An Amish Picnic

by Amy Clipston

  “The day I saw you at your schweschder’s bake stand, he asked me if I was interested in you, and then he warned me to not hurt you. He told me to not pursue a relationship with you if I had no interest in a future with you. I wasn’t sure how I felt then, and that’s also why I was standoffish. But I’ve struggled to stay away from you for too long. I don’t want to do that anymore. Even if he wants me to give up my apprenticeship with him while we’re dating, I’ll go back to working on mei bruder’s dairy farm and put my dream of being independent and owning a haus on hold. I care about you too much to just walk away from you.”

  A breathy laugh escaped her throat. “I never thought I’d hear you say you care.”

  “Do you care about me?”

  “Ya. I have since the first time I saw you at mei dat’s job site.”

  He moved his thumb over her jaw, and she enjoyed his touch. “Gut.”

  Then he leaned down and brushed his lips against hers, sending a shiver of sparks soaring from her head to her toes.

  When he broke the kiss, he leaned his forehead against hers. “I want to talk to your dat right now. I can’t wait to ask you to be my girlfriend.”

  She smiled and took his hand in hers. “Then let’s not waste another moment.”

  Chapter 9

  Phoebe and Kevin found her parents sitting on the back porch in their favorite rocking chairs. A colorful butterfly flittered past as she and Kevin climbed the porch steps together.

  “You two weren’t gone long,” Mamm said with a smile.

  “We want to talk to you and Freeman,” Kevin told Mamm. Then he smiled at Phoebe before looking at Dat. “Freeman, you warned me not to break your dochder’s heart. You said you were worried I’d hurt her if I wasn’t interested in a future with her. Well, I am interested, and I want to commit to a future with her because I care so much about her. I respect her. I’m amazed by her grace, intelligence, and bravery. I’ve had feelings for her for a while now, and I believe God led me to her. I would be honored to date her. Please give me your permission.”

  Phoebe clenched her jaw as Dat and Mamm exchanged a long and meaningful look.

  Finally, Dat turned back to Kevin. “I believe you’re a kind and respectful man, and as long as you continue to treat mei dochder with respect, you have my permission to date her. And you don’t have to quit your job.” He chuckled. “I can’t afford to lose a gut worker like you.”

  “Danki, Dat!” Phoebe leaned down and hugged him. “Danki so much.”

  Kevin shook his hand. “Danki, Freeman.”

  “Gern gschehne.”

  Phoebe squeezed Kevin’s hand as she looked up at him. “Why don’t we go to the picnic now?”

  “Absolutely.”

  * * *

  Later that evening, Phoebe and Kevin sat on her back porch, moving the glider back and forth and holding hands as the crickets’ symphony sang the sun to sleep. A stunning sunset gave way to a midnight-blue sky dotted with bright stars that seemed to wink and smile.

  After spending the afternoon with their friends at the park, Phoebe and Kevin had returned to her parents’ house to have supper with them, Christiana, and Jeff. Then they enjoyed coffee and lemon cake before heading out to the porch to talk alone.

  Happiness bubbled through Phoebe as she looked up at Kevin. “I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions about . . . everything. Danki for coming today and talking everything through with me.”

  Kevin ran a finger down her jaw. “God wouldn’t let me give up. He kept leading me back to you, and I’m so grateful.”

  “I am too.” She smiled at him. “I want you to know I’m in no rush. Let’s just take our time getting to know each other. I fully support your dream of building a career and a haus before any talk of marriage. We’ll take everything step by step and in God’s time.”

  “That sounds perfect, mei liewe.” His voice sounded husky in her ear, sending shivers dancing along her spine. And as Kevin leaned in to kiss her, she closed her eyes and cherished the feel of his lips against hers.

  When he pulled back, he touched her lips with his fingertip. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. Ich liebe dich, Phoebe.”

  Her eyes misted at his words. “I love you, too, Kevin.”

  As he pulled her in for a warm hug, she closed her eyes and savored her overwhelming happiness.

  Thank you, God, for sending Kevin into my life.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, I’m grateful for my loving family, including my mother, Lola Goebelbecker; my husband, Joe; and my sons, Zac and Matt.

