by Daisy Fields
Faith and Trust in Lancaster
(The Amish of Lancaster County #2)
By Daisy Fields
Copyright 2013 Daisy Fields
All Rights Reserved
Hannah Stoltzfus cupped her tea in her hands, breathing in the soothing aroma of steeping flowers. She sipped the hot liquid, letting it drift over her tongue and spill down her throat, warming her from the inside out. It felt like a much-needed hug from a dear friend. After everything she’d gone through over the last few days, God knew she could use a hug.
She set down the mug and gazed out the window onto the bright green, grassy fields. Dear God, she prayed, how is it that I once thought I knew how to be a good mother, and now I doubt myself every single day? Sometimes . . .
The thought caught in her mind, but she forced herself to finish. There was no hiding from God, after all. Sometimes I feel like I should not even be a mother.
The words shocked her, even within the relative privacy of her own head. She loved her children, she did, and she had made a choice to live according to the Ordnung, but she simply couldn’t deny that the world was becoming a place she didn’t really know how to navigate. Her eldest child, Aaron, was mooning after an English girl, her second-eldest, Annie, was betrothed to a good and stable man named Stephen but continued to spend time with fiery-tempered Jacob, and her youngest, Miriam, was enjoying her rumspringa in New York City, trying things so wild and out of alignment with the Plain way of life that it made Hannah shudder just to think about them.
It was hard not to feel that she’d failed as an authority figure, as a guide, as a mother. Hannah wrapped her arms around herself and soaked in the morning sunshine. One tear, then two, slipped down her face. She impatiently shook her head, but the tears stayed put. Was she ever grateful no one was around to see! Dear God, she continued, I have to confess, I don’t understand why this is happening to me. When I see everyone else’s children, they seem so well-behaved and confident of their place in our community. Why do I have all the black sheep?
And that, she realized, was the problem. She wasn’t certain any of her children actually wanted to live a Plain life according to the strictures of the Ordnung. That was their choice and their right, of course—Hannah would never force them to do anything against their will—but it stung to think that she had not instilled a deep-rooted love of their way of life in the children she had borne with her own body.
At that thought, Hannah broke out into racking sobs. Her chest heaved painfully, and she groaned and sniffled.
“Mamm!” a shocked voice cried. “Mamm, are you all right? Do I need to call for help?”
Hannah’s head jerked up, and her weeping cut off mid-sob. “No,” she told Annie, whose face had gone white with worry. “No, but denki, my girl.” She breathed heavily and cast about for an explanation that would not alarm her daughter too much. Nothing came to mind. Finally she said, “Just a bit of a stomachache. What brings you here in the middle of the day, anyhow?”
“A stomachache?” The skepticism dripped from Annie’s words. “But—”
“I’m fine, daughter, and I trust you to believe your mother when she speaks.” Hannah forced a smile. “Every mother misses her child when they’re not around.”
Slowly the color returned to Annie’s face. She nodded, letting her head fall. “Then I have great news for you, Mamm. I came to fetch you, because Miriam is on the telephone right now!”
Hannah’s hands fluttered in the air as she tried to gather herself. “Right now?” Annie nodded. “But I have bread in the oven,” she finished lamely.
“Oh, I’ll watch it,” Annie said easily. She gently prodded Hannah toward the door. “Go!”
Hannah allowed herself to be ushered out of the house. She blinked in the warm sunshine. The smell of grass and hay filled her lungs, and she inhaled deeply. Now that she was outside, away from Annie, she allowed herself to think of what she had witnessed the other day, the sight that haunted her dreams even now. Annie, her eyes closed, her lips pressing against Jacob King’s lips, smack in the middle of the afternoon, right under a tree where anyone could see. So brazen!
Hannah had forced them apart, but she wasn’t sure how long she could protect her daughter from herself. Annie gone on rumspringa in New York City, her thoughts full of dreams of being an actress on the silver screen, but something had changed her mind, and she’d come home again. When Hannah had questioned her, all she had said was that she knew she was meant to be here among the Plain folk.
