by Kelly Long
“No, Mamm! No! No! No! I wanna finish, pleeeease!”
Grace’s heart began to thump, as it always did when he dissolved in public. “Maybe a gut spanking is in order?” Miriam suggested.
Abel collapsed to the floor in a ball and Grace turned on the shopkeeper. “No, Miriam Esh, a spanking cannot beat a neurological condition out of his head.”
Alice tried to soothe him. “Abel, I’ll give you the dollar. You did a good job!”
His wailing increased and he was rocking back and forth now. “I wanna fiiiiiinish! Pleeease, Mama, pleeease!” He dissolved into shaking sobs. Grace dropped to the floor beside him, gathering him close in her arms. He allowed it, rocking against her, his sobs catching into hiccups. Her heart ached for her boy, and she felt like crying herself.
At last she helped him to his feet and he clung to her, hiding his face against her. “Alice, here’s my purse. Will you pay, please? I’ve got enough thread at home. Miriam, I’m sorry. I appreciate your help.”
She made her way with Abel out into the glaring sunshine and then up into the buggy. “I’m sorry, Mamm . . . I’m bad.”
She stroked his dark hair. “Nee, Abel, you’re a gut boy. I love you. But when you find yourself getting really upset, you have to try and choose to do something different instead of screaming. You can breathe deeply—”
“I can’t . . . I can’t remember,” he choked.
“You will someday, as you get older.” Grace tried to slow her own breathing.
Alice climbed into the buggy. “I got your fabric. Abel, are you—”
Abel squirmed restlessly. “No! Don’t talk to me!”
Grace flashed an apology to her friend through her eyes. Alice nodded, then Grace picked up the reins to head for home.
Seth watched as the buggy pulled up to the house. He saw Abel scurry down and take off toward the woods with Pretty close behind. He got there in time to help Alice down; Grace was already headed into the house. The screen door slapped closed behind her.
“Don’t ask,” Alice muttered.
“What?”
“I’ll go keep an eye on Abel,” Alice said.
And before he could ask any more questions, she disappeared and left him standing alone in the driveway.
CHAPTER 45
Grace lay facedown across the bed, her shoulders shaking. Seth went and lay down next to her, putting an arm around her back.
“Sweetheart, what is it?”
She shook her head and mumbled, her words muffled by the bedspread. “Nothing.”
“Come on, Grace. Tell me. Please.”
She turned her head sideways, facing him as tears dripped across her nose. “It’s Abel. He . . . he lost control at Miriam Esh’s. Crying and screaming. It was awful. I felt so bad—for him and for me.” She dissolved into sobbing.
“Shhh. Hush, Grace. It’s all right. People don’t understand, they don’t have to. It’s enough that you know Abel. And inside, deep inside, he’s really not afraid.”
She stopped crying suddenly and met his eyes. “That’s my biggest worry—that he’s so scared.”
Seth felt increasing confidence in his words. “He’s not. Inside he’s majestic and peaceful and free.”
“Ach, I want to believe that. How can you be sure?” She swiped at her eyes and let her damp hand rest against his cheek.
He smiled. “Someone talked to me this morning about grace. That’s what Abel’s got inside of him, I think. Grace. It’s a gift from Gott. I believe der Herr made him the way he is—not Silas Beiler, and not some kind of defect or mistake. Gott made him and filled his soul with grace.”
“Thank you, Seth. No one has ever said that to me before.” She moved slowly and kissed him, a kiss of gratitude, but not passion. Then she straightened up and tugged at her kapp. “I need to get my face washed and my baking done. It’s nearly eleven and Kate Zook’s coming at two.”
Grace, will you forgive an old woman for what happened today?” Alice said. “I shouldn’t have interfered.”
Grace went to her friend and embraced her. “Of course, Alice. I’m sorry, too, that I didn’t talk much on the way home—it drains me, you know?”
“I bet it does. Well, Abel’s out on the porch with Pretty. He wants some pink lemonade, and that sounds mighty good to me too. Maybe with a shot of something else.”
