A Family Comes Courting…

The Amish Spinster Club series begins!

With his orphaned nephew depending on him, Amish carpenter Eli Troyer moves to Harmony Creek Hollow to start over. And when schoolteacher Miriam Hartz offers to teach Eli, who is hard of hearing, how to read lips, he can’t refuse. Spending time with Miriam forges a bond between them. Can two wounded hearts overcome their pasts to make a family together?

JO ANN BROWN has always loved stories with happily-ever-after endings. A former military officer, she is thrilled to have the chance to write stories about people falling in love. She is also a photographer and travels with her husband of more than thirty years to places where she can snap pictures. They have three children and live in Florida. Drop her a note at joannbrownbooks.com.

Also By Jo Ann Brown

Love Inspired

Amish Spinster Club

The Amish Suitor

Amish Hearts

Amish Homecoming

An Amish Match

His Amish Sweetheart

An Amish Reunion

A Ready-Made Amish Family

An Amish Proposal

An Amish Arrangement

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

The Amish Suitor

Jo Ann Brown

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08427-7

THE AMISH SUITOR

© 2018 Jo Ann Ferguson

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

“The more we work together, the quicker you will learn.

Kyle must learn to face you and enunciate when he speaks.”

“Enough what when he speaks?”

“E-nun-ci-ate. To say something clearly.”

Eli nodded, flustered he’d misunderstood Miriam.

She touched his face. Startled, he froze.

“Eli, do not be embarrassed. Even people with perfect hearing miss words.”

Was his pain emblazoned there? The last thing he wanted was her pity.

He realized how he’d misread her when she said, “Your hearing loss is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I know.”

“You say that. But you do not act that way. It will get easier.” She smiled as if he were one of her scholars.

Was that how she saw him? That was what he was, but when she touched him on his arm to get his attention, he couldn’t think of her as anything other than a charming woman.

She was his teacher—and his neighbor. Nothing else. He was being a fool. He wasn’t going to invite more pain into his life. Not when he’d come to Harmony Creek to start over.

Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

—Deuteronomy 31:6

Dear Reader,

Have you ever met a person who was completely happy with his/her appearance or some aspect of their personality? We’re all a work in process. Some of us have visible challenges, as Eli does with his hearing aids. Others have invisible ones—for example, Miriam with her lack of self-esteem. Eli and Miriam needed to believe God put these roadblocks in their paths for a reason. They—and we—must accept that by meeting such challenges with perseverance and prayer, each of us becomes stronger in our faith.

Visit me at www.joannbrownbooks.com. Look for my next story coming soon from Harlequin Love Inspired, the next in my series set in Harmony Creek Hollow.

Wishing you many blessings,

Jo Ann Brown

For Gary Rubin the “younger man” A dear friend for longer than either of us wants to admit! Do you still remember the parade in Hop Bottom with one marching band and nineteen fire engines?

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Bible Verse

Dear Reader

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Harmony Creek Hollow, New York

The bottle of spaghetti sauce at the top of the pyramid swayed.

The three bottles below it rocked.

The whole stack quivered.

Eli Troyer leaped forward and hooked an arm around his nephew. He yanked the six-year-old away from the grocery store endcap. Kyle let out a shriek. Whether it was shock or a forewarning, everyone within sight in the small grocery store froze.

But not the bottles. The stack began to crumble.

Just as the wall had.

Irrational terror swelled through Eli, clamping talons around his windpipe. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. Sounds erupted in his mind. The memory of an earsplitting crack from a wall that couldn’t stand any longer. A man’s horrified shout, a woman’s scream, crashing stone, pain...silence.

Always the silence.

Knowing he had to protect the little boy, Eli put out a hand in a futile effort to stabilize the bottles, to keep the display from crumbling. Too late. Just like before. In a slow-motion avalanche, the tower collapsed. He bent over Kyle, keeping himself between the little boy and disaster. Time escalated again when the first jar hit the concrete floor and shattered. The rest followed. Some bounced and rolled, but most exploded in a spray of marinara sauce. The sharp sounds resonated through his hearing aids as if he stood in a giant hailstorm.

Shouts, loud enough so he could hear them, though he couldn’t pick out words, rang through the store. His fear faded into knowing he must deal with what had happened in Salem’s only grocery store. He fought the yearning to flee as a different panic burst out in a cold sweat. After four years of staying out of the limelight, eyes were focused on him. It was the moment he dreaded, the moment he’d hoped wouldn’t come.

Someone was going to talk to him. Ask him questions. Expect him to understand what they’d said and then answer.

What once would have been a snap now was torture. Since the retaining wall had fallen on him and his brother and sister-in-law, he’d asked God at least once a day why Kyle’s parents had been killed and he hadn’t. He’d survived, but most of his hearing had been lost, leaving him encased in silence.

Not just his hearing had changed that day. His whole life had. If the wall hadn’t capsized, he’d be married to Betty Ann Miller. He hadn’t been sure if her averted glances had been pity or if she was ashamed because she found herself walking out with a damaged man. Either way, he never walked out with her again, and she’d married someone else.

He avoided talking to people. Most when they saw his hearing aids raised their voices and spoke slowly as if that would have helped more. Before he’d brought Kyle north from their home district in Delaware, he’d known when to dodge chatty neighbors. The storekeepers near Dover had learned it was easier to let him point to what he needed and not engage him in conversation.

Ach, how he missed the simple pleasure of a chat. Now he mostly spoke to Kyle, who helped him with even the simplest interactions.

“Are you okay?” he asked his nephew.

The little boy, who looked like Eli’s late brother with his bright red hair and freckles, nodded.

“What happened?”

Kyle shrugged and held up a box of brown sugar before going to stand by where the sugar was on a shelf. It was at least three feet from the endcap, farther than the little boy could reach. The motions were Kyle’s way of telling him that he hadn’t touched the bottles.

His mud-brown eyes widened, and he pointed past Eli.

Expecting to see an angry store manager, Eli squared his shoulders and prepared to strain what little hearing he had left to pick up the manager’s words. He turned.

And stared.

On the other side of the broken bottles and splattered sauce stood two women and two half-filled shopping carts. An elderly Englisch woman cowered behind her cart and peered like a cartoon owl through glasses with bright green frames. The other woman stood in front of her.

Eli’s breath caught as he looked at the pretty Amish woman. He hadn’t attended a church service in Harmony Creek Hollow yet, because he and Kyle had just moved into the new settlement earlier in the week. But he guessed she was the sister of the settlement’s founder, Caleb Hartz, because beneath her heart-shaped kapp, she had similar pale blond hair and intense jade green eyes. As well, she had her brother’s impressive height.

Her apron and the hem of her dark purple dress, as well as her black sneakers, had been showered with spaghetti sauce. A dab highlighted her left cheekbone. Pink was returning to her cheeks, replacing the gray of shock.

Kyle grasped his hand tightly. They stood side by side when a harried Englischer wearing a bright red bib apron as the cashiers did rushed to him. The man, whom Eli surmised was the store manager because he wore a white shirt and tie, pushed past the crowd of shoppers toward the elderly Englisch woman.

“Okay...boy?” he asked, stopping to look at Eli.

Before Eli could answer, the elderly woman waved her hands, gesturing toward him and Kyle. He struggled to follow the conversation as Kyle’s grip grew more constricting.

Guessing the old woman was accusing Kyle of causing the sauce bottles to fall, Eli said, “See here—”

The tall Amish woman—Eli thought Caleb had said his sister’s name was Miriam—turned to help the older woman stand straighter. The Englisch woman was getting more upset, and Miriam bent to speak with her.

He opened his mouth, but Kyle tugged on his sleeve. When he looked at the little boy, his nephew shook his head. Did Kyle want him to say nothing?

Straining his ears, he tried to hear what was going on and why Miriam Hartz was getting involved.

* * *

“The boy didn’t do anything.” Miriam saw the shock on the faces of the three friends she’d come with to the Salem Market, but she wasn’t going to watch in silence while a kind was falsely accused.

She guessed the little boy was Kyle Troyer, because she’d met the other kinder who lived along Harmony Creek. After the little boy and his onkel had arrived from Delaware, Caleb had gone to their house at the far end of the hollow, but she hadn’t joined him. She’d sent a chicken-and-noodles casserole as well as vegetable soup and a few jars of the grape jelly she’d brought from Lancaster County. Caleb had said Eli wasn’t talkative, but seemed determined to make a home for himself and his nephew.

