Willow: Bride of Pennsylvania (American Mail-Order Brides 2)

by Merry Farmer

  There was more to the letter, happy tidings of Lottie’s own search for a groom and news about some of the other people they both knew in Lawrence, but Willow’s heart caught on the main reason for the letter. She blinked, gaped at Lottie’s neat handwriting, then burst into laughter.

  “It really wasn’t my fault,” she told Dusty. “How funny to find out just when I decided that I wasn’t going to let fear of making another mistake hang over me for the rest of my life.”

  Dusty replied with a tilt of her head and a look that said, “That’s all well and good, but are you going to feed me?”

  Willow jumped up from her chair, taking the letter with her. “I have to tell Amos.” He had a right to know, to share in her happiness. If she could show him that her own fears were unfounded, maybe he would see that there was hope for his situation as well.

  She refolded Lottie’s letter and tucked it back into her pocket before heading for the kitchen door. As she pulled it open—the sound of drumming rain loud on the porch roof—she thought better of her impulsiveness and turned back to the kitchen counter.

  “I’m not letting you ruin the butter again,” she told Dusty, putting a large, heavy bowl over the butter dish.

  When that was done, she turned back to the kitchen door, grabbed her cloak from its hook, and rushed out into the rainy afternoon. Thunder continued to boom, closer now.

  She hadn’t gone more than three steps, excited to share her news with Amos, when the sight of Beth running across the yard pulled her up short.

  “Beth, what are you doing here?” she called out.

  Beth glanced up as she mounted the steps of the back porch. Her wet hair was matted to her head and her face was lined with worry. But as she looked at Willow, she blinked wide in amazement.

  “Look at you,” she said, stunned. “Kapp and all.”

  Willow smiled, touching the white kapp. “I found Amos’s sister’s clothes. Oh, Beth, I think he’s just about ready to come back to the church, and I want to come with him.”

  For a split-second, Beth’s face lit with joy. “That’s wonderful.” Then it dropped back to near panic. “Have you seen Sarah?”

  “Sarah?” All at once, the mood of the conversation switched. A different kind of worry clawed at Willow’s heart. “Not since this morning, before the storm started.”

  “You saw her this morning?” Beth looked puzzled.

  “I…I came over to your house, looking for help with cooking. Sarah was out in the yard, picking blackberries.”

  “I sent her outside because she was vexing me something terrible,” Beth sighed. “She kept saying that she wanted to go visit you, no matter how many times I told her not right now.”

  “Yes, she said the same to me.” Willow chewed her lip. “I told her now was not a good time for a visit, but….” Her mind wandered back to the conversation. Come to think of it, she hadn’t exactly resolved things with the young girl. She blinked back to Beth. “You don’t think she tried to come over here by herself, do you? In the rain.”

  Beth drew in a shaky breath. “That’s exactly what I do think. But you say she never arrived here?”

  Willow shook her head. “No.” A second thought seized her, and she clapped a hand to her chest. “You don’t think she tried to follow me home through the woods, do you?”

  The terrified look on Beth’s face was all the answer Willow needed, but Beth said, “I didn’t think to come that way over here to look for her. Sarah knows the creek swells when it rains and she’s not to go into the woods.”

  “But this was before the rain started,” Willow finished.

  The two women exchanged terrified looks. Willow reached out and clasped Beth’s hand. Beth squeezed back.

  “We’ll find her,” Willow said with more confidence than she knew she had. “If she’s gone through the woods to come here, then we’ll find her.”

  She kept hold of Beth’s hand as she rushed down the porch steps and darted toward the woods.

  Chapter Nine

  Dear Gillian, Emma, and Rose,

  What an exciting day it’s been.

  I wrote that first sentence hours ago, and would you believe it, things became even more exciting than that. Exciting and fraught with danger….

  “Sarah,” Willow called, pushing a sagging branch away from her face. Thunder rolled outside of the forest, louder and closer than ever. “Sarah, sweetheart, where are you?”

