by Toni Shiloh
Nancy shrugged. “I’m not eager to find a spouse—I just turned twenty—but I’m open to the possibility. Julia and Pamela are more hopeful than I am that the trip will be the answer for them, or maybe they are feeling a tad desperate. Julia will be twenty-six soon, and some folks have started calling her an old maid since she rejected Ogden Martin’s proposal in such a public way. Of course she was right to do so. He wasn’t a good man.
“Pamela is only a year behind Julia in age. Very few men in our area have shown an interest in us, and Father has discouraged those fellows. He would rather we marry outside our community.” Nancy blushed and stopped signing.
“Because our incidence of inherited deafness is so high,” Esther finished for her. She was aware of her father’s feelings, but it still hurt to be reminded that he saw her deafness as an affliction to be avoided rather than embraced. Thankfully his views were not shared by all, but they were shared by the one person who had mattered the most to Esther—Barnabas King, the young man she had fallen in love with and had hoped to marry. Until he’d made his true feelings about her deafness known last Christmas.
She pushed that unhappy memory to the back of her mind. If she ever thought of marrying, she wasn’t going to seek a spouse in the hearing world. Only a man who was Deaf could understand the struggles and rewards of existing in a silent world. God would provide such a man for her if that was His plan. If not, she had her job and the children she loved.
Nancy smiled sadly and signed, “All of us want to find someone to love who loves us in return. I won’t settle for less, no matter what Father and Waneta have in mind.”
“She can be persuasive,” Esther said, looking to where her stepmother was talking to Julia and Pamela.
“I know the two of you don’t get along, but she isn’t a bad sort.”
“She’s so different from our mother. I know it’s wrong to resent her. I’ll work on being a better daughter.”
“She’s calling me. I’m glad to be out of the van, aren’t you?” Nancy walked away without waiting for Esther’s answer. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence.
Esther’s gaze was drawn to the pretty picture of the little pond across the way. She couldn’t believe her eyes when a moose with enormous antlers stepped out of the forest and waded into the water. She thought he was going to drink, but he plunged his entire head beneath the surface and came up with a mouthful of pond weeds that he munched on contentedly.
Oh, she wished Jonah was here to see this. A real live moose a mere hundred yards away. She had to get a closer look.
* * *
Gabe had hitched up the wagon as soon as the boy called Jonah arrived at the farm and explained his family’s ride had broken down about a mile away. Now they were both on their way to the van. “Are you excited about spending a few weeks in Maine?” Gabe asked.
“I would rather spend the summer at home playing ball with my friends, but Daed said I needed to come along to look after my sisters.”
“Do your sisters take a lot of looking after?” Maybe he could learn something useful about his mother’s imported bridal prospects.
“Esther needs my help sometimes, but the others don’t. They’re all going to be too busy trying to find husbands to need me.” The kid rolled his eyes.
Gabe grinned. Jonah was exactly the person he needed to pump for information. “All of your sisters are looking for husbands?”
“My stepmother claims she is a goot matchmaker and will have them engaged before the end of this trip. She even said we aren’t going home until at least two of the girls are promised. I think the whole thing is silly.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more.”
“I’d like to get back to my friends before the ball season is over. I’m the pitcher on our team. Are you looking for a wife?” the boy asked hopefully.
“Nee, I’m content being a single fellow.”
“So am I. Girls are nothing but trouble. Just ask me. With four sisters, I know what I’m talking about,” Jonah said with long-suffering conviction.
Gabe tried hard not to laugh. “How does your stepmother hope to get all your sisters engaged so quickly?”
“I don’t know her whole plan. I got tired of listening, but each one is going to concentrate on one brother.”
“Who plans to set her sights on me?”
“I don’t remember. I was getting pretty tired by then.”
A white van with the hood up came into view along with a group of Amish women standing beside it. Gabe pulled the horse and wagon to a stop beside them. Which one was going to concentrate her attention on him? He wished Jonah knew the answer. That way he’d know which sister to avoid. His mother’s cousin Waneta came rushing toward him with a cheerful smile.
“Gabriel, it’s goot to see you again.”
He got down from the wagon, determined not to give any of the women undue encouragement. “Nice to see you, too, Waneta. If your stepdaughters will get in the wagon, I’ll collect your things.”
“Our driver, Bessie, will help. Let me introduce you to my family.”
“There will be time for that when everyone is settled at the house,” he said and walked to the back of the van where Bessie, a gray-haired Englisch woman, was pulling out the luggage. He heard the rumble of a truck approaching and then a horn blaring. He glanced in that direction and saw a woman walking into the roadway. Her gaze was fixed on something in the distance. Didn’t she hear the truck? She looked at the ground. The trucker would never be able to stop in time. Gabe dropped the suitcases and dashed toward her.
The truck’s brakes squealed. Over the noise Gabe heard screaming behind him. He yelled at her to get off the road. She didn’t move a step. He closed his eyes and launched himself toward the woman, knowing they were both going to die.
He hit her and locked his arms around her as they landed on the hard pavement. His momentum sent them rolling to the grassy verge on the opposite side of the road. The wind from the truck tore his hat off. When the vehicle flew past, he kept his eyes closed for several seconds until he realized he was alive.
Thanks be for Your mercy, Lord.
He opened his eyes and gazed at the woman beneath him. She stared at him with wide, frightened, amber-colored eyes. She pressed her hands against his chest. “You saved my life.”
“Are you hurt?” His arm was starting to sting where he had landed on it.
“I don’t know. My head hurts.” Her words were slightly slurred.
The rush of adrenaline drained away, leaving Gabe weak and shaken. “Don’t move until you’re sure. What were you thinking? Didn’t you hear the truck? We could’ve both been killed.”
She was staring at his mouth. “I saw a moose. I’ve never seen one before. I wanted a closer look. Something scared it away. Please let me up.”
He rolled off and sat beside her. “It was almost the last thing you saw.”
Her family surrounded them and helped her to her feet. They were chattering and motioning with their hands as they hugged her and checked her for injures. It dawned on Gabe that they were using sign language. At least that’s what he thought it was. Was the woman deaf? Was that why she hadn’t heard the trucker’s horn or his shouts?
The big rig’s driver had managed to stop the truck a hundred yards down the road. He came running up to Gabe. “Are you okay? Is she all right? I couldn’t stop in time. She just walked out in front of me. Man, what you did was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Or the most foolish.”
“I’ve always heard there’s very little difference between the two.” The man patted his chest. “That took ten years off my life. If you had been a second slower—”
Visibly upset, the man sat down in the grass beside Gabe. “Are you folks Amish? I’ve heard some of you have moved here.”
“We are.”
“After tod
ay, I might trade my truck in for a horse and buggy.”
“You won’t haul near as much lumber that way.”
The man chuckled. “You’re right. Maybe I’ll just slow down and keep an eye out for folks like you.”
“We would appreciate that.”
Jonah, pale and shaken, left his sister and came to sit beside Gabe. “You saved Esther’s life. Danki, but it should have been me. I’m the one Daed sent to look after her. I reckon I didn’t do such a goot job.”
Gabe draped his arm over the boy’s shoulders. “You brought me here. Looks like that was Gott’s plan for both of us.”
“I just remembered something.”
“What?” Gabe asked.
The child looked up with his eyes full of wonder. “Esther is the one Mamm picked for you.”
Copyright © 2021 by Patricia MacDonald
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ISBN-13: 9781488070945
An Unlikely Proposal
Copyright © 2021 by Toni Shiloh
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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