The Prodigal Daughter Returns

Ten years ago, Amish quiltmaker Leah Beiler and her twin brother left their community and family without a word. Now she’s finally come home—with her orphaned young niece. Leah has much to explain to so many, including Ezra Stoltzfus. Before she left, she dreamed of marrying the handsome dairy farmer. But now that she’s lived among the English and is raising a child who knows nothing of Amish ways, Ezra worries she’ll leave again. Leah will have to prove to Ezra that her future is in Paradise Springs—and with him—forever.

“My niece will adjust soon to the Amish way of life,” Leah said.

“And what about you?” Ezra asked.

“I’m happy to be back home, and I don’t have much to adjust to other than the quiet at night. Philadelphia was noisy.”

“I wasn’t talking about that.”

“Oh.” Her smile returned, but it was unsteady. “You’re talking about us. We aren’t kinder any longer, Ezra. I’m sure we can be reasonable about this strange situation we find ourselves in,” she said in a tone that suggested she wasn’t as certain as she sounded.

“I agree.”

“We are neighbors again. We’re going to see each other regularly.” She faltered before hurrying on. “Who knows? We may even call each other friend again someday, but until then, it’d probably be for the best if you live your life and I live mine.” She backed away. “Speaking of that, I need to go and console Mandy.”

His heart cramped as he thought of the sorrow haunting both Leah and Mandy. They had both lost someone very dear to them.

The very least he could do was agree to her request. Even though he knew she was right, he also knew there was no way he could ignore Leah Beiler.

JO ANN BROWN has always loved stories with happy-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 she travels with her husband of more than thirty years to places where she can snap pictures. They live in Nevada with three children and a spoiled cat. Drop her a note at joannbrownbooks.com.

Amish

Homecoming

Jo Ann Brown

www.Harlequin.com

Arise; for this matter belongeth unto thee: we also will be with thee: be of good courage, and do it.

—Ezra 10:4

To Bill

my “city boy”

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Bible Verse

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

Epilogue

Dear Reader

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Paradise Springs

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

“I can’t believe my eyes. Is that who I think it is?”

Ezra Stoltzfus looked up from the new buggy he’d been admiring. His older brother Joshua had done an excellent job with the courting buggy he was building for his son. It was low and sleek, exactly what Ezra’s nephew Timothy would want when he was ready to ask a special girl to let him take her home from a singing.

He was about to ask Joshua what he was talking about, but then he looked through the large glass window at the front of his brother’s buggy shop in the small village of Paradise Springs. Every word fled from his mind.

It couldn’t be. Not after all this time. It had been ten years.

Getting out of a family buggy in the parking lot of the line of shops connected to the Stoltzfus Market was a slender woman dressed plain in dark purple. From beneath her black bonnet, her white kapp peeked out along with her golden hair that glistened in the spring sunshine. A small, black dog jumped from the buggy and stayed close to the woman as she spoke to someone inside. She smiled, and he knew.

It was Leah Beiler!

He couldn’t have forgotten Leah’s heart-shaped face with the single dimple in her left cheek. Not if he tried, and the gut Lord knew how much he’d tried for the past ten years, since she and her twin brother, Johnny, left Paradise Springs. They’d gone without telling anyone where they intended to go. They hadn’t come back.

Until today.

Did her family know she was back? They must, because she was driving Abram Beiler’s family buggy. He recognized it by the dent where his neighbor had scraped a tree on an icy morning a few months ago and hadn’t gotten around to bringing it in to Joshua to get it repaired. Why hadn’t Leah’s daed mentioned that his kinder were home? They’d spoken three days ago when Abram came over during milking to talk about the selection of a new minister for the district at the service on the next church Sunday. Abram had mentioned he was going to be away at a horse and stock auction west of Harrisburg for over a week and that he hoped he’d be home in time for calving, because several of his cows were due to deliver soon. How could Abram have talked of those commonplace things and never mentioned his twins had come back after so many years away?

Ezra couldn’t forget the conversation he and Abram had the very day Leah and Johnny had disappeared. They’d spoken about Abram’s youngest daughter, who was torn between her love for her way of life and faith in Paradise Springs and her twin brother’s increasing rebellion against both, as well as his family.

Ezra had reminded Abram of Leah’s strong faith and her love for her family, but he understood her daed’s concern. She was always determined to rescue any creature needing help. It didn’t matter if it was a baby bird fallen from its nest or her wayward brother who kept extending his rumspringa rather than committing to his community and God. She would throw everything aside—even gut sense—if she thought she could help someone. It had been her most annoying quality, as well as her most endearing. He knew of her generous heart firsthand because Leah had been there for him during the months when he grieved after his beloved grossmammi died...and many other times for as long as he could remember.

That day, as they talked on the Beilers’ porch, Abram had been at his wit’s end with worry about his youngest kinder. Otherwise, he never would have admitted to his concerns. Abram Beiler was a man who kept his thoughts and feelings to himself.

Was that why Abram hadn’t said anything the other day? Ezra didn’t know how a man could keep such glad tidings to himself...unless the tidings weren’t gut. Could it be Leah and Johnny hadn’t really come home to stay?

Ezra looked around the parking lot in front of the Stoltzfus Market. He saw a few cars and a couple of buggies, but no sign of Johnny. Was he in the store, or was he still in the buggy? When Leah smiled again as she spoke to someone in the buggy, he wondered with whom she was chatting. Her brother? A husband? A kind?

His gut crunched as the last two questions shot through his mind. The whole time Leah had been gone, she’d remained, in his mind, that seventeen-year-old girl who was always laughing and who always had time to listen to his dreams of running his family’s farm and starting his own cheese-making business. Oddly enough, she was the only one who hadn’t laughed at his hopes for the future.

Now she was back in Paradise Springs and at the shops run by his brothers. Where had she been and why had she come back now?

Joshua set down his hammer as he turned to Ezra, his mouth straight above his dark brown beard. “I guess I don’t have to ask. The expression on your face says that it’s got to be Leah Beiler.”

“The woman does look like her, but she’s turned away so I can’t be completely sure.” He kept his voice indifferent as he walked from the window toward the table where Joshua kept paperwork for new buggies and repairs on used ones, but his older brother knew him too well to be fooled.

“Even so, you think that’s Leah Beiler out there.”

He nodded reluctantly. The last time he had been false with Joshua was when they both were in school and Ezra had switched their lunch pails so he could have the bigger piece of their grossmammi’s peach pie. His reward had been a stomachache and an angry brother and a grossmammi who was disappointed in him. At that point, he had decided honesty truly was the best way to live his life.

So why was he lying to himself now as he tried to convince himself the woman could not possibly be Leah?

“Are you going to talk to her?” Joshua asked as he glanced up at Ezra, who was four inches taller than he was. Joshua was the shortest of the Stoltzfus brothers, but stood almost six feet tall. A widower for the past four years, he had the responsibility for three kinder as well as the buggy shop.

“I wasn’t planning on it.” He stared at the neat arrangement of tools on the wall so he didn’t have to look at his brother...or give in to the temptation to glance out the window again.

“You’re not curious why they went away?”

He wanted to say he wasn’t any longer. Not after ten years. But that would be a lie. At first, after she and Johnny vanished, he had thought about Leah all the time. She’d been such an important part of his life, around every day because they’d grown up on farms next door to each other.

Then, as time went on, he found himself thinking of her less because he was busy taking over the farm from his daed. Chasing his dreams to become a cheese-maker consumed him, allowing him to push other thoughts aside. Yet, he’d never forgotten her. At night, when the only sounds were his brothers’ snoring and the crackle of wood falling apart in the stove, memories of her emerged like timid rabbits from under a bush. They scampered through his mind before vanishing again.

And always he was left with the questions of why she had left and where she had gone and why she’d never returned.

“Of course, I’m curious,” Ezra said before his brother noticed how he hesitated on his answer.

“Then go out and see if she’s really Leah Beiler.” Joshua gave him a sympathetic smile. “You’ll kick yourself if you don’t.”

His brother was right, and Ezra knew it. After spending too many years on “if only,” he could not add another to his long list of regrets. God had brought this unexpected opportunity into his life, and ten years of prayer for an explanation could be answered now.

“All right.” He took his straw hat off a peg by the door and put it on his head.

“Then let me know,” Joshua called to his back. “You’re not the only one who’s been wondering if we’ll ever know the truth of why she and Johnny left. And why they’re back.”

