Chapter One

Grace Miller stepped cautiously across the lopsided porch of the old cabin, a deep sense of doom hanging over her small shoulders like a dark cloud. Built on a tilt, she thought to herself, eyeing the overhang of rotted wood and leaning post attached to the structure.

Her eldest sister, Charity, would have come to the same conclusion if she were here. Only Charity wouldn’t be here. None of her four sisters would ever be where Grace was. Only Grace would be foolish enough to go against everything she had ever known to be right here.

She shook her head slowly, keeping a tight hold on unshed tears. She was not dreaming. This was very real.

She obediently followed her aenti up the untrusty step. Moving inside the doorway, she whispered a silent prayer for strength to endure this next trial as her eyes took in the room. Her home for the coming months was nothing like the one her mutter had described so kindly before she left. If a quaint little cabin had ever rested on this forgotten piece of dry earth, she wished it would present itself now.

The driveway itself, steep and perilous and certainly not maintained, had taken a herculean amount of effort for the poor horse to climb just to get here. Grace’s shoulders slumped, suddenly realizing she would not again have such a luxury. If she was to ever travel beyond these four worn-out old walls, it would be on foot.

Being shunned in her community had been hard, but she had endured it. Getting banned from her father’s house and the comforts it had given meant no horse and no buggy, which she had accepted. Living here for the months ahead, would be the worst punishment of all. Her mistake was a bitter taste on her tongue, and there was no washing that down. The weight of everything she had brought upon herself was too heavy to bear, but she had no choice.

Life wasn’t all about her now.

And with that very thought, she pushed back her small shoulders and lifted her chin. She had never been a quitter before. She needed to think positively, just as Faith had encouraged her. Think positively regardless of this gloom and decay in front of her.

Walnut Ridge and its Kentucky hillsides and winding roads was nothing like Indiana. She already missed Havenlee and its sweet scents of open air and fresh mowed hay, and here it had been only a few hours since she boarded the bus and bid her home farewell. She would miss the smells of her mutter’s kitchen, of water from the nearby lake, the flat ground of her childhood, and the long roads that one could see for a good distance.

Here everything was all up and down and left and right, just plain curvy in every direction. And dry. Not a spit of moisture anywhere, unless one counted what the overly warm season was stripping from her pores. At least she was on her own two feet. Rattled nerves and fear, they were strong adversaries.

Dropping her blue bag, the few things her father permitted her to take, just inside on the dusty floor, she forced a weak smile as her aenti scooted by her. After twenty-three years living at home, a haus ten times bigger by measure to this one, she reckoned the change would take every day she was here to get used to. Sucking in a deep breath of regret, ignoring Aenti Tess’s rambling beside her, Grace snorted out the filth and untidiness that filled the dim little space.

“Grace!” Tessie barked, grabbing her sleeve. “Are you listening? There are rules here, too, ya know.”

“Jah, Aenti Tess. I am.” Rules. The always-present rules. She didn’t mean to sound ungrateful, but what else could be said about sin or charity that her aenti hadn’t mentioned already?

Her father’s voice still rang in her ears, despite his being three hundred miles away, and Grace remembered every word he’d spouted about immorality and false promises. Sending Grace away from her home and family matched her offense, but the vinegary taste of his harshness was fresh as the morning milking she performed before leaving her family home.

“I do appreciate the charity, Aenti. I will make the best of it,” Grace said in a surrendered tone. Though she barely remembered her aenti, Tessie Miller, for now, was the only tie binding her to family. She squared her shoulders again. She needed to be brave.

“You have no choice, that is for sure and certain,” Tessie replied.

No, she had no choices left, thanks to making the wrong one. Falling in love with Jared Castle, an Englischer, was one thing. What he left behind for her to handle alone was another. And now, as far as Ben Miller was concerned, he had four kinner, no longer five.

How could a father’s love be so quickly dissolve? She bit the inside of her cheek, just as she had done the day Daed scolded her for bringing such shame upon him. If one were to look up “sin” in the Webster book, her name would be there. Of that Grace was certain.

Grace closed her eyes and swallowed back another sweep of shame. Telling her parents she had been seeing a man outside of the community nearly broke her mutter’s heart. Telling them the extent of her disobedience shattered their hearts into a million irreparable pieces. They would never forgive her, regardless of whether that was the way of Amish life, not with a boppli on the way to forever remind them of her weakness and of their failure as parents in the face of the community.

She was alone, tossed away like a dirty napkin and shipped off to face her consequences in this strange place, with people she didn’t know.

