Anna walked along the road toward Rosemary’s house, two loaves of pumpkin bread in the basket on her arm, with a sense almost of having escaped. She ought to feel guilty for thinking that, but it had been so long since she’d been alone that she couldn’t seem to help it. She loved her family. She was grateful to them for taking her and Gracie in. Still, she couldn’t help the feeling of being slowly smothered.
That was what she missed most about life in the English world. Not the presence of electricity at the flick of a switch or the ability to flip on the television and see what was happening in the world.
No, what she missed was more basic than that. Independence. The ability to live her own life and think her own thoughts. Most of all, sometimes just to be alone.
She turned in at Rosemary’s mailbox, walking down the gravel driveway toward the house. The loaves of pumpkin bread she carried were a thank-you from Myra, who’d been fretting that she hadn’t done anything to repay Rosemary for all the rides she’d given while Joseph was in the hospital.
The drive rounded a stand of hemlocks and the house came into view. A long, stone one-story, it sat in an L-shape around a fieldstone courtyard furnished with a loveseat, chairs, and an umbrella-topped table. A gas grill snuggled against one of the walls, looking far more elaborate than most people’s stoves.
When Anna reached the door, Rosemary pulled it open before she could ring the bell.
“Anna, how nice! It’s good to see you. How’s Joseph doing? And Myra? Is the business going okay without him?” She took Anna’s arm, practically hauling her into the house.
Smiling at the enthusiasm, Anna handed Rosemary the basket. “Some pumpkin bread from Myra, with all her gratitude for your kindness. And they’re well.” It took a moment to adjust to speaking English again, but then it seemed the most natural thing in the world. “Joseph is pretty antsy at not being able to do things, of course.”
“Of course. Men are always terrible patients.” Rosemary headed for the back of the house, beckoning her. “Come into the family room and have some coffee. I’m dying to talk to you.”
Anna followed her past a formal dining room and equally formal living room. “You have a lovely home.”
Lovely, but the rooms were so perfect they didn’t look as if anyone used them.
“It’s all right.” Rosemary seemed to dismiss the space. “We really live back here.”
The hallway opened into a large family room where sunshine streamed through a skylight. The kitchen was in one corner, separated from the rest of the room by a counter. White leather couches formed a semicircle in front of a stone fireplace. The glass panels of French doors gave a view of a landscaped garden with a decorative pond in the center.
Rosemary was in the kitchen, already pouring coffee into two mugs. “You will have coffee, won’t you? You just have to stay and visit.”
“Yes, thank you.” Whether you were English or Amish, a cup of coffee was always a good excuse to sit and talk.
“Over here.” Rosemary, carrying the mugs, led the way to a round table next to the doors.
Anna joined her, inhaling the scent of the flavored coffee. “What a lovely garden.”
“Not bad,” Rosemary said. “But it doesn’t really fit here.” She shrugged. “We thought we wanted to live in the country, but then we built a house and put in a garden you could find in the suburbs of any big city. Weird, isn’t it?”
“Maybe so.” Anna hadn’t been thinking that, but now that Rosemary had pointed it out, she realized that what she said was true. The house and garden were a contradiction in the middle of farmland.
“So tell me.” Rosemary leaned toward her across the table. “I’ve been hearing about you coming back after, what was it . . . three years away?”
“About that.” Apparently it was too much to hope that the English, at least, wouldn’t be interested.
“Why come back after that long? Because of the baby, I suppose.” She answered her own question.
“Yes, because of Gracie.” That was true, though not for the reason most people seemed to think.
“So this story that the baby is actually the child of a friend—is that true?”
Anna felt reasonably sure her mouth was agape.
Rosemary laughed. “That’s me, tactless to the end. Sorry about that, but I figure if you want to know something, you ought to come right out and ask.”
Anna found she was returning the smile. The words had been said in such a friendly tone that it was impossible to take offense. Rosemary reminded her of Liz . . . forthright and honest.