  “Sarah,” Beth called, far more frantic than Willow could imagine being. Sarah was Beth’s daughter, after all, her heart.

  “We’ll find her,” Willow shouted over the din of the rain to reassure her friend. She pushed wet hair back from her face. “I know we will.”

  The cloak Willow had thrown on before leaving the house was wet through, and heavy on her shoulders. Willow tried to remain focused on finding Sarah and not on the deep regret of ruining Amos’s sister’s clothes so soon after putting them on. Yes, it was another problem, another bit of trouble that she’d caused for herself, but in her heart, she knew that Amos’s sister would forgive her. The important thing was not the clothes or her impetuousness, it was finding Sarah.

  “Sarah,” she called again, though she couldn’t help but add, “Oh, I never should have worn these clothes out in the rain.”

  Beth paused, panting, a hand to her heart. Her chest heaved up and down with more than just the effort of climbing over underbrush and fighting the rain, but she still managed to focus on Willow for a moment. “Clothes will mend, and if not, I will show you how to make new dresses. And if Amos has changed his mind about keeping away from the community, then perhaps God is smiling on us today and we will find Sarah safe and sound.”

  Willow kicked aside a fallen branch to meet her friend and squeeze her hand. “I don’t know what the future will hold, but I am certain of two things. I’m certain that Amos will open his heart and embrace what was lost, and I’m certain that Sarah is nearby, just as ready to be found as Amos is.”

  Beth’s eyes lit with hope even as they swam with tears. She tried to smile. “I pray that it is so.”

  The two of them turned together, back into the thickest part of the woods. “Sarah!” Willow continued to shout. “Where are you?”

  The thunder was still loud overhead. Flashes of lightning lit the blowing trees from time to time. The rain was as fierce as ever, drowning out even the noise of the thunder with its doggedness. Willow and Beth pushed on through the woods regardless.

  It wasn’t long until another sound rushed up to wrap fear around Willow’s heart. The sweet burble of the creek that she’d heard while crossing over to the Lapp’s property earlier had become a steady, angry roar. The closer they got to the place where the water cut through the swaying trees, the more anxious Willow felt. She had slipped in the dirt earlier. What was to keep her from falling over and being washed away entirely now?

  Hard on the heels of that thought came a tiny, high-pitched scream.

  “Sarah!” Beth shouted from the bottom of her lungs and picked up her pace.

  Willow raced after her, thrusting aside low-hanging branches and wiping rain from her face as she went. Sarah must have heard her mother’s call. A desperate cry of, “Mamm!” welled up after it.

  “Sarah, we’re coming,” Willow shouted.

  She dodged around a fallen log and picked up her pace as she and Beth came to the point where the ground began to slope toward the rushing creek.

  “Sarah,” Beth called. “Mamm’s coming. Hold on. Hold—”

  With her own sudden scream, Beth slipped and pitched forward. Willow watched in horror as her friend’s feet flew out from under her and she landed hard on her side, skidding toward the churning mud near the edge of where the creek had flooded its banks.

  “I’ve got you.” Willow lunged after her, saying a prayer and throwing her hands out to catch Beth before she could slide down the muddy slope and into the raging creek.

  At nearly the same time, she caught sight of a fr
ightened, wet Sarah, clinging to a fallen tree on the far side of the water. “Mamm,” Sarah shouted, weeping in terror.

  It wasn’t hard to see why. The creek was on the rise. Thick, muddy water carried everything from leaves to branches swiftly along its current. Sarah was half-immersed in the swirling torrent, her dress and one arm caught around the fallen tree. They were the only things keeping her from being swept off and likely drowned. Even from yards away, it was clear that Sarah was losing the strength to hold on.

  “We’ve got you, sweetheart,” Willow shouted across to her as she hefted Beth out of the slick mud. “Your mamm and I will come get you.”

  “My ankle,” Beth panted, wincing as she got to her feet and moved away from the mud that had pulled her down. “I think I twisted it.”