She realized her brother had left out a few details. Details like how tall Eli was. She wasn’t accustomed to looking up to meet anyone’s eyes other than Caleb’s, but when the newcomer’s gaze caught hers, the startlingly blue eyes beneath his dark brown hair that was in need of a trim were a half foot above hers. Next to his left eye, a small crescent scar matched another on his chin. Neither detracted from his gut looks.

“You’re wrong!” The angry woman’s piercing voice broke Miriam’s mesmerism with the stranger. She pointed a gnarled finger toward the scared little boy. “He’s the one who did it!”

“Are you certain, Mrs. Hayes?” asked the dark-haired man who stood beside the woman. A name tag pinned on the red apron’s bib showed he was the manager and his name was Russ. “You may not have seen clearly. You’re wearing your reading glasses.”

“I know what I saw!” Mrs. Hayes ripped off her glasses and let them drop on a chain hanging around her neck and set another, more sedate, pair on her nose.

The manager hesitated, and Miriam thought he was going to listen to the old woman.

Every instinct told her to remain silent, but she couldn’t. She wondered why Eli Troyer wasn’t defending his nephew. The kind reminded her of Ralph Fisher, the little boy whom she’d thought would become her son. The two boys were close in age. Seeing the kind sent a wave of regret through her. She’d lost everything the day Ralph almost drowned. His daed, Yost, had put an end to their marriage plans, telling her the near tragedy was her fault.

She hadn’t thought so because the little boy hadn’t been in her care when he got into trouble. True, he’d been on his way to her house where she was going to watch him that afternoon, but she hadn’t expected him to arrive until much later. Shouts for help from his friends had reached her, and she’d pulled the little boy from the pond and got him breathing by the time the ambulance arrived. The little boy had survived and was fine, though he’d had a lesson about showing off she hoped he wouldn’t forget.

She hadn’t expected praise for doing what anyone would have done. Nor had she expected Yost’s anger and the repercussions and recriminations that followed. However, as time went on and others seemed to believe her ex-fiancé, she’d started doubting herself. No one else could blame her more than she did herself. She’d been a teacher for more than eight years and knew what trouble a six-year-old boy could find. Though she’d glanced out the window to watch for Ralph, she hadn’t gone to meet him. Her prayers that God would show her if the mistake was really hers hadn’t been answered, so she’d stayed away from kinder. In case Yost was right.

Her arms ached to hold the frightened little boy next to Eli and offer him comfort. But she couldn’t let herself be responsible for another kind. Next time it might not be an almost-tragedy.

Still, she couldn’t stand there and let a young boy be accused wrongly.

Those thoughts fled through her mind in a second. Stepping forward, she said with a gentle smile, “Ma’am, I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

The manager glanced at her with relief. He was ready for someone else to try to reason with Mrs. Hayes.

The old woman wasn’t in a reasonable mood. “That boy bumped me a few minutes ago and almost knocked me off my feet. I’m sure he did the same to the sauce.”

“Did you see him do that?” asked a voice from the crowd of onlookers.

Mrs. Hayes glowered. “I didn’t have to. He was running wild. That man—” She aimed her frown at Eli. “I don’t know how you people raise your kids, but they need to learn manners.”

“I didn’t mean to bump her,” the little boy said. “She stopped right in front of me. It was an accident.”

“Wouldn’t have mattered if I’d fallen and broken a hip, would it, boy?”

“Let’s be thankful that didn’t happen,” Miriam said. “Why don’t you let him help you load your groceries into your car? That way, he’ll have another chance to say he’s sorry.”

The kind glanced at his onkel and made motions with his hands.

Looking from him to her, Eli nodded.

“I can help you,” the little boy said, sticking out his narrow chest.

The elderly woman seemed to have second thoughts as if she’d just realized how young the kind was. “No, that’s not necessary.” She frowned at Eli again. “You need to keep a closer watch on your child, and both of you need to learn how to behave in a store.” With a muttered comment Miriam didn’t catch, she walked away, pushing her cart.

The manager stepped forward, careful to skirt the broken glass. He motioned for a couple of his teen employees to start cleaning up the mess. He apologized to her and to Eli, ending with, “Mrs. Hayes means well.”

“I understand,” Miriam replied.

Eli said, “Danki.”

His voice was a rich tenor as smooth as warm molasses. She wished he’d say more, but he didn’t.

When Russ offered to pay to have her clothing cleaned, Miriam assured him it wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to get the stains out, but she didn’t want to hand her clothes over to a stranger. The manager insisted on giving her a discount on her groceries, and she agreed after realizing she’d become the center of attention in the cramped store.

“You, too, sir,” he said to Eli.

Again, Eli didn’t reply until his nephew tugged on his arm. “Danki.”

He took his nephew by the shoulders and steered him to a cart farther back in the aisle. When he glanced at her again, their gazes locked. Did he want to say something to her?

For the third time, he said, “Danki.”

The single word’s warmth and the sincerity in his voice swirled through her like a spring breeze after a difficult winter.

“You’re welcome,” she replied.

After he gave her a slight nod, he and his nephew walked away.

And Miriam let the air in her lungs sift out. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath, and she wasn’t sure why she’d been.

“Are you okay, Miriam?” asked a soft voice from behind her.

As Eli and his nephew went around the end of the aisle and out of view, Miriam turned to her friend Annie Wagler. Annie, her twin sister, Leanna, and Sarah Kuhns had come with Miriam in the Englisch van they’d hired to bring them the three miles into Salem for grocery shopping. The other women were, like Miriam, in their midtwenties and unmarried. Each had come to the Harmony Creek settlement to join members of their families in making a new home. The twins lived with grandparents and their brother and his family while Sarah kept house for two brothers.

“I am. Danki for asking. I never expected so much excitement.” She was babbling. She needed to stop, but her mouth kept moving. “Be careful. Glass is scattered everywhere.”

“Bend down.” Annie plucked a shard from the top of Miriam’s kapp.

Annie was the complete opposite of Miriam. A tiny brunette doll instead of a female Goliath towering over everyone else as Miriam did. Annie possessed a sparkling effervescence that brightened every life she touched...which Miriam couldn’t. Annie was honestly cheerful while Miriam had to struggle for every smile, though it’d been easier this morning while she and the other women rode in a white van driven by Hank Puente, who wasn’t much taller than the Wagler twins.

While Annie handed the glass to a store employee, Miriam shook her apron and dress with care. She was shocked when several more pieces of glass dropped to the floor. When she washed her clothes and herself, she was going to have to take care not to get cut.

Sarah stepped forward. She was a couple inches taller than the twins, but had hair as red as Eli’s nephew. She wore gold-rimmed glasses, which she pushed up on her freckled nose as she helped Annie and Leanna do a quick check to make sure there was no glass among the groceries in Miriam’s cart. Other shoppers edged around them, staring. Not at the plain women, but at the mess. More than one Englisch woman asked if Miriam had gotten hurt.

Miriam was amazed how the incident had opened the door wider for them with their Englisch neighbors, who had watched the Amish newcomers with polite but distancing curiosity. When she mentioned that to her friends, Annie giggled.

“What’s the saying? An ill wind blows no gut? I’d say it’s the opposite today. Gut things are happening.”

Annie saw the positive side of every situation, one of the reasons Miriam was glad they’d become friends. Annie’s optimism helped counteract her own regrets at how her betrothal had ended.

As she moved her cart aside so the store employees could clean the floor, she saw Eli and his nephew checking out. She watched the little boy signal his onkel each time the cashier spoke to them. Comprehension blossomed when she remembered Caleb saying Eli wore two hearing aids. They must not be enough to compensate for Eli’s hearing loss because he needed help from his nephew.

“Someone’s curious about our newcomer,” Leanna said.

“I’m more curious how long the checkout lines are,” she replied.

With another giggle, Annie said, “She’s not denying it.”

Miriam shook her head and looked at Sarah, who was more serious than she was. They shrugged before separating to finish their shopping.

Ten minutes later Miriam was watching her purchases flow along the belt at the checkout. Coming into the small village to do errands had become more fun than she’d expected. Other than the spaghetti sauce disaster, but that would be amusing when she told her brother about it. She was glad she’d accepted the invitation to share a ride with the Wagler twins and Sarah Kuhns.

Hearing laughter, she grinned at Annie. The tiny woman was in a silly mood today. They were enjoying a respite from the hard work of making homes out of the rough buildings on the farms where they lived.

It hadn’t taken long to get their groceries. The store had only three rows of shelves and was much smaller than the big-box store where Miriam used to shop at in Lancaster County. She hadn’t gone with women friends then, but with Ralph.

