Can they be a family for all seasons?

A lonely schoolmaster. A widowed mother.

Will working together be a lesson in love?

After a sudden heartbreaking loss, young widow Abigail Stolz must somehow help her troubled son adjust—even if it means working with Jamie’s stern schoolmaster, Ethan Miller. Much to her surprise, Ethan is actually a sensitive man who is also grieving—and lonely. But will family duty and the past keep them from a chance at happiness together?

EMMA MILLER lives quietly in her old farmhouse in rural Delaware. Fortunate enough to have been born into a family of strong faith, she grew up on a dairy farm, surrounded by loving parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Emma was educated in local schools and once taught in an Amish schoolhouse. When she’s not caring for her large family, reading and writing are her favorite pastimes.

Also By Emma Miller

The Amish Spinster’s Courtship

The Christmas Courtship

A Summer Amish Courtship

The Amish Matchmaker

A Match for Addy

A Husband for Mari

A Beau for Katie

A Love for Leah

A Groom for Ruby

A Man for Honor

Hannah’s Daughters

Courting Ruth

Miriam’s Heart

Anna’s Gift

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

A Summer Amish Courtship

Emma Miller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90704-4

A SUMMER AMISH COURTSHIP

© 2020 Emma Miller

Published in Great Britain 2020

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.

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Abigail knew her cheeks were bright red.

“Thank you for being so nice about this, Ethan. The gossip must be embarrassing for you.”

Ethan knitted his brows. “Are you kidding? These ladies just made my day. Apparently, I’m the most eligible Amish bachelor in Kent County.”

He leaned forward. “And speaking of such things, a pretty, smart woman like yourself—it will only be a matter of time before someone asks to court you.” He held her gaze. “Almost makes me think I ought to—” He cut himself off.

Abigail hesitated. He’d been about to say something, but what? She thought to press him, but then her mother took off and she had to hurry after her. “See you tomorrow,” she said.

“Tomorrow,” Ethan answered. “Hey, Abby. What kind of cake are you making?”

“Lemon icebox,” she responded. She didn’t look back, but she could feel him watching her. Had he been about to ask if he could court her? Abigail’s heart gave a little pitter-patter…

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed Abigail and Ethan’s story. How wonderful that they were able to find love again after such happy first marriages.

I always learn something about myself or the world we live in when I write a book and A Summer Amish Courtship was no exception. Ethan and Abigail’s story reminded me that God created us all more similar than different. Even though the Amish live differently than many of us, they still face the same challenges, particularly when it comes to family. I think the sense of responsibility to our loved ones runs strong in us. I know it does in me. But while families can certainly stress us out, my family is my greatest treasure.

With Abigail and Ethan on their way to living happily ever after, I’ve come upon someone else in Hickory Grove longing to find happiness again. Eli Kutz is not only looking for a wife to cherish, but a mother for his four beloved children. If you’ve read previous books in the Hickory Grove series, you’ll recall that Eli hasn’t had the best of luck in courting. That’s about to change. Eli will fall in love with a young woman you would least expect. Which of Rosemary’s daughters do you think it will be?

Peace be with you.

Emma Miller

Two are better than one.

—Ecclesiastes 4:9

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Introduction

Dear Reader

Bible Verse

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

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

“Tietscher!” eight-year-old Mary Fisher cried. She ran up the steps, her prayer kapp strings bouncing, and through the open doorway into the cloakroom of the schoolhouse. In the cold months, coats, cloaks and hats were hung on hooks on the wall. In the warmer months, it became a clutter catchall for lunch pails, fishing poles, overlooked homework and muddy boots. “Teacher, come quick!”

Ethan Miller was busy lining up his students’ lunch boxes on two shelves he’d built and just hung on the back wall. Without the shelves, the lunch boxes, bags and pails were all over the floor and constantly being knocked over. That morning, a peanut butter and raisin bread sandwich wrapped in wax paper had ended up on the bottom of someone’s shoe and John B. had enjoyed Ethan’s egg salad for lunch. Ethan had had an apple.

“Tietscher!” Mary exclaimed, waving both hands in the air. “It’s him again!”

“English, please,” Ethan instructed. He slid a wrinkled brown paper sack with the name Jacob S. scrawled across it onto the lower shelf. He’d painted the shelving a dark navy blue and he had to admit, for having made it from pine scraps from his father’s woodpile, it had turned out nicely. “What’s going on?”

The petite third grader huffed, peering at him through tiny wire-framed eyeglasses. She switched to English. “He’s going to knock it over and she’s inside!”

Ethan liked Mary Fisher. She was a good student and was kind to the younger children, but she could also be a tattletale. Which was probably expected from a girl who was the youngest of a family of fifteen children. The Fishers ran the youth group in Hickory Grove and everyone joked that it made sense considering the fact that they had enough children to have a youth group of their own.

Ethan looked down at Mary, trying not to be perturbed by the interruption. Not only did Mary Fisher like to tattle, but she tended to add drama to any event. A scratch on an arm became a broken bone. A boy tossing a stone could become a gang of teens throwing rocks and sticks.

Ethan took a moment to calm his irritation. His students had been outside only ten minutes without his supervision. All he wanted to do was finish installing the shelves. How much trouble could anyone get into in ten minutes? And he’d left two fifteen-year-old girls in charge, girls who could certainly be counted on to keep an eye on younger children for a few minutes.

Apparently they couldn’t be trusted today.

Ethan didn’t usually have recess this late in the day. In an hour he would dismiss his students, but it was so pretty outside, and spring had been late in coming that year. The students were all eager to get out into the sunshine after such a long, cold winter. That was why he’d given them half an hour, time enough for him to hang the new shelves. His plan was to then bring his students in and have a spelling bee. It was one of the events he had planned for their end-of-the-year program, which was to include a fund-raiser, the exact nature of which had yet to be decided.

Ethan added a tin lunch bucket to one of the shelves. “Who are we talking about, Mary?”

“Jamie Stolz!”

Ethan exhaled impatiently. He should have known.

Jamie was his new student. He’d been with them only six weeks. And in those six weeks the boy had caused more turmoil than the other twenty-six students put together in his one-room schoolhouse. Ethan squinted. “What’s he going to do?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He’s rocking the girls’ outhouse,” Mary wailed, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “He’s going to knock it over and Elsie Yoder is inside!”