Ezra nodded again as he opened the door. Fresh spring air flavored with mud and the first greenery of the season filled the deep breath he took while he walked out of Joshua’s buggy shop and into the midmorning sunshine. It took every ounce of his willpower to propel his feet across the parking lot toward where Leah stood by the buggy.

The crunch of gravel beneath his work boots must have alerted her, because she glanced over her shoulder toward him. Surprise, mixed with both pleasure and uncertainty, widened her eyes. They were the same warm shade as her purple dress, and that color had fascinated him since they were young kinder. Like her dimple, they had not changed, but she seemed tinier and more fragile. An illusion, he knew, because he had grown taller since the last time they were together. In addition, Leah Beiler was one of the strongest people he had ever met, the first to raise her hand to volunteer.

“Gute mariye, Leah,” he said quietly as he stepped around the small dog who ran from her to him and back. So many times he had imagined their reunion and what he would say when he saw her again. He couldn’t recall any of it now when he paused an arm’s length from her. The memory of the girl she had been, which had become flat and dull through the years, dimmed further as he beheld the living, breathing woman in front of him.

“Good morning,” she replied in English, then repeated the words in Deitsch, the language spoken by the Amish. She acted unused to it now. “How are you, Ezra? You look well.”

“I am. You?”

“I am fine.” She glanced along the storefronts in the small plaza with the market in the middle. A simple sign by the road stated Stoltzfus Family Shops. “Are all these businesses owned by your family?”

“Ja.” He pointed to each shop as he added, “Joshua builds buggies. Amos owns the market. Jeremiah and Daniel are woodworkers, and Micah makes windmills. Since the bishop approved us using solar panels, he’s been installing them, too.”

“What about Isaiah?”

“He has become a blacksmith, and his smithy is around back.” He wondered how she could act as if everything were normal, as if she and Johnny had not disappeared abruptly.

“Leah?” asked a sleepy voice before he could blurt out the questions swirling through his head.

She turned to look into the carriage. He did, too, and saw a girl sitting in the buggy, a girl who looked like Leah had when he and she were both going to school together.

He knew at that instant nothing could be the same as it had been before she left.

* * *

Leah Beiler had known the chances were gut that she’d see at least one of the other Stoltzfus brothers when she came to speak with Amos Stoltzfus at his market, but she hadn’t expected it would be Ezra. She’d hoped for more time before she spoke with him, more time to become accustomed to the plain life she had left behind a decade ago. Even though she’d tried to stay true to the ways in which she had been raised, some Englisch ways, like looking for a light switch when it was dark, had subtly become habits she needed to break.

At least the propane stove seemed familiar this morning when she rose to make breakfast, because she had used a gas stove the whole time she was away from home. Johnny had suggested an electric one, but she’d refused, one of the few times she’d put her foot down after they left Paradise Springs.

She was glad for the excuse to look away from Ezra when Shep gave a yip as another buggy pulled into the parking lot. Calming the dog, she tried to do the same for herself. She had offered to come to the market to get some cinnamon for Mamm because she had wanted to speak to Amos about displaying some of her quilts for sale. The quilts she had made and sold during the past ten years provided money to feed and shelter them, and she hoped she could go on selling them to help with expenses at home now that her parents were older. She had been thinking of that instead of realizing she shouldn’t have come to the market without preparing herself for a chance encounter with people she’d known.

Especially, she should have thought about the possibility of running into Ezra. Time had turned the awkward teen with limbs too loose and long for him into a handsome man. He had definitely grown into himself, because his suspenders seemed narrow on his wide shoulders and muscles were visible beneath his rolled-up sleeves.

He didn’t have a beard, which meant he’d never married. That surprised her because several of the girls who had been her friends before she left Paradise Springs had talked endlessly about Ezra Stoltzfus. At the time, he’d seemed oblivious to their hopes that he would ask to take them home on a Sunday after church. He was kind and teased them, but, if he agreed to take one of them home, it was because he was going to see one of their brothers and wanted to be polite. She had been certain he would ask Mary Beachy to walk out with him...until the night he kissed her.

Did he remember that night? They had been sitting by the stream that cut through the back fields of her family’s farm, and he’d leaned over to shoo a mosquito away. She had turned her face to thank him, not realizing his was close. Their lips brushed. The kiss had been swift, but the reaction had remained with her all night as she recalled how warm his mouth had been against hers.

She never had a chance to ask him if he’d meant the kiss or if it had been an accident. The next night, Johnny had the worst argument ever with their daed and left, taking her with him. He’d offered to go with her into the village for an ice-cream cone. Instead, they met a young woman in a car. Johnny had insisted Leah come with him when he got into the car. She’d gone, knowing someone had to try to talk him out of his foolish plan.

For ten years, she’d repeated the same plea for him to return to Paradise Springs and their family and their home and their friends. Not once had he wavered. He would not go back to their daed’s house.

And he had been true to his word.

But she had come home...at last. Her hope that it would feel as if she’d never been away was futile. Ten years of living among Englischers had altered her in ways she couldn’t have foreseen. Now she had to relearn to live an Amish life.

And her niece Mandy must learn to live one for the first time. Stretching into the buggy she’d borrowed from her parents, she tucked one of the quilts she had brought with her around the nine-year-old girl who had already fallen back to sleep. Her niece would need some time to become accustomed to the early-to-bed and early-to-rise schedule of a farm. Last night, upon their arrival at the family’s farm in Paradise Springs, the girl had been too wound up to sleep. This morning, Leah had caught sight of dampness on Mandy’s cheeks before her niece hastily scrubbed her tears away.

For Leah, her homecoming was wunderbaar. Mamm had embraced her as if she never intended to let Leah go again. They had stayed up late to talk, pray and cry together. Her sole regret was her daed was away and wouldn’t be back until next week. She hoped she could mend the hurt she and Johnny had caused him and that Daed would be as welcoming as her mamm had been.

It was never easy to tell with Daed. He kept many of his thoughts to himself, and he had never been as demonstrative as Mamm. Only Johnny, when he and Daed quarreled, had been able to break through that reserve.

No, she did not want to think of those loud arguments that had been the reason Johnny left and refused to return to Paradise Springs. She had done everything she could to try to persuade them both to listen to the other, but she had failed, and now it was too late.

Leah bent to pick up Shep and put him back in the buggy, but the little dog jumped out again, clearly thinking it was a game. Shep ran forward to the horse, who snorted a warning at him. The black dog was fascinated with the other animals on the farm, even the barn cats that had rewarded his curiosity with a scratch on the tip of his black nose.

“Stay, Shep,” she said.

The little dog obeyed with an expression she was familiar with from Mandy. An expression that said, All right, even though I don’t want to.

Sort of how she felt trying to make conversation with Ezra Stoltzfus. The last time she’d talked to him, words had flowed nonstop from both of them. Now it felt like they were strangers. With a start, she realized that was exactly what they were. She’d changed in many ways over the past ten years; surely he had, too.

If she needed proof, she got it when Ezra said in the same cool tone he used to greet her, “To be honest, Leah, I didn’t expect to see you in Paradise Springs ever again.”

“I wasn’t sure I would ever get back here.” She needed a safer subject, one where she didn’t have to choose each word with care. “How are your sisters?”

“Ruth is married.”

“She married before I left.”

“True. She has seven kinder now.”

“Did she choose names for them from Old Testament books as your parents did?”

His grin appeared and vanished so quickly she wondered if she’d truly seen it. “She decided to start with New Testament names.”

“And how is Esther?”

“She is at home. Mamm moved into the dawdi haus after Daed died, and our baby sister is now giving orders to the Stoltzfus brothers to pick up after themselves and help with clearing the table after meals.”

She hesitated. Asking about his siblings was not uncomfortable, but asking him how he was and what he was doing seemed too personal. That was silly. It wasn’t as if she was going to quiz him about whether he was courting anyone. She’d never ask that. It wasn’t their way to discuss possible matches before the young couple had their plans to marry announced during a church Sunday service. Even if such matters were discussed freely, she wouldn’t ask Ezra such a private question. Not now when every nerve seemed on edge.

“What about you, Ezra?” she asked, keeping her voice light. “I don’t see another shop here. What keeps you busy?”

“I took over the farm.”

“As you planned to. Have you started your cheese-making business yet?”

His gaze darted away. Had she said too much? Or was he simply unsettled by each reminder of how differently her life had turned out from what she’d talked about while his had followed exactly the path he wanted?

He bent to pat the head of the little dog, who had inched over to smell his boots, but Shep shied away.

“Shep is skittish around people he doesn’t know,” she said. “He usually stayed inside except for his walks when we were in Philadelphia.”

