A Simple Spring: A Seasons of Lancaster Novel

by Rosalind Lauer

  The stern approval in Nell’s dark eyes was magnified by her spectacles. “You will be a gut wife for our Adam,” Nell said, placing a hand on Remy’s shoulder.

  Coming from Nell, those words meant so much. Remy felt as though she might melt to the floor right then and there—melt into a puddle of sheer relief and joy. But instead she bolstered herself, said “Denki,” and watered the next plant.

  As she worked side by side with the older woman, Remy realized Nell must have been in a similar position many years ago. “Can I ask you a personal question? How was it for you, when you were first married and came to live here on the farm?”

  “So many years ago.” Nell sprinkled fertilizer on one of the plants. “I was younger than you, for sure. The first few months, I do remember I missed my mamm. But every time I got to feeling sad, my Alvin would do something nice. Read his Bible to me at night or walk with me down to the pond to show me how to scare off the geese. And so many times I burnt the eggs. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t get it right. One day I was so frustrated I was about to cry, and my Alvin, he just scooped the egg on a plate and sat down at the table. ‘I’m getting to like them that way,’ he told me. He loved to laugh. Adam’s father had that in him, too. Always smiling, with peace in his heart.”

  Remy smiled. “I wish I could have met them.”

  Nell shrugged. “But Gott our Father took them off to heaven. I miss them both. Levi’s wife, Esther, too. Ach, but when you get to be my age, you see many go when it’s Gott’s plan for them. Still, the heart aches. We can’t help that.”

  Remy nodded, thinking of her mother. She still missed her, but the ache of loss had eased over the years. “Did you grow up far from here?”

  “No, no. I was in an Amish settlement nearby, closer to Paradise. I met my Alvin at a youth gathering at my cousin’s farm. Alvin was visiting from Halfway, and though he was a quiet young man, he caught my eye.” Wrinkles creased the older woman’s face as she frowned. “Though I must say, it’s hard courting a fella who lives so many miles away.”

  Remy had heard that sometimes Amish youth mingled with teens from other communities. “Were your parents upset when you moved away?”

  Before Nell could answer they were interrupted by the sounds of sneakers pounding dirt, and laughter beyond the garden. Although it was only April, the leafy foliage around the garden made it difficult to see out to the lane, but Remy could make out the twins, Susie and Leah, and eleven-year-old Ruthie, who seemed to be racing one another on the lane. Remy noted that Susie was back from her doctor’s appointment. The girls chatted as they approached.

  “Can I see the letter?” Ruthie asked.

  “Mind your manners,” Susie answered. “Nancy said it was my job to deliver it straight to Remy.”

  “I just wanted to see it. I wasn’t going to open it.” Ruthie puffed, her breath uneven as she clambered up to the garden gate and peeked into the shaded arbor. “Mammi? Is Remy there? We have something for her, and it’s very important.”

  “It’s only a letter,” Leah said, smoothing down her dress. “You’d think no one ever got mail before.”

  “But it’s the first letter Remy has ever gotten here,” Susie said, hands on her hips.

  “She’s here,” Mammi called. “Kumm.”

  Remy tipped the watering can as the girls scurried into the garden. “Easy, there. My own express delivery service.”

  “Here you go!” Susie handed her the envelope. “Nancy Briggs said it was delivered to her house just this morning.”

  “And it’s from your father!” Ruthie said, her head bobbing. “A letter from your father! Aren’t you so very happy to hear from him?”

  “You haven’t seen him for months now,” Leah pointed out. “Do you miss him?”

  “He must miss you,” Susie insisted.

  “Well, if he missed me that much you’d think he would have written before this.” Glancing over at the three girls, their adorable faces lined up under their white prayer kapps, Remy tapped the envelope in her hand. “So many questions. I guess you want to know what the letter says.”

  Ruthie’s brows rose. “We’ve always wondered how you could leave your dat behind, but—” She glanced over at Mammi Nell, as if afraid of reproach. “Mary told us to leave it alone. Curiosity is a dangerous thing.”

