The Amish Quiltmaker's Unexpected Baby

Book 1: Amish Quiltmaker

by Jennifer Beckstrand

Genres: Amish & Mennonite; Contemporary Christian; Christian Romance

Synopsis

In the first in an engaging new series, an Amish quiltmaker moves from Pennsylvania to a new settlement in Colorado, where adventure, challenges, and love are waiting . . .



Esther Zook is starting over after her father's death, piecing together a new life with as much care as she puts into her intricate quilts. When her wayward sister abandons her baby, it throws all those plans for a fresh start asunder. Esther had accepted her status as an old maid—but a mother? And a single one, at that? Not that she hasn't noticed Levi Kiem, the eligible young man who's making repairs in her house. Yet he surely has no interest in Esther as anything other than a friend . . .



It's true that Levi has plenty of marriage prospects. His dat has even offered to send him to Ohio to find a wife. Yet the more time he spends with Esther, the more intrigued he becomes. Feisty and independent, she's nothing like the wife he once imagined for himself. Yet just as a quilt is crafted from contrasting cloth, they might find that together, they can create a family to cherish . . .

Release date: February 23, 2021

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Esther Zook had four hundred and thirty-five reasons to run screaming from the house and never come back.

But she wasn’t really a screamer, and she’d certainly never been much of a runner. She found it completely incomprehensible that people actually ran for fun. But most of them were Englischers, and she’d never been able to understand much of what Englischers did, so her confusion was expected.

Instead of screaming or banging her head against the refrigerator, Esther stood in the middle of her tiny kitchen and read Ivy’s letter over and over again. After all Esther had done for her sister, this was how Ivy repaid her? The world had turned upside down, topsy-turvy in a matter of seconds.

And then the buplie, the baby, started crying.

Esther was going to throw up.

And Esther wasn’t a thrower-upper. She’d never thrown up in her life, even that time Grossmater made her try cow’s tongue at the state fair.

Esther growled and tore Ivy’s letter in half, then in half again. Then in half again and again. Then she scrunched all the pieces together in her fist, made a raggedy paper ball, and with a great heave, threw the ball across the kitchen. It landed in the only potted plant in the house, caught in the long, feathery leaves of her fern like a bug in a spider’s web.

A strong knock at the front door startled Esther out of her thoughts and sent a wave of relief crashing over her. Ivy had changed her mind and decided to come back, which was just what Esther would have expected from Ivy. That girl couldn’t make up her mind about what to wear every morning. She was as flighty as a sparrow.

Esther rushed to the door and threw it open. Instead of Ivy on the other side, a tall, handsome Amish stranger with wavy brown hair and a deep cleft in his chin stood on her porch. He wasn’t Ivy, but he’d have to do. Esther grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him into the house. “Do you know how to change a diaper?” she said, because that was her immediate need, and she wasn’t going to waste time with unnecessary chitchat.

Surprise and shock popped all over his face. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Can you change a diaper? Because I can’t, and my schwester has run off.”

He took a step back and looked as if he was going to bolt like a skittish horse. She tightened her hold on his shirt. She couldn’t let him get away, not when she needed him so desperately.

He raised his hands as if stopping traffic and slowly looked down at her fist balled around the fabric of his shirt. Hopefully, he wasn’t fussy about wrinkles. “Um. My mammi sent me to look at your bathroom. She says it needs work. There must be some mistake.”

Esther clenched her teeth as the wails from the other room got louder. “We can sort out the mistakes later. Can you change a diaper or not?”

“I can,” he said tentatively. He was wise to be suspicious. She was about to draft him. “But I don’t especially like it.”

She pulled him into the baby’s temporary room and pointed to the portable crib. “The baby is in there. Her diapers are in that suitcase.”

He drew his brows together and gazed at her, his expression a mixture of confusion and panic. “This is a little . . . I don’t know what to say . . . my mammi said to come look at your bathroom.”

Esther huffed out a short and impatient breath. “Enough about the bathroom. I need you to change the baby’s diaper. Then we can talk about the bathroom. Is that good enough for you?”

