First Light in Morning Star

by Charlotte Hubbard

  And what was that about? Is Lydianne not feeling well—or does she regret shutting me down so quickly? Or does she know things she can’t tell me?

  Jeremiah reminded himself not to read too much into her retreat. Lydianne was very busy with her teaching, after all. And he was about to begin harvesting his corn crop—which promised to be the best he’d had in several years—so there was no point in seeking her out to get his questions answered. If the weather remained in his favor, he’d be working alongside his hired farmer, Will Gingerich, from sunrise until darkness fell for the next few weeks.

  Maybe all that physical labor would make him sleep more soundly, so he’d stop dreaming about the attractive blonde who remained beyond his reach.

  Chapter Twelve

  As a steady rain settled in on Wednesday morning, Lydianne greeted her scholars downstairs in the cloakroom. “Let’s hang up our wet wraps and start our day with an old, old story about rain,” she said cheerfully.

  Billy Jay made a face as he slipped out of his raincoat. “But I hate the rain! We had to ride to school in Dawdi’s old rig today—and he said we probably wouldn’t be goin’ outside for recess. Is that true, Teacher Lydianne?”

  “You’d be soaked in thirty seconds,” she pointed out.

  “And then you’d be sittin’ in your chair for the rest of the day with your wet clothes drippin’ all over the floor,” Stevie said without missing a beat. “Some of us would probably say you’d wet your pants, you big baby.”

  “Well, no, we wouldn’t be saying that,” Lydianne countered, quickly steering the boys away from a conversation about bodily functions. “But we will be talking about all sorts of animals, and the biggest boat you ever heard of, and the promise God made when He created the rainbow.”

  “Noah’s ark!” Gracie exclaimed. “I know that story!”

  “Me, too!” Ella chimed in, clapping her hands. “I wanna hear about how all the animals marched onto the ark two by two—”

  “And think about how much poop was on the ark!” Billy Jay blurted with renewed enthusiasm. “Noah probably had to muck out the stalls every day—”

  “And throw all that poop overboard!” Stevie declared with wide-eyed wonder. “There woulda been camel poop and bear poop and . . . and dinosaur poop!”

  “Ewww,” thirteen-year-old Linda put in, holding her nose. “I’m glad I wasn’t living on that stinky ark. That’s enough about manure, boys, or I’ll let you take my place at shoveling out the stable when we go home today.”

  Lydianne smiled to herself. She’d discovered the advantage of having older girls in the schoolroom who kept Stevie and Billy Jay from getting too far out of hand. At least the boys seemed interested in the special project she’d been saving for a rainy day, and she hoped it would keep them occupied during recess when they’d be staying indoors—without a chance to run off any steam outside.

  “I brought us a special story rug to sit on,” she said as she led the scholars up the stairs and into the classroom. “I like to think of it as a magic carpet, because stories take us to faraway, fascinating places. Today we’ll go all the way back to Bible times in the Old Testament.”

  Lydianne’s magic carpet was actually a colorful braided rag rug her dear, deceased mother had made—large enough that it had nearly covered the floor of the small attic room where she and her older sisters had played when they were children. Her heart thrummed with memories as she watched the Flaud sisters and the Miller girls nimbly sit on the rug, carefully tugging their cape dresses over their crossed legs before patting the places between them. The four younger scholars situated themselves in those spots and looked eagerly at Lydianne.

  Easing onto the rug, she carefully arranged her long, loose skirt so she was modestly covered. Lydianne held up a big picture book she’d recently bought for the schoolroom’s library. “Long, long ago, God tried many, many times to tell humans how they should love Him and live in peace together,” she began, paraphrasing the text as she focused on the colorful illustrations. “He became so disappointed in their wicked, sinful ways that He was sorry He’d ever created them.”

  The classroom fell silent as the kids thought about what this statement meant. Pleased that they were taking the story seriously, Lydianne turned the page.

  “God so was tired of His people’s violence and meanness that He figured the only way to fix it was to wipe everything away,” she continued, shaking her head sadly. “He decided to destroy the world He’d created—even the animals and the birds.”

  “With a big ole flood,” Gracie whispered solemnly.

  “That’s right,” Lydianne said, flipping to the next page. “But whose family did God save?”

  “Noah’s!” Stevie cried out. “He was one of the gut guys!”

  “And God told him how to build this big, huge ark that would float on all that water He was gonna send,” Billy Jay put in.

  “And Noah had to bring in every kind of animal, two by two,” Ella continued the familiar story. “There was lions and tigers and g’raffs and horses and cows and goats and chickens—and thank gutness there was puppies, too, or I wouldn’t have Brownie to play with!”

  Lydianne nodded, her heart overflowing with love for the bright little blonde who so closely resembled her father. “God didn’t give Noah and his family a lot of time to prepare for the flood. Noah and his sons began to build the ark of cedar wood, higher and higher, with a single door and just one window, near the top,” she told them, pointing to the details in the pictures. “The neighbors all thought Noah was crazy to build such a boat, because they lived nowhere near the ocean. But Noah, a man of deep faith, believed what God had told him.”

