by Amy Lillard
“Help me find him,” Hannah begged. How could they just lose him?
“Of course,” Leah said. “You check in the house, and I’ll check over at Jim’s. Maybe Samuel decided to go back home.”
Hannah nodded as Mamm came out of the barn. “He’s not in there.”
“Brandon went to check at the pond,” Leah said.
Mamm’s eyes widened with fear.
Please, God, don’t let him be in the pond. Please, please, please.
“I’m going to check Jim’s.” Leah took off in the direction of Anna and Jim’s, her purse swinging against her hip as she hurried away.
“I’m going to look around back again. Maybe he wandered off into the woods.” Mamm started around the back of the house. She had been hanging up laundry while Samuel played nearby. Then the next thing they knew, he was nowhere in sight.
“I’m going to check in the house again.” Hannah started for the porch, each step ringing out a prayer.
I know You haven’t been listening to me. And I understand. But this isn’t about me. This is about an innocent little boy. Please, please, hear my prayers. Let us find Samuel. Please let him be okay. Unharmed. Please.
She had been taught her entire life to pray for God’s will, but she couldn’t say those words. She needed Samuel to be all right. So much had gone wrong these last few weeks. She wasn’t sure she could take another tragedy.
The house was so quiet when she stepped inside. If Samuel was in there, he would be making noise, right? Unless he was asleep. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? They were out looking for him, and he was curled up asleep in Mamm’s extra laundry basket.
Lord, please let him be curled up asleep in the extra laundry basket.
But the laundry room off the back porch was empty. She checked everywhere in the house she thought a toddler could fit, calling his name as she opened closets and pantry doors, and even looked under the beds.
“Eunice, is that you?” Mammi’s voice carried in from the adjacent dawdihaus.
“It’s me,” she called in return. “Hannah.” She moved closer to the door that led to the space that Mammi claimed as her own.
Hannah’s voice was raw from yelling Samuel’s name. She was worn out from all the hollering.
“Why are you screaming so?” Mammi asked.
Hannah stepped through the curtain that separated the two “houses.”
Mammi’s quarters were dark and quiet. They had moved her bed into the living room when she fell and broke her hip to help her get around easier. She could get out of bed when she wanted, but not be far from it when she needed to lie down again.
Hannah’s grandmother was nearing her nineties, and every minute of her hard life was etched into her face. She had more wrinkles and creases than an old weathered cowboy, but Hannah loved every one of them. She had missed her mammi when she was gone and was so glad to be able to connect with her grandmother once again. If only for a little while.
“Now tell me why you’re hollering again?” Mammi’s lips protruded a bit, her teeth soaking in a glass at her bedside. She was sitting in a chair near the window working the crossword puzzle from the paper.
“Samuel’s missing. I need to go . . .” Hannah trailed off as Mammi pointed to her bed.
Samuel lay curled up on one side, sound asleep. His cheeks were pink and angelic. Tears rose into Hannah’s eyes. She rushed to his side and scooped him into her arms, kissing him repeatedly as if she needed the connection to convince herself that he was indeed whole and fine.
“Hannah Mae, you’re going to wake him up,” Mammi admonished, but Hannah was too grateful.
Samuel started to cry, startled awake by all the jostling.
“Thank you, Mammi.”
“You’re welcome . . .” Mammi’s voice trailed behind her as Hannah rushed back into the main part of the house. “I tried to holler for you, but no one answered. I didn’t know you were looking for him.”
“It’s okay,” Hannah called over the sound of Samuel’s wails. “He’s fine, and that’s the main thing.”
Hannah rushed out of the house and back into the yard, the crying Samuel cradled to her chest. She bounced him up and down to comfort him, but he just cried harder.
“What happened?” Mamm rushed around the side of the house as Brandon came back through the pasture.
“You found him?” Brandon took off running toward them, his own relief shining on his face.
“Hannah?”
She barely heard her sister’s call over Samuel’s cries.
“Is he okay?”
They all three ran toward her as she stood bouncing Samuel and shedding tears of her own. He was fine. She could hardly believe that he was okay.
She raised her face to the heavens even as her mother rushed in and scooped Samuel into her arms. Hannah clasped her hands together and raised them toward the sky. “Thank you, Lord. I know that You are listening. I’m so sorry for ever doubting. Thank you, thank you, Lord, for answering my prayers. Amen.”
* * *
“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Brandon said, checking his bait and tossing his hook back into the water. He and Joshua were stretched out on the mossy banks of the pond, pretending to be fishing. Brandon just needed a little quiet time. Everyone had been so happy that Samuel was found, that a quiet moment couldn’t be found between the two houses.
“You’ve never seen anyone pray before?” Joshua frowned.
“I’ve never seen her pray before. At least not that I can remember.”
Joshua tilted his head to one side and chewed on the inside of his cheek. He had his back propped up against a fallen tree, his legs stretched out in front of him. “You didn’t go to church?”