  “It can be at times,” Remy agreed, though she wondered if the girls’ fascination with her father had something to do with their own loss. The least she could do is let them enjoy vicariously what little relationship she had left with her father. “Okay. What is it you want to know?”

  The twins looked at each other, their faces beaming with interest.

  “We’re all aching to know what’s in the letter, of course,” Ruthie said.

  “I appreciate your honesty.” Remy handed the envelope to Ruthie. “Why don’t you read it out loud?” she suggested. “I have no secrets to keep from the family.” It was true; in the months since she had fallen in love with Adam, she had shared her past and opened her heart to him, and he had reciprocated with details of his own loving concern for the children he’d committed himself to.

  “I don’t believe it!” Ruthie clasped the letter to her chest with pursed lips while the twins egged her on. As she unfolded the paper, Leah exclaimed over the fact that he’d had it printed up, all professional.

  “Don’t be too impressed. He had his secretary do it on a computer,” Remy explained.

  Ruthie took a deep breath and began reading. “ ‘Dear Remy: I’ve been worried sick about you since you left. As I write this I’m thinking of those cults that brainwash kids and take them captive. I have half a mind to drive out there and rescue you.’ ” Ruthie paused. “What’s a cult?”

  Remy struggled for a definition. “He’s talking about a group of people who force others to do things their way.” The accusation that the Amish would have captured or recruited her was laughable; no one here had proselytized or pressured her at all. Instead, she had been drawn here by love. Her life in Philadelphia had been so drab. Thinking back to those days, she recalled the sting of loneliness that had shadowed her daily routine. She didn’t miss the long days in the sterile office or the long nights spent searching for the comfort of sleep. Here in Halfway, whether helping out down the road at Nate and Betsy King’s farm, or here with Adam and the family, her days were busy and her heart was so very full.

  “Are we a cult?” Leah asked.

  “No, we are not,” Remy said firmly.

  Mammi Nell lifted a hand to stop discussion. “We live separate from the rest of the world. We are not guided by what Englishers think of us, good or bad.”

  Remy nodded, heeding the older woman’s advice. “Does the letter say anything else, Ruthie?”

  “Oh, there’s plenty more.” She squinted, reading on. “ ‘Loretta is sick with worry about you.’ ” Ruthie sighed dramatically. “Who is Loretta?”

  “My stepmother.”

  “Do you miss her?” Susie asked sweetly.

  “Not at all. To be honest, when I lived in Philadelphia, Loretta didn’t seem comfortable when I visited their house. I wasn’t invited there for holidays or family dinners. We saw very little of each other.”

  “But she’s worried about you,” Leah pointed out.

  “Loretta probably hasn’t even noticed that I’ve been gone. Chances are, my father is just trying to make up a story that will persuade me to come home.” Remy wondered if she should be educating these young girls in the insidious ways of the Englisher world. She glanced over to Mammi, who had taken a seat on the bench. She didn’t seem to have an opinion one way or another.

  “ ‘It’s time you end this nonsense and come home,’ ” Ruthie read, her voice far more gentle than Herb’s must have been when he dictated the letter to his assistant. “ ‘Your condo and job are waiting for you, as well as the car.’ ”

  The condo and the car … They had been weighing on Remy’s mind, but certainly not as a lure calling her back to th
e city. The responsibilities of her old life had to be settled before she could fully engage her new life here. Herb was right about that; she had a few things to sort out.

  “ ‘Come back now if you want a place to live. Enough with playing country girl. Stop the shen … shen …’ ”

  Leah looked over her sister’s shoulder. “The word is shenanigans.”

  Ruthie looked up. “What’s that?”

  “It means silliness,” Remy explained.

  “It sounds like a silly word. Shenanigans.” Susie’s fingertips danced over the leaves of a plant. “It makes you smile when you say it.”

  Though it didn’t take much to make Susie smile, Remy thought.

  Ruthie lowered the letter. “Will you go back, Remy? Are you going back to your father?”

