomach to pinch and twist.

  Deborah sat with her vater on the porch. “Vater?”

  “Ja.”

  “Have you noticed that Mutter is a bit...forgetful?”

  He chuckled. “Aren’t we all?”

  Just what Deborah had said to Amos when she was defensive. “Ne. I mean more so than the rest of us. She...she’s not like the rest of us. I think something might be wrong.”

  “Wrong?” His voice rose. “There is nothing wrong with your mutter. Don’t say things like that.” Vater struggled to his feet, one foot still in a cast. He awkwardly jammed the crutches under his arms. It made his show of angry haste almost comical.

  Deborah would have laughed if not for the seriousness of her mutter’s...condition? Did she have a condition? She definitely had something.

  Deborah watched her mutter for two more days, and her concerns grew with each passing day.

  She tried to approach her older sisters with her concerns, but they told her to leave it be.

  Did everyone know something was off with Mutter? No, not all of her sisters. Her three older ones did—and for a lot longer than Deborah had—but no one would talk to her about it. Except Amos, and he wasn’t family. Nor did he know any more than she did.

  What was she going to do?

  Chapter Eight

  Amos reread his cousin’s text message from last night. Jacob would pick him up on the far edge of the Millers’ field away from any houses. He wanted to show Amos where he would be living when he left the community. Make Amos more comfortable with the idea of leaving.

  He wasn’t comfortable with the thought of leaving at all, but neither was he with staying. He had become comfortable at the Millers’.

  If he wasn’t forced to return to his parents’ farm, he would seriously consider remaining Amish as well as single. Amish was what he knew. Leaving had seemed to become necessary to go into the Englisher world to work. So why bother returning to the Amish one? No gut could come from having a foot in each world. He would end up preferring one and resenting the other.

  Amos tucked the cell phone into his coat pocket and
peered out the barn door. None of the Miller girls or their parents were in sight. He could escape undetected. He strode briskly across the field, hoping no one came out of the house until he was on the other side of the sycamore trees by the pond. Though they had no leaves yet, their trunks would hide his progress through the other side of the field.

  This was the same direction Deborah left by. When she “went to the pond,” did she keep on going this way? Did she feel the same guilt he did? Not likely. She was just going for a walk. Unlike him sneaking off.

  He’d meant to question her yesterday about where she’d gone, but he’d been distracted by Teresa wandering and Deborah without a coat.

  Something was going on with Teresa, and he suspected that Bartholomew and the older girls knew about it. But not being a family member, they weren’t likely to confide in him.

  He passed by the pond and glanced at the log he’d shared with Deborah. He’d enjoyed their walk and would like to do so again. What beyond the pond drew her away from the house so often? He saw nothing of interest, just more fields. Did she visit a friend? Or meet up with a young man? That unsettled him. It shouldn’t. He shouldn’t be thinking of taking walks with Deborah at all when he didn’t plan to stay in the community. And yet, his mind—or his heart—managed to repeatedly sneak off in that direction.

  At the road, Jacob waited, leaning against an old blue pickup truck. He spoke in English. “I thought you might not come.”

  Amos responded in Deutsch. “I texted you that I would.”

  Jacob continued in English. “Yeah, but I know how things can come up.” He patted the side of the truck. “How do you like my ride?”

  His cousin sounded like a fancy outsider. After only six months? Would Amos sound like that soon? “It’s nice.” He supposed it was nice, but didn’t know vehicles, or particularly care about them. Sure, he’d driven cars on Rumspringa. Driven fast, but knew, for him, they were always temporary. Another thing he had been wrong about.

  Jacob shook his head. “Out here, you’ll need to speak English.”

  For some reason, Amos didn’t want to. “I will when we get to wherever we’re going.” He saw no reason to do so now. Jacob understood Deutsch.

  Jacob pushed away from his truck. “Jump in.” He climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Amos made his way around the other side and got in. A part of him bristled that this was wrong. He shouldn’t be doing this, but he wasn’t actually doing anything wrong. There was nothing wrong with getting a ride from an outsider. Being with a former Amish would be frowned upon, and if discovered, Amos would be admonished, though being in a vehicle wasn’t technically wrong. But going against the Ordnung and his promise when he joined the church was wrong. Where he was going and why—that was wrong. His actions today would be more than frowned upon. He would be shunned. None of that would matter once he left. Except Deborah. He would miss her. The thought of not seeing her made his chest ache.

  His cousin put the truck into motion. “You’ll like Donita and Frank. They’re a sweet couple. They left the Amish life twenty years ago. Half of their ten children went back, the other half stayed fancy. Now they help other Amish who wish to leave. You’ll live with them until you find a job and can get your own apartment.”

  Amos hadn’t given much thought about what he’d actually be doing once on the outside. He’d pictured it a bit like Rumspringa—just hanging out with other people, not putting down permanent roots like a job and an apartment. He was woefully unprepared for this. His instinct had been to leave. “I don’t know how to do those things.” Would there be any jobs on farms? That was the only work he knew. And carpentry. All Amish knew how to build. But with so many men being forced to work in the Englisher world, would there even be any jobs available for him?

  “They’ll help you with everything. Getting a driver’s license, finding a car or truck to buy and locating a place to live. You could stay with me, except there are already five of us in a little two-bedroom apartment. Maybe we could find something together, just the two of us.”

  Amos liked the idea of rooming with his cousin. It would make the move easier.

