by Jo Ann Brown
“A coyote or a coydog, I’d guess.” Leah shuddered. “Let’s go inside.” She didn’t want to add that either a coyote or its mixed offspring could easily kill a small dog like Shep.
“I don’t like that sound,” Mandy said, not moving. “We didn’t hear anything like that in Philadelphia.”
Though coyotes likely roamed the city, Leah didn’t correct the little girl.
“I miss home.” Mandy got to her feet and held Shep close. Pausing in front of Leah, she asked, “How much longer are we staying here? Isabella’s tenth birthday is only a few weeks from now, and I don’t want to miss her party. I should be getting my invitation soon, but she told me that it’s going to be a sleepover. I can go, can’t I? I can’t wait. My very first sleepover.”
Fortunately Mandy didn’t wait for an answer as she hurried into the house, chattering about the party.
Leah sank back into the rocking chair. She ignored the coyotes’ calls as she stared out into the rain. Facing the truth wasn’t easy, but though Mandy might wear plain clothes and follow the Ordnung of their district, to the little girl, it was only a game. She hadn’t given up her longing to return to the city and the life and friends and dreams she had there.
If they returned to Philadelphia, Leah would have to leave everything behind again...including her reblooming relationship with Ezra. Yet, she couldn’t put her happiness ahead of Mandy’s. She had to find a way to show Mandy that their lives in Paradise Springs were better than in the city, but how? She pressed her hands together and closed her eyes. “God, show me the way because I don’t have any idea what to do.”
She hoped God would send her inspiration soon.
* * *
Ezra drew in the reins to slow his buggy when he saw Leah standing by the mailbox at the end of the Beilers’ lane early the next week. Dozens of emotions rushed through him, but the only one he paid attention to was his anticipation to enjoy another conversation with her. Maybe he’d even have the opportunity to hold her slender fingers again.
Not looking in his direction, she closed the mailbox and glanced at the handful of envelopes she had taken out. A frown furrowed a line between her brows. Was she disappointed that a letter hadn’t arrived from someone special? From a suitor she’d left behind in Philadelphia?
When he imagined some Englischer writing to her or perhaps some Amish man she’d encountered at the market in the city, an odd sensation pinched him. A sensation he didn’t want to examine too closely. Are you envious of someone who may not even exist? He ignored the taunting voice in his head.
The horse rattled the harness, and she looked up. Strain had stolen the usual glow from her face. “Wie bischt, Ezra?”
As he answered that he was doing fine, he admitted to himself that he liked hearing her use plain words. It was as if each word washed away some of the Englisch influence that had seeped into her life. He wanted to believe that meant she had no thoughts of leaving again.
“Bad news?” he asked when she scowled at the envelopes she held.
“Not exactly.” She pulled out a small, bright pink envelope. “Mandy has been waiting for this impatiently. It’s an invitation to her best friend Isabella’s birthday party.”
“In Philadelphia?” He struggled to get the words out, feeling as if someone had punched him in the gut.
She slid the envelope back in among the others. “Ja.”
“Are you going to give it to her?”
“Ja. I won’t be dishonest with her.” She sighed. “I don’t know what will happen now. I’ve been praying for guidance.”
“I’ll add my prayers to yours, Leah.”
Her face brightened, and she reached out to clasp his sleeve. “Danki, Ezra. I know God listens to each of our prayers, so it can’t hurt to have more going up.”
Savoring the tingle that flew up his arm, he started to move his hand to put it over hers. She drew her fingers back and held the envelopes with both hands. He couldn’t be sure if she’d seen his motion and reacted to it or not. As unsettled as she was by the invitation addressed to Mandy, he didn’t want to upset her further.
Instead, he said, “I thought you’d want to know that we raised almost four thousand dollars at the mud sale.”
“That’s wunderbaar!”
“Jim the auctioneer told me that your quilts sold for over one hundred dollars each.”
“Really?” Her eyes widened in honest shock. “For such small pieces?”
“I recognized a couple of the bidders. One has a shop in Bird-in-Hand and the other has one in Strasburg. I’m sure they plan to resell the small quilts to tourists for even more than that.”
“Where are you going?”
“Into town. I’m hoping Joshua can fix a wheel that broke on my hay wagon.” He pointed to the cargo space behind the buggy’s cab that made the vehicle resemble an Englischer’s pickup truck. A large wheel balanced in the open bed.
“Will you let Amos know that I’ll come in tomorrow and pick up the groceries Mamm ordered? We were supposed to pick them up today, but Mandy is staying late at school today to work on a project. She won’t be home for another hour, and...” She looked down at the envelopes.
Was she hiding more than distress about Mandy being invited to her friend’s party? “I’d be glad to give you a ride if you want to get them today.”
Her smile was brittle, and her eyes shifted away as if she suddenly found the dandelions by the road very interesting. “No, but danki. I’ve got some chores I need to finish. I didn’t want Amos to stay late at the store because he expects me to come today. If you don’t mind telling him...”
Before he could say that he did mind because he was growing surer with every word she spoke that there was something very important that she wasn’t telling him, she hurried back toward the house. She ran so fast that the strings on her heart-shaped kapp bounced out behind her.
