Grace clasped her hands together to keep them from trembling as she stepped through the wide doorway into the Yoders’ parlor. She’d never been inside, other than to dust the table, fireplace mantel or window seat, but she knew this room was used only for company or important events. As she prepared to face Bishop Atlee, her mouth went dry, her heart raced. She wanted to be respectful, but knowing that her plans for finding meaningful work—indeed, her very future among the Amish—depended on Bishop Atlee’s decision made her determined to emphatically state her case. She would not take no for an answer.
She stopped just inside the entrance. Standing at a window, gazing into the side yard, his back to her, was a short, stocky man in black shoes, black trousers and a long black coat with a split tail. Grace took a deep breath and waited. When seconds dragged by without him noticing her, she cleared her throat.
The man turned to face her, a wide-brimmed, black felt hat in one hand. “Grace, it’s good to meet you.” He tilted his head and smiled sheepishly. “Forgive me. Have you been standing there long? My wife says I’m getting hard of hearing, but I think I just concentrate so hard I forget to listen. I was going over tomorrow’s sermon in my head.” His cheeks dimpled as he studied her with warm blue eyes.
Grace swallowed, unsure what to say.
He studied her. “Ya, ya, you do have the look of your sisters.” He stroked a flowing white beard that made him look like an Amish Santa Claus.
Not that the Amish believe in Santa, Grace thought, glad that he couldn’t read her thoughts.
He chuckled. “Jonas’s girl, for certain.” Spreading open his hands in a gesture of welcome, he said, “Child, we are happy to have you in Seven Poplars.”
Relief made her insides somersault. She’d expected a tall, stern cleric, not a jolly grandfatherly type. Was it possible that this man was the senior church elder? Or had she made another of her many mistakes? “Bishop Atlee?” she stammered.
“Ya. Ya.” His vest-covered belly quivered with amusement. “What were you expecting? You’re white as new lard. Did you think I would reject you for your parents’ sin?”
“I...I didn’t know. I thought...Old Order Amish...all the rules,” she managed, before she ran out of breath.
“We are all human, Grace, none more so than me. Every day, we try to follow God’s word, but from time to time we stumble.” He rocked his head sideways, one direction, then the other. “Then we must ask forgiveness and do our best to live as He instructs us. That’s all any of us can do. It would be a hard heart indeed who could turn away a child for being born.”
A wave of relief washed over her. “So, it’s all right if I take the job?” She struggled to find words. “With the animals...at the clinic?”
He shrugged. “Fine by me. Work is always good. Like prayer, for building character. But why are you asking my permission?”
“Hannah said... I thought I had to.”
“Ah.” The blue eyes narrowed, his expression became serious. “I can see that you don’t understand what a bishop does in our church,” he explained gently. “I’m an ordinary man, chosen by God to serve our community. I do rule on our members’ behavior, because it’s my duty to give judgment as best I understand His plan for us. But you aren’t one of us, Grace. You would have to be a baptized member of our faith for me to instruct you. You must do as you see fit.”
“But that’s just it,” she said. “I want to be one of you. I want to be Amish, like my parents were, to live like you do, to worship and serve God as you do.”
He sighed and folded his arms over his broad chest. “So Hannah has told me, child. And I wish you well. We all do. We would like nothing better than to welcome Jonas’s girl to our fold, but it is hard. Harder to give up the world than you can imagine. I’ve seen others try, but never have I known a woman or a man to succeed. The pull of the outside life is too strong.”
“But I can try? You won’t forbid it?”
“Forbid it?” His eyes widened. “I will pray for you, Grace. We will all pray for you, but...” He shrugged. “I fear your row will be long, rocky and thick with weeds. Try your best and come and talk to me again in...a year, maybe two. Then we’ll see.”
“But...”
“Two years would be better.” Bishop Atlee settled his hat over a gray-streaked head of thinning hair. “Now, I must get myself to the barn or my friends will think I’m hiding in the house, trying to avoid the work of sorting apples.”
A year? Maybe two? Grace watched as the man made his way out of the parlor and down the hall. “Two years,” she murmured, half under her breath. She didn’t have that long. How could she stand the wait? In a year, maybe less, she’d hoped to be one of them, to have a husband and a home of her own.
She was sure that the bishop meant well, but he didn’t know how determined she could be or how many obstacles she’d already overcome. And most of all, he had no idea why she needed this life for herself so badly...why this was the only way. She would show him. She would show them all. She wouldn’t fail in this—she couldn’t.
“Grace?” Anna’s voice penetrated Grace’s musing as she appeared in the doorway. “We need your help.”
As Grace allowed herself to be pulled back into the noisy hubbub of the kitchen and the preparation of food, she pushed the bishop’s warning to the back of her mind. She wouldn’t allow his cautiousness to take away any of her excitement and joy over being allowed to take the job...or of the cidering.