Her happiness faded again at the thought of the little boy she’d believed was going to be her son when she married his daed.

“Ach, Miriam, where did you find those oyster crackers?” asked Annie.

“I think,” she replied, “the crackers are in the middle aisle.”

Telling her twin to stay with their cart, Annie sprinted away as if she were as young as the boy with Eli. Two men at the other register followed her with their eyes. Nobody could be unaware of the interest Annie Wagler drew from men, except Annie herself.

“That’s forty-nine dollars and twenty-seven cents,” the cashier said. In a singsongy tone that suggested she repeated the words many times each day, she asked, “Do you have one of our frequent shopper cards? You get a point for every dollar you spend. When you fill the card, you get twenty-five bucks off your next visit. If...” The woman paused. “Do you people use these sorts of cards?”

Miriam smiled at the woman whose hair was the same rich purple as Miriam’s dress. After five months, Englischers around Salem still worried about offending the plain folks who’d moved into their midst.

“Ja... I mean, yes,” Miriam said, wanting to put the other woman at ease. “We’re known for being frugal.”

“Squeezing a penny until it calls uncle, huh?” The cashier laughed as she pulled out a card and handed it to Miriam. “Bring this with you every time you shop.”

“Thank you.” She put the card in her wallet and pulled out cash to pay for her groceries. “Do you take checks here?”

“As long as they are local and have a phone number on them.”

With another smile, Miriam accepted her change and helped the cashier bag her groceries. She put the grocery bags in her cart and walked toward the automatic door. As it swung open, she walked out. She watched a buggy leave the parking lot. It wasn’t a gray buggy like the ones she was accustomed to, nor was it the shape of the black buggy Sarah’s brothers had brought from northern Indiana. Though the departing buggy was also black, it was wider. It had to belong to the Troyers, because when she’d visited a cousin in Delaware, she’d seen similar Amish buggies.

Once their Ordnung was decided, everyone in the new settlement would drive identical buggies. Discussion had begun on the rules for their church district, but nothing had been voted on yet.

Hearing the store’s door opening behind her, Miriam hurried toward the white van. Hank slid aside the door as she reached it. He reminded her of a squirrel with his quick motions and gray hair and beard. He wore a backward gold baseball cap as well as a purple and gold jacket, though the June day was warm. He’d explained the coat was to support the local high school team.

“Find everything you wanted?” he asked.

“And more.”

“Ain’t that always the way?” He looked past her.

Turning, she saw her friends approaching with their carts. Once their groceries were loaded with Hank’s help, Sarah volunteered to return the carts to the store.

Miriam climbed in and sat on the rearmost seat. Leanna sat beside her, leaving the middle bench for her twin and Sarah.

After the van pulled out onto Main Street, they drove past several businesses, including a hardware store separated from the building next door by a narrow alley, a drugstore and several beauty salons and barbershops. Two diners faced off from opposite sides of the wide street. An empty area where a building had burned down five decades before was where a farmers and crafters market was held every Saturday. Miriam looked forward to being able to bring fresh vegetables to sell later in the summer.

They waited for the village’s sole red light to change before turning left along East Broadway. Ahead of them was the old county courthouse, and the redbrick central school sat kitty-corner from it.

“Danki for asking me today,” Miriam said with a smile. “I had a wunderbaar time and got some errands done, as well.”

“We watched you having a gut time.” Annie grinned. “Eli Troyer was intrigued with you.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Am I being silly?”

The other women shook their heads and laughed.

Deciding not to get caught in a game of matchmaking when she had no intention of making the mistake again of believing a man loved her enough to accept everything about her, Miriam said, “We should do things together more often.”

“I agree.” Leanna sighed. “I miss the youth group we belonged to several years ago at home.”

“Here is our home now,” Sarah said in her prim tone. “We’ve got to remember that.”

Miriam wished Sarah would stop acting as if the twins were kinder. Maybe being around kids all the time, as Sarah was in her job as a nanny, made her speak so. Sarah needed to lighten up. Just as, Miriam reminded herself, she needed to.

“What shall we do for our next outing?” Annie’s eyes twinkled. “We can be an older girls’ club and have fun as the youth groups do.”

Sarah nodded. “Ja, but I don’t like calling ourselves ‘the older girls’ club.’”

“How about if we become a ‘women’s club’?” Leanna asked.

Annie shook her head. “Those are for married women. We aren’t married. We’re... What’s the term? Not old maid. No. There’s another one.”

“Spinster.” Miriam smiled. “Why don’t we call ourselves the Harmony Creek Spinsters’ Club? After all, a spinster is someone who helps take care of a home for her siblings and parents, which is what we do.”

“I like it,” Sarah said.

Leanna grinned as Annie jumped in with, “I like it, too. We’ll be the Harmony Creek Spinsters’ Club, and we can take turns choosing fun things to do together.”

“Until we get married.” Leanna wore a dreamy look. She was a romantic and devoured romance novel after romance novel.

Miriam wanted to warn her not to be so eager to make a match, but how could she when she’d been glancing out the window every few seconds, looking for a glimpse of the Troyer buggy? I’m concerned if the little boy is all right.

She chided herself for telling herself lies. She needed to listen to the advice she would have liked to offer Leanna. A desperation to get married could lead to dreadful mistakes. It was better to trust God’s timing. Maybe if she’d done that, she wouldn’t have jumped to accept the proposal of a man who’d seemed more interested, in retrospect, in having her raise his kind than anything else.

But no matter. She wasn’t going to make such a mistake again.

Chapter Two

Kyle tugged on Eli’s sleeve, trying to get his attention.

His nephew had been doing that for the past ten minutes while their buggy headed north along the main road that ran through the center of the village. They’d passed several fallow farms and newer houses on smaller lots.

Pulling his gaze from the road, he glanced at the little boy. Kyle swung his arm toward the horse, arching his brows.

Where are we going?

Eli sighed. He and the little boy, his only living relative, had developed their own sign language after the accident that killed his nephew’s parents. Kyle had been a boppli, so for him, Eli’s hearing loss was a normal part of his life. However, Eli doubted he’d get used to it himself. Hours of prayers, railing at God for the deaths of his brother and sister-in-law, had given him no insight into why the accident had to happen. Nor had pleading or bargaining. He didn’t understand why the retaining wall his brother was building had collapsed.

What had Eli missed? He’d pointed out places where Milan needed to strengthen the wall, and his brother said he’d done as Eli suggested. Eli was a carpenter, unlike his brother, who’d seldom thought of anything other than his dairy herd.

Guilt rose within him like a river of fire. In retrospect, maybe he hadn’t been as focused on the wall as he should have been. The day of the wall’s tragic failure, too many of his thoughts had been about how he’d ask Betty Ann that evening to be his bride. He hadn’t been sure she’d accept his proposal because he’d noticed her eyeing a couple of other guys, so nerves had plagued him. Distracted, he must have missed what brought the wall down on them.

When Kyle yanked on his sleeve, Eli wondered how long he’d been lost in thought.

“Let’s go home,” Eli said, checking the road before he made a U-turn.

The little boy frowned. Kyle probably thought his onkel had parted company with his mind.

And maybe Eli had because he’d driven out of his way to avoid having to see Miriam and her companions when their van zoomed past the buggy. It wasn’t as if she’d strike up a conversation then. His efforts to avoid talking with his new neighbors had been successful so far, but church was the day after tomorrow. He couldn’t avoid them there, though the Leit in Delaware had become accustomed to him and Kyle leaving right after the service and before the meal was served.

He wouldn’t skip the gathering to worship together, but he dreaded seeing people bend toward each other to whisper as he passed. As if he were blind as well as almost deaf. More than once, he’d been tempted to shout that they could yell, and he wouldn’t hear everything they were saying. He also hated the pitying looks aimed in his direction. Each one was a reminder of the expression Betty Ann had worn the first time she came to the hospital to see him after the accident. The first and only time she’d visited him there.

Would Miriam Hartz look at him the same way? The idea that such a lovely woman, who’d stepped in to defend a little boy she didn’t know, would regard him as a victim of sorry circumstances twisted his stomach.

He was glad when Kyle demanded his attention again by pointing out sheep in a field they passed. He didn’t want to think about seeing sympathy in Miriam’s eyes.

God, give me strength.

He hoped this prayer would be answered before Sunday.

* * *

“Got a minute?”

On Saturday afternoon, Miriam looked up from her sewing machine.

Her brother walked into the barn that served as their home while he worked to make the farmhouse livable. The pipes in the house had frozen, and water spread through it, ruining floors and walls.