“Is that where you’ve been? Philadelphia? So close?”

She nodded, picking up the dog and holding him between her and Ezra like a furry shield. She was astonished by that thought. When they were growing up, she had never felt she needed to protect herself from Ezra. They’d been open about everything they felt and thought.

“Philadelphia is only fifty or sixty miles from here, and buses run from there to here regularly. Why haven’t you come back to Paradise Springs?” he asked, and she noticed how much deeper his voice was than when they’d last spoken. Or maybe she’d forgotten its rich baritone. “Why didn’t you come back for a visit?”

She gave him the answer she had perfected through the years, the answer that was partly the truth but left out much of what she felt in her heart. “I wanted to wait for my brother to come back with me.”

“Did he?” Ezra glanced around the parking lot. “Is he here?”

Tears welled in her eyes, even though she’d been sure she had cried herself dry in recent days. “No. Johnny died two weeks ago.” She regretted blurting out the news about her brother. How could Ezra have guessed when she wasn’t wearing black? She was unsure how to explain that she had only a single plain dress until she and Mamm finished sewing a black one for her.

Ezra’s face turned gray beneath his tan, and she recalled how Johnny and Ezra had been inseparable as small boys. That changed when they were around twelve or thirteen years old. Neither of them ever explained why, though she had pestered both of them to tell her.

“What happened?” he asked.

She crooked a finger for him to come away from the buggy. Even though the accident had happened shortly after Mandy was born, she didn’t want to upset the kind by having her listen to the story again. Mandy was already distressed and desperate to return to Philadelphia and the life and friends she had there, but Leah hadn’t considered—even for a second—leaving her niece behind with Mandy’s best friend’s family, who offered to take her in and rear her along with their kinder.

Mandy and she needed each other, because they had both lost the person at the center of their lives. Now they needed to go on alone. Not completely alone because they had each other and her parents and her two older sisters and their spouses and their extended family of cousins, aunts and uncles in Paradise Springs. And God, who had listened to Leah’s prayers for the strength to live a plain life in the Englisch world.

Leah paused out of earshot of the sleeping girl and faced Ezra. The sunlight turned his brown hair to the shade of spun caramel that made his brown eyes look even darker. How many times she had teased him about his long lashes she had secretly envied! Then his eyes had crinkled with laughter, but now when she looked into those once-familiar eyes, she saw nothing but questions.

“Johnny was hurt in a really bad construction accident, and he never fully recovered.” She looked down at Shep, who was whining at the mention of his master’s name. The poor dog had been in mourning since her twin brother’s death, and she had no idea how to comfort him. “In fact, Shep was his service dog.” She stroked the dog’s silken head.

“Why didn’t you come home after Johnny was hurt?”

“He said he didn’t want to be a burden on the community.” She thought of the horrendous medical bills that had piled up and how she had struggled to pay what the insurance didn’t cover. Johnny’s friends told her that they should sue the construction company, but she had no idea how to hire an attorney. Instead, she had focused on her quilts, taking them to shops to sell them on consignment or to nearby craft fairs.

“No one is a burden in a time of need.” Ezra frowned. “Both of you know that because you lived here when Ben Lee Chupp got his arm caught in the baler, and the doctors had to sew it back on. Everyone in our district and in his wife’s district helped raise money to pay for his expenses. We would have gladly done the same for Johnny.”

“I know, but Johnny didn’t feel the same.” She bit her lip to keep from adding she was sure the financial obligations were not the main reason behind her brother’s refusal. He had told her once, when he was in a deep melancholy, that he had vowed never to return home until their daed apologized to him for what Daed had said the night Johnny decided to leave.

That had never happened, and she had known it wouldn’t. Johnny had inherited his stubbornness from Daed.

Ezra looked past her, and she turned to see Mandy standing behind her. Her niece was the image of Johnny, right down to the sprinkling of freckles across her apple-round cheeks. There might be something of Mandy’s mamm in her looks, but Leah didn’t remember much about the young Englisch woman who had never exchanged marriage vows with Johnny.

Leah knew her mamm had been pleased to see her granddaughter dressed in plain clothes at breakfast, and the dark green dress and white kapp did suit Mandy. However, Leah sensed Mandy viewed the clothing as dressing up, in the same way she had enjoyed wearing costumes and pretending to be a princess when she went to her best friend Isabella’s house. Mandy seemed outwardly accepting of the abrupt changes in her life, but Leah couldn’t forget the trails of tears on her niece’s cheeks that morning.

Motioning for Mandy to come forward, she said with a smile, “This is Amanda, Johnny’s daughter. We call her Mandy, and she is my favorite nine-year-old niece.”

“I am your only nine-year-old niece, Aunt Leah.” Mandy rolled her eyes with the eloquence of a preteen.

“Ja, you are, but you’re my favorite one.” She put her arm around Mandy’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “This is Ezra Stoltzfus. He lives on the farm on the other side of our fields.”

“I spoke with your daed the day before yesterday,” Ezra said as he looked from Mandy to Leah, “and he didn’t say anything about you coming to visit.”

“Coming home,” Leah corrected in little more than a whisper.

“I see. Then I guess I should say welcome home, Leah.” He didn’t add anything else as he strode away.

She stood where she was and watched him go into his brother’s buggy shop. When he did not look back, she sighed. She might have come home, but her journey back to the life she once had taken for granted had only begun.

Chapter Two

Ezra walked between the two rows of cows on the lower level of the white barn. He checked the ones being milked. The sound of the diesel generator from the small lean-to beyond the main barn rumbled through the concrete floor beneath his feet. It ran the refrigeration unit on the bulk tank where the milk was kept until it could be picked up by a trucker from the local processing plant.

He drew in a deep breath of the comforting scents of hay and grain and the cows. For most of his life, the place he’d felt most at ease was the bank barn. The upper floor was on the same level as the house and served as a haymow and a place to store the field equipment. On the lower level that opened out into the fields were the milking parlor and more storage.

He enjoyed working with the animals and watching calves grow to heifers before having calves of their own. He kept the best milkers and sold the rest so he could buy more Brown Swiss cows to replace the black-and-white Holsteins his daed had preferred. The gray-brown Swiss breed was particularly docile and well-known for producing milk with the perfect amount of cream for making cheese.

He hoped, by late summer, to be able to set aside enough milk to begin making cheese to sell. That was when the milk was at its sweetest and creamiest. He might have some soft cheese ready to be served during the wedding season in November or December if one of his bachelor brothers decided to get married.

He squatted and removed the suction milking can from a cow. He patted her back before carrying the heavy can to the bulk tank. She never paused in eating from the serving of grain he’d measured out for her. Opening the can, he emptied the milk into the tank. He closed both up and hooked the milking can to the next cow after cleaning her udder, a process he repeated thirty-one times twice a day.

Usually he used the time to pray and to map out what tasks he needed to do either that day or the next. Tonight, his thoughts were in a commotion, flitting about like a flock of frightened birds flying up from a meadow. He had not been able to rein them in since his remarkable conversation with Leah.

Johnny was dead. He found that unbelievable. Leah had come back and brought Johnny’s kind with her. Even more unbelievable, though he had hoped for many years she would return to Paradise Springs.

Her mamm must be thrilled to have her and her niece home and devastated by Johnny’s death. How would Abram react? The old man had not spoken his twins’ names after they left. But Abram kept a lot to himself, and Ezra always wondered if Abram missed Leah and Johnny as much as the rest of his family did.

If his neighbor did not welcome his daughter and granddaughter home, would Leah leave again and, this time, never come back?

“Think of something else,” he muttered to himself as he continued the familiarly comforting process of milking.

“If you’re talking to the cows, you’re not going to get an answer,” came his brother Isaiah’s voice.

Ezra stood. Isaiah was less than a year younger than he was, and they were the closest among the seven Stoltzfus brothers. Isaiah had married Rose Mast the last week of December. He had been trying to grow his pale blond beard since then, but it remained patchy and uneven.

“If I got an answer,” he said, leaning his arms on the cow’s broad back, “I would need my head examined.”

“That might not be a bad idea under the circumstances.”

“Circumstances?”

Isaiah chuckled tersely. “Don’t play dumb with me. I know Leah Beiler’s reappearance in Paradise Springs must be throwing you for a loop. You two were really cozy before she left.”

“We were friends. We’d been friends for years.” Friends who shared one perfect kiss one perfect night. He wasn’t about to mention that to his brother.

Isaiah was already worried about him. Ezra could tell from the dullness in his brother’s eyes. Most of the time, they had a brightness that flickered in them like the freshly stirred coals in his smithy.

