OTHER BOOKS BY KATHLEEN FULLER
A Faith of Her Own (Available March 2015)
A Reluctant Bride (Available September 2015)
The Hearts of Middlefield novels
A Man of His Word
An Honest Love
A Hand to Hold
The Middlefield Family novels
Treasuring Emma
Faithful to Laura
Letters to Katie
A Gift for Anne Marie, included in An Amish Second Christmas
Flowers for Rachel, included in An Amish Garden
A Perfect Match, included in An Amish Wedding
A Miracle for Miriam, included in An Amish Christmas
What the Heart Sees, included in An Amish Love
AUTHOR BIO
Photo by Sarah Debevec
Kathleen Fuller is the author of several bestselling novels, including A Man of His Word and Treasuring Emma, as well as a middle-grade Amish series, The Mysteries of Middlefield. Visit her website at www.kathleenfuller.com Twitter: @TheKatJam Facebook: Author Kathleen Fuller
An Excerpt from
An Unexpected Blessing
Chapter 1
SHIPSHEWANA, INDIANA FEBRUARY 13
Etta Bontrager paid little attention to the north wind that howled and rocked their buggy.
Her husband, Mose, peered out the front window, his weathered hands firmly gripping the reins to their horse. Mose was nearly six feet tall and still had the muscled form of the young man she had married twenty-four years earlier. In her mind, he still was that man in every way. As they passed near a streetlight, Mose raised his hat and reset it on his head, giving her a glimpse of his dark, curly hair and receding hairline. They had both aged, to be sure; nevertheless, in their hearts she felt certain they were the same young man and woman setting out on a life together.
Etta looked past Mose to the scene outside the window. Snow swirled around them, accumulating on the side of the road in three-foot drifts. Beyond the snow was darkness. Little of the northern Indiana countryside was visible. It was as if the rest of the world had virtually disappeared under the weight of the winter storm.
She had kept an eye on the weather all afternoon as an ominous feeling of heaviness in her belly and lower back warned her that her time was near. She’d watched as the snow covered the top of the barn, the maple trees, and the hillside. The east side of the house, where they planted their family garden, had disappeared under the white blanket. The trampoline, which her children had become too old to play on, disappeared under a small white mountain. Their front porch looked like something out of an Englisch postcard.
As they rode toward Shipshewana, the temperature held steady at a numbing twenty-four degrees.
Etta was quite aware of the conditions outside their buggy this cold February evening, but she was more concerned about what was happening inside her body. Pushing the blanket down and off her lap, she swiped at the sweat running down her face in rivulets.
She tried to focus on her breathing.
She resisted the fear that insisted on clawing its way up her throat.
She pushed away the memory of that other night nine years ago.
Closing her eyes, she imagined the child in her womb, the babe she would soon hold, the babe she had thought was a mistake. Now she knew it was no mistake. Gotte had intended this child for their lives—for her and Mose. He had sent them an unexpected blessing in their later years. She did not believe this child was meant to replace Sarah. One child could never take the place of another. But God had seen fit to bless them one more time, and He would see them through.
No storm was too big.
No night too dark.
The pain washed over her, and she again began to count, panting and praying it would pass quickly. Longer contractions meant the time for their babe’s birth was closer, and they weren’t yet ready.
Not here.
Not in the middle of the country road.
Mose reached over and clutched her hand.
When she opened her eyes, she saw the worry etched on his face. “The storm is bad, ya?”
“We’ll get through,” he said.
“I’m glad you woke the girls and reminded them to keep feeding wood into the big stove in the living room.”
“They’re gut girls. They’ll take turns and handle it just fine—not that any of them would go back to sleep. They were too excited about the arrival of their new schweschder.”
“Maybe I should have stayed home.”
“Nein. Doc said you needed to be at the birthing center.”
Etta peered out the front window. They had no lights on the front of their buggy, and the streetlights revealed little—snow falling, snow swirling, snow covering everything in its path. The road itself was completely obscured. Etta had no idea how Mose managed to keep them moving in the right direction.
Rather than fret over the weather, which she couldn’t control, she prayed for the babe about to be born. She whispered a silent prayer for Sarah, who was now in heaven, and another for David, her lost child. That was how she thought of him now—not gone or vanished but lost. Finally, she prayed for their farm, that Mose might find a way to make the bank payments. She petitioned God for help so they wouldn’t need to sell the home where they had raised all of their children.
Each prayer brought heartache.
The ache in her heart over Sarah was steady, constant, familiar. The sorrow over David was fresh, even after two years. Was he safe, sheltered, and warm? When would she see him again? As for their farm, it didn’t seem possible that they might lose it. Her thoughts could hardly wrap around that fear.
The questions swirled and collided in her mind, and then her attention was jerked back to the present as the buggy tilted precariously and came to an abrupt stop. Their ten-year-old gelding, Morgan, struggled with the weight of the buggy against the heavy, wet snow, but the drift he’d stepped into was too deep.
The buggy was stuck.