He must have sensed her frustration, or maybe he thought it was best to just agree with the crazy Amish woman. “I suppose so.”

“Gute. I’ll get a diaper.”

The stranger looked into the crib as if its contents would jump out and bite him. His mouth immediately relaxed into a dazzling smile. “Well, aren’t you sweet?” he said, and it took Esther a fraction of a second to realize he was talking to the buplie and not to her. He reached down and picked up Ivy’s baby and cradled her in his arms like Esther had seen gute mothers do. The baby immediately stopped crying. Esther caught her bottom lip between her teeth. She probably should have tried that.

The stranger cooed and bounced the baby like he knew what he was doing. Did he have his own children? He didn’t have a beard, so he probably wasn’t married, but for sure and certain, he seemed like the fatherly type.

He laid the baby on the twin bed next to the crib. The baby kicked and grinned at him as if he had a whole bag of lollipops in his pocket. “What’s her name?”

Esther clenched her teeth again as she felt her face get warm. “Winter.” It was embarrassing just saying it.

The stranger raised an eyebrow. “Winter?”

“I don’t know what my schwester was thinking.” But that was nothing new. Esther was never sure what her sister was thinking. She handed him the diaper.

He smiled at the baby and talked to her in that soft little voice people always used with buplies. “Well, Winnie, you sure are a beautiful baby.”

“Winnie?” Esther said. “That’s much better.”

The stranger glanced at Esther as if she was a distraction, as if she’d been the one to barge into his house and not the other way around. He slipped the wet diaper off Winter—Winnie—making a crackling sound as he pulled the tabs on each side of the diaper. Then he wrapped his fingers around Winter’s ankles and lifted her bottom so he could slide the clean diaper under her. In a lightning-quick motion, he fastened the diaper around Winnie and onto itself. It happened too fast. “Could you do that again? I’ll watch more closely.” Not that she was planning on changing any more diapers. For sure and certain, Ivy was bound to walk back through that door within the hour.

He frowned. “How have you managed this long? Your baby must be at least three or four months old.”

Esther pushed a long and frustrated sigh from her throat. “She’s not my baby.”

He picked up Winter, being careful of her floppy head, and bobbled her up and down on his hip. “She’s cute.”

Esther glanced at Winter. She had a shock of fine black hair that floated around her head like a patch of ragweed. And even at four months, she had dark, well-defined eyebrows that made her look older than she was. “Of course she’s cute. That doesn’t mean I know how to change her diaper.”

The stranger smoothed his thumb down Winter’s soft cheek. The baby studied his face as if he was the most interesting thing she’d seen in her short life. He was definitely the most interesting thing Esther had seen since she’d come to Colorado. “She looks like you,” he said.

Was that a compliment? Winter was cute and all, but her head was unusually big for her body. Did the stranger think Esther had a big head? “Jah. I guess she looks like me.” Esther’s temper flared at the thought of her schwester’s betrayal. “My schwester showed up last night with Winter. She asked if she could stay for a few days. What could I do? You don’t turn away family.”

“Of course not.”

Winter was done being fascinated with the stranger. She squirmed in his arms, made a face, and started crying in earnest. “Do you think she needs another diaper change?” Esther said, because out of the two of them, the stranger was the expert.

One side of his mouth twitched upward. “I expect she’s hungry.”

“Hungry? She can’t be hungry. I don’t have anything to feed her.”

The stranger held Winter close and patted her back gently. It was a sweet gesture, but it did nothing to quiet the crying. “Is there formula in the suitcase?”

Formula! Esther had watched Ivy make a bottle last night. She knelt down and stirred the contents of the suitcase until she found a white and blue plastic container with a picture of a baby on the front. “This is it. And there’s a bottle on the dish drainer in the kitchen. Ivy washed it last night.” How nice of her. Esther nearly growled out loud. Ivy had abandoned her baby and left Esther with a very serious problem, but at least she’d been thoughtful enough to wash the baby’s bottle before she left. Esther was going to explode with the injustice of it all.

