by Emma Miller
“There’s another piece left,” Miriam said, pushing the dish toward Bram.
“Ne, denki, I couldn’t eat another bite.”
“I’ll take it.” Reuben reached for the dish and dug into the last piece as if he was starving. He shouldn’t be. He had been living with Hezekiah and Miriam since the accident, and Miriam had doted on him with her cooking.
Hezekiah chuckled. “I sure like that young man’s appetite.”
As Miriam started clearing the table, Bram turned to the older man. “I’ve told you what I have in mind, and you’ve looked at the house plans.” Miriam paused to listen to Bram, and he glanced up at her. “What do you think?”
“Well,” Hezekiah said, reaching for Miriam’s hand, “it was hard to hand the work over to Reuben this summer, but I have to admit the rest has done me good. I feel better than I have in a long time. I know Miriam has worried about what would become of us when I couldn’t work anymore, especially after we lost Daniel.” He looked at Bram, his eyes bright and sure. “We’ll move in as soon as you’re ready for us.”
Miriam squeezed Hezekiah’s shoulder. “Ach, and I have to thank you, Bram. To live so close to Ellie and the children...” She smiled as she busied herself with the dishes.
“Now, don’t say anything to Ellie yet.” Bram looked at Reuben. “She doesn’t know anything about this, and I don’t want her to until I get a chance to tell her.”
Reuben grinned at him as he got up from the table to head back to his chores. “You had better let her in on the secret soon, then. I know my sister. If she hears a rumor about a new Dawdi Haus being built at your place, she’ll ferret out the truth faster than anybody.”
Bram went out to his buggy, leaving Miriam and Hezekiah to discuss their packing. He hoped to get the Dawdi Haus built before winter, but he had one more thing to do first. It was time to let Ellie in on his plans.
He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of this solution before. Having Hezekiah and Miriam close would help ease Ellie’s mind, and he was looking forward to having the older man’s help to build up his farmland. Hezekiah may not be able to walk behind a plow anymore, but his knowledge of farming would never go to waste.
Partner pranced and blew a couple times before he settled into his steady trot, enjoying the cooler fall weather as much as he did. Bram settled in for the drive to the Stoltzfus farm, watching the corn crops in the fields he passed.
It had been a long, hot, dry summer, but it looked as if the farmers would have enough of a harvest to survive. His own crop would give him enough to use for the winter and enough seed for next spring, but nothing extra to sell.
It didn’t matter. Bram still couldn’t shake the feeling that he had opened a door and discovered a wonderful new world. Now if he could only convince Ellie to share it with him.
He had spent nearly every evening with her since coming home from Chicago. He would meet her on her glider at dusk, after the children had gone to bed, and they’d sit for an hour or more.
Sometimes they talked. Bram thought they’d run out of things to talk about, but they never did. He grinned to himself. They wouldn’t run out of things to talk about in a hundred years.
Other times they sat quietly, holding hands, or with Bram’s arm around Ellie’s shoulder, while he kept the glider swinging with one foot. He wouldn’t get tired of that in a hundred years, either. He’d have to make sure he built a glider like that for their own place.
Their own place.
Bram chirruped at Partner, suddenly anxious to hear Ellie’s answer to his question.
* * *
The tomato plants had started producing again with the onset of cooler weather. Ellie pushed aside the old, dry stems from the summer to find the tomatoes that grew amid the new, green leaves. A second chance at life brought new fruitfulness to the tomatoes.
Ellie glanced toward the glider at the side of the Dawdi Haus. The tomatoes weren’t the only things with a second chance. She couldn’t keep a smile off her face at the thought. How would she ever have known love could be so sweet a second time? She couldn’t bear the thought of waiting until this evening to see Bram again.
“Memmi, help!” Susan’s cry came to her ears yet again.
Ach, there was Danny, heading for the cow pen at the side of the barn. Ever since he had learned to walk, the cow pen was his favorite destination. Until school started last week, Susan had helped Mandy or Rebecca watch the toddler while Ellie did her chores, but now that Susan was on her own, Danny was proving to be a handful.
Ellie caught him just as he reached the fence and swung him up in her arms as he giggled. The little stinker! He liked being caught as much as he wanted to see the cows. She tickled his belly to hear him laugh again as she carried him back to the toys Susan had set up in the grassy yard.
“Ach, Danny, you play here with Susan for a little while longer while I pick the rest of the tomatoes.”