A light from down the street shone into their window, and for a split second, she saw fear bleach the color from her husband’s face. Then Mose turned to her and patted her hand. “I have a shovel and lantern in the back. I’ll dig him out.”
Etta nodded, unable to respond. The next contraction was coming. They were closer together now, barely allowing time to rest in between. It was all she could do to focus on her breathing and continue to pray that this child would wait before entering the world.
Those thoughts all fell away as once again her body was flooded with pain.
She placed both of her hands on her belly, took another breath, forced back the panic, and whispered another prayer.
The contraction subsided, and she glanced to her left.
Mose was gone. He must have stepped out into the storm. The buggy wasn’t moving.
Why?
Then she remembered—the snowdrift and the sudden stop.
His promise to dig out the horse.
If there was a way through this storm, Mose would find it.
If not, they’d have the baby here, in the buggy. It wasn’t the welcome she’d envisioned for her change-of-life baby, but then often their lives did not follow the path she envisioned.
Like most people, their married life had taken twists and turns she would never have imagined when she was a young woman about to wed.
Another contraction came, consuming her attention with her energy. When it passed, she willed her body to relax, huddled beneath the blanket, and trusted that Mose would be safe as he continued to dig a path around the gelding. Etta could see him now, occasionally, as he passed in front of the light from the lantern. He was a shadow, moving back and forth, side to side, through the blizzard.
She fought to keep her eyes open for a minute, then two, and finally, she relented.
As she rested, her mind traveled back and landed on the day she’d first shared their news . . .
Chapter 2
MID-OCTOBER FOUR MONTHS EARLIER
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br /> Etta adjusted her apron, which was pulling tightly in every place it shouldn’t. She would need to do something about that, but she hadn’t felt up to tackling any extra sewing projects. Until the last few weeks, she’d struggled to rise from bed in time to feed Mose and the children.
This week had been better. Finally, she felt like her old self, or her younger self. It had been so many years that she’d forgotten the surge of energy she often experienced at the midpoint of a pregnancy. It wouldn’t last, but she was determined to take full advantage of it.
She’d risen from bed before Mose and had been in the kitchen warming kaffi when he came down. He greeted her with a smile and soft kiss before trudging out to the barn to attend to the morning chores. He’d returned in time to eat breakfast with the children.
Only their girls remained at home. Their two oldest boys had farms of their own—Ben in Middlebury and Christopher, a little closer to Shipshewana proper. Two years earlier their youngest son, David, left the community.
With only the girls, the meal had passed in relative peace. Martha had described the new fabric she would be placing on the store shelves at Lolly’s. Beth had told them that business at the pretzel booth was slow, so she planned to stop by the library before her shift and pick up another book. Only Charity had complained, declaring that school was boring and she would be glad to be free of it. All three of her girls were healthy, beautiful, good Amish girls. If one of them was in her rumspringa, Etta couldn’t tell it. Not that every parent realized when their child entered that time of rebellion. For some teens, it consisted of small, quiet decisions—like choosing to own a phone or going to see Englisch movies.
Etta felt the absence of David most keenly in the morning, as he’d always been her bright-eyed and bushy-tailed child, eager to launch himself into the coming day. His seat remained empty at the table. Some families put place settings at each meal to remember the one who had left, but Etta didn’t need a plate and silverware to remind her of David’s absence. It weighed on her heart each day, and each day she prayed that he would return home. She held tightly to the promise that God would watch over each of her children and that one day David would return.
Once her family had scattered to their various tasks, the house had filled with a silence she’d grown used to. She’d spent the morning cleaning, paused for lunch with Mose, and was now beginning her dinner preparations. For a moment she stood at the kitchen window looking toward the field, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mose. Though many Amish men now worked in factories or businesses, Etta liked having Mose near the house all day. She spotted him at the far side of the field, attending to their large work horses—Abby, Babe, and Chex. All three were black. Abby and Babe were Belgians and Chex was their sole Percheron. Abby and Babe had a single white spot between their ears, stretching down to their eyes. Chex had smaller white patches from the tips of his ears to his nose.
Mose handled the three horses as if they were no more trouble than the neighbor’s dogs. In truth, the horses stood over seventeen hands high and weighed nearly two thousand pounds each. They had already harvested the larger soybean crop. Christopher and Ben had come to help with that two weeks ago. Today Mose was beginning to harvest the corn. He would work the field alone as long as the weather remained clear, which it seemed it would.
He’d grimly told her that morning that the harvest was not going to bring in the income they needed. Etta didn’t need Mose to point that out to her. She’d been watching the fields for months and realized that the growth had been stunted by a longer than usual winter and rains at the worst of times. They’d make ends meet somehow. They always did. God always provided, though sometimes not as much as they might wish for.
If Etta looked closely, she could make out Pal, their chocolate lab, sitting at the edge of the field, eyes trained on Mose. The dog was exceedingly loyal and wouldn’t even consider coming back to the house until Mose did. The afternoon sun splashed through the window, and she stood there for a moment, enjoying the warmth of the October rays against her skin.
When she heard footsteps on the front porch, she knew it would be Rachel, her neighbor, come to share some tidbit of news.