  Willow nodded and hugged her friend, but her focus was on Sarah. She’d never had to rescue a child from raging waters before. She could barely catch the chickens when they got out without Beth’s help. But it was clear as day what she had to do, and that Beth wasn’t going to be able to help her do it.

  “Hold on,” she called across to Sarah. To Beth she said, “I have to find a way to get across the creek.”

  “You could try the footbridge,” Beth suggested, “but it’s a ways up that way.” She nodded into the rainy darkness further up the creek’s path.

  Willow shook her head. “There has to be a closer way to cross, something like a bridge but not a bridge. Or some place where the creek isn’t as wide.”

  The two of them searched frantically up and down the creek where they stood, but time was running out. The rain wasn’t lessening by a fraction and thunder still split the air now and then.

  “I’ll have to try there,” Willow said. She pointed several yards downstream, where the creek made a sharp turn. A tall, thin tree slanted over the water. One of its branches hung low enough that if she was careful, she’d be able to hold onto it while wading across the angry water.

  “Go.” Beth nodded.

  Checking one last time to be sure Beth was all right and shedding her sodden cloak, Willow dashed down the course of the creek. “I’m coming, Sarah, I’m coming,” she called across to the frightened girl.

  Sarah replied with tears and wails. The sound shot straight to Willow’s heart. She stumbled across a thick tree root, but ignored it and ran on. She had one goal and one goal only in mind. She had to reach Sarah before it was too late.

  As she reached the leaning tree, she leapt out to take hold of the low-hanging branch. Her feet skidded on the muddy bank as she did, pitching her toward the grimy brown sludge. Willow let out a shout, but held on. Cold water rushed over her feet, soaking her already wet shoes with grimy brown water. She couldn’t think about that now. She trained her eyes on the far bank and plunged into the hard current.

  The water pushed at her so fiercely as she tried to walk across the creek that her feet kept slipping. Only the branch saved her from succumbing to the current. By the time she was halfway across, she gave up trying to walk and propelled herself hand over hand across the branch. That took every bit of strength and concentration she had. Her arms ached and were near the point of giving out when she reached a spot where her feet gained purchase in the muddy creek bed. Once she had that, she pushed herself on to the far side, finally letting go of the branch.

  “I’m coming,” she shouted to Sarah, dashing up the far side of the noisy creek.

  “Hurry,” Beth called across to her. She was leaning against a tree, her hands clasped to her chest.

  The air burned in Willow’s lungs and her legs were wobbly by the time she stumbled up to the point where Sarah was caught in the river. The girl was farther out into the creek than she’d seemed from the other side. Either that or the water was rising fast. Willow couldn’t think about that. She grabbed hold of the fallen tree that Sarah clung to and inched her way slowly along it.

  “There, there.” She tried her best to sound comforting when, in fact, she was near panic herself. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.”

  “Mrs. Stoltzfus,” Sarah wailed. She extended one arm to Willow, but grabbed hold of the fallen tree again when the motion caused her to slip.

  “Stay right there, sweetheart,” Willow cautioned her. She was within two yards now. “I’ve got you. I’ve—”

  Without warning, the ground slipped under Willow’s feet. The world tipped around her as she went down, scrambling and flailing to grab hold of something. But everything she grasped slid out of her hands. Her head spun as her feet hit the cold, rushing water.

  Amos set down his pen and let out a breath as he finished the last of his letters. He’d never been a very good correspondent, and writing to every one of his four siblings in one sitting was draining. Four times he’d explained Willow, who she was and what she meant to him. Four times he’d asked his brothers and sisters to forgive him for being so distant. If he was going to mend fences and return home, after all, he needed to start with the people who had gone through the same pain that he had.

  Just as he stuffed the last letter into its envelope and sealed it, a knock sounded at the barn door. Amos glanced up with a smile, expecting to see Willow and to tell her what he’d been doing for the last hour and more. Instead he was met by the sight of a wet, worried Mark Lapp.

