Samuel swept the floor of the shop, finding the routine chore relaxing. Anna’s arrival had introduced a new element into the flow of their days—not unwelcome, but a bit disturbing, even so. He was one who liked knowing what was coming from one moment to the next, not that anyone but the gut Lord knew that for certain.
Finishing, he propped the broom in the corner, stepped outside, and pulled the door shut behind him, taking a moment to lock it. Once people in the valley, Amish and English alike, hadn’t bothered to lock anything, but times had changed. He wasn’t as much concerned about thieving as he was that some foolish kid would get into the shop and hurt himself.
Samuel stood in the afternoon sunshine for a moment, deliberately turning over in his mind his approach to the new horse. Star would be a challenge, no doubt about that. Someone had made the animal wary and defensive where humans were concerned, and it would take time and patience to overcome that.
And while he was thinking of wary creatures, Anna was in the yard, taking sheets down from the clothesline.
How had her meeting with Bishop Mose gone? He’d seen the bishop’s buggy arrive last night, and he’d seen it leave again an hour or so later.
While he hesitated, wondering whether to approach her or not, she turned, caught sight of him, and nodded. He walked over to her, catching the end of a sheet that had drooped close to the grass.
“Denke.” She took it, shaking the sheet out with a quick flip of her wrists, and started to fold it. “You’re done for the day, are you? Or is my brother still tinkering with a job?”
“Tinkering, yes, but not on a job.” He couldn’t suppress a grin, knowing how predictable Joseph was on this subject. “Can’t you guess where he is?”
She blinked, and then glanced toward the barn. “He’s working on my car, isn’t he? I guess it was only a matter of time.”
“Joseph never met a machine he didn’t want to take apart.” He studied Anna’s face. Was she content over Bishop Mose’s counsel? He couldn’t tell from her expression. “Still, when you sell the car, it would be as well to have it working.”
“Sell the car.” She stopped, turning her face away from him as she took a white pillowcase from the line. “Ja, I guess you are right.”
Her reaction raised a few more questions in his mind, in addition to the ones that had been there since the day he’d found her in the barn.
“How did it go with Bishop Mose?” he asked abruptly. Maybe she’d tell him to mind his own business again.
Her hands stilled on the fabric for a moment. Then she folded the pillowcase and dropped it into the basket at her feet. “All right, I guess. Not exactly what I expected.”
“The bishop can be a bit surprising at times.” He waited.
For a moment it seemed she wouldn’t speak. Then she gave her head a frustrated little shake. “I thought he’d say I must kneel and confess to the church. I’d do it, and then it would be over.”
“He doesn’t want you to do that?”
“He says there’s time enough later for that. That I should get used to living Amish again, make things right . . .” She stopped, turning to a row of small sheets that must be from the kinders’ beds.
Make what things right? “Bishop Mose cares more about what’s in the heart than on outward forms, ain’t so?”
“I guess so.” She was frowning, her fingers toying with a clothespin. “Kneeling and confessing wouldn’t be easy, but I’d do it.”
Most folks came to that, sooner or later, when they’d transgressed. The difficult moments were soon past, and the relief at being restored to full fellowship was worth almost anything. But was that driving Anna? He wasn’t sure.
“People think being Amish is about clothes and electricity. They see only the outside and judge by that. We know it’s more about having a humble and obedient heart.”
Her mouth tightened at that. “They wouldn’t understand, even if you told them. The people I knew out in the English world didn’t see much value in being humble. You must know that. You lived out there.”
“Ja.” He didn’t want to talk about his time out among the English.
She seemed to sense that, looking at him with a question in her eyes. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard you’d gone. You were the last one I’d expect to jump the fence. Why did you?”
“Not for the cars and the clothes, any more than you did.” He tried to turn it back on her.
“I wanted freedom. I wanted to make decisions for myself, not just accept what other people told me.” She tilted her head to the side, looking like the girl she’d been, full of questions and curiosity. “That wouldn’t be what drove you.”
“No.” He’d walk away from Anna, but that wouldn’t be fair. He’d been the one to start this conversation. “I went away because of my father.”
He saw her process that, remembering probably the talk it had caused when a middle-aged man with a growing family had jumped the fence, disappearing into the English world without a word of explanation.
“You wanted to find him?”
