The Patch of Heaven Collection

by Kelly Long

  “And I’m supposed to say I’m sorry and that I’m happy for you, right?” The question wasn’t antagonistic, just tired.

  “No, I don’t expect you to say anything. I just want you to know that I’d talk with you if you ever wanted. Believe it or not, I understand what it’s like to feel trapped and unhappy.”

  Kate didn’t respond and Lilly lifted the reins. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t care. Anywhere.”

  “Fine.” Lilly started Ruler back down the road and they soon came to the Wyse family farm. She would have passed when the sight of dozens of buggies gathered around the place made her catch her breath. Was someone ill? She could think of no other immediate reason but tragedy for so many to gather on a Saturday, and she hastened Ruler along and turned down the lane. “I’m sorry, Kate. I’ve got to stop. Something might be wrong.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kate muttered, but Lilly was already out of the buggy, barely noticing when Kate began to follow her but then turned and walked back up the lane. Lilly threw the reins over a post and flew up the steps and burst through the kitchen door.

  The jumble of women, some unfamiliar, made her heart sink even lower and she frantically searched the group for Mamm Wyse.

  Then she heard someone exclaim. “It’s Lilly!”

  The crowd stopped talking and slowly parted to reveal a giant quilt frame surrounded by women with their needles frozen mid-stitch. Then she saw Jacob and Seth and tried to assimilate the fact that they were, apparently, quilting!

  Jacob stabbed his needle into the fabric and rose when her eyes met his. The contrast between his long, dark-clad legs and the bright colors of the unfamiliar quilt pattern was striking. He came around the edge of the frame and crossed the room to where she stood with his hands outstretched.

  “Lilly! I thought that you’d be away for more of the day . . . I . . . I wanted us to get more done.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s your wedding quilt.”

  “My wedding quilt?” Her blue eyes flashed to his.

  “This isn’t how I planned for you to know,” he whispered, pulling her close to him and shielding her with his broad back from the naturally inquisitive faces behind them. She saw him glance over her shoulder and heard a shifting as the women in the kitchen sounded like they’d turned away as a group.

  “How did you plan it?” she whispered back, amazed and uncertain.

  He smiled at her, his heart in his eyes. “With Seth. I just wanted to give you something to celebrate our marriage. I thought a wedding quilt made up of all kinds of squares, all kinds of love, might show you that . . . that . . .” He cleared his throat. “That our marriage is for real.”

  Tears began to flow down her cheeks.

  “Even if it didn’t start out in the traditional way . . .”

  Jacob took her hand and turned to lead her to the frame where Seth sat grinning.

  “Seth helped me write a request for some ladies to donate a quilt square and some of their time and skill. But Derr Herr had the word get around I guess, and all of these ladies wanted to celebrate in your happiness as a bride, even if it is a bit late.”

  “Ach, Jacob, do you even know what a gift this is? How much I’ve longed for this?” Her voice shook but she raised it so that everyone could hear her as she continued. “I have to tell you, even those whom I don’t recognize, that this is something I never thought I’d have. Never really thought I deserved in some way.” She looked toward Lucy Stolis’s sweet, young face. “But I think you’re all here because Derr Herr brought you to add to this day.”

  She turned to Jacob and lowered her voice. “Thank you, Jacob. I can’t imagine a greater gift of love.” And she thrilled to the truth in the words. Love. At last.

  A needle dropped, crystalline in sound, and went skittering across the wooden floor. The noise broke the silence and the ladies broke into an emotional response of laughter and tears.

  Jacob drew her forward to walk her around the edges of the quilt.

  “I’ve never seen such a large quilt!” she exclaimed.

  “Well, all of the squares are wunderbaar but there are a few I think I should point out.” He moved her to a corner to show her the square the children had made her for her wedding gift. He pointed to the next one, a marker-covered square showing a little boy, holding the hand of a woman outside a schoolhouse. “That’s Abel’s square . . . you and him together.”

