Buch lesen: «An Amish Match»

Chapter One

Paradise Springs

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

The rainy summer afternoon was as dismal as the hearts of those who had gathered at the cemetery. Most of the mourners were walking back to their buggies, umbrellas over their heads like a parade of black mushrooms. The cemetery with its identical stones set in almost straight lines on the neatly trimmed grass was edged by a worn wooden rail fence. The branches on a single ancient tree on the far side of the cemetery rocked with the wind that lashed rain on the few people remaining by the newly covered grave.

Rebekah Burkholder knew she should leave the Stoltzfus family in private to mourn their loss, but she remained to say a silent prayer over the fresh earth. Rose Mast Stoltzfus had been her first cousin, and as kinder they’d spent hours together every week doing their chores and exploring the fields, hills and creeks near their families’ farms. Now Rose, two years younger than Rebekah, was dead from a horrific asthma attack at twenty-four.

The whole Stoltzfus family encircled the grave where a stone would be placed in a few weeks. Taking a step back, Rebekah tightened her hold on both her son’s hand and her umbrella that danced in the fickle wind. Sammy, who would be three in a few months, watched everything with two fingers stuck in his mouth. She knew that over the next few days she would be bombarded with questions—as she had been when his daed died. She hoped she’d be better prepared to answer this time. At least she could tell him the truth rather than skirt it because she didn’t want him ever to know what sort of man his daed had been.

“It’s time to go, Sammy,” she said in little more than a whisper when he didn’t move.

“Say bye-bye?” He looked up at her with his large blue eyes that were his sole legacy from her. He had Lloyd’s black hair and apple-round cheeks instead of the red curls she kept restrained beneath her kapp and the freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks.

“Ja.” She bent to hug him, shifting so her expanding belly didn’t bump her son. Lloyd hadn’t known about his second kind because he’d died before she was certain she was pregnant again. “We have said bye-bye.”

“Go bye-bye?”

Her indulgent smile felt out of place at the graveside. Yet, as he had throughout his young life, her son gave her courage and a reason to go on.

“Ja.”

Standing slowly because her center of balance changed every day, she held out her hand to him again. He put his fingers back in his mouth, glanced once more at the grave, then stepped away from it along with her.

Suddenly the wind yanked on Rebekah’s umbrella, turning it inside out. As the rain struck them, Sammy pressed his face against her skirt. She fought to hold on to the umbrella. Even the smallest things scared him; no wonder after what he had seen and witnessed in those horrible final months of his daed’s life.

No! She would not think of that time again. She didn’t want to remember any of it. Lloyd had died last December, almost five months ago, and he couldn’t hurt her or their kinder again.

“Mamm,” Sammy groaned as he clung to her.

“It’s all right,” she cooed as she tried to fix her umbrella.

She didn’t look at any of the other mourners as she forced her umbrella down to her side where the wind couldn’t grab it again. Too many people had told her that she mollycoddled her son, and he needed to leave his babyish ways behind now that he was almost three. They thought she was spoiling him because he had lost his daed, but none of those people knew Sammy had experienced more fear and despair in his short life than they had in their far longer ones.

“Here. Let me help,” said a deep voice from her left.

She tilted her head to look past the brim of her black bonnet. Her gaze rose and rose until it met Joshua Stoltzfus’s earth-brown eyes through the pouring rain. He was almost six feet tall, almost ten inches taller than she was. His dark brown hair was damp beneath his black hat that dripped water off its edge. His beard was plastered to the front of the coat he wore to church Sundays, and soaked patches were even more ebony on the wide shoulders of his coat. He’d gotten drenched while helping to fill in the grave.

“Take this,” he said, holding his umbrella over her head. “I’ll see if I can repair yours.”

“Danki.” She held the umbrella higher so it was over his head, as well. She hoped Joshua hadn’t seen how she flinched away when he moved his hand toward her. Recoiling away from a man’s hand was a habit she couldn’t break.

“Mamm!” Sammy cried. “I wet now!”

Before she could pull her son back under the umbrella’s protection, Joshua looked to a young girl beside him, “Deborah, can you take Samuel under your umbrella while I fix Rebekah’s?”

Deborah, who must have been around nine or ten, had the same dark eyes and hair as Joshua. Her face was red from where she’d rubbed away tears, but she smiled as she took Sammy’s hand. “Komm. It’s dry with me.”

He didn’t hesitate, surprising Rebekah. He usually waited for permission before he accepted any invitation. Perhaps, at last, he realized he didn’t have to ask now that Lloyd was dead.

