Chapter 1
The Hiding Spot
“A glad heart makes a cheerful face, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed.” —Proverbs 15:13 (NLT)
June 2017
Emma sat in the far corner of her parent’s porch protected from the rain and hidden from the watchful eye of her datt. Leaning her head against the back of the chair, she tried to remember when her datt started to act so strange. He told her again that morning that under no circumstances was she to go anywhere without him or her mamm.
Sitting back up in her chair, she petted Someday on his head and wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered. “I can always count on you to be glad to see me.”
Listening to the sound of the rain on the roof was just what she needed to calm her anxiety over staying out of her datt’s way. It was just about as soothing as working in the garden. She loved the feel of the warm soil in her hands and enjoyed tending to the gardens around the farm. The purple and white pansies along the picket fence were in full bloom, and she smiled at how they looked as if they were welcoming the spring rain. Closing her eyes again, she leaned back and replayed the conversation she had had with her datt at breakfast.
“Do you know what today is?”
“A canning day,” her mamm said as she put a plate of pancakes in the middle of the table. “We have three baskets of strawberries waiting for us on the back porch.”
“That too, but it’s June 17, and it’s just thirty more days until my birthday.”
She turned toward her datt. “I thought you might let me go to the market with the girls this morning.”
“Didn’t your mamm just say you were helping with strawberries?”
“Ja, but I thought just this once you might let me go.”
“Well, you thought wrong.”
She knew better than to argue and just went back to her breakfast, feeling defeated again by his sharp tone.
The sound of the sliding barn door startled her, and she opened her eyes and looked across the yard. Matthew, her bruder, was in the barn tending to a sick calf. He was standing in the doorway as if he was looking for a break in the rain to make it back to the house.
She leaned back and thought how rare it was to be enjoying such a long break from her Saturday chores. They had been making jam all morning, and the smell of strawberries was still thick in the air. They had just come upstairs from the basement kitchen when her datt came storming through the kitchen door. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to pour a glass of meadow tea before her mamm shooed her outside.
~~
Stella pulled a chair out so Jacob could sit down. She glanced to make sure Emma had left the room and grabbed Jacob’s hand and started to rub it lovingly.
“What’s the matter?” she asked as she handed him a glass of tea.
“I don’t understand how three orders got mixed up, the lumber delivery delayed, and why Matthew has another sick calf.”
“Let Kathryn worry about the orders, and Matthew will figure out what the problem is in the barn. You need to quit letting these little things upset you so.”
He knew she was right, but it was getting harder and harder to control his anxiety. When silence fell between them, Stella looked into his eyes and saw the same fear she saw six months ago, when the letter and the newspaper article came from his schwester in Ohio.
“This has nothing to do with the orders, does it?”
He hung his head and started to rub the back of his neck with his free hand.
“I have a notion this has more to do with Emma’s birthday than anything else. When she mentioned her birthday this morning, I saw that panicked look in your eyes. I pray Gott will give us direction and show us what we need to do. He won’t let us down, Jacob. There’s nothing we can do to protect Emma other than put our faith in the Lord. He gave her to us to protect, and we need to have faith that He’ll help her with the choices she soon needs to make.”
Jacob leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and said, “I know He’ll watch over her, but we’re running out of time. No matter how hard I try to keep her close, I think what I’m really doing is pushing her away. I promised Walter, before he died, I’d tell her the truth when she turned sixteen.”
“Jacob, we knew this day would come, and I’m as worried as you are. But what good are we doing by forbidding her to leave the haus? When she turns sixteen and starts her rumshpringa, there’s nothing we can do but let her make her own choices.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“I’m afraid she won’t want to stay with us once she learns the truth.”
Stella leaned in closer and laid her head against his while she recited one of her favorite Bible verses, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”
~~
Emma felt protected in the corner of the porch where she couldn’t be seen. Across the yard, she spotted her bruder again. Matthew was five years older and took care of the farm, while her datt tended to the furniture shop. Matthew kept to himself, and the only friend she knew he had was Daniel Miller from the feed store. She had been sure Sarah Mast would end up being her sister-in-law, but she moved to Ohio suddenly last year. Matthew never mentioned her name and spent most of his days in the barn with his calves.
As she continued to enjoy her solitude, she heard the clip-clop announcing her schwester’s wagon as it turned down the long driveway.
Her datt’s mood was getting worse, and she noticed the change in him every time she entered the room. Just yesterday, she asked her mamm again if he was upset with her about something, and her mamm just assured her she was just imagining it.
Lately, she sensed she frustrated her datt to no end. She often felt him glare at her, always followed by him rubbing his hand along the scar that lined his face from his temple to his chin. She wished she understood his sudden reaction to her, and she vowed to stay out of his way the best she could. She had to believe the scar on his face had something to do with it, but lately, no one could break through his icy, cold stare but her sweet mamm. Years ago, she tried to get them to explain the scar, but they told her it was doings of the past and nothing would be gained by talking about it.
As Emma rocked in her favorite chair, she suddenly remembered the strawberry flower Samuel Yoder had picked and quietly passed to her without a word yesterday. Him on one side of the row, and her on the other, their fingers often brushed as they reached to pick the ripest berry. On one of her last reaches, he slipped the little white flower into the palm of her hand. When she looked up, he acted like he had done nothing out of the ordinary.
As quickly as he passed the flower, he rolled one of his corny jokes off his lips. “What do you call a cow that has the jitters?”
She put the flower in her apron pocket without mentioning it and said, “I don’t know. What do you call a cow with the jitters?”
“Beef jerky!” Samuel laughed at his own joke and got up and carried his full basket to the wagon at the end of the row.