“I don’t mind telling you. Yes, Gracie really is the daughter of a close friend who died shortly after she was born. There wasn’t any other family.”
“Sad. But the baby has ended up with plenty of relatives now, right?”
“Right.”
“We built this big house thinking we’d have babies to fill it.” Rosemary’s eyes were shadowed. “It hasn’t happened. Not yet, anyway.”
“I’m sorry.” She wanted to ask what the doctors said about Rosemary’s chances of getting pregnant, since she wanted it so much, but she barely knew Rosemary, despite the woman’s quick friendliness.
“No sense in brooding about it. That’s what my husband says.” She waved her hand, as if trying to dismiss the subject. “You must have found it tough, getting used to the real world after growing up Amish. How on earth did you manage all alone?”
“I had some English friends who helped at first.” They’d soon fallen away, though. They weren’t family. “Even so, I wasn’t nearly as prepared as I thought I was. Getting a job, finding a place to live, getting my GED—all of it was new.”
Funny, that no one else had asked that. Her family seemed to consider her life out there a blank page. Samuel, who knew what it was like more than anyone, had only talked about the adjustment of returning.
“Rough.” Rosemary took a gulp of her coffee. “Was any of it what you expected? Was it worth it?”
She considered. “The independence was great. Just being able to decide things for myself was so different from anything I was used to.”
“Yeah, but there are downsides to that—like not having anyone care if something happens to you.” Rosemary sounded as if she understood that personally.
Anna nodded. That had been the worst of it. “I made friends, eventually. People who became like family to me.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m talking too much about myself. Tell me about you. Where are you from?”
That was always a safe question in the outside world. People always seemed to be from someplace other than where they were. If you asked an Amishman that question, he’d look at you blankly.
“Originally Los Angeles.” She shrugged. “My husband changed jobs a lot at first. Always onward and upward. You know how that is. We saw this area when we were driving to Pittsburgh for a job interview. He had this vision that we’d settle down in the country, live close to nature, and he’d quit working so hard, but he never will.” She lifted her hands in a giving-up gesture. “He’s gone most of the time. Truth is, I’m bored.”
That was how Anna had always felt as a teenager, bored out of her mind by the sameness of life here. Now—well, now she didn’t have time to be bored. Amish or English, she didn’t have time for that, not with a child to raise.
“So tell me.” Rosemary’s curiosity apparently wasn’t slaked yet. “Are you really going to stay?”
The blunt question gave her pause. She thought about her reaction to Daad’s comment about getting rid of the car.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. She glanced at the clock. “I should be getting back.”
“Do you have to?” Rosemary shook her head. “Well, sure, you’ve got stuff to do, I know. That’s the Amish. Always busy. Maybe if I didn’t have electricity, I wouldn’t be bored.” She smiled, standing when Anna did. “Listen, come back any time. Whenever you want to feel like an Englischer again.”
“Okay, I will.” Funny, how easy it was to fall back into an English way of speaking.
“Great.” Rosemary gave her a quick hug. “See you later.”
Maybe Rosemary just wanted someone to talk to, but that didn’t really matter. Anna had found a friend, and she hadn’t even realized that she needed one.
• • •
Anna stood on the back porch, Gracie in her arms, watching the family gathered in the backyard for the picnic. With the meal over, adults settled in their seats to talk, while the children, too restless to wait for the cake and ice cream, chased each other around the yard or lined up for turns at cranking the handle of the ice cream maker.
Once again Anna had that dizzying sensation of seeing them as an outsider did. Who were they, these people who dressed so strangely and spoke a different language? That was what an outsider would see.
An outsider would see her as one of them. Same clothes, same language, same mannerisms—quiet, unassuming, humble. No outsider could look at her heart and know what was happening there. Sometimes even she couldn’t.
Gracie tugged at Anna’s kapp string, one of her favorite occupations. Anna caught the chubby little hand and kissed it, making Gracie laugh. Certainty settled in her.