  Special thanks to my mother and my dear friends Becky Biddy and Susie Koenig, who graciously proofread the draft and corrected my hilarious typos.

  I’m also grateful for my special Amish friend who patiently answers my endless stream of questions. You’re a blessing in my life.

  Thank you to my wonderful church family at Morning Star Lutheran in Matthews, North Carolina, for your encouragement, prayers, love, and friendship. You all mean so much to my family and me.

  Thank you to Zac Weikal and the fabulous members of my Bakery Bunch! I’m so grateful for your friendship and your excitement about my books. You all are awesome!

  To my agent, Natasha Kern—I can’t thank you enough for your guidance, advice, and friendship. You are a tremendous blessing in my life.

  Thank you to my amazing editor, Jocelyn Bailey, for your friendship and guidance. I’m grateful to each and every person at HarperCollins Christian Publishing who helped make this book a reality.

  I’m grateful to editor Jean Bloom, who helped me polish and refine the story. Jean, you are a master at connecting the dots and filling in the gaps. I’m so happy we can continue to work together!

  Thank you most of all to God—for giving me the inspiration and the words to glorify you. I’m grateful and humbled you’ve chosen this path for me.

  Discussion Questions

  At the beginning of the story, Kevin believes Phoebe is too young and immature for him. Do you think he misjudged her? Why or why not?

  Even though Phoebe insists that Kevin spend most of the youth gathering with his friends, including his ex-girlfriend, she’s hurt when he does. But Kevin never meant to hurt her. Have you ever inadvertently hurt someone’s feelings? If so, did you apologize and make amends? How did that turn out?

  Freeman warns Kevin not to date Phoebe if he isn’t looking for a real relationship. Freeman also cautions Phoebe to stay away from Kevin. Do you think Freeman’s concerns about Kevin’s intentions are valid? Why or why not?

  Which character can you identify with the most? Which character seemed to carry the most emotional stake in the story? Phoebe, Kevin, or someone else?

  At the end of the story, Kevin decides pursuing a relationship with Phoebe is worth risking his job and his dreams. What do you think made him change his mind throughout the story?

  What role did the youth gatherings play in the relationships throughout the story?

  Candlelight Sweethearts

  Kelly Irvin

  To my family, love always!

  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

  2 Corinthians 12: 9–10 niv

  Featured Families

  Fergie and Lucy Cotter

  Children: Darcie (husband: Bart Detweiler), Jasper, Salome, Kimberly, James, John

  Isaiah and Nadine Shrock

  Children: Esther Marie, Jonas, Nathan, Timothy, Lulu

  David and Diane Hershberger (bishop)

  Matthew Miller (deacon)

  Chapter 1

  Decisions, decisions.

  Oblivious to the three people waiting in line behind her, the customer squinted at the enormous blackboard-s
tyle price list that hung on the wall behind Esther Marie Shrock. Most customers tended to do this. Esther Marie didn’t mind. Considering the sixty-five kinds of cheese and forty varieties of meat available at St. Ignatius’s Valley Grocery Store, customers usually hemmed and hawed. It didn’t matter how much time they had to make their choices before they arrived at the front of the line.

  The woman rocked the fussy baby in her arms and sighed. “I know. I know.” She shifted the sweet bundle to her other arm. The smell of spit-up and a damp diaper wafted over to the deli, lifted into the air by the overhead ceiling fan with its pleasant whirring like background music. “You’re tired and hungry. Just give me a minute to make up my mind.”

  Here it comes. Here it comes. Please Gott, don’t let it be ham.

  “Let me see. Okay, for starters, I’ll take a pound of ham, sliced thin.”

  There it was. Esther Marie squelched a sigh. She took a long breath and inhaled the briny scent of garlic dill pickles. I can do this. In Gott, all things are possible. “Whi-ch-ch-ch one?”

  The woman’s forehead wrinkled. She fanned her damp face with a piece of notebook paper covered with a grocery list in cramped cursive handwriting. “What do you mean?”

