A Simple Vow

by Charlotte Hubbard

Beside her, Loretta leaned closer to whisper, “Are you nervous?”

  Edith realized that she felt altogether confident, believing she would come away as Asa’s wife this time. “No, I’m fine,” she murmured.

  “Then stop squirming.”

  Edith sat taller. She’d been so intently focused on Asa, she hadn’t realized she’d been wiggling on the pew bench.

  To settle herself, she ran her fingers over Leroy and Louisa’s velvety cheeks, pleased that they were such calm, quiet babies now that they’d resumed their goat-milk diet. Soon they would be her and Asa’s son and daughter, because Will had contacted an adoption agency to begin the process of giving them the Detweiler name—and all the love their hearts could hold for these special babies. Drew was pleased that he’d be living close by to watch his children grow up, as well.

  After more prayers and another hymn, Preacher Ben rose to address the congregation with the second, longer sermon. “Seems the perfect morning to recall the passage from Revelation that’s often used at funerals, but which speaks to the young folks in the first rows this morning,” he began as he looked at the three men and then at Edith and her sisters. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away,” Ben recited in a ringing voice. “And he that sat upon the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’” That’s what we celebrate today, folks—God’s made this situation new for Edith, and for the Detweiler brothers, and for Will and the little twins. Praise be to our Jesus.”

  Edith smiled gratefully at Preacher Ben as he continued his sermon. Behold I make all things new. It reminded her of the way Asa took old, broken furniture and created a useful piece with fresh stain and the skill of his carpenter’s hands. The passage also reminded her that Drew had walked away from the lies he’d told, and Will had found a fresh start farming for Luke Hooley. The Lord had opened a different door for Leroy and Louisa, as well, and Edith felt blessed to be raising them as her own children.

  “It’s almost time for the wedding,” Rosalyn murmured as everyone stood up to sing the final hymn of the church service. “I’m so happy for you, Edith. Asa’s a blessing to our family.”

  Edith smiled—even though Dat was eyeing the three of them sternly, as he had when they’d been young, talkative girls in church. Nothing was going to spoil her absolute joy today as she stood beside Asa and promised to love and honor him for the rest of her life—an exchange of simple vows that would forever bind them together. Because she’d almost unwittingly married his twin, however, Edith cherished these moments of anticipation . . . the knowledge that this time the vows she repeated would be honest and meaningful. Today no one would interrupt the ceremony with the jarring news that she was standing beside the wrong man.

  Denki, God, for delivering us from our sins and loving us in spite of them, she prayed as the last words of the hymn died away. Denki for the way our family has come together again in forgiveness—and is now growing. Your will be done.

  As folks sat down on the wooden benches, Bishop Tom gestured for Edith and Asa to join him in the small open spot in the center of the room. More than two hundred people had gathered to celebrate this day with them, and Edith could feel the love and support that filled the home she and Asa would soon share. From the preachers’ bench, Bishop Vernon Gingerich smiled at her with twinkling blue eyes. Such a blessing he’d been to Will and his family, helping them patch up the holes that resentment had caused in their relationships, and easing Will’s grief after Molly’s passing.

  “We’re gonna do this again,” Bishop Tom said, smiling at the men and then at the women. “But this time we’ll get it right!”

  Gentle laughter filled the room and lifted Edith’s spirits. Asa gazed down at her. He looked so handsome in his black vest and pants with his shiny raven hair brushing the collar of his white shirt. She knew she would remember this special moment forever. Once again Bishop Tom began the ancient Old Order wedding ceremony, and Edith repeated the words with joy and confidence.

  As Asa said his vows, his face radiated the deep love and commitment Edith hadn’t felt when she’d stood beside Drew a month ago. She’d attributed the little differences in the groom’s mannerisms to his nervousness—the same jitters she’d been feeling that morning—but today Asa’s voice filled the big front room with his strength and purpose.

  When at last Bishop Tom pronounced them man and wife, Edith drew a deep breath. Asa turned and took her hands in his, gazing at her with indigo eyes that shone with devotion. “I love you so much, Edith,” he murmured.