Joshua turned her umbrella right side out, but half of it hung limply. The ribs must have been broken by the gust.

“Danki,” she said. “It’s gut enough to get me to our buggy.”

“Don’t be silly.” He tucked the ruined umbrella under his left arm and put his hand above hers on the handle of his umbrella.

Again she flinched, and he gave her a puzzled look. Before she could let go, his fingers slid down to cover hers, holding them to the handle.

“We’ll go with you back to your buggy,” he said.

She didn’t look at him because she didn’t want to see his confusion. How could she explain to Lloyd’s best friend about her reaction that had become instinctive? “I don’t want to intrude on...” She gulped, unable to go on as she glanced at the other members of the Stoltzfus family by the grave.

“It’s no intrusion. I told Mamm we’d go back to the house to make sure everything was ready for those gathering there.”

She suspected he wasn’t being completely honest. The Leit, the members of their church district, would oversee everything so the family need not worry about any detail of the day. However, she was grateful for his kindness. She’d always admired that about him, especially when she saw him with one of his three kinder.

Glancing at the grave, she realized neither of his boys remained. Timothy, who must have been around sixteen, had already left with his younger brother, Levi, who was a year older than Deborah.

“Ready to go?” Joshua asked as he tugged gently on the umbrella handle and her hand.

“Ja.” Instantly she changed her mind. “No.”

Stepping away, she was surprised when he followed to keep the umbrella over her head. She appreciated staying out of the rain as she walked to Isaiah, her cousin’s widower. The young man who couldn’t yet be thirty looked as haggard as a man twice his age as he stared at the overturned earth. Some sound must have alerted him, because he turned to see her and his older brother coming toward him.

Rebekah didn’t speak as she put her hand on Isaiah’s black sleeve. So many things she longed to say, because from everything she had heard the newlyweds had been deeply in love. They would have celebrated their first anniversary in November.

All she could manage to say was, “I’m sorry, Isaiah. Rose will be missed.”

“Danki, Rebekah.” He looked past her to his oldest brother. “Joshua?”

“Rebekah’s umbrella broke,” Joshua said simply. “I’m walking her to her buggy. We’ll see you back at the house.”

Isaiah nodded but said nothing more as he turned to look at the grave.

Joshua gripped his brother’s shoulder in silent commiseration, then motioned for Rebekah to come with him. As soon as they were out of earshot of the remaining mourners, he said, “It was very kind. What you said to Isaiah.”

“I don’t know if he really heard me or not. At Lloyd’s funeral, people talked to me but I didn’t hear much other than a buzz like a swarm of bees.”

“I remember feeling that way, too, when my Matilda died.” He steered her around a puddle in the grass. “Even though we had warning as she sickened, nothing could ease my heart when she breathed her last.”

“She was blessed to have you with her until the end.” She once had believed she and Lloyd could have such a love. Would she have been as caring if Lloyd had been ill instead of dying because he’d fallen from the hayloft in a drunken stupor?

No! She wasn’t going to think about that awful moment again, a moment when only her faith had kept her from giving in to panic. The certainty that God would hold her up through the horrible days ahead had allowed her to move like a sleepwalker through the following month. Her son and the discovery she was pregnant again had pulled her back into life. Her kinder needed her, and she wouldn’t let them down any longer. It was important that nobody know the truth about Lloyd, because she didn’t want people watching Sammy, looking for signs that he was like his daed.

“I know Rose’s death must be extra hard for you,” Joshua murmured beneath the steady thump of rain on his umbrella, “because it’s been barely half a year since you buried Lloyd. My Matilda has been gone for more than four years, and the grief hasn’t lessened. I’ve simply become accustomed to it, but the grief is still new for you.”

She didn’t answer.

He glanced down at her, his brown eyes shadowed, but his voice filled with compassion. “I know how much I miss Lloyd. He was my best friend from our first day of school. But nothing compares with losing a spouse, especially a gut man like Lloyd Burkholder.”

“That’s true.” But, for her, mourning was not sad in the way Joshua described his own.

Lloyd Burkholder had been a gut man...when he’d been sober. As he had never been drunk beyond their home, nobody knew about how a gut man became a cruel man as alcohol claimed him. The teasing about how she was clumsy, the excuse she gave for the bruises and her broken finger, hurt almost as much as his fist had.