Since his hands were busy, Esther placed the tub of formula in the crook of the stranger’s elbow. “Do you know how to make a bottle?”

“You’ll have to hold the baby.”

Esther never did anything unless she was confident in her ability to do it perfectly, and she wasn’t about to mess up with the baby, especially not with a stranger watching. She snatched the formula from its place on his elbow. “You hold the baby. Tell me how to make the formula.” It couldn’t be that hard.

The stranger bounced the baby more zealously. Winter cried fiercely. “You just have to read the directions.”

Directions. Esther knew how to read directions. She made intricate quilts that required concentration and strict following of directions. She could make formula. She read the directions twice, just in case she missed something the first time. “How warm does the water need to be? I have a cooking thermometer.”

“I don’t think the cooking thermometer will help.”

“Why not?”

The baby was getting hysterical, but the stranger stayed as calm as a summer’s morning. How did he do that? “You just have to guess.”

“Guess? You can’t guess with a baby.”

Still patting Winter’s back, he strolled into the kitchen and turned on the tap water. “You wait for it to get pleasantly warm, then you fill your bottle.”

Esther frowned. “Shouldn’t you use purified water? I think we’re supposed to use purified water.”

That quirky little smile appeared again. “Tap water is fine, and Winnie is too hungry to be picky.”

Esther sidled up to the sink as if it would bite her and put her hand under the running water. It was a good thing she had a solar-powered water heater. She had all the warm water she wanted.

“Is it warm?” he said.

“I can’t decide if it’s lukewarm, pleasantly warm, or unseasonably warm.”

“Good enough,” he said.

“Good enough? For someone who claims to know a lot about babies, you seem to be quite irresponsible about bottle temperatures.” Esther opened her gadget drawer and started searching for her cooking thermometer.

“I never claimed to know anything about babies.”

“Well, maybe you should have told me that before you barged in here and changed Winnie’s diaper.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “As I remember it, I didn’t barge. You dragged me in.”

Okay. He had a point, but that in no way excused the tap water idea. “We don’t have time to argue about it now.” No time at all. Winnie’s high-pitched screams would soon break all the windows in Esther’s house. Esther didn’t need any extra house repairs. She’d only just moved in.

The stranger glanced up at the ceiling and expelled a puff of air from between his lips. He cradled Winnie in one arm, tested the water temperature for himself, and grabbed the bottle from the dish drainer. “Good enough,” he repeated, and at that point, Esther had to agree. It was either tap water or new windows. He filled the bottle with water and handed it to Esther. “Now put the formula in.”

“How much?”

A glance up at the ceiling again. “Read the instructions.”

A little embarrassed that she was so flustered, Esther read the instructions two more times, pulled out the little scoop, and poured three scoops of formula into the bottle. She spilled quite a bit on the floor, but cleaning up would have to wait. Poor Winnie was out of her head with hunger, and she couldn’t have been looking forward to a bottle tainted with tap water.

Esther screwed the nipple onto the bottle and started to shake it up, just like the directions said. She shook vigorously, as instructed, and tiny droplets of milk flew from the hole in the nipple. Esther squeaked as formula splattered her nose and cheeks. She glanced at the stranger. A solitary drop of milk hung precariously from a strand of the curly hair that fell over his forehead, and four more drops trickled down his cheek.

“You have to cover the hole,” he said, calmly wiping the milk from his face. The big drop slipped from his hair and plopped onto Winnie’s cheek. Winnie momentarily stopped wailing.

For some inexplicable reason, the look on the man’s face struck Esther’s funny bone. She couldn’t keep a smile off her face. “It doesn’t say that anywhere in the directions.”

He laughed. “They probably should have mentioned it.” He reached out and dabbed at Esther’s cheek with his thumb. Something sweet and warm trickled down her spine. She ignored the sensation and the surprise that followed. She hadn’t allowed a man to break through her defenses in a very long time.

“Okay, cover the hole,” she said, gathering her scattered wits. She placed her finger over the hole on the nipple and shook the bottle hard.