“What?” Ethan looked down at the little girl, certain he’d misheard.

Mary’s head bobbed, hands flapping. “Jamie is rocking the outhouse and he says he’s going to knock it over! With Elsie inside!”

Ethan strode past his student. “Jamie Stolz!” he bellowed taking the schoolhouse steps two at a time. Behind the one-room building, he spotted a group of children gathered around the two outhouses that stood side by side, one for boys, one for girls. Both had small privacy fences in front of them.

“What’s going on here?” Ethan asked, walking across the grass. Off to the left he saw several boys involved in a game of softball. To the far right, a group of teen girls huddled in a tight circle, their heads together, oblivious to the outhouse drama. His two appointed guardians were among them.

“Jamie, Teacher,” Alfie, a third grader answered morosely. He hooked his thumbs through his suspenders. “He’s being bad again.”

Just then, a squeal arose from behind the girls’ privacy fence. “Help!”

Ethan could see the top of the outhouse above the fence. It didn’t appear to be rocking. But then he’d dug the foundations for the new outhouses the previous summer so he knew they were pretty stable.

“Elsie?” Ethan called.

“Teacher!” she shrieked.

Ethan halted at the little fence and peered under it. He didn’t see Jamie.

Ethan hesitated, not sure what to do. It wouldn’t be proper of him to go to the outhouse door with the little girl inside. “Elsie, just come out here!”

“I can’t get out!” Elsie shrieked. “Door’s stuck!”

“Jamie? Where are you?” Ethan called sternly. Then he heard a loud rapping on the rear wall of the outhouse.

Elsie began to cry.

“Mary Judith!” Ethan called in the direction of the cluster of teen girls who were still unaware of what was going on. “Could you come get your sister?”

The blonde teen with a blue scarf tied on her head looked up in surprise to hear her name and then hurried toward him.

“Go see if you can get your sister out,” Ethan instructed. He turned around to the other students gathered in a semicircle. They were all talking at once. One of his first graders was crying. “Recess is over,” he declared, pointing toward the schoolhouse. “Inside. Peter, get the boys off the ball field,” he told one of his more responsible students.

Then, as Mary Judith walked behind the privacy fence, Ethan headed for the rear of the outhouses, which were on the edge of a small copse of trees. The woods were just beginning to spring to life and everywhere were shoots of new green leaves. “Jamie!” he called. “Jamie Stolz!”

Ethan came around the corner to see blond-haired Jamie shoving a thick branch between the girls’ outhouse and its foundation. “Jamie,” he barked just as the boy prepared to leap on the branch. And rock the outhouse again.

“Yes?” the little boy asked, taking a stumbling step back.

“I have her, Teacher,” Mary Judith called from the other side of the outhouse. “Someone put a stick through the latch!”

“Everyone inside!” Ethan ordered again to the stragglers who’d not heard or obeyed his first command, trying not to transfer his displeasure with Jamie to the other children. He imagined they were as frustrated with the boy as he was. He was a constant disruption in the classroom: talking, throwing bits of paper, rocking loudly in his chair. And on the playground, he spent most of his time teasing younger children. “Everyone in the schoolhouse. Now, please.” He turned back to his errant student. “Jamie, why would you do this?”

The boy tucked his hands behind his back. He was wearing denim pants, a pale blue shirt, suspenders and a straw hat. He looked like the other male students, yet he didn’t. Most boys in Hickory Grove wore hand-me-downs. The clothes Jamie wore, though homemade like everyone else’s, were all brand-spanking-new.

Ethan grabbed the stick Jamie had shoved under the outhouse and tossed it into the woods. “How did Elsie get locked inside?”

“I don’t know.”

Ethan pressed his lips together and glanced away, trying to calm the anger rising from his chest. If there was one thing he couldn’t abide, it was a liar. He returned his gaze to his new student. “Did you lock Elsie in the outhouse?”

The boy stared at the ground.

“Why were you trying to tip it over?” Ethan pressed. “Jamie, if the outhouse had tipped over with her inside, Elsie could have been seriously hurt.”

Jamie kicked at a pile of acorns on the ground. “I wasn’t going to knock it over. Too heavy. I was just rocking it.”

Ethan exhaled, looking away again. He was momentarily unsure what to do. He’d certainly encountered mischief since he’d accepted the job of the Hickory Grove schoolmaster two years ago, but it always had been the same sort of innocent naughtiness: frogs in lunch pails, the snapping of suspenders, the tugging of kapp strings. Until Jamie’s arrival, the biggest problem he’d had was little boys arriving at school late because they stopped along the way to throw rocks in a pond.

Ethan looked at Jamie. “Have you something to say for yourself?” He opened his arms wide. “Anything?”

The boy concentrated on his new leather boots that looked as if they’d never been in a barn.

Ethan thought for a moment. He’d already talked with Jamie’s widowed mother three times in the last six weeks. Three times! That was more than he’d spoken to other parents since September.

Abigail Stolz seemed like a nice enough woman. Though each time he approached her she was defensive, suggesting it was he who was responsible for her son’s misbehavior. As if a schoolmaster was solely in charge of his students’ discipline. And she was forward for an Amish woman, which had annoyed him the first time he met her, then amused him the second time. Truth was, she reminded him a lot of his stepsister Lovey, a woman who wasn’t shy about speaking her mind. And he adored Lovey.

Ethan glanced down at Jamie. He didn’t see any way out of this. He knew what he needed to do. “Get in my buggy,” he ordered. With the warmer weather, he’d started walking to school again. It was less than a mile’s walk if he cut across the fields, less than two if he took the road home. He’d only brought the buggy this morning because he’d intended to run into Byler’s store after school and order a piece of stovepipe. He and his father were installing a woodstove to keep their shop warm where they were making a buggy.

Jamie looked up at Ethan. “What?”

“I said get in my buggy. I’ll send one of the big boys out to hitch up Butter.” Butter was his horse. Her name was Butterscotch. His dead wife had named her that after they bought the dun at an auction. She had said the mare was the color of her homemade butterscotch pudding. His Mary had teased him that the mare wasn’t the proper color for an Amish man’s buggy, but Ethan had bought her anyway. Because his Mary had liked her. He’d been razzed for years about the color of his driving horse and her name. He didn’t care. She was one of the few things he had left of his wife.