  “Oh, Remy, I don’t want you to go.” Susie stepped into her arms and hugged her.

  “Honey, I’m not moving back to Philadelphia.” Remy put the watering can down and rubbed Susie’s shoulders.

  “But a daughter must obey her father, ya?” Leah asked.

  “That’s not always true, at least not with the Englishers.” Remy hesitated, wringing her hands. She hadn’t told them much about her father, mostly because she didn’t want to dwell on her own disappointment in his moral fiber. “I know that obedience to your parents is very important, and I’ve always been respectful of Herb—my father. But … how can I explain it? He doesn’t really act as a father should.”

  “We understand,” Leah said. “Every father isn’t as good and kind as our dat was.”

  “That’s true.” The girl’s words warmed Remy’s heart; how lovely that Leah remembered her own father that way. “Herb is very different from your dat. He wants me to leave you and this life I’ve chosen, but in this case, he doesn’t know what’s best for me. I’m a grown woman now, and I know my heart.”

  Remy pressed a hand to her heart as the right words seemed to find her, and suddenly she had the answer to Mammi’s penetrating gaze and the girls’ multitude of questions. “I’ve already made my promise to this family. I want to be baptized here. This is where I belong.”

  FIVE

  Sadie’s shift at the hotel was almost over, and it had been uneventful.

  There hadn’t been much work left to do when she had arrived, half an hour late after the appointment with the doctor. The hotel guest rooms had already been cleaned, the hallways vacuumed. She had busied herself cleaning the windows in the lobby to a sparkling shine, though this had annoyed Lorraine at the front desk.

  “The smell of that cleaner gives me a headache,” Lorraine had said, waving a hand to push the bad air away. “Can’t you work somewhere else?”

  “Sorry.” Sadie had tried to keep the spray closer to the windows. “It’s just that the sun is shining outside, and I thought that clean windows would bring a bit of that sunshine inside to cheer up the place.” She had been listening to a song about country roads on her iPod, and the images of sunshine and mountains had lifted her spirits again.

  But Lorraine had not been impressed. She’d just perched at the desk like a mouse watching for cheese to drop, saying, “I think I’m allergic to ammonia.”

  From there Sadie had gone out to clean the windows in the little breezeway that attached the office to the downstairs guest rooms. That job had taken longer than she’d expected because of the many fingerprints from children.

  Now she was preparing to mop the tile floor in the breakfast area, and the love song on her iPod about a beau who was so far away made her think of Mike going off to Philadelphia.

  Silly for her to think that. She barely knew him.

  But the lyrics tugged at her heart as she rolled the bucket out of the maintenance room. The singer burst into a glow when she sang about seeing the boy’s face at her door. Now wouldn’t that be a wonderful sight, to open the door and see Mike Trueherz standing there, the light of his good soul shining through his sky-blue eyes and friendly smile.

  She was just stowing the chairs on the tables when the hotel owner appeared.

  “Hey, Sadie. How’s it going?” Jeff Decker had always been a kind and fair employer.

  “Everything is good.” She smiled as she lifted a chair onto the table. “How are you, Mr. Decker?”

  His lips pressed together. “Not so good. I’m afraid I have some bad news. Business has been a little slow, the bad economy and all. I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go, at least for the time being.”

  Sadie felt the blood drain from her face. “You mean … I’m fired?” The words were tight in her dry throat. This couldn’t be! She was a good worker.

  “It was a tough choice, Sadie, but you have to admit, you’ve been unreliable lately.”

  “If it’s about today, I’m sorry, I was—”

  “Today was just one example. You’ve canceled on me a few times, leaving me in a tight spot. A few weeks ago I had to step in and clean a few rooms myself. I need a cleaning crew that I can rely on.”

  Sadie’s shoulders fell as she realized it was true. She had canceled a few times when Frank wanted to have more time for the band to practice, and there had been some nights when she’d left early with Frank, either to go into the city to clubs or to rehearse in Red’s garage with the band. At the time, it hadn’t seemed like a problem.