The barn was a single open space. Upon their arrival, she and Caleb had strung a web of ropes halfway to the rafters. Hanging quilts on the ropes had created rooms, including the private spaces where they slept. She’d placed rag rugs on the uneven floorboards to protect their feet from splinters. A propane camp stove allowed her to cook, and a soapstone trough became their kitchen sink. She and Caleb missed cakes, bread, cookies and everything else prepared in an oven. He’d picked out the double ovens he intended to put in the house. Until then, it was rough living, but with the doors and windows open, including the ones at either end of the loft, the space was comfortable at last. She’d thought they might become human icicles during the coldest days of the winter.

Turning off the sewing machine that got its power from a car battery, she made sure the half-finished purple dress was folded before she stood.

“What do you need, Caleb?” she asked.

“A favor.” He sat at the table in the center of the open area. “Please hear me out before you give me an answer.”

“Of course.” She slid onto the bench facing him.

“I received a letter yesterday from the local school district. They’d written it at the request of the state education department.”

She clasped her fingers together on the table. “Why?”

“They’re concerned our kinder haven’t attended school the minimum days for the school year.”

“Mercy Bamberger has been homeschooling her two, and Nina Zook taught her four kinder.”

“But there are four other families with kinder in our settlement. The state insists they attend the minimum number of school days.”

“Do they have a suggestion of how we should do that?” Her brows lowered as she said, “If we’d had a school here, by now our scholars would be done so they can work on their families’ farms.”

“They suggested—and the local school superintendent, Mr. Steele, agreed—we hold school here for the next four weeks. That would take us to the middle of July, so the older scholars would be available to help with the harvest. At the end of the term, the kinder would be tested to make sure they’d learned what’s mandatory for their ages.”

She leaned toward him. “I thought our schools were independent of interference from Englischers.”

“They are, but as you know, the kinder need to attend for a minimum number of days.” He gave her a small smile. “I’m sure I can talk Mr. Steele into not having the testing, as long as I assure him the scholars will be in school for four weeks.”

“That sounds like a gut idea. We’ve got about ten kinder of school age, I’d guess.”

“Nothing you can’t handle.”

“Me?” she managed to choke out past her shock.

He didn’t look at her as he said, “I sort of volunteered you because nobody else in the settlement has been a teacher.”

“What about Mercy or Nina?”

“Mercy has her hands full with her foster son, and Nina is going to have her new boppli any day. You’re our best choice to oversee the school.”

Like everything else her brother did or said, it made complete sense.

But teaching? Kinder who’d be put into her care for six hours each day? She stared at him. How could Caleb ask such a thing of her? She’d come to Harmony Creek to escape the murmured accusations she couldn’t be trusted with kinder.

“It’s for only four weeks, Miriam,” he said. “By the time school starts in the fall, Nina has said she’ll take over until we can find a teen girl to teach. Just four weeks.”

“All right, I’ll do it.” What else could she say? She had to help keep the new settlement from getting off on the wrong foot with their Englisch neighbors.

“And I need you to do one other thing for me.”

“I thought you said one favor.”

“I guess I should have said one at a time.”

She laughed with him. As hard as Caleb was working to make the settlement a success, he must be learning, at last, that he couldn’t do it all himself. Though he continued to try.

“We’re having a school built, so we’ll be ready to go in the fall,” he said. “It’ll be between our farm and Jeremiah Stoltzfus’s. There’s a level piece of ground with not too many trees that will be perfect. We’ve hired a carpenter.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“He’s never built a school before, and you know what’s needed.”

“Our schools are pretty much the same.”

“Ja, the ones in Lancaster County are. But schools in Indiana sometimes have two rooms and two teachers.”

“Is that what you’re planning on here?”

He shook his head. “The majority of our families are from Pennsylvania, so we’re building what we’re used to.” His cheeky grin returned. “And one room is cheaper than two.”

“True.” She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to be responsible for almost a dozen kinder.

“Will you work with him on the project?”

“Of course.”

“Gut.” He pushed himself to his feet, came around the table and gave her a quick hug.

“Who’s going to build the school?”

“Eli Troyer.” Her face must have betrayed her shock, because Caleb added, “I know it’ll be a challenge to work with him.”

She hadn’t mentioned yesterday’s incident at the grocery store to Caleb, because she’d been so busy she’d forgotten until after her bedtime prayers. “His nephew—”

“Shouldn’t be around more than any other kid.”

Hating the sympathy in her brother’s voice, Miriam loved him at the same time for worrying about her. He did understand. She’d wondered whether Caleb would have invited her to join him in northern New York if circumstances in Pennsylvania had been different.

“Having kids around seems to be a given.” She was shocked at the bitterness in her voice. She wasn’t angry with her brother, but she was dubious of being in charge of the scholars. What if one of them got hurt?

Caleb’s face lengthened with dismay. “If you don’t want to—”

“I said I would, and I will.”

“Danki. We should have the school done before the month is over. This weekend we’re going to get the walls up and the roof on. Eli will cut in the windows and doors and finish the interior.” This time her brother misjudged her hesitation because he went on, “I realize Eli has trouble hearing. I speak slowly, and he gets most of what I’m saying.”

She thought of how his nephew seemed to be helping him comprehend what was being said. “How bad is his hearing? Really?”

Caleb shrugged. “Enough to be frustrating to him, I’d guess.”

With a wave, her brother left.

She stared after him. If he’d told her first that she’d be working with a man who had a kind the same age as Ralph Fisher, would she have agreed to assist with the school? She wasn’t sure.

* * *

Eli was paying more attention to Miriam than he was to their temporary bishop Wayne Flaud, who’d come to oversee the service at the farm owned by the Kuhns brothers. How had Miriam reacted when Caleb told her that she’d be working with him? Had she been as astonished as he’d been?

Those were questions he couldn’t get answered unless he asked her. He wouldn’t put her in an embarrassing situation.

She was as lovely as he’d recalled over and over during the past two days. Her eyes weren’t sparking as they had when she’d defended his nephew. Seated with the other young women who’d been at the grocery store, she looked at her clasped hands or the bishop who spoke at one end of the benches that faced each other. He could re-create her eyes’ rich green shade. Even while sitting, she towered over the women around her. He was amazed such a tall woman could be so graceful in every motion.

And, when he’d thought nobody would notice, he’d been watching her every motion since she’d stepped out of her brother’s buggy.

The bishop’s voice, raised as he asked everyone to pray, intruded into Eli’s thoughts. As he moved to kneel, facing the bench where he’d been perched, his eyes cut to her again.

He got caught, because his gaze connected with hers. For a single heartbeat before she turned to kneel. It’d been enough for him to confirm she’d been surprised by her brother’s suggestion they work together. He didn’t see dismay, though.

Lord, please make this collaboration a gut one so the work we do together is a reflection of the hopes of this settlement.

Keeping his prayers focused on the future was the best way to avoid thinking about the past and another pretty woman who’d dumped him like yesterday’s trash. He glanced at his nephew beside him. He owed his brother and sister-in-law a huge debt for failing to protect them, and he intended to repay it, in part, by raising their son as they would have wanted.

Eli kept reminding himself of that obligation as the service came to an end. He needed to make a comfortable home for the little boy and earn a living to put food on their table. Once he finished, he’d look for more work.

As he’d done in Delaware, he made an excuse to avoid staying for the meal. If he met his neighbors one by one, he’d be able to get to know them well enough to guess what they were saying. In a crowd of almost thirty people, picking out individual voices and words was impossible.

Kyle looked disappointed as he glanced at the other kinder, but he didn’t protest.

Eli draped an arm over his nephew’s shoulders, surprised again at how much the little boy had grown in the past year. He’d inherited the Troyer height, and if he kept shooting up as he was, he’d be taller than Eli by the time he was a teenager. When they reached their buggy and Kyle climbed in, the little boy leaned forward and grabbed onto the sleeve of Eli’s black mutze coat.

Astonished, Eli asked, “What is it?”

Someone talk to you.

“Who?”

The little boy pointed in the direction they’d come.

Eli’s next question went unasked when he saw Miriam standing behind him, about ten feet away. By herself. Her friends were putting food on the tables set in the grass. Knowing he shouldn’t be paying attention to such details, he couldn’t help noticing how Miriam’s dress was the exact green of her eyes. Her white kapp glistened as light sifted through the heart-shaped top, and her apron of the same shade seemed to glow in the sunshine.

She said something as she walked toward the buggy.

He assumed it was a greeting because she gave him a polite smile.

“I know Caleb wants us to work together,” he said.

