He smiled, but he led the way without protest.
TWENTY-FIVE
The half-moon hung low in the sky as Mary slipped out of the mudroom and hurried across the lawn. With her shawl pulled tight against the chilly wind, Mary found Stephen’s buggy in line behind several other men who waited for their dates.
Mary pulled herself up into the buggy and slid the door shut behind her “Goot evening, Stephen,” she said.
“It’s goot, it really is, to see you,” he said. He jiggled the reins.
His horse plodded around the buggies ahead of them, and they pulled out of the driveway.
“So how are you, if I may ask?” Stephen glanced toward her, his face a shadow in the dark as low clouds scurried across the moon.
“Decent enough for a chilly evening,” Mary replied. She tightened her shawl again.
The truth was, the cold didn’t bother her at the moment. Willard’s handsome face had been in her mind’s eye all through the hymn singing. Since Friday, the memory of his smile and warm charm had remained. On her knees, she had beseeched the Lord for mercy—but her prayers had done little goot. At this moment, she imagined Willard instead of Stephen seated beside her in the buggy.
Allowing Willard to help at the co-op had been an awful mistake.
Stephen was clearly oblivious to her dreadful thoughts. He smiled gently as faint moonbeams reached inside the buggy. “I have looked forward, all week I have, to this, you know—the few hours I’d spend, at least, with you.”
“I…” she began. “It’s goot to be here with you again, Stephen.” Mary caught her breath and let the words burst out. “What kind of progress have you made with Lavina? Did you get a chance to stop by her house and speak with her?”
He grimaced. “Lavina, I mean, of course not. That’s not going, if I may say so, much of anywhere, Mary. Surely a woman like yourself…you are smart, and you know that such things take time. And what if Lavina…I mean, the woman doesn’t even know I’m thinking such thoughts about her, if I really am. And the Lord’s will. I can’t, much as I try, even with your encouragement, bring myself to take the step.” Stephen glanced upward. “The Lord has not spoken to my heart. And, I mean, I am dating you. Lavina? No! One doesn’t, while one is dating someone else…someone whom I care about. Please don’t be offended, Mary, but I care a lot. The Lord knows how much. I think you’re a wunderbah woman.”
Mary forced the words out. “Maybe you wouldn’t think so if you knew what I did this past week.”
Stephen laughed. “I doubt if there’s anything in the world, or even in my imagination, that you are capable of, even if you tried, doing wrong.”
Mary kept silent. She wouldn’t change his mind, and Stephen would soon ask what she had done if she didn’t leave the subject alone. She didn’t regret the time spent with Willard enough to make a full confession to anyone. That was the terrifying thing about Willard. He seemed so right, so much of what she had always wanted. But how was that possible?
Mary gathered her courage. “I know you said Lavina was not for you, but we should practice making a visit to some other widow’s house. That day must come, Stephen. You shouldn’t live alone when there are women in the community who would take care of you.”
He stared out of the buggy as they plodded into the Yoders’ driveway and up to the hitching post. He hung his head, the reins loose in his hands. “I don’t know, if I am honest and truthful, about that. I don’t think so, Mary.”
He began to climb out, but Mary stopped him with a touch on his arm. “Let’s just sit in the buggy for a while. It’s chilly, but the moon is still out. We can go inside if we get too cold.”
Stephen nodded and settled onto the seat again.
“Tell me about your childhood.” She glanced at his face with a smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard much about the Overholt family.”
“There’s not much, as they say, to tell. Seven boys, all big men, clumsy, most of them, but none worse than me. The others—at least I think they did—turned out okay. They are all, down to the last one, married to decent women. I was the middle child. There was no reason, at least that I can see, that we were strange, which is how, as they say, I turned out. We were happy, I think, at least it seemed so to me. I was, I don’t know, lost kind of…never took to things. I kept to myself for some reason—at least, that’s what I was told. I just never married. That was the Lord’s will.”