  But now … now she realized that she had brought this on herself through her own bad choices. How could she have been so irresponsible?

  “I’m so very sorry, Mr. Decker.” She pressed her hands onto the edge of the table to keep herself steady. “I know how important it is to keep your hotel clean. The customers like it so much, and I’ve always done my best to keep it spic-and-span. But I haven’t been reliable these past few months. I see that now, and I’m so sorry.”

  “It happens.” He shrugged. “But right now I need to scale back, and you’re the weakest link. This will be your last shift. Lorraine will have your final paycheck for you by the time you finish up.”

  Shame flamed within, warming her cheeks as she apologized again. “Please, Mr. Decker, is there anything I can do to keep my job?”

  “Not right now, but I’ll think about bringing you back next month, if things pick up with summer tourists. You’ve always been a good worker when you were here, and I’ll remember that. You take care now, okay?” He gave her a friendly smile, then headed to the back office.

  Humiliated, Sadie got down on the floor and scrubbed with extra strength. She was a hard worker. This couldn’t be! Besides her disappointment at losing the job, she would also be losing her only way out of the house. Her job at the hotel had made it easy for her to see Frank and go to band practice every few days.

  But now that was all over.

  She had made a terrible mistake, and it would cost her the music she loved and the only boyfriend she’d ever had.

  As she scrubbed, Sadie tried to work through the embarrassment that burned inside her. How would she tell her family? Adam would have questions; he would want to know why she’d missed work. Oh, there was trouble ahead, and it was all her fault. She had always tried to be a better person than this, but she had failed Mr. Decker.

  As she scrubbed the grout between the tiles, she tried to focus on her music and let her heart be light. There was a reason for everything on God’s earth, she knew that. But in her heart she worried that the reason here might be to punish her for being irresponsible.

  She had scrubbed her way over to the open French doors when a pair of low work boots appeared out on the patio.

  “Hey, church girl.” Frank called her that, even though he had only ever seen her wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She liked dressing in Englisher clothes, though she left her prayer kapp on at all times. As a little girl she had been told that the kapp helped send her prayers directly to God, and she wasn’t able to part with her connection to God in heaven. “What’s shakin’?” he asked.

  Fighting back tears, she rose to her knees and looked up at him. “Oh, Frank, it’s horrible. I�
��ve been fired.”

  “What? What happened?”

  Looking around to make sure Mr. Decker wasn’t nearby, she quickly told Frank about their conversation. “I feel sick about it,” she said. “And I don’t look forward to telling my family. When they hear this, they’re going to know about the bad things I’ve done.”

  “You haven’t done anything bad,” Frank insisted. “And why do you have to tell your family at all? If they don’t hear about it from Decker, and they probably won’t, you can keep coming in to town on your scooter, but instead of going to work you can go to Red’s garage … or to Philadelphia with me. How about that for a plan?”

  “And lie to my family? I couldn’t do that.”

  “No need to lie,” he said. “You just don’t tell them you were fired.”

  Sickened by shame and the fumes of ammonia, Sadie wiped her brow with her wrist and thought about Frank’s idea. She would not lie to her family, but then she wouldn’t have to do that if they thought she was heading off to work. His plan might work … but was it too far from the truth?

  “Trust me,” Frank said, “this is going to work out. I know you feel bad now, but down the road you’ll look back on this day and wish it had happened earlier. With the extra rehearsal time we can get in, we’ll definitely get some summer gigs—paying gigs. With you fronting the band, we’re going to make ten times as much as either of us made slaving away for Decker.”

  “This is not slave work.” She shook her head as she went over the grout with a hand brush. “I never minded working here.”

  “Yeah? Well, how about getting paid for singing your heart out, church girl? You loved those concerts we saw, right?”

  “Ya,” she admitted reluctantly. Although she’d been to two concerts with Frank and Red, Sadie still found it hard to imagine that people made money for their music. But that was another world—Frank’s Englisher world—and he didn’t understand how she now ached to correct the way she’d wronged Mr. Decker.