Chapter Twenty-Five

“Twenty-three thousand! It is only a few acres of nothing but forest and one forgotten field. There isn’t even good timber on it any longer.” Cullen couldn’t see why Elmo Hilty was asking such a price for the cabin and hillside, but he was. Bishop Mast patted his shoulder, but Cullen found he could only take a seat to steady the numbers bouncing around in his head, the price required to outbid the Englischer wanting the land for hunting.

“The bank said if you could settle for a higher number, they would help intercede the sale. Elmo should have known better than to use an Englisch realtor.” Bishop Mast shook his head. “We all want to help you do this, Cullen. Within the realms of what is proper, that is.” The bishop’s half-hearted smile was encouraging. His mother had always said little got past the bishop and nothing got past Gott. She was right. Bishop Mast had always shown up the moment he heard Cullen needed him, and Cullen never once had to mention why he needed him right now.

“If Elmo knows it is me buying it, he will settle for the lesser amount from the Englischer.” Of that Cullen was certain. Freeman would pout and stomp if Elmo even considered Cullen a buyer. Cullen had no chance even if he was willing to use his extra savings account for the land.

“Jah, he would. I still cannot see why he would sell it after everything.” Bishop Mast scratched his beard and paced the hardened concrete floor of his barn.

“After everything?” Cullen questioned. The bishop’s eyes widened like a swollen river at the shock of his own words.

“It is not for me to say; gossip is a sin, Cullen,” he said.

Cullen still wasn’t sure what the bishop was implying. “If you know something that will help Grace stay here in Kentucky, I should hope you would share that with me now.” Cullen had never been so forward with the leader of the community before, but Bishop Mast was a sensible man, and if there was a way to keep Grace here, he needed to know it.

“I, for one, will not interfere with her staying or going. That is for Grace to decide. But talk with Tessie Miller. She will give you what you need.” At that, the bishop clamped his lips tight.

“I will do that,” Cullen replied. “I should go make my offer, before the bank closes for the holiday.” Cullen stood and offered the bishop a hand.

“I will go with you,” he said, and Cullen nodded appreciatively. Yes, Bishop Mast was a man who took his role in the community seriously. That, or he was trying to escape a houseful of chatting women baking Christmas cookies.

The bishop climbed into the buggy with a wide smile. “You’re escaping, aren’t you,” Cullen teased.

“Going with you is better than hiding in the barn. It is winter ya know,” Bishop Mast said, jabbing a pointy elbow into Cullen’s side.

Cullen slapped the reins and aimed for Pleasants Community Bank. He had his savings, and hadn’t meant to touch it until he was ready to expand the house for a family. He also had his parent’s savings to lean on if the need ever came. He had almost forgotten about that, but he had always promised himself he would never touch it. Not unless there was a real need within his community for it. Buying a run-down cabin and land that served no use was not a real need; it was a want.

A want that might keep Grace at his side until she was ready to become his wife.

A horn honked, breaking his concentration, and Cullen veered off the side of the road to let the blue van pass. To his right, he saw the old forgotten house, yellow curtains blowing in a winter breeze. Cullen turned to it—it always called out to him—but instead of a mournful ache twisting his gut and blotting out his present day, he smiled. Marty would be glad he found someone worthy of spending his life with. She would say, “Now that is how life is done,” as she had a habit of doing.

“You have grieved long enough. I am glad to see you are moving ahead.” The bishop didn’t keep to himself how pleased he was that Cullen was finally heeding his advice. Even if it was ten years waiting.

“I am.” Cullen suppressed a wide smile. Just the thought of Grace becoming his fraa filled him with a fullness he had long been denied by his own hand.

“Gott does not want us to mourn so long, but there is no time frame on such a thing.”

“I thought all I felt for Marty was gone when she was called home. I never thought I could care for another again.” Cullen figured few men dared to confess raw emotions, let alone to their bishop, but that is what bishops and ministers were for, was it not?

“Took ya by surprise, did it?” The bishop nudged him and winked. “He sent her here. You helped her, and doing so you both got healing. Gott is gut.”

He most certainly was. Cullen’s love for Marty had been so strong, he did in fact bury it in the deepest recesses of his soul. He hid it in the aches of his chest, the center of his bones, and even in the places between teeth and cheek. Selfishly stored and haunting him all the same. But Grace changed that. She awakened that part of him that needed to be rebirthed.

“I don’t know if she will even stay.”

“I have seen the way the two of you sneak glances at each other. Everyone does. She will stay. Are you prepared to be a father to her child?”

“Yes. No child should be without the love of a daed.” He couldn’t imagine a childhood without his father in it. No one should.