She put her hand over her distended belly. Lloyd would never be able to endanger their second kind as he had his first. Now she wouldn’t have to worry about doing everything she could to avoid inciting his rage, which he’d, more than once, aimed at their unborn kind the last time she was pregnant. Before Sammy was born, she’d been fearful Lloyd’s blows might have damaged their boppli. God had heard her desperate prayers because Sammy was perfect when he was born, and he was growing quickly and talking nonstop.

Joshua started to say more, then closed his mouth. She understood. Too many sad memories stood between them, but there were gut ones, as well. She couldn’t deny that. On the days when Lloyd hadn’t been drunk, he had often taken her to visit Joshua and Matilda. Those summery Sunday afternoons spent on the porch of Joshua and Matilda’s comfortable white house while they’d enjoyed iced tea had been wunderbaar. They had ended when Matilda became ill and was diagnosed with brain cancer.

A handful of gray buggies remained by the cemetery’s gate. The horses had their heads down as rain pelted them, and Rebekah guessed they were as eager to return to their dry stalls and a gut rubdown as Dolly, her black buggy horse, was.

“Mamm!” Sammy’s squeal of delight sounded out of place in the cemetery.

She whirled to see him running toward them. Every possible inch of him was wet, and his clothes were covered with mud. Laughter bubbled up from deep inside her. She struggled to keep it from bursting out.

When she felt Joshua shake beside her, she discovered he was trying to restrain his own amusement. She looked quickly away. If their gazes met, even for a second, she might not be able to control her laughter.

“Whoa!” Joshua said, stretching out a long arm to keep Sammy from throwing himself against Rebekah. “You don’t want to get your mamm dirty, do you?”

“Dirty?” the toddler asked, puzzled.

Deborah came to a stop right behind Sammy. “I tried to stop him.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “But he jumped into the puddle before I could.”

Rebekah pulled a cloth out from beneath her cape. She’d pinned it there for an emergency like this. Wiping her son’s face, she gave the little girl a consoling smile. “Don’t worry. He does this sort of thing a lot. I hope he didn’t splash mud on you.”

“He missed me.” The girl’s smile returned. “I learned how to move fast from being around Aenti Ruth’s kinder. I wish I could have been fast enough to keep him from jumping in the puddle in the first place.”

“No one is faster than a boy who wants to play in the water.” Joshua surprised her by winking at Sammy. “Isn’t that right?”

Her son’s smile vanished, and he edged closer to Rebekah. He kept her between Joshua and himself. Her yearning to laugh disappeared. Her son didn’t trust any man, and he had gut reason not to. His daed, the man he should have been able to trust most, could change from a jovial man to a brutal beast for no reason a toddler could comprehend.

“Let’s get you in the buggy.” Joshua’s voice was strained, and his dark brown eyes narrowed as he clearly tried to understand why Sammy would shy away from him in such obvious fear.

She wished she could explain, but she didn’t want to add to Joshua’s grief by telling him the truth about the man her husband truly had been.

“Hold this,” he said as he ducked from under the umbrella. Motioning for his daughter to take Sammy’s hand again, he led them around the buggy. Rain struck him, but he paid no attention. He opened the door on the passenger side. “You probably want to put something on the seat to protect the fabric.”

“Danki, Joshua. That’s a gut idea.” She stretched forward to spread the dirty cloth on the seat. She shouldn’t be surprised that he was concerned about the buggy, because he worked repairing and making buggies not far from his home in Paradise Springs. She stepped back while Joshua swung her son up into the carriage. If he noticed how Sammy stiffened, he didn’t say anything.

Once Sammy was perched on the seat with his two fingers firmly in his mouth, Joshua drew the passenger side door closed and made sure it was latched so her son couldn’t open it and tumble out. He took his daughter’s hand before they came back to stand beside her.

Rebekah raised the umbrella to keep the rain off them. When he grasped the handle, she relinquished it to him, proud that she had managed not to shrink away. He smiled tautly, then offered his hand to assist her into the buggy.

“Be careful,” he warned as if she were no older than her son. “The step up is slick, and you don’t want to end up as muddy as Samuel.”

“You’re right.” She appreciated his attempt to lighten her spirits as much as she did his offer.

Placing her hand on his palm, she bit her lower lip as his broad fingers closed over it. She’d expected his hands to be as chilled as hers, but they weren’t. Warmth seeped past the thick wall she’d raised to keep others from discovering what a fool she’d been to marry Lloyd Burkholder.

Quickly she climbed into the buggy. Joshua didn’t hold her hand longer than was proper. Yet the gentle heat of his touch remained, a reminder of how much she’d distanced herself from everyone else in their community.