She blinked, and he guessed she’d expected him to chat about the weather or the church service before getting to the subject of the school. She couldn’t know how difficult it was for him to make small talk.

“Ja,” she said.

So far, so good.

“Miriam, I want to say danki for what you did at the store.”

“You already...”

He hoped she’d said something about him previously thanking her for helping Kyle.

“It means a lot to me for someone to come to my nephew’s defense as you did.”

“...little boy, and he...nothing wrong.” He was surprised when Miriam peered past him and into the buggy.

“Looking for something?” he asked. Too loudly, he realized when she winced.

After four years he should be used to that reaction from people when his voice rose with the strength of his emotions. He wasn’t.

“I was...no matter.”

Or at least that was what he thought she said as she stepped aside as Kyle jumped out of the buggy and gave her a big grin. Her expression grew uncertain and wary.

Of his nephew? Why?

Unsure how to ask that, he said, “I don’t know if Caleb told you my nephew is living with me. His name is Kyle. He’ll be one of your scholars. School starts next week, ain’t so?”

When she forced a smile, it looked as if her brittle expression could shatter. She seemed to shrink into herself, acting as if she were allergic to Kyle and him.

He thought again about how she’d jumped to his nephew’s defense at the grocery store. Why had she changed from that assertive woman—too assertive, many would say, for a plain woman—to a meek kitten who acted afraid of her own shadow?

“If you want to play ball with the kinder for a few minutes, Kyle,” he said, “go ahead. Just come when I call you.”

Kyle punched the air and ran off to join a trio of other boys and two girls near his age.

Knowing he should keep an eye on his nephew, though there were plenty of adults around, Eli couldn’t stop his gaze from shifting toward Miriam again and again. She stared at Kyle and the other kinder as if they were a nest of mice about to invade her home.

Shock rushed through him. Why would Miriam Hartz agree to teach the settlement’s kinder if she didn’t like kids? Hadn’t Caleb told him that she’d been a teacher in Pennsylvania? He had missed something, something her brother said or she did. No Amish woman who stood up for a little boy as she had displayed such an undeniable distaste for kinder. Why had she cringed away from Kyle?

As she noticed him appraising her, she said something he didn’t hear and hurried toward the house and her friends. He’d better figure out her odd actions if there was any chance of Miriam and him working together successfully. He wished he knew where to begin looking for an explanation for her peculiar behavior.

Chapter Three

Miriam stood by the window offering the best view of the rolling foothills of the Green Mountains at the horizon. When she’d first arrived at the Harmony Creek farm, the hills had been a sad gray brown. The bare trees had grown thick with leaves and bushes until the hills looked as if they were covered with tight green wool.

Closer were the neat rows of her gardens. Caleb had rototilled two beds for her as soon as frost left the ground. She put in seeds and the immature plants she’d started in the cold frame. The simple wooden box topped by glass acted as a miniature greenhouse. Using it added to the time the plants could grow, which was important when the growing season in northern New York was short. Now in June, the plants were thriving in the earth.

With a chuckle, Miriam tossed her dust rag on the table and checked that her simple blue kerchief was in place over her hair. Why was she inside on such a beautiful day? School was starting at the beginning of the week—the reason why she’d been trying to get her weekly chores done today—so she wouldn’t have as much time to enjoy her garden.

She glanced around the large space with its quilt walls. The ones hanging as “bedroom doors” had been pulled aside to let air circulate. It was strange to live in a place like this one, but it was beginning to feel like home.

As she walked outside, she thought of how truly blessed she was. She had gut friends, including those in the Spinsters’ Club. She laughed. So far she hadn’t shared the name and their plans to enjoy outings together with anyone else. She wondered what the reaction would be. Though she’d considered mentioning it to Caleb, she hadn’t. He was so solicitous of her, and she wondered if he would think she’d lost her mind amidst her desolation about the canceled wedding.

The grass beneath her bare feet was as soft as the breeze making loose strands dance around her face. She curled her toes into the grass and drew in a deep breath as she watched Comet, their dappled-gray buggy horse, rolling like a young colt in the pasture. He was taking advantage of the day as she was.

Pausing to pluck a couple of weeds out of the flower bed to the right of the barn door, she glanced at the battered farmhouse. It was two stories high, but the roof dropped low over eyebrow windows. Caleb had replaced missing slats on the roof and installed drywall inside the house. Because he’d had to remove everything to the studs, he’d asked her to redesign the first floor. She’d made the kitchen bigger and added a mudroom and laundry room with a door to the yard, so it’d be easier to take laundry out to the line that ran from the house to the biggest barn. He’d put a movable wall between the two front rooms. That way, when it was their turn to host church, the wall could be shoved against the kitchen wall, making enough room for the Leit.

The outer walls would be painted white, and he’d agreed the shutters should be the same dark green as the shadows beneath the pine trees. The barns were a worn red, and he’d have to repaint them, too, but for now he was concentrating his scarce free time on the house.

Miriam admired the buds on the daylilies. They soon would be blooming. She planned to transplant her perennials along the front porch, and the best time for moving daylilies was August. She could wait longer to shift the daffodils she’d found in the woods. For the first two days after she brought the bulbs closer to the house, a groundhog had dug them up. She’d convinced the irritating burrower to leave them alone by dousing the flowers with a liberal amount of chili powder mixed with water. The strong scent had kept the animal away...at least so far.

She squatted by the flower bed and went to work. Less than five minutes later, she heard buggy wheels rattling toward the barn. Wondering who was coming, she gathered the weeds she’d pulled. She tossed them onto the compost pile before she walked around the barn’s corner. If someone was looking for Caleb, she’d have to admit she wasn’t quite sure where he was. He’d had a long list of errands to do in Salem and in Cambridge, about ten miles to the south.

She stopped in midstep, surprised when Eli climbed out of the family buggy. Why hadn’t he said anything yesterday about plans to stop by?

Her breath caught when his nephew hopped out behind him. The little boy looked around with the candid curiosity of a six-year-old, and he pointed to Comet. The horse wasn’t a common color for buggy horses. If the little boy went into the pasture and frightened him, it could be—

Stop it!

She scolded herself for looking for trouble where there might not be any. She wanted to stop reacting to the sight of a young kind, thinking of things that could go wrong, but she couldn’t. Kyle reminded her of Ralph Fisher. Both were spindly and all joints as their elbows and knees stuck out from their thin limbs while they grew like cornstalks.

Eli had noticed her dismay yesterday after the church service. Nobody else had, not even her friends in the Spinsters’ Club. She needed to keep her feelings to herself to halt the questions from beginning again—such as why a teacher hated kids. She didn’t hate them; she loved them. Because she loved them, she didn’t want to be the one to put any in danger.

“Gut mariye,” Eli called.

She waved to him and his nephew and waited for them to cross the yard to where she stood. A siren sounded from the main road, and she flinched.

Kyle did, too, and scanned in every direction to see what sort of emergency vehicle it was.

Eli kept walking as if nothing had happened.

How bad was his hearing?

It wasn’t her business. However, the teacher in her was curious how he’d managed to get by with only his young nephew to clue him in. A few quick tests he wouldn’t know were going on would tell her the extent of his hearing loss.

“I brought plans for the school,” he said when he reached her. “Do you want to see them?”

“Ja.” She didn’t nod to confirm what she’d said. “Seeing them is a gut idea because you want my help, ain’t so?”

His dark brows dropped in concentration. He must have heard some of what she’d said and was trying to piece it together. Wondering why he didn’t ask her to repeat what she’d said more slowly, she sighed. Even her grossmammi had resisted help for years because of hochmut, but pride did nothing to help her escape the ever-narrowing walls of her world as her hearing continued to fail. Nor would it help Eli.

She spoke to Kyle. “There’s chocolate pudding in the fridge. Go ahead and help yourself to some. Have some with a glass of milk, too, if you want.”

“Can I, Onkel Eli?” he asked.

More confusion fled through Eli’s eyes, but he nodded when the little boy made motions that must have conveyed the question without words.

Miriam bit her lip to keep from saying sign language had limits because it could be understood by a limited number of people.

When the little boy skipped to the door and disappeared inside, she saw Eli’s distress before he could mask it. Didn’t he realize that, with Kyle beginning school, he needed to learn a different way to communicate? He wouldn’t be able to depend so much on the little boy.

“Let me show you the plan I sketched for the school,” Eli said, motioning toward the barn.

Was he hoping to head inside where his nephew could give him hints about what was being said?