“I agree.” As they pulled into the bank parking lot, the bishop added, “You know, I have watched so many couples over the years fall in love, join in marriage, start families…”

“I know this.”

“There is a common order to how these sorts of things are done, and you have yet to follow it,” he said with a wink.

Cullen had loved an outsider and planned to help her enter his world before marrying her. Not the most traditional of Amish relationships. Now Grace, cast away by her family, with child, and not a widow. Yep, for a man who followed the Ordnung to his best abilities, in this department Cullen was lacking.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you.” He really was.

“You have not disappointed me. You are a gut man, Cullen Graber, and you tend to be drawn to the destitute. No matter what path you take to reach that place inside you that brings you joy, Gott will smile on you all your days for that big heart inside you.”

…

Tessie Miller lived in a small two-story gray house at the end of Walnut Ridge. The lot was barely an acre, but she had managed to fill every inch of it with gardens, flowers, and fruits. As a boy, Cullen had climbed the young apple and peach trees while his mother and Tessie sat in the shade, sewing and sharing tea. They had been good friends, and the woman had never once treated him like the other children around her. Oh, she scolded him a time or two, but she also gifted him smiles, soft kind eyes, and cookies, whereas she never did for others. Maybe because she and his mother were so close, he thought.

Stepping to the door, Cullen made a mental note to shovel her path to the barn before leaving, then knocked. He had no idea how to start the conversation he needed to have with her. The bishop had been so vague about everything, but felt Tessie held all the answers to solve his problems. He would be plenty grateful if she managed to simply solve one.

Inside, he heard Tessie walk across an old wooden floor. The woman was so small, he was surprised her steps sounded like the thud of a large man on a hollow floor. She opened the door, not looking surprised that it was him waiting on the other side. In fact, if Cullen were a betting man, he would say Tessie Miller had predicted his coming all along.

“I wondered how long it would take ya. Kumm,” Tess greeted with a permanent frown. “The kaffi is about ready. You are a bit early.” Had she been expecting him? Surely she hadn’t a clue where he and the bishop had been. Cullen chuckled under a breath. Gossip traveled faster than a racehorse. By morning it wouldn’t surprise him one bit if all of Walnut Ridge knew he just bought a worthless hillside.

He shook his head, freeing any concerns from taking precedence over the matter at hand, and stepped inside. Following her past the sitting room into the kitchen, Cullen shed his coat and hat before taking a seat at her table. He still had a few chores at home to tend to, and no way was he missing Abram’s surprise birthday party this evening, but speaking to Tess, while the bishop’s words were still fresh on his mind, was best.

“How did you know I would kumm?” He shifted in the chair as she poured him a cup of kaffi.

“I have eyes.” Was it that obvious how he felt about Grace? “I see you busy about and tending to her.”

“Then you need to bring her here to live with you.” That would sure make everything easier, cheaper, too. “The Hiltys are threatening to sell the cabin if she doesn’t agree to marry Freeman, and her daed wants her to return to marry her off to some widower with three kinner. A man named Leon Strolzfus.” Tessie didn’t seemed surprised.

“Those Strolzfus menner are slower than Christmas comin’,” Tessie grumbled. “Talk at the same speed, too.”

Cullen took up the cup of kaffi, blew the rising steam, and sipped the strong brew. His adrenaline had already worked in his favor today and he made a mental note to not consume more than half the cup given to him.

Tessie never rattled easily, but he had expected a bit of surprise from her. Everything that was happening to Grace was not how things were—not fair or acceptable. And yet, Tessie Miller was not surprised to hear them.

“I know all of this. My bruder has forbidden me from interfering. He does a lot of that.” Tessie slumped into a seat across the table with a defeat he had never seen in her before. She looked weary as an old quilt. The gray hairs slipping from her kapp had whitened more in the passing weeks, proof of how quickly life could wear one down. Cullen needed that fight she had always been known for, now more than any time in his life, and it was simply not there. Even with the bishop understanding his need to help Grace, and not forbidding him, it wasn’t enough. He needed Tessie Miller and all that pluck that made her. Grace didn’t want to disappoint her family again and Cullen feared she would return home as her father demanded. Who else could stop what was happening and convince Ben Miller to do right by his middle daughter?

“Why would one do such a thing to his own daughter, Tessie?”

“He is punishing her.”

“I gathered. But she confessed and repented before her church. She endured weeks under the ban and is no longer shunned in her community. She has been forgiven, so why tell her she must marry?”

“It is what is expected. We are meant to marry, raise kinner, even if we go about it the wrong way. And kinner should be punished for doing wrong. Spare the rod, spoil the child.” She darted wide and uncompromising eyes at him.

