Er hot net der glaawe. He doesn’t keep up the faith.
Do I? she asked herself silently. Or do I set it aside when it’s inconvenient—or when I’m not willing to do God’s bidding?
Looking at the two kind, friendly women here to help her, Hannah wondered whether there was any way to compare her faith to theirs. Was hers even close to filling her to the brim, as she imagined theirs did? Would either of them cling to anger, like she was?
I mostly had forgiven Mom, she realized. Accepted that her mother’s love wasn’t quite what she’d wanted, but was the best she could do. The sharpness of Hannah’s anger now was new, from when she learned how she’d been cheated out of family—and how much Jodi had hurt her own parents and Samuel.
But how much of that anger was ultimately selfish, Hannah asked herself, because it was on her own behalf?
She gave herself a small shake. Right now, she needed to immerse herself in these new friendships, and the sense of belonging Julia and Miriam gave her.
In the few hours the other women were there, they finished the dress and cut out the apron and a shirt for Zeb. Hannah paid Miriam for the fabric and supplies she’d already brought, and put in an order for enough fabric to make a new dress for Rebekah as well as a second one for herself. “And aprons, too.”
They both nodded, leaving with cheerful waves and promises to be back tomorrow.
Did she need another dress? The request had just popped out of her mouth. If she was only to be here for a few more weeks, even a month or two, she could get by with three dresses if she was diligent with her laundry. It wasn’t as if she’d ever have any use of them again, except maybe when she visited. She could leave them at her father’s house.
The picture of herself cheerfully changing back into her Englisch clothes—blue jeans and a T-shirt, say—and driving away as her family stood in the front yard waving refused to form. This wasn’t the first time she’d felt as if a crater had opened somewhere in her chest or stomach when she tried to envision her future.
Eventually, she’d really have to sit down and make some decisions . . . but right now, Hannah cleared off the table. She had to be able to serve supper—once she’d actually applied herself to cooking.
* * *
* * *
Thursday evening, Gideon had visitors. He recognized the two adults as they emerged from the buggy, but not the older girl.
“Stay in here unless I call for you,” he told his kinder, and went out the back door to intercept the family. They had been crossing the lawn toward the rarely used front door, making the statement that they felt they didn’t deserve to be welcomed as close acquaintances, far less friends.
He waited until they saw him approaching, and nodded. “Paul.” He had to grope for the wife’s name; he didn’t think they’d ever spoken, even though their church district was of typical size. If he had a wife of his own, he would undoubtedly be more familiar with the women. Fortunately, the name came to him before the pause became awkward. “Claudia. And I think you must be Zillah.”
Hers was one of the names he had passed on to Bishop Troyer.
The girl tried to squeeze her body into a smaller space, but she had the courage to look up and meet his eyes, hers desperate.
Older than Rebekah and Zeb, for sure, he decided, but likely no more than ten or eleven.
“We’re here to tell you how sorry we are for the talk that went around at school,” Paul said, direct. “Zillah wants to say the same to both your kinder.”
Gideon looked at her with a friendlier eye, although he reminded himself that she might be here, planning to say the right words, only because her mamm and daad were mad at her. They would not have enjoyed being chastised by bishop.
“That’s good of you,” he said. “Did Zillah hear these rumors from you?”
Her father’s lips tightened. “No. She has lately become friends with several girls who are older than she is. They’re of an age to be thinking about boys and talking about their rumspringa—and gossiping.”
Gideon relaxed slightly. He had liked Paul, always willing to join any work frolic, and the two of them had often discussed farming. Paul had advised Gideon, when he first moved here, on the best choice of crops, seeds, and fertilizers.
“I’m glad,” he said. “Please, come in for a cup of coffee and some applesauce cake. The girl who works for me is a fine cook.” He wished Hannah were here. He’d become so used to talking to her, hearing her advice.
Claudia’s face brightened. “Ja, I had a slice of friendship bread she baked. I wonder if she’d share the recipe.”