“It’s such a nice day, ain’t so?” She sat on the cement ramp’s edge. It would be used to bring equipment into the barn, once it was no longer their home. “Let’s go over what you’ve got out here.”

She thought he’d object, but he opened a large sheet of paper and spread it across the ramp beside her. He stood so close, each breath she took was flavored with the scents of his laundry soap and bleach. Unlike her brother’s, his white shirt pulled over his head and had a stand-up collar. The tab front closed with four small buttons. Beneath the cotton, the shadows of the muscles along his brawny arms drew her eyes.

She looked away. Eli Troyer was too handsome for her own gut. She wasn’t Leanna Wagler, believing in the possibility of a storybook hero coming to sweep her off her feet and carry her off to a wunderbaar life.

“What do you think?” he prompted, looking at his drawing. “It’s a rough sketch, but it should show you what I’m planning. Feel free to tell me changes you think will make the school better.”

She looked at the page. It was far more than a rough sketch, she realized. He’d marked out on the floor plan how the desks for the scholars and another larger one for the teacher would be set. He’d drawn the interior walls as if she stood in the room and looked at each one. It allowed her to see where he intended to place the blackboard and the bulletin boards. A generously sized storage closet was in a back corner.

He pointed to the narrow rectangles in the walls. “Those are windows. The bigger ones with the dotted lines showing the space for each to swing open and closed are the doors. What do you think?” He tilted his head toward her.

All air vanished as she found her nose so close to his that the piece of paper would have barely fit between them. She couldn’t move or blink when she raised her gaze to meet the blue-hot heat in the center of his eyes. Every emotion within him was powerful and uncompromising.

Somehow she gathered enough air to ask, “Do you have a pencil I can use? I want to make a small change.”

“Ja.” He groped in his pocket and pulled out a short ruler.

“Pencil,” she repeated as she pantomimed writing. Once he’d looked away, she drew in a deep breath.

What was wrong with her? She couldn’t remember feeling like that when she was with Yost, and she’d been in love with him.

When a pencil was placed in her hand, she realized she’d drifted away on her thoughts. She kept her eyes lowered and squared her shoulders before bending over the page. The sooner she was done with reviewing the plans, the sooner she could put space between her and Eli.

“I think there needs to be another window on either side of the door.” She drew what she wanted on the drawing.

“What are those?”

“Windows.” She gestured toward the barn. “Windows.”

“I know what you meant.” He shook his head. “Windows suck heat out of a building. If there are more windows in the school, you’ll be using a lot more propane to keep the building warm.”

“Two small windows won’t make much difference.”

“I’ve been a carpenter since I was fourteen, and I’ve learned a lot in those seventeen years. One thing I learned is that extra windows means needing more fuel to keep the space warm. No more windows.”

“But—”

“You can’t change facts, Miriam, no matter how much you want to.”

“The fact I know is kinder work better in a sunny place than one filled with shadows.” She folded her arms in front of her. “My brother trusts me to know what to do. That’s why he’s having me work with you to design the school.”

He frowned, and she wondered if he’d understood what she said. She realized he’d gotten a bit of it when he said, “Ja, sunshine and shadows. Like in a quilt.”

“I’m going to talk to Caleb about this,” she said.

At her brother’s name, comprehension dawned in his eyes. “Discuss it with him if you want.” He shrugged. “He’ll tell you the same thing I have.”

She looked away. “He’ll agree with me.” She added the silliest thing she could think of. “He does about blue flamingos.”

When she got no reaction from Eli to her challenging words, she stood and walked behind him as if looking at the sketch from another angle.

“I will be celebrating when he agrees with me,” she said.

Again no reaction.

She clapped her hands.

He glanced over his shoulder and frowned. “Why did you do that?”

His question proved he could hear sounds, which was more than her grossmammi had been able to in the three years before she died.

“I told you.” She smiled.

Her expression unsettled him. His gaze turned inward, and she guessed he was trying to figure out what she might have said. The silence stretched between them, a sure sign he couldn’t guess what she claimed she’d told him.

“Oh.” He gathered himself and said with calm dignity, “If you’ve got no other comments about the school...”

As he bent to get the piece of paper, she cupped her hands to her mouth and called out, “I’ve got lots and lots of comments. I want to paint the floor yellow and the walls purple. I want—”

He spun and stared at her before she could lower her hands. Wide-eyed, he demanded, “What are you doing?”

She met his accusing stare. “Testing you.”

“Pestering me? Ja, that’s true.”

“No!” She frowned at him. “Testing. With a t.” She sketched the letter in the air between them.

“I’m not one of your scholars. You don’t need to test me to find out what my reading ability is.”

Folding her arms in front of her, she gave him a cool smile. “That’s not what I was checking. If you want, I can teach you to read lips.”

“What?”

She touched her lips and then raised and lowered her fingers against her thumb as if they were a duck’s bill. “Talk. I can help you understand what people are saying by watching them talk.”

* * *

When he realized what Miriam was doing, Eli was stunned. A nurse at the hospital where he’d woken after the wall’s collapse had suggested that, once he was healed, he should learn to read lips. He’d pushed that advice aside, because he didn’t have time with the obligations of his brother’s farm and his brother’s son. Kyle had been a distraught toddler, not understanding why his beloved parents had disappeared.

During the past four years he and his nephew had created a unique language together. Mostly Kyle had taught it to him, helping him decipher the meaning and context of the few words he could capture.

“How do you know about lipreading?” he asked.

“My grossmammi.” She tapped one ear, then the other. “...hearing...as she grew older. We...together. We practiced together.”

Kyle came outside and rushed to them when Miriam gestured. He wore a milk mustache, and chocolate pudding dotted his chin.

When she bent to speak to him, too low and too fast for Eli to hear, the little boy nodded and took the tissue she handed him. She motioned toward Eli as she straightened.

Wiping his mouth and chin, Kyle faced him. Learn to read talking. What’s that? The puzzled boy looked from Miriam to him at the same time he made the rudimentary signs he used to help Eli understand others.

“I can help.” She put her hands on Kyle’s shoulders. “Kyle...grows up. Who will...you then?”

Who would help him when Kyle wasn’t nearby? He was sure that was what she’d asked. It was a question he’d posed to himself. More and more often as Kyle reached the age to start attending school.

“How does it work?” he asked.

“You watch my lips. We start with simple words. It is how my grossmammi... I learned.”

Watch her lips? Simple? He would gladly have spent days watching her lips. His gaze was drawn to those rose-colored curves too often. Now she was giving him the perfect excuse to stare at them...

He shook his head.

“You...no help?” she asked, and he realized she’d confused his refuting of his own thoughts as an answer to her kind offer.

Before he could answer, Kyle pulled on his sleeve and motioned, Help you. Her help you.

As his nephew pointed at Miriam and then at Eli, Kyle’s signals couldn’t have been clearer. Kyle wanted Eli to agree to the lessons.

Not for the first time, Eli thought about the burden he’d placed on Kyle. Though Eli was scrupulous in making time for Kyle to be a kind, sometimes, like when they went to a store, he found himself needing the little boy to confirm a total when he was checking out or to explain where to find something on the shelves. If he didn’t agree to Miriam’s help, he was condemning his nephew to a lifetime of having to help him.

That wouldn’t have been what his brother would have wanted. Milan and his wife, Shirley, had expected their son to play with friends and go to school and learn to assume responsibility for the family’s farm. The farm had been sold so he and Kyle could start over by Harmony Creek, but he could ensure his nephew had the chance to be a kid. Was Miriam the way God was answering his prayer for help? If so, he needed to agree.

“All right,” he said. “You can try to teach me to read lips.”

She gave him a nod and a gentle smile, not the superior one he’d worried she’d flash at him. “...next Monday. You and Kyle—” she pointed at his nephew and at him, matching Kyle’s motions “—supper. After we eat...”

“All right.”

“Tell me.”

For a second he was baffled, and then he realized she wanted him to repeat what she’d said so she could be certain he’d grasped the meaning of her words. His confusion became surprise. Why hadn’t he considered such repetition was an easy way to avoid mistakes?

“You invited Kyle and me to supper,” he said. “After the meal, you’ll start teaching me to read lips.”

“Gut,” she said as his nephew held his fingers in an okay sign. Satisfaction sparkled in her cat-green eyes as if she’d enjoyed a bowl of cream. “Be prepare...work.”

He hoped he wasn’t going to prove to be an utter failure as he’d been with helping his brother make sure the wall was safe. Miriam seemed so confident she could teach him. He didn’t want to disappoint her when she was going out of her way to help him.