  “I don’t know if I want a car.” However, his Pennsylvania driver’s license, which he’d gotten on Rumspringa, was still valid for a few more months. Leaving the community didn’t mean he had to throw the whole Ordnung out the window. He just wanted to see if it was the right place for him.

  “You’ll need one to get around.”

  “I can walk.”

  “In the winter?”

  His cousin had grown soft.

  “I’ll manage, and spring’s here.” Barely. He needed to think about plowing. He needed to make sure the Millers’ plow and tractor were in gut condition. If they were anything like the rest of the farm, they likely needed some work.

  Jacob chuckled. “You’ll change once you’ve been out here for a while.”

  Did he want to change? A part of him didn’t. One of the reasons he was speaking Deutsch while Jacob spoke English. At the same time, he didn’t want to remain as he was on his vater’s farm. He didn’t feel as though he fit in there. Hadn’t Gott made it clear the Amish life wasn’t for him? Or else Esther would have married him, and he would have stayed in Pennsylvania. He would have land to work.

  Before long, Jacob pulled into a driveway on the edge of town. The house was a modest size. Probably had been an Amish home at one time. The sizable yard nestled up to a field.

  “Do they have a working farm?” he asked in Deutsch. He could work on their farm. That made him smile.

  His cousin shook his head and spoke in English. “No, they have only the house. The fields belong to an Amish family.” He put the truck into Park, turned off the engine and got out.

  Amos hesitated before doing the same.

  A man who looked to be about sixty stepped out onto the porch and was dressed in typical Englisher clothes—nothing fancy, just a red-plaid flannel shirt and jeans. “Come on in. Donita has some hot chocolate and cookies waiting for you, boys.” That must be Frank. He spoke in English with no hint of his former Amish life.

  Amos was probably going to like this man. He followed Frank and Jacob inside. The aromas of chocolate and cinnamon wrapped around Amos like a warm blanket. Made him feel comfortable and at home. From the delectable smells, he could mistake this for an Amish home.

  The house was similar to an Amish one, but with pictures scattered on the walls and shelves, as well as some useless knickknacks. But for the most part, the interior was simple.

  Donita’s smile lit her whole face. “Welcome. Please, sit down.” She had no accent either.

  Had these people actually been Amish?

  Amos grumbled inside. He was going to like her, too. What was his problem? Wasn’t it gut that he liked them? He sat on a glider-rocker and accepted the steaming mug of liquid bliss with marshmallows and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

  Donita’s eyes twinkled. “This is how Jacob liked his cocoa when he lived with us.”

  That made sense as to why she’d made it perfectly. Amos had loved his aunt’s made-from-scratch hot chocolate. The cinnamon had been the perfect touch.

  Amos spoke English out of respect for his host and hostess. “Thank you.” He took an offered chocolate chip cookie. His favorite.

  After the hot chocolate and cookies, Frank stood. “Let me show you the room you’ll be in when you come to stay with us.”

  Amos stood, as did Jacob. Frank climbed the stairs first, followed by Amos, and Jacob tagged on at the end.

  Frank knocked on the first door on the left. “Jesse’s at work, but I like to knock anyway.” He opened the door to a small room with a twin bed, nightstand, dresser and small desk.

  Simple. Functional. Inviting.

  Frank stepped aside. “This will be your room when you come. It may be small but you’ll have it to yourself. Jesse
will be moving out at the end of the week. We found a family at church who will rent him a room.”

  “Why doesn’t he just stay here and rent from you?”

  “We provide the first landing, so to speak. We feel led to assist with the transition and prepare you for a life on your own. We’ll help you learn how the world outside the Amish community works.”

  Jacob jumped in. “On the surface, it seems like it would be simple to just move to the Englisher world, but when you’ve grown up having all your decisions made for you, like we have, it’s not as simple as moving into town. It’s a huge adjustment.”

  Frank nodded. “Donita and I are here to make your transition easier. We have a weekly Bible study here for any former Amish who want to come. We have quite a crowd on Tuesday nights.”

  Amos liked the idea of having people to guide him. “This is very nice. I’m sure living here will be gut.”

  Frank motioned down the hall. “This is the bathroom. You’ll be sharing it with five to eight others. All depending on how many we have at any one time. If you decide to come before Jesse leaves or even stay right now, we have a cot we can set up in one of the rooms.”

  The thought of staying right now and not seeing Deborah again made his stomach tighten. “I can’t stay right now. I’m helping out an injured farmer. He has all daughters. He doesn’t have anyone to do his farmwork while he heals.”

  “All daughters?” Frank smiled. “I understand.”

  It wasn’t like that, but it didn’t matter if he thought Amos was angling to court one of them. Because he wasn’t.

  Jacob led the way back downstairs and shook Frank’s hand. “It was good seeing you. I’ll keep you posted about this one.” He squeezed Amos’s shoulder. “We need to get going.”

  Amos shook the older man’s hand. “Thank you for showing me around and explaining things.” He turned to Donita, who sat, typing on her laptop computer. “Thank you for the hot chocolate and cookies. They were very gut.”

  “You’re welcome. I look forward to seeing you again.”

  Unfortunately, he was definitely going to like these people. He hadn’t realized until now that he’d secretly hoped to not like them, because it would have given him a reason not to live in the outside world. He’d thought he wanted to like them. Was afraid he wouldn’t, which would mean his transition to the Englisher world would be harder. But he did like this nice couple. They were eager to make his transition trouble-free, so it would be easy for him to leave one life for another. Nothing to stop him now.