What she felt or didn’t feel at this moment didn’t matter. The only important consideration was keeping Gracie safe.
“Anna, you’re keeping that beautiful boppli to yourself, ain’t so?” Mahlon’s Esther hurried up the porch steps, Mahlon close behind her. “Let me put these dishes in the kitchen, and then I want to take her.” She paused to coo at Gracie. “She remembers Aunt Esther, don’t you, little schnickelfritz?”
Gracie babbled something incomprehensible, clasping her hands and then stretching them up, as if ready to fly out of Anna’s arms.
Anna was swept with the need to hold her close. Don’t be so eager to fly away, little bird. You need your mammi still.
Would she ever feel ready to let Gracie go? Somehow she doubted it.
Mahlon held out his hands to Gracie. “Come and see me, little one.”
Gracie hesitated for a moment, giving him a coy smile. Then she lunged into his arms. Laughing, he lifted her over his head, making her shriek with glee.
“Careful,” Anna warned. “She just had her supper. You don’t want applesauce and mashed potatoes all over you. Maybe I should take her.”
Mahlon settled Gracie high in his arms. “You’re just jealous because she wants Uncle Mahlon now. I’ll look after her.” Before Anna could answer, he marched off the porch with the baby.
Gracie would be fine with him. Maybe Mahlon didn’t know a lot about babies yet, but he wasn’t the careless boy he’d been. He was a grown man, perfectly capable of watching Gracie. Probably he and Esther would be starting a family of their own before long.
Anna should be helping Myra bring out the birthday cake instead of standing here worrying. She headed for the kitchen, her thoughts flickering to the girl she’d been. That girl had never taken responsibility for a thing, if she could help it. She couldn’t have imagined how she’d feel as a parent.
“Anna, look at the cake Leah brought.” Myra was cutting thick slabs of chocolate cake. “Barbara brought snitz pies. Maybe get that cream out to go with. And the birthday cake is all ready except for lighting the candle.”
Nodding, Anna went to the propane refrigerator for the whipped cream. She had made the cake herself that morning, yellow cake with white frosting, trimmed with pink icing. She wasn’t good enough with icing to write Gracie’s name, but Gracie wouldn’t know.
There would be no photos to hold the memory. The ban on cameras irked her, but then, she wasn’t likely to forget this day. “Shall I take coffee out then?”
“Ja, that would be fine.” Myra looked up, her cheeks flushed. “Joseph looks gut tonight, ain’t so?” Her eyes grew concerned. “I was afraid he’d be too tired for this. You don’t think it’s too much for him, do you?”
Anna glanced out the kitchen window. Joseph sat in the rocking chair they’d carried out for him, a pillow at his back to cushion the sore ribs and a footstool under his feet. He was deep in conversation with Samuel and Leah’s Daniel, young Matthew nearby listening in respectfully to his elders.
“Joseph looks fine right now,” she said. “We can keep a close eye on him in case he starts getting tired.”
“Ja, you’re right.” Myra shook her head. “I worry too much, but . . .” She hesitated, and Anna knew without more being said that she was thinking about the babe she was carrying and the test results she was still waiting for. “I’m glad you’re here, Anna. I don’t know what we’d do without you just now.”
“I’m glad, too,” she said, picking up the coffeepot.
To her surprise, that was true. The trouble with the car that had landed her at Joseph and Myra’s door seemed to have brought her to the right place at the right time. Whatever the future, she was here with them now.
The future. She carried a tray with cups and coffeepot to the door, pushing the screen open with her hip. Let her mind go there, and it would start spinning again. With no money and no viable transportation, she couldn’t leave now if she wanted to.
Samuel saw her coming. He jumped up to take the heavy tray from her, his fingers brushing hers. “I’ll carry that for you.”
“Denke, Samuel.” She withdrew her hands quickly, afraid someone might see. Might comment.
“He just wants you to hurry back for the cake and pies,” Joseph said, smiling. “He’s still hungry.”