Kyle threw his arms around Miriam and gave her a big hug. He grinned, and Eli realized how eager the kind was to let someone else help Eli fill in the blanks.

“You’ll have a gut time at school, ain’t so, buddy?” Eli asked, trying to cover his trepidation at losing Kyle’s help.

Kyle tensed. No go. Go later.

Eli knelt in front of his nephew. “You’ll be fine. You’re going to enjoy school.”

When Miriam nodded and said something, Kyle looked dubious.

The little boy shook his head. Stay together. Eli and Kyle. No go now.

“You’ll be fine,” he repeated. “The day will go so quickly you won’t realize it because you’re having fun with learning and your new friends.”

Kyle touched one ear, then the other.

It took every sinew of strength Eli had not to flinch. That was a signal he hadn’t seen the little boy make often, but he knew what it meant. Kyle was scared something bad would happen, as it had to Eli and his parents.

“It’ll be okay. Miriam will be watching over you so you don’t have to worry about getting hurt, ain’t so?”

He raised his eyes toward her, expecting her to confirm his words. Instead, Miriam eased out of the little boy’s embrace, her smile gone. She said something, but Eli didn’t get a single word. She rushed away, vanishing into the barn where she lived with her brother.

What had he said wrong? One minute she’d been working to convince Kyle that going to school was something he wanted to do. The next she was fleeing as if a rabid fox nipped at her heels. Was it the thought of being with the scholars? Again, Eli found himself wondering why anyone who was so uneasy around kinder was going to be the settlement’s teacher.

He didn’t have time to figure it out. He needed to calm his nephew. “Looks like we’re both going to start school next week,” Eli said, patting him on the back.

Kyle gave him a distracted nod and kept staring at the door Miriam had used. Why was he acting as oddly as she had?

Had what Miriam said upset the little boy?

“What did she say as she was leaving?” he asked as he tucked the page with the school drawing into his pocket. “Did you hear what she said?”

He nodded.

“What was it?”

The little boy started to open his mouth, then clamped it closed. Shaking his head, he ran to the buggy and climbed in.

Eli sighed. Kyle had heard something he didn’t want to repeat. It’d happened a few times before, and Eli had discovered how useless it was to badger the little boy again to help him understand. Kyle always found a way to avoid answering him.

But Eli now did have one answer. He wasn’t going to come to regret his decision to let her teach him lipreading.

He already did.

Chapter Four

Drying her hands, Miriam crossed the barn toward the open door at one end. The beep-beep-beep announced the delivery truck from the lumberyard backing toward where a dozen men and boys waited in eager anticipation. The school’s concrete foundation had been poured and given time to cure. Now they would work together to build walls and rafters. Once they had the skeleton in place, Eli would install shingles, clapboard, windows and doors before he finished the interior.

Spending time with Eli while he finished the school wasn’t going to be easy. Having his nephew hanging around was going to add to the stress, but she needed to get used to it because other kinder would be coming to the barn for school on Monday.

And, in the fall, though she wouldn’t be the teacher, the kinder would arrive every day to the school right across the road from her house.

Her heart contracted with the pain that never went away. Ach, how she’d longed for the family she thought she and Yost and Ralph would be! Even if the Lord hadn’t blessed her and Yost with more bopplin, they would have had the three of them.

Then it was all gone.

Tears welled into her eyes, but she dashed them away. Crying for what was impossible was absurd.

She’d been blessed when Caleb invited her to come with him to help build a new settlement. Their parents and four older siblings, who were well established in their lives, had remained behind in Lancaster County. God had brought her to this point. He must have a reason for it. She must have faith that someday she would understand, and she would be able to accept why her joy had been torn away.

“Gut mariye,” called the irrepressible Annie as she peeked past the front door. “Anyone home?”

“Komm in!” Miriam was glad to push aside her uncomfortable thoughts.

Dwelling on the past was useless. Dreaming of the future was more fun, but just as useless. She needed to concentrate on the present where she’d found three wunderbaar friends.

It was time to put sorrow behind her. She had to believe God had something better for her, something she couldn’t even imagine yet. Wasn’t that what faith was all about? Believing God would get her through the rough times?

Annie bounced into the barn followed by her twin. “Are you ready for a Harmony Creek Spinsters’ Club meeting?”

“I’m ready to enjoy a visit from you anytime. Are you here for a meeting?”

“Of course not.” Leanna rolled her eyes as she untied her bonnet. “Sarah had to work today. But the men are having a work frolic, so we decided we should, too.” She put a basket on the table. “It was Annie’s idea.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Because you know I have gut ideas?” Annie asked.

“No, that would be a surprise,” her twin teased with affection. Motioning after she set two more bags on the table, she added, “Komm here, Miriam, and see what we’ve been able to dig up.”

Miriam wasn’t surprised when the twins began to unload schoolbooks and stack them on the table. Each grade level was printed with a different color cover, and she saw they had several for most grade levels. She already had the teacher’s editions. Caleb had packed them, figuring someone would use them along Harmony Creek. She wondered if he’d assumed he could persuade her to teach again...at least temporarily.

She tapped her cheek in thought. “We’ll need workbooks. I wonder where we can order them.”

“Is there a bookstore in the village?” Leanna asked.

“Not that I’ve seen, but Caleb may know where one is.”

“Or go to the library and order the books from a computer there.” Annie’s eyes twinkled.

“I’m not sure the bishop would approve.” Miriam sat at the table and began to sort the books out by grade. “Maybe Sarah could ask Mrs. Summerhays if she knows where we can place an order without using the internet.”

Since her arrival from northern Indiana, Sarah had been working as a nanny for the Summerhays family, who lived almost two miles east along the road toward Rupert, Vermont. There were four kinder, two preteens and two much younger kinder. Sarah told them it was what Englischers called a blended family. The parents had been married before. Miriam didn’t know if death or divorce had led to the daed and mamm remarrying, and she didn’t ask. She assumed Sarah knew, but her friend wouldn’t carry tales about the family’s private business.

Leanna opened a textbook and turned the pages. “Here’s the address for the publisher. If Mrs. Summerhays doesn’t have a suggestion, I can write to the publisher and ask how to order more books. In the meantime, the scholars may have to share.”

“A gut lesson for them,” Annie said. “And the lesson for us is that the men working on the schoolhouse are going to be grouchy if there isn’t food waiting for them for dinner.”

They laughed and got to work unpacking food from the baskets. Squeezing cold casseroles into the small refrigerator along with the dishes Miriam had prepared, they set the hot selections on the table atop towels so the wood wasn’t scorched. More food would be arriving soon.

“Mercy promised to make nachos,” Miriam said as she handed several more glasses to Annie.

“Your neighbor is Hispanic, ain’t so?” Annie asked.

“Ja, but she told me she learned to make nachos from her adoptive mamm. Her adoptive Mennonite mamm.”

That brought more laughter as they worked together.

“Before the others get here,” Annie said, “we need to plan another event for the Harmony Creek Spinsters’ Club.” She giggled. “I love getting to spend time with you. What does your brother think of it, Miriam?”

“I haven’t said anything to him about our club.” Her embarrassment faded when she saw the uneasy expressions on the twins’ faces. “I guess you haven’t, either.”

“It sounds as if we’re desperate to be married,” Annie murmured.

“Or have given up.” Leanna clasped her hands in front of her. “I believe there’s a man out there who will fall in love with me.”

“All you have to do is not be looking for him, ain’t so?” teased her twin. “Isn’t that what you say the heroines in your romance novels do?”

Color burnished Leanna’s cheeks. “I know those are just stories, Annie. I like reading them.”

“I do, too.” Annie’s face became almost the same shade as Leanna’s. “But if the right man comes along...” She sighed. “I don’t want to lose this friendship.”

“Once a member of the Harmony Creek Spinsters’ Club, always a member, ain’t so?” Miriam laughed, so glad she could let her worries slide away at least for a short while. Between the kinder coming for lessons and having Eli across the road day after day, in addition to teaching him to read lips, not thinking about those hurdles was a blessing. “We could rename it—”

“No! Don’t change its name.” Annie leaned forward with clasped hands. “Please!”

“But if none of us has told anyone—”

“The next one we come up with could be worse.” Annie shuddered.

Again, they shared a big chuckle.

“If you’d let me finish...” Miriam waited until they were listening again. “I suggest we rename our older girls’ group the Harmony Creek Spinsters’ and Newlyweds’ Club.”

Leanna brightened. “That’s perfect.”

“Do you have something to share, little sister?” asked Annie as she winked at Miriam. “Big plans for the fall?”