Yet she had held onto the postcard with a picture of an actress she idolized—graven imagery, as forbidden by the Ordnung—and though she had accepted Stephen Beiler’s proposal of marriage, she hadn’t hesitated to kiss another man.
More tears burned Hannah’s eyes, threatening to pour down her cheeks. But she wiped them away and prayed. Dear God, help me to be a ray of sunshine today. I must protect my family at all costs. I must not betray my concerns to anyone else. Hannah might not be the best mother she could be—that was up to God to decide—but one thing was certain: she would never, ever cease to do whatever she could to shield her family from harm. If that meant keeping her daughter’s illicit secrets, Hannah would do that, even as she tried to guide Annie to a decision she wouldn’t later regret.
Warmth rushed through her, as though God approved of her line of thought. Feeling much better, Hannah wiped her face on her apron and smiled. Everything would be well. She would make it be.
* * *
“Mamm? Are you there?” Miriam—no, Miri, she reminded herself—stood anxiously at the counter of her host family’s posh apartment in Manhattan, telephone receiver gripped tightly in her hand. Something had told her she needed to call home and make sure her real family was all right. Before they had gone out for the day, Pamela and David had let her know that she should truly make herself at home, and surely that included phone calls.
Annie had promised she would go get their mamm right away. Miri bounced impatiently. Someone had left the huge widescreen television on in the other room, and she could hear the prattle of what Pamela had told her was a soap opera. The overly dramatic dialogue and gazes between characters were ridiculous, but Miri had found herself developing a taste for the shows, silly as they were.
Right now, though, she just wanted to talk to her mamm. Miri didn’t miss home, exactly, not with all the excitement there was to experience in the big city, but . . .
She looked around at all the shining silver everywhere. A stainless steel refrigerator. A microwave. A stand mixer in chrome and black. Once David had demonstrated it for her, Miri almost drooled at how easy that made baking. She wished she could bring one home with her. She didn’t see how it could be prideful to want to make your life a little easier, so you could get more done. After all, didn’t her mamm’s hands ache sometimes from kneading so much dough for the baked goods they sold at the market?
This entire loft apartment with its ground-floor doorman and incredible view of the city was another world. Miriam couldn’t decide if she loved or hated it. Probably both, she conceded, especially when she thought of Mikey, the handsome, smart, rich black boy just a year older than her. He was the son of Pamela’s and David’s friends and very suave and sophisticated. They’d had their first date a few nights before, when he’d taken her to a premiere of a movie. They’d waited alongside a red carpet with other people dressed in gorgeous clothes, and cameras were everywhere, with reporters begging the actors and actresses for posed shots. The whole affair had taken Miri’s breath away.
“Hello?”
Hearing her
mamm’s voice yanked Miri right out of the memory and sent a flush of embarrassment racing over her. Suddenly the last thing she wanted to do was talk to her mamm. She couldn’t tell her about Mikey or the girls she’d met through him or the expensive clothes Pamela had bought her or how she’d exchanged her kapp and sturdy black shoes for high heels and a skin-baring dress? How was she supposed to make her mamm understand what it was like, existing in this world of glitter and leisure?
Or worse, that once Miri had gotten over the shame of showing so much skin and having people stare and snap her picture, she actually quite liked it?
“I’m here,” she said. “How are you, Mamm?”
“Much better now that I can hear your voice, my girl,” her mamm replied warmly. Her accent, the familiar accent of Miri’s community, suddenly sounded strange to her. Was that what Mikey heard when she spoke? “We’ve been missing you in these parts. Tell me, have you been remembering to pray?”
“Of course, Mamm,” Miri said. Her throat grew tight with tears. She didn’t want to describe this strange, frosted, alien life. Instead, she wanted to hear about her mamm’s steady, reliable days. “But I want you to tell me everything. How are the horses? How’s Daed? Can Annie talk about anything except her wedding day? Has she made sure the whole community knows she’s engaged to Stephen yet?”