  Lilly nodded, her tears falling unchecked.

  “This is mine, sweet schweschder,” Seth called, indicating a painted sunrise over the mountaintops with a well-held needle.

  “Ach, Seth. It’s beautiful. Danki.”

  Jacob pointed to another square nearer them. “I asked your mother . . . she said you wouldn’t mind, right, Mamm?” He showed her the patch he’d cut from the Christmas tree covering that Lilly and her daed had sewn.

  “Oh, Jacob, it’s just too much.”

  “Well, there’s one more.” He took her by the hand to the square on the opposite corner of the quilt. “I made it—your gift to me and back again.”

  Lilly bent to look at the seemingly blank square that she’d given him for Christmas.

  “There’s nothing on that square you gave me,” he said for only her to hear. “Because I thought of a thousand ideas. And none seemed right. What finally came to me was that I wanted us to start quilting on it together. Just a few stitches now and maybe we could add to the design every year. Just like our lives together.” His voice was hesitant.

  She felt her heart swell with love. “It’s like a patch of heaven, Jacob.” She turned in his arms and kissed him full on the mouth to the delight of all the onlookers. Then she took her place at the frame, beside her husband, and began to stitch on her wedding quilt.

  CHAPTER 47

  Jacob stood in the shadows of the storefront in the crisp early spring air. He glanced now and then to the reassuring bulk of Thunder, properly hitched to the nearby post, and wondered for the third time if he should wait in the buggy. Then he told himself that he was on a fool’s errand and almost backed out entirely when the Englisch woman came down the street with her keys jangling.

  “It’s you.” She smiled at him and he swallowed, removing his hat.

  “Jah, I mean—yes.”

  “Not bringing any ladies with you today?” she asked as she opened the door.

  He shook his head lamely and followed her inside.

  She flicked on some lights, deposited her bag on a counter, then turned to him with expectancy. “So, how are things going with your bride?”

  “Uh—good. Real good.”

  “She’s a lucky girl.”

  “Thank you, but I think I’m the one who’s lucky.” He was wringing his hat between his large hands, trying to study a nearby mannequin without appearing to do so.

  The Englisch woman laughed. “All right. What can I do for you?” Her voice had lowered a bit at the question and he once again thought longingly of escape.

  “Um. To the tell the truth, I wanted something for my wife, but I’m not sure. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

  “Every guy who comes in here thinks that,” she said, shifting to business mode. “Tell me how she’s shaped.”

  “Shaped? Uh, like a woman?”

  “What size is she? Most of our items come in small, medium or large.”

  Jacob cleared his throat. “She’s tall—but slender. Her waist has a gentle curve to it . . .”

  “Bosom?”

  “Yes,” he choked.

  “Yes, what?”

  “It’s . . . fine.” He ran a finger around the inside of his collar and the woman seemed to take pity on him. “I want”—he gulped—“something beautiful.” He felt the blush rising from his toes. “So she knows . . .” He cleared his throat. “She’s, uh, never owned anything . . .” He couldn’t finish his sentence.

  The woman gazed at him speculatively, almost as if something funny had occu
rred to her, and she smiled. “Does your wife have dark hair? And fair skin?”

  Jacob nodded in confusion. “Yes.”

  “I think I know the right thing. Follow me.”

  He tread across the velvety carpet in his work boots, further into the recesses of the store, like he was working himself deeper into a dark cave.

  The saleswoman stopped and pulled something from a rack. Then she led him back out into better light.

  “How about this?”

  Jacob gazed at the simple lines of the cream and lace gown with its delicate inserts of light blue ribbon. His head whirled with the sudden vision of the thing shaped against his wife’s pale skin; the ribbons matching the twin pools of her eyes, the lace pressing against the soft curve of her shoulder, leaving her neck bare . . .

  “I’ll take it.”

