Keys of Heaven

by Adina Senft

  “You were thinking out loud one day?” Corinne’s forehead was furrowed with concern. “You were talking with Linda and advising her to leave her home with Ella and Arlon? Oh, Sarah.”

  Sarah wilted under the pain in her mother-in-law’s face. “She couldn’t conceive. I thought it would be for the best—that if she had calm and quiet and her own home, she might be able to.”

  “Who says we ain’t calm and quiet?” Benny burst out. “We have prayer time same as anybody else.”

  “I’m sorry, Benny. I judged your family,” Sarah whispered. “It was prideful of me and presumptuous and I beg you to forgive me.”

  “It ain’t me who needs to forgive,” he said, the indignation leaking out of him at Sarah’s miserable humility. “It’s Aendi Linda and Onkel Crist.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’ll see them tomorrow after church and ask their forgiveness, too.” Her shoulders slumped and she patted her pockets. Amanda pulled a hankie out of hers and handed it to her with such a look of sympathy that Henry got irritated all over again.

  “Don’t Ginny and I get an apology?” he asked.

  “Henry.” Surprise laced Ginny’s tone. “She didn’t mean to spread gossip. Looks like a little bitty speculation got out and started growing into a fact before anybody noticed.”

  “She had no business speculating about us.”

  But Ginny seemed a lot less bothered about it than he would have expected a woman to be after hearing her name and private business bandied about all over the district.

  “There’s a lot worse things could be said about me than that I was getting married to you,” she pointed out with a glimmer of her usual good humor.

  “It’s offensive.” When her gaze fixed itself on him, he realized how that must have sounded. “I mean, being talked about is offensive.”

  “Please forgive me, Henry,” Sarah said from behind the handkerchief. “And Ginny.”

  “Of course I forgive you, sweetie,” Ginny said. “If that gossip ever turns into reality, believe me, you’ll be one of the first to know.”

  But for some reason, this didn’t seem to make Sarah feel better, and Henry had had about enough. He took Ginny’s yellow sweater from the back of her chair and helped her into it, shook Trent’s hand, wished Eric well, thanked the room in general for a great dinner, and in five minutes was walking out into the summer evening, where darkness had nearly fallen. Fireflies winked on and off all over the lawn and in the fields beyond it, males trying to impress the females with their brilliance and all but a lucky few not finding any success.

  “Poor Sarah,” Ginny said once they were in the car and accelerating in the direction of town. “I feel sorry for her.”

  “I don’t,” Henry said. “You can’t talk about people like that and not have it come back to bite you.”

  “But it wasn’t malicious. She was trying to do the right thing.”

  “Who knows what the right thing is when it comes to people? I don’t even know the Peacheys except for Benny, and even I can see that encouraging a woman to leave her family is overstepping the line.”

  “She wouldn’t have gone alone.” Ginny settled back in the passenger seat. “But be that as it may, it was kind of fun being engaged for thirty seconds. I’d forgotten what it was like.”

  “It’s nothing to make jokes about, if you ask me. Here I’d just seen myself in an ad campaign that was a total lie, and the next thing I know I’m being congratulated on another lie, and there’s my neighbor, in the middle of both things. I don’t know how she does it.”

  “It’s not fair to blame her for being in the video. So were you.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “So was she. Talk is cheap. Like telling people it was offensive, the thought of being engaged to me.”

  Wait. Whoa.

  He pulled off the road in a spot where the wagons gained access to someone’s field and there was a shoulder wide enough for a car.

  “That’s not at all what I meant. The gossip offended me. Not the thought of being engaged to you.”

  He couldn’t see her face very well in the dark interior of the car—only the splash of her curls and the straight outline of her nose, but her posture seemed to soften. “It’s kind of a nice thought, though, isn’t it?”

  Shifting in his seat, he touched her hair. “I admit it’s flickered through my mind once or twice. But we haven’t actually known each other that long.”

  “I think I know you better after a couple of months than I ever knew my husband in fourteen years of marriage. But then…I suppose getting to know myself was a big part of that. If a person doesn’t know herself when she’s young and takes a big step like marriage, how can she expect to know anyone else?”

  “You’re a wise lady, Ginny Hochstetler,” he said softly.

  He would go a long way before he found a woman like this again. True, there were some obstacles to their being together—living and working arrangements, for one. How could an innkeeper live on a farm and keep an inn? How could a potter live in an inn when his studio was two miles away on a farm? But those were just logistics.

  The important thing was the softness in his heart when he looked at her. The joy he sometimes allowed himself to feel in her company. That sparkle in her eyes that told him she felt the same way.

  Don’t let her get away. If this is the moment, don’t lose it.

  Because heaven knew he was done with being connected to the Amish. With Ginny, he could cut that tie for good, and begin his life over again for the second time. It would be twice as good as the first time, because he wouldn’t be alone.

  “Ginny?”

  Her hand slipped into his. “Hmm?”

  “This is probably the most unromantic location ever for a moment like this…but…would you ever consider giving some truth to that rumor—for real?”

  With a low chuckle, she said, “You might have to take back what you said to poor Sarah.”