Her mamm laughed. “Slow down, my girl! You’re always so hasty. The horses are well. I think they miss you, though, because they nicker a bit more, swish their tails a bit less.”
Miri was surprised to find that she missed the horses, too. Her heart swelled with the homesickness she hadn’t thought she had. “And Daed? How’s he doing?”
“He misses you, too. You know Daed; he doesn’t say much, but I can tell the day just isn’t the same for him without you there.” Miri’s mamm sounded melancholy saying that, but she pushed some cheer into her voice. “But we’re all so proud of you for being such a brave girl. Is your host family treating you well?”
“Oh, ya, truly,” Miri gushed. “They’ve introduced me to so many things. I had no idea New York City was such a complex place, and without them, I have no idea how I’d know anything. They’ve had me try Indian food and Chinese food and Russian food and Japanese sushi. Who knew raw fish could be so good?”
She knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want her mamm to worry, nor did she want her to suspect just how far Miri had already strayed from Plain living.
“Raw fish?” her mamm echoed doubtfully. “Are you certain that’s safe?”
Miri chuckled. “I wondered the same thing at first, but Pamela and David pointed out that Japanese people have eaten that way for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and they know how to pick good-quality fish and how to make it safe to eat.” She didn’t add that she had almost vomited at the first bite, and the second, and the third, but out of sheer politeness, she’d kept eating. There were some things she might never like, but no one needed to know that, especially not her mamm.
“Well, I’d better go, Miriam,” her mamm said, sounding reluctant. “Bread’s in the oven, and though Annie promised to keep an eye on it, we know how she is with baked things.”
The two of them shared a giggle. Annie was so flighty and absentminded that she could barely steep a cup of tea, never mind bake cookies or cakes without burning them. It felt good to laugh with her mamm like that. It made Miri feel a little less guilty not mentioning that Mikey was on his way over to pick her up for a walk in Central Park. He’d promised gelato afterward. Miri wasn’t quite sure what that was, but as long as it didn’t involve raw fish, she thought it should be okay.
Please, God, she prayed fervently, no more raw fish!
“Be good, ya?” her mamm asked softly.
“I promise,” Miri said, hoping she wasn’t lying. She hung up the phone and dashed to the bathroom to finish applying the new, fancy makeup Pamela had purchased for her. Butterflies danced in her belly. She hoped Mikey would like it. They’d talked so much, Mikey had let slip that his favorite color was blue. So Pamela had taken Miri shopping for a glittery blue dress and matching eye shadow.
She couldn’t wait to see his face when he saw her.
* * *
As soon as she’d pushed her mamm out of the house, Annie’s face crumpled. This was so wearying, all this pretending. Pretending to be fully in love with Stephen. Pretending her mamm hadn’t caught her midkiss with Jacob. Pretending there was nothing between Jacob and her, nothing at all.
She felt so sick. She’d searched in her chest that morning and found Stephen’s letter and the doll. While cuddling the doll to her chest, she’d reread the letter, in which he’d told her so sweetly that he supported her dreams, whatever they might be. Even if that meant she never came home to Lancaster County. Not only that, but he’d admitted he’d held onto her doll ever since she’d forgotten it at his house when they were small children.
Annie had never been treated with such kindness and compassion before. She’d known right then that she would never, ever make a better match than Stephen Beiler. And after all the drama she’d endured during her time in New York City, when supposed friends had betrayed her, she hadn’t been able to land a single acting role, and she’d been mugged, to boot—something she had never admitted to anyone in the Plain Amish community—the thought of coming home to a life with an ambition-free, kind, reliable man who thought she was as pretty as the moon.