  This lady had been in the store before. She’d ordered from the deli before. Still, Esther Marie reached deep into her well of patience. The woman was tired. New moms always were. Not that Esther Marie would know. As much as she dreamed of being a wife and mother, she’d never been asked to take a ride in a Plain man’s buggy after a singing, let alone heard those precious words, Will you marry me? So here she stood making sandwiches and selling bologna. And liking it.

  “We have thir-t-t-een kinds.” Breathe. Slowly. No block. No block. See the words. Say the words. “Black forest, brown sugar, Cajun, honey, maple.” The block hit her. She searched for the words lost in a hinterland of anxiety. Her hands fluttered as if they had a life of their own. “Hmm, you know, c-c-c-c-ooked s-s-s-super trim 10 percent, coo-k-k-ked off the b-b-bone, c-c-c-c-ooked off the bone honey c-c-c-c-ured, reduced so-so-sodium, hmm, you know, s-s-smoked s-s-s-liced, smoked, s-s-s-s-outhern s-s-s-smoked, V-V-V-Vir-g-g-g-inia.”

  The little boy with no front teeth and a smudge of dirt on his face standing in line with his grandma snickered. Grandma smacked the back of his head. “We don’t make fun of disabled people, child.” Her voice carried to the far ends of the earth. “It’s rude. They can’t help it. It don’t mean they’re stupid.”

  She had that right, even if the way she treated her grandson left him with tears in his eyes and Esther Marie feeling responsible for his pain. Years of enduring snickers, taunts, and a million suggestions for correcting the “problem” came with the territory when a person stuttered as badly as she did. Plain kids didn’t tease her. Her family never made fun of her, but they did finish her sentences and had to hide their impatience while she worked to say a simple phrase.

  No wonder no man wanted her for a wife. The husband yoked to her signed up for a lifetime of listening to her tortured attempts to speak not one but two languages.

  Esther Marie eyed her stash of jelly beans on the shelf under the scale. Sweets were her secret vice. Her go-to treat when the world seemed tear streaked and grimy. Nope. Chewing her favorite purple and pink candies would only make it more difficult for customers to understand her.

  She arranged her happy face. “T-T-ake your time. It’s a big ch-ch-cho-oice.”

  The harried mom decided on maple ham along with a pound of lacy baby swiss. She also wanted provolone and muenster as well as a pound of deluxe bologna. “Good ch-ch-ch-choice.” Ignoring the sweat dampening her dress under her armpits and the heat creeping over her face, Esther Marie went to work. This was the easy part. With quick, efficient movements she sliced the meats and the cheeses, weighed them, and added price stickers in a matter of minutes. “Enjoy.”

  “Thank you.”

  The customer turned away, but not before Esther Marie saw the look she hated most. The pity look.

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but doing the best possible job. Esther Marie had done her best every day for the past four years at the grocery store, popular with locals and the tourists who went out of their way to find it on the road to St. Ignatius’s airport before they went on to Glacier National Park. Here at the store, the way she talked didn’t matter. Fergie Cotter told her that when he hired her, and he repeated it whenever he observed a scene like the one she’d just endured.

  “Coming through, excuse me, coming through.” Jasper Cotter’s deep voice rang out over the chatter of her waiting customers who used the time to compare notes on the latest gossip about the tiny Montana town’s less than nine hundred people. A basket of leaf lettuce and plump tomatoes from the Cotter garden balanced on one shoulder, the owner’s son barged through the swinging gates into the deli. “Guder mariye.”

  Esther Marie ducked her head and nodded. Jasper’s solid, round body, so like his father’s, invaded her pristine space. His face mottled red from the July heat and exertion, he swiped at the sweat beading on his nose with his free arm. Biceps bulged against the faded-blue cotton sleeves of his shirt. His man smells mingled with the aroma of teriyaki beef jerky. She heaved a breath. “Gud-d-d-er mari-ye.”

  He slid the basket onto the back counter and dusted off his big paws. “The line is too long. You should call Mudder back to help you.”

  And so it began.

