The faint smell of exhaust permeated the inside of the work van as Abram looked out the window on the way home from work. The miles of pastureland and narrow two-lane roads seemed to go on forever. Dozing in the van was as impossible as sleeping at night had been lately. There was too much weirdness happening inside his home. He understood Ariana’s anxiety concerning Quill’s hint that he would take one of their siblings, but other things were bothering him. Whispers between his parents. Tears his Mamm brushed away, thinking no one noticed. Mamm hadn’t been much of a crier until recently.

In his twenty years of life, he’d never been confused by the happenings in his household. He’d often been overwhelmed by the activity and the vast amount of energy and emotions coming from his parents and nine siblings, but he’d never been perplexed.

Added to those things, it was the third of September. Ariana now had twenty-seven days to earn about $5,500. Time was slipping through their hands, and Abram was taking as much overtime as he could get. Ariana could hardly manage her regular housecleaning jobs because of Salome’s constant neediness. It irked Abram, but he knew better than to get between sisters.

The van passed a woman standing in a moving cart attached to a horse. He couldn’t see who it was. She was bent over, reaching as far as she could toward the horse, and Abram immediately knew she was having trouble with the rig. A small cart like that was as springy as a frightened rabbit. And standing as she was, if she hit one small rock or tiny bump in the road, she would sail through the air and land with a thud. He knew of a man some ten years ago who was in a similar situation and had broken his back because of it. If the horse and cart were threatening to separate, she should bring the rig to a halt before trying to address the issue. But if a stave had worked its way free, she might be having difficulty getting stopped.

Abram tapped Mr. Carver on the shoulder. “Stop the van.”

Mr. Carver looked in his rearview mirror. “Are you sure it’s necessary? She looks to have it under control.”

The two other Amish men in the van sat upright, paying attention for the first time in many miles. “What’s up?”

“We’re needed…now.” Abram pointed, and while he grabbed an apple out of his lunchbox, his two Amish coworkers looked through the back window of the van. Pretty sure the issue was with breeching and the buckles on the trace lines, Abram grabbed his tool belt.

“Abram’s right. Let us out.”

Mr. Carver pressed the brakes without another question, and they began to slow. The woman and rig were already several hundred feet behind them but were coming their way at a quick pace.

Mr. Carver brought the vehicle to a complete stop. “I’ll give you guys a few minutes, but I’m not waiting for long. I’m tired, and I’m hungry.”

Abram scurried out of the van. J. B. and Benny were right behind him. While heading for the far side of the road, Abram strapped on his tool belt and tucked the apple inside it, freeing his hands so he could catch the horse if he broke from his constraints.

“What’s the plan?” Benny asked, taking long strides with his short legs. The man carried an extra hundred pounds, and he wouldn’t be much help catching up with the rig.

“J. B., you try to get in the cart with her. If things go awry, help her get out. Benny, watch for oncoming vehicles. Slow them and warn us. I’ll aim to stop the horse.”

“Hey.” J. B. trotted after Abram. “Is that Cilla and Barbie?”

Abram hoped it wasn’t Barbie, but another look said it was.

Great. Just what he needed to add more confusion to his life—a woman he didn’t understand. So what were Barbie and her younger sister Cilla doing out here anyway? They were in the boonies, and Cilla’s health was too fragile to chance her getting caught in a situation like this.

He held up the apple, hoping the horse would catch a whiff and want to stop. Now that the horse was closer, Abram thought he could see several issues and why Barbie was standing to address the problem. Although the horse was approaching at a speedy trot, it appeared a tug had broken and a stave had flopped free. With the lightweight cart bouncing all over the place, if Barbie stopped in the wrong way, the horse could end up impaled on the stave.

“Easy, boy.”

For the first time Barbie looked up from her efforts with the trace lines. Relief eased the tension on her face, and the sweet, welcoming smile he’d come to know over the last few months, the one that had encouraged him to ask her out, graced her lips.

Women. There was simply no way for someone like Abram to understand them, even though he had a twin sister. One might think that would give him an edge, and maybe it would someday, but evidently it wouldn’t do so with the one woman who counted most.

Not wanting to startle the horse by speaking loud enough for Barbie to hear him, he motioned toward J. B., who was still running toward the cart. Abram showed the apple to Barbie before he motioned to the horse. She nodded and pointed to the trace line. He could only assume a trace line had broken, but what about the harness? Her family, like his, struggled financially, which meant things like harnesses weren’t replaced or repaired as often as needed.