  Turning the page, Lydianne smiled at the rapt expressions on her scholars’ faces. “Then Noah called out to the animals, and they came to him, because God had spoken to them, too. It was already starting to rain when the last of the animals showed up.”

  Gazing at her students, she asked, “Meanwhile, what do you think Noah’s wife and daughters-in-law were doing? What would you need if God said you’d be living in a boat during a flood that might last a long, long time?”

  After a moment’s silence, Lorena’s face lit up. “Food! Noah’s wife and daughters-in-law surely had to be preparing the food they’d need—”

  “And think of all the feed those animals would eat,” Kate said in an awed voice. “They probably didn’t have baled hay for their herds—and how would they provide the leaves and grass the deer and other wild animals needed?”

  “And what about acorns for the squirrels? And bird seed? And puppy chow?” Ella asked with a worried frown.

  Billy Jay’s eyes widened. “Do ya s’pose some of the big animals ate some of the smaller animals while they were in the ark all that time?” he whispered. “Wild animals do that.”

  Lydianne smiled at their astute questions. “The Bible doesn’t go into those details,” she replied.

  “But maybe God didn’t allow any of the animals on the ark to die, because He wanted them to be alive after the flood waters receded,” Lucy speculated. “God can do anything—and He wanted a peaceable kingdom where lions could lie down with lambs instead of having them for dinner—”

  “Maybe He made it so the predatory animals didn’t want to eat the other ones,” Kate put in thoughtfully. “Otherwise, a lot of species would’ve become extinct.”

  “Excellent points,” Lydianne said, smiling proudly at her older girls’ insights. “Here again, the Bible doesn’t spell out a lot of things that went on in the ark. We can figure that the women might’ve baked bread and gathered grapes and olives and other grains beforehand. We do know that Noah and his family and all those animals lived together while it rained for forty days and forty nights. The Bible says the water covered the entire earth—even the trees and the tallest mountains.”

  Billy Jay exhaled loudly. “That’s a long time not to go outside and play, Teacher Lydianne,” he murmured. “Do you s’pose all those monkeys and chicke
ns and pigs got crazy like we do when we’re cooped up?”

  Lydianne chuckled along with her students. It was a real blessing that the boys were enthralled by the untold possibilities in this story, thinking beyond what the Bible presented. “What did Noah do then?” she asked. “How did he find out if it was safe to leave the ark?”

  “He sent out a dove, and when it came back with an olive branch, Noah knew the water had gone down enough that the trees were uncovered,” Lorena recounted.

  “And how did God mark His promise with Noah—His covenant—that He would never again destroy His creation with a flood?” Lydianne asked as she closed the storybook.

  “It was a rainbow! Up in the sky!” Ella crowed ecstatically.

  “So every time it rains,” Gracie put in confidently, “God sees the rainbow, and it reminds Him to stop the water before the whole world gets flooded again.”

  As Lydianne rose from the rug, her heart was filled with happiness. She hoped the retelling of this favorite Bible story would keep her scholars busy and engaged during this run of rainy weather.

  “Let’s start our day with a special Noah’s ark spelling list. It’s written up on the board,” she instructed. “We also have some math problems involving the size of the ark—and what a cubit is—and we’ll explore some Bible history about what people wore and the food they probably took into the ark with them. Later on, we’ll have some special projects—like coloring a big poster for our wall, and molding clay animals, and maybe even building a model ark!”

  As the day went on and the rain showed no sign of letting up, Lydianne unrolled the huge poster of Noah’s ark surrounded by pairs of animals—with a large rainbow that stretched across the sky. To use up some of the kids’ energy, she allowed them to play a relay game that raced them up and down the stairs a few times, and then they began coloring the poster. It didn’t surprise her that Ella placed her chair where she could work on the wide stripes of the rainbow.

  When Billy Jay and Stevie were losing interest in coloring, Lydianne gave them modeling clay and suggested they make animals to display on the table below the spot where the completed poster would hang. That afternoon she unwrapped an ark kit she’d found in the bookstore, and soon Lucy and Lorena were helping Billy Jay and Gracie fit the wooden pieces together.

  By the time parents began arriving in their rigs to fetch the children, Lydianne believed that she and her scholars had shared their best day yet. As the buggies headed toward the road through the pouring rain, a blessed peacefulness settled over the classroom. She felt drained, yet elated. She wanted to rest her head on her folded arms for a bit—except the last time she’d done that, Jeremiah had come to the schoolhouse and invited her to the Shetler reunion.

  Considering the steady downpour that drummed on the schoolhouse roof, Lydianne doubted he’d show up again today, but how could she know? Jeremiah certainly hadn’t been harvesting his corn, as he’d mentioned at church this past Sunday, so chances were good that their busy bishop was out taking care of other business. He might stop by to ask her about why she’d turned him down—and she certainly couldn’t give him a full, detailed answer.

  With a weary sigh, Lydianne straightened the room, gathered her books, and started for home. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she didn’t have to elude Jeremiah Shetler? He was such a compassionate, handsome man, that any woman would be blessed to have him as her husband—

  But that one afternoon when I gave in to my love for Aden has made me a maidel forever. What man could respect or trust me, if he discovered my secret? And if Bishop Jeremiah learns I bore Ella out of wedlock, I’ll be shunned, and I’ll lose my teaching job. How can I possibly remain in Morning Star after that?

