by Kelly Irvin
COPYRIGHT
ZONDERVAN
The Midwife’s Dream
Copyright © 2018 by Kelly Irvin
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
Epub Edition April 2018 ISBN 9780310352006
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
CIP data is available upon request.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.
Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
18 19 20 21 22 / LSC / 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Copyright
Glossary
Featured Jamesport Families
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Discussion Questions
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To my daughter, Erin, whose dream was always to be a
mother. You’re doing a great job, sweetie! Love always.
Wait for the LORD;
Be strong and take heart
And wait for the LORD.
PSALM 27:14 NIV
GLOSSARY
ach: oh
aenti: aunt
appeditlich: delicious
bedauerlich: sad
bopli/boppli: baby
boplin: babies
bruder: brother
bruders: brothers
bu: boy
buwe: boys
daadi: grandfather
daed: father
danki: thank you
dat: dad
dawdy/daadi haus: grandparents’ house
Dietsch: Pennsylvania Dutch, the Amish language (German dialect)
dochder: daughter
Englisch/Englischer: English or Non-Amish
fraa: wife
freind: friend
freinden: friends
froh: happy
gegisch: silly
geh: go
gelassenheit: fundamental Amish belief in yielding fully to God’s will and forsaking all selfishness
gern gschehne: you’re welcome
Gmay: Church District
Gott: God
granddaadi/groossdaadi: grandpa
grandmammi/groossmammi: grandma
gut: good
Gut nacht: Good night
haus: house
Ich liebe dich: I love you
jah: yes
kaffee/kaffi: coffee
kapp: prayer covering or cap
kichli: cookie
kichlin: cookies
kinner: children
lieb: love
liewe: love, a term of endearment
maed: young women, girls
maedel: young woman
mamm: mom
mammi: grandmother
mann: man
mei: my
mudder: mother
naerfich: nervous
narrisch: crazy
nee: no
Ordnung: the oral tradition of practices required and forbidden in the Amish faith
rumspringa: running-around period when a teenager turns sixteen years old
schee: pretty
schtupp: family room
schweschder: sister
schweschdere/schweschders: sisters
sohn/suh: son
Was iss letz?: What’s wrong?
Wie bischt?: How’s it going?
Wie geht’s: How do you do? or Good day!
wunderbaar/wunderbarr: wonderful
ya: yes
yer: your
yerself: yourself
yung: young
*The German dialect spoken by the Amish is not a written language and varies depending on the location and origin of the settlement. These spellings are approximations. Most Amish children learn English after they start school. They also learn high German, which is used in their Sunday services.
FEATURED JAMESPORT FAMILIES
CYRUS AND JOSEPHINA BEACHY (DEACON)
Iris
Joseph
Rueben
Samuel
Carl
Louella
Abigail
JEREMY AND BERTHA KURTZ
Nathanael
John
Avery
William
Salome
Mahon
Jason
Mary
Mark
BARTHOLOMEW AND RACHEL SHROCK
Liam
Annie
Micah
AIDAN AND BESS GRABER
Joshua
CHAPTER 1
The baby boy slid into Iris Beachy’s hands so fast a person might think he was late for supper. He opened his mouth wide and declared his dislike of his new surroundings with a loud wail.
“Hello to you too, sweet one.” Her best friend’s new son weighed at least ten pounds. He arrived with a full head of dark hair that stood up in wet spikes around his red, wrinkled face. Iris chuckled and held him up for Rachel and Bartholomew Shrock to see. “He’s a full-grown man. Better set him to work chopping wood.”
“He’s here. Our boy’s here, fraa.” Bartholomew left his wife’s side to take a closer look. His big grin split his face over his long brown beard. “He’s a giant.”
“Built like his daed for sure.” Iris suctioned fluid from the baby’s nose and mouth with a syringe. He didn’t like that at all. The wail turned to an aggravated howl. “Hush, hush, you’re fine. It’s a good thing you’ve done this before, Rachel. He had plenty of room to squeeze out without any tearing.”
Twice before. Fortunately, Rachel’s mother had taken little Annie and Liam to her house at the beginning of the six hours of labor that started on a cloudy February afternoon in which the Missouri sky spit ice and snow at passersby as if to taunt them for daring to venture outdoors.
Iris wiped the baby off and looked him over from top to bottom. His skin was pink, his toes and fingers perfectly formed, his legs and arms strong. She laid him in the old blanket Rachel had placed in the cradle by the bed. They would save the tumbling block crib quilt Iris made for later when he was dressed. She placed a clip on the cord and cut it.
“Your suh has a healthy set of lungs.”
She handed the squalling baby to Rachel, who sank back onto the pillows and tucked her new baby into the crook of her arm. His cries subsided seconds later. “He’s built like Bart, but he looks like me. Don’t you think?”