“Watch yourself,” Isaiah said, as always the most cautious one in their family. “She jumped the fence once with her brother. Who knows? She may decide to do so again.”

“I realize that.”

“Gut.”

“Gut,” Ezra agreed, even though it was the last word he would have used to describe the situation.

His brother was right. When a young person left—jumped the fence, as it was called—they might return...for a while. Few were baptized into their faith, and most of them eventually drifted away again after realizing they no longer felt as if they belonged with their family and onetime friends.

While he finished the milking with Isaiah’s help, they talked about when the crops should go in, early enough to get a second harvest but not so early the plants would be killed in a late frost. They talked about a new commission Isaiah had gotten at his smithy from an Englisch designer for a circular staircase. They talked about who might be chosen to become their next minister.

They talked about everything except the Beiler twins.

Ezra thanked his brother for his help as they turned the herd into the field as they always did after milking once spring arrived. Letting the cows graze in the pasture until nights got cold again instead of feeding them in the barn saved time and hay. When he followed Isaiah out of the barn and bade his brother a gut night, low clouds warned it would rain soon. The rest of his brothers were getting cleaned up at the outdoor pump before heading in for supper. Again, as they chatted about their day, everyone was careful not to talk about the Beilers, though he saw their curious looks in his direction.

As he washed his hands in the cold water, he couldn’t keep himself from glancing across the fields to where the Beilers’ house glowed with soft light in the thickening twilight. He jerked his gaze away. He should duck his head under the icy water and try to wash thoughts of Leah out of his brain.

Hadn’t he learned anything in the past ten years? Did he want to endure that grief and uncertainty again? No! Well, there was his answer. He needed to stop thinking about her.

The kitchen was busy as it was every night, but even more so tonight because Joshua and his three kinder were joining them for supper. Most nights they did. Sometimes, Joshua cooked at his house down the road, or his young daughter attempted to prepare a meal.

With the ease of a lifetime of habit, the family gathered at the table. Joshua, as the oldest son, sat where Daed once did while Mamm sat at the foot of the table, close to the stove. The rest of them chose the seats they’d used their whole lives, and Joshua’s younger son, Levi, claimed the chair across from Ezra, the chair where Isaiah had sat before he got married. Esther put two more baskets of rolls on the table, then took her seat next to Mamm. When Joshua bowed his head for silent prayer, the rest of them did as well.

Ezra knew he should be thanking God for the food in front of him, but all he could think of was his conversation with Leah and how he was going to have to get used to having her living across the fields again. He added a few hasty words of gratitude to his wandering prayer when Joshua cleared his throat to let them know grace was completed.

Bowls of potatoes and vegetables were passed around along with the platters of chicken and the baskets of rolls. Lost in his thoughts, Ezra didn’t pay much attention to anything until he heard Joshua say, “Johnny Beiler is dead.”

“Oh,” Mamm said with a sigh, “I prayed that poor boy would come to his senses and return to Paradise Springs. What about Leah?”

Amos lowered his fork to his plate. “She came into the market today and asked if I would be willing to display some of her quilts for sale.”

“What did you say?” asked Ezra, then wished he hadn’t when his whole family looked at him.

“I said ja, of course.” Amos frowned. “You know I always make room for any of our neighbors to sell their crafts. From what she said, she hopes to provide for her niece by selling quilts as she did when she was in Philadelphia.”

Joshua looked up. “I have room for a few at the buggy shop. You know how many Englisch tourists we get wandering in to see the shop, and they love quilts.”

“I will let her know.” Amos smiled. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”

“That is gut of you boys.” Then Mamm asked, as she glanced around the table, “How is Leah doing?”

As if on cue, a knock sounded on the kitchen door. When Deborah, Joshua’s youngest, ran to answer it, Ezra almost choked on his mouthful of chicken.

Leah and her niece stood there. For a moment, he was thrown back in time to the many occasions when Leah had come to the house to ask him to go berry picking or fishing or for a walk with her. As often, he’d gone to her house with an invitation to do something fun or a job they liked doing together.

But those days, he reminded himself sternly, were gone. And if he had half an ounce of sense, he’d make sure they never came back.

* * *

“I’m sorry to disturb your supper,” Leah said, keeping her arm around Mandy as she stepped inside the warm kitchen where the Stoltzfus family gathered around the long trestle table. The room was almost identical to the one at her parents’ house, except the walls behind the large woodstove that claimed one wall along with the newer propane stove were pale blue instead of green. Aware of the Stoltzfus eyes focused on them, she hurried to say, “Shep is missing, and we thought he might have come over here.”

“Shep?” asked Esther. “Who is Shep?”

Leah smiled at Esther, who had been starting fourth grade when she and Johnny went away. Now she was a lovely young woman who must be turning the heads of teenage boys. When Esther returned her smile tentatively, Leah described the little black Cairn Terrier, which was unlike the large dogs found on farms in the area. Those dogs were working dogs, watching the animals and keeping predators away. Shep had had his own tasks, and Leah wondered what the poor pup thought now that he didn’t need to perform them. Did he feel as lost as she did?

“Let me get a flashlight, and I’ll help you search.” Ezra pushed back his chair and got up.

His brothers volunteered to help, too, but everyone froze when Mandy said, “I didn’t know Amish could use flashlights. I thought you didn’t use electricity.”

Heat rose up Leah’s cheeks, and she guessed they were crimson. “Mandy...”

“Let the kind ask questions, Leah,” Wanda, Ezra’s mamm, said with a gentle smile. “How else do we learn if we don’t ask questions? I remember you had plenty of questions of your own when you were her age.” She patted the bench beside her. “Why don’t you sit here with Deborah and me? You can have the last piece of snitz pie while we talk.”

“Snitz?” asked Mandy with an uneasy glance at Leah. “What’s a snitz?”

“Dried apple pie.” Leah smiled. “Wanda makes a delicious snitz pie.”

“Better than Grandma’s?”

Wanda patted Mandy’s hand and brought the kind to sit beside her. “Your grossmammi is a wunderbaar cook. There is no reason to choose which pie is better when God has given you the chance to enjoy both.” Behind the girl’s back, she motioned for Leah and her sons to begin their search for the missing dog.

While Ezra’s brothers headed into the storm, Leah went out on the back porch and grimaced. It was raining. She should have paused to grab a coat before leaving the house, but Mandy was desolate at the idea of losing Shep. When Mandy asked if the dog had gone “home to Philly,” Leah’s heart had threatened to break again. The little girl didn’t say much about her daed’s death, but Leah knew it was on her mind all the time.

As it was on her own.

“Here.”

She smiled as Ezra held out an open umbrella to her. “Thank you.”

He snapped another open at the same time he switched on a flashlight. “Where should we look?”

“Shep likes other animals. Let’s look in your barn first, and then we can search the fields if we don’t find him.”

“I hope he hasn’t taken it into his head to chase my cows.”

She shook her head. “From the way he’s reacted to cows and horses, I don’t think he knows quite what they are. He is curious. Nothing more.”

“Let’s hope he’s in the barn. There have been reports of coydogs in the area. Some of our neighbors have lost chickens.”

Leah shuddered. The feral dogs that were half coyote were the bane of a farmer’s life. They were skilled hunters and not as afraid of humans as other wild animals were. Little Shep wouldn’t stand a chance against the larger predator.

As they left the lights from the house behind, she added, “Thanks for helping. I didn’t mean to make you leave in the middle of supper.”

“Your niece looked pretty upset, and Esther offered to keep our suppers warm in the oven. The cows are this way.”

“I remember.”

He didn’t answer as they walked to the milking parlor. Spraying the light into the lower floor, he remained silent as she called Shep’s name.

“I missed this,” she murmured.

“Walking around in the rain?”

She shook her head and tilted her umbrella to look up at him. “Barn scents. The city smelled of heat off the concrete and asphalt, as well as car exhaust and the reek of trash before it was picked up. I missed the simple odors of this life.”

“You could have come home.”

“Not without Johnny.” Her voice broke as she added, “Even though when I finally came back, he didn’t come with me.”

“I’m sorry he is dead, Leah. I should have said so before.” He paused as they closed their umbrellas and walked together between the gutters in the milking parlor. “My only excuse is that I was shocked to see you.”

“I understand.” She shouted the dog’s name. The conversation was wandering into personal areas, and she wanted to avoid going in that direction.

She wouldn’t have come over to the Stoltzfus family home tonight if Mamm hadn’t mentioned possibly seeing Shep racing through the field between their farms. Even then, she would have suggested waiting until daylight to search for the pup except that Mandy was in tears.

