One More Time for Joy

Book 3: Paradise Valley

by Amy Lillard

Genres: Amish & Mennonite; Christian Romance; Clean & Wholesome Romance

Synopsis

At the heart of a Missouri Amish community, a circle of caring friends—the Widows' Club of Paradise Valley—sees each other through life's storms, in this uplifting series from award-winning author Amy Lillard . . .



Joy Lehman has pressed on faithfully since losing her husband, raising their children and running a thriving bakery alone. Even caring for her oldest son, Johnny—seriously injured after a fall—has not shaken her fierce independence. Johnny will walk again, she's sure. Until then, a meeting of the Widows' Club at her home makes it clear that Joy must consider some costly renovations. Her brother-in-law, Uriah, is happy to provide the lumber and the labor—if Joy will accept his help.



Uriah understands family challenges—he's a widower himself, and father to four daughters. Yet he can see that Joy's struggle lies deeper than house repairs, in learning to accept an altered future for her son. As Uriah's daughters begin helping in the bakery, and Joy and Uriah's bond grows deeper, a new possibility glows bright—the unexpected happiness that lies in embracing one strong, united family, filled with support and love . . .

Release date: March 28, 2023

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

They were wrong. No two ways about it. The doctors were wrong. They had to be.

Joy Lehman rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, though she couldn’t see it. It was impossible to see anything in the pitch black of the night. The house was quiet, the night was dark, and yet she couldn’t sleep. Too many thoughts from the day kept swirling around inside her head.

Today the doctors had told them that Johnny B’s healing had stalled, and he wouldn’t improve beyond where he was now. He wouldn’t be able to walk. He wouldn’t gain any more feeling in his legs. He would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

She refused to believe them. She refused to give up hope.

It wasn’t like doctors hadn’t been wrong before.

She rolled onto her side and sighed. She needed to shut off her thoughts. Three thirty came mighty early in the morning. Bread needed time to rise. She could make some of the dough up in the afternoons. But by then her feet were dragging she was so tired. It was easier to just go to bed and get up early again to make it. She was that tired now, but her thoughts were too restless to allow her to rest.

She could hear every sound the old house made. From the sighing in the attic loft to the ticking of the ancient grandfather clock that sat near the entrance to the living room. For a moment she held her breath, listening. She thought she heard someone stirring around upstairs. Maybe one of the younger children getting up to go to the bathroom. The house was quiet and not quiet and oh—so dark.

Hope. She needed hope. She had to have hope. Especially when no one else around her held any for her son. She would continue to pray that God’s will be done. It was all she could do and accept it as it came. But that didn’t mean she had to give up hope. That didn’t mean that she couldn’t pray that it be God’s will that her son would walk again.

It was even more important now that the doctors had crushed all the hope that Johnny B had had going into this afternoon’s appointment. She had seen the downward turn of his mouth, the bitterness that had settled in his eyes. Whatever hope he had clung to had been ground underneath the heel of their fancy Englisch shoes.

Stop! she told herself sternly. She wasn’t about to go down that road. She wasn’t about to allow herself to turn bitter as well. She couldn’t. Even if she had wanted to. Someone had to remain positive, and that someone had to be her.

Johnny B would walk again. She couldn’t allow thoughts of anything else.

The small beam of a flashlight verified what she had earlier suspected. One of the smaller children was up and about. Most likely the youngest, Jane, who flitted around during the day as if nothing was wrong but allowed the night to bring in doubts with it. Just like someone else she knew.

“Mamm?”

Joy smiled a little into the night at the sound of her sweet daughter’s voice. Jane had been only a year old when her father had died. She had no memories of him whatsoever, no inkling of what life might have been like before his death. All she knew was her mamm ran a bakery in the basement, where her older sister and a couple of girls from their church district worked.

Joy was secretly glad that Jane had none of those memories. It made the “now” somehow easier to accept. Jah, children were resilient. Yet some more than others. Jane carried with her whatever she experienced. She hid it during the day, but at night, it rose back up to haunt her.