Ezra rested his elbows on his knees as he watched her disappear around the barn, then he slapped the reins gently against the horse. The buggy rolled along the side of the road, and the questions followed, taunting him. When he’d walked with Leah after the mud sale, he had believed that she was opening up to him as she’d done years ago. Now she was as closed as a miser’s fist.
As if the weather had grown as dejected as he was, rain spit against the windshield. He leaned forward and flipped the switches to turn on the buggy’s lights. The trees along the road were becoming obscured in mist, and he wanted to be as visible as possible to any other traffic.
Only a few cars were parked in the parking lot in front of the Stoltzfus Family Shops. They were closer to Amos’s grocery store than Joshua’s buggy shop. The carpentry shop where his youngest brothers worked was dark, so they must be working on a project somewhere in the area.
Lashing the reins to the hitching post, Ezra wrestled the broken wheel out of the back of the buggy. He carried it into the shop and leaned it against the high counter at the front of the shop. Both his brother and his nephew Timothy paused in their work around the buggies and glanced toward the door.
“Can you fix this?” Ezra asked in lieu of a greeting.
Joshua stood from where he had been kneeling beside a family buggy that looked finished except for paint. Wiping his hands on a stained cloth, he came over to examine the wheel. He ran his finger expertly along the area where the metal rim had separated from the wooden one.
“Ja,” he said, “but it may take a few days. I don’t know if I have the right length of metal to put around a wheel this size.”
“Can’t you hammer this back into place? I need it to finish cutting the hay in the big field.” He glanced at the window. “Once it stops raining long enough.”
“Not if you don’t want to be back here tomorrow with it broken again. Cobbling it together won’t do you any gut. The first time it hits a
stone or even a small hill in the field, it may break again.”
“Do you have a wheel here that I can use until you can fix this one? I’ve lost enough time to the rain as it is. I don’t know why God sends us too much rain some years and not enough others.”
“To teach us faith that things will eventually work out for the best.”
Ezra laughed tautly, a short, sharp sound that brought a frown from his brother. “Do you have a wheel I can use or not?”
“I’ll look, but not until you tell me what’s wrong with you. You’re as grumpy as a beaver with a toothache.”
Timothy chuckled. He swept the sawdust with more enthusiasm when his daed frowned in his direction.
“Sorry,” Ezra said. “I got frustrated over something, and you shouldn’t have to suffer because of it.”
“Leah?”
“Is it that obvious?” He grimaced. “It must be.”
“You two seemed to be getting along well at the mud sale.”
“I thought so, but, today when I offered her a ride here to pick up her family’s groceries, it was as if she couldn’t wait to get away from me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Joshua frowned. “Didn’t you ask her?”
“No. I didn’t want to be nosy.”
“But isn’t that better than you imagining all sorts of reasons—none of which may have any basis in reality—why she didn’t accept your offer?” He hooked a thumb toward Timothy, who was dumping the sawdust into a barrel at the back of the shop. “I would expect such foolishness from him, but not from a full-grown man.”
Ezra arched his brows and shook his head. “Maybe that’s the problem. When I’m around her, I find myself thinking like a teenager again. As if no time has passed since the night she and Johnny went away.”
“Ten years have gone by, Ezra.” He sighed. “Ten years of happiness and sorrow and changes. Even if you wished to, you can’t erase them and pretend they haven’t happened.”
“I don’t intend to try, but...” He wasn’t sure what the “but” would be. He knew there had to be one. Otherwise, why was he miserable?
“When I find myself struggling with wishing that the past was different, I remind myself of the words in Psalm 118.”
Ezra knew the verse his brother was referring to, because he had often heard Joshua murmur the words to himself in the days, weeks and months after his beloved Matilda had died.
This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
“Those words got me through many lonely days and nights,” Joshua continued when Ezra remained silent. “I’d become accustomed to sharing dreams of the future with Matilda, but suddenly she was gone. The past was too painful, and the future was an empty landscape. All I had was the present. I needed to be the daed for our kinder that she would have wanted me to be. All you have is the present, too, Ezra. That you can change. Not the past.”
“Danki.” Ezra patted his brother on the arm, hoping that the motion would say what words couldn’t.
But Joshua wasn’t done. “You’ve got a great opportunity. I don’t see any reason why the two of you can’t start over, if that’s what you want.”
“Maybe we could, if we wanted to.”
Joshua snorted his disbelief. “Wanted to? You can’t stop talking about her, and you’re worrying yourself sick over silly things.”
“What if she leaves again?” Ezra asked, finally voicing his greatest fear.
“Is she planning to?” His brother looked astonished. “From what Mamm and Esther have told me, she seems really happy to be home.”
“She is, but her niece isn’t.” He explained the little he knew about the birthday party invitation. “You know Leah. She puts her needs and wants aside if someone needs her help. If Mandy is adamant about going back to Philadelphia, do you think Leah will let her go alone?”
“No.” Joshua scratched behind his ear. “But the solution is easy.”