Winnie’s face was red, and she took great halting breaths in between screams. Bless his heart, the stranger was doing his best to quiet her, though nothing was working. “That’s probably enough shaking,” he said, wincing at a piercing scream directed into his ear.

“Ach. Okay.”

Esther handed him the bottle, and he stuffed it into Winnie’s mouth while she was still upright. Winnie sucked ravenously on the bottle, and the stranger slowly maneuvered her into a supine position in his arms. Carefully, he sat down at the table in one of Esther’s four kitchen chairs and shot a grin in Esther’s direction, flashing his extra-white teeth. “Success,” he whispered.

Esther sighed and wiped her hands on a dish towel. First crisis averted. Lord willing, there would never be a second crisis. Unfortunately, she had an inkling her life was going to be one crisis after another until Ivy came back. “I’m sorry I got griddlich.”

His smile made her feel better. “It’s okay you got cranky. The sound of a baby crying is the most stressful noise in the world. People will do just about anything to stop it.”

“How do you know so much about babies?” She cleared her throat. “Do you have children?” She didn’t want him to have children, because that would mean he was married, but why she cared about that, she couldn’t really say.

“Nae. I’m not married.” Esther worked very hard to refrain from clapping her hands. “I have eleven bruderen and schwesteren,” he said. “I’m the oldest, and my youngest sister, Lydiann, is two. The good news is she was potty trained last month, so no more diapers for either of us. I’ve changed plenty of diapers in my life, though I’ve always tried to get out of it. My sister Mary Jane is much better at diapers and children. She has two of her own.”

Winnie reached up and wrapped her fingers around one of the stranger’s suspenders. She kicked her tiny feet and gazed at him as if she hadn’t recently been a total emotional wreck. She really was a darling little thing. Too bad her mother was a ninny.

The stranger glanced at Esther as if he didn’t want to pry but felt compelled to anyway. “So Winnie is living out of a suitcase, you’ve never changed a diaper before, and you have a piece of chalk behind your ear.”

Esther pursed her lips. Her life sounded quite strange when he put it like that. “Ach. You never know when you’re going to need a piece of chalk.”

His grin overspread his whole face. “I mostly never think about chalk.”

“I always put chalk or a pencil behind my ear just in case I need to mark a pattern or a piece of fabric. Then I don’t have to stop what I’m doing to search for something to write with.” A quilter always needed chalk. Sometimes Esther walked around town with chalk dust on her cheek and got strange looks from her neighbors.

He nodded. “That’s right. You’re a quilter.”

How did he know that? “The suitcase and diaper problem came last night.” She walked around the table and retrieved Ivy’s letter from her potted plant. She sat across the table from the stranger and unwrapped the letter. It crumbled to shreds when she pulled at it. He raised his eyebrows. She smiled sheepishly. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so enthusiastic about tearing it up. “It’s from my schwester.”

“She sent you a ball of confetti?”

Her face got warm. Why had she let her temper run away with her? “It used to be a letter. She left it for me this morning.”

“It looks as if you didn’t like what it said.”

“My schwester hasn’t been in my life for many years.”

He pulled the bottle from Winnie’s mouth and set it on the table. Then he lifted Winnie to his shoulder and patted her back. Winnie smacked her lips and let out a half-hearted whimper. “About halfway through feeding a baby, you need to burp them.”

“Good to know.” Esther fingered the pieces of Ivy’s letter. “My sister probably found out I had money. She was extra motivated to find me.”

“Okay?” he said.

She shook her head. “I don’t have a lot of money. But my sister is destitute, so to her, I’m rich. None of my bruderen would have taken her in, though I’m sure she wouldn’t have wanted to live with any of them.”

He scrunched his lips to one side of his face. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just so angry I could spit, but I won’t, because it’s rude.” She smoothed out all the pieces of her sister’s letter and laid them in order like she was putting together a puzzle. “I have four older bruderen. I am the oldest daughter, and Ivy is the youngest in the family. She is four years younger than I am, and my parents spoiled her rotten.” Esther glanced at Winnie. “I’m not blaming them for how she turned out. From what I’ve seen this morning, being a parent must be well-nigh impossible.”