  “Your d-d-d-aed is s-s-s-ick to-to-day. Your m-m-m-udd-d-d-er is busy up-p-p-p front.” A wave of embarrassed shame swept over Esther Marie. Her worsening stutter betrayed her inability to control her feelings when this man she’d known since childhood came around. Jasper might look like Fergie, but he had none of his father’s easy way with people. He tended to go about business in a forward manner that put people off. “I-I-I-I’ve got it.”

  To prove her point she nodded to the next customer in line, Dr. Seeley, a retired dentist who lived on a plot of land next to the Plain community’s school. His wife liked the roast beef with Havarti cheese. He yelled when he talked to Esther Marie as if stuttering somehow meant she couldn’t hear.

  “There’s no harm in asking for help.” Jasper took a few steps back to allow her to access the cooler that held the roast beef. He lifted his straw hat and swiped at his auburn hair beginning to recede from his deeply tanned forehead. He must be twenty-five like Esther Marie, but he would be without hair by the time he reached middle age. Still, it didn’t make him any less pleasing to the eye. He had milk chocolate–brown eyes half hidden by his dark-rimmed glasses. His smiles were rare, but that made them seem like a gift—especially when directed at her.

  “Daed has indigestion and a headache. He said he’ll be along as soon as the baking soda-and-water brew he drank does the trick.”

  According to Lucy, Fergie had been feeling badly all weekend. He wanted to chalk it up to Lucy’s cooking, but she was sure he had the flu. She didn’t want her husband to bring his germs into the store. Esther Marie didn’t want to argue with Jasper. Her mother would say a good Plain woman never argued with a man. Being a good Plain woman required a steel trap for a jaw. At least it did for Esther Marie.

  She slapped a price sticker on the roast beef package and handed it to Dr. Seeley. He grinned and shouted, “Thank you.”

  “I brought fresh tomatoes and lettuce from the garden. Both need to be washed well before you use them.”

  As if a person didn’t know that. Esther Marie nodded at Hazel Kent, who reeled off an order for a dozen sandwiches for the ladies’ auxiliary meeting at noon. Chips and cookies to go with it. “Giv-v-ve me a few m-m-m-inutes.”

  “No problem. Take your time.” Mrs. Kent’s phone rang, and she immediately took the call. “I’m waiting for the order, June. That girl who stutters is working on it. It’s so nice they hire people with special needs here.”

  The unctuous tone grated on every nerve. Esther Marie managed to smile as she grabbed two bags of homemade whole wheat bread from
the shelf. Special needs? The English had phrases that tickled her funny bone sometimes. This wasn’t one of them. She had no special needs. To be like everyone else, to do her job, to become a wife and mother, to be a good, obedient, humble follower of Jesus, those were her only needs.

  Jasper frowned. “We don’t do it as a favor. Esther Marie is a good, smart employee—”

  “It’s o-o-o-o-k-k-kay.” Esther Marie offered him her best smile. That he wanted to defend her was sweet. Despite his brusque ways, he never hurried her when she spoke and he never finished her sentences. A feat of patience for a man impatient with most people. “She m-m-m-m-eans well.”

  Still frowning, Jasper pointed to the machine she’d used to slice the ham and then the bologna. “The slicer is dirty. Aren’t you supposed to clean as you go?”

  Pause. Breathe. Imagine the words you want to say. The speech therapist her parents had taken her to see as a child had many tips, tricks, and exercises to help Esther Marie conquer her speech impediment. Books from a good friend had helped too. But a cure for what ailed her didn’t exist. After a while, they couldn’t afford to keep seeing a therapist who couldn’t offer a cure. Esther Marie could do the exercises on her own. “I-I-I will—”

  “Why are there jelly beans on the floor?”

  In her haste to sample her snack, she must’ve dropped some. “I like jelly beans.”

  A funny look flitted across his face. He opened his mouth. “I like—”

  “Jasper, Jasper!” Lucy sped down the sewing notions aisle as fast as her short legs and chubby middle-aged body would permit. “I have to go. Salome called. She says your daed keeled over in the kitchen. She took him to the clinic. You’re in charge of the store.”

  “Nee!” Jasper shoved through the swinging gates and strode toward his mother. “I’m going with you.”