“Ja, but . . . not only that.” His hands closed into fists, pressing against his legs. He wasn’t ready to go further than that.
Her blue eyes filled with sudden sympathy. “You wanted to understand.”
“Ja.” Coward, he told himself. You’re not facing the truth.
He didn’t want to. And he certainly didn’t want to talk to Anna about his reasons for leaving. Or his reasons for coming back.
It wasn’t her fault that her return made him think too much about that time in his own life. Made him question too much.
He cleared his throat. “My daad—”
A bird cried harshly. He stopped, spinning to look toward the barn. That noise . . . Then he heard it again, and he started running. It wasn’t a bird. It was Joseph, calling for help.
Anna raced toward the barn, a few steps behind Samuel, fear running with her. Her heart stuttered in an effort to pray.
Please, God, please, God. The words kept time to her pounding feet. Joseph wouldn’t cry out like that unless it was bad.
She plunged through the barn doorway behind Samuel and stopped, struggling to see in the gloom after the bright sunlight. Dust motes swam in a shaft of light disturbed by something.
By the car falling from a jack. She rushed forward, breath catching in her throat. Joseph lay trapped under her vehicle.
Samuel dropped to his knees next to her brother, not touching him.
“Hurry! Get him out! Why aren’t you moving?” She shoved Samuel’s shoulder and plunged past him, reaching for Joseph. She’d get him out herself if Samuel was too slow to do it.
Samuel grabbed her arm, yanking her back. “Don’t touch him.”
“We have to help him!” she blazed at him. She couldn’t see Joseph’s face, just his legs. He could be dead—
His legs moved, just a little. She could breathe again. “Joseph, can you hear me?”
The only answer was a low groan.
“Anna, listen to me. We can’t pull at him. That would only make it worse.” Samuel caught her by the arms, shaking her a little. “Are you listening?”
She stifled a sob and nodded.
“We need jacks to get it off him. Run. Ring the bell first—if the neighbors hear, they’ll come. Then go to the shop. There’s a jack on the bottom shelf to the right of the door. Bring it. Got that?”
She jerked a nod. Samuel was right. They needed help. She ran from the barn.
Sunlight stabbed at her eyes as she raced across the yard. She stumbled onto the porch, breathing hard, trying to form the words to pray.
Help Joseph, Lord. Please help Joseph. She reached, groping for the bell rope, caught it, and pulled hard and fast. The bell pealed out, its clamor alerting anyone within hearing distance to come.
Myra pushed through the door, eyes wide in a pale face. “Who?”
No time to break it gently. “It’s Joseph. He’s in the barn, trapped under the car. Samuel is with him. I’ve got to get a jack.” She grasped Myra’s arm. “He’s going to be all right.”
No time for more. She turned and ran toward the shop. Behind her she heard the bell ringing again, sending its call across the quiet fields as Myra pulled and pulled on the rope.
The jack was right where Samuel had said it would be. Anna grabbed it and ran again, pain stabbing into her side. Even as she hurried toward the barn she could see men coming, running from the field beyond Samuel’s where they’d been harvesting.
A cloud of dust on the lane from an approaching vehicle meant one of the English neighbors had heard, too. They’d bring a phone, maybe had already called 911.
For an instant she was one of them, furious at being without a phone in an emergency. Who lived this way? What if someday something happened to her baby and she couldn’t get help?
She stumbled into the barn, clutching the jack. Samuel had already replaced the jack Joseph must have been using, and he had rigged up a lever with a heavy anvil and a barn post.
He grabbed the jack she carried.
“Has he said anything?” she asked.
“No.” He tried to maneuver the jack into place. “It’s better this way, Anna. Best if he’s unconscious while we’re getting the car off him.”
How could he sound so calm? She clutched her hands together. But panic wouldn’t help.
Myra ran into the barn, white-faced but tearless. “They are here—”
Others brushed by her then, men all alike to her dazed vision with their black pants and beards, hurrying to Samuel’s side. Myra made an instinctive move, and Anna caught her before she could go closer.
“Wait, stay here. Give them room to work.”
“Ja.” Catching back a sob, Myra nodded.
A woman bolted into the barn—English, with a cell phone in her hand. “I’ve called nine-one-one. They’ll be here soon.” She put her arm around Myra, exchanging glances with Anna. “How bad . . . ?”
“Joseph is trapped under the car.” The car. Her car, which shouldn’t even be here.