  “Amos,” Mark strode into the barn as soon as he was acknowledged. “Have you seen Beth or Sarah?”

  Amos pushed his chair back and stood, leaving the letters on his desk. “No.” He frowned and moved to meet his friend in the middle of the barn. “Where are they?”

  Mark gave him an anxious shrug. “Beth went looking for Sarah almost two hours ago. She thought Sarah was just playing outside, but then this storm started and she didn’t come back. Prissy Yoder is watching the baby while I look for them. I was hoping that they found their way over here somehow and were taking shelter during the worst of it.”

  The same anxiety that tightened Mark’s face struck Amos in the chest. “Maybe they’re up at the house.”

  Mark nodded. The two of them rushed back out into the rain, dashing for the back porch. At last, the rain was beginning to let up, but the yard was flooded and water still poured off of the roof.

  As they reached the house and entered the kitchen, they were met by silence and the smell of something burning. “Willow?” Amos called, striding straight through the kitchen, across the hall, and to the main room.

  All of the things that Willow had taken out of storage and arranged in the house were exactly where she’d put them. In any other circumstances, he would have smiled and found a certain amount of pride in her refusal to give in to him.

  “Willow?” he marched back through the hall to the kitchen. Mark had found a thick towel and removed a thoroughly burnt shoo-fly pie from the oven. The kitchen table was scattered with letters, one of the chairs pushed askew. Willow never would have left something as special as the letters to her friends laying out in such disarray, and she certainly wouldn’t have let a pie burn in the oven. “She’s not here.”

  “Do you think Beth and Sarah aren’t together, and that one or the other of them came here to get Willow’s help searching for the other?” Mark asked.

  It seemed as likely as not, even more so when Amos checked for Willow’s cloak and found the hook bare. “It looks like it,” he said.

  The two men headed back out to the porch and into the rain. “Which way to you figure they went?” Mark asked.

  Amos scanned the vast, gloomy field beside his property, the dark, rain-soaked woods. “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “There’s no telling which—”

  He stopped. A lone, bedraggled figure limped toward them from the woods.

  “Beth,” Mark shouted. He leapt down the porch stairs and ran toward his wife.

  Amos followed, close behind. Mark had always been a faster runner than him, but by the time he reached Beth, halfway to the woods, Amos had nearly caught up with him.

  “Where’s Sarah?” Mark asked as his wife
threw herself into his arms. “Is Willow with you?”

  “The creek,” Beth panted. “Sarah was caught on a tree. Willow went over to save her, but she slipped.” Her wild, frightened eyes turned to Amos. “She’s barely holding on.”

  Stark fear, far greater than anything Amos had ever felt before, filled him. “Show me,” he said, darting on toward the woods before Beth and Mark could do as he requested.

  The three of them ran into the woods as fast as they could. Beth had injured her foot, so it was slower going than Amos would have liked. He pushed as far ahead of them as he dared, calling over his shoulder for directions.

  “Which way? How much farther?”

  “To the left,” Beth shouted, now far behind him. “Down near the bend.”

  Amos nodded and pushed on. Branches clawed at his legs, one scraped the side of his face, but he didn’t care. Willow was in trouble. She needed him.

  “Willow,” he shouted. The rain had softened, but it was still loud enough for him to lose his bearings. He heard the creek rushing, but his fear was so potent that he wasn’t certain of direction. “Willow!”

  “Amos,” he heard at last, loud and frantic from somewhere to his right.

  He changed directions and charge on to her. “Willow, I’m coming.”

  “Amos, hurry!”

  He was more than happy to do follow that order. He would follow any order, do anything she wanted him to do, as long as he could hold her in his arms again. For all his fine talk about forgetting the past and focusing on the future, he hadn’t stopped to truly understand that she was his future. Everything she stood for and everything she wanted would color his days for the rest of his life, if he could just reach her in time.

  “Amos, this way.”