“I don’t understand,” Jamie said. His English was excellent. Often children started school with no knowledge of the English language. In Kent County, Delaware, children usually strictly spoke Pennsylvania Deitsch—a form of German, not Dutch, as many Englishers mistakenly thought they used—in their homes, so it was up to the schoolmaster to teach them English. Ethan had been concerned when Jamie had arrived from out of state that he would have come from a school where the children were taught in Pennsylvania Deitsch. It happened in some places. But his concerns had been quickly dispelled; Jamie spoke English as well as Ethan did. And his diction might have been better.

“What do you not understand?” Ethan asked, beginning to lose his patience again. He was exasperated that the boy wasn’t better behaved and exasperated with himself that he wasn’t able to get him to act better. He was also annoyed with the child’s mother. It was evident that she wasn’t disciplining him. “I want you to get in my buggy and wait for me. I’m dismissing everyone early. And I’m taking you home.” He pointed at the boy. “So I can speak to your mother. Again.”

Jamie met Ethan’s gaze and he thrust out his lower lip. “You’re being mean to me. Everyone here is mean to me. I don’t like this school.”

“Jamie, no one is—” Ethan halted midsentence. There was no sense arguing with a nine-year-old. He knew better. And at this point, this was a matter for his mother to deal with. And if she couldn’t, then…then he’d just expel the boy. Maybe that would get Abigail Stolz’s attention.

“Buggy!” Abigail’s mother announced from the back door. “Babby! Buggy coming!”

“Are you expecting someone?” Abigail asked, walking away from the kitchen sink as she dried her hands on a towel, a red-and-white one with a rooster on it. It wasn’t a Plain towel; it wasn’t the kind most Amish women had in their homes. But her mother had spotted it at Spence’s Bazaar the previous week and had made such a fuss about wanting it that Abigail’s father had bought it for her.

“It’s not Plain,” Abigail had argued under her breath as they’d gotten into line to pay for it. “We’re new to Hickory Grove still, Dat. What will our bishop think?”

“What will he think?” he had asked as he peeled off dollar bills from a wad in his pocket that he kept together with a rubber band from a bunch of bananas. “He’ll think I’m a husband who indulges his wife once in a while. That’s what he’ll think.”

“But it’s red, Daddi,” Abigail had murmured.

“That’s why she likes it,” he had whispered back with a smile.

Abigail walked to the back door and peered out the window. There actually was a buggy approaching. It was not one of her mother’s false alarms. Abigail didn’t recognize the horse, though. It was a pretty light brown, almost caramel shade. Not the color horse one often saw pulling an Amish buggy. “Cover your head, Mam,” she instructed absently, still watching out the window.

June’s hands flew to the tight bun of thin hair that had grayed long ago. “Where’s my kapp, Babby? Someone’s taken my kapp.”

“No one’s taken your kapp. You’ve put it somewhere and I can’t find it. It’s been missing since morning.”

Abigail walked into the mudroom that was off the kitchen and grabbed a dark blue scarf from a rusty nail in the wall. Her father had finished a lot of work in the last eight months since he and Abigail’s mother had bought the property, but there was still a lot to be done. One item on Abigail’s lengthy to-do list was to add pegs to the walls in the mudroom that also served as a laundry room. It just seemed uncivilized to her, to be hanging coats and cloaks and hats on nails.

“I don’t like that scarf,” June fussed, trying to push her daughter’s hands away as Abigail wrapped it neatly around her mother’s head, covering her hair. For modesty’s sake, no one but a woman’s husband was supposed to see her bare head.

“I want the pink one,” June fussed.

“We don’t wear pink scarves, Mam.” Abigail deftly tied the scarf at the nape of her mother’s neck. “There you go.” She smiled as she smoothed the fabric at her mother’s forehead. “All done.”

June King was a small woman, frail in appearance. But even though she was seventy years old, she was as strong as an ox, especially when she took a notion to put up a fight. Which was happening with more frequency, in Abigail’s opinion. Her father, however, disagreed. He either downplayed his wife’s inappropriate behavior and speech or denied it altogether. Abigail knew that deep in her father’s heart, he must know his wife of fifty years was showing signs of dementia, but she suspected he wasn’t yet ready to face the truth.

“Who’s here, Babby?” June asked, as excited as a young girl going to her first singing. “Do you think it’s the bishop?”

“I don’t know who it is. Maybe a neighbor,” Abigail responded.

“I think it’s the bishop.”

“Ne, I think not.” Abigail walked back across the kitchen to turn down the apple butter simmering on the stove. She’d found some apples no longer in their prime in the cellar and decided to do something with them before they spoiled. “Bishop Simon’s driving horse is black.”

Outside, Abigail’s father’s dog, Boots, began to bark. He was an old border collie, mostly deaf and suffering from arthritis, but he still managed to stand watch over the farm. When her parents had moved to Delaware the previous fall and taken the dog with them, Abigail’s son had missed him dearly. When she and Jamie had arrived in Delaware, Jamie had been as excited to see the dog as his grandparents.

“Oh, my! It’s that handsome schoolmaster!” June declared, clapping her hands. She pushed open the screen door and walked out onto the back porch, leaving the door wide open.

“The schoolmaster?” Immediately concerned, Abigail dropped the wooden spoon she’d been using to stir the apple butter onto the counter. It fell so hard that it bounced. “What’s he doing here?” She glanced at the round, black-and-white battery-powered clock on the kitchen wall. It was only two forty-five. School wasn’t out for another fifteen minutes.

Abigail hustled to the open back door, her heart fluttering in her chest. It had to be Jamie. Was he ill? Had he been injured? She fought the panic rising in her chest as she went down the porch steps and into the driveway, walking past her mother.

“Schoolteacher!” June greeted, waving eagerly. “So glad you could stop by. Come in for coffee and apple streusel! My daughter makes a fine streusel!”

“Mam, shush,” Abigail murmured. “It’s not proper calling out to a man like that.”

Now that the buggy was closer, Abigail could see that it was indeed the schoolmaster. And her Jamie. She could see her little boy through the buggy’s windshield. He didn’t look ill, or injured, but why else would the teacher be bringing him home in his buggy? And early, no less.

Abigail hurried out into the middle of the driveway, catching the pretty mare’s halter as the buggy rolled to a stop. Boots barked and ran in circles around the conveyance.