  Lilly made up the bed with deliberation in the late afternoon. A week had passed since the quilting and she had yet to lay her wedding quilt upon the bed because she’d just wanted some time to drink in the pleasure of remembering the quilting. And, she wasn’t sure what Jacob would think if she used it. Would he believe it was some symbol that she wanted a marriage in truth? She hoped so. So now, she folded away Edith’s quilt and glanced at the pile of Jacob’s bedding on the chair near the dresser. She felt her heart begin to pound with expectancy as she considered the coming night. Her mamm was staying overnight in Lockport to help a new member from the support group who was having a hard time. This left her and Jacob in the house alone for the first time since they’d been married.

  She smoothed the folds of the wedding quilt with a loving hand as she spread it over the bed, its generous size spilling over the sides and nearly brushing the floor. She fluffed the pillows a bit, then stood back to admire the bed.

  The sudden rumble of thunder in the distance broke her reverie and she turned toward the window with a smile. Oh, how she loved a good storm.

  Jacob arrived home in the middle of the rain, thunder, and lightning to an empty house. He knew Mamm Lapp was supposed to be gone, but he puzzled over Lilly’s whereabouts late on a Saturday. The gut smells of food baking also had him worried. It wasn’t like her to up and leave something she was cooking. He frowned and went to the kitchen window to peer outside. The rain made steady races of rivulets down the glass, but his sharp eye caught something white in the tree line beyond the barn. He laid the large box from Emily’s on the counter and turned to hurry back outside. Careless of the rain, he sloshed through muddy puddles, then ran for the copse of trees.

  Something came to him then and he almost stopped still. As he walked, he began to remember the dream he had on his wedding night. Clarity flooded his mind like the answer to a prayer. It hadn’t been Sarah he’d been wanting. It was the dark-haired maedel among the trees who drew his mind and heart—the vision of his beautiful wife.

  He silently entered the leaf-strewn copse and turned to see the real Lilly with her kapp off and her long hair down, reaching to cup handfuls of the water that dripped from the canopy above into her mouth. Her back was half turned from him, and he thought he’d never seen anything so sensual in all his days.

  He took a step forward, mesmerized, but not wanting to startle her, and she turned.

  “Ach, Jacob. I . . . I love the rain in the springtime.”

  “I know.” He stepped closer to her. “I saw you here before—once.”

  “Really? When?”

  He caught her in his arms and he thrilled to the yielding of her damp, slender form against him. “The moment my heart turned to you.”

  Lilly smiled up at him, a secret, knowing smile, prompted by his words and the desires of her heart. She tipped his damp hat off so that it fell on the wet ground behind him and reached up to caress the soft lay of his dark beard and to brush his long hair away from his face.

  “I’ve invented something,” she told him, knowing her voice sounded warm and intimate, a competition for the fall of the rain.

  “What is that?”

  She could tell that he was having difficulty concentrating on the words as his gaze seemed to drink her in with his pupils dilated and his eyes gold with intensity.

  She held out a cupped hand to catch some water then studied him deliberately. “Rain kissing,” she confided. “Have you heard of it?”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “Would you like to learn?” she asked, tilting her hand so that some of the water ran down her arm.

  “Jah,” he whispered breathlessly.

  “Take off your coat then.”

  He obeyed with a haste that made her smile, shrugging out of the garment and carelessly letting it fall to the ground atop his wet hat.

  He stood in his dark pants and long-sleeved white shirt, the press of his suspenders defining the strength of his shoulders already being revealed by the dampening rain.

  “I think you can learn best by experience,” she told him, dipping her finger into the pool of water in her palm, letting a drop of rain cling to her fingertip. She reached to rest the drop upon his lips. She stood on tiptoe to make her mouth even with the clinging droplet.

  She closed her eyes and let her mind drift back to the day on the trail, wanting to kiss him with the same burning intensity he had brought her. She pressed her lips against the rain and tasted his lips, ignoring the low groan that reverberated from his chest as she lingered, making sure to drink deeply of the water and his scent before moving away.