She had a plan today. Grace loved a plan. Between working with the other women and keeping an eye on Dakota, she would scout the territory for a new father for him and a husband for her. She hoped he’d be a farmer. It would be good for Dakota to live surrounded by animals and growing things.
And trees...she thought wistfully. She hoped that there would be trees around her new home. Trees were solid. They sank their roots deep into the earth and endured...exactly what she wanted to do.
* * *
In the barn, John and his uncle had easily found a place in the cider-making process where they could be useful. Uncle Albert washed apples, while John carried baskets of them to dump onto the hand-crank conveyer belt. The apples dropped into a crusher before moving on to the press. Fresh, sweet juice poured in streams out of the press into a vat and finally into clean gallon jugs.
Around him Amish men and boys laughed and talked, sharing jokes half in English and half in Pennsylvania Dutch, sometimes interjecting German words into an English sentence and vice versa. Not everyone taking part in today’s cidering was Amish; a few outsiders had come to share in the work and camaraderie. Uncle Albert knew most of them, either as clients, friends or both, and John watched as he exchanged good-natured ribs with them. A person didn’t spend thirty years in a small county without getting to know nearly everyone.
They couldn’t have asked for a better day. The sun was out; the air was crisp and cool without being raw, and there wasn’t a hint of a breeze. Best of all, the Yoder barn, clean and neat as always, smelled of hay, apples and healthy animals. It was John’s idea of what heaven must smell like. He’d been working for the better part of an hour when Bishop Atlee joined them. The bishop greeted Uncle Albert with a grin and a handshake before pulling off his black church coat and hanging it on a nail.
“Let me take over here, John,” the older man offered, when he’d been welcomed by the others. “It will do me good to do a little physical work before we sit down to the noon meal. It’s quite a spread those women are fixing, I can tell you.”
John wanted to ask him if he’d given permission for Grace to come to work at the clinic, but this wasn’t the time or place. Over the past few days, it had somehow become important to John that Grace join the practice, and he didn’t want to spoil the day if the church elder had given the wrong answer.
John hadn’t caught sight of Grace yet, but he had picked out small Dakota, riding in a child’s wagon pulled by an older boy. In his straw hat, denim coat and trousers, he looked exactly like every other Amish boy, although his complexion was somewhat darker than the fair German/Swiss faces surrounding him. He couldn’t help wondering about Dakota’s father, and if he was honest with himself, hoping that the man was out of Grace’s life.
John stepped back and handed the bishop an empty bucket, nearly colliding with Rebecca Yoder, who barely managed to avoid spilling the mugs of coffee she carried. “Sorry,” John said. He looked around, hoping to see Grace, but was disappointed. There was a girl in a lavender dress with Rebecca, one of her cousins, but John couldn’t remember her name.
Rebecca laughed and dodged around him to hand a cup of coffee to his uncle Albert. She offered the second to Bishop Atlee, but he shook his head. Roland Byler accepted it with a nod, and Rebecca smiled warmly up at him. Roland was a brother to Charley Byler, who’d married Rebecca’s older sister Miriam.
John had been treating one of Roland’s milk cows for mastitis. He didn’t know Roland well, but what he’d seen of him, he liked. Roland was a widower with a son close in age to Grace’s Dakota. The Amish didn’t usually remain single long after the loss of a husband or wife. Roland was a good-looking man, well-spoken and a hard worker. He had a nice little farm. John wondered if there might be something brewing between him and Rebecca. She was young, but not too young to consider marriage to someone as well-regarded in the Amish community as Roland.
One of the young men from Rose Valley called out to Rebecca’s companion. “Dorcas! I like coffee. Didn’t you bring me a cup?”
Dorcas giggled and held out the mug to John. He shook his head and thanked her.
His uncle Albert used a long-handled wooden paddle to stir the floating apples in the wash tank, and then glanced back over his shoulder at John. “Can you check if we’ve had a call from the office? I want to make certain that Bernese puppy is still stable.”
John nodded. His uncle had performed emergency surgery the night before on the sixteen-week-old puppy that had swallowed a bottle cap. Normally, John would carry his cell phone with him, but he’d just replaced one that he’d accidently dropped into a horse’s watering trough. Considering the process involved in making cider, he’d decided to leave his new one in his glove compartment for safety’s sake. He crossed the farmyard to his pickup and had just opened the passenger’s door when he heard a child shriek.
By the time John pushed through the circle of children crowded around the swing under the big oak tree, Dakota was sitting up on the ground and screaming at the top of his lungs. Susanna knelt beside him, crying, blood on her hands. “What happened?” John squatted down by the injured child. Whatever had happened couldn’t be too serious, he decided. No one who could scream that loud could be critical.
Susanna sobbed and mumbled something, but John couldn’t understand.
“What happened?” John repeated. He’d located the site of the injury, a cut on a swelling lump on the back of Dakota’s head.