Abigail went straightaway to the passenger’s side and slid open the door. “Jamie? Are you all right?” she asked, trying as best she could to hide her alarm. “What’s wrong, sohn?” She reached out to him to take him in her arms. He was really too big for her to carry anymore, or even hold in her lap. And he didn’t like it. But Jamie was her baby boy, her only child. A mother couldn’t be criticized for caring about her child, could she?

“I’m all right,” Jamie said, pushing his mother away. “I’m fine. I can get down myself.”

Abigail clasped his cheeks between her hands, looking into his brown eyes. He looked fine. Not sick at all. “Not hurt?” she asked.

“Not hurt or sick,” the schoolmaster said dryly, pulling the brake on the buggy.

His name was Ethan Miller. Abigail had met him several times. They were part of the same church district. The schoolmaster had also stopped by the house a couple of times as he walked home from school—to complain about her son’s behavior. She didn’t care for Ethan Miller. He was grumpy and he expected too much of Jamie too soon. The poor boy had just moved halfway across the country. His life had been turned upside down like an apple cart: leaving his friends in Wisconsin, living with his grandparents, joining a new community. Who could expect there wouldn’t be a few bumps in the road?

The schoolmaster got out of the buggy and walked around to Abigail. He was a tall man, slender, with blond hair, brown eyes and a carefully trimmed beard. Some might have thought him handsome, and maybe in other circumstances, she might have, too.

The border collie sniffed at the schoolmaster’s heels and then wandered away.

“I brought Jamie home because we had a problem at school today,” the schoolmaster said. “Again.”

Abigail looked down at her son who was now standing beside her. “Go into the house with your grossmami,” she told him, stroking his shoulder. “She’ll find you a snack.”

Jamie smiled up at her. “Ya, Mam.”

“I’m not making him a snack, Babby,” her mother put in. She was standing on the far side of the driveway, but she had heard every word. Abigail’s father was losing his hearing but her mother’s was as good as her own and it seemed as if she never missed a thing. “Jamie’s been naughty. I don’t make snacks for naughty boys.”

The schoolmaster glanced June’s way and then returned his gaze to Abigail. “Actually, I’d like Jamie to stay here. And tell you for himself what he did.”

Abigail looked at her son, then at the schoolmaster. “I don’t understand.”

When the teacher didn’t say anything, she turned her stare back to Jamie. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t mean to, Mam,” Jamie said, pouting. “I’m very hungry. Could I have my snack?”

“Tell her,” the schoolmaster said, using a tone of voice that Abigail didn’t much care for. Who did he think he was, speaking to a young boy so harshly?

“Please, Mam?” Jamie whined. “I’m so hungry.” He touched his forehead. “I’m feeling dizzy.”

“Tell her,” the schoolmaster repeated, lowering his voice until it was little more than a rumble.

“Tell her, you naughty boy!” June called from the other side of the driveway.

Jamie’s eyes filled with tears. “I tried to tip over the girls’ outhouse. I just wanted to see if I could do it.” The words tumbled out of his mouth. “I was trying to use a lever. Like Grossdadi taught me. I didn’t know Elsie was inside! I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

Abigail’s eyes widened. “You tried to tip over an outhouse? With someone inside?”

He grabbed the hem of her apron. “I didn’t mean to, Mam!”

“There, there,” Abigail soothed, stroking his blond curly head. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not all right,” the schoolmaster said. Now he was taking on a tone with her. “It was dangerous, what he did. Then he lied to me and when he finally did admit what he’d done, he wasn’t even apologetic.”

“I am sorry, Mam! I am,” her son cried into her apron.

“He says he sorry,” Abigail returned stiffly, meeting the schoolmaster’s gaze.

“He’s not sorry he did it. He’s sorry he got caught.” The schoolmaster brought his hand to his neatly trimmed beard and stroked it. “And that’s not good enough, Abigail.”

“Oh it isn’t, Ethan? For whom?” She let go of Jamie to take a step closer to the schoolmaster. Her irritation was rising by the second. Her father had always said her quick temper was her worst trait, but sometimes she thought maybe it was her best. Life had been hard as a single woman since her husband’s death and it had been her experience that sometimes standing up to men got things done when nothing else would.

“That’s bad, tipping over outhouses,” June put in from the far side of the driveway.

Ethan stood there in front of Abigail for a moment. He glanced away, then back at her. Maybe he had realized that she wasn’t a weak-minded woman who could be pushed around by any man who wanted to give her advice on how to raise her son.

“This is the fourth time I’ve had to speak with you about Jamie’s behavior at school,” Ethan intoned, “and I’m ready to just ex—” He took a breath and glanced at her son. “Go with your grandmother,” he said quietly.

Jamie took off for the house and Ethan met Abigail’s gaze.

For some reason, his soft tone made her angrier than if he had just raised his voice to her. And who did he think he was to be ordering her son around after school hours? “You’re ready to just what?” she demanded.

“Expel him,” he answered flatly.

“Expel? Expel him?” Abigail sputtered.

“In my day, boys were paddled,” June called. “That’s what my dat did when my brothers were bad. A good switching is what this boy needs, Babby.”

Abigail whipped around to her mother. “Mam, please see to your grandson. Inside.” She turned back to the schoolmaster.

“You’ve left me with little other choice. If Jamie’s behavior doesn’t improve, he’s out,” Ethan said. “I’ve asked you repeatedly to rein your son in and so far, I’ve seen no improvement. He doesn’t turn in his schoolwork, or when he does it’s not complete. He doesn’t listen,” Ethan said, ticking off on his fingers. “He’s disruptive, disrespectful and out of control.”

“Out of control? He’s nine years old!” Abigail pointed toward the house in the direction Jamie had just gone. “And what does that say of you, Ethan?” She placed her hands on her hips. “A teacher who can’t control one little mischievous boy?”

“Mischievous?” Ethan flared. “Ne, his behavior is beyond mischievous. What about last week when he cut the strings off Martha’s prayer kapp with scissors? What of the cow pie he put in Johnny Fisher’s bologna sandwich? What about—”

“You know what I have a mind to do, Ethan Miller,” Abigail interrupted, gritting her teeth.

Ethan rested his hands on his hips. “What?” he demanded.

“I have a mind to go to the school board and have you dismissed.”

He laughed, which made her even angrier. If that was possible.