  “I think I get it,” he rumbled, reaching out for her with intent. But she held him off with one hand against his chest and he reluctantly stilled.

  “Just one more lesson, Jacob,” she murmured. She took her cupped hand and pressed it full against the front of his arm where she knew the gunshot wound was laying its permanent scar—the mark of their love’s beginning.

  His shirt was already soaked but she knew it didn’t matter when he shivered at her touch. She trailed her fingers down his arm, then back up again. “Beloved husband. Horse thief. Wild heart. Dream of my girlhood. Are you mine?”

  “Yes,” he choked as she moved to press her mouth against his wound. “Ach, Lilly, yes.”

  She kissed him through the fabric, the warmth of her mouth competing with the chill of the rain until she knew instinctively that he could stand no more. She drew back and he bent his head and kissed her once and hard. Then he scooped her up in his arms and carried her through the trees and back to the house.

  He crossed the room to the bed in two strides and sank beside her. “Ach, Lilly . . .” he breathed, reaching to touch her wet hair. “I love you. I love you. You were the perfect plan God always had for me, my love, my treasure.” He trailed damp kisses along her shoulder, then yanked at his shirt in frustration of the barrier. She reached to help him with sure fingers and then he lost all thought as she whispered her love against his mouth . . .

  A lazy smile tugged at his mouth. “Remind me that I’ve got a gift to give you later.”

  “All right. Want to know what I’m thinking?”

  “Mmm-hmm?” He bent to nuzzle her neck and she laughed.

  “Uncle Sebastian.”

  Jacob lifted his head and stared down at her. “What?”

  “He told me a secret at Christmas—remember?”

  “Jah, the thing you lacked.”

  “Well, I’ve found it.”

  “Have you?” He nestled her against his shoulder and caught a handful of her hair to spread across his chest.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “What is it?”

  She moved against him with a subtle pressure and he caught his breath.

  “Joy.”

  For My Father

  GLOSSARY OF PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH WORDS AND PHRASES

  ach—an exclamation like oh or my

  aentis—aunts

  boppli—baby/infant

  bruder—brother

  daed—dad/father

  danki—thank you

  daudi haus—small house in back of th
e main house where the parents live after their children are grown and married

  der Herr—God

  eck—bridal table

  Englisch—non-Amish people and their ways

  es dutt mir leed—I am sorry

  fater—father

  fraa—wife

  Gott—God

  gut—good

  hiya!—hi

  hund—dog

  jah—yes

  kapp—prayer cap

  kindskind—grandchild

  kuche—cake

  kinner—children

  kumme—come

  mamm—mother

  munn—moon

  narrisch—crazy

  nee—no

  redd-up—clean up

  sei so gut—please

  was en de welt—what in the world

  wunderbaar—wonderful

  PROLOGUE

  MIDDLE HOLLOW, OHIO

  A late summer breeze caught the scent of the wild roses that spilled over the crumbling stone wall and filled Grace Raber’s apron. Grace was eighteen, but because of her sunny disposition, those around her always thought of her as a much younger child. There was nothing she loved so much as the time after her chores, when she was at liberty to wander about the fields and trees near the family farm. She often brought things back to decorate the supper table under her mamm’s approving eye.

  Today God had given her roses, and their heady scent called up romantic images of a tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed Amish man, someone who would cherish her and love her forever.

  The fantasy gave Grace the sense of floating, flying, defying gravity. But as she approached the farm, her steps grew heavy.

  A horse and buggy stood out front, belonging to their neighbor, Silas Beiler. He was a stern old man who owned the adjoining property, and despite her parents’ attempts to hide it, Grace knew that her family was in debt to him after a bad harvest the previous year.

  Grace didn’t like the Amish widower. She always felt as though the thickness of her dress and apron were never enough to shield her soul from the pious condemnation in the man’s dark eyes. Whenever she passed by, he would raise his bushy eyebrows in an expression of pained contempt. Just the thought of him made her shudder.