Grace forced her eyes open again to keep from envisioning the look of pain that had been etched in her mutter’s eyes. Charity said she need not regret her yesterdays and should live with intent for today. However, Grace couldn’t do anything except regret every single moment that had led her here, and there was no amount of begging for forgiveness that would soften it.

She recalled the snowy day, the warmth of Jared’s hand in hers as he drove along the far end of town. The way he smiled at her that always made her tingle from head to toe. He was chivalrous, attentive over the few short months they had gotten to know each other. He was everything Mutter had said a gut man should be.

Jared asked so many questions about her life, her Amish upbringing, always with curiosity. Boys Grace’s age rarely took time to listen to a girl’s thoughts sprung out loud, and they never looked at her the way Jared did. It took him less than two weeks to be so bold as to hold her hand. Why hadn’t she just ended it there? Had she not listened to her parents’ warnings about the outside world enough to know how tempting it could be? Had her mutter not explained in detail the feelings that ran through young folks? She knew how verboden such friendships were. But Jared’s smooth tongue had a way of convincing her they had something special.

He made promises, and so many of them. He promised to speak to her father and court her properly. He promised her his heart and that he wanted to make her his fraa. And she believed him.

She had cried the night that he’d promised to join the church and give her the life she had dreamed about since she was a girl. He’d wiped away her joyous tears and kissed her, a kiss that seemed to have no end to it. Jared had a way of turning her nos into yeses without her even realizing she had done so. Lovestruck, the Englisch called it, and she had a triple dose of it, blinding her to the obvious. Jared was a liar, a manipulator, and she was the naive girl who believed every honey-coated word he whispered.

Now here she stood, facing the consequences of her naivety.

The baby maneuvered around inside her, the reminder of her mistake catapulting her back to the present. She didn’t dare cradle it, giving her aenti a chance to gift her with another one of those sharp, stony stares.

A baby was meant to be a blessing. She had heard that all her life, but this one was protruding evidence that she was a fallen women. She wanted to be happy, glad to know Gott entrusted her to carry life inside her, but she didn’t deserve sentiments of bliss or shadows of giddiness. Grace was a sinner—shamed her family, herself, and her unborn.

Still, in fragile little moments, Grace dared to let a smile tempt her sullen expressions when she felt the miracle inside her move about. No matter what wrongs she had done to put herself in this place of punishment, her child would not feel it equally if she could help it.

“Lay those in that room,” Tessie ordered the men who had helped deliver Grace and her few belongings to the abandoned cabin. They complied without a word.

The heat was almost unbearable for the last days of October, and Grace found no relief in the shade of the cabin’s sunken roof. She would miss her three-story home and the large basement that always provided a cool refuge on summer days. Grace stepped forward and took a short spin to see all the cabin had to offer her. And there was certainly no cellar. One couldn’t really call it a cabin, could they?

To her left sat a small kitchen. A rusty cookstove, a shelf of dust and plates leaning against a far wall, a sink that had an old hand pump to work it. Grace cringed at the plainness or, for a better word, emptiness. The men began unloading her trunk, a bed her aenti had gifted her, and a small box with her Bible and other personal items. In the center of the open room was a square four-legged table that looked like something a child had rummaged together as a first attempt to create something useful. At closer inspection, Grace doubted it was even capable of holding her Bible for nightly reading without crumbling to the dirty floor.

A shack. Grace settled the debate in her mind. A broken-down, forgotten shack. The main room was half the size of her bedroom back home, and she stiffened when the man Tessie called Caleb opened the only other door to the next room. If this was what the front room looked like, who knew what lay behind the creaking narrow door?

A whiff of stale air was set free. Dust- and rodent-infused, it poured out and hit her like a punch. She was going to be sick.

Covering her face to protect what little she had eaten, which amounted to three hardened cookies her younger sister Hope had snuck into her bag before she boarded the bus, Grace managed to endure the rankness. For the life of her, she couldn’t imagine such a place could ever be livable.

“I will kumm for you Sunday for church at the Glicks’, unless you want to wait until the next gathering.” She was surprised her aenti had even given her a choice. By the frown on her face and those sharp Miller eyes, Tess didn’t seem the kind of person who gave options. Grace wasn’t ready to be thrust into the community and stared at like a newcomer, even if she was one. Everything was coming at her a bit fast, and getting settled in seemed best.

She needed a moment to catch her breath, accept this new reality. “I would prefer to wait. I should get my haus in order first.”

Tessie grumbled, ran a boney finger over the kitchen table, stared at the heavy roll of dirt collected there, and then grumbled again. “I have arranged work for you at the creamery until you are…well…for now, we shall say.”