“Really?”
“You need to make sure Mandy wants to stay here. If she doesn’t go, Leah won’t. Look, I can ask Rose if Mandy can come over and play with Deborah.”
“Rose is babysitting for you?”
“She agreed to watch Levi and Deborah after school. I lost my regular sitter Betty last week after she took a job cleaning Walt Filipowski’s bed-and-breakfast over on Meadow Lane.” Leaning an elbow on the counter, he said, “If Mandy is happy with new friends, she’ll find it easier to let the old ones go.”
Ezra considered his brother’s suggestions. They were simple and straightforward and would truly benefit Mandy because she could make a home in Paradise Springs. Maybe even be baptized into their faith eventually and truly become a part of the Leit.
“You can do that,” Joshua added, “or you could ask Leah if she intends to return to the city with Mandy.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” His brother frowned. “It’s a simple enough question—are you staying or going back to Philadelphia?”
“If I back her into a corner, she might decide then and there that she’s not staying. I don’t want to be the cause of her leaving a second time.”
“A second time? She left last time because of Johnny, right?”
“I hope so.” He went out of the shop before Joshua could ask another question, but he couldn’t escape the truth he’d tried to ignore from the moment he’d first heard that Leah had left Paradise Springs with her brother.
What if she’d gone away because of the kiss he’d stolen from her? He’d been tongue-tied afterward, overwhelmed by his feelings for her. He hadn’t been able to think of anything to say. He’d gotten up and left. He didn’t even walk her home. The next day, he’d watched for a chance to go and talk with her alone, but her twin brother or one of her parents was with her throughout the day.
Then she was gone.
Since then, he’d wondered if he’d backed her into a corner, kissing her and leaving without a word as if the kiss meant nothing. As if she meant nothing.
He couldn’t risk making the same mistake, but asking her to choose between Mandy and him would be an even bigger error. There must be some way to keep both her and Mandy in Paradise Springs. But how?
Chapter Nine
Where could Mandy be? Mamm hadn’t seen her for the past hour, though she knew Mandy had come home from school, because she’d made a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies with her granddaughter.
Leah found no sign of the girl or Shep in any of the outbuildings. She saw Daed working out behind the barn. He was repairing the belt on the stationary engine that ran some of the equipment on the farm. For once, Mandy wasn’t near where he was.
Where else could she be on a Saturday?
Shadowing her eyes, Leah looked across the field toward Ezra’s farm. The milk herd was scattered in one field as the cows grazed. Clothes hung on the line stretching from the house to the barn, but no one was in the yard. She looked along the fence lines that she could see from where she stood, but Mandy wasn’t in sight.
She opened the gate on her family’s side of the field. She picked her way across the field as quickly as she could. She didn’t want to leave Mamm home without someone else there very long. Just in case Daed fell again. That was why she’d turned down Ezra’s offer to drive her to the grocery store to pick up Mamm’s order. The next day, when Mandy was home from school, Leah had collected the groceries knowing that her niece would help, if necessary. She thanked God again that it hadn’t been.
The days of rain had left the ground muddy, and pockets of water were hidden beneath the thick grass. When her foot sank into one, she grimaced and focused on watching where she walked. She made it across the field without soaking her other sneaker.
She understood why the ho
use had appeared deserted when she saw that the family’s buggy was gone. Wanda and Esther must be calling on someone or running errands. Was Ezra gone, too? She didn’t see anyone working in any of the fields, which was odd for him on a Saturday. With all the rain, he’d been out cutting hay whenever the skies were clear.
A sharp bark caught Leah’s ear. Looking at the field behind the barn, the one she hadn’t been able to view from home, she saw Mandy. The little girl was leaning over the fence, her bare toes curled on top of the lowest rail and holding her hand out toward some cows, who regarded her with indifference. Shep had his head stuck through the railing and seemed to believe that the cows understood what his barking meant.
“Mandy!” she said as she hurried to where her niece stood. “You know you’re supposed to let someone know when you’re leaving the farm.”
Glancing over her shoulder with a smile, her niece waved the handful of grass toward the cows, but they had no interest in being fed that way. “I can’t see where Mamm Millich is. Do you see her? Do you think she’s had her calf? I want to be able to get a photo of the calf to show Isabella when I go to her party.”
“Mandy, you need to check with someone before you go running off,” she said. So far, Mandy hadn’t said anything about the birthday party in front of her grandparents, as Leah had asked. The little girl hadn’t asked why, and Leah suspected she understood it would be a sore point with Mamm and Daed. Now wasn’t the time to discuss either taking pictures or the birthday party. “Mamm and I have been worried sick when we couldn’t find you.”
That finally got Mandy’s attention. She let the grass fall to the ground and jumped down off the fence, her dark skirt swirling around her knees. “I told Grossdawdi that I was going to come over here to see my favorite cow.” The little girl regarded her, baffled. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“He was busy, so I didn’t ask him if he knew where you were.” She wasn’t going to admit that she wasn’t sure if she would have asked her daed about Mandy’s whereabouts even if he hadn’t been involved in fixing the engine belt.