His lips twitched. She’d seen that expression several times already—a mixture of amusement and lightheartedness that she found quite attractive, as if nothing ever upset him or made him lose his temper. He’d probably never tear up a letter from his sister, let alone throw it across the room. “Maybe you should save your judgment until you’ve had a little more time to settle in,” he said.

“I don’t think so.”

Winnie let out a gute burp, and the stranger moved her to his other shoulder. He obviously knew what he was doing. If Esther had enough money, she’d hire him as a full-time mother’s helper. Esther took a deep breath. She wouldn’t need to do that, because Ivy was definitely coming back. Soon.

Esther looked at the shreds of Ivy’s letter. Maybe she should try to put it back together to look for clues to Ivy’s return. She retrieved the tape from the gadget drawer and sat back down at the table. “When Ivy was eighteen, she jumped the fence and ran away with an Englisch boy.”

“That must have been hard for your family.”

Esther squared her shoulders so the weight of her memories wouldn’t knock her over. She tried never to think about the months before and after Ivy left home. Ivy had hurt Esther and Mamm and Dat in so many ways it was hard to count them all. In the last eight years, it had been easier to forget Ivy even existed.

Esther pulled a short piece of tape from the roll and taped the first two strips of paper together. The stranger watched her with interest. “I’ve seen Ivy twice in the last eight years. We rarely heard from her. She didn’t even know Mamm had died until six months after the funeral.”

“I’m sorry about your mamm.”

Esther nodded. “Denki.”

“Maybe your schwester was ashamed to come home. That happens sometimes.”

Esther shrugged. “Maybe. But last night she showed up on my porch as if she’d never been gone. I don’t know how she got here, but it was just her and Winter, with no blanket for the baby and no coat for herself. I don’t know what she was thinking. April is still cold in Colorado.”

“Maybe she came from somewhere warm.”

There he went again, giving Ivy the benefit of the doubt, even though she didn’t deserve it. Esther pressed her lips together, a little ashamed of herself. Maybe she was too determined to think badly of Ivy. “She had a black eye and a bruise on her wrist.”

“Ach.”

“Poor Ivy. She never thought she deserved better.”

“So you let her stay the night,” he said.

Esther nodded, the anger bubbling up again like a pot of caramel on the stove. “I woke up this morning and found this note on the kitchen counter.” She finished taping the last piece and smoothed the creases. “Dear Esther,” she read, glancing at him in irritation. “Jordan texted me last night, and he is really, really sorry. I don’t think I’ve given our love enough of a chance. I need to know if this is going to work, and I can’t work on our relationship if there’s always a baby between us. I just need to leave Winter here for a few months while I figure it out. Jordan loves me. This is real, Esther.”

The stranger’s eyes were as round as pincushions. “Ach, du lieva,” he said.

Esther huffed out a breath. “Jah. That’s what I said.” Along with some other bad words she’d learned from the TV in the hospital waiting room. She had spent a lot of time there when Dat was sick. “It gets worse,” she said. She scanned the letter to find where she’d left off and continued reading. “I knew you’d say no, so I left without telling you. You’re going to be mad, but please try to think about my feelings and what’s best for me instead of always thinking about yourself.”

“Ach, du lieva,” he repeated.

Esther couldn’t stand it anymore. She ripped up the letter again, wadded it into a ball, and threw it across the kitchen. It landed in the sink. There were just so many reasons to be mad, and there wasn’t enough paper in the whole world to make her feel better.

“What are you going to do?” he said quietly.

“How long can you stay?” she said, only half joking. Well, maybe more than half. He could never really stay, and she would never really ask him. But for sure and certain it was a tempting thought.

He laughed but then stopped himself and studied her face as if to determine if she was serious. “I have another appointment in twenty minutes.”

“Don’t worry. I would never actually ask such a thing of anyone. But I truly have no idea what to do. Maybe my schwester will come to her senses and be back before supper.” Esther groaned, draped herself across the table, and thumped her forehead against the wood. “Or maybe she’ll be gone for another eight years.”

