Montgomery, Indiana
The night wind brushed Rebekah’s cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut in the wagon bed beneath the quilts Joseph had brought. I wish I had the foresight to bring something besides my quilting bag. She adjusted her makeshift pillow beneath her head. My fabric is going to be rumpled beyond repair in the morning...
Once they picked up Peter, snippets of their charged and ongoing conversation floated back from the wagon seat and filled Rebekah’s ears on the bumpy road to Montgomery.
“I had the feeling she wanted to stay with the English,” Peter lamented, his voice heavy and broken. “I went on Rumspringa to watch out for her, and I let her slip away at the last possible moment.”
Joseph’s voice was calming in its own special way. “You did the best you could, Peter.”
“But now here we are, only a few weeks from your wedding to my little sister, on a dark road back into the world of the English.” Peter’s voice turned to a growl. “Not how it’s supposed to be.”
The rocking of the wagon drew Rebekah into a light sleep, despite her inability to fully relax when Joseph was near. His words made her eyes flutter open a few moments, or hours, later. “What if she doesn’t want to come back, Peter?”
It seemed that Peter was no closer to sleep in that moment than she was. However, at Joseph’s heart-wrenching question, his voice was meek. “Then I believe that will break my heart, Joseph.”
The gentle clopping of the horse’s hooves on the gravelly trail punctuated the all-too-noticeable lull in conversation.
“You have been living with the Wagler’s, living Amish, for almost a year now, haven’t you?”
“Ya. My one-year anniversary will come right before you and Rebekah marry.”
Joseph exhaled audibly. “If Katie doesn’t come back, will you still be baptized in the Church?”
Rebekah propped up on one elbow. The prospect of being baptized in the Church was not one that was taken lightly by those born Amish, much less by those invited into the Amish culture—as Peter had been once it was discovered he was Rebekah’s brother.
When it was decided that Peter would stay on at Gasthof Village, the question had come up of where he would live. Rebekah’s parents, the Stolls, had been ready to volunteer their home; however, they just had their seventh child when Peter came along. Before they could speak up, Louise and Simon Wagler offered to take him on. Not only to teach him the Amish ways and school him on the faith, but to take him in as a son. Their only son, Rebekah’s age, had gone on Rumspringa and never came home, having chosen to stay English. Now, once he was baptized, Peter would become the Wagler’s son. He would take their name and become a member of the Church. He would become Amish. All of this had never been a question until Katie won his heart and then decided to miss their meeting to come back to Gasthof Village...back home.
Katie had never been Rebekah’s favorite person, especially not when she was intent on winning Joseph’s affections before Peter came into the village. Something about this particular Knepp twin, who was astoundingly opposite her twin sister and Rebekah’s friend, Annie Knepp, never sat right with her. Whether it was the sideways glances at Joseph when she thought Rebekah wasn’t looking or her shameless flirtation with him when Rebekah had been burned in her family’s barn fire, she wasn’t sure. But one thing remained. Rebekah simply couldn’t place all her trust in Katie Knepp.
Did something happen to Katie? Is she all right? The thoughts borne of concern for a fellow Amish girl flooded Rebekah’s mind, and she was powerless to stop them.
Was Katie really innocent in her disappearance? Was she simply trying to break away from my brother? Rebekah prayed incessantly for forgiveness for having thought such unforgiving thoughts, even as the most disturbing one of all swirled at the forefront of her mind. Rebekah’s jaw clenched.
Or could this be one last attempt at winning Joseph’s heart?
Peter shifting his weight on the creaky seat drew her from her brooding daydream. “I don’t know, Joseph. If I can’t have a life with Katie like you will have with my sister...” His voice trailed off into the Indiana night and spoke volumes. All three were no doubt thinking the same depressing thought. If your decision to become Amish is so loosely hinged, perhaps it isn’t the right decision for you, after all.
***
Katie Knepp sat alone on the wooden boardwalk of Montgomery’s Main Street, wondering what to do next.
It’s been hours since I missed meeting Peter, she thought as the guilt rose up into her throat. He looked so worried as he waited at the train depot before dashing down the street, glancing in alleyways.
But he’d never thought to look in the depot’s outhouse. She knew he wouldn’t, he was a gentleman. Which was precisely why she’d chosen that place to hide.
Thoughts of her parents and her sister, Annie, chased each other around in her mind. The urge to see them after so long with the English was suppressed only by knowing she would have to explain her absence at the depot and face a scolding. Or worse.
Somehow, I wasn’t ready to come home just yet. Leaving the English world just didn’t feel right at the time. Or, the thought of coming back and being plain again made my head hurt, weren’t things her loved ones would want to hear and would only hurt them. Katie shook her head. She never wanted to hurt those she loved, but it seemed that’s what she was best at nowadays.
The sky deepened to a hazy blue-black hue and the icy November winds swirled along the empty street. Katie hugged her knees to her chest. “I didn’t think this through very well.”