He smiled at her as he led them toward the back door. “I’m sure she would. Hannah Mast is a generous woman.”
Rebekah and Zeb looked up when the group came through the mudroom to the kitchen, their eyes widening. Rebekah scrambled off her chair and backed up a few steps, while Zeb stared defiantly at Zillah. Gideon wished even more for Hannah’s presence, this time for the sake of his kinder.
“Sit down,” he told them gently, and waved the guests to other seats. Paul hung his hat on a peg, and his wife and daughter removed their bonnets.
Coffee was on, so he only had to pour. It took barely another minute to dish up squares of moist cake topped with a drizzle of icing, but none for him or his kinder. They’d had plenty already.
Paul looked at Zillah, who sat across from Rebekah and Zeb. She stole a peek at her daad, then raised her chin and said in a voice with a quaver, “I’m sorry for the things I said. I didn’t know what I was talking about. I wanted Bernice and . . . and Yonnie to like me.”
Especially Yonnie, Gideon suspected. Was a girl her age old enough to like a boy in a special way yet? From her blush, he thought yes, although the heat in her cheeks might just as well be shame.
Rebekah surprised him by speaking up with no prompting from him. “Denke for saying that,” she said with great dignity. “None of that was true, but it hurt my feelings anyway. I still miss my mamm.”
“It made me mad that people were saying such bad things about our mother,” Zeb said sharply. “None of you knew her.”
Zillah bit her lip and nodded.
“Zeb,” Gideon felt compelled to say.
His son looked momentarily mulish, but finally bit off, “I forgive you.”
Well. Gideon supposed that was the best he could hope for, unless he hauled Zeb outside by the scruff of his neck and lectured him on accepting an apology graciously.
Fortunately, amusement crinkled the skin beside Paul’s eyes. He had at least three boys, if Gideon remembered right. If Zeb was any example, they were harder to raise than girls, even if Gideon had worried more about Rebekah since the move to Tompkin’s Creek.
Zillah thought Bernice had gotten her information from listening to her parents, but she wasn’t sure. “It could have been Emmie . . . ,” she said doubtfully.
Gideon pictured another older girl but couldn’t remember a last name.
“Not Yonnie?” her mother asked.
“He’s a boy. I don’t think he cared that much.”
The adults turned the talk to the farming that was their livelihood, and boredom set in among the kinder.
Zeb asked if Zillah wanted to go outside. He’d pitch so the girls could both hit the ball. They agreed with alacrity, and all three raced out the back door.
Claudia said humorously, “Kinder never seem to hold grudges.”
Gideon smiled. “Not when it gets in the way of having someone to play with.”
She set down her fork. “I hope this doesn’t make you regret settling here. We’ve been so happy to have you.”
“Denke.” He hesitated. “I doubt that will be so. There was talk back home, before we moved.” He told them the basic story: his wife had been killed in a car accident with her friend, who was driving. “They’d grown up best friends,” he said.
“Living next door, you know how it is.”
“Ja. I don’t see why there was talk, instead of the sympathy and caring you should have been able to expect.”
He unclenched his jaw. “Our bishop believed I should never have allowed Leah to get in the car with her friend. He thought I’d let her set aside her faith.”
“What?” Claudia stared at him. “After such a tragedy, he blamed her as well as you?”
“Ja,” he said tightly. It still rankled, when he should feel humbled instead. Of course, he blamed himself, too. The suggestion that Leah had brought on her own death had particularly angered him.
“You had good reason to move,” she declared. “I had a close friend, an Englischer, from my girlhood, too. I don’t see her much anymore, because I grew up in Iowa and met Paul when his brother married my cousin. It’s so far, we mostly write letters.”
Like the one Gideon was guessing Bernice’s mother received from a friend or family member in New York. He chose not to say that.
Not much later, the Schwartz family left, exchanging smiles and even a hug for Rebekah, given by Zillah, who also whispered into her ear.