“But that’s such a sad story,” Mary wailed. “There were lots of women, I’m sure, who would have taken your offer of marriage. You have a farm that must be about paid for, and—”
“Yah, see, there you go, like I said. There really is no reason.” Silence fell in the buggy. The setting moon hung in front of them, just above the horizon.
“That’s still a sad story,” she insisted.
“Yah, I know,” he agreed. “Seems like all my life, at least, that’s how it’s been, sad. Seeing the Lord’s hand, and then not seeing it, or being told that…” His voice trailed off.
“I’m sorry, Stephen. I guess I did the same thing.”
“Don’t blame yourself, really, don’t. At least you have—for me, I think—done much more, so much more than any of the others have.”
“How many girls have you asked on dates?”
He laughed, the sound grim. “Not too many. Maybe, shall we say…” He appeared to count for a moment. “More than a dozen, I think, but I can’t remember. They are all kind of lost in my mind—that is, when I’m around you, Mary. You seem like the end of the road, like home to me. Almost like the first girl, the one who was not the Lord’s will.”
“What did you say?” Mary asked.
His gaze was fixed on the moon as it slipped under the horizon. “Like that,” he said. “Just like that—the light of my life, my hope for the future, for our plans which she spoke of. But the Lord was not with us, and she was gone forever.”
“Who was this girl?” Mary studied Stephen’s face.
He seemed lost in the memory.
“Stephen!” She reached for his arm. “What happened? Tell me.”
He rallied himself. “It was all very long ago, as they say. I should have forgotten, but I haven’t. They said we could not be, so I have worked, and waited, and prayed, but things are what they are. There is nothing anyone can do about this, at least it seems so to me.”
“Maybe you should start at the beginning,” she told him, still holding his arm. “Tell me about this girl.”
He turned toward her. “Could we go inside the house, where it’s warmer?”
“Of course.”
Stephen shivered and climbed down from the buggy, while she went out the other side. He had the buggy blanket draped over his horse by the time Mary walked up to him. He dropped his gaze and followed her up the sidewalk. Mary held the door open for him and saw the pain written heavily on Stephen’s face as he passed her. She closed the door and seated herself beside him on the couch. The flames from the kerosene lamp Mamm had left on the woodstove flickered across the room.
“You were saying?” she prompted.
“She was a beautiful girl to me,” he said. “Though she wasn’t really, not to others—as I wasn’t, and as I am not. We were two lost souls, but we loved from our hearts. I first saw Millie at a rumspringa gathering in Lancaster. You know how those are, but perhaps you don’t. They are much the same as here I think, or they used to be…at least, it seems so to me from the ones they have here.”
Stephen gazed at the kerosene lamp flame as it danced in the glass. “Millie was from a district in the south of Lancaster County, visiting, I think, for the weekend with her brother. I heard the Lord’s voice in my heart, right from her first smile, as if the heavens had come down and visited me. Millie warmed my heart and filled me with joy. I almost hurt, if you know what I mean. I suppose, at least I think, you must have known this when Josiah first paid you attention.”
Mary caught her breath. This insight she had not expected. And
Willard, she almost said aloud.
Stephen continued. “We moved closer that evening, Millie and I, each of us drawn to the other, it seemed. I dared speak, what was in my heart. I can’t remember…probably something dumb, like I always say, when things are important to say. But she smiled, and it didn’t matter, because she was like me. We talked, all that evening, mostly with each other. I followed her out to her brother’s buggy when the time came to leave. Around midnight, I think.
“‘Do you always come to this gathering?’ she asked me.
“‘Usually,’ I told her. ‘Will you be here next week?’
“‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘If I can persuade my brother Harold to bring me.’
“But I knew she would come, because she loved me as I loved her. She was there the next week, and the next. She let me drive her home in my buggy, while her brother frowned but said nothing. A moon was out that night, much the same as there was tonight, a sliver of a moon, hanging close to the horizon. The weather was warm, though, around the middle of summer. We drove with the buggy doors open. I did not know what lay ahead of me, did not see the storm clouds coming. I was too blind to know that the Lord’s will, you understand, would stop us.”
