CHAPTER FIVE
The next morning was Sunday of a church week. Many Englischers don’t know this, but most Amish districts only have church every other week. On the off weeks, it is supposed to be family time to study the scripture. We don’t have brick-and-mortar churches either. Instead, the church meets in the home of a district member. All the owners’ possessions and furniture are moved aside so that benches can be brought into the home for the congregation. It was quite a production, and, in my district, the moving of the furniture took place the Saturday evening before church, so Sunday morning could be saved for worshiping. Because my home was so small, I would never be able to fit the entire district inside. The only Sundays that the church could meet on my property would be when it was warm enough to set up the benches outside.
It might have been warm enough that very Sunday because it was a beautiful bright spring day, but the service was scheduled at the home of Ruth and the bishop. Whenever the service was at the bishop’s home, Ruth pulled out all the stops for the Sunday meal for the congregation that follows every one of our services, so she can be—or see herself as—the best homemaker in the district. Don’t get me wrong, Ruth is a great wife, mother, and homemaker. It would serve her better if she didn’t spend so much time trying to prove that to everyone else, over and over again. It must be exhausting to show off so much.
Oh, but there I go, taking notice, and perhaps passing judgment in some way. I didn’t resent Ruth for her efforts or even Joelle or Raellen for their propensity for gossip. We each had our quirks—the Amish were no different than the Englisch in this way. We were all people, with an assortment of personalities and quirky ways. Come to think of it, my matchmaking was surely a topic of talk in the district. Not all the plain people approved of it.
It felt strange to be leaving for church that morning with no goats to see me off. I missed those two rascals more than I cared to admit. Perhaps later that day, I would stop by the greenhouse and check their progress on clearing the land. They certainly were part of my reason to visit the greenhouse, but I couldn’t get the conversation I had had with Iris and the members of Double Stitch out of my mind. How could the greenhouse be in trouble? Edith had never had difficulty managing it in the past. And then there was the point that my nephew Enoch was back. When I had heard the news, my heart flipped. I had been waiting a very long time to make things right with him, and it seemed to me that I would finally get that chance.
As I walked to my buggy and Bessie, I had a Bundt cake in my hand, my contribution to the Sunday meal. I had promised Ruth that I would bring the cake. She’d said that she was short on desserts, which I found surprising. Any Amish woman worth her salt was able to bake at least a simple cake. I didn’t claim to be as good a baker as Ruth, or as good a baker as I was a quilter or a matchmaker, but my Bundt cake always seemed to please. I had already put a plate of cookies in the buggy too, for good measure.
I’d tossed and turned all night, worrying about Enoch’s return. I couldn’t understand why Edith hadn’t told me when she was here yesterday morning, and I wondered if her twin brother’s return to the village was the real reason she wanted to break her engagement. Was Enoch coming back to take his place in the greenhouse? It was hard to say. My nephew ran away from the Amish faith when he was a young man. It wasn’t long after his sister became engaged to Moses Hochstetler that he left.
He not only rejected the Amish way, he rejected Gott. As the woman who took on the role of his mother in his life, I felt that I had failed him. Of course, I wanted him to be Amish, but beyond that I wanted him to be faithful to his beliefs in the way he saw fit. Rejecting all belief was the worst possible result, but after what had happened, his reaction didn’t surprise me.
I feared that it was too much to hope that Enoch planned to come back to the Amish way, but even if he just came back to the county as an Englischer, I would be happy. I needed to see him, and when I saw him, I needed to ask his forgiveness.
I set the cake on the buggy seat, unhitched Bessie from the tree where I had tethered her and the buggy that morning, and set off. If I had traveled to the Yoders’ farm by car, I would have been there in fifteen minutes, but by buggy it took me almost an hour to arrive, and the whole time I worried about Enoch’s return to Harvest. I made up my mind that I would ask Edith about her brother just as soon as I saw her.