“I don’t think Shep is here,” she said after a few minutes of spraying the corners with light.

“Let’s walk along the fence. Maybe he’s close enough to hear you and will come back.” His grim face suggested he was unsure they would find Shep tonight.

She put up her umbrella so she didn’t have to look at his pessimistic frown. If she did, she might not be able to halt herself from asking where the enthusiastic, happy young man she’d known had vanished to.

How foolish she had been to think nothing would change!

If she could turn back the clock, she might never have gone with Johnny that night when he promised her ice cream and then took her far from everything she’d ever known. She sighed silently. Johnny had asked her to come with him because he needed her. Not that he had any idea then how much he would come to depend on her, but she had always rescued him from other predicaments. Maybe he had hoped she would save him that time, too, but he was too deeply involved with Carleen, his pregnant Englisch girlfriend, by then.

Leah wondered what Ezra was thinking as they walked along the fence enclosing the pasture. She guessed she’d be smarter not to ask. He remained silent, so the only sound was the plop of raindrops on the umbrellas except when she shouted for the dog.

Because of that, she was able to hear a faint bark. It was coming from the direction of the creek that divided the Stoltzfus farm from her parents’. She ran through the wet grass, not paying attention to how her umbrella flopped behind her and rain pelted her face.

Ezra matched her steps, his flashlight aimed out in front of them. He put out an arm, and she slid to a stop before striking it.

“Careful,” he said. “You don’t want to fall in the creek tonight.”

“The bank—”

“Collapsed two years ago, and the water is closer than you remember.”

“Danki.”

He nodded at her thanks but said nothing more.

How had the talkative boy become this curt man? What had happened to him in the years after she left Paradise Springs? She wanted to ask that as much as she wanted to find Shep, but she didn’t.

Calling out the dog’s name again, she relaxed when she heard a clatter in the brush. “Ezra, point the flashlight a little farther to the left.”

“Here?”

She almost put her hand on his arm to guide him but pulled back. Even a casual touch would be foolish. “A bit farther.”

She let out a cry of joy when light caught in two big eyes and Shep yipped a greeting. She squatted as he burst out of the brush. He leaped up and put his paws on her knees, the signal he had learned to show he was ready to assist. With a gasp, she stood and stared at the pair of paw prints on the front of her skirt.

Shep deflated as if he had been scolded.

Bending over, she patted his soaked head. “Come, Shep. Stay with us.”

He jumped to his feet, his tail wagging wildly. His tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth in what was his doggy smile.

“Do you have a leash for him?” Ezra asked as she turned to walk back to the house with Shep happily trotting by her side far enough away so the rain didn’t run off the umbrella onto him. “If he ran away once, he’ll run again.”

Was he talking about the dog, or was he speaking of her, too? He’d made it clear he didn’t think she intended to stay in Paradise Springs. Pretending to take his words at face value, she said, “Shep is fine now that he has something he knows he should do.” She smiled sadly while they crossed the field back toward the house. “I need to keep him busy. He’s a service dog, not a pet.”

“You called him a service dog before. What does that mean?” He glanced at the dog and jumped back when Shep shook himself.

“Shep!” cried Mandy as she and Deborah ran from the house. “You found him! You found him!”

Leah snagged Shep’s collar before he could run up the porch stairs and get the two girls wet. She sent the girls to ask Wanda for some towels so they could dry off the dog and themselves. She didn’t want to track mud into the house.

“Old ones,” she called after them. As soon as the screen door slammed in their wake, she turned back to Ezra. “You asked what a service dog is. They are dogs trained to help people who need assistance with everyday things.”

“I’ve seen Englisch tourists with guide dogs. Usually German shepherds. What kind of service can something Shep’s size do?”

“Don’t let his size fool you. Shep is one-third heart, one-third brain, and one-third nose. After the accident, Johnny often had seizures. If he was doing something, like getting from his bed to his wheelchair, he could fall and be hurt. Shep helped by alerting us to an upcoming seizure.”

“A dog can do that?” He stepped aside when Amos came out on the porch with ragged towels.

“Heard you had a very wet dog out here.” He chuckled. “I can see the girls weren’t exaggerating.”

Taking a towel and thanking him, grateful for his acceptance of her as she’d been when he greeted her at his store as if she’d never left, Leah began drying the dog. She looked up at Ezra and said, “I didn’t believe it myself at first. The doctor told us some dogs can sense a change in a person’s odor that happens just before a seizure.” She gave Shep another rub, leaving the dog’s hair stuck up in every direction. “He let us know about Johnny’s seizures. That way, we could be sure Johnny was secure so he wouldn’t hit things when the seizures started. After we got Shep, Johnny no longer was covered with bruises.”

Ezra picked up the damp dog and rubbed his head. Shep rewarded him with a lick on the cheek.

“He likes you!” Mandy rushed out onto the porch. “Look, Aunt Leah! Esther gave me some of her date cookies. They’re yummy!” She paused, then reached into her apron pocket. “She sent some out for you, too.”

Ezra put the dog down and took the crumbling cookie she held out to him. Shep lapped up the crumbs the second they hit the ground.

“Can Deborah come over and play?” Mandy leaned into Leah and said in a whisper, “She’s my age, you know.”

“I’m sure something can be arranged soon.” Leah took a bite of her cookie and smiled. Esther clearly had learned her mamm’s skills in the kitchen. “But for now, let’s get Shep back home so we can get him dried off before he catches a cold. Guten owed, Ezra.”

“What did you say?” Mandy asked.

“Good evening. It’s time for us to go home.”

The girl yawned but shook her head. “I want another cookie.”

“Not tonight.”

“But I want another cookie.” Mandy’s lower lip struck out in the pout she had perfected with Johnny, who could never tell her no. Whether it was because he felt guilty that he was an invalid or he had never married her mamm, he had been determined to make it up to his daughter in every possible way. However, the girl should have learned by now that such antics were far less successful with Leah.

“We will come back and visit soon,” Leah said quietly.

“When?”

Aware of Ezra listening, Leah said, “Soon. Let’s go.”

Mandy grumbled something under her breath, and Leah decided it would be wise not to ask her to repeat it.

Calling to Shep to come with them, Leah turned to the porch stairs. She bit back a gasp when Ezra moved between her and the steps. He frowned at her as if she were as young as Mandy.

“Wait here,” he said in a voice that brooked no defiance.

But she retorted anyhow. “It’s late, and Mandy needs to go home so she can get some sleep.”

“You plan on walking in this downpour?”

She looked past him and saw it was raining even harder than before, though she would not have guessed that possible. Wind whipped it almost sideways. Even so, she said, “I’ll share the umbrella with Mandy. We’ll be fine.”

“You cannot handle a dog, a kind and an umbrella by yourself in this wind. Let me get the buggy, and I’ll drive you home.”

“Don’t be silly, Ezra. It is only across the field.”

“You’re not going across the field in the dark. You know that could be too dangerous. If you go by the road, it’s a quarter mile down our farm lane and a half mile along a dark road, then another quarter mile for your farm lane. That’s a mile with two squirming creatures.” He took the umbrella out of her hand. “Wait here until I get the horse hitched up.”

“Ezra—”

“Listen to gut sense, Leah. Just this once.”

Pricked by his cool words, which she knew were true—as far as he knew—she fired back, “I was going to say danki.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it. Repeating his order for her to wait on the porch, he strode toward the barn.

In his wake, Mandy asked, “Is he always this angry?”

“I don’t know,” she had to reply because she was realizing more each time she saw Ezra how little she knew the man he had become.

Chapter Three

The family buggy usually felt spacious with its double rows of seats, but, tonight, it seemed too small when Ezra stepped in and picked up the reins from the dash. He flipped the switch that turned on the lamps attached to the front and back of the buggy. They were run by a battery under the backseat where Leah’s niece and his, who had begged to come along, were whispering and giggling as if they’d known each other all their lives.

No, not like that, because Leah and he had known each other all their lives, and silence had settled like a third passenger on the seat between them.

“Ready?” he asked as he turned on the wiper that kept his side of the windshield clear.

Instead of answering him directly, Leah called back, “Do you have Shep with you, girls?”

“He’s here.” Mandy burst into laughter again. “Oops! He stuck his nose under my dress. His whiskers tickle.”

“It sounds as if we’re set,” Leah said, but she didn’t look at him. Her hands were folded on her lap, and her elbows were pressed close to her sides.

Did she sense the invisible wall between them, too?