“
He looks like my groossdaadi. No teeth, all hair.” Bartholomew leaned over Rachel and tickled his son’s cheek with one huge, callused index finger. “Micah. We’ll name him Micah.”
Rachel smiled up at them. Bartholomew’s hand moved from his baby to his wife’s cheek. She held it there with her free hand. The look her friends exchanged brought a lump to Iris’s throat. She ducked her head and dealt with the afterbirth.
Be thankful for Rachel and Bartholomew’s blessing. Be joyful. Be thankful. Be content.
Iris reminded herself, as she always did, of God’s blessing in giving her this role in the Jamesport community. She’d delivered six babies on her own since Laura Kauffman retired as the Gmay midwife. Many more under Laura’s tutelage. To be able to bring her friends’ babies into the world was a gift. God allowed her to be present when a new life bounded into her arms and began this journey in the world.
Thank you, Gott.
Even if He hadn’t fulfilled her one and only dream. That of her own family. A husband and her own babies. Not yet, she amended. On His time, not hers.OnO She gathered up the bloody towels and sheets. She refused to lose faith. Not when her friends married and had their babies. Not when her twenty-third birthday passed.
Plenty of time, her mother kept saying. Plenty of time.
“It’s dark out already. I better do my chores.” Bartholomew headed for the door. “I’ll let you women do what you do. Iris, I’ll hitch up the buggy and bring it around front so it’ll be ready when you are.”
Iris cleared her throat of that annoying lump. “I won’t be long. The road will be bad and getting worse.”
Fortunately, the Beachy farm was only a stone’s throw from the Shrocks’. Perfect for visiting back and forth. Perfect for watching Annie and Liam grow and change. Now Micah. The annoying lump returned. Iris made a pile of the bloody towels and stood. “Micah is a fine name.”
“I told Bartholomew we couldn’t pick Ephraim because I know you want that name for one of your boys.” Her tone airy, Rachel smoothed Micah’s blanket. “It would be too confusing when they get together to play.”
Leave it to Rachel to hop over all the parts in between. Finding that special friend. Courting. Marrying. “You can use the name for your next one.”
“You’ll need it. Don’t you worry.” Rachel patted the bed in a sit-with-me motion. “You have lots of time. Look at it this way, when you get married, you’ll be too busy having your own boplin to deliver other people’s. You’ll miss it.”
Rachel was a good friend. She’d just given birth and she chose to focus on how that made Iris feel. She always knew what Iris was thinking. All the way back to when her daed became the deacon and he started taking care of Gmay business. Then rumspringa and the singings. And Aidan. Iris settled onto the bed and began to re-braid Rachel’s hair. “You’re a mess.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“No point in talking about it. Gott’s will is Gott’s will.”
Rachel kissed Micah’s forehead. His eyelids fluttered. He went back to sleep, lips puckering as if he were sucking. “You are the kindest, nicest, sweetest person I know, Iris Beachy. And no man would say you’re hard on the eyes. Your turn will come. I promise you that.”
“You’re sweet, but you can’t promise me anything.”
“Mahon Kurtz likes you.”
“He has a funny way of showing it.”
“He knows you’re still in love with Aidan. He’s waiting until you’re ready.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Don’t be silly.” Iris tugged at Rachel’s chestnut hair. “Aidan asked me to marry him. I said no. Not the other way around.”
“Ouch. Not so hard.” Rachel pushed Iris’s hands away from her head. Even with her skin blotchy, hair sweaty, and nightgown stained and wrinkled, Rachel was the pretty one. At sixteen, Bartholomew asked her to ride home with him after their first singing. They never looked back, marrying two days after her nineteenth birthday. “Because you’re wise beyond your years. Aidan loves Bess, and you knew it before he was willing to admit it. Mahon is waiting for you to give him a sign you’re ready.”
“You see what you want to see.”
“What does Salome say?”
Salome was the other still-single woman in the gaggle of girls who’d once been inseparable. She taught school and waited for her special friend. She was also Mahon’s sister. “She thinks her brother is short a few tools in his toolbox. He’s busy working the farm with his bruders now that his daed is retiring. And when he’s not, he draws pictures and looks at the stars.”
Rachel giggled. “So draw him a picture.”
“Don’t laugh. It’s not like our paths don’t cross at church and at every frolic and every school picnic.”
“You like him. You know you do.”
She did like him. In a warm, content, he’ll-always-be-around sort of way. She’d simply never thought of him in that light. He was Salome’s goofy brother who wore glasses and knew the names of all the constellations in the sky before he learned his multiplication tables.