“Won’t he just run away again?” Susan tried to get Danny to play with a toy cow.
“Ja, probably. Just do like you’ve been doing. Call me when he does.”
Buggy wheels in the lane caught her attention.
“Memmi, look. It’s Bram.” Susan ran to the hitching rail by the Dawdi Haus to wait for him.
Ellie forgot the tomatoes when she saw Bram. He glanced her way with his crooked grin as he pulled Partner to a stop, then turned his attention to Susan while he tied the horse.
“This is a nice surprise,” Ellie greeted him as he held Susan up to give Partner a pat on the nose.
“I have another surprise for you,” he murmured in her ear as he gave her cheek a kiss. “Do you think your mam can take care of Susan and Danny?”
Bram wouldn’t wait for her to change out of her work dress or even wash her hands. As soon as the children were taken care of, she was in his buggy and they were heading down the road.
Ellie sat close to him, her hand tucked in his arm.
“Where are we going?”
Bram leaned over and kissed her kapp.
“I have something to show you at the farm.”
“Will I like it?”
“Ja, I think you will. But the more you pester me with questions, the longer it will take to get there.”
Ellie laughed. “I think Partner could take us there himself, no matter how many questions I ask you.”
Bram just grinned and slapped the reins on the horse’s back.
Ellie hadn’t been to Bram’s farm since the shooting, but everything looked like a normal, quiet Amish farm as they drove up the short lane. She looked toward the house. Which stove had he ended up buying? And was the sitting room livable? It must be. Bram had been settled there for several weeks. She climbed down from the buggy and started toward the house.
“Ne, not that way. Come with me.”
He took her hand and led her around the house and down a slope to a level spot near the creek.
“What do you think?”
Ellie looked around. The place was quiet and secluded, even though it was still close to the farmhouse. “It’s nice, I guess. Why?”
He let go of her hand and paced along an imaginary line. “This is the front, and the door will be right here. The front porch will go around the corner—” he turned and paced along another line between her and the creek “—this way, so you can look out on the creek in the evening.”
“You’re building a house here? Why do you need another house?”
Bram acted as if she hadn’t spoken. He turned another right angle and paced along a third side of the square.
“The back door will be here, with a walk going to the privy.” He gestured toward the outhouse that sat at an equal distance between his imaginary house and the farmhouse up the slope. “And then on this side, there’ll be space for a garden.”
A garden? He was planning a house here, but that garden space looked too small for a family. “Bram, you already have a garden.”
He walked back to her and took her hand again.
“Ja, I already have a garden, but Miriam likes to plant flowers, doesn’t she?”
Ellie stopped, smiling at his sly grin. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
“I’ve already talked to Hezekiah and Miriam, and they’re pleased about it.”
“About what?”
“This.” He swept his hand around them to take in the proposed house he had laid out for her. “This will be their Dawdi Haus. They’re going to move in as soon as we can get it built.”
Ellie’s eyes blurred. He was doing this for a couple he wasn’t related to? Why would he do that? But if they lived here, with Bram, she wouldn’t have any more worries about them. They would be so close, only a couple miles away, and she’d be able to see them more often. Every day if she wanted to.
Bram’s finger slipped under her chin and lifted it so she looked into his eyes. “Miriam can’t wait to live next door to you and the children.”
He moved his hand to the side of her face, and she felt him tuck the strand of hair behind her ear. Her breath caught as she realized what he had said. “What do you mean, next door?”
“Ellie,” he said, his voice soft, intimate. He leaned closer to her. “I love you, and I want you to be my wife. Will you marry me?”
He smiled his crooked grin, but this time it was unsure, hopeful. She hadn’t noticed the way his beard hid his dimple until now. He had stopped shaving again after the shooting, and his beard was getting so long he looked like a married man, but that dimple was still there. A secret they shared.
Just the first of all the secrets they would share. A wave swept over her, leaving her breathless. Bram wanted her to be his. How could she bear this joy?
“Ja, Bram, ja. I’ll marry you.”
He pulled her close to him, and she molded her body to his, pressing her ear against his chest to listen to his heartbeat.
Bram was kissing her forehead, her nose, nudging her face up with each kiss until he caught her lips with his. She lifted her hand to pull him closer as she let herself drown in his kiss. This was her Bram.
Epilogue
“Are you nervous?” Mandy’s question after the family’s morning prayers were over made Ellie laugh.