As I turned into the Yoders’ long driveway, I scanned the buggies for my niece’s vehicle or for the wagon that she would sometimes drive to church on nice days, but I didn’t see either.
The Yoders’ yard was filled with buggies and plain-dressed children playing tag in the side yard while a handful of mothers looked on. I expected to find Edith and her children in that group. Normally they would be there, but they were missing this Sunday. Her boys were balls of energy and Edith liked them to run as much of it out as possible before services began so they didn’t fidget during the sermon.
Edith’s home and greenhouse were just half a mile away from the Yoders’ farm, so she should have beaten me to the services even if the family decided to walk. I had a bad feeling about her absence. I noted too that I didn’t see Zeke Miller standing with the other young men chatting to the right of the wide front porch as he would usually have been doing.
Ruth and Bishop Yoder stood next to the front door of their very large farmhouse. It was a light blue, wood-framed home that was oddly shaped because as the family grew, more and more rooms were added onto it in every direction, and when her husband was chosen to be bishop, Ruth felt it was a necessity that she add a large sitting room on the very front of the house along with a giant front porch to accommodate the entire congregation. If Ruth had her way, church would be at her home every time the congregation met, but that was not the Amish way. The community grew closer by visiting each other’s homes, which was one reason that Sunday services moved around the district.
Ruth waved to me from the porch. I waved back, but I was still scanning the grounds for any sign of Edith, her children, or Zeke. I didn’t find it comforting in the least that they were all missing the service. Perhaps if one or the other was gone, I wouldn’t have found it so alarming. I walked around the giant house, thinking that Edith might be in the back where Ruth kept her kitchen garden. There wasn’t a garden on the planet that Edith could resist inspecting. If she was there, the children would likely be with her. I told myself that it wasn’t odd in the least that Zeke Miller wasn’t at church that day. In fact, I would have been surprised if he had been there with all the talk that must be floating around the village over his and Edith’s broken engagement.
I came around the side of the church and found several young women with babies in their laps sitting under the big walnut tree near the kitchen garden, but no one else.
Despite the ominous worries churning inside me, I told myself it was nothing to be concerned about. Just as it made sense that Zeke wouldn’t want to be at services, it was also likely that Edith wouldn’t want to be there. She was a sensitive girl. Maybe she didn’t feel she could face the gossip. I hadn’t been in Holmes County when her first husband, Moses, died, but I completely understood why she wouldn’t want to face that level of chatter about her personal life again.
Even so . . .
I decided that I would never be able to sit through the service without checking on her. I scurried back around the side of the blue house and made a beeline for my horse and buggy. All the while, I felt like a bad student who was making a dash away from a one-room schoolhouse before the teacher spotted me.
“Millie Fisher, where on earth are you going?” Ruth called.
The teacher had caught me!
I waved my hand. “I’ll be back as quick as I can,” I called over my shoulder. “I just need to tend to something quite urgent.”
I was climbing into my buggy when a hand appeared at my elbow and helped me up into the seat. I picked up the reins and looked down at the kind face of Tucker Leham, a broad shouldered, beardless Amis
h man with dozens of freckles on his face.
“I need to talk to you.” Tucker adjusted his round glasses on his nose.
“What about?”
The young man bit his lip, and I knew immediately that it had something to do with my niece. Tucker worked at the greenhouse. “Have you seen Edith this morning?”
He shook his head. “I—I—” He pulled on the collar of his shirt as if it was choking him.
“Is something wrong with Edith?” My voice was sharper than I intended it to be, but worry had begun to claw at my heart.
“Nee,” Tucker said. “I—I heard that she and Zeke are not to wed. Is that true?”
I looked down my nose at him and felt that I was acting like Ruth Yoder. If this young man knew something about my Edith, I wanted to hear about it and quick. “Why do you want to know?”
