Fearless Hope: A Novel

by Serena B. Miller

  The conversation he’d thought would purge his soul had not exactly been a success.

  chapter TWENTY

  Logan was hard at work a week later when a small army of Amish men and women showed up to prepare his house for church. Most were Hope’s relatives, who—from what he could tell—cleaned every square inch of his house. With all of Hope’s hard work, he wondered what they found to clean. Then he found several women standing on stepladders and realized they were actually washing down all the walls and cabinets. Cleaning for church was apparently serious business.

  With Simon’s willing help, the men started in on the yard. Weed eaters were pulled out of buggies and gasoline-powered push lawn mowers were fine-tuned and added their whir to the general noise as they cut the tender spring grass that had sprung up in uneven clumps.

  Men worked in the massive old barn with pitchforks. Hay bales arrived on flatbed buggies, and were distributed to the various stalls. Small children seemed to be everywhere. Teenagers worked harder than he had ever seen teenagers work. It was as though everyone had been assigned a job by some unseen church foreman, but Hope told him that had not happened. They just all knew what needed to be done and did it.

  Logan was left with nothing to do but watch in wonder as Hope’s father and some others moved the partition out of the front room. Everything they did was accompanied by talk and laughter. He was wandering around, offering to help and finding nothing to do that wasn’t already being accomplished, when Hope’s mother took him in hand.

  “We know you need to write,” Rose said firmly. “And we don’t want to disturb you, so we’ve set you up out under that tree where you can watch what’s going on and still get some writing done.”

  He was astonished to find that someone had actually carried his writing desk out to the tree and his laptop was on it. An extension cord was curled beside it, long enough to reach a house outlet if he ran out of battery. Someone had even poured him a cup of coffee and set it beside the laptop. Freshly sharpened pencils were placed in a decorative cup, along with a new notebook. A sturdy piece of plywood was laid on the ground, to create a flat surface for his office chair.

  In other words, they did not need him, were not thrilled with him trotting around offering his help, and were giving him something to occupy himself with so that he would stay out of their way. Adam and another little boy were sitting beside the same tree, each with three crayons grasped in their hands as they colored together in a single picture book with farm animals on the front.

  “So—you’ve been sidelined, too, huh?” he said to the children.

  In reply, Adam held the book up and showed him a badly colored green house.

  “Good job!” Logan said. “Whatever you do, don’t color in the lines. It’s supposed to be bad for your creative development.”

  Adam tilted his head to one side, and then once again became absorbed in his coloring book.

  Logan could not begin to concentrate with all this activity going on around him, so he simply typed “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over again, trying to look busy, while he watched the ultracompetent Amish take over his house.

  Hope was so cute directing foot traffic. She was seven months pregnant now and glowing with health. He studied her, thinking of how he would describe her if she were a character in one of his books.

  Hope Schrock was barefoot, modestly dressed, and pregnant. A preparer of food, a lover of children, an encourager to the elderly. Her name fit her well. Wherever she went, whomever she touched, she brought a lifting of spirits. In other words, she brought with her wherever she went . . . hope.

  He read the words aloud and then deleted them, deciding that they did not do the woman justice. She was the most competent woman he’d ever met, and she managed to do it all with patience and a ready smile.

  It was a pleasure to watch her with her children, or with the other women. He saw her touch an elderly woman’s arm and lead her to a rocking chair on the porch. Solicitous and kind. That was his Hope.

  He caught himself. She was not his Hope.

  A problem was developing and he did not know what to do about it. He had trouble taking his eyes off her. What if she were religiously free to marry whom she wanted? Would she consider him as a candidate?

  Sitting here was giving him entirely too much time to watch and think about her, and yet it was a great pleasure to do so.

  Then he saw Hope’s mother, Rose, staring at him with a concerned look on her face, as though she had read his thoughts. Immediately he dropped his eyes and began to write in earnest.

  “You have an interesting job, my Englisch friend.” The man who had been introduced to him as Bishop Schrock startled him by dropping a copy of one of his own books onto his desk.

  Logan picked it up. “Where did you get this, Bishop?”

  “Hope brought a copy to me.”

  “Why?” Logan was not ashamed of his books, but he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of an Amish bishop reading one.

  “Because when she told me who you really were, I asked her to. It is possible to learn much about a man’s heart by what he writes.”

  Logan hoped the bishop hadn’t come to the conclusion that he was a dangerous psychopath just because he wrote about them!

  “I’m a storyteller,” Logan said. “I make things up. I don’t experience or believe in everything I write.”

  The bishop nodded at this and said nothing.

  “Did you finish it?” Logan probed.

  “Ja,” the bishop said. “I finished it.”

  Logan waited for him to say something else about it. Good or bad. The bishop seemed in no hurry to speak. He simply stood there, towering over him.

  “So . . .” Logan prompted. “You hated it?”

  “I did not hate it.”

  “Then what?”

  “I am wondering what good they do, these books you spend your life writing.”

  “What good?” Logan felt the sting of the bishop’s words. “They are how I make my living . . . just like building a house or shoveling manure.”