“A couple of times. Sometimes on Easter. But never all the time.”
Joshua shook his head as if the concept of only going to church occasionally was the oddest thing he had ever heard. “You never learned to pray?”
“Nope. Not really.”
“Do you ever pray?”
“I dunno. Maybe.”
Joshua continued to stare as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “Do you believe in God?”
“Of course.” How could a person not believe in God?
“What good is believing in God if you don’t take the time to pray to Him?”
His mother believed in God, but he had never seen her pray, not until today.
What good is believing in God if you don’t pray to Him?
He remembered all the things his mother had told him about the Amish church. He wished he had paid better attention. They prayed all the time here. Before they ate, after they ate—though the prayers were all silent. There was no way to know if a person was really praying or sitting there with their head bowed waiting for time to eat.
But she had prayed today.
“Do you think my mother thought God had given up on her?”
“What do you mean?”
Brandon thought about the question again. “Why was it such a big deal that my mom left the Amish?”
“When she went to the Englisch world, she couldn’t be compliant to the ways she had been taught. There are too many distractions in the Englisch world. Most believe that the distractions alone can cause a person to fall from grace.”
“‘Fall from grace’,” Brandon repeated. “Why doesn’t she join the church now?”
“You.”
Brandon jerked into a sitting position, whirling around to face his cousin. “Me? What do I have to do with it?”
Joshua seemed to think about it a minute, then a minute more, and again, until Brandon knew he was taking way too long to answer.
“Tell me,” he quietly demanded.
His cousin nodded. “I will, but you have to know that I am telling you this because of what happened the other day. I don’t want you mad at me because you think I’m withholding information.”
At Joshua’s words Brandon’s stomach fell into his lap. “What?”
�
��Your mother and Aaron love each other.”
The words shouldn’t have been such a shock, but now that it was brought to his attention, he knew that was the truth. His mother had been happy for the first time in a long while. She had been wearing Amish clothes and hanging out with Aaron and his kids.
But then his conversation with Aaron and his mom came back to him. She told him that she and Aaron weren’t getting married because there were rules of the Amish church that she couldn’t follow.
“What rules of the church would keep her from marrying him?”
Joshua shook his head. “It has more to do with you.”
He had said that once before. “How do I fit into all this? I’m not going to join the Amish church.”
“Exactly. And you surely don’t want to live without your cell phone and computer.”
“I have to use the computer for school.” His tone was more than defensive.
“You’re missing the point.”
“Then tell me what you’re trying to say.” He hadn’t meant to raise his voice, but this conversation was getting beyond annoying.
“A person can be Englisch and live in an Amish house.”
Brandon nodded. “That’s what we’re doing now.”
“But an Amish person can’t live in an Englisch house and stay in good standing with the church.”
Brandon rolled those words around in his head, sorting through them to the meaning inside. “Are you saying that because I want electricity and a car, that my mother is not marrying the man she loves?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
But that couldn’t be true.
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe his mother wasn’t really in love with Aaron. Maybe he wasn’t what was keeping them apart. After all, Brandon didn’t know for a fact that his mother wanted to join the church.
How many times had those words been thrown around, and he wasn’t even sure exactly what they meant? He was certain it had something to do with wearing those plain dresses and the white caps on their heads. Well, that might be part of it. Somehow he knew there had to be more.
Did his mother want to marry Aaron? Did Aaron want to marry her? Did she want to join the church? There was only one way to find out for sure.
* * *
Hannah eased down onto the porch steps, thankful that life had returned to normal. Anna, Jim, and the kids had returned from the school and gathered Samuel up to take him home, unconcerned that he had been missing for a good fifteen minutes that afternoon. It might not seem like a long time, but when she was living it, it felt like an eternity.
Dat and David had also come home. They had gone into the barn with some new tool, grinning like kids at having a new “toy” to play with.
Mamm had gone back to hanging up the clothes, and Leah had gone in to get a snack.
And all was quiet for a time.
She heard the rattle before she saw the buggy. Buggies, she corrected herself. Two carriages pulled down the lane, the first one pulled by the bishop’s gelding.
“What does Amos want?” Leah’s question reached her ears a split second before the screen door slammed behind her.
“You know what I do.”
Leah moved down the steps, then eased in next to Hannah. “You think he’s coming for another reckoning?”
“Please.” She said the word, but her heart panged in her chest.
The bishop pulled to a stop, tethered his horse, and gave them a quick wave before ducking into the barn after her dat and brother.
“Dat got a new tool today.”
Leah nodded sagely. “That sounds about right.” She flicked a hand toward the second buggy. “What’s Aaron doing here?”
She wanted, more than anything, to tell her sister that Aaron had come for her, but as much as she wanted that to be true, she knew it wasn’t. There was nothing left for them. Not any longer. Probably not ever.
“He’s working with a new mare Dat bought.”
“Huh.”
As they watched, Aaron followed much the same routine as the bishop, giving them a wave, then heading for the horse barn.