Watching the buggy recede down the lane, Rebekah said, “She was nice. Wasn’t she, Zeb?”
He lifted one shoulder. “She’s okay.”
This smile, Gideon hid. When he said, “Time for chores,” both his kinder groaned.
Gideon reflected that it was easy to forgive a young girl who had only been trying to impress older friends. He wondered what Willard and Ava Kemp would have to say, and Lois and Matthias King.
He reminded himself to ask his kinder more about who this Emmie was.
* * *
* * *
Friday, Julia came alone. The owner of the quilt shop had unexpectedly asked Miriam to work today.
“I don’t know if Ruth has hired anyone to replace Miriam yet. There are plenty of quilters out there, but most of them have families and no time to spare. Although . . .” Her forehead crinkled. “That gives me an idea.”
“You thought of someone?”
“Ja, a cousin of Miriam’s husband, David Miller. Her parents belong to a different church district, but no farther from town. Ketarah is only seventeen, I think, and I can see her excited to have a job in a fabric store. She and her mamm both are very fine quilters.” She gave a decisive nod. “I’ll ask Luke to talk to Ruth tomorrow. She may not have thought of Ketarah.”
Hannah smiled. “I see you brought more fabric.”
“And no boppli. Deborah—Luke’s mamm, you know—begged me to leave both Nathan and Abby with her for the afternoon. Think how much more we’ll get done, especially since we don’t have Miriam to take turns with him!”
Hannah laughed. “Just think, once Miriam’s a mother, too, Nathan will be walking.”
“Walking? He’ll be running the minute he can figure out how not to tip over!”
“I think you won’t get nearly as much quilting done as you used to.”
Julia smiled softly. “I quilted so much, I had piles of my own quilts. I’d given ones to everyone I knew. I’d sold plenty of them. I quilted because I was alone so much. I still love to quilt, but I’m not sorry that my life has become busy with a husband and kinder.”
“No.” Hannah had a feeling her answering smile was more complicated. “I was hoping that, while we work, you might be willing to talk a little more about your decision to convert.” She braced herself for the other woman to ask whether she was considering doing the same, but Julia only smoothed any wrinkles from the fabric. So Hannah asked, “Was Luke a big part of it?”
“Of course he was, but not all.” Even as they laid out the fabric and pinned the pieces of one of Julia’s discarded dresses, adjusted in small ways to better fit Hannah, Julia talked readily about why she’d been so drawn to the Amish. She’d switched to speaking English, probably aware that Hannah’s Deitsh still wasn’t up to such a serious discussion. “Two reasons, most of all,” she said at last. “I never felt as if I had a personal relationship with God. As if He might hear me. I went to church and I said prayers before meals, but that’s all. I didn’t make daily decisions by asking what God would expect of me. I saw immediately that the Amish do. Most Americans see it as a ridiculous sacrifice. And there are sacrifices, but mostly small. When you add them all together, you find that God is more present in your life. You don’t think of Him only on Sundays. And what was I really giving up?”
Of course, the question echoed Gideon’s, resonating with Hannah. What would I be giving up? How many times had she asked herself that now? Yet she wondered whether that was the important question, or whether she should be asking herself what she would be reaching for?
Some instinct—or was it cowardice?—had her lightening the moment, though. “Buttons? Velcro?”
Julia giggled. “That’s about right. I dress differently, I don’t listen to loud music or watch television, I don’t drive a car anymore—” She shrugged. “My parents and my brother love me. I always knew I could go to them for anything. But now, I have so much more. My life is rich with family, with love, with the kinder I always wanted, and with a sense of the Lord’s presence that I never had before.”
Hannah paused, scissors in hand, to watch the flow of expressions across the other woman’s face. Julia radiated joy.