“I think you’re talking about yourself, Joseph,” Daniel put in. “A man needs plenty to eat when he’s recovering, ain’t so?”
Joseph patted his lean stomach. “Wouldn’t hurt, I guess.”
“There’s a piece of cake and pie with your name on them,” Anna assured him.
She glanced around for Gracie, and found her sitting in the grass with Sarah. They both had small wooden toys their grossdaadi had carved for them—a duck for Sarah and a dog for Gracie. The end of the picnic table held a stack of other gifts for the birthday girl.
Sarah held up the duck in front of Gracie’s face. “Quack, quack, duck.”
“Quack,” Gracie parroted. Everyone laughed, and Daadi bent to pat her head.
Heart full, Anna turned back to the kitchen for the birthday cake.
When she came back out, the mood had changed. She sensed it the moment she approached the adults, reading it in the lowered voices and troubled faces.
“What is it?” She put the tray of cake down.
“Nothing,” Mahlon said quickly. “It’s nothing.”
“Barbara was just telling us the gossip that’s going around,” Samuel said evenly, his gaze meeting hers.
A surge of gratitude went through her. Samuel understood better than anyone that she’d rather know than guess.
“What are they saying?” She stood stiffly at the end of the picnic table, feeling like the accused.
Barbara’s normally ruddy cheeks were flushed even more. “Levi says I should have kept my mouth shut, and maybe he’s right. But that Mary Stoltzfus is just plain mean-spirited.”
“Barbara . . .” Levi said.
“Well, she is.” Barbara glanced at her boys, chasing each other around the oak tree. “Maybe because she had no kinder of her own, she always thinks she knows more than anyone. Well, she was wrong about our Anna, and I told her so right to her face, right there in Mueller’s store.”
A mix of feelings roiled in Anna—surprise that Barbara had stood up for her mingled with annoyance that she’d done it in so public a place, along with anger at Mary Stoltzfus and her interfering.
“What is she saying?” She managed to say the words evenly.
Barbara’s color deepened to a dull brick shade. “That little Gracie is really your child, and that the rest of the story is a pack of lies. And I said to her, ‘Mary Stoltzfus, you should be ashamed and on your knees in front of the congregation yourself. Elias Beiler himself saw the papers making Gracie our Anna’s adopted child, and the bishop is the one to know Anna’s heart, not you.’ That’s what I said, and I’d say it again.” She looked around, as if wanting someone to argue with her.
Anna couldn’t say a thing. That Barbara, of all people, should be the one to spring to her defense—well, as Samuel had once pointed out to her, she’d never given Barbara much cause to like her. Her throat was almost too tight to speak, but she had to.
“Denke, Barbara. Denke.”
She’d have tried to say more, but Gracie picked that moment to take two wavering steps. Even before Anna could exclaim about it, Gracie suddenly seemed to realize what she was doing, wobbled, and fell onto her hands and knees. More surprised than hurt, she burst into tears.
Daadi reached her before anyone else could. “There, there, little one.” He scooped her up in his arms, cradling her against his chest. “You’re all right, ain’t so? You’re just learning to walk. It takes a few tumbles to learn something new.”
Gracie sniffled a time or two and smiled, with an effect like the sun coming from behind the clouds. She patted his beard. “Ga-da,” she announced proudly.
“Ach, she’s trying to say grossdaadi, the little dear,” Esther said.
Murmurs of agreement, of love, sounded. Daadi’s eyes were bright with tears as he smiled and kissed Gracie.
Anna tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She wanted Gracie to be safe, and so she was. The family would give Gracie more than Anna ever could alone.
And if, in the end, she decided they should leave, at least Gracie would have known their love.
Longing welled up in her. Anna wanted to say something, do something, that would show what her heart couldn’t express.
She thought of the car—two cars, really. A car had taken her away from them, and another had brought her back again. That was the car that was parked in the barn, mute cause of Joseph’s pain.