“I’m Rosemary Welch.” The woman was slim, in her early thirties, probably, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt over a white tee. She ran a hand through curly dark hair. “I’m sorry my husband wasn’t home to help. What can I do? I’ve got my car. Do you want me to go for anyone?”
Myra didn’t seem able to answer. She could only stare at the car, her whole being straining toward her husband’s motionless body.
“I don’t think so, thank you,” Anna answered for her. “Thank you so much for coming and for calling the paramedics. We are grateful.”
“No problem.” The woman glanced toward the car, as if wondering what it was doing in an Amish barn, but she didn’t ask. “I’ll wait. I can drive Myra to the hospital if need be.”
“Thank you,” Anna said again. “Maybe the children . . .”
Myra seemed to rouse herself. “They were still sleeping when I heard the bell. Someone should go to them . . .” Her voice trailed away, as if she couldn’t complete the thought.
Again Rosemary and Anna exchanged glances. “I’ll look after them, Myra,” Rosemary said quickly. “You stay with your . . .” She stopped, apparently not knowing who Anna was.
“I’m Anna Beiler, Joseph’s sister. Some of the other women will come soon, I’m sure. If you could stay with the little ones until they get here?”
The woman nodded, already moving to the door. “Call me if you need me.”
When she’d gone, Anna put her arm around Myra’s waist. “You have gut neighbors.”
“Ja.” Myra seemed to rouse herself. “Do you think— Can’t we go a little closer?”
Nodding, Anna led her around the side of the car, safely out of the men’s way.
“They’ll have him out in a moment. It will be all right,” she murmured.
She didn’t know that it would, and the fact that Joseph was still unconscious seemed bad to her, but Myra needed hope to cling to. They both did.
Samuel was directing the operation, the other men moving without question to follow his lead. He was calm and steady despite his anxiety for his friend.
The anger Anna had felt at him for not moving more quickly drained away, leaving her cold inside.
“Now,” Samuel said.
She saw what they intended. The men were levering the car up, shoving jacks into place as it lifted. She held her breath. If it slipped . . .
It didn’t. Samuel dropped to the floor, peering beneath the car. “Once more,” he said.
Again they levered the car up, muscles straining, shirts darkening with sweat. The instant the jacks were in place, Samuel snaked his body under the car next to Joseph. She held her breath, praying, knowing Myra was praying, too.
She saw Samuel’s hand gesture, and the men bent as one to slide Joseph gently out.
“He’s alive,” someone said, and Myra seemed to sag against her.
Thank you, Lord. Thank you.
Figures darkened the rectangle of sunlight in the open doorway. The paramedics had arrived and were moving quickly to Joseph, kneeling next to him in the center of a circle of Amish figures.
“You’ll go with me to the hospital,” Myra said, clutching Anna’s hand.
“Ja, of course I will,” she soothed.
But all the time her thoughts spun in a wheel of blame. This was her fault. She had brought the car to this place where cars were forbidden. If not for her, Joseph wouldn’t be lying there, bloody and motionless. She should never have come home.
• • •
How much longer would they have to wait for word? Anna moved to the window of the waiting room, trying not to fidget, and stared out over the flat roof of the adjoining hospital wing. It had been hours, surely, since Joseph had been taken to surgery.
Please, Lord. Be with my brother. She fought to compose her mind to prayer, but her thoughts skittered helplessly in every direction. Now they fled to Gracie, and she yearned to be sitting with her at the kitchen table right now, spooning cereal into her mouth.
“You’re not worrying about Gracie, are you?” Mahlon moved to her side, a cup of coffee looking too small in his big hand.
She tried to manage a smile for the gawky teenage brother who’d turned into a responsible married man while she was gone. “How did you guess that?”
“Wasn’t hard. You’d either be thinking about her or about Joseph.”
“I’m doing plenty of thinking about him. And praying, too. If only . . .”
“Ja,” Mahlon said. “He shouldn’t have tried to do that by himself, for sure. But he’s strong. He’ll come through this fine, ain’t so?”
He was asking for reassurance, she realized. Beyond his height and beard and outward maturity, she glimpsed the boy he’d been—a year older than she, but always seeming younger, the happy-go-lucky boy who’d tumbled into mischief without thinking.
“That’s right,” she said, trying to sound confident. “Nothing can keep Joseph down for long.”