His face turned the color of a cherry tomato on a hot summer’s day, so red in fact that his freckles all but disappeared. A light dawned in the back of my mind. Tucker was sweet on Edith. It was no surprise to me, really. He was over thirty and still unmarried. He worked at Edith’s greenhouse as a gardener and had since he was a young teenager. He was almost as skilled with plants as Edith. I’m sure over time he had developed a growing affection for her sweet ways and manners. What a struggle it must have been for him when she again fell for the wrong man just as she had for Moses all those years ago. He had seen her fall and be hurt by Moses Hochstetler too. All this time, he’d waited to the side and loved her from afar.
Why hadn’t I seen Tucker’s feelings for Edith before? I thought that it only could have been because I had been away in Michigan for all those years. I hadn’t had the opportunity to witness his growing feelings.
“Nee, Tucker. She is not marrying Zeke Miller,” I said in a low voice.
“I . . . I didn’t expect that. This is surprising news.” He shook his head. “I will not trouble her then.”
I cocked my head. “Trouble her with what?”
He shook his head and stepped back from my buggy. He turned and walked toward the group of young men chatting beside the large oak tree in front of the Yoder home. If I called out to him, asking what he was talking about, it would cause a scene.
I flicked the buggy reins, and Bessie backed up and started for the long drive. Church members headed to services in the opposite direction, gave me strange looks. I didn’t stop to explain. I needed to reach Edith and reassure myself that she was all right.
On the road, we Amish have to obey the traffic laws just as the Englischers do in their automobiles. It’s not unheard of for an Amish person to be pulled over for speeding or reckless driving of a buggy. Even drunk driving a buggy is a problem in the county, although usually only with young men on rumspringa.
I drove as recklessly and quickly as I dared to Edy’s Greenhouse. I knew in my heart that something was amiss. Bessie sensed my urgency and stepped double time. I wished that I had an Englisch driver with me, because I would get there so much more quickly in a car. It was at times like this when I could see why the Englisch adopted so much technology. It certainly made their lives much easier in emergencies. I shook my head. I was jumping to conclusions, imagining there was some sort of emergency at the greenhouse. Everything might be fine. Everything would be fine.
Ruth would admonish me if she could hear my thoughts. She would tell me that life wasn’t meant to be easy. We were on this earth to toil and do good works, and then find salvation. I couldn’t agree with her on that. I thought that Gott also wants us to have joy and delight in the lives we are given. Ruth would have argued with that.
Bessie shook her bridle. She felt my anxiety. Bessie was an old team horse whose longtime partner had died. Afterward, she refused to work with any other animal at my brother’s quarry. I could understand that. I felt the same way when I lost my Kip.
“We need to hurry, Bessie,” I said aloud. “I think something is very wrong at the greenhouse.”
As if she could understand me, she increased her pace without my even touching the reins. I knew I should have had more faith that Gott would make all things right, but there in my buggy, I couldn’t find it. The old proverb said, “Worry ends where faith begins.” As much as I knew that to be true, I could not keep the worry at bay.
CHAPTER SIX
As I pulled into the long driveway that led up to the greenhouse, I marveled at the lovely piece of land that Edith had cultivated in so many ways. Her actual house was small, only bigger than mine because there was a second floor with three tiny bedrooms. The footprint of the house was the same as my own. However, beyond the house was where her real pride and joy lay: Edy’s Greenhouse. It was a long building with Plexiglas sides to let the light and warmth of the sun inside. It was as large as a horse barn, and its reputation was far greater now with Edith at the helm than it ever had been under her father’s care.
Of a younger generation, Edith could see the greenhouse’s potential and knew Englischers found charm in buying things that were labeled “Amish,” so she’d tailored the business to accommodate both Amish and Englisch. In truth, she was a clever businesswoman and advertised her business in Englisch newspapers and even on the radio. I have been interested during my lifetime to see how our lifestyle has seemed to grow more fascinating to the Englisch as they advance farther and farther away from the plain lives we Amish lead. Perhaps it is the simplicity of our ways that keeps the Englischers captivated.