  “Ah,” the bishop said. “That is true. Our honest labor does little except provide goods for others and food on the table for our family.”

  “Then why do you ask what ‘good’ my books do? Why do they have to do ‘good’?”

  “Like all Amish, I was only educated through the eighth grade,” Bishop Schrock said. “I am no judge of literature, but even I can see that God has given you much talent. You put words together in ways that pulled me in and kept me reading much later at night than what was good for me.”

  Finally, some praise. “So what is the problem?”

  “I admit, I am a little envious of your ability with words.” The bishop shook his head as though with wonder. “To throw them away on books that mean nothing . . . it seems like such a waste.”

  Books that meant nothing? The Amish certainly didn’t pull any punches.

  “Your book left me with a dark feeling in my heart for many days. It was not good for me to be inside a bad man’s head for so long. Through your words I saw things I should not have seen. I would like to forget them but now I cannot.”

  Logan wished Hope had asked permission before she loaned the bishop one of his books.

  “The Bible says that there is a great spiritual battle going on around us that we cannot see. It says that there are forces of evil to be fought with whatever weapons we are given. After I read your book, it felt like the forces of darkness had won a small battle in my heart.”

  That hurt.

  His mission accomplished, the bishop blithely walked away, leaving Logan to drum a pencil on his desk and seethe. When everything the bishop said was stripped down, he believed that he had just been accused of being a tool of Satan.

  • • •

  While they worked together, Hope enjoyed showing the other women the new appliances that Logan had purchased.

  “You just put this little cup in, pull down
on the handle, and . . . out comes a cup of coffee or tea!” She demonstrated the new Keurig coffeemaker Logan had purchased. Compared to the labor involved in using the drip coffeemaker on the stove, the Keurig seemed magical to her.

  She handed Rose the cup of coffee she had just made and watched as her mother took a sip.

  Rose’s eyes widened. “This is really good!”

  “I know!” Hope wiped off the counter and dropped the little spent Keurig cup into the new trash compactor.

  “But very expensive, is my guess,” Rose said.

  “I don’t know how much it cost,” Hope said. “Let me show you the washer and dryer now.”

  Hope’s mother was suitably impressed with the new water-saving laundry appliances, but she seemed to grow more and more worried.

  “You are enjoying these modern things a little too much, I think,” Rose cautioned. “And maybe the man who bought them?”

  “I have done nothing wrong,” Hope said.

  “Of course you haven’t,” her mother soothed. “But you are without a husband, and he is too much without a wife. There is danger here. You must protect yourself. It would be easy to have your head turned by so many expensive things. Before long you might not want to be Amish anymore.”

  Hope hurried to reassure her.

  “I am just doing my job,” she said. “You remember how Titus had to use electric tools when he worked in the furniture factory? It did not change him. He still used the old ways when he came home. So do I.”

  There was a part of her that felt guilty saying this to her mother. The truth was, she had enjoyed getting to use modern things.

  “I suppose you are right,” Rose said. “But watch yourself, Daughter. Satan is sneaky and he creeps into a person’s life so quietly.”

  “I will be careful, Maam,” she promised.

  “Gut,” her mother said. “Now I must go and see to the setting up of the tables on the porch.”

  What she had said to her mother was true. She would be very careful. Even more careful now that she had discovered that Logan was not truly a married man. Thinking he had a wife had created an extra wall of protection around her heart. That wall of protection had crumbled with his confession. She had recently begun to feel his admiring eyes on her and sometimes it warmed her heart in spite of her best intentions. Most of the time she shoved that warmth out of her heart by reminding herself that he had been, and probably still was, living in sin with Marla whenever he went to New York. Still . . . her mind had begun to think of things that it should not.

  Her conscience and training told her that she must flee temptation immediately, but her practical mind reminded her that she needed the income he provided. Where else could she work for such an easy boss, who paid so well and who welcomed the idea of her children being with her? What other employer would offer to allow her to bring the new baby with her after it was born?

  And so, she did what she had been warned against doing her whole life. She pretended that there was no temptation, while deep down inside, her attraction to this Englisch man deepened every day.

  Her Daed came into the kitchen at that moment and her sinful thoughts scattered like scurrying mice.

  “Could you draw a glass of water for your old father?” he asked. “Cleaning the old barn is thirsty work.”

  She grabbed a drinking glass from the cupboard. “But you are not yet fifty. You should not say you are old.”

  “Being here makes me feel old.” He accepted the drink from her hand as he glanced around the kitchen. “It was a fine place we had here once. I hope the Englischer is enjoying it.”

  She heard so many emotions in his voice. Bitterness, anger, shame.

  “I know it hurts you to be here.”

  “It hurts to see the good earth that I tilled and enriched my entire life growing into nothing but weeds!”

  She saw tears come to her father’s eyes, but there was nothing she could do or say. The situation was what it was, and he had been the one to bring it about. He could blame no one except himself. She ached for him, but there was nothing she could do.

  “What’s the Englisch man going to do with my land?” he asked. “Sell it to developers?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I hope not.”