Jane could remember when Johnny B was able walk. Her sweet, caring heart hated that he was suffering. Though she was too young to know that was the reason. Just as Joy couldn’t tell her.

“Jah?”

“Are you awake?”

“Jah, liebschdi.” She waited until Jane made her way completely into the room, stopping beside the bed next to her. “Are you allrecht?”

Jane nodded, a motion Joy could detect from the bobbing of the flashlight beam.

“What’s wrong?”

“Leah’s snoring, and she’s keeping me awake.”

Joy was glad the darkness hid her smile. Leah didn’t snore, but Joy wasn’t about to argue with an eight-year-old over the fact. “You want to come sleep with me?”

It was a bad habit to get into, but the truth was Joy needed the nighttime comfort as badly as Jane did.

“Please.”

Joy scooted over in the bed, patting the spot next to her.

Jane jumped in beside her, turning off the flashlight after she had snuggled down safely in the covers.

Joy wrapped her youngest into her arms and kissed the top of her head.

Jane sighed contentedly.

She shouldn’t give in. She shouldn’t allow Jane to sleep with her. Or allow her to give in to her fears, but it was one of the few things she seemed to have control over these days.

Ten-year old Chris was acting like . . . well, she didn’t know what to call how he was acting, but it wasn’t proper behavior. He seemed angry all the time. Sullen, as if he had been the one to lose use of his legs. He didn’t like the fact that he and his brother no longer shared a room, though he wouldn’t admit as much.

Johnny B couldn’t navigate the stairs in his wheelchair, so they had moved his bed into the living room. That of course threw a monkey wrench into the dynamics of the entire household. The couch had to be moved into another part of the house. It had been on the back porch for a while, but with winter approaching that plan would have to be altered. And with only three bedrooms, the idea of allowing him to take over her downstairs room would have her sharing with the two girls or her youngest son. Neither prospect seemed doable long term. And the basement was where her bakery was located. Without that . . .

And then there was Leah; Joy might be worried about Leah most of all. Leah smiled too much, was too accommodating. Joy swore to herself that if she asked Leah to go into town barefoot in the snow, the child would do it with an unwavering smile on her face. That wasn’t healthy. Her family wasn’t healthy. She had no idea what to do to get everyone back on track. And it was worse at night, like this. The darkness always seemed to bring with it doubts and fears.

She pressed her face into Jane’s sweet-smelling hair, perfumed with apple shampoo and the fresh scent of her cotton nightgown.

Everything would look bright again in the morning. She just had to make it until then.

Thoughts stilled, Joy closed her eyes and finally fell asleep.

“Joy.”

She looked up as Millie Bauman called her name. Millie was standing at the top of the stairs that led down to the barn below. Joy and the members of the Whoopie Pie Widows Club—officially the Paradise Springs Widows Group—had gathered for one last day of cleaning before church tomorrow.

This was the first time that Joy would host church in her home since Johnny B had fallen, though she didn’t actually host it in her house itself. Like a lot of the Amish had begun doing, Joy had built a new barn with a bonus room on the second floor. Her brother-in-law, Uriah, had come up with the plans and helped with it shortly after Rudy, her husband, had died.

The previous barn had been about to fall down around their ears, so Rudy and Uriah had been discussing the new barn for almost a year. Then Rudy up and died, and Uriah continued on in his memory, building the large structure with three stalls, enough room for two buggies plus storage, and the upstairs bonus room. She didn’t keep farm animals, just her buggy horse and the retired buggy horse she was allowing to live out his days in comfort in the second stall. There was no need for a hay loft. That space was better suited for light storage, a place for the children to play on rainy days, and church. Plus it was a lot easier to clean.

Uriah and Rudy had made certain to add a couple of bathrooms in the barn plans to keep people from having to come through the house for any reason at all. Now she was eternally grateful for that decision. It took so much pressure off for the service. It was as if God had known that something was going to happen, and she would need this ease on her chores in order to get through.