Stephen fell silent, and Mary waited until he continued. “My horse was fast in those days. Wind Jammer, he was called when I bought him at the sale barn, and the name fit. Millie leaned against my shoulder as we raced along those summer nights. ‘I think I love you,’ she whispered in my ear once. ‘I felt you would come for a long time, and here you are.’ I didn’t say anything for a while. I couldn’t say anything. Not after a beautiful girl, at least to me, like Millie, said something like that. I stopped the buggy in front of her barn and jumped down. Her daett was there, ready for me, waiting. ‘This will go no further,’ he told me. ‘My daughter is not ready for marriage.’ But he meant she was not for me—how I was, poor and from a strange family, and slow. I tried to see her again, but Millie never came back to our rumspringa gatherings, and neither did Harold. They would not let me speak with her when I visited the house, often though I went.”
“Is she married now?” Mary asked.
Stephen shook his head, his eyes fixed on the kerosene flame. “Millie’s an old maid, the last I heard. She’s teaching school in her district.”
“But Stephen—” Mary clutched his arm.
“Can we just, how do they say, forget this?” he interrupted. “This was not the Lord’s will. So do you have anything to eat? I’m sorry to bring up my past, taking up your time, but I am hungry.”
“Of course.” Mary leaped to her feet and hurried into the kitchen.
She didn’t know who Millie was from the southern part of Lancaster County, but Stephen’s story had a ring of authenticity. Likely Millie’s daett thought Stephen unfit for his daughter. The couple had been denied love, and Millie had refused to settle for second best. But why? Pain stabbed at her heart. That often happened when couples were broken up. Regardless, Stephen had once known his own dreams of home and family. Both of them had been betrayed by circumstances out of their control. They had more in common than she had thought possible.
Footsteps came from the living room. Mary quickly wiped her eyes, but Stephen still noticed. “I’m sorry, I really am, to unload my story on you, when I know that your own heart must still be tender…hurting, actually, from what Josiah did to you.”
“It’s okay,” she managed. “Why don’t you sit at the table? We can eat in here.”
He hesitated, but he sat when she motioned with her hand. She set out brownies and glasses of milk, and they ate by the light of the lamp, with flames flickering on the dark walls.
Mary gave Stephen a smile, and he seemed to relax. “Maybe you could visit Millie again and talk to her. Things change over the years. You are both older now, and you have your farm. Millie’s daett might be wiser after these years have passed and watching his daughter mourn for her loss. Why didn’t Millie wed again?”
He hung his head. “I don’t know. She was beautiful to me.”
“Then Millie must still love you. The least you can do is visit.”
Stephen grew pale. “But my strength, my courage…I did not tell you everything, Mary. Out by the buggy that night, her daett said I was rejected of the Lord. That he would not add to Millie’s sins…” Stephen’s voice trailed off.
Words exploded out of her. “That is horrible, Stephen! That is awful to say about someone. Surely Millie’s daett has either changed his mind or seen the error of his ways by now. Why would the man say something like that?”
Stephen ignored the question while hope lit in his eyes. “You think?”
“Yah! Certainly!” Mary didn’t hesitate. “But even if he hasn’t, you must not believe such things. The Lord’s blessings are on those who believe and obey. Those are the true teachings of the community.”
“No one has ever said this to me.” Stephen’s eyes lowered.
“Have you told anyone else your story?”
“No. Those words are too awful to utter. They are true, Mary.”
“They are not! You must visit Lancaster at once and pay Millie a call. After these long years…” Tears sprung into her eyes. “Another day is too long to wait, Stephen.”
He stared blankly toward the window.
She held out the plate of brownies to him. “You want another one?”
He took a brownie slowly, with hope flickering on his face. “I can go see her, Mary. If you say I can.”
“You can,” she told him. “And the Lord will bless you.”