  “I love you, too, Asa. Forever and ever.”

  As their guests rose from the pew benches, Dat stood up to address the crowd. “You’re all invited to the Grill N Skillet to celebrate with us,” he announced. “We’re grateful to Drew Detweiler for providing our meal today. God has greatly blessed us with His abundance and love, which we in turn share with our families and friends. We’re glad you all came today.”

  Edith and her sisters gathered around the small table where Bishop Tom was laying the marriage certificate. “Dat’s in fine form today,” Loretta remarked as Edith and Asa signed their names.

  “Dare we hope he’s moving forward now, a happier man?” Rosalyn asked as she wrote her name beneath Edith’s.

  “That would be a gut thing for all you girls,” Will said as he waited for Loretta to sign and hand him the pen. “Especially now that Edith’s taking her sunny disposition across the road.”

  Drew was nodding as he signed the certificate and returned the pen to Bishop Tom. “We should make it our mission to see that Cornelius carries today’s happiness forward with him. He’s suffered long enough.”

  “That’s a commendable attitude, kids,” the bishop remarked as he, too, penned his name on the proper line. “I’m glad you’ll all be close at hand to help him—and each other—with that project. But for now, let’s go up the road and celebrate with a fine dinner! It’s a happy day in Willow Ridge.”

  Edith couldn’t have agreed more as she and Asa accepted congratulations from the folks who gathered around them. Ernest and Fern Detweiler beamed at her, welcoming her to the family, and then Marian Gingerich gripped her hands, as well. “I feel we’ve turned the page and started a new chapter in the family story,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I’m so relieved that Leroy and Louisa will be your children now—and so grateful for the way you’ve led Will to a fresh opportunity.”

  Edith’s body thrummed as she accepted similar congratulations from Bishop Vernon and Jerusalem Gingerich and Preacher Ben and Miriam Hooley. Nazareth and Jerusalem agreed to mind the babies during the meal so Edith and Asa would be free to visit with their guests.

  It was a special moment when Dat came up to her, gazed at her wistfully, and then embraced her. “Wish your mamm could’ve been here to share this day,” he murmured, but he quickly put a smile on his face and extended his hand. “Asa, it’s gut to have another man in this family—another rooster to keep after these busy hens!”

  Everyone around them laughed. As the guests made their way to the door, Edith was grateful that so many of their friends and family members had come a second time to share this special day with her and Asa. The lane and the road filled with people talking and laughing, all the way to the Grill N Skillet. Edith walked among them, her hand enveloped by Asa’s larger, stronger one. She felt loved and cherished. She felt blessed and beautiful.

  Behind her, Edith heard the rapid patter of footsteps. Nora caught up to her, her freckled face pink with excitement. “The next event,” she said eagerly, “is to be a baby shower at my place, Edith. As we baked pies and set the tables for today, all the ladies agreed it was time the twins had their own clothes and toys.”

  Edith stopped walking and threw her arms around Nora. “Denki so much for all the ways you’ve helped me. Knowing you is like having a mamm and a big sister and a best friend
all rolled into one!”

  Nora eased away, blinking rapidly. “That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me,” she murmured. “You’re welcome, Edith. I’m glad you’re finally Mrs. Detweiler—and so happy that you’ll be raising Louisa and Leroy here in Willow Ridge.”

  When they arrived at the café, Edith, her sisters, Will, and the Detweiler brothers filled their plates with the grilled meats and delicious side dishes that awaited them on the buffet table. They took their places at the raised table in the corner, where they could look out over the crowd as everyone ate. Aromas of grilled meats, creamed celery, and the traditional “roast” made of chicken and stuffing filled the air. The kitchen serving counter was covered with slices of pie on plates—an inspiring sight—but it was the regal white wedding cake with its pale blue borders that made Edith sigh with gratitude.

  “What a beautiful cake Miriam’s made us,” she murmured. “It survived the first wedding day, held its shape in the freezer, and now it’s standing tall and sturdy and sweet . . . like a prize for enduring all the setbacks we encountered along the way.”