“How is Johnny B going to get up here for the service?” Millie continued.

Joy pushed herself to her feet, her knees popping in the process, and made her way over to where Millie stood. Around the room, the women had all stopped cleaning, wiping down, and polishing whatever it was they were cleaning, wiping down, and polishing to watch her.

“He’ll have to come up the stairs, jah?” Millie asked with a small nod toward the narrow wooden staircase. It wasn’t a space created to be wheelchair friendly. It was narrow, not too steep, but steep enough, and of course it was stairs. Not suited to a wheelchair at all.

Joy felt something inside her start to wither. How was she going to get his wheelchair to the second floor for the service? How? How? How?

The question poked at her like a broken mattress spring. She chewed her lip, so very aware of everyone’s eyes watching her. Judging her. Well, maybe not harshly judging, but judging all the same. How was she going to solve this? They wanted to know. She wanted to know.

Sylvie Yoder, Millie’s aunt, bustled over. Sylvie ran the Paradise B&B in town. “Could you move the service? I mean I know that’s what this space was created for, but when I have a wheelchair-bound guest at the inn, I have a room downstairs especially for them.” She didn’t have any way for a physically handicapped person to get up her stairs either.

Elsie Miller, co-owner of Poppin’ Paradise, the local popcorn shop, stopped wiping down the wood-paneled walls and made her way over to where Sylvie, Millie, and Joy stood. “You can’t move the service downstairs. You’d have to move all the stuff you have stored down there to somewhere else, and the horses.”

“Not to mention that there’s no time to get it clean enough for the service,” Lillian Lambert added. Lillian worked at Paradise Variety Store, and Joy had been a little surprised to see her today. Her father-in-law was her boss and somehow seemed to have Lillian too busy with work every time something like this cropped up. Joy supposed some people would think that Lillian was trying to get out of helping, but they all knew her father-in-law. They all knew his nature. He owned the variety store and liked things his own way. Liked as in demanded his way or everyone around him suffered. Lillian had managed to become so wedged under his thumb that Joy was surprised she even knew her own mind.

But she did about this. Which showed exactly how obvious it was that they faced a problem.

“Well, this many heads is better than one,” Hattie Schrock, the eternal optimist, chimed in. Hattie was the voice of hope and exactly what Joy needed in that moment. Hope. Never give up hope. Never surrender. Never let them see they got to you.

Joy smoothed her hands down the front of her deep-blue day dress and black apron. There was a way. There was always a way. She wouldn’t admit to anything else. She stared at the steep staircase. “There’s a way,” she told them, her tone emphatic, confident, and sure, though she felt none of those things. “There is a way.” Now all she had to do was think of it.

Uriah did his best to listen to the words that Aaron Lapp was saying. Funny how just because Uriah owned the lumberyard everyone wanted to talk wood to him, like he had no mind for anything else. He nodded politely at Aaron, who owned the Paradise Amish Buffet—not to be confused with the Paradise Chinese Buffet. It was owned by a nice Asian family who had recently built a new house at the edge of town, in that no-man’s-land between Paradise Springs and Paradise Hill. And who he didn’t feel the need to discuss fried rice with every time he saw them.

Everyone was standing around outside Joy Lehman’s house, waiting on church to start, milling in the yard and pretty much freezing. Yesterday had been a beautiful fall day, warm sun and just enough of a breeze. Now . . . brrrr. But that was late October in Missouri. At least it wasn’t snowing yet. Though they were calling for a bad winter.

Movement out of the corner of his eye drew his attention. His sister-in-law, Joy. Joy was a good woman. Made of tough material, Uriah thought. She had definitely kicked it in when his brother died. All the widows in Paradise Springs seemed made of sterner stuff. Maybe because they had formed a group. They stuck together, supported each other. Met once a week and gabbed and ate whoopie pies and whatever else women tended to do when they flocked to one place. Uriah wouldn’t know. He might be surrounded by daughters, but none were old enough to even be out of the house yet, and his own wife had been gone for four years now. But the widowers of the valley hadn’t banded together or formed a club. Well, they didn’t bake whoopie pies either. So there was that.