At the road there was a hand-painted sign that pointed down the long gravel driveway. It read, EDY’S GREENHOUSE, CLOSED SUNDAYS.
At least it was a Sunday, and I knew there wouldn’t be any customers about the property. There might be no one about at all. All the workers, who were Amish, were most likely at our district service or at services of their own if they were members of a different community.
There were many kinds of Amish in Holmes County. It most definitely wasn’t “one size fits all,” an Englisch phrase that I learned during my time in Michigan.
Edith’s front yard wasn’t empty though. Her three young children were there sitting in the grass tossing a ball to each other. Well, the older boys were tossing the ball. Little Ginny was plucking blades of grass from the lawn and making a bouquet out of them in her tiny hand, as if they were the most precious flowers she had ever seen. All three children were clean, with combed hair and wearing their Sunday best. That at least told me Edith had every intention of going to church this morning. What could have kept her from leaving for the Yoders’ farm? I gripped the reins so tightly, my knuckles turned bright white.
There was no sign of the goats.
The children jumped to their feet just as soon as they heard me come up the driveway. They waited patiently until I parked the buggy and climbed out of it before they rushed me for a four-way hug. I squeezed them tightly, more relieved than I cared to admit to find them well and happy.
“Where’s your maam?” I asked, pulling upright to look at the oldest child, Jacob.
“She told us to stay here.” Jacob was ten years old, and had carried the weight of being the man of the house for the last three years. He was a serious child who always did what he was told, and I worried about him at times. Childhood was fleeting, and I wished that he could enjoy more of it than he had. His father had died when Jacob was only seven. It was his job to protect the property and the family; it was the way of our culture to make the oldest male child responsible, whether he wanted that calling or not. That was a lot of responsibility to be placed on shoulders so slight.
Micah was nine, but not nearly as responsible or mature. Even though he was only a year Jacob’s junior, he was still the second born and didn’t have the pressure Jacob did.
Micah gave me another hug and was quickly followed by three-year-old Ginny, who was born after her father died. Smiling up at me, the little girl with the long blond braids was the spitting image of her mother at that age. “Aenti, our cat had kittens! Tiny kittens. They are in the house in a box, sleeping.
Maam said to leave them be for a bit. They are so cute. I want to carry them everywhere. They love me.”
Jacob looked down at his sister. “You have to let the mother cat have some peace. If you keep picking up the babies, she will tire of them, and they could die.”
Ginny’s eyes grew to the size of dinner plates and tears gathered in her eyes. “They could die?”
I squeezed her tight. “Nee, nee, shhhh.” I gave Jacob a look over her head. “The kittens will be fine, but your maam is right that they need sleep and rest. I’m sure they will want to play with you soon. Kittens love to play. Speaking of animals that love to play, where are my goats?”
Micah laughed. “Maam penned them up after they chased the bishop’s wife across the front yard yesterday. I never laughed so hard in my life.”
I could very well imagine. “I heard about that. I saw Ruth later that afternoon, and she was none too pleased.”
“She can actually run very fast for a bishop’s wife. I didn’t expect a lady that old to run so fast,” Micah said with just a dash of respect.
I put my hands on my hips. “She is the same age as me. You don’t think I could run away from a pair of goats if I were chased?”
“That would never happen, Aenti, because they are your goats. They would never be silly enough to chase you!”
I nodded. “That’s a gut point.”
Ginny’s face cleared as we spoke about the goats, but I could see the hint of worry that remained. Even at such a tender age, Ginny’s temperament was so much like her mother’s it was startling at times.
“Are you going to stay for Sunday supper?” Micah asked eagerly.
I stepped back. “Do you want me to stay for supper because you want my company or because you want me to make some of my famous biscuits?”
Micah looked serious. “We always want to spend time with you, Aenti Millie, but if you wanted to make your famous biscuits too, we would not mind.”
Ginny shook her head and sucked on her lower lip.
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