“Alice!” Grace laughed.
“I’m kidding. Well, maybe only half kidding.”
Grace served the lemonade and left Alice and Abel drinking on the porch. She slipped around to the kitchen garden to get a few things for that afternoon’s quilting time with Kate.
Like a little garden imp, her mother-in-law poked her head up from in between the pea pods to smile at her. The entire family shared the kitchen garden, but this was the first time Grace had met Mary picking.
“Mary, I made some pink lemonade. Would you like some?”
“Nee, thank you, dear. I’m getting some things together for a salad to take over to the Masts. Poor Emily’s down with a bad cold, but she definitely didn’t catch it swimming.”
They both laughed, and Grace lifted a wicker basket from the ground and let herself into the garden gate.
“Well, I’ve got Kate Zook coming to quilt. You’d be welcome to join us, Mary, when you get back.”
“I’ll tell you the truth about two things: first, that girl sets my teeth on edge, and second, I wish you’d call me Mamm instead of Mary. Oh, I know I probably don’t feel anything like your mother, but over the coming years, I’d like to try to fill that spot more and more.”
Grace smiled at her. “I’d be honored to do that. You’re a lovely mother.”
“I can return that compliment easily. Abel is a unique pleasure.”
“Ach, you haven’t seen him in action. He had a fit at Miriam Esh’s that she’ll probably tell everyone within a ten-mile radius about.”
Mary Wyse laughed. “So what? I have to confess that Jacob and Seth found more ways to get into trouble than any pair I’ve ever seen in all my days. If it wasn’t one neighbor complaining, it was another. One summer Seth reached through the Kings’ backyard picket fence and plucked every one of their prize-winning red tulips, roots and all. He brought them home to me as a proud present, and the Kings lost the blue ribbon at the fair that year for the first time in ages.”
Grace laughed. She could picture a young Seth trying to please his mother. Maybe that was why he understood Abel so well, because he’d gotten himself in trouble a time or two.
“I’ve got to head out,” Mary said. “You have a gut day with whatever mission you’re on with Kate Zook.”
“Oh, I will. And thank you . . . Mamm.” Grace tested the word softly, and Mary rewarded her with a bright smile.
Once alone, Grace quickly surveyed the garden’s abundance, trying to decide what she might whip up in a hurry. The zucchini ran riot and the tomatoes were nearly ready to fall, they were so red. She switched her baking plans to lean more toward a tea and hastily began to gather things in her basket. She’d have a light, chilled zucchini soup, tomatoes in sugar, and cucumber and onion sandwiches. And she’d make some jelly drop cookies for dessert.
Satisfied with her menu and her gatherings, she headed back to the house, praying softly to herself that the afternoon might be a success.
Seth and Jacob were mending a fence in the heat of the summer afternoon. They moved along slowly, checking wire and wood with care, a few feet from each other.
“Tell me why we’re working on a Saturday again?” Seth asked.
“Because this needs doing. I’ve seen that new colt testing the fence, and besides, Lilly went visiting with her mother.”
“Yeah, well, Grace has got Kate Zook coming over to quilt.” Seth knocked his hammer experimentally against a post.
“Kate Zook? Why on earth?”
Seth knew that Kate had made trouble for Jacob and Lilly in the early days of their marriage, and there was no love lost on the girl or her schemin
g mother. “I don’t know half the reasons women do what they do. I think Grace sees something good in Kate.”
Jacob grinned. “Well then, she’s got better eyesight than most.”
Kate Zook arrived promptly at two, with a faint sneer on her face and a sarcastic twist to her words as she said, “Thank you for inviting me.” Still, Grace was hopeful that extending kindness to the girl would help.
“Where’s your Englisch friend?” Kate asked.
“She’s with Abel. She thought it would be good to give us time to talk.”
“Lovely,” Kate said, although her tone indicated that time alone with Grace was anything but.
They sat down at the quilting frame. “I appreciate your help,” Grace said. “And I’ve made us a real nice tea for later.”