Aaron continued to talk, and Uriah continued to pretend to listen politely, though his focus had shifted.

What was Joy saying? She had approached Zebadiah Miller, the bishop for their district, as he was about to enter the barn where church was to be held. Uriah wasn’t sure why her presence captured his attention. Just suddenly she was there.

He caught the words “baby monitor” right before Joy gestured toward the upstairs part of her barn.

Zebadiah stroked his beard and listened to her. Then he shook his head.

“What do you think?” Aaron asked Uriah.

Uriah roused himself out of his stupor. “Excuse me,” he muttered to the other man, and went to see what was happening with his sister-in-law.

“Zebadiah.” He nodded to the bishop, then turned to his brother’s widow. “Hello, Joy.”

She smiled at him in return, though the action was overshadowed by the sadness in her eyes and the tired slant of her lips.

“What’s going on?” Uriah asked. Because something was going on. He could sense it in the air between them.

Zebadiah looked to Joy. It was her story to tell.

“It’s Johnny B,” she finally said. “This is the first time that I’ve hosted church since his accident, and I never thought about the stairs.” She shook her head. “Once he can walk again, it won’t matter so much, but right now, I can’t get his chair into the bonus room. And Zebadiah doesn’t think it a good idea to have his baby monitor in the service.”

“Baby monitor?” Uriah looked from Joy to the bishop.

“I use it in case he needs me while I’m working. It’s a two-way, and he calls me if he needs to, and I can hear him. He hates it of course, but until he can walk again, what other options do we have?”

“For the service?” Uriah asked. “Or for every day?” Suddenly he was swamped with guilt. After Rudy had died, he had done his part, maybe even more than his part, to help his brother’s widow. He had built the barn, helped renovate the basement into the flourishing bakery that it was today, and secured a dependable lessee for her farmland. But after that . . .

“Not every day,” she told him, with a small shake of her head. She closed her eyes when she said it, as if praying that it was true. “He’ll walk again. We just need him upstairs for the service.”

“He’s fine missing this worship,” Zebadiah told her. That was old Zeb: laid back, didn’t get upset about much. “I think the baby monitor will be too much of a distraction in the service.”

“I just—” she started.

“Mamm.” Joy’s youngest boy appeared out of nowhere and tugged on her arm.

“Chris, we’ve talked about this. I am in an adult conversation, and I can’t run to whatever it is you need.”

“Topher,” he said with a frown, though Uriah had no idea what that meant. “I want to be called Topher.”

Oh.

“I’m not going to have this conversation right now. Go get ready for service.” She nudged him away, and he went, though Uriah could tell that every step was performed with the utmost unwillingness.

“So you agree that it will be distracting?” Zebadiah asked.

Joy nodded reluctantly.

Zeb was probably right.

Tears started in Joy’s eyes, but just as quickly disappeared again. “I don’t want him to feel different. He needs to be at the service.”

Uriah remembered a couple of services that Johnny B hadn’t been able to attend, but he wasn’t sure what made those different than this one today. Because it was his own house? Or something else?

“I can help.” The words slipped out easy as pie. Of course he would help. He would be there for his brother’s family. Always.

“You can’t get that chair up the stairs without help, and it’s too narrow for more than one person to go up and down at a time,” Joy protested.

That was true and partially his fault, but who knew this was going to happen when he and Rudy had drawn up the plans for the building? Who knew that they would need a wider, less inclined stairwell to help a wheelchair-bound boy make it to church?

“Mamm.”

The three of them turned as a new voice entered the conversation. Johnny B rolled up, his expression as hard as a gravestone and twice as solemn.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I can miss church today. As long as Zebadiah understands.”