“Danki, Joshua.” She lowered her eyes, which were oddly almost even with his as she sat on the buggy seat. “I keep saying that, but I’m truly grateful for your help.” She smiled at Deborah. “Danki to you, too. You made Sammy giggle, and I appreciate that.”

“He’s fun,” she said, waving to him before running to another buggy farther along the fence.

“We’ll see you back at Mamm’s house,” Joshua said as he unlashed the reins and handed them to her.

She didn’t say anything one way or the other. She could use her muddy son as an excuse not to spend the afternoon with the other mourners, but she didn’t want to be false with Joshua, who had always treated her with respect and goodness. Letting him think she’d be there wasn’t right, either. She stayed silent.

“Drive carefully,” he added before he took a step back.

Unexpected tears swelled in her eyes, and she closed the door on her side. When they were first married, Lloyd had said that to her whenever she left the farm. He’d stopped before the end of their second month as man and wife. Like so much else about him, she hadn’t known why he’d halted, even when he was sober.

It felt wunderbaar to hear a man use those commonplace words again.

“Go?” asked her son, cutting through her thoughts.

“Ja.” She steered the horse onto the road after looking back to make sure Joshua or someone else wasn’t driving past. With the battery operated lights and windshield wiper working, she edged the buggy’s wheels onto the wet asphalt. She didn’t want to chance them getting stuck in the mud along the shoulder. In this weather it would take them almost an hour to reach their farm beyond Bird-in-Hand.

Sammy put his dirty hand on her cape. “That man was mad at me.”

“Why do you think so?” she asked, surprised. From what she’d seen, Joshua had been nothing but friendly with her son.

“His eyes were funny. One went down while the other stayed up.”

It took her a full minute to realize her son was describing Joshua’s wink. Pain pierced her heart, which, no matter how she’d tried, refused to harden completely. Her darling kind didn’t understand what a wink was because there had been too few cheerful times in his short life.

She had to find a way to change that. No matter what. Her kinder were the most important parts of her world, and she would do whatever she must to make sure they had a gut life from this day forward.

* * *

Joshua walked into the farmhouse’s large but cozy kitchen and closed the back door behind him, glad to be inside where the unseasonable humidity didn’t make everything stick to him. He’d waved goodbye to the last of the mourners who’d came to the house for a meal after the funeral. Their buggy was already vanishing into the night by the time he reached the house.

He was surprised to see only his younger sister Esther and Mamm there. Earlier, their neighbors, Leah Beiler and her mamm, had helped serve food and collected dishes, which they’d piled on the long table in the middle of the simple kitchen. They had insisted on helping because his older sister Ruth was having a difficult pregnancy, and her family had gone home hours ago.

The thought of his pregnant sister brought Rebekah to mind. Even though she was going to have a boppli, too, she had no one to help her on the farm Lloyd had left her. He wondered again why she hadn’t joined the mourners at his mamm’s house. Being alone in the aftermath of a funeral was wrong, especially when she’d suffered such a loss herself.

Take care of her, Lord, he prayed silently. Her need is great at this time.

A pulse of guilt rushed through him. Why hadn’t he considered that before? Though it was difficult to see her because she brought forth memories of her late husband and Matilda, that was no excuse to turn his back on her.

Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow he would go to her farm and see exactly what help she needed. The trip would take him a long way from his buggy shop in Paradise Springs, but he’d neglected his obligations to Lloyd’s wife too long. Maybe she would explain why she’d pulled away, her face growing pale each time he came near. He couldn’t remember her acting like that before Lloyd died.

“Everyone’s gone.” Joshua hung his black hat on the peg by the door and went to the refrigerator. He poured himself a glass of lemonade. He’d forgotten what dusty work feeding, milking and cleaning up after cows could be.

And hungry work. He picked up a piece of ham from the plate on the counter. It was the first thing he’d eaten all day, in spite of half the women in the Leit insisting he take a bite of this casserole or that cake. They didn’t hide the fact they believed a widower with three kinder must never eat a gut meal.

“Mamm, will you please sit and let me clear the table?” Esther frowned and put her hands on the waist of her black dress.

“I want to help.” Their mamm’s voice was raspy because she’d talked so much in the past few days greeting mourners, consoling her family and Rose’s, and talking with friends. She glowered at the cast on her left arm.

The day before Rose died, Mamm had slipped on her freshly mopped floor and stumbled against the table. Hard. Both bones in her lower left arm had broken, requiring a trip to the medical clinic in Paradise Springs. She’d come home with a heavy cast from the base of her fingers to above her elbow, as well as a jar of calcium tablets to strengthen her bones.

