“You can’t be serious,” Edith said, holding baby Charity in her arms. “You can’t work at a newspaper. You’re in hiding, remember?”
“I know.” Leah ran a hand over her face. “It was an impulsive thing to say to the reporter, but I confess I’ve been fantasizing about actually doing it.”
“But why? You seem so happy and content, toggling back and forth between the Sommers and here. Why would you suddenly want to work for a newspaper?”
“Isaac asked me whether it was just a matter of pride and ego.”
“Is it?”
“Maybe.” Leah snapped another clean, dry diaper and folded it, laying it on a stack on the kitchen table. The house was quiet, and she was alone with Edith and knew it was a good time to bring up her troubles. “But, Edith, there’s something more. Isaac was very unhappy when I suggested the possibility. Disillusioned, that’s the word he used. He said it illustrates the gulf between us, the contrast to being of the world but not in the world.”
“What are your feelings for Isaac?”
The Amish weren’t big on discussing feelings, Leah knew by now, so Edith’s question meant the answer was important. “I’m in love with him,” she admitted.
“That’s what I thought. You’re aware of the problems?”
“Of course. I’ve had warnings from Sarah and Rachel not to toy with his affections. It’s just that—well, we have a lot in common and are very compatible in so many ways.”
“Except one.”
“Right, except one. Faith. He left the community once. And then he came back.”
“He did more than come back. He came back and was baptized. That’s a commitment every bit as serious as a marriage vow.”
“I know that now. Maybe that’s why I thought about taking up this reporter on the chance of a job. It would give me independence and put some distance between Isaac and me.”
“Are you that anxious to leave us?”
Leah looked up. Edith’s eyes were soft and kindly. “I would have thought you’d be anxious to get rid of me,” she said slowly. “I’ve been troubling you all summer, plaguing you with my ignorance.”
“But you didn’t stay ignorant. Now that the children are in school again, I’ve come to depend on you more and more. Sarah is helping Ivan in the shop and with the livestock since the boys are in school, and she’ll be married in November anyway. Rachel is student teaching, so with the kinner gone, I’ll admit you’ve been a blessing. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
“You’d have hired someone to help you, as you said you did when your last baby was born.”
“Ja, so this all works out. It’s a Gott thing.”
“A God thing,” echoed Leah. She dropped into the chair opposite Edith. “You know, I’ve been realizing something a little scary—I’m feeling more fulfilled here than I did when I was working. As a journalist, I constantly chased after the next hot news story. It never ended. There was always another news story to chase. But now...” She fell silent.
“But now...?” Edith prompted.
“I don’t know. I’m different. It’s not just the lack of modern conveniences. It’s not just the sense of community. It’s other things too. The way Ivan reads the Bible in the evenings. The Sabbath services. The way everyone I meet is humble and not competitive. The...the faith.”
“And you feel like something is different inside?”
“Yes. And I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe it’s... I don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s that Gott-shaped hole in your heart,” Edith suggested gently. “Maybe it’s starting to be filled. Have you thought about that?” She lifted the infant onto her shoulder, patting.
“Reluctantly, yes.”
“Why reluctantly?”
Leah gave a somber smile. “You’ve never felt any doubts about your faith, have you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then you can’t understand what it’s like to have no faith at all. To discover that God might really care about me is a little frightening. It’s like—like I’d lose control of my own fate, my own destiny.”
“But why is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know that it is. It’s just scary.”
“Seems like Gott directed you here. Maybe it was time to reevaluate your life.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Leah smoothed another diaper. “I spent so many years working in a high-stress atmosphere that I’d forgotten what it’s like not to be competitive. My friends were the same way. We were all striving and jostling and comparing each other’s careers. But no matter how much I acquired or succeeded, something was always missing. It was like I was swimming with sharks and telling myself swimming with sharks was normal.”
“So you don’t miss that competitiveness?”
“No. On the contrary, not being immersed in it makes me realize how selfish and greedy I’d been—not so much for things as for fame and recognition. I was trying to fill something up inside me. Yet that impulse still raises its head sometimes. Want to hear something embarrassing?”
Edith nodded.
“When I first got here, and the first time I sat in on the Bible readings with you as a family, I couldn’t follow Ivan’s German.” Leah kept her eyes on the growing pile of diapers. “So my mind wandered and I started looking at the children, and how respectfully they behaved during the reading. The journalist in me started thinking what it would be like to write about how you raise and train children. Then I started thinking about this I could write about, and that I could write about, and my mind was just buzzing. When Ivan finished reading, I was a little ashamed to be thinking about my career during a time when I should be concentrating on the word of God.”
“Perhaps you should think about it in a different way,” suggested Edith. “Perhaps Gott was talking to you about ways to leave behind your old life and embrace a new one.”
“The thought occurred to me too.” Leah sighed. “There’s so much to think about.”
“It reminds me of something I once read,” commented Edith. “All the bad stuff people deal with—money, poverty, ambition, war, empires, slavery—all these things are just the terrible story of man trying to find something other than Gott which will make him happy.”