“Yah! Giddap!” A mishmash thundering of hooves on the packed earth made her jump. An Englishman in a tall, white hat drove a wagon at breakneck speed down Main Street before reining to a halt in front of the only door on the storefront façade with a candle still lit. “Doc, wake up! I got a sick man here.”
Katie watched, her mouth agape, as the man leapt from the wagon seat without bothering with the step. He flung back a cornflower blue quilt and exhaled audibly.
The familiar, musical tone of Pennsylvania Dutch came from the wagon. “He hasn’t moved since we left.”
Katie rose from her seat on the boardwalk and slunk back into the shadows, her eyes wide as she watched the unfolding scene.
The doctor dashed out with his nightcap on, the large blue tassel flopping this way and that. “What have we got here?”
“I think it’s a heart seizure. Brought him in from the Amish settlement just north of here.”
Katie’s heart began to pound.
The doctor fiddled with his hands where Katie couldn’t see. “He’s alive. I have a pulse, though faint. You’re a miracle worker getting him here on time. Help me get him into the clinic.”
Katie absorbed the scene as the two men carried him from the wagon and into the clinic.
The Englishman’s voice was loud. “Sorry to leave you with this, Doc, but I have a whole mess of people waiting on their wagon wheels down at the livery. So I got to go, but his son is here.”
“Can’t stay here, son. I have to work. Take him with you, Mr. Williams.” The doc huffed as he carried his patient. “What’s his name, anyway?”
A familiar voice rang out in the dark street. “Stoll. Samuel Stoll.”
Katie sucked in a hard breath.
With a blue quilt over his arm, Jeremiah Stoll, the oldest Stoll son, emerged from the wagon bed. “If I can’t stay, at least let me leave this with my father.”
Jeremiah! Katie jerked her head back and hit it on the corner of the splintery wood with a resounding thunk. I can’t let him see me.
***
Katie waited until Jeremiah and the white-hatted Englishman were back in the wagon before daring to move from her shadowed hiding spot. She dashed through the billowing dust left by the retreating wagon and hesitated only a moment at the doctor’s door. Knocking once out of respect, she let herself in without waiting for an invitation. Emotion bubbled in her throat and blurred her vision.
“Sit there by the door,” the doctor commanded, without looking up from whatever he was doing to Mr. Stoll, who was laid out on a table. “I’ll be done...in...a...there now.”
Mr. Stoll’s limp arm flopped off the table. A second later, a cascade of blood flowed down the soft underside of Samuel’s arm in glistening rivulets. It dripped off his pale fingers in fat drops. Katie’s stomach lurched.
“Oh. Oh my.” She hiccupped and covered her mouth with her hand as the world around her beginning to spin.
The doctor turned to face her, blood spangled across his white apron. “I have lots of work to attend to little lady. Your father is in good hands with me, as I’m not a drunk like most other doctors out this way.”
Katie blinked as the doctor split in two and then went back together. The background spun into a dark shade of blurry shapes. She grasped the back of the straight-backed chair to steady herself. Vomit burned in her throat.
“Oh, yes sir...” Katie stumbled over the feet of the chair in a feeble attempt to get out the door to the safety of the dark, deserted street.
“Furthermore,” the cranky doctor continued, advancing toward her, “what you Aim-ish people do best is pray. So go on now. Get after it. But don’t do it here.”
Katie took wobbly steps onto the wooden boardwalk, gulping in the fresh air, as the doctor loomed in the doorway. “While God’s busy tending your prayer, I’ll be able to save your father’s life. There’s nothing you can do here, so go home. I’ll send word up to Gasthof when he’s fit to travel. Now good night!”
With a slam, Katie was alone in the street. The cool air wrapped itself around her in a welcome assault. After the stuffy heat and coppery aroma in the doctor’s clinic, the chill of the night sent her to her knees, retching and heaving right in front of the almighty door. Tears streamed from her eyes and a hint of helplessness burned in her soul behind the bitter aftertaste of fear.
A voice, which should have startled her, called her attention from her newfound predicament. “Darling, you look like you could use a hand.”
Katie turned her face toward the sound. Standing before her in a checked tweed jacket, an oval-faced brunette extended her hand. A smile played upon the woman’s plump lips, as though she knew a secret, but wasn’t telling. Katie accepted her hand and allowed herself to be pulled upright on wobbly knees.
“I’m—I’m Katie. Katie Knepp.”
The pretty brunette’s tilting smile widened into a grin. She still didn’t let go of her hand. “Hello, Katie Knepp. My name’s Elizabeth, Elizabeth Cochrane.”
Katie returned her sincere and somewhat solemn smile. “Elizabeth, what br—”
Elizabeth’s coughing laugh interrupted her. “My name is Elizabeth, Katie Knepp. But you can call me the name I’m better known by. Nellie Bly, the woman who spent ten days in a madhouse.”