“Dismissed under what grounds?” Ethan scoffed.

“On your lack of control in the classroom,” she told him. She folded her arms over her chest. “What kind of teacher are you that little boys can get away with such things? It’s clear to me that you are unable to control your students and that…that you should be replaced immediately because you—” she pointed at him “—are obviously not doing your job.”

“My job is not to teach your child how to behave.” He pointed back at her. “That is your job. It’s obvious the boy needs discipline at home.”

Abigail drew back, dropping her arms to her sides. Somewhere in the very back of her mind, she knew he had a point, but he had made her so angry that she couldn’t think straight.

Ethan walked away. “Get your son under control or I’m expelling him,” he warned.

“I certainly hope you don’t speak to your wife with that tone,” she flung back at him.

Without another word, the schoolmaster got into his buggy, turned around in the driveway and headed out the way he’d come. Abigail watched him until he was halfway down the lane and then marched toward the house. Who did Ethan Miller think he was? How dare he threaten to expel her son! She passed her mother who was still standing there beside the driveway.

June watched her daughter walk by. “What do you think of the schoolteacher, Babby?” she asked brightly. “Me?” She broke into a broad smile, not giving Abigail a chance to respond. “I like him.”

Chapter Two

Ethan took his time seeing to Butterscotch, leading her to the water trough and then giving her a good brushing until her coat gleamed. Afterward, he fed her a scoop of oats and set her loose in the pasture to graze until sunset when he’d put her up in the barn for the night. He knew it was foolish, but the time he spent with the mare made him feel closer to his wife, more than five years gone now. Closer to her in memory at least. How she’d loved the mare, their little farm in upstate New York, their quiet life. How she had loved him.

He’d been so lost after her unexpected death that he thought he might die of his grief. He didn’t, of course, just as his wise father had predicted. And as the days turned into months, then years, though he hadn’t stopped loving her, the pain was no longer so sharp. Now, after so much time had passed, more often than not, he smiled when he thought her, rather than cried.

Ethan stood beside the gate and watched Butterscotch wander off to graze in a bed of fresh, flowering clover. Then, his hands deep in his pockets, he walked down the lane toward the harness shop in search of his father. He was still mulling over his conversation with Abigail Stolz. He was hoping to talk with his father about Jamie and the boy’s mother. Maybe he could offer a different perspective.

Ethan took his time walking, taking in the two-hundred-acre farm, its fields that were now turning green, white fencing, barns and outbuildings. In the two years since the family had moved to Hickory Grove from New York, Millers’ shop had flourished. Despite the local competition of Troyer’s just three miles away, his father had found ways to provide goods and services to both Amish and Englisher customers. Not only did he repair and make nearly any kind of leatherwork, but he also sold the type of supplies a man with livestock needed: liniments, wormers, fly and pest control traps and sprays, you name it. And that wasn’t all he was selling these days.

A year ago, Ethan’s stepsister Bay Laurel, who they called Bay, had started selling jams and jellies, fresh eggs, preserves, and baked goods. Her single shelf had turned into an entire aisle and his father was considering expanding the size of the store to keep up with the women’s side of the business. Then there was Ethan’s brother Joshua, newly wed, who had built a greenhouse over the winter and was about to open a business selling seedlings, flowers and vegetable plants.

All that, and Benjamin, his father, was still dreaming of expanding his business inside the huge dairy barn he’d remodeled. He wanted to go into buggy making. Ethan wasn’t much for working in the harness shop. That was why he had taken the job of schoolmaster when the position had become vacant. But buggy making was quickly becoming a passion of his. He still had a lot to learn, but he liked using his hands to make a wheel, a door, a padded seat. Alone in the shop, or even working beside his father, he loved the peacefulness of it. No little girls squirming in their seats, no little boys bringing toads into the schoolhouse. No Jamie Stoltz trying to tip over an outhouse.

Ethan’s annoyance with the boy came back in a single breath. Which turned to near anger toward the mother. He felt sorry for Abigail, a widow alone trying to raise a boy without a father, but surely she understood that it was her duty to control the boy’s behavior. Ethan couldn’t help thinking that if Jamie was bad at school, it was likely he wasn’t all that well behaved at home either. He got that impression from the grandmother. He couldn’t remember her name, though they’d been introduced at church. Daniel King, Abigail’s father, and his wife had been in the harness shop a couple of times and they’d bumped into each other at a dinner celebrating Epiphany back in January. That was just before Abigail and her son had arrived in Hickory Grove. He had heard from his stepsister Ginger that she was widowed three or four years ago, though Ginger hadn’t known any of the details. That fact alone gave him good reason not to judge the woman so quickly, but—

“Ethan? You okay?”

He looked up. He’d been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t seen or even heard his sister-in-law, Phoebe, approaching.

“I thought you were going to walk right by me.” She met his gaze with a smile. She was wearing a blue scarf tied around her head and the denim coat one of his stepsisters had commandeered. Ordinarily, Amish women didn’t wear men’s denim barn coats, even around their house, but there was nothing ordinary about his stepmother’s girls. Or his brother Joshua’s new wife.

“Uh, sorry, just thinking. Ya, I’m fine,” he said. He liked Phoebe. She’d come from a hard life, bringing a little boy with her, but she’d managed to make a new life there in Hickory Grove. She was sweet and kind and fun, but the thing Ethan liked most about her was her resilience. He admired her ability to see beyond her troubles and find the goodness in the world God provided. He was beginning to think maybe he needed to take a page from her book. As much as he hated to admit that his father and stepmother, Rosemary, were right, it was time to move on with his life. He knew it was what his Mary would want. But he just… So far, he just hadn’t been able to get there.

“Been down to the mailbox,” Phoebe said. She held up a bundle of flyers and envelopes. “Something here for you. A bank statement, I think.” She stopped in front of him, sifting through the pile in her arms. With a family their size—his father and stepmother, his stepsisters, stepbrothers, and brothers still living at home, as well as Phoebe and her son—they numbered fifteen at the supper table. And that was if his stepsister Lovey and her family didn’t join them. They received a lot of mail.

“It’s here somewhere,” she said, still thumbing through the stack.

“Just leave it on the counter,” he told her, turning so he was still facing her, backing down the driveway, hands deep in his pants pockets. “Have you seen my dat?”

“In the shop. In the back, I think. I stopped to see Ginger on the way to the mailbox. She’s working the register.”