The horse must’ve noticed the apple because he planted his two front hoofs firm for a moment, trying to come to a halt. He then whinnied as if in pain and continued onward. Abram’s best guess was the stave had jabbed him as he tried to stop, so Abram grabbed the dangling stave and held on to it with all he had, knowing what was about to happen.

Barbie pulled back on the lines. “Whoa!”

Abram bore the brunt of the pressure on the stave as the horse came to a halt. Abram’s heart pounded mercilessly, and he’d broken out in a sweat, but as easy as that, the dangerous situation was resolved. He panted while patting the horse and regaining his breath. It was odd how a situation could be dangerous one moment and only a minor inconvenience the next.

Unfortunately, now came the really tricky part—facing Barbie. Maybe he was feeling a bit dramatic because his adrenaline was running pretty high, but after preventing the horse from being speared by the stave, Abram felt as if a sharp object might impale him. He’d admired her from afar for a couple of years, and it had been bad enough that she had come to his home to end the relationship before the first date.

Cilla stood, a bright grin on her face as she leaned out to see him. “Denki, Abram.”

“Gern gschehne, Cilla.”

Benny hurried over to them, and while he and J. B. checked on Barbie and Cilla, Abram walked from the side of the horse to its front, patting its neck reassuringly before using his pocketknife to slice the apple and feed the fruit to the horse.

“Denki.” Barbie was out of breath. “I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

“You can thank Abram. We didn’t even see you,” Benny said.

Abram kept his focus on the horse, but he could see that Barbie was looking at him.

“Denki, Abram.”

Abram gave the worn-out harness a once-over. “Not a problem.” But this rigging should’ve been retired years ago.

“Hey!” Mr. Carver hung his arm out the window. “How much longer?”

J. B. moved toward Abram. “Can you fix this on your own and get her to her place? It’s not more than a one-man job, and if it’s all the same to you, I think we’ll go on home.”

Abram agreed that it required only one of them, but did it have to be him?

On second thought he knew the other three men had wives and children waiting for them. With Ariana busy trying to earn money so she could afford the café, Abram was sure no one would mind or feel unsettled because he wasn’t home on time. “Sure.” He checked a pocket of his tool belt to verify he had his leather hole punch. Clearly the harness would need repairs. “I need some leather strips from the van, and then you can go.”

“Sure thing.” J. B. turned to Benny. “Abram can handle this.”

While J. B. and Benny spoke to Barbie, Abram went to the van and grabbed the only leather strap left in the scrap box. He hoped this would be enough if he needed to add an extender or replace a segment to mend the harness. The Amish men he knew were as prepared to deal with faulty harnesses and issues with horses as any Englisch mechanic was to work on a car.

The men got in the van and waved as they pulled off. Having just gotten the strip of leather from the van, Abram was on the side of the road where the van had been. Once they were gone, he couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if he had been wearing only a towel after getting out of a shower.

Barbie watched him. Cilla too, but she didn’t rattle him. He drew a deep breath before crossing the road. He could do this. It was certainly easier than the awkward misery of trying to strike up a conversation after a singing. Once the singing was over and the separation between the boys and girls ended, the young people would mingle. The chaperones, which meant family, neighbors, and church leaders—a few of whom were waiting for something embarrassing to happen so they would have stories to talk about—watched like hawks as the young people ate from the spread of treats they’d provided. If being shy and uncomfortable around girls wasn’t difficult enough, having an audience of onlooking parents added to the misery.

Eighteen-year-old Cilla started to step out of the cart, but Barbie grabbed her arm and shook her head. Cilla frowned but took a seat beside her older sister. Both remained in the cart, sitting on the bench and observing Abram as he went to the harness to assess what needed to be done first and how. The air around them was stifling with thoughts no one voiced. The only one seemingly at ease and content to be there was the horse, which continued to chomp on the apple.

“Well, there’s good news.” Abram noted that the breeching, the part that went around the horse’s rump, needed repairing before the tug, and then he would have to add an extender to the trace lines. What a jumbled mess of tattered leather. “It’s a good thing this didn’t happen to you at night or while it was raining.”

“True.” Barbie’s singular word sounded forced.

He didn’t look at her. It would only make it harder not to be lured into longing for a real and deep relationship with her. Just be yourself and stick to the job. Sounded easy enough, so why was his heart racing like mad? “I’ll have it fixed within the hour, but it would be best if you didn’t use this harness again.”

“It was my fault,” Cilla said. “When I hitched the horse, I wasn’t paying attention. I was in a hurry, and now I’ve just made things worse.”