“Why should I be nervous? This is my second wedding day.”
“Ellie won’t have to be worried about anything,” Mam said as she finished washing the dishes. “Everything is ready, thanks to all the willing helpers we’ve had.”
Mam dried her hands and started the day’s work with her usual brisk enthusiasm.
“Rebecca, remember, you and your friends are in charge of the little ones today. And, Mandy, will you please keep an eye out to give them a hand if they need it?”
“Ja, Mam, you can count on it.”
Mam smiled at both girls. “I know I can. Now, let’s bring up the jars of chow-chow from the cellar and start the chicken frying....”
Mam shooed the girls down the cellar steps in front of her, but turned to Ellie before following them.
“I have prayed for this day, daughter. Gott’s blessings will go with you.”
“I know, Memmi. He is blessing our family already.”
Ellie was alone in the kitchen—alone for the last time before her sisters and aunts started arriving to help with the wedding dinner. She looked around the spacious room. More than anywhere else in the world, this kitchen meant home and family. She had missed the significance of the kitchen before her first wedding. Perhaps she had taken it for granted, but she never would again. It was the center of the home.
She smoothed her hand along the grain of the old table and then rested it on the back of Dat’s chair. Dat had made this chair a place of humility, mercy and grace. She had learned about Gott as she listened to Dat read from the Bible as he sat here, and as he read their morning and evening prayers while they each knelt at their chairs.
Her whole life had been bracketed by Dat’s prayers at the beginning and end of every day. Even when she and Daniel had been married, he had included their names in his prayers just as he included Zac, Lovina, Sally and their families as they married one by one. Tomorrow he would start including Bram and their family in those same prayers.
Bram had taken her with him last night as they moved her things into their new house. The new table in the kitchen was as big as this one. His grin when she had protested that the table was much too large for the five of them still made her smile. They both hoped it wouldn’t be too large for long.
Tears of thanksgiving came to Ellie’s eyes as she thought of Bram’s chair at the head of that long table. He had built a shelf on the wall behind his chair and placed his Bible there, along with the copy of Die Ernsthafte Christenpflicht, the prayer book Dat had given him and the copy of the Ausbund hymnal that had been her gift to him. Bram was going to be a wonderful husband and father, leading his family as well as her Dat ever had.
Even as early as it was, the community would soon start arriving. First the women who would help prepare the huge amounts of food they would need to feed dinner and supper to two hundred people, and then the other families.
Then at nine o’clock the service would begin. She and Bram would miss the singing, as they would spend that time with Bishop Yoder, receiving the final counsel before taking their vows. Then the sermons would begin, the sermons that would lead the entire church in reflecting on the meaning of marriage and the solemnity and permanence of the vows she and Bram would soon take.
Ellie peeked in the doorway of the front room. All the walls had been pushed back to make room for the benches for the service, as if it were a Sunday meeting. She leaned her head on the door frame, her mind filling the benches with her family and loved ones of the community.
After the sermons, she and Bram would stand before the church with their witnesses—Matthew, Annie, Lovina and Noah—and then they would say their simple vows, promising to love and bear and be patient with each other until death.
Could she love Bram?
Ach, ja. She already loved him with all her heart.
Could she be patient with him?
Ja. Her love would provide the patience she would need.
Could she bear him? Bear his bad moods as well as his good? Bear his sorrows as well as his joys? Bear his failures as well as his successes?
Ja. She could bear anything at Bram’s side.
The back door opened with a sharp squeak of the hinges, and Ellie turned to see Bram filling the doorway. His face broke into a grin when he saw her. “I hoped I’d find you here.”
“Couldn’t you wait until the wedding?”
“Ne, not today. I wanted to be alone with you for just a minute, before everyone else gets here. You know we won’t have a chance until late tonight.”
“A chance for what?”
Bram’s crooked grin twitched, and he crossed the room to her. “A chance for one more kiss before you become my wife.”
Ellie rose on tiptoe to peck him on the cheek. “There you go.”
Bram growled as he pulled her into his arms. “You know I want more of a kiss than that.”
And then he kissed her with a passion she had never felt before.
Ach, ja. She could bear even this.
* * * * *
ISBN-13: 9781488084478
Redeeming Grace and The Prodigal Son Returns
Copyright © 2017 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
Redeeming Grace
Copyright © 2012 by Emma Miller
The Prodigal Son Return
s
Copyright © 2013 by Jan Drexler
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