Leah went very still. She thought of her career, her ambition, even the depression from her scarred face—was all this merely something that she was grasping at, trying to make herself happy?
She dropped into a chair and stared unseeing at the floor. Had God put her here for a reason? Was He trying to tell her something? Was He doing His best to make her, Leah, happy?
She found her eyes were swimming with tears. She raised her face and looked at Edith, whose own eyes were soft with compassion.“Are you happy, child?” Edith asked softly.
“No.” The word was ragged. Leah broke down crying, the ugly hiccupping sobs that she knew would leave her face blotched and red. But she didn’t care.
She wept from a sudden realization: she did have a God-shaped hole in her heart, and she’d spent her whole life chasing after things she hoped would fill it. Education, career, ambition, accolades, pride, ego. When it was all snatched away from her that night in the alley, when the gang member had slashed her face, she thought she’d lost everything.
But now she was beginning to realize it wasn’t an ending—it was a beginning. Here in this plain kitchen, next to a woman who’d just experienced for the seventh time the miracle of birth—all of this was directing her toward one unavoidable fact: God did love her. And He was the only one capable of bringing her happiness.
Edith made no move to comfort Leah but merely removed a clean handkerchief from her apron pocket and pushed it across the table toward her. Then she rocked with the baby across her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” sniffed Leah after a few minutes. “I don’t know what came over me.” She mopped her face and blew her nose.
“It’s a powerful thing, isn’t it, to know Gott watches out for us,” commented Edith. “Don’t be ashamed to cry, child. We’re only human.”
Leah gave a hiccupping sigh and slumped in her chair. “I—I just realized that maybe God was guiding me here the whole time. I’ve been happier here than I have at any other time in my life—and that makes no sense to someone raised as I was, to believe a career is paramount and family life is just an afterthought.”
“I know it’s hard, going against early training.”
She wiped her eyes with the handkerchief, feeling drained. “It’s funny, during my first week here, Rachel and I were out weeding the garden one day. I mentioned how angry I was about getting my face cut up. That’s the first time I heard about the so-called God-shaped hole, when Rachel brought it up. And for a moment, I felt this extraordinary feeling. It was, well, like a wave washed over me. It felt cleansing, like it might wash away my anger and bitterness and leave peace behind. Then it faded, and I didn’t give it any more thought, until now. Now I remember that feeling of peace. It’s—it’s back. I guess it took a disfigurement on my face to get my head clear.”
“I think your disfigurement is much less than you think,” replied Edith. “I never see your scar now.”
“Just like I never see Rachel’s small size. We talked about that not long after I got here. She said the Amish look much more closely at what someone looks like on the inside than on the outside.”
“Rachel is my wisdom child.” Edith smiled. “She’s wise beyond her years. It was hard for her at first, accepting her condition and deciding never to marry. But she’s adjusted and is now in a position to help others whenever they need some of that wisdom. She’s a natural leader too—she’ll make an excellent schoolteacher.”
“I could learn a lot from her,” Leah said.
The next morning, she opened her dresser drawer and pulled out the crooked stick she had stepped on early in the summer. She sat down on the bed and stared at it.
Had God sent her here to straighten out her stick? The witness protection program could have placed her anywhere, but it placed her here, among people who didn’t see her scarred face and who—in their gentle, unassuming way—had spent the last few months laying their straight sticks next to her crooked one. Now, at least, she understood that. She realized one of the most powerful tools of a religious life was straightening one’s stick—walking the straight and narrow.
She took Robert Tresedor’s business card and tossed it in the woodstove.
Then she went to visit Isaac.
“You threw the card away!” Isaac straightened up from riveting some leather in his workshop.
“I did more than that. I burned it in the woodstove.” Leah fiddled with a scrap of leather.
“Why?”
She met his gaze. “Because your opinion mattered more than my ego. Or my pride.”
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Praise Gott,” he murmured.
“There’s more. I don’t know how to explain it, but I’ll try.”
“Does it have to do with the newspaper job?”
“No. Yes. Kinda.” Leah dropped onto a stool and felt her eyes prickle with some of the emotion she felt the day before. “I was talking things over with Edith, trying to wrestle with my confusion and, as you called it, my pride and ego. It’s like I couldn’t let it go. And...and...and I burst out crying because I realized everything I did, I did because I was trying to find happiness without God.”
His hands remained idle. “And what did you conclude?”
“That I was wrong and God was right.” She sniffed and groped in her pocket for the handkerchief she’d learned to carry. She wiped her eyes. “I think I understand now. Suddenly the offer from the reporter didn’t hold my interest anymore. So I burned his business card. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Not the business card, the realization about God.”
A few moments passed in emotional silence. Then she raised her head and saw Isaac’s eyes were closed and his lips moved silently. Then he opened his eyes—and smiled. “My prayers,” he said softly, “are answered.”
She gave a shaky laugh. “Mine too.”
But it wasn’t entirely true. She didn’t know what to do about being in love with Isaac.