After everyone in the house was quiet, Madison slipped out of bed, pausing to make sure Elizabeth was not stirring. She tiptoed down the hallway and down the wooden stairs, carefully avoiding the squeaky treads. Thankful for the moonlight coming in through the recently cleaned windows, she crept through the living room and the kitchen and went out the door.
Holding her skirt in her hands, she dashed across the yard to the barn, where she pulled a candle from her apron pocket and lit it with a match. She set the candle on the wooden ledge by the phone, and using its flickering light to see, she dialed the numbers and waited for Anna to answer. When Anna said hello, she didn’t sound quite right.
“Is that you, Anna?”
“Yes. It’s me.” Her voice was gruff and flat sounding.
“Did I wake you up?” Madison asked.
“No. I am awake.”
“Are you okay?”
There was a long pause, and then Anna began to pout out a sad story of how she’d spent the day with Jacob, how she’d dressed up and nearly gotten sick on a boat, gone to places she didn’t want to go, gotten horrible blisters on her feet—only to find out that Jacob didn’t really love her. Even worse, he had found someone else.
“I’m so sorry, Anna.”
“It is for the best.” Anna’s tone didn’t match her words.
“Really?”
“I know it is better this way. I know I cannot live in the English world. I do not belong here. I do not like it. I wish I never came here.”
“But if you hadn’t gone to New York, you wouldn’t have found Jacob. You wouldn’t have discovered the truth about him. And you might’ve spent your whole life pining away for him, wondering if you two belonged together.”
“Ja, you are probably right. Still, it is hard. It hurts.”
“At least you know that it was never meant to be, Anna. You can get on with your life now. You wouldn’t have known that without visiting New York.”
“Yes, that is true enough.” Her voice broke again. “Even so—I want to leave here. I want to go home!” Now she was sobbing.
“You can’t go home yet,” Madison reminded her. “Not to your parents’ house anyway, because Rachel still needs—”
“No, no. It’s all right. Being with Rachel is almost like home. I just don’t want to be here anymore, Madison. I wish I had never come to this big place. I want to leave right now.”
“That’s why I’m calling. You need to take an early bus tomorrow morning. Have you gotten your ticket yet?”
“No. In my misery, I forgot about it.”
“Well, you need to be here first thing in the morning. Maybe by eight or nine at the latest. Can you figure it out and do that?”
“Yes.” Anna’s voice was firm with resolve. “I will be there.”
Madison heard something rustling in the barn—probably a cow, but just in case, she knew she should cut this short. “Good. I’ll see you in the morning. Just be there, okay?”
“I will.”
“Things are going to get better, Anna.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just know. I’ll be praying for you.”
“You will pray for me?” Anna sounded surprised.
“Yes. You don’t have to be Amish to pray.”
After they said goodbye, Madison replaced the receiver back on the phone, puffed out the candle, then listened to make sure no one was around. Satisfied that she’d only heard one of the animals, she put the candle back into her pocket and slipped out into the farmyard. The three-quarter moon was high in the sky now, illuminating the fields with a milky light that seemed to be inviting her for one last rendezvous with the nighttime countryside. As she walked through the field and the high grass, crickets were chirruping happily and the owl let out three hoots as if to say hello.
Madison stood looking out over the pond for a few minutes, soaking in the sounds of night creatures, the smells of the earth and the blooming fruit trees and the water, and the beauty of the moon reflected on the black glassy surface of the pond. She sat on the now familiar bench and sighed.
She was going to miss this place. She wondered how she could replicate this part of her day once she was back in the busy city. Central Park was right by her building, but she knew better than to go down there by herself at night. Perhaps there were other ways to find this sort of place—perhaps it was a spiritual place as much as it was a physical one.
She would have to explore these things another time, because right now she wanted to keep her promise to pray for Anna. It had been disturbing to hear Anna’s deep sadness tonight. Madison felt somewhat guilty for her pain. If she hadn’t encouraged the life swap, Anna would not have discovered that Jacob no longer loved her.
Yet, like Madison had suggested, it could be a blessing in disguise (as Rachel would say) that Anna had learned the truth. At least she could move on now. So that was how Madison prayed—that God would help Anna to shake off her grief and to realize that she had her whole life ahead of her.
Madison also prayed for Anna’s relationship with her aunt. She asked God to help Anna see Rachel in a new light, and to deepen their friendship. Perhaps it would take a miracle, but wasn’t that God’s business? Then she prayed for the whole family, starting with Daniel and clear on down to her namesake, baby Maddie.
Next she prayed for Malachi. She asked God to bring good out of his heartache and to make himself as real to Malachi as he had to her. And to show Malachi that he should get baptized because he knew he loved God . . . not because he supposed he loved a woman.
Finally, she prayed for the people back in her own world. She prayed for family and friends, and she asked God to help her to take what she’d found here—this sense of peace and purpose and connection with him—back to the city with her. That, she knew, would take a miracle too. But she suspected God was up to it.