  “Sarah has nothing to do with this. Ginny, do you ever think about sharing your life with me?”

  “I’m doing that right now, and I think that I like it.”

  “I mean in a more formal way. I guess—what I mean is—would you marry me? Someday? When we both feel the moment is right?”

  Now she took his other hand. His own were cold, which made hers seem all the warmer. “Protecting my reputation from the ravages of gossip, are you?”

  “No. Mine.”

  She laughed, and he raised her hands to kiss the backs of her knuckles. “Will you?”

  “Unromantic location or not, you are a very romantic man and I’m very close to kissing the breath out of you right now. But Henry, you haven’t said one very important thing. Do you love me?”

  Mentally, he kicked himself. Of course he should have said that first. “If love is wanting to hear your laugh first thing in the morning…looking for you in a crowd to see what crazy earrings you’ve got on today…wanting to hear your voice just to assure myself that I’m not all alone on the planet…then yes, I love you.”

  “I love you, too…minus the earrings. Yes, my very dear man, I will marry you. Remind me to thank Sarah Yoder for spreading rumors the next time I see her.”

  This time, it was he who kissed the words right off her lips, right there on the side of the road.

  And even the clip-clop of the buggy passing on the other side didn’t make either of them come up for air.

  Chapter 32

  As married women, Linda and Ella Peachey sat fairly close to Sarah in church in Lev Esh’s huge basement room, but there was of course no opportunity to speak until the service was over. She did her best to let her soul calm itself during the slow singing of the hymns, and to remember that during each hour of a Sunday morning across the time zones of the country, somewhere an Amish congregation was singing the “Lob Lied” at exactly the same point in the service and lifting up God’s name in praise.

  During the fellowship meal afterward, Sarah didn�
��t have the nerve to bring up such a sensitive topic in case others heard. But when she saw Ella and Linda strolling near the rockery that was Saloma Esh’s joy, admiring the variety of plants, Sarah saw her opportunity.

  She joined them and, for the span of a single second, thought it might be all right—that Benny might have cleared the way before her.

  But no. The delight in the garden that had been in Linda’s eyes faded into politeness, and Ella’s face closed the way certain flowers did at night, to protect themselves from things that stung and nibbled. Sarah could not go back and leave this damage unrepaired. She must go forward in the humblest way she knew.

  “Ella—Linda—please, may I speak with you?”

  They exchanged a glance in which Sarah clearly saw Ella say without a word, It’s up to you, Schweschder. Linda nodded.

  At which point the careful speech she had prepared early this morning while she was making breakfast completely fled her mind.

  “I have done a very hurtful thing,” she began. “I have been so caught up in my pride and in my little skill as a healer that I completely forgot that God is the healer and His will must be done.”

  The two sisters-in-law stood waiting, and Sarah despaired that she would ever find the words to make right her error.

  “In my foolishness, Linda, I thought that if you had a home of your own, and quiet and security, that you would be better able to conceive.” Linda’s hand moved over her flat belly in a way Sarah instantly recognized. “But Benny told us last night that God has done what I in my blindness could not.”

  “I believe your herbal drinks helped,” Linda said at last.

  “But my putting ideas in your head about leaving your home could not have.” Oh, she must not cry before she got these words out. “When Benny was telling us last night, I could see that I had caused offense in him. And if I did that, then Ella, what must you feel?”

  “Our home is not perfect,” Ella said stiffly. “But it is our home, and God is there.”

  “I know that now,” Sarah whispered. How could she explain this?

  Her gaze, blurry with unshed tears, fell on Saloma’s rockery, and the jaunty “keys of heaven” plants that waved and bloomed on the edges.

  And then the words came, as though the gut Gott Himself had put them there.

  “You see those plants there, the ones with red flowers?”

  “The Jupiter’s beard?” Ella asked.

  “Ja. They are also called keys of heaven, and while they don’t have a use so much to an herbalist, they’ve taught me a lesson. You see, they grow where the soil is thin and rocky and it doesn’t seem as though there should be enough to sustain them. But God has made them so they find what they need, and they like it best right where He puts them. What I never saw until now is that the plant doesn’t think thin and rocky at all. The plant thinks, Here is where I belong, where I can get what I need to grow best.”

  “And you think that is how I am?” Linda’s face had softened, and the light had begun to return to it. “Because I do. I belong on the farm with my family, and the boys, and that barn full of inventions.” She gave Ella a fond smile. “There is where I have what I need to grow best. Both of us do. And that is why you couldn’t really convince me to leave.”

  “We had quite a job calming Benny down last night,” Ella said. “To hear him, you would think Crist and Linda had a wagon loaded, ready to pick up and move into Henry’s place.”

  Henry.

  Sarah heaved a sigh that seemed to come right from her shoes. “I have that seam to mend, too. But I could not go another day without making it right with my sisters in the church. Will you forgive me for letting my pride and wrongheadedness get the best of me?”

  “Of course I forgive you,” Linda said, and leaned in to hug her. “I am so happy right now that I cannot bear to let anything get in the way of it. I am sure your herbs have helped God’s hand along. Taking the herbs is the only thing that has changed for me, so it must be so.”