Ezra nodded and slapped the reins to get the horse moving. The rainy night seemed to close in around them while they drove down the straight farm lane. He flipped on the signal and looked both ways along the deserted country road. Not many people would be out on such a rainy night.

He racked his brain for something to say to break the smothering quiet in the front seat. Everything he could come up with seemed too silly or too personal. Listening to the girls talking easily in the back, he couldn’t help remembering how he and Leah used to chat like that. About everything and nothing. About important things and things that didn’t really matter.

“Leah—” he began.

“Ezra—” she said at the same time.

“Go ahead,” they both said at once.

Mandy leaned forward and giggled. “How do you do that? Can you keep talking together?”

“I doubt it,” he said at the same time Leah echoed him.

That sent the girls into peals of laughter.

“They are easily entertained,” Ezra said, risking a glance toward Leah.

“I’ve noticed. I hope they will become gut friends. It will help for Mandy to have someone she knows when she starts school next week.”

“You are sending her to school here?”

“Of course.” She looked at him and said, “You don’t believe we’re here to stay, do you?”

“I don’t know what to believe.” He wasn’t going to admit he was unsure if he was more bothered by the idea she might go away again or that she might stay. Either way, he needed to keep his feelings as under control and to himself as her daed did his. Ja, he needed to act as Abram would.

“Believe me,” she retorted. “You always did.”

“Before.”

She recoiled as if he had struck her. He wished he’d thought before he’d spoken. He didn’t want his frustration to lash out at her.

“Leah,” he began again, but was interrupted by the honk of a car horn.

He stiffened when he looked back and saw a car racing toward them. The driver leaned on the horn. He pulled the buggy toward the right, feeling the wheels jerk in the mud.

The girls cried out in alarm as the car cut close to them, sending water rising over the top of the carriage. He fought to keep the buggy from tipping as he twisted it farther off the road.

Gripping the reins in one hand, he wrapped his other arm around Leah as she slid into him. His breath erupted out of him when his shoulder struck the buggy’s side. Pain ricocheted down his arm and numbed his fingers, but he kept hold of both the reins and Leah.

The car careened past them. He steered the horse onto the road at an angle that wouldn’t send the buggy onto its side. The wheels burst out of the mud and spun on the wet road. He slowed the horse as the car’s taillights vanished over a hill and into the darkness. Warm breath brushed his neck, and he was abruptly aware of Leah sitting within the curve of his arm. She clutched one of his suspenders, and he could see her lips moving in what he was sure was a prayer.

She raised her face, and his breath caught as he realized how long it had been since the other time he had held her close. That night he had surrendered to his longing to kiss her. Tonight...

As if she could read his thoughts, Leah pushed herself away and moved to the far side of the seat. Her fingers quivered as she smoothed her kapp into place.

“Is everyone okay?” she asked, and her voice trembled, as well.

He doubted the girls noticed as they both began to talk about the car that had rushed past them. Shep’s yip announced the dog was all right, too.

As Deborah and Mandy began analyzing every aspect of the near accident, Ezra guided the buggy along the road. He kept an eye out for any other cars and noticed Leah doing the same, though most drivers were cautious around buggies and bicycles and pedestrians.

“I don’t think the driver even saw us,” she said, surprising him that she didn’t let them lapse into silence again. “Not until the car was right behind us.”

“He should have noticed the lights and the slow-moving vehicle sign on the back. When headlights hit it, the colors flare up as bright as a candle.”

“That was rude,” Mandy interjected. “Splashing us.” She looked down at the floor where water was gathering into puddles. “Shep is getting wet again.”

“We’ll dry him off when we get home,” Leah replied.

Ezra turned the buggy into the farm lane leading to the Beilers’ house, and he heard Leah’s sigh of relief. Even the girls in the back became silent as he drove toward the farmhouse set behind the barns.

It was almost the twin of his home, except there never were any lights on in the dawdi haus, which had been empty for as long as he could remember. He slowed the buggy and drew as close to the porch steps as he could, so Leah and her niece wouldn’t get too wet.

She climbed out and took Shep before Mandy bounced up onto the porch. With a wave, the girl rushed into the house with the dog following close behind.

Leah started to follow, then said, “Danki for the ride home, Ezra.” She shuddered so hard he could see it ripple along her. “When I think of that driver speeding past us while Mandy and I might have been walking along the road, it’s terrifying.”

“Don’t think about it.”

“But I must because I need to thank God for keeping us safe tonight when we could have been hurt.” She clasped her hands together so tightly her knuckles grew pale. “When I think of something happening to Mandy, I can’t stand it.”

“God was watching over us tonight.”

“I pray He watches over the driver in that car, too, so he or she gets home safely without endangering anyone else.”

“You still think of others before yourself, don’t you?”

“You make that sound as if it’s wrong.”

“It can be.”

Her eyes widened, and she followed her niece into the house without another word.

“Why is Leah upset?” asked Deborah from the back.

He had forgotten his niece was a witness to the brief conversation. Maybe it was for the best they hadn’t said more.

So why did it feel as if there were many things he should have said?

* * *

Within a few days, Leah could easily have felt as if she had never left home, but no one else seemed willing to let her forget it. Each person coming to the house began with questions about her time in Philadelphia and ended with how happy they were she had returned. She appreciated their gut wishes, but she was tired of relating the same story over and over and seeing no understanding in their eyes. Maybe it was something only a twin could comprehend. When one twin was in trouble, the other twin could not rest easily until she helped him out of trouble. That was the way it had always been for her and Johnny.

Her heart sang with joy when her sister Martha arrived for a visit with her five kinder. Her other sister had moved to Indiana with her husband within a year after Leah left, but Martha lived near the southern edge of Paradise Springs.

The two older kinder were a few years younger than Mandy, and they soon were outside teaching her how to gather eggs and feed the chickens. Their lighthearted voices followed the soft breeze through the open kitchen window.

Leah sat in a rocking chair by the table and bounced the youngest on her knee. She carefully removed her kapp strings from his eager fingers. Beside her sister, who sat where she always had at the table, two other small kinder watched Leah warily. The little boy stuck his thumb in his mouth while the girl had two fingers in hers. Leah remembered Mandy doing the same as a toddler. Joyous shouts from the yard announced her niece was having fun with her new cousins.

“Five kinder and another on the way.” Leah smiled. “I am going to have fun getting to know them.”

“I’m glad they will have a chance to know you.” Martha glanced down at them. “They are shy.”

Reaching out to her sister, Leah put her hand on Martha’s. She had missed her family dreadfully while away, and she was thankful for this chance to reconnect with them. “We have plenty of time to get to know one another.”

“It is lovely for my kinder to have another cousin.” Tears rolled up into Martha’s eyes. “And for us to have something of Johnny in our family. To think we had no idea she even existed...” She shook her head and looked away as her tears glistened at the corner of her eyes.

“I wrote home often, though I know you didn’t see any of my letters.” She wondered if she should have said that. She didn’t want to ruin the warmth of this moment with her sister and Mamm.

“Why not?” asked Martha, her eyes wide.

Mamm said quietly, “Your daed sent back the letters unread, Martha. He felt, Leah, that, if you truly wanted to ease our worries about you and Johnny, you’d come back to Paradise Springs and tell us yourself.”

“But Johnny wasn’t able to travel.” Leah sighed, wishing her daed and her brother hadn’t been so stubborn.

Mamm’s eyes shone with the tears that appeared whenever Johnny’s accident was mentioned. Even though it had happened over nine years ago, Mamm hadn’t learned about it until Leah returned home.

“I know that now,” Mamm said.

“Will Daed understand?” She couldn’t keep anxiety from her voice.

“You need to ask him yourself.”

“I will when he gets home.”

Martha and Mamm exchanged a glance she wasn’t able to decipher before Martha said, “He will forgive you, Leah. That is our way, but you can’t expect him to forget how you and Johnny left without even telling us where you were going. Just sneaking away.”

Leah opened her mouth to protest she hadn’t intended to leave, but saying that wouldn’t change anything. She had gone with Johnny, and she had chosen not to come back while he needed her. Shutting her mouth, she wondered if her family felt as Ezra did, and they were waiting for her to disappear again. How could she convince them otherwise? She had no idea.

* * *

Ezra stopped in midstep when he came out of the upper level of the barn. What was a kid doing standing on the lower rail of the fence around the cow pasture and hanging over it? He should know better than to stand there. Surely even an Englisch boy knew better.