“He needs to know you’re interested back.” Rachel smoothed Micah’s wild hair. He sighed, the sweetest, most tender sound imaginable. “Most men do.”
“If he’s not interested enough to approach me first, then I reckon it’s not meant to be.”
“Admit it.” Rachel scooted up on the pillow. Her face had that same fierce expression it did when she accused her little brother of eating her lunch at school. “You won’t do it because you’re mad at Gott.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“I think we’ve had this conversation already.”
Rachel laughed. Micah frowned and sputtered. She shushed him. “Go home, freind.”
“Do you want something to eat first?”
“I’ll get it in a while. Help yourself if you’re hungry.” Rachel pulled the quilt up so it covered both her and Micah. “I’m going to enjoy lying here with no little ones tugging on my skirt or asking me for a cookie or needing a diaper changed for a while longer. Bart will be hungry after he finishes the chores. We’ll eat together.”
Rachel would be back on her feet making breakfast in the morning, and Iris would get a good night’s sleep before doing her own chores. She glanced out the bedroom window. The icy panes reflected the kerosene lamp back at her. The days were short this time of year. “Mudder will have left a plate warming on the back of the stove for me. She’ll be sitting by the fire, waiting.”
“That’s where you get your sweetness—your mudder.” Rachel grinned. “Definitely not from your daed.”
“Daed’s different at home.” Rachel was teasing, but Iris couldn’t help but defend her father. “His bark is worse than his bite, always has been.”
To others, Cyrus Beachy might be a stern deacon who taught baptism classes. But at home, he was still a big, overgrown teddy bear to her. The man she’d climbed all over as a little girl, the man who tickled her until she shrieked on cold winter nights after she beat him three times in a row in checkers. The man who read stories to his children every night before presiding over their prayers.
She wanted a husband who would be a father like that. Aidan would’ve been that kind of husband. She gritted her teeth and administered a silent scolding as she always did when these thoughts wiggled their way into her brain. Aidan belonged to someone else now. “I better get going.”
“Talk to you soon.”
Rachel’s sleepy voice trailed after Iris as she tugged on her wool coat, mittens, scarf, and bonnet. Her satchel in one hand, she trudged out into a biting wind that took her breath away. Icy snowflakes pelted her cheeks as she slipped and slid down the porch steps and slogged toward the buggy Bartholomew had retrieved as promised. Sable snorted, whinnied, and stamped her feet as if to say hurry up. Iris ducked her head and grabbed her bonnet to keep it from flying away.
Minutes later she turned the buggy onto the highway and headed f
or home. Her hands and feet were frozen and her nose numb. It had been a long day. The urge to doze overwhelmed her. Her stomach rumbled. She snapped the reins, and Sable picked up speed. Home, a grilled-cheese sandwich, a hot cup of tea, and bed, in that order. The buggy’s wooden wheels skidded under her. “Whoa, whoa. Take it easy, girl.”
Only a mile more. One more mile. The wind whipped through her coat as if she wore nothing. An engine revved behind her. Who else was silly enough to be out on the road in this weather? She eased toward the shoulder. A horn blared. She swerved still closer to the edge, afraid to go too far for fear of landing in a ditch she couldn’t see under the heavy blanket of snow.
The horn honked again and again in an irritating refrain. She twisted in her seat. Headlights blinded her. “Ach, okay, okay.” She pulled over a little more, halted, and threw her hand up in the air to wave them on.
Instead of passing, the car—or was it a truck—pulled in behind her and stopped. The engine idled in a weak put-put-put.
She strained to see the black form behind the lights. A pickup truck maybe.
A door opened. Words were exchanged. English. The door slammed.
Sudden heat rushing through her, Iris gripped the reins. She couldn’t outrun a car in her buggy. She heaved a breath and licked chapped lips. Her whole mouth was dry. “Who is it? What do you want?”
The headlights illuminated a form that moved toward her. Her heart hammering in her chest, she squinted.
A man strode toward her.
CHAPTER 2
Iris couldn’t see his face. He wore a dark hat. A dark coat, black pants, black boots. A Plain man? Why would a Plain man be in a car that pursued her on an empty country road on this icy cold night? Her heart whipped itself into a frenzy of off-kilter beating. The taste of metal in her mouth made her gag. She swallowed against the acid taste. “Who is it? Speak up.”
“It’s me. Mahon.”
Her heartbeats fought to resume their normal rhythm. The whoosh of adrenaline leaving her body left her weak. Her lungs ached with the effort to breathe. A rush of anger followed, warming Iris from head to toe. She hopped from the buggy and trudged toward him. Her rubber boots, a size too big, sank into the snow, halting her forward progress, which served to aggravate her more. “What are you doing following me in a car? Are you driving? Why did you honk at me?”