“Come in,” she hollered out as she set about mixing together the ingredients for the beef and barley soup they would have for dinner.
She had already chopped the carrots and onion, measured the barley, thyme, and oregano. The spinach leaves lay in a colander in the sink. With a twist of the wrist, she opened the jar of stewed tomatoes—one of the last ones from the previous year’s harvest. The girls had recently helped her pull this year’s vegetables from the garden. Last week had been spent canning and moving the previous year’s bounty to the front of the shelves. Her containers of garlic powder, black pepper, and salt sat beside the stove. The ground beef sizzled in the pan.
Less than two weeks ago, she’d been unable to abide the odor of cooking meat of any kind. Afternoons often found her fleeing to the bathroom. Fortunately her oldest daughter, Martha, had stepped in and helped without asking any questions.
“I have a new letter from Silas and Samuel—” Rachel stopped in the doorway to the kitchen, her fingers on her lips, the letter clutched in her left hand.
Rachel was the same height as Etta, but that was the only physical trait they shared.
Though Etta had gained a solid thirty pounds over the last twenty years, Rachel had somehow managed to keep her girlish figure, even after bearing five children, all of whom were now grown and moved onto farms of their own.
Etta’s hair was as brown as Pal’s coat. Rachel’s remained blond even as gray cropped up here and there. Eight years separated them, with Rachel being the older. She’d turned fifty the previous summer.
No one would mistake them for sisters, but after twenty-four years of living side by side, they had become the best of friends.
“Oh my.”
“What’s wrong?” Etta asked, her eyebrows arching as she continued to stir the meat. Rachel was staring openly at Etta’s stomach. Etta turned the burner off and pushed the pan toward the back of the stove. Then she moved to the sink and washed her hands, taking extra care so she would have a few moments to think of how she wanted to handle this. If she chose to ignore the subject, Rachel would let it drop. But truthfully, she was ready to talk with someone.
She turned and smiled at Rachel. “Perhaps we should have some kaffi.” She placed a lid over the pan of hamburger meat.
“Kaffi and a sticky bun?”
“I haven’t been able to abide the sweetness of it, but ya—there are several left over and you’re welcome to one.”
Etta enjoyed the simple task of filling the mugs with the coffee she’d kept hot on the stove and pulling out the milk and sugar while Rachel found the sticky bun and placed it on a saucer. The everyday jobs had brought a sense of joy to her in the last few weeks. It seemed as if everything was new and special—even the chipped mugs for their drinks and the old pitcher that held their fresh milk.
When they settled at the table, Rachel dug into the sticky bun and followed it with a gulp of kaffi.
Etta smiled. “I suppose you want to talk about our newest blessing.”
“You’re with child.” It was a statement rather than a question. Rachel wrinkled her nose, accentuating the age lines around her eyes, and took another bite of the sweet roll. Finally, she pushed the plate away. “How did I miss it? You must be—”
“I’m not sure how far along I am. My monthly cycle has been so irregular the last few years.”
“Have you felt the boppli move?”
“Ya. Kicking already. That started a few weeks ago.”
“So you’re probably five months, maybe six.”
“Six, I believe.” Etta turned the coffee mug in her hands. She enjoyed the feel of the hot mug against her skin. She’d been limiting her caffeine consumption of late, but that didn’t stop her from pouring the occasional cup. Usually she ended up tossing her mugful out onto the roses in the g
arden.
Rachel shook her head. “In July, when we thought you had a stomach bug—”
“Morning sickness.”
“Then in August I was certain you’d somehow caught an early case of the flu.”
“I wasn’t sure myself at the time. I kept thinking that it couldn’t be. I am forty-two.”
“Not too old—”
“Apparently not.”
“But old enough.” Rachel sank back against her chair. “I’m happy for you, Etta. You and Mose are blessed. This is a gift from Gotte.”
“So Mose said the other night, and I believe him.”
“But?”
“But that doesn’t stop all the questions I have.”
“You know about birthing, Etta. After six children you could probably have this one by yourself, not that I’m suggesting a home birth.”
Etta allowed her gaze to travel across the kitchen to the sitting room and out the front windows. The maple tree was dropping red, yellow, and brown leaves around the old wooden swing hanging from its lowest branch. “Mose hung that swing over twenty years ago. Now Noah runs to it as soon as his feet hit the ground.”
“He’s a sweet grandson.”
“Ya. That’s my point. I’m going to have a child younger than my first grandson?”
“Gotte’s wille . . .”
“I suppose.”
Rachel sipped her kaffi and studied her friend. “It’s not the age of the children that is bothering you.”
“No. It’s my age. Will I be able to keep up? I remember clearly enough the long nights when a boppli has the colic, trying to ease the misery of teething—”
“You would often come over and help me when the twins went through such spells.”
“Two of mine didn’t sleep through the night until they were six months old.”
“Christopher and David. I remember.”
Etta smiled. It seemed as if the two families were one, as if their lives had been entwined as they shared births, deaths, good crops and bad, winter storms and summer droughts. Rachel’s twins now lived in Montana. “Any word from David?”
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