  She deliberately changed the subject. “Did you talk with Moses Hochstetler?”

  “I did.”

  “Did he listen?”

  “He listened, but . . .” Her father hesitated. “It was one of the few times in my life I wished I was not forbidden to raise my hand against another man. He does not deserve a son as fine as Simon.”

  Hope was grateful for the restriction their faith put on violence. She hated to think of what might have happened had her Daed and Moses fought. Daed was powerfully built, with work-hardened muscles as strong as steel—but Moses was strong, too. Had the men actually fought, one or both would have ended up in the hospital and that would have devastated two families.

  “I also spoke with Bishop Weaver, the Swartzentrubers’ bishop, about what Simon’s father had done,” he said. “He was not happy. He said not to worry, that he will deal with Moses.”

  “I am certain he will, then. Thank you for taking care of this for me.”

  He smiled. “That is what fathers are for.”

  “And Gott gave our family a gut one in you.”

  He caressed the surface of one of the fine cherry kitchen cabinets that his own father had built. “I am grateful that you still think so, Daughter.”

  A look of deep regret crossed his face. She could only imagine how hard it was for him to remember all that he had lost.

  “It is only wood, Daed.” Hope’s heart broke at seeing his grief and she gave him a rare hug. “It’s only wood.”

  chapter TWENTY-ONE

  A low, slow, humming sound rose through the floorboards of his upstairs bedroom. He paused in the act of tying his necktie and listened. The singing was made up predominately of male voices and reminded him of the otherworldly drone of a bagpipe he had once heard played at a funeral.

  He had not worn a suit for months, but when he asked Hope if a white shirt and dark suit would be appropriate, she seemed relieved he’d brought the question up. Her enthusiastic approval made him wonder if she’d been fearful he would show up in jogging shorts and a T-shirt.

  He slipped his suit coat on and checked outside the window. The assembly of buggies had grown in the past ten minutes. From his vantage point of the second story, it looked as though the field beside his house was carpeted with black buggy tops. And horses. Lots and lots of glistening, dark-brown horses.

  Hope had suggested he wait until services were starting before coming downstairs. There was a prescribed way to enter the room, she explained, a matter of respect. The bishop walked in first, regardless of his age. Then the ministers filed in according to their age, with the oldest going first. The deacon followed. Then the rest of the men came in turn, from the oldest down to the youngest, teenage boys bringing up the rear.

  Working an Englisch man into the traditional entering and seating situation, she explained, was going to be a little awkward, especially since he deserved respect for his generosity in allowing them to assemble beneath his roof. Hope wasn’t sure quite what to do, and so they agreed that it would be best for him to simply come down a few seconds after he heard the strains of the first hymn.

  He glanced at himself in the mirror and nervously straightened his tie. One thing he did not want to do was embarrass his housekeeper.

  Unfortunately, he was also a little worried about staying awake. The writing on his thriller novel had been going unusually well last night, the story finally unraveling in his head, and he hated to stop, so he went on late into the night, afraid that if he did stop, he would never get back into the writer’s zone that was so hard to achieve. It was looking like he might have a book ready to turn in to his publisher by deadline after all. It might not be his best, but it was by far not his worst. The house, the people, Hope, hi
s extracurricular writing at the antiques shop, had somehow, someway, rescued him.

  What time had he gone to sleep, anyway, 5 a.m.? All he remembered for sure was that the last thing on his mind when he crawled into bed was that it was Sunday morning. The thought that on this Sunday morning there would be a houseful of guests had been a pleasant one. It occurred to him right before he closed his eyes that he did not enjoy being alone nearly as much as he had always tried to tell himself.

  Hurriedly, he ran a brush through his hair, took a deep breath, and then headed downstairs.

  Spread out before him when he got to the bottom was a scene that he would never forget. Black-bonneted, black-cloaked women and children sat on one side of the room; bearded men on the other.

  The singing stopped and he stood there, wondering how to go about finding a place to sit. It appeared that every available seat was already filled. He sought out Simon, but the boy was nowhere to be seen. So many eyes were turned on him.

  He was about to sit on the stairs themselves, when several men scooted over and a spot opened up. The bishop waved him toward the seat. As he squeezed himself in between two Amish men about his own age, the bishop launched into what sounded like a sermon or a harangue—Logan wasn’t sure which. He just hoped that Bishop Schrock was not informing everyone that the owner of the house was a writer of dark novels and therefore the spawn of Satan.

  The Amish were not an openly affectionate kind of people, from what he had seen, but their personal space when it came time to worship was far less than what he was comfortable with. He couldn’t so much as take a deep breath without the man sitting next to him feeling it.

  Someone—he couldn’t tell who, but someone sitting close to him—had obviously missed their Saturday-night bath, or it could have been several Saturday-night baths. He found himself wondering if deodorant was against some obscure Amish rule.

  The sermon, as Hope had warned him, was in German. He did not understand a word. Soon, the novelty of being in an Amish worship service began to pall, and he found himself wishing that he’d taken the time to use the bathroom before rushing down.