Most of the kids stared wide-eyed as John gathered the hysterical child into his arms, but Johanna’s son Jonah spoke up. “Swing,” he said. “Caleb fell off,” he said carefully in English. “The swing hit Kota.”
Susanna rubbed her hands on the grass, threw her apron over her head and cried louder.
“Shh, shh,” John soothed. “You’ll be all right.” Dakota clung to John’s neck and buried his face in his shirt. The bleeding had already slowed, and John put pressure on the wound with a handkerchief. Dakota howled again. John started toward the house. He hadn’t gone more than a dozen steps when Grace came running toward him.
“How bad is he hurt? Lori Ann said...” She broke off as John explained what had happened.
“It looks worse than it is,” he said. “Just a bump and a scalp wound. The laceration isn’t deep.”
Grace put out her arms to take him, but John shook his head. “Let me. We’ll take him inside, wash him up and—”
“I can do it,” Grace insisted, patting Dakota’s back. “It’s all right, sweetie, Mommy’s here.”
“If you want.” Reluctantly, John handed over the boy. “If you need bandages, I have some in the truck. I’d really like to examine him, once you’ve washed it. I can tell you if he needs to go to the emergency room.”
“You think he’ll need stitches?”
“If he does, I’ll drive you to the hospital. Do you have a pediatrician?”
“No, we haven’t had time to find one.”
“We have a good medical staff at the hospital, and there’ll be one on call.”
Women had poured out of the house and were offering advice, mostly in Dutch. Hannah arrived, took one look at the two of them, another at the shrieking Susanna and cleared a path. “Take him into the bathroom,” she suggested.
“Is Susanna hurt?” John asked. The King boy had found his way to Susanna and was standing by the tree staring down at her. Oddly, he was crying, too.
Hannah went to her daughter, spoke to her and helped her to her feet. “She’s fine,” she pronounced. “Just scared of blood and afraid that it’s her fault Dakota got hurt.”
“He’ll be fine,” John reassured Susanna, smiling.
By the time they got inside, the bleeding had stopped, and Dakota’s sobbing had faded to a faint sniffle. Once they washed the back of the boy’s head, he could see that the cut was a small one and the bump didn’t seem to be getting any larger. “Put a cold compress on it,” he advised Grace.
“Do you think he should see a doctor?” she asked.
“Watch him for any unusual sleepiness, dizziness or nausea. I’d say the swing barely grazed him. Head wounds bleed a lot.”
“I think I’d feel better if a pediatrician took a look.”
“All right. I’ll drive you to the hospital.”
“It’s kind of you, Mr. Hartman.”
“John.” He smiled at her. “The Amish don’t favor titles. Everyone goes by his or her given name. Even children call adults by their first name. You’ll have to get used to that.”
“There are a lot of things I have to learn about this life,” she said, cuddling Dakota against her. She offered him a grateful smile. “I can come to work for you, cleaning the kennels, if the job’s still open. Bishop Atlee said it was all right.”
“Great.” John grinned. “Now, let’s get this boy checked out before we miss out on the wonderful dinner you ladies prepared.”
* * *
Fortunately, the emergency room was nearly empty, and they were in and out of the hospital in less than two hours. John had been right. A little antibiotic ointment, a couple of butterfly bandages and a superhero sticker completed the treatment. By the time they got back to the Yoder farm, the men were just gathering for the first seating for the meal. Dakota scrambled out of the truck and ran to join Jonah and his new friends as Grace turned to John.
“I can’t thank you enough,” she said. “For taking us to see the doctor, for offering to hire me, for everything.”
“No problem,” he said, stuffing his hands into his jeans pockets.
“I want you to know how much I appreciate it. You’re a very nice man, John, and I hope we can be friends.” She hesitated. “As...as well as employer and employee,” she stammered. “I didn’t mean...”
John’s smile widened and his eyes lit up. “I know it’s not politically correct to say so, but I like you. I like you a lot, and I hope we can get to know each other a lot better. I mean this in the most respectful way. I think you’re an admirable woman and a great mother. Would you consider it too pushy if I asked if there was someone...a man in your life?”
“You mean Dakota’s father?”
An expression of sympathy passed over his handsome features. “Hannah told me that your husband had...that you’re widowed. I’m sorry for that, but is there someone else? You’re not seeing someone or...”
“No.” Grace shook her head. “No one, but...” She hesitated. John Hartman was a terrific guy: thoughtful, funny, responsible, just the kind of person she’d want in her life...in her son’s life. “I can’t date you, if that’s what you mean,” she said. Why was this so hard? Why didn’t he wear a wide-brimmed black hat and Amish suspenders? He would be perfect, if only...
“Because you’re going to work for me? I can understand—” he began.
“No, it’s not that,” she said in a rush. “You’re not Amish. I want to be Amish,” she said. “So you can see, it’s impossible...because you’re not. But if you were...” Her cheeks grew warm and her vision blurred. “If you were, you’d be the first man I’d set my Kapp for.”