No words were needed, and the silent connection and joyful way he had at making her laugh was all she needed. As soon as she got home, she placed the delicate small flower in her special memories box.
Samuel was two years older and was already attending Sunday night singeons. She smiled at the thought of being able to attend next month. Samuel’s sister Katie, and her best friend, would turn sixteen two days after her, and they looked forward to going together. They had been best friends since they learned to walk and spent every spring picking berries and every summer playing in the creek. From the time they could carry a basket, they’d been crawling through the berry patches together.
The Yoders’ farm butted up against their farm, dividing the two properties with a line of sugar maple trees. Emma and Katie’s mamms had both grown up together and were best friends for as long as either of them could remember. Emma’s parents had inherited the farm when her doddi died twenty years earlier. Emma’s datt grew up in Sugarcreek, Ohio, and moved to Willow Springs to apprentice with doddi when he was seventeen. That was all Emma knew about her datt’s past. He never spoke of his childhood or any of his family in Holmes County and never about the scar on his face.
The rain had stopped, and the sun was starting to peek through the clouds when she heard the screen door slam. Shortly after, she saw her datt walk across the yard to the wood shop, she heard her mamm’s fingers tap on the window behind her, signaling for her to come back inside.
~~
The next day, church was being held at the Mast Farm. Emma and her schwesters decided to walk instead of riding in the buggy. It was only two miles and a perfect morning for a walk. The sky was bright blue, with a few white puffy clouds sprinkled about. On their way, they stopped to enjoy watching a spring lamb frolic in the pasture as they stepped aside to let a buggy go around them. Once they turned off Mystic Mill Road and onto Willow Lane, they walked down the middle of the road with no care in the world. Emma loved to be outside and marveled at everything she saw.
The sap had stopped flowing months ago, but there were still a few sugar maple trees that had collection buckets on them. The pastures were green and lush from the spring rain, and a herd of black and white cows roamed through the pasture while they took no mind to the girls. The large, white barn adjoining the field had its big double doors to the hayloft open, and two cats sat on the edge of the door, watching the barnyard beneath them. Few cars traveled on the back roads of their Amish settlement, and they could enjoy their walk without worrying about traffic. The occasional humming of buggy wheels was the only thing that pushed them to the side of the road.
Anna and Rebecca were identical twins but had two completely different personalities. Their looks might be the same, but you could always tell them apart once they opened their mouths. They both had dark hair and bright blue eyes, the same color of the morning glories that grew alongside the barn, just like their mother’s.
Once they got to the large, white clapboard farmhouse of Eli Mast, they got in line to go into the service. The petitioned walls that separated the kitchen from the living room had been removed, and benches were neatly lined up in rows facing each other. She sat in the second-to-the-last row right next to her best friend, Katie Yoder. On the other side sat Rebecca and Anna.
Once she was seated, she looked around the room for Samuel. He stood directly across from her on the other side of the room. There were more men than women in the twenty-two families that made up their church district, so some of the men had to stand during the service.
As the song leader started the first song from the Ausbund songbook, she could feel someone watching her. She looked around the room, and her eyes stopped on Samuel, just as he crossed his eyes, made a funny face, and turned away. She looked away, thinking that he couldn’t have just made a face at her. She kept still, looking straight ahead while trying to concentrate on the words.
Just when she thought she’d been mistaken, she looked over at him, and he did it again. She put her hand over her mouth and tried to hide a giggle. Katie elbowed her, and her mamm turned in her seat to see where the laugh had come from. Katie saw what Samuel had done and turned toward Emma and then toward her bruder and gave them both a stern look. Emma purposely didn’t look his way again until they started to sing the second song, the “Lob Lied.”
Samuel told her a couple of weeks ago that it was his favorite song. He explained how he found it amazing that every other Amish district throughout the country was singing the “Lob Lied” at the same exact time. She marveled that he was touched by the song and told him that it must make a beautiful sound in heaven.
When she lifted her head to look his way, she noticed he no longer needed to look at the words in the songbook and could sing it by heart just like she could. During the twenty-minute song, she caught him looking her way a few more times. That time, he made no funny faces as he was fully enjoying the slow song. This was her favorite part of the service, and it helped her ready her heart to hear the sermon that followed.
As soon as the service was over, she headed to the kitchen to help put moon pies on a platter to be served. Before she reached the kitchen, Samuel made a point to walk her way, and as he passed, he said, “Was that a giggle I heard?”
In a whisper, she said, “You know exactly what I found so amusing. Did you see the look I got from my mamm? I’m sure I’m going to hear more about that when I get home.” She couldn’t help but smile as she looked up at him.
He was at least six inches taller than her, and his crisp white shirt and starched black pants made him seem even taller. His face was tanned from working in his family’s strawberry fields, and his boyish grin had her captivated. No matter what, she loved his playful disposition the most. Things at home were so tense lately, she looked forward to the fun banter they had with each other. Before he left to go help the men push the benches together to make tables, he asked if she was coming back to the singeon that evening.
Emma looked around to make sure no one had come up to them before she answered, “Once I turn sixteen, I’m certain my datt will let me go. But I don’t dare ask before that. He’s been moody, and I don’t want to set him off.”
“I’m sure he has his reasons for being so short. It takes a lot to run a business and a farm. My datt gets the same way sometimes, especially in the spring when the berries need picked.”
He leaned in closer and whispered, “just so you know, I’ll be glad when you can come.”
As he walked away, he brushed his dark brown hair off his forehead and put his hat back on as he picked up a bench to help with the tables. He turned and winked at her as he walked away with a big grin on his face.
She couldn’t help but smile at the interest he was showing in her. Her birthday couldn’t get here fast enough.
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