Chapter Thirty-four

FRIDAYS WERE TYPICALLY FRENZIED at the carriage shop, and this one was no different as Jed worked on his assigned surrey. He and Perry had to have their six-day workweek wrapped up before the Lord’s Day—from the earliest time of their apprenticeship, Uncle Ervin had nudged them to be as productive as possible.

Jed was meticulous while finishing the flooring of the large family carriage. All the while, he could hear Uncle Ervin making small talk with Perry, who was building a two-wheeled cart, the simplest type of buggy.

Perry was describing a recent visit to Charm, where he’d run into some old school chums, one of whom was leaving the Amish life behind. Uncle Ervin wagged his head at that, then said something that caught Jed’s attention.

“Speaking of Amish going to the world, I ran into a farmer friend, Abram Kurtz, who grew up in Lancaster County but now lives in Kidron,” Uncle Ervin was saying. “Abram was in line at Lehman’s Hardware behind an Englischer girl, who was all dolled up in earrings and makeup, short skirt, fancy hairdo, but—get this—she had an Amish accent a mile wide and kept mixin’ up her Dutch with English.”

“Not fancy a’tall, I’m thinkin’,” Perry interjected. “You can take the girl out of the Amish, but you can’t take the Amish out of the girl!”

Ervin nodded. “Abram was convinced she wasn’t from anywhere in Ohio!”

“Why’s that?”

“He could tell by her accent she was from his old stompin’ grounds back in Pennsylvania.”

Jed turned to get a better listen, very curious.

Perry slapped his knee, fully engaged, and Ervin kept going. “So Abram decided to have some fun with her and said right out loud, ‘What part of Lancaster County are you from?’”

Ervin continued his story. “Well, I guess the young woman turned as white as a sheet in the wind. And Abram took it even further and said he had some friends who lived south of Strasburg—asked if she knew ’em.”

Perry howled with laughter.

“Her mouth dropped, and right quick, he offered a handshake and introduced himself all proper-like. She played along, it seemed, told her name, but it wasn’t Amish, let me tell you. Then suddenly, she excused herself like she’d forgotten something, and rushed out of the store, leaving her things behind.”

Perry shook his head. “Guess it ain’t funny after all.”

Ervin agreed. “If ya leave the People, son, you’ll spend the rest of your life pretending to be what you’re not.”

Perry nodded and glanced at Jed.

Unable to keep quiet any longer, Jed asked, “So, what was the young woman’s name?”

Ervin thought for a moment. “Well now, I don’t recall.” He was frowning, apparently still trying to remember. “Wait a minute. Jah, I believe ’twas something like . . . Lillian.”

Perry harrumphed and stepped back to use the level on the buggy box he was constructing. “Doesn’t sound very Amish, does it?”

Ervin agreed. “But the Pennsylvania Amish do use some different first names than round here.”

Lillian? An Amish girl from Lancaster County?

“What’re the chances?” Jed murmured, going over to Perry’s fine-looking two-wheeler. He commented on the well-built base, hoping his uncle might say more about the conversation with his friend. Finally Jed asked, “So this was at Lehman’s Hardware, ya say?”

Ervin gave him a quizzical look. “Jah, in Kidron.”

“Small town,” Jed added casually.

“Sure is,” Ervin said.

Too small to hide in, Jed thought. A sudden idea presented itself, and Jed knew right where he was going to be tomorrow—if he could work fast enough. And if I can hire a driver, too.

After supper that evening, while his father and the neighboring farmer were nailing together beehive frames, Jed offered to help Bettina groom the horses. The stable smelled of fresh bedding straw, and he drank in the scent—he missed some aspects of daily farm life after spending nearly all of his daylight hours at the carriage shop.

“I need to pick your brain,” he told his sister with a glance over the horse’s mane.

“Sounds painful.” She smirked in the horse stall next to Jed.

“I’m serious.”

“What’s on your mind?” she asked, grooming brush in hand.

“It might sound peculiar, but let’s say you decided to go fancy and wanted to hide from your family in the outside world—”

“What on earth?” Bettina blinked, her eyebrows rising. “Somethin’ you’re not telling me, Jed?”

He shook his head. “It’s not about me, Simbel—silly.”

“Who, then?”

“Just put your thinkin’ cap on for a minute and help me out.”

“Well, I wouldn’t dress Plain, that’s for sure.”

Obviously, Jed thought. “So how would I spot you if you looked like every other Englischer?”

“Oh, I see.” Bettina stopped her brushing and placed her hand on the chestnut mare. “You must be lookin’ for a girl who’s gone a little overboard. She wouldn’t have a very gut fashion sense—for an Englischer, that is. She’d look fancy but a little off.”

“How do ya mean?”

“If it was me, I’d be the one trying too hard to fit in. First, I’d cut my hair real short and maybe color it, too.” Bettina touched her auburn hair where it was visible outside the white bandanna. “How would I look as a brunette?”