The other man nodded. “And the Lord understands.”

But Uriah could tell that the idea of Johnny B not being at church was breaking Joy’s heart.

She sucked in a trembling breath. Maybe it was to steady her nerves, maybe it was to wash down the tears that she seemed determined not to shed.

Uriah held up one hand to stay the conversation. Then he turned to Johnny B. “A minute?”

For a moment he thought the young man was going to deny him, but he nodded, one stern jerk of his chin.

Uriah stepped away from the bishop and his sister-in-law, following Johnny B a few feet away so they could talk.

“I think it means a lot to your mother that you be at church today.”

“I don’t know why,” he grumbled.

Honestly, Uriah didn’t either. But apparently it did. And if it meant that much to her, then it was a problem that needed a satisfactory solution.

“As I see it,” Uriah continued, “we have two ways of getting you there, aside from hurriedly building an elevator and powering it with the windmill. And truthfully, that’s not something I would put my faith into.”

He wasn’t certain, but he thought he saw a shadow of a smile flicker on Johnny B’s hard mouth. Good. That was good.

“First way: I get someone to carry your chair up the stairs and I carry you up the stairs myself.” The boy wasn’t quite fifteen and hadn’t had that growing spurt where one day he was a child and the next a man. It wouldn’t be an easy task to carry him up the staircase, but it wouldn’t be impossible either.

“In front of everybody? No way.”

“Or we could tie a rope to your chair. Someone could push and someone else could pull, and we could bump you up the stairs that way.”

“That’s just as bad.” Johnny B shook his head. “Everyone will be watching.”

“And they’ll be watching if you turn around and go back to the house. Face it: No matter what you do now, everyone will be talking about you. So do you want them talking about you good things or bad?”

“How is me going back inside my house where no one will bother me a bad thing?”

Uriah shrugged. “I’m just thinking that determination to get to church might give you some street cred.”

Johnny B frowned. “What is that?”

“Something the Englisch guys at the lumberyard talk about. It’s like bonus points in the community. You know, like with the girls.”

There was a flash of interest in Johnny B’s eyes, but it was gone in an instant. “I’m not going to date.”

“Jah, not until you’re sixteen at least.”

“Not even then.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m never going to walk again,” Johnny B said, his voice full of derision. “Who wants to date a cripple in a wheelchair?”

Uriah didn’t know how to answer that. Hadn’t his mother just said he would walk again? Who was right? Who was wrong?

And there was a part of him that wanted to tell Johnny B not to talk about himself that way. Words were hurtful even if a person said them about their own self.

“Okay, then. I didn’t want it to have to come to this, but you need to do it for your mother.”

Johnny B opened his mouth to protest, but Uriah shook his head, effectively cutting him off. “Do it for Joy.”

In the end, Uriah gathered two lengths of rope and tied each to one wheel on Johnny B’s chair. Then he pressed Thomas Kurtz into helping.

Thomas stood at the top of the stairs with both ropes— tied together now—in hand. Uriah pushed and Thomas pulled and after a few grunts and a little sweat despite the late-fall chill, the two of them managed to get the boy upstairs.

Everyone watched, just as Johnny B had predicted they would, and once he was safely on the second floor, everyone clapped. It was an unusual start for a Sunday service, but Uriah supposed that some days were just like that.

Johnny B’s face turned pink, and he ducked his head. No one wanted to be different. At least not so different that people noticed right off.

Soon everyone settled down and the service started. Uriah found his gaze resting more and more often on Joy. She was faced front, watching intently as Leroy Lambright, the deacon of their district delivered the second sermon. Jane, her youngest sat next to her. Leah was twelve or so, if he was remembering correctly, and she was seated with the other girls, as was the custom. He couldn’t remember, but he didn’t think Jane had turned nine yet. That was when the girls stopped sitting with their mamms and instead sat in a little gaggle of aprons and prayer kapps.

He thought that Jane had been about a year old when Rudy died, and his brother had been. . .