He realized it wasn’t a boy. It was a girl, dressed in jeans and a bright green T-shirt. Leah’s niece, Mandy. She wore Englisch clothing, unlike what she’d had on when he saw her before. Her hair, the exact same shade of gold as Leah’s, was plaited in an uneven braid, and he suspected she’d done it herself. Her sneakered feet balanced on the lower rail on the fence, and she was stretching out her hand to pet the nose of his prized pregnant Brown Swiss cow.

“Don’t do that!” he called as he leaned his hoe against the barn door.

She jumped down and whirled to face him, staring at him with those eyes so like Leah’s. “I wasn’t doing anything.” She clasped her hands behind her back as if she feared something on them would contradict her.

He went to where she stood. When she didn’t turn and run away as some kids would have, he was reminded again of her aunt. Leah never had backed down when she believed she was right.

The thought took the annoyed edge off his voice. “You shouldn’t bother her.”

“Ezra is right,” said Leah as she walked toward them with the grace of a cloud skimming the sky.

He couldn’t look away. So many times he had imagined seeing her walk up the lane again, but he’d doubted it ever would happen. Now it had, and it seemed as unreal as those dreams.

“She needs peace and quiet,” Leah went on, “because she’s going to have a calf soon.”

“Calf?” The little girl’s face crinkled in puzzlement. “I thought they were called fawns.”

“No.” She tried not to smile. “Deer have fawns. Cows have calves.”

“But that’s not a cow.”

“She definitely is,” he said, resting his elbow on the topmost rail.

Mandy put her hands at the waist of her jeans and gave them both a look that suggested they were trying to tease her and she’d have none of it. “That isn’t a cow. Everyone knows cows are black and white. That is light brown. Like a deer.”

Now it was his turn to struggle not to smile. “Some cows are black and white.” He pointed to the ones grazing in the Beilers’ field. “But others are brown or plain black or even red.”

“Red?”

“More of a reddish-brown,” Leah said.

“Then why are all the cows in my books black and white?” Mandy asked, not ready to relent completely.

Leah shrugged, her smile finally appearing. “Maybe those Englisch artists had seen only black-and-white cows.”

Ezra didn’t hear what else she said, because his gaze focused on the dimple on her left cheek. How he used to tease her about it! Had she known he was halfway serious even then when he said God had put it in her cheek to keep her face from being perfect? He hadn’t been much older than Mandy the first time he said that.

“Does she have a name?” Mandy asked.

He replied, “I call her Bessie.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Everyone calls their cows Bessie.” She glanced at her aunt, then added, “At least in books. She’s pretty and nice. She should have a special name of her own.”

“What would you suggest?” he asked, wanting to prolong the conversation but knowing he was being foolish.

He saw his surprise reflected on Leah’s face when Mandy said, “I think you should call her Mamm Millich. That’s Deitsch, you know, for Mommy Milk. Grandma Beiler has been teaching me some words.” She giggled. “They feel funny on my tongue when I say them.”

“I think it’s a wunderbaar name,” he said. “Mamm Millich she is.”

“I named a cow!” Mandy bounced from one foot to the other in her excitement. “I can’t wait to tell Isabella! She’ll never believe this.” She faltered. “But there’s no phone. How can I tell her?”

“Why don’t you write her a letter about Mamm Millich?” Leah asked. “Think how excited she’ll be.”

“But I won’t be able to hear her being excited. I miss Isabella. I want to tell her about Mamm Millich.”

He watched as Leah bent so her eyes were level with her niece’s. Compassion filled her voice as she said, “I know, Mandy, but we must abide by the Ordnung’s rules here in Paradise Springs.”

“They’re stupid rules!” She spun on her heel and ran several steps before turning and shouting, “Stupid rules! I hate them, and I hate being here. I want to go home! To Philadelphia! Why didn’t you let me stay with Isabella? She loves me and wants me to be happy. If you really loved me like you say you do, you wouldn’t have made me come to this weird place with these weird rules.”

“Mandy, you know I love you. I...” Leah’s voice faded into a soft sob as her niece sped away.

When Leah’s shoulders sagged as if she carried a burden too heavy for her to bear any longer, Ezra’s first thought was to find a way to ease it. But what could he do? It was Leah’s choice—hers and her family’s—what Mandy’s future would be. He was only a neighbor.

“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” Leah said as she stared at the now empty lane. “The change has been harder on her than I expected it to be. I tried to live plain in the city, but Johnny consented to letting her have a cell phone, which he allowed her to use whenever she wanted.”

“So he didn’t want her to grow up with our ways?”

“It wasn’t that. It was more he couldn’t deny her anything she wanted.”

Seeing the grief in her eyes, he wondered if she was thinking of her brother or her niece or both of them. “Why isn’t Mandy with her mamm?”

“I don’t know where she is. After Johnny’s accident, Carleen spent more and more time away from the apartment. One day she was gone. She left a note saying that she couldn’t handle the situation any longer. She refused to marry Johnny because she wasn’t ready to settle down. She surely hadn’t expected to be tied down to an invalid.” Her voice grew taut. “Or tied down to a baby. She took the money we had, as well as everything that was hers, and vanished. We never heard from her again.”

“Does Mandy know?”

She shook her head. “Johnny and I shielded her from the truth. No kind should think she’s unwanted.” Squaring her shoulders, she said, “But Mandy isn’t unwanted. In spite of what she said, she knows I love her, and she’s already beginning to love her family here. She will adjust soon.”

“And what about you?”

She frowned at him. “What do you mean? I’m happy to be back home, and I don’t have much to adjust to other than the quiet at night. Philadelphia was noisy.”

“I wasn’t talking about that.” He hesitated, not sure how to say what he wanted without hurting her feelings.

“Oh.” Her smile returned, but it was unsteady. “You’re talking about us. We aren’t kinder any longer, Ezra. I’m sure we can be reasonable about this strange situation we find ourselves in,” she said in a tone that suggested she wasn’t as certain as she sounded. Uncertain of him or of herself?

“I agree.”

“We are neighbors again. We’re going to see each other regularly, but it’d be better if we keep any encounters to a minimum.” She faltered before hurrying on. “Who knows? We may even call each other friend again someday, but until then, it’d probably be for the best if you live your life and I live mine.” She backed away. “Speaking of that, I need to go and console Mandy.” Taking one step, she halted. “Danki for letting her name the cow. That made her happier than I’ve seen her since...”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. His heart cramped as he thought of the sorrow haunting both Leah and Mandy. They had both lost someone very dear to them, the person Leah had once described to him as “the other half of myself.”

The very least he could do was agree to her request that was to everyone’s benefit. Even though he knew she was right, he also knew there was no way he could ignore Leah Beiler.

Yet, somehow, he needed to figure out how to do exactly that.

Chapter Four

As soon as she opened her eyes as the sun was rising, Leah heard the soft lilt of her mamm’s singing while she prepared the cold breakfast they ate each Sunday. It was the sound she had awakened to almost every day of her life until she went away with Johnny. It was only on rare occasions when Mamm was helping a neighbor or the few times she’d been too sick to get out of bed that her voice wasn’t the first thing Leah heard each morning.

Leah slid out from beneath the covers, taking care not to jostle Mandy. A nightmare had brought her running from the room across the hall. As one had every night since they arrived on the farm a week ago.

Maybe she should ask Mandy to share her room. She could bring in the small cot that was kept for when they had more guests than beds. It wasn’t the most comfortable cot, but she would let Mandy use the double bed where Leah had slept during her childhood. Leah suspected she’d get a better night’s sleep on the cot than being roused in the middle of the night by a frightened little girl who kicked and squirmed while she slept. Had Mandy always been restless, or was she bothered by her dreams even after she crawled into bed with Leah?

Going to the window where faint sunlight edged around the dark green shade, Leah looked out. The rain she’d heard during the night had left the grass sparkling at dawn as if stars had been strewn across the yard. She smiled when she noticed the barn door was open and the cows in the field.

Her hand clutched the molding around the window when she saw Daed emerge from the chicken coop. Like Johnny, he was not too tall, but very spare. The early light sparkled off silver in his hair and beard, silver that hadn’t been there years ago. When had he arrived home? It must have been very late, because she hadn’t heard a vehicle come up the farm lane.

She started to pray for the right words to speak when she came face-to-face with her daed for the first time in a decade. Her silent entreaty faltered when, instead of striding toward the house at his usual swift pace that made short work of any distance, he put one hand on the low roof while he placed the other on his brow. He stood like that for a long moment before looking at the house. His shoulders rose and fell in a sigh before he pushed himself away from the coop. With every step toward the house, his steps grew steadier and closer to the length of his normal stride.