“I know, but...” Esther squared her shoulders. “Mamm, it’s taking me exactly twice as long to do a task because I have to keep my eye on you to make sure you don’t do it.”

“There must be something I can do.”

Joshua gave his younger sister a sympathetic smile as he poured a second glass of lemonade. Mamm wasn’t accustomed to sitting, but she needed to rest her broken arm. Balancing the second glass in the crook of one arm, he gently put his hand on Mamm’s right shoulder and guided her to the front room that some of the mourners had put back in order before they’d left. The biggest space in the house, it was where church Sunday services were held once a year when it was Mamm’s turn to host them. Fortunately that had happened in the spring, because she was in no state now to invite in the whole congregation.

He felt his mamm tremble beneath his fingers, so he reached to open the front door. He didn’t want to pause in this big room. It held too many sad memories because it was where his daed had been waked years ago.

Not wanting to linger, he steered his mamm out on the porch. He assisted her to one of the rocking chairs before he sat on the porch swing. It squeaked as it moved beneath him. He’d try to remember to oil it before he headed home in the morning to his place about a mile down the road.

“Is Isaiah asleep already?” he asked. “When I was coming in, I saw the light go out in the room where he used to sleep upstairs.”

“I doubt he’s asleep, though it would be the best thing for him. You remember how difficult it is to sleep after...” She glanced toward the barn.

His other brothers should be returning to the house soon, but he guessed Mamm was thinking of the many times she’d watched Daed cross the grass between the barn and the house. Exactly as he’d looked out the window as if Matilda would come in with a basket of laundry or fresh carrots and peas from her garden. Now he struggled to keep up with the wash and the garden had more weeds than vegetables.

Mamm sighed. “What are you going to do, Joshua?”

“Do?”

“You need to find someone to watch Levi and Deborah during the day while you’re at the shop.”

It was his turn to sigh into his sweaty glass. “I’m not sure. The kinder loved spending time with Rose, and it’s going to be hard for them to realize she won’t be watching them again.”

“Those who have gone before us keep an eye on us always.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “But as far as the kinder, I can—”

He shook his head. “No, you can’t have them come here. Not while you’ve got a broken arm. And don’t suggest Esther. She’ll be doubly busy taking care of the house while you’re healing. The doctor said it would take at least six weeks for your bones to knit, and I can’t have the kinder at the shop for that long.”

Levi and Deborah would want to help. As Esther had said to Mamm, such assistance made every job take twice as long as necessary. In addition, he couldn’t work beneath a buggy, making a repair or putting it together, and keep an eye on them. Many of the tools at the buggy shop were dangerous if mishandled.

“There is an easy solution, Joshua.”

“What?”

“Get yourself a wife.”

His eyes were caught by the flash of lightning from beyond the tree line along the creek. The stars were vanishing, one after another, as clouds rose high in the night sky. Thunder was muted by the distance, but it rolled across the hills like buggy wheels on a rough road. A stronger storm than the one that morning would break the humidity and bring in fresher air.

Looking back at his mamm, he forced a smile. “Get a wife like that?” He snapped his fingers. “And my problems are solved?”

“Matilda died four years ago.” Her voice was gentle, and he guessed the subject was as hard for her to speak about as it was for him to listen to. “Your kinder have been without a mamm, and you’ve been without a wife. Don’t you want more kinder and the company of a woman in your home?”

Again he was saved from having to answer right away by another bolt of lightning cutting through the sky. “Looks like the storm is coming fast.”

“Not as fast as you’re changing the subject to avoid answering me.”

He never could fool Mamm, and he usually didn’t try. On the other hand, she hadn’t been trying to match him with some woman before now.

“All right, Mamm. I’ll answer your question. When the time is right, I may remarry again. The time hasn’t been right, because I haven’t found the right woman.” He drained his lemonade and set the glass beside him. “From your expression, however, I assume you have someone specific in mind.”

“Ja. I have been thinking about one special person, and seeing you with Rebekah Burkholder today confirmed it for me. She needs a husband.”

“Rebekah?” He couldn’t hide his shock as Mamm spoke of the woman who had remained on his mind since he’d left the cemetery.

“Ja, Rebekah. With a young son and a boppli coming soon, she can’t handle Lloyd’s farm on her own. She needs to marry before she has to sell out and has no place to go.” Mamm shifted, then winced as she readjusted her broken arm. “You know her well, Joshua. She is the widow of your best friend.”