She patted Gracie, secure in her grossdaadi’s arms. “Daadi, I think it’s time to get rid of the car. Do you know someone who would haul it away?”
He nodded, his eyes bright, his expression telling her that he knew exactly what she was saying.
“Ja, Anna. I will take care of it for you.” He clapped his hands, getting everyone’s attention. “Komm, it’s time we lit the candle on that birthday cake.”
• • •
Anna slipped out the back door into the dusk, much as she had when she’d been a teenager. Back then, she’d have been planning to hitch up Mamm’s buggy and go off to meet her friends, sometimes Amish but more often English.
Now, she simply wanted a few minutes to herself—that, and to find the toy dog Daadi had carved for Gracie. Somehow in the midst of all the cleaning up, the toy hadn’t made it back into the house.
She stepped down off the porch and switched on the flashlight she carried. She’d never find the small object in the grass without it. If the house had electric lights on the outside, as so many English farmhouses did, she could throw a switch and illuminate the whole area.
The Amish dictum had usually been that if it runs on batteries and doesn’t depend on a connection to the power grid, it’s acceptable. With the advent of so many other battery-operated gadgets, from boom boxes to cell phones and iPods, the lines had to be drawn over and over again.
She swept the flashlight beam across the yard in an arc. Could she get used to this way of life again?
She could give up electric lights, she supposed. But could she give up her independence after all she had gone through to get it?
The flashlight beam picked up a glimmer of white, and she stooped, but it was only a paper napkin, probably blown off the table.
She wanted to give Gracie the best life possible. Was an Amish life the best for her? What about college, a profession, all the things that the outside world considered important? The more she thought about it, the more she felt as if her head would explode.
“Have you lost something, Anna?” Samuel’s voice came out of the dark beyond the range of her light. She swung around, the beam striking his blue shirt, his tanned face.
He put up a hand to shield his eyes from the glare, and she lowered the torch immediately.
“I’m sorry. You startled me. I didn’t realize anyone was out here.”
“Just making the rounds of the barn and henhouse,” he said, moving closer.
“Don’t you need a light for that?”
He gave a low chuckle. “It’s not dark out yet, Anna. Switch that off and let your eyes get used to it. You’ll see.”
When she didn’t move, he put his hand over hers on the flashlight and turned it off. She began to protest, and he held up his hand.
“Just wait.”
They stood, not speaking. The rhythm of the evening settled over her—the rustle of the breeze among the tall sunflowers along the fence, the chirp of crickets, the lonely call of some night bird, answered by the whoo-whoo of an owl.
Her tumbling mind seemed to still along with her body. She inhaled. Exhaled. Saw the rhythmic flashes of the lightning bugs rising from the grass.
Gradually, as if the lights went up slowly in a theater, she realized she could see. Her eyes picked out the picnic table, the chairs, even a ball one of the children had forgotten. And there, in the grass almost at her feet, the small carved dog.
She bent and picked it up, closing her fingers around the smooth wood. “This is what I was looking for. Daadi made it for Gracie. I must have dropped it when I was taking her in.”
“Ja?” He took the dog from her, turning it over in his hand. “I saw her playing with it, but I didn’t realize Elias made it. He’s a gut grandfather, he is.”
“And father.” Daadi understood so much, it seemed. All the things she didn’t say.
“Ja.” The word came out a little rough, and she remembered about his own father, who’d lost himself voluntarily in the English world, leaving his family to fend for themselves.
“I heard what you said to him about the car,” Samuel said. “It’s ser hatt for you, giving that up.”
So hard. She nodded. “That car was the first one I ever owned. The only one, maybe. I guess it meant freedom to me.”
“Ja, I know. I wanted a car first thing when I jumped the fence.”
She should go in, but it sounded as if Samuel wanted to talk. Given Myra’s worries about him keeping everything to himself, she couldn’t discourage him. She sat on the picnic bench and patted the space next to her.