Her always frowning aenti grunted against the stench of the room but never attempted to cover the scowl on her face. Aenti Tess and Daed had this, too, in common—giving commands without an expression, like a general of some great army not willing to break rank with his men.

Turning on the heel of her thick black-soled shoe against the wooden floor, the same as Grace remembered her first school teacher doing while pacing the floors during reading time, Aenti Tess aimed for the door, and both men quietly followed behind her. Caleb tipped his hat, but his eyes, like the other man’s, stayed forward. No way either would dare pass a pleasantry toward a sinner. Grace already endured weeks under the ban, shunned from her community until she kneeled and confessed her sins before the church in her district and was no longer disturbed by other’s avoidances.

She bit the inside of her cheek, contemplating if she would ever again fit in when she returned to Havenlee. Nothing sprouted. Being an unwed mother justified avoidance, made you invisible or the subject of gossip.

“Danke!” Grace yelled behind them as the door slammed. And in that sound of wood slapping on wood, her future was set.

Grace was alone, shut away, and would be forgotten for the following months. This was her punishment for falling for worldly charms and sweet words. This was her punishment for letting Jared into her heart. This was her punishment for turning her back on Gott.

Dry autumn dust swirled above the floor. Sweeping her foot across the woodened planks, Grace found even the floor itself unlevel. The condition of the shack—sinner’s shack, she settled on calling it—was in dire need of attention. She spied a cardboard box sitting near the sink and went to investigate. On the front, written in thick black lettering, was, “Grace, welcome to Walnut Ridge, Elli.” Grace lifted the flaps and peered inside. There she found linens, crackers and cheese, and a new lamp already filled and ready for use. Digging deeper, she found a small box of matches and lit the lamp. In the glow of lamplight, she spotted a case of bottled water near the front door. Something she hadn’t noticed or expected. Her parched lips were thankful, and she fetched a bottle from the plastic casing without hesitation. The warm liquid sent immediate relief down her scratchy throat and unsettled stomach.

As if first appearances weren’t disappointment enough, adding light into this gloomy shack only awakened her to her current reality. The rusty water pump, the weak hanging cabinets, and the front door that, despite Tessie giving it a good slam, didn’t shut entirely. In the silence of this nowhere, all her pent-up emotions exploded in a rush and Grace surrendered to her tears.

This far from anything resembling life, she could cry, wail, scream if she needed to, and no one would hear her. And so, in the solitude of her own making, she did.

A few moments later, Grace wiped her soaked face with her thin cobalt-blue dress sleeve and straightened her shoulders. First introductions were over, and it was time to live with intent and be glad Gott had seen to her most basic needs. It would be fully dark soon, she measured, and she took up the broken-handled broom in the corner and began making herself busy with the work.

“All things go better when one finds themselves in busy.” She said aloud the words Mutter often sang on dreary rainy days. As the hours passed, Grace stopped only long enough to sip at her bottle of water and cram another slice of cheese on cracker into her mouth. Whoever Elli was, Grace was lucky the woman didn’t know her cause for being here. The creamy flavors of the cheese and lavender-infused flavoring not only filled her aching belly but calmed her unsettling nerves. She had never spent a single night without her family, and now she was expected to spend at least sixty or more of them alone. She collected an old torn rag from one of the pantry shelves and began wiping down the remainder of the room.

The sinner’s shack was the last place on the long stretch of valley road, and only two houses were close—if over steep hillsides was considered close. There was much to consider, now that she was here. Was there a midwife in the community? Back home, Edith Strolzfus would have delivered her child, her mutter at her side. “But mutter will not be with you,” Grace murmured and brushed back another sob. Grace made a mental note to ask Tessie about a local midwife on her next visit, if there was one. Just because Father had sent her to live in her aenti’s community didn’t mean she was Tessie’s responsibility. She was an adult, after all, and very much responsible for her own mistakes—as well as her own survival.

When the late hour approached, Grace wrapped the cheese in the clear parchment it had come in and set it in a half-size refrigerator that was a mere few degrees cooler than the room itself. She stood back and admired how the place looked better already. But every good feeling that entered was quickly replaced by the sounds of her father. She envisioned herself and her sisters, still kinner, sitting at the kitchen table, Daed spouting stories, drilling obedience into their young girlish minds. Maybe if she had listened more intently, she would not be here. Now all those stories he had told about the shunned woman, a lesson for them to take in about the worldly sins around them, would be her story.

She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. No one was going to come to her rescue, help carry her burdens. She was on her own. Grace would have to rely on her own fortitude to survive…and hopefully thrive.