But her mood became darker as she talked about being attacked when she was nineteen, about the years of terror because her assailant was never identified or arrested. “My life revolved around him. There was fear, and anger, and even hate. What he did to me was bad. I’d still rejoice if he was arrested, so that he couldn’t hurt any other woman. But when I opened my heart to God, I was able to forgive him, to accept that he may have been abused himself, and had to express his own rage somehow. Because his DNA has never been collected at another crime scene, as far as we know—” She glanced at Hannah. “You have to understand, my brother will never stop searching for him.”
Hannah nodded.
“So I hope and pray that the man horrified himself so much by the attack on me, he has never done anything like that again. I even hope he can forgive himself. Being able to forgive, living my faith, has brought me peace.”
Too moved to say a word, Hannah didn’t even dare start cutting for fear she’d make a mistake. Was she letting her bitterness and new fury at her mother stunt her own life? Close her off from God?
“Have you met Luke?” Julia asked her.
“I . . . no,” she managed to say. “I might have seen him.”
“You probably did. He’s tall for an Amishman, over six feet. David’s close to that, as is Gideon. Oh, and Luke’s brother, Elam. Luke has dark hair and blue eyes.” Color rose in her cheeks, more noticeable for her redhead’s creamy skin. “He’s handsome.”
Hannah laughed. “I’m not surprised you think so.”
“In a different way,” her new friend mused, “Gideon is as striking.”
Hannah lightly whacked Julia’s arm. “Knock it off.”
Their conversation turned to the church service, and some of the people Hannah had met. She commented on what an extraordinary voice the man who’d called out the first hymn had.
Julia nodded. “John Mast. I think he’s your father’s cousin. First or second, I don’t know. He’s what we call the Volsinger. He always chooses the hymns for that Sunday, and lifts his voice to lead us.”
“Auslanders,” Hannah said, “would say he’s wasting his talent.”
Julia’s eyes met hers. “What do you say?”
“That he uses his voice to praise God, and to help others do the same. That’s a lot more important than a recording contract.”
Julia clasped her hand and squeezed.
They were quiet for a few minutes, only the snip, snip of the scissors to be heard, but then Julia exclaimed, “Oh, I almost forgot! Luke wanted me to pas
s on a message.”
“A message?”
“He bought lunch yesterday at the bakery a few doors from the furniture store. He said while he was in line, he heard two women talking. Their kinder came home from school—oh, it must have been Tuesday—and they said gossip was going around. It was about Gideon, and his wife’s death. Luke pinned one of them down—Dinah is married to a cousin of Luke’s, Jerry Ropp.” She grimaced. “Yes, the relationships hereabouts are awfully tangled. Anyway, Luke said he’d have stopped yesterday on his way home, but his buggy horse had developed a limp, and he remembered I was coming over here today anyway. Just in case Gideon’s kinder don’t say anything, Luke thought he should know.”
“Oh, we know.” Hannah reported on most of the past few days’ happenings. She didn’t say, I don’t think Gideon told his children everything about the accident. She didn’t say, I think his grief is mixed with other, even more painful, emotions. “Gideon said the parents of one of the girls who was passing the rumors around stopped by yesterday evening to apologize. I guess Bishop Troyer has talked to all the parents.”
Julia gave an exaggerated wince. “I don’t envy them.”
Although Hannah didn’t have much sense of humor where all this was concerned, she did laugh. When Amos Troyer had welcomed her last Sunday to the service, she’d seen how kind his gaze was, but also how unnervingly perceptive. She wouldn’t want to try to keep a secret from him.
When she said as much, Julia smiled. “He’s been so good to me. To get baptized, I had to take classes and, eventually, convince him that my conversion was genuine. I imagine that’s always true, but in my case, he’d already guessed that Luke had fallen in love with an Englischer—and probably that I’d fallen in love with an Amishman.”
“So saying, ‘I want to marry Luke,’ didn’t cut it as a reason to be baptized, huh?”
“No, and I’m glad. The bishops and ministers have to guard against young men and women, madly in love, not having any idea what they’re getting into.” Her eyes rounded. “Oh, no! I’m so sorry! Me and my big mouth, just rattling away.”
Finding Hope Page 21