  “Tall like me, sturdy like the twins,” Asa said as he gripped her hand, “and sweet like you, Edith. But you’re the prize, and I’m the big winner. I don’t know where I’d be if you hadn’t stuck by me these past weeks.”

  Edith gazed into her husband’s indigo eyes, loving the way she saw herself reflected in them. “We don’t have to worry about that anymore,” she murmured. “We’re together now in Willow Ridge—a little slice of heaven right here on earth.”

  Read on for an excerpt from

  Charlotte Hubbard’s next Amish romance,

  Christmas at Promise Lodge

  coming this October!

  As the year draws to a close, the brand-new colony of

  Promise Lodge is thriving, a welcoming community that

  offers three Amish sisters a fresh start. And as

  Christmas approaches, gifts big and small

  are given with love . . .

  As Promise Lodge’s first wedding arrives, the evidence of a community building a foundation for the future is a cause for celebration. But the bishop’s narrow-minded wedding sermon doesn’t sit well with the Bender sisters, the town’s courageous founders, especially widowed Mattie Bender Schwartz. She believes marriage and family aren’t the most important of God’s gifts—even if she suspects her tender feelings for Preacher Amos Troyer run deeper than simple friendship.

  Amos hasn’t given up hope that stubborn, spirited Mattie will change her mind about taking another husband, but when an accident threatens to change the course of his life forever, he wonders if the Lord has sent him a message. He’ll need faith, hope, and charity to find the right path—and a Christmas blessing to convince Mattie to walk it with him.

  Mattie Schwartz slipped into her new navy blue dress earlier than she needed to because this was no ordinary October day. In about four hours, her younger son Noah would be marrying Deborah Peterscheim—the first wedding to take place in the Promise Lodge colony she and her sisters had founded last spring—and she’d been awake since three o’clock, too excited to sleep. She left her two-room apartment and went downstairs to join the Kuhn sisters, who were overseeing the preparation of the wedding meal in the lodge’s huge kitchen.

  Mattie inhaled deeply. The entire building smelled of roasting chickens, vegetables, and perking coffee. The huge kitchen, which had at one time provided meals when Promise Lodge had been a church camp, bustled with the ladies who lived here now. As soon as Mattie stepped through the door, however, seventy-year-old Beulah Kuhn pointed at her with a vegetable peeler.

  “This is the day that the Lord has made for your Noah to marry Deborah,” she paraphrased from the stool where she sat peeling potatoes.

  “Let us rejoice and be glad in it!” Beulah’s sister Ruby added with a wide smile. “The mother of the groom gets time off from cooking and cleaning up. It’s your day to party, Mattie!”

  “We’ve already sent Alma Peterscheim out of here,” Mattie’s sister Christine remarked from the stove, where she stood stirring gravy. “Didn’t want Deborah’s mother sitting through church with food on her new dress, after all.”

  “You were here all yesterday afternoon baking pies with us, Mattie,” Frances Lehman, the bishop’s wife, pointed out. “So it’s your day to visit with your family and friends who’ve come to celebrate with you. We’ll allow you a cup of coffee and one of the biscuit sandwiches from the counter, and then you’re to forget all about the kitchen.”

  Mattie shook her head and chuckled. As one of the three original owners of the property, she’d considered herself more outspoken and independent than most Plain women, but the other ladies who’d made their homes here were proving to be every bit as stubborn and insistent as she and Christine and Rosetta.

  “All right, just this once I’ll do as I’m told,” Mattie teased as she picked up a warm breakfast sandwich. “But we’re not making it a habit, understand.”

  The kitchen filled with laughter, a sound that lifted Mattie’s spirits. When she’d been widowed in Coldstream—and Christine had lost her husband, and Rosetta had been left alone after their parents had passed—they’d each known the lonely silence of roaming around in their separate farmhouses. Living in the lodge together, with Plain ladies who rented apartments from Rosetta, made for a far more cheerful life. Mattie closed her eyes as she bit into a big, soft biscuit filled with ham, a fried egg, and cheese that dribbled down the sides. Eating food someone else had cooked was a treat that made her Noah’s wedding day even more special.