“So perhaps I was wrong, all these years, about the Lord’s will? Because Millie’s daett was really wrong.”
Mary nodded, tears stinging her eyes.
TWENTY-SIX
The following Sunday, Mary glanced up from her place among the unmarried girls as Bishop Miller led the men into the Sunday morning services. The ministers took their place on the special bench prepared for them beside the kitchen doorway. Mary searched the line of men for Stephen’s face. He would be the first of the unmarried men to appear if he was still in the community.
Mamm had confirmed Stephen’s story on Monday morning. “Yah, there was a Millie Zook from southern Lancaster if I remember right.”
“Why would she never have wed?”
Mamm shrugged. “That’s hard to say. Millie had a birthmark that ran up her neck and into one whole side of her face, but why are you asking?”
“Just wondering.”
“This is not because of Betsy?”
“No.”
But Mamm had not been satisfied with her answer. “You were too young to remember Millie when we moved. You wouldn’t even have met.”
Mary had taken a deep breath. “Stephen dated her once, and her family cut off the relationship.”
“He told you this?” Mamm had appeared worried. “Why are you still dating the man?”
“I’m not anymore. I think I accomplished what I wanted to.”
Mamm’s worried look did not fade, but the conversation ended when Betsy appeared in the kitchen doorway, waving a letter from Ronald.
“It came! Another one already!” Betsy did a jig on the kitchen floor.
Joy had filled Mamm’s face. “And he’s a goot Amish man, right?”
Betsy had ignored the question to dash upstairs.
Now Stephen wasn’t here this morning, which must mean that he had followed Mary’s advice and made a visit to Lancaster. Was healing possible for him and Millie after these long years? Was the same thing possible for Mary? If so, then with who? Certainly not with Willard Gabert, though her feelings led her toward that end.
Mary caught her breath, and the girl seated beside her glanced up in surprise. Amish girls didn’t draw attention to themselves by gasping in church services, but everyone in the room had also noticed what she saw. Willard Gabert, the Englisha man, stood in the line of unmarried men.
“Who is he?” the girl leaned over to whisper.
Mary
pressed her lips together as warmth ran up her back.
The girl’s look turned to disapproval. “What is an Englisha man you know doing here?”
Which was precisely the question. Why had he come? He hadn’t been to the co-op again, and she’d felt conflicted about wanting him to return. Willard’s handsome face was a memory that haunted her. Now he was here. Did he plan to join the Amish? Mary’s heart pounded in her chest. Was this how the Lord would answer the cry of her heart? Could Willard Gabert be her future husband? Mary forced herself to breathe, and the girl next to her gave her another disapproving glance.
A song number was given out, and the service began. Mary snuck a glance at Willard. He seemed perfectly relaxed, even at home on the backless bench, with an Amish man seated on either side of him. One of them shared the German songbook with Willard, but there was no way the man could read a word. Willard didn’t appear bothered, though, as the German hymn was sung. The plaintive notes filled the whole house, and he smiled and nodded without moving his lips. At least he didn’t pretend to know what he didn’t know. The man was honest, but she already knew that.
Bishop Miller stood to lead the line of ministers upstairs for their Sunday morning meeting. Willard’s gaze followed them, but he didn’t appear surprised—just interested in the proceedings. She had gone to his church services. Why should she complain if he came to hers?
The answer was obvious. She had been interested in Kenya, while Willard was interested in her. This was plain enough to see. Mary kept her head down as heat crept up her neck. Those were thoughts she had tried to avoid, even during the day Willard had spent at the co-op. Instead, she had focused on her own feelings and how wrong they had been. Willard cared enough to attend an Amish church service, perhaps even considered joining the community—but what would that do for his mission in Kenya? One couldn’t be Amish and run a mission overseas.
The singing continued, and Mary kept her head down until Bishop Miller led the line of ministers down from the upstairs. She dared look up once the preaching began, but kept her eyes turned carefully away from Willard’s direction.
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