Kate shrugged, selecting her needle. Grace watched her for a moment as she began to stitch. “Why, Kate, you’re an excellent quilter!”
“I should be,” she said. “When I was little, I used to sit on a stool at my mother’s feet. She made me practice buttonholes.”
“Ach,” Grace said. Buttonholes were the bane of all sewing.
“Mamm would cut the hole in a little piece of fabric and give it to me, and I’d try and finish it. I’d give it back to her and she’d smack the top of my head, telling me it looked more like a sow’s ear than a buttonhole. She’d give it back and I had to do it until it was perfect—smacks and all.”
“I’m sorry,” Grace said. It was probably the most the girl had ever revealed about an unpleasant upbringing. Some Amisch were very hard on their children, being the strictest of disciplinarians.
She placed a stitch, then looked carefully across the expanse of fabric at the girl.
“Kate, this may sound strange, but God has laid you on my heart. I think He’d like me to be a mentor, a friend to you, if you will allow it.”
“What are you talking about?” Grace felt the scorn in Kate’s eyes, filled with disbelief and a gleam of something else she couldn’t identify.
“I promised to tell you about my first husband. It’s only fair that I do so since you’ve shared with me.”
“Yeah, right.” The younger girl shrugged.
“I was married very young, to an extremely brutal man, an evil man.”
“Did he hit you or the kid?”
Suddenly Grace realized that she now had Kate’s interest. She prayed that God would give her the words to say. “Abel, no. Me . . . yes.”
“Why’d you stay?”
“I married him to help my family, and once we were married he kept me isolated from them. He wouldn’t allow me to see them. But I also stayed because I felt I had nowhere to go, no way to support myself. So I started to quilt, experimenting with different designs.” She paused. “But not color, of course. My husband—that is, my first husband, Silas—felt that bright colors were a vanity and an affront to God.”
Kate nodded her chin toward the bright quilt that stretched between them. “Seems like you’ve changed.”
Grace looked at the quilt. The girl was right. She had changed, indeed. Even after Silas’s death, when she was alone with Abel and making quilts to sell in Lancaster, she had kept to the muted tones—a reflection, she supposed, of her morbid life.
It must be Seth’s influence, giving her the courage—perhaps through his painting—to use bright colors. It felt like an exploration of her inner self on a quilt frame, the announcement of some renewed self-esteem. And she had her husband to thank for it.
“I think you’re right, Kate.” Grace smiled. “I am different now. And if I can change, believe me, you can too.”
Kate’s hands stilled on the cloth. “Who said anything about me wanting to change? I’m fine like I am.”
“Are you?” Grace shrugged. “You are one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever met, yet you never smile. You are wounded, I think. The Bible says that ‘deep calls to deep,’ that one who has gone through struggle or difficulty can recognize it in another. I see you, Kate—or at least glimpses of the real you—and I’d like you to be free.”
“Free?” She stabbed viciously at the quilt with her needle. “You have no idea what it’s like to—”
“To have people berate you, seem to hate you, tell you that your beauty is but sin and temptation, to feel ugly inside, tortured and hurt and—”
“That’s enough!” Kate rose to her feet, her hands shaking. “I don’t have to listen to this.”
“True. You don’t.” Grace forced herself to remain calm. “But it is the truth, and you know it. The Bible also says that ‘the truth shall set you free.’ I’m here to help you with that truth if you want it.”
Kate rolled up her needles. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m leaving.”
“Very well,” Grace said. “I’m sorry you’ll miss tea, but you’re welcome to come again anytime.”
Kate gave her one last bewildered look, then stormed out the kitchen door. Grace heard Alice call good-bye to the girl but there was no response.
Grace took a deep breath as Alice and Abel came inside.
Alice put her hands on her hips. “Grace Wyse, are you trying to help that angry child?”
“Well . . . yes.”
Abel went into the living room to lie on the floor with Pretty, and Alice came over and took Kate’s vacated chair.
“Grace, you can tell me this is none of my business, but I love you. You have more on your plate to deal with than most people I know, and things will not necessarily get easier with time. So why let yourself be rudely talked to by some snot of a kid?”
