“Are you and Mikayla coming tonight?” Jack asked.
Abby looked from the boys to the man kneeling by the freezer. She knew only one girl by that name. Mikayla St. Pierre was the newest teen volunteer, a pretty, quiet girl who liked to work alone. Someone had told Abby the thirteen-year-old was an orphan after her sole surviving parent, her daed, had died in a car accident and she now lived with a guardian. Was David Riehl the one who’d taken her in? Maybe there was more to him than the curt man who looked at her as if she’d come from another planet.
David reached into the freezer, his face turned away. “Tonight? What’s tonight?”
“The volunteer supper.” Jack grinned. “Roast beef and the fixings.”
“And desserts.” Reece’s smile was broader than his friend’s. “Lots and lots of yummy desserts. Isn’t that right, Abby?”
She heard an odd sound behind her. Turning, she discovered David regarding her with a strange expression. She wasn’t sure if he was upset or surprised or something else.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
Instead of answering her, he asked a question of his own, “You are Abby?”
“Ja.” When he continued to stare with indecipherable emotion glowing in his eyes, she hurried to add, “Es dutt mir leed.” She flushed anew, not wanting to admit his presence had unsettled her enough to forget to speak in English. “I mean, I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself when you arrived. I was in a hurry to get the freezer fixed. Is it all right now?”
Again, he acted as if he hadn’t heard a word she’d spoken. “You are Abby? Abby Kauffman?”
Concerned by his odd behavior, she wasn’t sure what might be wrong with him. Moments ago he’d acted curt but polite, as she’d expected a busy repairman to act. Now he was gawking at her as if she’d grown a second head. What had she said to cause him to react as he was?
She couldn’t halt herself from asking, “Are you all right, David?”
* * *
No, I’m not.
David Riehl was glad the woman standing between him and the door into the main room couldn’t read his mind. Or maybe it didn’t matter because his thoughts were so jumbled he didn’t know how to sort them out.
Abby Kauffman—the Abby Kauffman whom Mikayla had mentioned over and over—was Amish? He’d assumed... He wasn’t sure what he’d assumed, but he’d never guessed the name belonged to an Amish woman.
There was no doubt she lived a plain life. Her shimmering blond hair was pulled into a tight coil beneath a heart-shaped organdy head covering.
A kapp, whispered a memory from the depths of his mind. He couldn’t remember what the pinafore-type apron was called. The color of her dress reminded him of pine needles, and her eyes were the color of a tree-covered mountain on a foggy day. Not quite green and not quite gray.
He shouldn’t be staring at her, but he couldn’t pull his gaze away. There was something undefinable about her that drew his eyes. Something more than her pretty features or her plain dress. He couldn’t figure out what it was and, for a man who spent his life getting to the bottom of problems, not being able to put his finger on what intrigued him was unsettling.
David mumbled under his breath, hoping she’d think he was impatient to install the new thermostat. His fingers were clumsy because knowing Mikayla’s Abby was Amish bothered him more than he’d guessed. He tried to concentrate on his task. It was almost impossible because his thoughts flew in every possible direction.
As they had too often since the night ten months ago when he’d gotten the call that Boyd St. Pierre, his best friend since they’d gone to Evergreen Corners High School together and a single parent after his wife died in childbirth, was dead. A slick mountain road, a careless driver and a ten-car pileup left four people dead and twice that many injured. Mikayla hadn’t been hurt other than bruises and blackened eyes from the airbag.
David had had the air knocked out of him almost as hard by the shock of discovering Boyd had named him Mikayla’s guardian. What did a bachelor who was an only child know about raising a thirteen-year-old girl?
At first, the necessary flurry of a funeral and settling his friend’s estate and handling insurance claims had kept him too busy to think, but in the past couple of months, the pace had slowed to something similar to normal. He’d come to realize, though, he had no idea how to be a parent to a teenager.
Mikayla didn’t talk much, but on the few occasions she did, almost every comment contained Abby’s name. When she’d joined the other young people from their community church in volunteering, he’d been glad to see her spending time with people her age. However, he couldn’t remember more than a handful of times when she’d mentioned any of the teens by name.
Just Abby.
Always Abby.
“Are you okay?” Abby asked again, ripping him away from his uneasy reverie.
“Fine, fine.” It wasn’t a lie. He was doing as fine as he could in this odd situation.
Why, among everything else Mikayla had said about Abby being so welcoming and fun and funny, had she failed to mention Abby was Amish?
As he finished affixing the thermostat and reached for the access panel cover to screw it into place, he knew the answer to his question. Mikayla hadn’t said anything because being Amish didn’t mean anything to her other than it was part of Abby’s identity.
It did to him. He could hear his father’s voice, low and filled with anger, deriding the ultraconservative Pennsylvania Amish community where their family had lived for generations. David’s parents had left when he was about to start school, so his memories of what had happened were fuzzy and contradictory.
“We were chased away by closed minds and open mouths,” his father had said so often the words were imprinted on David’s brain. Neither of his parents had spoken about why they’d abandoned family and friends and moved to Vermont, but they’d never taken any pains to hide their disgust with the Amish.
“Hey, Mikayla!” Jack pushed away from the window. “Did you take a bath in Pepto-Bismol?”
Mikayla appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. The stylish glasses perched on the end of her nose were pocked with bright pink as were her worn T-shirt and jeans. She was a slender girl of medium height who looked like her mother. A mass of brown curls surrounded her face that was dotted with enough freckles to be cute.
“Hi, Abby,” she said with the shy smile he’d seldom seen. It vanished as she noticed him by the freezer. “Oh, David.”
He waited for her to say more. She didn’t. Instead she wrapped her arms around herself and stayed in the doorway. The boys by the pass-through window seemed as much at a loss for what to do or say as he was.
Abby, however, walked over to Mikayla and put an arm around her shoulders. “I was so hoping you’d drop in today. Have you enjoyed painting Kaylee Holst’s bedroom? Every five-year-old wants a candy-pink room, ain’t so?”
“It’s been fun, but I don’t know if I ever want to see pink again.” Mikayla didn’t push her hair back from her face, hiding her expression.
From him or from everyone?
David watched as Abby steered the girl he called his daughter, for lack of a better word, across the kitchen to the table where she was preparing the roasts. She chattered with Mikayla as if they’d been friends for years.
His fingers curled, his nails cutting into his palms. He should have been aware that Mikayla had become friends with an Amish woman. He prided himself on knowing the facts, so he could plan ahead. That skill served him well as a repairman and in life...until Mikayla had become part of it. He’d made it clear he was available whenever she wanted to talk. He’d changed his life insurance and made a will to provide for the girl in case something happened to him. He’d started a college fund for her, though she didn’t want to talk about going.
He’d never considered she’d choose an Amish woman to
turn to. He had to find out more about Abby Kauffman. The last thing he needed now was to have the fragile girl being judged as cruelly by the Amish as his parents had been.
Copyright © 2020 by Jo Ann Ferguson
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ISBN: 9781488060120
Hill Country Redemption
Copyright © 2020 by Shannon Taylor Vannatter
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Hill Country Redemption Page 21