“It won’t be that bad. This Jordan guy doesn’t sound like he’s going to last very long.”

“You’d be surprised how dedicated my schwester is to a lost cause. She once had a pet worm that she fed for weeks after it died. Mamm finally made her throw it away.”

The stranger pulled the bottle from Winter’s mouth, set it on the table, and stood up. “I’m wonderful sorry, but I have to go.”

“Of . . . of course. I understand.” With a look of regret and maybe a little doubt, he gave Winter a few more pats on the back and handed her to Esther. Esther cradled Winter against her chest like she’d seen him do, but it didn’t feel natural.

“Give her a few more burps. In an hour or so she’ll need to go down for a nap. Then she’ll want another bottle and a diaper change. If all else fails, feed her. Babies need to eat a lot.”

Esther nodded as the panic rose like bile in her throat, but she wasn’t going to beg him to stay. It wouldn’t be dignified.

Winnie drooled all over Esther’s shoulder.

Nope. She wasn’t going to ask him to stay, not even with drool dripping down her sleeve. He walked to the entryway and glanced in the front room. “Nice quilt,” he said.

Esther gazed longingly at the small quilt she had on frames in the front room. It was a special order from someone over the Internet, the long neck of a mother giraffe going from the top of the quilt to almost the bottom, where she licked the top of her baby’s head. It was a darling quilt, and she’d finished the top just yesterday. Now it was highly unlikely she’d ever finish quilting it. She couldn’t give anything but her full attention to the baby.

The stranger gave Esther a very sorry look. “There’s nothing to worry about. You’ll do just fine.”

That was a bald-faced lie, but Esther was too polite to accuse him. He’d already changed a diaper and fed Winter. She could at least give him a pleasant send-off. “Denki for your help. I couldn’t have done it without you.” She managed to say it without bursting into tears.

“Maybe Ivy is already on her way back.”

“Maybe,” she said, not believing it for one minute, and annoyed with him for trying to make her feel better right before he abandoned her. If she hadn’t had her hands full of baby, she would have pulled her chalk from behind her ear and chucked it at him. You never knew when you were going to need a piece of chalk.

With one last awkward nod, he escaped. Only after he shut the door behind him did Esther realize she had no idea how she was supposed to “put the baby down for a nap.” She could have kicked herself for not asking him before he left.

And . . . why had he come? She had no clue about that either. She hadn’t even asked him his name, and he hadn’t offered it. Maybe he hadn’t wanted her to know who he was. He’d be a lot harder to track down that way. If she couldn’t find him, she wouldn’t be able to rope him into changing more diapers.

Esther ground her teeth together. She should have at least asked his name.

Winter immediately started fussing, as if she realized just whom she’d been left with. Esther bounced her up and down the way she’d seen every mother deal with a baby when it got squirmy. “Hush now,” she said. “It’s going to be okay, Winnie. Do you mind if I call you Winnie? It’s so much less embarrassing than Winter.”

Winnie pursed her little lips and squinted like she was thinking about it very hard. Then she opened her mouth as if she was about to cry and threw up all over Esther.

Winnie squeaked in her sleep, and Esther woke with a start. She looked at the clock with blurry eyes and tried to make it come into focus by sheer force of will. She finally gave up trying to determine the time. It was light outside, so it must have been morning, but for all she knew, it could have been anywhere between six and ten a.m.

Winnie hadn’t taken a nap yesterday, and more than once Esther had scolded herself for forgetting to ask the stranger how to give a baby a nap. After Winnie threw up all over Esther’s dress, Esther laid Winnie on her bed, changed clothes, and put her soiled dress in her bathroom sink to soak. As she was filling the sink with water, Winnie rolled off the bed, bonked her head, and screamed as if someone had stolen all her toys. Esther felt horrible about it, but how was she supposed to know that Winnie had learned how to roll over? Babies weren’t supposed to roll over until they were like a year old or something, right? She needed some sort of chart to tell her all the things Winnie could. . .