He nodded, pressing his lips together as if to keep them from trembling. “You don’t need to worry about your boppli, either. My Esther will take gut care of her and little Sarah, too, for sure.”
“I know she will.” Mahlon’s young bride had come straight to the house to take over the babies, while Levi’s wife, Barbara, organized the folks who kept showing up to help.
Those who weren’t taking over duties at home were here, it seemed. The waiting room had slowly filled up as word had spread through the Amish community.
She turned back to the room. Daad was talking to Bishop Mose in one corner, a few older men forming a supporting circle around them. With their dark clothes and white beards they looked like a cluster of Old Testament patriarchs.
Leah sat on one side of Myra, clasping her hand. Samuel was on the other, supporting his sister. Other Amish, their faces as somber as their clothes, waited with them, murmuring softly now and then.
Suddenly Anna saw them as her sociology professor would have . . . a strange, anachronistic group with their old-fashioned clothes and their identical hairstyles, talking in their own version of Low German interspersed with English words.
Different. Odd. He wouldn’t have used those value-laden words, but that’s what he’d have meant. She stared at them, feeling as if she were looking at an illustration in a textbook.
She blinked, trying to shake off the sense that she saw them from both inside and outside the group. Coffee, that was what she needed.
She skirted a small group of men and headed for the coffee urn. As she passed, a word from their conversation reached her. Car. They were talking about the car, of course, the cause of this tragedy. Her car, which never should have been in Joseph’s barn to lure him to disaster.
Her hands weren’t quite steady as she lifted the lever on the coffee urn, filling the cup. Naturally they’d be talking about it, even as they prayed for Joseph. She glanced again at Myra, her face tense with strain, and at the supporting figures on either side of her, hiding their own pain to comfort her.
Was this what it had been like the night she’d landed in this same hospital after the borrowed car she’d been driving had hit an Amish buggy? Had Daadi and Mammi grieved and been comforted by the community?
She didn’t know. She hadn’t even thought of it as she’d come out of the daze of medication, aware only of her own misery. Mammi, Daad, Leah—one of them, patient and loving, had always been next to her when she woke.
She’d repaid them with impatient words and stony silences, so obsessed with her own concerns that she hadn’t even thought about what they were going through.
She spotted Bishop Mose coming toward her. She took a hurried gulp of the coffee, trying to wash away the shame that had hit so unexpectedly.
“Some coffee for you?” She reached for a cup, trusting that the movement hid her face for a moment.
At his nod, she filled the cup, adding the sugar she knew he used.
“Denke, Anna.” He took the cup in a work-worn hand that was stained by the oils he used in his harness shop.
“People out there,” she said, jerking her head toward the window, “they couldn’t imagine a bishop who has to do his own job as well as his ministry.”
Bishop Mose didn’t seem surprised by a comment that had to sound odd under the circumstances. But then, it would take a lot to startle him.
“I guess that’s true. But Paul still made tents when he was an apostle, ain’t so?” He didn’t seem to expect an answer. “How are you, Anna?”
She clenched her teeth, determined not to say what she was thinking. But the words slipped past her guard and came out anyway.
“It’s my fault. If I hadn’t brought the car here, none of this would have happened.”
For a moment those wise old eyes surveyed her. “Joseph had nothing to say about what he did, then?”
“I didn’t mean that.” She fumbled for a way to express what she felt. “Everyone knows how fascinated Joseph is with machinery. I should have realized that if the car was there he’d start tinkering with it. I should have gotten rid of it.”
“And Joseph should have known better than to crawl under a car supported by one old jack, ja? And all alone, besides, with no one there to help him. Ain’t so?”
Somehow she’d rather cling to her guilt. Was that just another way of being self-centered?
Bishop Mose patted her hand. “We’ve all got plenty of real things to feel guilty about in this life, without taking on burdens that don’t belong to us.” He squeezed her hand briefly. Without waiting for a response, he moved off toward Myra.
Things to feel guilty about—she had those, all right. They’d been slapping her in the face ever since she’d returned. Her friends in Chicago would reassure her that she hadn’t done anything wrong, that she’d just been trying to find herself, that she deserved to be free.
She didn’t. The conviction landed on her. She didn’t deserve that freedom she longed for so much. Not until she’d made things right with the people she’d hurt.