He nodded, turned and continued on his way.

“See you for supper,” Phoebe called after him.

His back now to her, he raised his hand in response.

Ethan found Ginger occupied at the register ringing up an English woman. “My dat?”

She nodded over her shoulder as she dropped fly paper into a brown paper bag. “Back in the buggy shop, I think. UPS delivered leather for seat covers.”

Ethan went through the swinging half door to get behind the counter, then through the next door and into the leather workshop. He nodded to his brother Jacob who was busy with an awl punching holes in what looked to be a new bridle he was making. Beside him, seated on a stool, was their eleven-year-old stepbrother, Jesse, who was talking a mile a minute about a bass in their pond he was set on catching.

Ethan walked through the shop and into a hall where the newly constructed walls had drywall but no paint yet. Doorway cuts in the walls led to empty space now that could be turned into additional workrooms or an office if his father wanted to expand later. At the end of the hall, he found the door to the buggy shop open.

Benjamin Miller’s door was always open, figuratively and literally, and not just to his wife and children and stepchildren, but to his community, as well. He was a good listener, but he also didn’t hesitate to give his opinion if it was asked. His father was the wisest man Ethan knew and even though he had just had his thirty-third birthday, he was still young enough to need his father’s guidance occasionally. Old enough to know it.

Benjamin turned on the stool where he sat at his workbench and peered over the glasses he wore for up close work. “Get that stovepipe?”

Ethan shook his head. “Didn’t make it to Byler’s. Had a problem with one of my students. Had to take him home. I’ll go get the stovepipe tomorrow.”

“Whenever you get to it will be fine.” Benjamin looked up at his eldest son, reading glasses perched on his nose. In his fifties, he was a heavyset man with a reddish beard that was going gray, a square chin and a broad nose. Ethan had his father’s brown eyes, but his mother’s tall, slender frame.

“I’m hoping this break in the weather means we won’t be needing to light that old woodstove ’til fall,” his father went on, nodding in the direction of the stove they’d recently installed. His father had traded a new full harness for the stove with a man from over in Rose Valley. Benjamin liked bartering and did it whenever he could. He said it reminded him of his childhood back in Canada where he’d grown up. In those days, he said, paper money was rarely exchanged; a checking account was unheard of. The sizable Amish community relied mostly on themselves and traded for everything.

Benjamin turned back to the piece of paper he was studying on his workbench: a sketch of the buggy he and Ethan were building together. It was a small, open buggy, referred to sometimes as a courting buggy. “You said you had a problem with a student. Get it worked out?”

Ethan took a deep breath. He sighed, removed his wide-brimmed straw hat and ran his fingers through his blond hair. His gaze settled on the box on the cement floor that had been opened to reveal yards of leather they would use to upholster the new buggy’s seat. “Ne… Well, maybe. I don’t know.”

Benjamin removed his glasses. “Want to talk about it?”

Ethan sighed again, and then the whole story just came out. It wasn’t the first time he’d talked to his father about Jamie. He knew the boy had been a problem since he’d arrived at school, but still, he listened patiently, commenting or urging Ethan on as he relayed the most recent incident.

When Ethan was done, he dropped down on a stool near the door. “I’ve just had it, Dat. I’ve half a mind to—” He halted and then started again. “I’ve half a mind to resign, effective the end of the school year. If I give the school board notice now, they’ll have time to find another teacher by September.”

“That what you want to do? Quit teaching?”

Ethan set his hat on his knee, studying the courting buggy that was nearly complete. The project was so close to being done that Benjamin was already working on the plans for a more traditional family-sized buggy. “I don’t know, Dat. I’m thinking maybe there’s some truth to what Abigail said. Maybe I’m not cut from the cloth of a schoolmaster.”

“Not sure I agree with that. Other folks in Hickory Grove would say you’re the best teacher they’ve had for their children. Last Saturday over at the mill, John Fisher was talking about inviting some other Amish teachers—men and women—to our schoolhouse for a day for you to run some kind of training. To get teachers together to talk about ways to teach our children about the world we live in these days. It’s not like in my day when we were isolated from Englishers. Insulated. No denying that as the world has changed, we’ve been forced to change. But that doesn’t mean we have to give up who we are. That means we’ve got to deal with the changes not just in our homes and our church, but our schools, too. Men like you, you understand that. You understand how hard it can be for our children. To hear the music, see the behavior and not covet it.”

Ethan worried his lower lip, thinking. Everything his father said was true. Teaching school wasn’t easy, not with Amish kids being exposed to Englishers: the clothes, the cars, the behavior. You couldn’t keep young folks on the farm all the time so they had to know how to deal with the world they were supposed to stand apart from. He knew they needed to be guided in how to stay on the path their ancestors had set out for them and school was one of the places they could find that guidance.

What Ethan didn’t know was if he was really the one to be doing it.

“That said,” his father went on, “if you do decide teaching isn’t your calling, you know you can join me here.” He gestured to the workshop they were both proud of. “Before you know it, Levi will be home and we’ll be getting serious about production.”

Over the winter they’d added an overhead door in the shop big enough to accommodate a buggy, and they purchased quite a few tools. A buggy maker had to be a welder, an upholsterer, a carpenter, mechanic and painter all rolled into one and he needed different tools for each aspect of the construction. Ethan’s brother Levi was staying with friends in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, apprenticing as a buggy maker. His plan was to learn what he could over the next year or so and then return to Hickory Grove. At least that’s why he said he’d moved to Lancaster, though Ethan suspected it was the larger population of single women that had attracted him to accept the position.

Ethan eyed his father. “You think we’re ready to go into business, do you? So far, we’ve just made that new family buggy for ourselves and the one for Lovey and Marshall.”

“And your courting buggy is nearly done.” Benjamin smiled, pointing at the sleek black buggy that took up the center of the shop.

Ethan shook his head. “Not mine. Will and Levi would get more use of it. Jacob. Before you know, Jesse will be taking girls home from singings.”

Benjamin hesitated. “I know you don’t want to hear this—”

Ethan held up his hand. “Dat—”

“I know you don’t want to hear it but I’m going to say it anyway.” He got off his stool and walked toward Ethan. “Because it’s my duty as your father to say things you don’t want to hear.”

Ethan rose, clamping his hat down on his head.