“You were eavesdropping on the porch.” Grace smiled. “And yes, I’m trying to help her. I’m trying to help myself too, to get over being insecure.”
Alice snorted. “Insecure about what?”
“I don’t know—the past.”
“The past is long gone, honey.”
Grace smiled again. “You’re right, Alice. It is gone. But God can still use it for good.”
“Besides,” Alice said, “I wasn’t eavesdropping. I was hungry and wanted to see when you were going to eat.”
CHAPTER 46
Violet knew that the small Amisch community of Pine Creek had its eyes on her and Luke after their appearance together at the mud sale, but she wasn’t overly concerned. She was sitting on her bed, lost in thought as she folded laundry, when Grace peered through the half-opened door.
“Come in,” Violet called, patting the bed beside her. “Do you want to talk?”
“I feel like I’ve been neglecting you a bit,” Grace said as she sat. “I saw you and Luke King at the mud sale. He seems kind.”
“Ach, he is.” Violet couldn’t help the flush that stained her cheeks. “And so much more.”
Grace gave her a gentle smile. “I don’t want to sound like a nagging older sister, but you are young, Violet. Don’t you want some time to think—maybe consider a bit, before—”
Violet reached out to hug her. “I am considering, dear Grace. I feel like I’ve known him for years.”
Grace sighed. “And I forget that it is your choice, not—” She broke off, and Violet touched her hand.
“I’m sorry, Grace. I cannot imagine how it must have been for you not to be able to choose. How have you come to maintain trust in der Herr after that experience?”
“It was a long time ago. And the Lord blessed me with Abel.”
“That’s true. But now, with Seth—is it all right?”
“I think things are getting there.”
“I’m glad, Grace. I really do think he is a gut man.”
Her big sister nodded in agreement. “He truly is.”
The following Tuesday Grace went looking for Seth and found him in his painting room. He whirled when she entered and moved to block her view of the canvas.
“Painting a secret?” she asked.
“Maybe. What’s up?”
“I’d like to go into town with Alice and maybe Lilly, if she’s up to it. C
ould you keep an eye on Abel? He’s out front, playing with Pretty. Violet is off somewhere. Maybe Abel can help you and Jacob this afternoon?”
“Sure. He’ll be fine, don’t worry. And have a gut time.”
He seemed anxious for her to be gone. She wondered what he was painting. They hadn’t talked much about his art lately. She was glad to avoid the issue for the time being, although she couldn’t help thinking about the ways he had influenced her attitudes toward color in her quilting. Maybe her heart was softening toward his art.
She hurried down the steps, called a good-bye to Abel, and then joined Alice in the buggy.
“One of these times, I’m going to drive,” Alice said.
“Now that I’d like to see.” Grace laughed and they headed off in good spirits to pick up Lilly.
Seth became so immersed in his painting that at first he didn’t hear Jacob calling his name downstairs.
“What?” he called, landing another stroke on the canvas.
Jacob stormed up the steps and entered the room. “Seth, what are you doing? Do you remember a thing called work?”
“What time is it? Seems like I started only a bit ago. I’m painting the Grace pond, Jacob. Want to take a look?”
“Nee, I want to get done working so that I can go home to my beautiful wife. It’s nearly two o’clock.”
“Suit yourself, but I think Grace was going to try to pick up Lilly, so they might be home late.” Seth stuck his brushes into the coffee can filled with turpentine and dried his hands on a rag. “I’ll clean up later, all right? Come on, big bruder. Let’s move.”
They were downstairs and outside before Seth realized that he didn’t hear Pretty’s normal cheerful barking.
“Jacob, have you seen Abel?”
“Nee, I thought he was with you.”
Seth stopped stock still and blinked in the heavy sunlight. “I’m sure he’s around. Will you help me have a quick look? I promised Grace I’d keep an eye on him, and I—”
“And you started painting, right? You always lose track of time when you’re doing that. Come on, let’s look around.”