“Grace is not a child. She made a mistake, confessed it. We are to forgive one another’s shortcomings. Is that not what we are taught?” Did they all not forgive Dave Shelter, the former deacon who ran off with all their money years back? “Shelter robbed us and we forgave him. Is her sin so much greater than his?”

Cullen couldn’t slow the anger rising up inside him. This was not right.

“Jah, we are to forgive.” Tess exhaled a shallow breath. “Ben knows no other way. It was the same way of our daed, and for me.”

Cullen stiffened at her last words, but Tess simply sipped at her cup as if the revelation stirred no broad reaction. “Tess?”

Looking off toward the light shimmering through a kitchen window, rays bursting through panes of glass in a line of hope that reached the center of the kitchen table, she appeared to gather her thoughts. Cullen dug in deep for the patience he was known for and waited. Knowing Tess since he was born, Cullen had not once heard of Tessie Miller ever doing a thing that would deserve a punishment, other than a few harsh words on a bad day. She was profoundly faithful and stiffly obedient. She bent no rules, avoided all worldly things, and sat front and center with an open ear every other Sunday.

“He would see his kind thrown to the wolves for what she did?” The silence was killing him.

“Jah, he would.” No explanation but a simple yes. Was Ben Miller so unforgiving as to see Grace marry without love? Tess lowered her gaze to her cup as if something were there that would help her. “Benjamin thought our daed a great and Gottly man and does what he can to be much like him. They both share the same thoughts on such matters as this.” No wonder Grace found Walnut Ridge so friendly and forgiving.

“You were sent here like Grace was,” he muttered, trying to recall all he truly knew of this woman.

Staring into his own cup, memories long brushed away resurfaced. Tessie Miller had not been there since he was born; she moved here when he was young. “I remember little. Mutter would walk the hillside to the cabin to deliver cookies and fresh ham and visit.” How could he have forgotten those long hours of digging in dirt and catching grasshoppers on that hillside? On Grace’s hillside. The excitement he found remembering little forgotten moments with his mutter was quickly drowned by the current situation.

“Ya mutter was very kind to me, when no one back home was.” Her dull gray eyes glistened. With guilt or pain, he didn’t know. “It has been hard for me to know Grace was up there, alone. It can be such a lonely place.” Her boney fingers rotated her cup. “Abigale knew that. She said she could see the lonely in my face. It took me two months before I dared open the door and let her in.” The memory brought a smile. “Anyone else would have stopped coming, but not your mutter. No, she saw a young maedel who had made a mistake, a stained thing who needed cleansing. Your daed helped, too. You remember that old hund, Buddy?”

“I do. He growled at the wind but let me climb on his back till I was too big to do so.”

Tess leaned forward, pinning him with a grin. “He was my company like that awful fur ball you gave Grace.” She leaned back in her chair, her eyes still on him. “Grace is lucky to have you and Elli and Betty. I was blessed to have your mutter.”

“But you do not have kinner. Why were you sent to live away from your family?” It still amazed Cullen how one could do that to another. Next to God, family meant everything to the Amish. Even in matters of fallen souls and sin, they did not simply toss a member out without leaving a door from them to re-enter.

Being shunned wasn’t the end unless the shunned wanted it to be. Its purpose was to isolate without harm, and in love, to bring the fallen back to the fold. And when they returned, all was forgiven and placed in a past that could not be revisited.

A tear fell down Tess’s cheek. Then another and he wished he had not made the statement. “I can leave. I am sorry if I have hurt you by speaking of things that are not for me to know.” Cullen stood.

“My boppli did not take its first breath.” Hand trembling, she lowered her head. Like Grace, he thought. The past had repeated itself. Thirty years from now, would this be Grace sitting here? He thought not. If his mother could help Tessie Miller, he could certainly help Grace.

“We do not have to talk of this if ya cannot.” Her story was hers, and she needed to know she did not have to share any of it with him.

“I was alone when my time came. In the very cabin our Grace is in. I was young and knew nothing of having a child. I thought I had time.” She looked off again, and he handed her a hanky he had taken from his mother’s drawer just recently. One never knew when Grace would have a day when it would be needed. With all the tears that were being shed in his presence lately, he fussed at himself for not doing that sooner. “Your daed found me and hurried me to the hospital, but it was too late.”

She was crying, her hardness broken by a memory, and Cullen shortened the distance between them and took her hand. He did not need the details surrounding her hurt in order to feel for her. One look at her face did that good and well.