  “And you, Ella?” Sarah asked. “Will you forgive me?”

  “No wrong has been done except in your own mind, and God has taken care of that.” Ella extended a hand. “I would not want us to not be in fellowship together. I forgive you, if you will forgive yourself.”

  Sarah pulled her into a hug, and to her great relief, Ella came. They stood close together, admiring the rockery and the keys of heaven with its jaunty red flowers.

  “I wonder I didn’t see this lesson before,” she mused aloud. “Look at Eric, the Englisch boy that Priscilla and Benny found purely by chance, and brought back here. He was not content to grow in his place, which he found very rocky, and so he ran away. I know how I felt when Simon and Joe went to that dude ranch without telling me exactly where they were going. I can’t even imagine what Eric’s parents went through before they knew he was safe—so young, and so reckless.”

  “I have been afraid for Benny and Leon many a time, but they always seem to land on their feet,” Ella said. “Even still, they don’t seem inclined to run away.”

  “Benny loves his home,” Sarah said. “I could see that. I only hope this Eric learns to be content where he is. I certainly don’t want to find him on my doorstep again and face his father’s anger. Once was enough.”

  Linda looked past Sarah’s shoulder and waved. “My gut Mann has brought the buggy around, so we must go. And here is your Caleb, too.”

  “I hitched up Dulcie, Mamm,” Caleb said, hanging back respectfully in case he was interrupting them.

  “I’m ready, and leaving with a lighter heart than when I came.” She smiled at Linda and Ella, and her heart softened even further at the sincere smiles of forgiveness and friendship they gave her in return.

  God really did answer prayers, she thought as she let Caleb take the reins and drive the four miles home. Later, when he had gone over to his Daadi to talk cows and barns and what Jacob jokingly referred to as “the meaning of life,” she sat on the back steps next to the lemon balm, whose gentle scent filled the air and whose vigorous branches were now crowding the porch. She could almost lean on it as she would the shoulder of a friend.

  Scripture said, It shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak, and God had been faithful in showing her that humble little plant in the very moment of her need.

  Which told her something. Eyes closed, she lifted her face to the summer sky and let the sun fall on it in blessing as she approached the Lord.

  Lord, help me to look to Your creation to find my help, and not to my own thinking. In that way lies pride, and offense, and the breaking of relationship with my sisters and brothers. Help me to be as humble as that little red plant, the keys of heaven, growing in my place and learning to love it there. To want no other place but the one You have given me. Thank You for teaching me, and for softening my heart and those of my sisters in the church. I hope this will bring us closer together, so that we can share the joy of the new life You are creating.

  From far away, she heard a voice hailing her, and opened her eyes to see a lean figure coming over the top of the hill.

  Henry.

  And not with his usual amble, either, that told the onlooker he was more concerned with looking at plant forms than where he was going. He was walking with a purpose, as if he had news to tell her.

  Well, she had news for him, too. She’d learned a lesson, and she hoped he’d be happy to hear it so that they could clear up every misunderstanding and truly be friends again.

  Her step was light as she made her way to meet him through the flowers blooming in the field.

  Reading Group Guide

  The “keys of heaven” plant grows in rocky places where the soil is thin and other plants don’t find survival easy. Yet it thrives in its place. Who would you say is thriving in his or her place in this novel?

  Who is trying to move out of his or her place? Do you think it’s a wise move? If you were in that place, would you do the same?

  Sarah and the other Amis
h people in Willow Creek are friendly with the Englisch among whom they live, but they are aware that they cannot “have fellowship” with them. What do you think about this?

  Do you like the character of Ginny Hochstetler? Do you think she and Henry are right for one another?

  Sarah tells Silas Lapp that she’s dedicated to her new calling as a healer and declines his courtship. Was this the right thing to do? Do you think she’ll regret it?

  Sarah felt she was doing the right thing to encourage Linda Peachey to push for a home of her own. Do you think this blinded her to what was best? Do you think she was following God’s will?

  Eric ran away to pursue his passion. Would you have taken steps this extreme if you felt strongly about something?

  What do you think of Sarah and Henry encouraging Eric to stay in Willow Creek instead of returning him to his parents right away?

  If you had been Eric, would you have chosen two weeks in an Amish home over two weeks in New York City?

  What do you think Henry is coming to tell Sarah at the end of the book?

  Glossary

  Aendi: Auntie

  Ausbund: The Amish hymnbook

  Bidde: please

  Bobblin: Babies

  Bohnesupp: bean soup, often served at lunch after church

  Bruder, mei: my brothers

  Daadi, Daed: Grandpa

  Daadi Haus: “Grandfather house”—a separate home for the older folks

  Dat: Dad, Father

  Deitsch: Pennsylvania Dutch language

  Denki: thank you

  Dokterfraa: female healer

  Druwwel: trouble

  Eckschank, der: the corner cupboard

  Englisch: non-Amish people

  freind: friend

  Gelassenheit: humility, submission

  Gmee: church community in a district

  Gott: God

  Grossmammi: Great-grandmother

  Guder Mariye: good morning

  Gut: good

  Gut, denki: Good, thank you.