“It’s time for you to marry again, sohn.”

Ethan shook his head, surprised by the emotion that rose up in his throat, threatening to prevent him from speaking. He took a moment. “Dat,” he said when he found his voice. “We’ve been over this a hundred times. I don’t know that I’ll marry again.” He stared at a spot on the floor, embarrassed by the feelings welling up in him. His father was never one to tell his sons it was wrong to show emotion. Benjamin Miller was an emotional man, Ethan’s brother Joshua, too. But Ethan wasn’t like them. He didn’t know what to do with his sadness, his loneliness, except tamp it down, close it off, stay one step ahead of it.

“You need to find yourself a nice young woman, marry, have children.”

Ethan stood there, unable to meet his father’s gaze.

Benjamin smoothed the straps of his suspenders and then went on. “You join me in the shop and we’ll start making buggies not just for family and neighbors but we’ll take orders from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, even. Rosemary’s cousin in Kentucky says that when we’re ready, he’ll be the first one to put cash on our workbench. He’s running a buggy that was his grandfather’s because there’s no one making them down there.”

Benjamin took a step toward Ethan. “I’m not getting any younger, you know. Rosemary and I, we’ve talked about building a smaller house here on the property. Once you older boys are married, and Rosemary’s girls, we’ll have no need for such a big house. You marry and start having little ones and the big house is yours. Someday I’ll be gone and this farm, this family, will be yours. Now, you know I’ve got things worked out so you and all your brothers will have a piece of it, but you’ll be the head of this family someday—you’ll be here to father your little brothers should I pass before they’re full grown men.”

“Dat,” Ethan murmured.

“Sohn, it’s what God means us to do. A man is to marry. And to marry, you have to get out there and meet a woman, court a woman.”

Ethan closed his eyes, beginning to regret having come to his father. After the day he’d had, he didn’t need a lecture. “Dat, even if I did have a notion to court a woman, who would that be?”

“Plenty of single young women in Hickory Grove,” Benjamin declared, gesturing with his hands.

“Young. Exactly. Can you imagine me with one of Ginger’s or Nettie’s friends?” Ethan lifted his gaze to meet his father’s.

Benjamin shrugged. “So you want a more mature woman. A little harder to find, but they’re around. There’s that niece of Eunice’s who stays with them sometimes. Dottie? She’s not much to look at, but she’s a woman of faith.”

Ethan almost smiled. He knew Eunice Gruber’s niece Dottie, one of the many nieces the woman paraded in front of the single men of Hickory Grove and he knew her well enough to know Dottie wasn’t the kind he would court. It wasn’t her looks that he cared about. He truly believed that beauty was in the eye of the beholder. It was Dottie’s incessant giggling that bothered him. She might have been a woman over thirty, but she acted more like she was fourteen.

“I don’t think Dottie is my type, Dat.”

“Fine.” He threw up his hands. “What about Abigail Stoltz? Nice-looking woman. She lost her husband. She understands what it’s like to be alone, to—”

“Abigail?” Ethan demanded, almost laughing out loud. “Dat, did you not hear anything I said? She accused me of doing my job poorly. She threatened to have me fired.” He shook his head adamantly. “I can guarantee you that if I took a mind to court a woman, she’d be the last one I’d pursue.” He turned toward the door. “I need to move hay before supper. We’re short in the barn.”

“Just think on what I said,” Benjamin called after him.

I’ll think on it all right, Ethan said to himself as he walked out the door. Now he was as frustrated with his father as he was with Abigail.

“Amen,” Daniel King announced heartily as he drew silent grace to an end. He clasped his calloused hands together, looking across the kitchen table at Abigail. He was plump to his wife’s slenderness, his gray hair cut short in a bowl cut, his beard long and gray. His gray eyes twinkled with kindness when he spoke. “Looks good, dochder. Let’s eat. I did a little plowing in the garden this afternoon and I’m hungry enough to eat this table.”

Jamie giggled. “You can’t eat a table, Grossdadi. You’d get splinters in your mouth. Knock out some teeth.”

“Only if the teeth were loose.” Daniel tousled his grandson’s blond hair. “Like yours.”

“Just this one.” Jamie wiggled one of his front teeth with his fingers.

“Not at the table,” Abigail chastised as she put a pork chop smothered in gravy and onions on her mother’s plate and then her son’s. She passed the serving dish to her father.

“I knew a boy who once ate a table,” June said, heaping cinnamon applesauce onto her plate. “A big supper table we used to use for church dinners. Ten feet, I suspect. Chewed the boards to sawdust and had nary a splinter to swallow.”

Jamie cut his eyes at his mother but didn’t contradict his grandmother. Instead, he began scooping the gravy and onions off his pork chop and dumping them on his mother’s empty plate.

Abigail gave her mother and her son a serving of mashed potatoes, then passed the bowl to her father. “More gravy on the stove if anyone wants some.” She glanced at her mother who was now spooning applesauce onto her pork chop. She rested her hand on her mother’s for a moment. “You won’t like that, Mam,” she said quietly.

“I like it,” June declared loudly. “They’re dry.” She dumped another spoonful on her pork chop.

“They’re not dry, wife,” Daniel put in, adding pats of fresh homemade butter to his potatoes. “Abby makes a fine pork chop.”

“Dry as the boards in that table that boy Israel ate.” June began putting applesauce on top of her mashed potatoes.

Abigail gently took the Ball jar of applesauce from her mother and served her son.

“Not near the potatoes!” Jamie complained, laying his hand across his plate.

“My day,” Daniel said good-naturedly as he took the quart of applesauce from his daughter, “a boy ate what his mother put on his plate. That or he put his own food on his plate. You’re old enough to get your own pork chop, boy.”

Abigail tried to spoon green beans onto Jamie’s plate, but he held out his hand to her.

“I don’t like green beans. No green beans.”

“I’m only giving you three. You can well eat three measly green beans,” she said, irritation creeping into her voice. She wasn’t upset with Jamie, of course. It was his teacher. It was Ethan Miller who had her struggling to control her exasperation and think of him with kindness in her heart. She’d been stewing over him since he’d brought Jamie home. She still couldn’t believe the nerve he had to come there and try to tell her how she should raise her son.