Jed pondered her response.

“Most of all, I wouldn’t sound Amish, if I could help it,” she continued.

Jed nodded. According to Uncle Ervin’s friend, it was the woman’s accent that gave her away.

“I’d also spend nearly all my time with Amish folk, since I’d be awfully homesick,” Bettina said, clinching his plan.

Of course! Jed thought. There are oodles of Amish at Lehman’s Hardware. “I guess I just need to check with the locals . . . ask if there are any fancy folk hanging round Amish.”

“Ach, Jed.” She stared at him, frowning. “Is this a real girl we’re talkin’ about?”

“She’s very real, and she’s a runaway.”

“Well then, I’m sure someone will know exactly who you’re looking for. But, Jed . . . most likely, even if ya could track down a girl like this, she might not have a thing to do with you. Runaways are fed up with bein’ told what to do and how to be.”

Lillian, he thought. If Lily’s changed her name, what else has she changed?

“Tell me more.” His sister stepped out of the horse stall and came to the door where Jed was working. Leaning on the door, she was clearly curious. “This doesn’t have anything to do with the girl you liked in Lancaster County, does it?”

“There’s nothin’ to tell, frankly.”

Bettina gave him a look. “I’ll keep mum, I promise.”

He thought of Eva’s sisterly concern for Lily, and of Uncle Ervin’s comments—if they panned out. “I’ll let you know when or if I find out. How’s that?”

Turning back, she slipped inside the other stall again and picked up the grooming brush once more. “It’ll be your fault if I don’t sleep tonight, ya know, wonderin’ what you’re up to.”

“I’m just spinning my wheels. Prob’ly nothin’ will come of it.” He fluffed the bedding straw with a pitchfork. If Lily wanted to be fancy, that was her right, since she was old enough to make her own decisions. Even so, it was Eva he was concerned about, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she had heard from Lily by now.

And if not . . .

What if I could bring Eva at least some measure of relief? But do I dare interfere in her life after messing up so badly?

Yet Jed felt he had little hope of another chance with Eva if he did nothing about Lily. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was something.

Later, when he and Bettina had finished with the horses, his sister headed to the house to help their mother with some hemming, and Jed made his way to the woodshed to split a pile of dry logs with his father.

Right away, Jed brought up the idea of an Old Order Amish person trying to go English. Typically, he and Daed didn’t talk much when they worked together, but he wanted to hear what insight his father might have.

“What’s this about going fancy?” His poor father looked ferhoodled.

“Ain’t me, so don’t worry.”

“’Tis gut. Thought I heard from the deacon you were planning to take baptismal classes this summer.”

“Right.” Jed knew he’d better come up with something to shed a bit of light on what he was planning. “Someone I met in Pennsylvania has a relative who left the Amish community back there.”

“And you’d like to locate him?”

“Well, it’s a young woman, actually.”

“I see.”

Jed didn’t feel obliged to tell more. “I just thought you might’ve heard accounts of some Amish youth tryin’ to fit in with the outside world . . . and if they’re ever persuaded to return to their families. What helps them want to stay put once they’re back home?”

Daed leaned his axe against the woodpile and scratched his neck. “You don’t hear of this a lot round here. Does the girl have a good church family to keep her from backsliding? Because none of us is immune to temptation, son.”

“I know very little about her or the church district.”

“Well, given the right—or wrong—circumstance, any of us is capable of sin.” His father quoted 1 Corinthians 10, verse 12. “‘Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.’”

Jed had heard that very verse during Sunday sermons.

“The Lord gives us the responsibility to keep track of each other.” Daed stopped to wipe his brow with the back of his shirt sleeve. “Makes me wonder where the young woman’s family is in all this.”

“Sadly, her parents are deceased—her mother passed just recently.”

“So then someone else needed to come alongside the girl to encourage her in the faith, ain’t so?”

Jed wondered, now that his father had said this, if Lily’s brothers had been too caught up with their own families, perhaps, or if they weren’t even aware of Lily’s struggles. Surely the latter was true. Yet with a loving, caring sister like Eva, how could Lily have been enticed by the world?

Daed had more to say. “The Deceiver of souls looks for discouraged and disconnected believers—’specially those isolated because of grief or disappointment. Such folks are cut off from the church body as a whole by their own doin’.” Daed looked off in the distance like he was remembering someone in particular. “You’ve known people like this, Jed. They tend to drift away like chaff in the wind.”

Jed nodded, keenly listening. “I’d like to help this young woman, if I can find her.”

“Be careful, son. You might not like what you discover. Satan’s trickery abounds.” Daed picked up his axe and began chopping again, and Jed worked, too, glad to help his wise father.

May the Lord be with me, Jed prayed, wanting to do this for the right reason . . . though he could almost imagine Eva’s lovely face when she learned that Lily had been found.