“Komm, sit for a minute. Tell me about it.”
He folded his long frame onto the bench, propping one elbow on the table behind them. “Not much to tell. I found out that it’s not so easy to get a car when you don’t have a job or a credit card or even a telephone.” He shook his head. “I was so green. Totally not ready for what it was like out there.”
She studied his face in the dim light. “Why did you go, then? It seems so out of character for you. You were never a rebel.”
“Like you,” he said, his teeth flashing in a smile.
“Like me,” she agreed, not even sure now what had been so important about that rebellion of hers.
Samuel looked down, his face growing serious. “It was my daad’s leaving, first off. It unsettled all of us. I kept trying to fill his shoes, thinking I’d be able to go on without him.”
“But you couldn’t,” she finished for him.
“I tried. I got baptized into the church, I courted Rebecca Miller, and we talked about marrying. But the closer it came, the more doubts I had. Mamm was still grieving about Daad, and I couldn’t seem to feel right about anything, not knowing why he’d left. I got it into my head to go after him.”
It made sense, and it also made her reasons for leaving seem frivolous in comparison. “You risked so much.”
“I did. The church doesn’t look lightly on baptized members leaving. I could have talked to Bishop Mose, explained what was in my mind. That’s what I should have done. Instead I went running off, not telling anyone what I intended, hurting my family even worse.”
His voice roughened, and the sound hurt her heart.
She touched his hand lightly, wanting to comfort him. “I’m sure your mamm understood.”
“I hope so. But it pained her. It made it seem like I was siding with him.” His fingers curled around hers, as if he needed something to hang on to.
“Did you find him?”
He was still for so long that she thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he took a ragged breath.
“I found him. You know, I pictured him living in a shack someplace, maybe drinking himself to death, ashamed of what he’d done.” His fingers clutched tighter and he stopped, as if he couldn’t go on.
“It wasn’t like that,” she guessed, trying to help him along.
“No. Instead I found he had a whole different life, living with a woman who had a farm outside Columbus, Ohio. He looked prosperous and happy. He was so at ease that you’d think he’d never lived any other way, even though it was her money that put the clothes on his back and the car in his driveway, I’d guess.” His words were heavy with bitterness.
“I’m sorry.” Anna tried to imagine it and couldn’t.
“I felt like I’d never known him. Like maybe he didn’t even know himself.”
Through the bitterness, she sensed what it was that Samuel feared. She longed to comfort him as she would Gracie.
“You’re not like him. You’re not.”
“I hope I’m not. But how would I know for sure? When I came back, Rebecca wanted to pretend my leaving had never happened, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t marry her, not knowing if I wouldn’t suddenly make up my mind to walk away.”
“You wouldn’t,” Anna said again, searching for a way to convince him of what she saw so clearly. “You’re not someone who gives up once you’ve set your hand to something.”
Surely his endless patience with the horses, his steadfast determination to run the shop for Joseph, proved that.
He was shaking his head, and she put her hand to his cheek, wanting to stop him. To comfort him. But his skin was warm against her hand, and the touch sent that warmth shimmering along her skin.
He looked at her, something startled and aware visible in his eyes even in the dim light. The breath caught in her throat.
Then his head came down, and their lips met. She ought to pull away, but she couldn’t. She caressed his cheek, felt his arms go around her, drawing her close, and lost herself in his kiss.
After a long, dizzying moment he drew his lips away slowly. Reluctantly, it seemed. He brushed a trail of kisses across her cheek before he pulled back and looked at her.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said gravely.
“Neither did I.” She could only be surprised that her voice sounded so calm.
“But I’m not sorry.” A smile lit his face with tenderness. “I’m not sure what it means, but I’m not sorry.”
He rose, clasped her hands for an instant and then let them go. “Good night, Anna. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She put her fingers to her lips, watching him stride off toward his place until the gathering dusk hid him from view. She didn’t know what it meant either, but for once, she wasn’t running away.