Taking pity on the younger woman, Miriam put her arm around Leanna’s shoulder. “I thought brothers were awful about picking on their sisters, but I think Annie takes the cake.”

“Did I hear someone say cake?” called a deep voice from the door.

Miriam started to turn to motion to her brother to come in, but her eyes were caught by how pale Leanna’s face became.

The young woman clamped her lips closed, but her gaze followed every motion Caleb made as he sauntered into the room and greeted them. When he spoke to Leanna, color erupted anew into her cheeks.

Could Leanna have a crush on Caleb? And did he look and smile at Leanna a bit longer than he did Annie? Caleb had been gone in the evening a lot lately. Was he walking out with Leanna?

Coming to her feet, Miriam knew she shouldn’t be speculating on such private matters. A couple who was seeing each other didn’t make that fact public until their intentions to marry were published two weeks before their wedding.

“You don’t have an oven here, do you?” asked Annie.

He shook his head. “And I miss baked goodies.” He winked at Miriam.

Her brother didn’t like anyone outside the family to know he was a far better baker than she was. She could make tasty food, but he managed to create treats that were delicious and spectacular-looking. She understood his reluctance to share his skills with others. Few plain men spent time in the kitchen unless necessary.

“I wanted to give you a head’s up,” Caleb continued as he snatched a cookie off the tray the twins had brought. “We’ll be ready for dinner in about a half hour. Will that work for you?”

“Certainly.” Miriam smiled. “Do you want to eat at the school or here?”

“We’re going to set planks on sawhorses out in the yard. That way you can serve from here. Does that work for you?”

“Perfectly.”

The other women nodded.

As her brother hurried out to continue working, Miriam noticed Leanna wasn’t the only one watching. Her twin was, as well. Were they both interested in her gut-looking brother, or was something else going on?

Miriam didn’t have time to puzzle out an answer as two more women came into the barn, carrying additional food for the midday meal. As they worked together to have the meal ready for the laborers across the road, she didn’t have a chance to think of much of anything but the tasks at hand.

* * *

It was an excellent beginning.

Eli straddled the ridge board at the roof’s peak as if it were a horse. Looking at the level stretched out before him, he smiled. The bubble in the center glass of the lengthy tool was exactly in the middle. He held his right thumb up. Those who’d been working on the school cheered.

Handing the level to LaVon Schmelley, who’d moved into the hollow from Pennsylvania a month or so before Eli and his nephew arrived, Eli reached for his hammer as he waited for the first sheet of plywood to be slid toward him.

LaVon squinted through his gold-rimmed glasses as he handed off the level to someone standing on the ground and guided the large sheet into place. Eli nailed the top into place with an air-powered nail gun. LaVon used a regular hammer on the bottom.

The other man grinned and said something Eli didn’t catch; LaVon pointed to the ground. Eli looked down.

Caleb and Jeremiah Stoltzfus, whose farms shared a common border, motioned toward them. Eli couldn’t guess what they were trying to communicate. When LaVon edged to the ladder while the other men put aside their tools and walked across the road, Eli guessed it was time to eat.

His stomach rumbled at the thought and tightened with anxiety. He hesitated while the men began lifting plywood on top of sawhorses. From where he sat, he could see Miriam working with a half dozen other women to arrange chairs around the makeshift tables.

He groaned, wishing he had some excuse not to join the communal meal. Unlike on church Sundays, he couldn’t slip away. He was needed to oversee the afternoon’s work. A quick glance at the ground warned he couldn’t use needing to get more supplies as an excuse for why he couldn’t sit with the rest of the workers while they ate.

Taking a deep breath, he climbed down. He took his time switching off the nail gun and the air compressor. Without its low rumble, he caught staccato hints of voices and laughter. No specific words, but he guessed the atmosphere was casual and cordial. He wished he could feel that way, too.

Pausing to wash his hands at the hand pump set between the barn and the dilapidated house, Eli walked to where a generous assortment of food was arranged on planks that would be used on the school’s roof and walls. Drawing in a deep breath of the aromas, he helped himself to a variety of casseroles, a couple rolls and apple butter. Conversation buzzed like a swarm of maddened bees, and he picked out a few words. Enough to let him know most of the discussion was about the progress on the school.

He smiled. That he could talk about, though he wished Kyle was there. His nephew was gut about clueing him in to the specifics of anyone’s comment.

Taking a seat at the end of one makeshift table, he said silent grace before digging into his food. It was as tasty as it smelled. He’d learned that bending over his plate and appearing completely focused on his meal kept others from trying to draw him into the conversation.

He couldn’t keep himself from looking at where Miriam sat at a nearby “table.” She was chatting with her friends, and they laughed with an ease that suggested they’d known each other their whole lives. He remembered when it’d been simple to be around people and enjoy their company, but that seemed as if it were part of someone else’s life.

Suddenly, she looked in his direction.

And caught him watching her.

A piece of roll stuck in his throat, and he fought not to cough. It would draw everyone’s attention.

Miriam will help you learn to understand others better.

He couldn’t deny the truth, but spending time with her might only increase how often she invaded his thoughts. A bad idea. He couldn’t see any outcome other than her dumping him as Betty Ann had or her trying to shower him with compassion. He didn’t want either, especially the latter because he’d come to equate compassion with pity.

When Caleb called out what must have been a jesting comment because everyone laughed, Eli chuckled, too, though he had no idea what Caleb had said. He relaxed when he realized the topic was how he was looking to establish himself as a carpenter. Questions were fired at him, and he kept nodding, hoping he wasn’t committing himself to something he didn’t have the skills to do.

“...more pie?” asked Miriam as she held a plate out in front of him.

The aroma of baked apples flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg made his mouth water. He took the plate. “Danki.”

“You...doing well.”

“Ja, you’ll be moving the scholars into the school before you end your summer term.”

Her smile wavered as it did whenever he mentioned her teaching the kinder. Curiosity tugged at his tongue, urging him to ask the obvious questions.

He didn’t.

If he started probing into why she acted as she did, she might do the same to him. He didn’t want to talk about the tragedy...again and again as he’d had to in Delaware.

“You...rest doing a gut job,” she said before she put another piece of pie in front of a man who’d been cutting two-by-fours.

In spite of himself, Eli’s hand paused between the plate and his mouth while he watched the other men’s gazes following Miriam. That wasn’t any surprise, because she was lovely. What was a surprise was the swell of something distasteful when she wore a brilliant smile as she answered a man on the other side of the table.

Jealousy.

For the time she was spending with the others? Or for how easy it was for them to talk with her?

Or both?

Lord, help me focus on what’s important for me and for Kyle.

It was a prayer he needed to keep in his heart every hour of every day.

Yet, it was impossible to look away when Miriam set a plate in front of LaVon, who was sitting across from him. She said something to the other man, but her gaze locked again with Eli’s.

This time she didn’t look away like a frightened rabbit. She met his eyes. The bits of voices he could discern faded as he became lost in the connection between them. Every instinct told him to tear his gaze away. He didn’t.

Was it confusion he saw on her face? Was she as baffled and uncertain about this invisible bridge that spanned the distance between them?

Eli had no time to puzzle that out because she looked toward the other end of the tables. Just as everyone else did. Belatedly, he copied the others’ motions.

Caleb had risen to his feet. He was smiling as he spoke, but Eli caught only two words.

“Fire department...”

He didn’t know what else Caleb had said. Whatever it was must have been important because the other men were sitting back, considering Caleb’s words. Eli waited for one or more of them to ask questions so he could discover why Caleb had mentioned a fire department.

“Volunteers...?” asked LaVon.

“Ja.” Caleb smiled as he sat again and folded his arms on the table. When Eli strained, he picked out the words, “With more houses...Harmony Creek...more volunteers. We’re here during the day. That...gut for the department.”

Eli understood. Or hoped he did. The local fire department was looking for more volunteers, especially those who were at home during the day. From what he’d learned about Salem, most people worked in other towns, some driving more than thirty miles each way. A fire during the day would get out of control without enough volunteers to fight it. The arrival of the Amish who worked on their farms was the perfect solution to the quandary.

“Interested?” asked Caleb as he looked in Eli’s direction.

“Ja. I volunteered in Delaware.” He wished he hadn’t jumped on the chance when he saw Miriam frown in his direction.

He understood what she didn’t say. Kyle had told him about the sirens that had sped past on the main road, the ones Eli hadn’t heard when he went to talk to Miriam about the schoolhouse plans. No wonder she looked puzzled that he was volunteering to be a firefighter.

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