“You don’t like green beans with bacon?” Daniel scoffed. He took the serving bowl from Abigail. “Suits me just fine. More for me.” He put a healthy portion on his plate and then a smaller one on his wife’s. “Saw that the teacher brought Jamie home. Spotted that dun of his from the garden,” he remarked, directing his comment to Abigail. “My grandson in trouble again?”

Abigail took a moment to gather her thoughts before she responded. She and her father got along well, but like all parents and adult children, especially those living together, they had their disagreements.

He had a lot to say about how she was raising her son, and much of it critical. He thought she coddled Jamie, that he was immature and that she expected too little of her boy. He’d actually used the word discipline the other day, the same word Ethan had used, which had annoyed her all the more. Men didn’t understand the relationship between a woman and her only son. And neither knew what it was like to lose a spouse, to be raising a child alone.

Abigail stalled, using the time to cut up Jamie’s pork chop for him as she chose her words carefully. “There was an incident at school today. Ethan wanted to talk with me about it.”

“Naughty boy,” June chastised, shaking her fork at her grandson.

Abigail pushed Jamie’s plate back to him and began to serve herself helpings of the green beans, pork chops and potatoes. Then, suddenly remembering that she had buttermilk biscuits in the oven, she rose from her chair. “Oh, goodness. The biscuits. I don’t think that pesky timer is working.” She hurried for the stove, grabbing a hot mitt off the counter.

“What’d you do, Jamie?” Abigail’s father asked.

As Abigail opened the oven, she glanced over her shoulder, waiting to hear what her son would say.

Jamie stared at his supper plate, his hands clasping it. “The kids are mean to me. They don’t want to play with me at recess.” He stuck out his lower lip. “I want to go home to Maple Shade.”

“Oh, Jamie, you know that’s not possible.” Abigail pulled the pan of biscuits from the oven. Luckily, she’d caught them before they began to burn. “We sold our farm, remember? We live with your grandmother and grandfather now. We came to help them with the farm.”

“What did you do?” her father repeated, putting a forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth. “Mmm. Just like I like them. Lots of pepper.” He eyed his grandson as he chewed and waited.

After a long moment of silence, Abigail said, “The schoolmaster said—”

“Daughter, let my grandson tell me. He can speak. He has a mouth.”

“Oh, you’re in trouble now,” June said quietly. She reached for the jar of applesauce again.

Abigail dumped the pan of biscuits onto a plate and carried them to the table. “You have to eat something besides applesauce, Mam.” She set the biscuits in the middle of the table and put one on her plate.

“He’s in trouble,” June responded, pointing at Jamie with a serving spoon that was heaped with applesauce. “That handsome schoolteacher brought him home because he tipped over the outhouse, girl inside.” She plopped more applesauce on top of her potatoes.

“He didn’t knock it over.” Abigail gently took the spoon and the jar from her mother’s hands and then slid into her chair. “Go on,” she encouraged. “Tell your granddad what you did.”

The boy pressed his lips together, slowly looking up. “I was trying to make a lever. Like you showed me at the barn the other day when you were trying to get the cardboard under the rain barrel. I wanted to see if it would work.”

Abigail’s father met her gaze but he held his tongue, though only until supper was over and Jamie had been excused. The boy took no time at all to race from the kitchen and out the back door, headed for the barn he said, to feed the cats.

“So the schoolteacher had to bring him home this time?” Daniel intoned as he carried a stack of dirty dishes to the sink. “Because of his behavior?”

June had taken her position at the sink to wash. It was a chore she could still do well, and she liked it. Abigail had taken over most of the cooking, but she let her mother wash dishes, understanding that it was important that she still contribute to the household.

“Wasn’t there a problem last week?” Abigail’s father pressed when she didn’t respond.

Abigail carried the leftover biscuits, covered in a clean dishtowel, to the pie safe. “Jamie told me he didn’t know Elsie was inside when he started rocking the outhouse.”

Daniel left the stack of dirty dishes on the counter and went back to gather more. “You believe him?”

Abigail hesitated as she tried to puzzle out her thoughts. She had caught Jamie in a few fibs from time to time, but she didn’t want to believe he’d intentionally risk injuring someone and then lie to cover it up. Ethan believed Jamie had known the little girl was inside, which would mean Jamie had lied. Abigail didn’t think Ethan would make up such a thing…which meant her son had told them an untruth. She had to face it.

“He’s having a hard time, Dat. He misses his home, his friends. He still misses his dat.”

“But didn’t you tell me he was having trouble in school before you moved here? Not getting along with the other children, not doing his lessons. Wasn’t that one of the reasons why you decided not to stay in Wisconsin until the end of the school year?”

Abigail closed the pie safe and just stood there for a moment. Her stomach was in knots. She’d barely eaten. She didn’t know what to say to her father. She didn’t know what to do to help her son. She turned slowly to face him. “It’s a hard age.”

“He could have hurt that girl.”

Abigail took a handful of dirty eating utensils from her father’s hand. “I understand that. And I’m going to talk to him.”

Her father stood there looking down at her. She knew he had more to say on the matter, but thankfully, he didn’t. Instead, he said quietly, “I want to help you, daughter. I want to help Jamie. He’s the only grandson I have.”

“I know you do.” She squeezed his arm. “Why don’t you go out and finish up your chores. Mam and I can take care of the dishes.” She shrugged. “Maybe take Jamie fishing in the pond for a little while? He loves fishing with you.”

Daniel nodded. “I can do that.” He turned to go, then back to her. “But you know this isn’t just going to right itself on its own, don’t you? It’s only going to get worse. Something has to change. You keep doing the same thing and it doesn’t work, you have to change your approach.”

“I’ll talk to him, Dat.” Abigail bit down on her lower lip. “And I’ll think on it. Figure out what I need to do differently.” Her thoughts immediately returned to her conversation with Ethan. He’d threatened to expel Jamie. She couldn’t let that happen. Schooling was too necessary, and she knew she couldn’t teach him at home, not with the house and her mother to deal with.

She closed her eyes for a moment, listening to her father’s footsteps as he left the kitchen. She had been feeling overwhelmed for weeks. She had hoped that being here would make things easier for her and Jamie. She’d thought a change of scenery might help Jamie at school, but obviously, she’d been wrong. Her first impulse had been to blame the schoolteacher, but now she felt bad. He was just doing his job. And she’d lashed out at him. She’d raised her voice.

And now she owed him an apology. She just wasn’t sure how to go about it.

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