Was her daed sick? Perhaps he had picked up some sort of bug at the auction. Or was it more serious?

Leah hurried to get dressed, making sure no speck of lint was visible on her black dress or cape. Settling her kapp on her hair that was pulled back in its proper bun, she stared at herself in the mirror over the dresser. She was not the girl who had left Paradise Springs, but she suddenly felt as young and unprepared for what awaited her as she had been that night.

Trying not to act like a naughty kind sneaking through the house, she went down the back stairs. She opened the door at the bottom and stepped into the kitchen.

Mamm wore her Sunday best and aimed a smile at Leah as she set the oatmeal muffins she had baked last night in the center of the kitchen table. At one end, Daed sat in his chair. There was a hint of grayness beneath his deep tan from years of working in the fields, and she could not help noticing how the fingers on his right hand trembled on the edge of the table.

Was he ill, or was he as nervous as she was?

She got her answer when he said in his no-nonsense voice, “Sit, Leah. We don’t want to be late for Sunday service.”

She obeyed, keeping her head down so neither he nor her mamm could see the tears burning her eyes.

“Is Mandy asleep?” asked Mamm gently as she took her chair at the foot of the table.

“Ja,” Leah answered. “She didn’t sleep well last night.” She glanced at her daed, who had remained silent save for his terse order.

What had she expected? For him to welcome her home as the daed had in the parable of the prodigal son? Daed wasn’t demonstrative. While Mamm spoke of how she loved her family, Daed had never uttered those words to his kinder. Yet, he had shown her in many ways that she was important. Her favorite had been when he asked her to ride into Paradise Springs with him so they could have special time together.

Be patient, she told herself. The words from James’s epistle filled her mind. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

As if she had repeated those words aloud, Daed bowed his head to signal the beginning of grace. Leah did the same. During the silent prayer, she asked God not only for patience but for Him to open Daed’s heart and let her back in. God’s help might be the only way that would happen.

When her daed cleared his throat to let them know grace was over, she looked at him again. He poured a hearty serving of corn flakes into his bowl, then handed the open box to her.

“Danki,” she murmured.

He did not reply but set several of the muffins on his plate. Again he passed the food to her.

“Danki,” she said more loudly.

Again he acted as if she had not spoken.

She bit her lower lip and handed the plate to her mamm without taking a single muffin. Her appetite was gone. Her daed clearly intended to act as if she were nothing but an unwelcome outsider who had invaded their family. It was almost like he had put her under the Meidung. She wasn’t actually being shunned, of course, because he was willing to sit at the table with her and he handed her the plates. However, he did not speak to her or look in her direction unless absolutely necessary. Silence settled around the table, and she had no idea how to break it.

She almost cheered with relief when footsteps pounded down the stairs. Mamm rose quickly when the door at the base opened and Mandy emerged, yawning and rubbing her eyes. She had dressed, but her hair hung down her back in a disheveled braid that she’d worn to bed.

“I need help with my hair,” Mandy announced.

“Ja.” Leah started to stand.

Mamm motioned for her to stay where she was. Taking Mandy by the hand, Mamm led her to the table and toward the end where Daed sat.

Mandy shot an uneasy glance at Leah. Even though she wished she could reassure her niece that everything was fine, Leah said nothing as she waited to see how her daed would act when meeting the granddaughter he hadn’t known he had. Again she noticed how his hand was shaking until he put his left one on top of it as he leaned forward.

“This is Grossdawdi Abram, Mandy,” Mamm said with a smile. “He has been eager to meet you.”

Mandy regarded him with hesitation, and Leah wondered if she was disconcerted by Daed’s long, thick beard. She had seen the little girl staring at other men who wore beards, especially those that reached to the middle of their chests. Even though Leah had explained many times during their years in Philadelphia about how the Amish dressed and why, Mandy seemed uneasy around the married men with their full beards.

Leah had tried to hide her own unsettled reaction when Mandy asked why Ezra was clean shaven. She had seemed startled that he wasn’t married. Leah had to admit that she was, too. His older brother and sister had wed years ago, and Isaiah, who was less than a year younger than Ezra, married last year. It probably wouldn’t be long before the others found spouses, including the youngest Stoltzfus, Esther. With his mamm already depending on Esther’s help, she couldn’t handle the household chores by herself. Ezra needed a wife, so why hadn’t he found one by now?

Telling herself that was a question best left unexplored, she watched as Mamm bent to whisper in Mandy’s ear. The little girl leaned forward and gave Daed a tentative kiss on the cheek. Leah held her breath, not sure how her daed would react.

She swallowed her shocked gasp when Daed lightly stroked Mandy’s cheek as he said, “You are as pretty as your grossmammi was when she was your age, ain’t so?”

That was all the encouragement Mandy needed to begin chatting as if she wanted to catch up her grossdawdi on everything that had happened from the day she was born. She barely slowed down to eat and paid no attention when Leah reminded her that it was rude to speak with her mouth full of food. She asked about the animals on the farm and told him about Shep.

Only because she was watching did Leah notice Daed wince when Mandy began talking about how Shep had helped alert them to Johnny’s seizures. When he abruptly said it was time for another prayer before they left the table, he gave them no time to bow their heads before he’d pushed back his chair and was striding to the back door. He called back over his shoulder that the buggy would be ready to leave in a few minutes.

Mandy looked at Leah. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Of course not. We simply don’t want to be late for the worship service,” Mamm answered before Leah could. Coming to her feet, she picked up the almost empty muffin plate. “Leah, help Mandy with her hair while I clear the table.”

Leah brushed out her niece’s hair, braided it and wound it around her head properly with the ease of years of practice. Sending Mandy back upstairs to get her white, heart-shaped kapp and her black bonnet, she began picking up the dirty dishes and stacking them by the sink where they could be washed once the Sabbath was past.

“That went well,” she said without looking at her mamm. “Daed seemed very glad to see Mandy.”

“Why shouldn’t he be? Mandy is a sweet, gut kind. You’ve brought her up well.”

Warmth spread through the iciness that had clamped around Leah from the moment she witnessed her daed’s weakness by the chicken coop. She considered asking her mamm if Daed was feeling poorly but had to wonder if she’d misconstrued what she saw. After a long trip away, Daed probably was exhausted. Could that explain his terse reaction to her homecoming? She longed to believe that was so.

“Danki. I made sure that we lived a gut Christian life while we were away,” Leah replied.

“I know you well, daughter. I have never doubted that you did your best to live as you were taught. Since you brought Mandy home, I have seen how you made efforts to teach her our ways and our beliefs.”

“If you see that, why can’t Daed?” She clapped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late. She’d blurted out the words from the depths of her aching heart.

“I warned you. He was hurt and humiliated when you left. To lose two kinder when they jumped the fence...” Mamm shook her head and sighed.

“But I didn’t jump the fence.”

“You left.” She turned to the stairs as Mandy bounced down into the kitchen.

Leah didn’t answer as her mamm checked that Mandy’s bonnet was properly tied beneath her chin before her niece rushed out to watch Daed harness the horse to the buggy. Leah wasn’t sure what she could have said. She had left...to go with Johnny and persuade him to return, though she never had succeeded with that. Was her failure why Daed was so upset with her? That she’d never convinced his only son to come home?

Again those traitorous tears welled up in her eyes. She longed to ask her daed why he hadn’t read even one of her letters. It had been difficult to steal time away from taking care of an invalid and a kind to write to her family. Maybe if Daed explained why he’d sent back the letters, she could understand why he joyously had welcomed his granddaughter home while hardly acknowledging his daughter. There must be something more behind his actions than him being furious that she’d left with Johnny and his girlfriend, Carleen, years ago.

Wasn’t there?

* * *

Ezra sensed the underlying anticipation in the members of the district who had gathered on the front lawn of Henry Gingerich’s home. Part of today’s worship included the selection of the new minister, and already the baptized members had nominated their choice for the next Diener zum Buch by whispering that man’s name to the other minister or the bishop. Any married man whose name was whispered by three different members would be placed in the lot for the next “minister of the book,” who would be expected to preach a sermon in two weeks and every other Sunday for the rest of his life.

The married men were gathered in small groups or stood with their wives and kinder. Everyone spoke in hushed voices, and, though nobody would be speculating on who would be called forward, he knew it was the main topic on everyone’s mind.

He hoped the tension kept the rest of the congregation from noticing how his head snapped about when he heard Leah’s lyrical voice not far from where he stood by himself. Looking to his right, he saw her with her arm around her niece’s shoulders.

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