“I am sorry that happened to you, Tessie. If I had known—”

“Few do. And I expect it to stay that way.” She sniffed and wiped at her damp cheeks, returning to her straightforward posture and the frown that made her. In a short moment, she had surrendered her past and the hurt that dwelled there, but she would not allow it to consume her.

“You think me hard on her, but I pace the floor each night praying for Grace. Praying the Lord sees fit that things are different for her.”

Cullen could see that in her. “Was it an Englisch man, just like Grace?”

“Nee. It was no Englischer.” Tessie’s snarl told him she was not so inclined to sin past the walls of her community. “We both made a horrible mistake.” Cullen wondered how any of this would help Grace. Tessie seemed to read his mind and answered that for him. “My sisters and I had kumm to Pleasants for my cousin Matthew’s wedding.” He assumed she meant Matthew and Sadie Miller, the owners of the Country Kitchen, but did not ask. “We were permitted to stay for a gut long time, a month to help with the harvest and the wedding,” she added defensively.

“I met a man who said all the right things to someone raised so plain and private. I was very unruly and disobedient back then,” she said.

He couldn’t imagine a young Tess being unruly or disobedient. Snarky and opinionated, but not disobedient.

As Tess came to her feet, Cullen thought she would end the story there, not revealing any more of her shortcomings to him. He didn’t blame her. It was a hard thing to admit failure. It had taken him years to admit his failure to steal Marty away from her father and run away with her as soon as he discovered she was being abused.

“I did not know he was to be wed soon after Sadie and Matthew. We wrote back and forth every day for three months, before he told me he had taken a fraa.” Cullen couldn’t imagine the heartbreak she would have felt at the news. Amish or Englisch, man was simply a creature he could not understand.

“I never saw him again until I was sent here to watch his life continue around me and not be part of it. It was my punishment, you see.” She pinned him with a grave expression. “Grace was sent to see how lonely I lived, what her disobedience would gift her. That was hers.”

Cullen felt a rage creep into him that he had never known before. This was another father who found no worth or room for error in his child. If God ever was to bless him with kinner, he would never make such mistakes, he promised himself right then and there.

“The man hid me away in hopes that few would notice me. I never left the cabin unless visiting your mutter. I did not even attend church then.” The revelation was like a bolt of lightning, raising the hairs on his arms and neck.

“Did this man know you were expecting before he married?” She nodded, and Cullen stood to give the floor a good walking over, too. “Tessie, are you saying…?”

Turning away from Cullen, she continued. “I buried our son in the back field. Bishop Mast and your parents were the only others there that day. I was told to return home, but after all of that, I could not allow for it. My punishment was to forever be reminded of that mistake, so I stayed. I have never allowed myself to look past Gott and have followed his word the best I could since. Your mamm was my dearest friend—I could not leave her side, either. My heart broke just as yours did when we lost them. I still weep for her to this day.”

She was trying to convince him of her loyalty since her womanhood began, but Cullen needed no such convincing. Tessie Miller had been as strong in her faith as any he had ever known. He would not judge her for the sins of her youth any more than Grace’s or his own. This was not who they were now.

“And you would let that, or even worse, happen to Grace?” It was bold, stupid, and a little pushy, but Cullen had to try.

“I know what you and the bishop have been planning. I saw him at the bank talking with that Sherman Wilson fellow. But Elmo will not sell it to you, and I cannot go against my bruder’s wishes. Benjamin says we women cannot change after giving in to sin. He says you can yank all ya want on a duck’s neck, but it will never be a swan.”

They were at a standstill. Trying to wrap his head around the mystery this woman had kept all his life and the fate of Grace and her child, Cullen dropped back into his chair and lowered his head to the table with a thump. How could he court Grace and eventually marry her if she was forced out of Walnut Ridge?

“Do not be knocking that thing around.” She smacked the back of his head with her palm. “We need it to kumm up with something smart.”

So she wouldn’t go against her brother’s wishes, but she was still invested in helping Grace any way she could. Cullen looked to the heavens, then back to the coffee cup again. There had to be some way around all of this. A way Grace did not have to leave Walnut Ridge.

“Can I ask you two questions?” She nodded, and a slow grin began forming on her lips. “Do you love her?

“Jah, I do love her. I want to help. I just do not know how I can be of any assistance without going against my family.” Her hands were tied, he knew that, just as Grace thought her hands were tied. His were not, but he couldn’t do much on his own. This would require something out of the ordinary, but not pushing the boundaries of the morals that he had been raised with. If his idea had some worth, and Tessie was willing, they would still need more help.

“If I gave you a Christmas present, would ya accept it?”

“What are you talking about?” She raised her voice. “Christmas is in two days. Can we not focus on this matter first?”

“Would you like to own the property where your child was buried?”