Annie knew she wasn’t glamorous. She’d tried hard to fake it—again with the pretending—when she was on rumspringa, had done her best to fit in with her acting troupe, but they’d never really included her. One woman, with blond hair and a two-hours-at-the-gym-on-the-StairMaster body, took a particular disliking to Annie and started gossiping about her with the other members of the troupe. Soon, even the ones who had gotten along with Annie snickered when she walked by. One person even put chewed gum in her purse, ruining her copy of a script, and another “accidentally” splashed her with coffee as she waited for her turn to audition.
Nothing had been the way she’d expected, and she was so tired and sad and enervated that she was ready to have a breakdown.
Then Stephen’s letter arrived. It gave Annie the excuse she needed to admit to leave her failed dreams behind in New York and go home to the adoration and acceptance she so desperately needed. She could save face and just say she’d realized where her heart truly lay—on the farm, by a good man’s side.
And for the most part, it was true. Having tasted life behind the silver screen, she’d lost any desire to continue on that path.
But what she hadn’t anticipated was her attraction to Jacob. Stephen, for all his goodness and stability, was simply not capable of inspiring that kind of bodily response in her. She fanned herself and prayed for help. Oh, God, You must help me! I cannot help how I feel for Jacob King, but I know it’s wrong. Of course it is. I am betrothed to Stephen Beiler, a good, kind man who will value me always. Why can I not feel such passion for him instead?
When no immediate guidance came, Annie sighed. She had avoided both men over the past few days, no easy feat! She’d had to convince Stephen she was ill with her women’s time, and being the considerate fellow he was, he wanted to know if there was anything he could do, any tea she might like that he could bring her. Guilt stirred in her heart as she said no and finally chased him off.
Jacob had at least kept his distance, but the mere thought of him made her lips tingle. She sighed. How were they going to survive in one community like this? Something was going to have to give.
She replayed his final words to her. They’d been out in the field where they’d first kissed, and the sun shone down, warm as the bliss inside her from his assured touch.
Jacob gently laid her back against the grass and pressed more kisses to her closed eyes. All Annie could see was the yellow light. All she could feel was him. Nothing else existed.
Finally Jacob pulled away, leaving Annie bereft. Cold. All the sunlight v
anished, leaving her dark and full of sadness. Empty.
She blinked rapidly, reaching for him. She wasn’t done by a long shot. “Come back,” she teased. “The grass is comfortable, I promise.”
Jacob shook his head and ran a hand through his tangled hair. His voice was ragged. “You have to leave him, Annie.”
Annie stared at him, her mouth wide open. What was he saying?
“You have to leave him,” Jacob repeated. “You have to choose. It’s Stephen or me.”
Annie moaned. Dear God, help me resolve this tangled knot of a situation! If she could just combine her passion for Jacob’s proximity with Stephen’s dependable nature and calm temperament, everything would be perfect.
How was she supposed to choose? There was no way.
And she was afraid. Afraid that if she didn’t choose, the decision would be made for her. She also knew that if she were alone with Jacob again, she wouldn’t be able to keep herself from kissing him. The connection between them was electric. Maybe that was why the Ordnung forbade use of electricity?
Jacob stirred feelings in her she hadn’t known were there, not even during her stay in New York City. There was a pull between them she simply couldn’t deny.
But when she tried to imagine wedding him instead, she couldn’t. Jacob was stubborn, ambitious, selfish, and hot-headed. The complete opposite of Stephen in every way. The absolute worst choice for a husband, at least where sensitive Annie was concerned.
And yet, she could not pull away, not when her lips recalled what it was like to touch his. How soft, yet insistent. How flushed, as though he had come down with a fever . . .
Only the smell of something burning brought Annie back to herself. Her eyes widened. Oh, no! She’d forgotten to keep an eye on the bread like she’d promised her mamm!
She leaped to her feet and frantically pulled open the oven. Black smoke poured out, filling the kitchen. Annie broke into a fit of coughing. Still, maybe there was hope for the bread?