“And that’s it?” Leah asked.
“Looks that way.” Life had settled back into its quiet rhythm.
After the excitement of the afternoon, that was A-okay with Hannah.
“Have you talked to your attorney?” Leah asked.
“Not this week.” Normally, Hannah called him every Monday, but she had missed today, instead touring Leah’s new store with her sister. Not that she thought she was missing any good news. Mr. Lipman had seemed pretty sure that there wasn’t going to be much, if anything, left of Mitch’s estate. There was no start-over money. No money for her to go back to school. “You don’t happen to need any help in that store of yours, do you?”
Leah shot her that smug sister look that clearly said I told you so. “I might. You looking?”
Hannah sighed. “I’m going to have to do something. I’m not qualified for much else.”
“You could go back and get your GED.”
Hannah nodded. She probably would—but she still had to have groceries until then.
“Mom.” Brandon came over the hill, fishing pole in one hand as he hurried toward her.
“Oh no.” She stood and started across the yard, her heart in her throat at his urgent tone. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head and kept coming.
Lord, she couldn’t take this. “Brandon?”
But he refused to answer until he was standing just a few feet from her.
“Are you in love with Aaron Zook?”
Her heart stuttered in her chest. “It doesn’t matter.”
“If it doesn’t matter, then answer the question.”
She didn’t have an answer that she wanted to give her son. Movement caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. Her father and the bishop had come to the door of the barn, alerted by Brandon’s loud tone. Even Aaron had stopped his training and stood stock-still as Star nudged her broad forehead against his chest.
“Are you in love with Aaron Zook?”
“Yes,” she finally managed.
“Do you want to marry him?”
She shook her head. “Brandon—”
“Answer the question. Do you want to marry him?”
“Aaron and I can’t get married.” It hurt to even say the words, but she knew from past experience that pain would dull with time.
“That’s not what I asked.” Brandon propped his hands on his hips, the manner so much like Aaron’s it nearly took her breath away. He might look just like her physically, but he was still Aaron’s boy through and through. “Do you want to marry him? Yes or no.”
“Yes.” It wasn’t like it was a big secret. Aaron knew as well as she did the obstacles that stood in their way.
“One more question.”
Good. Hannah wasn’t sure her heart could take much more.
“Why didn’t you come back here when you knew that you were pregnant with me?”
There were a hundred white lies she wanted to tell him, but she knew the truth was the only way to go. Brandon needed to know that his father—his real father—was a good man. She had made the mistakes that had kept them all apart.
“After I had been gone a couple of months—”
“After you left here,” he clarified.
Hannah nodded. “I got a letter from your uncle Jimmy about how Aaron had started to see someone else. I wanted to come back. I’d just found out that I was pregnant, and I wanted to share that news with him. But he was already dating another. What if he rejected me?”
Aaron coughed. Somehow during Brandon’s questions, Aaron had moved closer. He now stood only a few feet away.
Hannah looked up and snagged his gaze. “It was a terrifying thought.”
“But—” Aaron started.
Hannah cut him off. “I couldn’t risk it.” She shifted her attention back to her son. Their son. “I would be shamed and Aaron
would be forced to marry me, and I couldn’t stand the thought of him loving another and having to be married to me forever.”
“And now?” Brandon asked. “What about now?”
She shook her head. “I thought you were only asking one last question.”
“I lied.”
“Brandon, I—”
“Are the two of you in love but not getting married because of me?” He laughed. “That’s weird to say. Don’t most couples get married because they have a child?”
“There’s more to it than that,” Hannah said. She wanted to turn to Aaron, have him help her explain, but this was a mess of her making, and she had to see it through.
“What?” he asked. “Joining the church?”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Me.” His tone was matter-of-fact.
“Yes,” she finally admitted. “I can’t join the church, because I know that you don’t want to live in an Amish house. I can’t ask you to do that. It’s hard enough when you’re born into it.”
“And if you don’t join the church . . .”
“Then I can’t marry Aaron. Or any Amish man, for that matter.”
“Do you want to join the church? I mean, I saw you pray.”
He saw her prayers answered.
“Mom?”
Did she want to join the church? “Yes.” Whether she and Aaron ever found their way together, she knew that it was time for her to be back with her people. And God. Past time.
“Then I give you permission to join your family in the Amish church.”
Tears stung her eyes, and she shook her head. “I can’t do that.” She was a mother, and her first responsibility was to Brandon. She could connect with God on a different level. Maybe take Leah up on the invitation to the Mennonite church. God would understand. She knew that now.
“You can,” Brandon said.
“No.” He was so sweet to worry about her. She trailed her fingers down one of his cheeks. He had grown up these last few weeks. He wasn’t perfect. His hair was still a bit too long, and he still had a sassy mouth, but he was going to be just fine.
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “I prayed and prayed about this. And there is no answer that will make everyone happy. I gave everything to God, and there is no answer.”