Abram got the leather hole punch out of his tool belt and added fresh holes to the leather patch. “Since you’re in a hurry, if you give me your word you won’t use this harness again, I’ll rig it together and get you two on your way as soon as possible.”

“If I give you my word,” Barbie said, “would you trust it? I mean, after, you know…”

“I’m sure you had good reasons to call off our date.”

He heard the two sisters whispering, and Cilla had a scolding tone, but that’s all he could tell.

“I…I think I did.” Her voice wavered. It had to be from the stress of what had just happened.

He wanted to look her in the eye and ask what the reason was, but his desire to understand wasn’t even close to the most important thing going on in his life. “You’re safe, Barbie. Just take a few moments to relax and let that sink in.” Using a metal brad from his tool belt, he connected the old leather of the breeching to a piece of the new leather.

“Ya, we are. Thanks to you,” Cilla said.

He couldn’t keep from looking up. Cilla was relaxed against the bench seat, all smiles. Barbie had her forehead buried in her hand, hiding the rest of her face. Surely there was something he could say to make her feel better. “Knock, knock.”

Cilla laughed, and Barbie looked up, bewildered.

He chuckled and shrugged before trying again. “Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?” Barbie sounded as if she was afraid those weren’t the right words.

“Beets.”

“Are you serious?” She stared wide eyed, but his goal was to get her mind off the stress and danger, and he wasn’t giving up.

With the breeching patched, he moved to the tug and began working with another small piece of leather. He couldn’t see her from this spot. “You want to start from the beginning? Or pick it up from when I said ‘beets’?”

There was a long pause, and the girls whispered to each other again before he heard her faint voice. “Beets who?”

“Beets me.”

He heard one girl laugh—obviously Cilla, so he decided to try again. “Knock, knock.”

Barbie must’ve moved to the far side of the bench, because she was peering around the horse to see him. “Who’s there?”

“Yacht.”

“Yacht who?”

“Yacht a know me by now.”

Cilla stifled a giggle.

“Abram?” Barbie sounded better, a little calmer.

He cut a thin piece of leather from the tug. “Ya?”

Barbie climbed down. “You’re different tonight.”

“Am I?” He thought about it for a moment.

“Ya.”

She patted the horse’s back, her hand trembling. “I’m not sure what would’ve happened if you hadn’t come by when you did.”

“My part was a coincidence, so God gets the credit for the timing.”

“Seems odd, but”—Cilla got out of the wagon—“after all these years of knowing you, I’m still caught off guard by your kindness.” She looked at Barbie and shook her head, as if annoyed with her.

Barbie shrugged.

Rather than get caught between two feuding sisters, Abram decided to change the subject. “So what has you two in a hurry and in the boondocks?”

Neither girl responded, but Abram saw Cilla nudge Barbie with her elbow. When Barbie didn’t speak up, Cilla did. “Our brother Eli needs a medicine that wasn’t available at the closest pharmacy. We’re returning home with it.”

That explained everything. Two of the Yoder siblings dealt with illness—Cilla and Eli. Sometimes, like today, Cilla seemed as strong as any other young woman, and then she’d be sick and unable to leave the house for a month or more. She had cystic fibrosis. Eli had asthma.

But it had taken him entirely too long to get this vital piece of information. If either girl had said something when they finally stopped the horse, Mr. Carver could’ve taken them home. Abram began removing the rigging from the horse. “Get the medicine out of the cart, and you can both ride home bareback.”

Barbie stroked the horse again. “We can’t leave the cart. Someone could take it or damage it, and Daed needs it to make a living.”

Their Daed worked at a local market, and he made deliveries to Englisch shut-ins. This rig was lightweight and fast, so it was vital to her Daed’s job. “I’ll stay with the cart. Send your brother Matt back for it. I’ll have the harness repaired by then.”

Barbie didn’t move. “Cilla can’t ride bareback. It’s physically exhausting and can trigger issues with her breathing.”

Cilla’s cheeks turned pink, but she looked more angry than embarrassed by what Barbie had said. “Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. Barbie should go ahead, though.” He motioned toward the cart. “Go on, Barbie. Get the medicine.” While she did as he said, he rushed to get the unnecessary harness off, leaving the bridle and reins. She returned with the small white bag, and he intertwined his fingers and offered her a boost onto the horse.

She paused, seeming as if she had hundreds of words on the tip of her tongue. But she simply smiled and gave a nod of gratitude before she put her booted foot in his hands.

Was this incident more than just Abram being the closest person to lend a hand? Had God allowed him to be a part of it for a reason that might draw Barbie to him after all?