  “We’ve told Rosetta and my girls to stay in the dining hall, setting tables,” Christine remarked, pouring more flour and milk mixture into her gravy. “Phoebe and Laura are so excited to be serving as Deborah’s side-sitters. I didn’t want them getting their dresses dirty, either.”

  “Jah, what with my Noah’s being sweet on Deborah all through school, your girls have waited a gut long while to sit up front with her,” Mattie said before taking another gratifying bite of her breakfast.

  “And what a blessing that Noah and Deborah can hold the wedding in their new home,” Frances put in with a big smile. “It’s truly amazing, how many houses have gone up since Floyd and I moved here with the girls this past summer.”

  “Jah, what with Preacher Amos’s being a carpenter and Floyd and his brother running a siding and window business, we’ve got one of the nicest-looking Plain communities I’ve ever seen.” Beulah rose from her stool to carry a big pot of peeled potatoes to the sink. “Ruby and I never dreamed we’d have our cheese factory up and running so fast, either, but the fellows here can build just about anything. And we couldn’t ask for richer milk than we’re getting from Christine’s cows.”

  “And my bees love the orchard, too,” Ruby said happily. “Every morning when I get up and look out the window, I see their white hives amongst the apple trees and tell myself we’ve found the Garden of Eden.”

  “The produce stand’s open later in the season than I’d figured on, too,” Mattie said with a nod. “Local folks are snapping up our pumpkins and the last of the squash now, and I suspect they’d come all winter long if Deborah kept selling her baked goodies there.”

  “Maybe she could sell them from the cheese factory,” Beulah mused aloud. She ran water into her pot and put the potatoes on to boil. “Truth be told, we could use her help running the counter out front while we stir up batches of cheese. But she might change her mind about working now that she’s getting married.”

  “Last I heard, Deborah was excited about having a new kitchen to bake in, especially while Noah’s out on his welding jobs,” Mattie said. “At least until she’s got wee ones to watch after.”

  “Deborah was amazed at how well her breads and bars sold over the summer,” Christine said. She turned off the gas stove and smiled at Mattie. “I suspect she sees the three of us Bender sisters running businesses and understands what an advan
tage it is for a woman to have some income. For us unattached gals it’s our living, but for a wife it means a little more freedom—more leverage—when things around the house wear out or need fixing.”

  Frances was listening to this thread of conversation as though Mattie, Christine, and the Kuhn sisters were speaking a dialect she didn’t understand very well. “Where I come from, the menfolk have always brought home the bacon and the women have cooked it up,” she said softly. “Married women are homemakers without any businesses, and widows and maidels depend upon the men in their families to support them.”

  “That’s how it was for Beulah and me before we ran away from home,” Ruby said. “Once we maidel schoolteachers retired, our brother Delbert took us in—”

  “But we felt he and his wife should be raising their five kids instead of having to support us, as well,” Beulah continued. “Delbert was against us living here—”

  “Jah, he came in his truck and hauled us back home,” Ruby recounted.

  “—but when his mother-in-law had to move in after Carol’s dat died, we decided that was just too many folks in a one-bathroom house. So here we are,” Beulah said, raising her arms victoriously. “We’re making our own way with our cheese and our bees, living in Rosetta’s lodge. Life is fun again!”

  “We’re too young to get old any time soon,” Ruby chimed in matter-of-factly. “God is gut, and so’s the life He’s led us to here.”

  Frances smiled at all of them as though she might know something she wasn’t telling. “It’s invigorating to come to this new colony where everyone’s starting fresh—and I’m grateful to everyone for being so accepting of my Mary Kate,” she said in a voice that quivered a bit. “With Floyd’s being the bishop in our previous settlement, and Mary Kate’s being in the family way after that English fellow took advantage of her, we prayed that Promise Lodge would be a safe haven for her and the baby.”