  Lydianne swiped at a tear and quickly made her way through the rain toward the pole barn, where her buggy was parked. She might as well accept her fate and go home alone—because that was how she was destined to spend the rest of her life.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As Jeremiah approached the Miller home on Tuesday, October first, wearing his best black coat and pants with a new white shirt, he had mixed feelings about the wedding he was about to conduct—and that bothered him. Ordinarily, the sight of the wedding wagon—which was stocked with dinnerware, tablecloths, and extra stoves and ovens for putting on the meal that would serve hundreds of guests—lifted his spirits. His mood, however, matched the gray predawn sky, which was overshadowed by clouds.

  It had been a frustrating week.

  Three days of continual rain had postponed his corn harvest—and it had taken that many more days for the soil to dry enough that the draft horses and wagons could enter the fields without getting stuck in the mud.

  But his farm work had to wait yet another day while he officiated at Gabe and Regina’s wedding. First would come the regular church service, followed by the wedding ceremony, and then a huge meal and multi-family celebration that would last the remainder of the day. Because he was the bishop, he couldn’t slip away from any of these festivities to tend his personal business—even though his livelihood depended upon working while the weather was good.

  Jeremiah sighed as he drove closer to the house and the big white tents the Millers had rented to accommodate the long tables for the wedding meal. He suspected that Regina would’ve preferred holding the meal and reception in the commons at The Marketplace, but her uncle, Preacher Clarence, had probably insisted upon the traditional wedding arrangements because he was paying for some of them.

  Again, Jeremiah reminded himself that Gabe’s and Regina’s families deserved his full attention—his best, most inspired wedding sermon—because the Flauds and the Millers were not only members of his congregation, they were also his dear friends. Why did he feel so restless, wishing he could drive a farm wagon for Will Gingerich rather than officiating at today’s joyous occasion?

  Because it’ll be sheer torture to lead Regina and Gabe in their marriage vows while you stand only a few feet away from Lydianne.

  All week he’d thought about her. One night he’d had a vivid dream about his beloved Priscilla—only to be shocked awake when she’d turned to take him in her arms, and it was Lydianne smiling at him. He was delighted that Gabe and Regina would be starting their new life together—and remaining in their cozy home in Morning Star—yet he was a desperate man.

  Desperate for a woman’s touch and sigh.

  Desperate for a sign from God that he should either try again with Lydianne or move beyond his desire for her.

  “This, too, shall pass,” he muttered as he parked his rig alongside the pasture fence. “Get over yourself and get on with your life, man.”

  Jeremiah shook his head. He was so far gone, he’d been talking to himself lately—even a couple of times when Mamm had caught him at it. He was relieved that his mother was riding to the wedding with Jude and his kids, because she’d been spending a lot of time at their place to help Leah with baby Adah, who was still too young to be out among people.

  But Mamm’ll be watching you, wondering why you refuse to even chat with Lydianne. She’ll believe this wedding is the perfect place for you to spend time with a young woman who’d make you such a fine wife.

  His mother was right about Lydianne making him a fine wife, even if he didn’t want to spend time with her during the wedding festivities, where the guests could observe them. The mood was buoyant as he met with Preachers Clarence and Ammon in an upstairs room to decide who would preach the two sermons during church. His colleagues agreed that he should preach during the wedding, as usual, before leading the couple in their vows.

  As the three of them and Deacon Saul entered the Millers’ front room, which had been expanded by adjusting some of its movable interior walls to accommodate the huge crowd, Jeremiah anticipated a wonderful day to celebrate a fine young couple. The congregation was nearly finished singing the hymn when he and the other leaders took their places in front of the preachers’ bench.

  Jeremiah looked at the front pews, occupie
d by the wedding party. He was aware that Gabe and Regina had gone against tradition by having only one set of side-sitters instead of two—

  He coughed, stifling a reprimand that would’ve stopped the church service cold. Instead of Gabe’s cousin sitting beside him, Glenn Detweiler held the place of honor. And he was grinning as though he’d just won the lottery.

  * * *

  As Lydianne settled onto the front pew beside Regina, her heart felt airy and light. Because Martin Flaud, as the school board president, had called off classes so his daughters—and everyone else—could attend Gabe’s wedding, she was enjoying an unexpected day off. She felt special, wearing the new dress of deep royal blue fabric that Regina had chosen to offset her bridal dress, which her Aunt Cora had sewn from an eye-catching shade of morning glory.

  With her dark red hair tucked tightly under her crisp white kapp, Regina radiated an exuberant joy that Lydianne envied. Even though it had been her own decision—her own secret—that had determined she’d forever remain a maidel, she swallowed a sigh as she leaned closer to her best friend.

  “I wish you all the joy and love in the world, Regina,” she whispered as she clasped the bride’s hands.

  “And I wish you the very same, Lydianne,” Regina replied softly. “Someday the right man will come along—”

  Lydianne had been so focused on the bride that she hadn’t looked around the room, but movement on the men’s side made her glance in that direction. She froze.

  Instead of Gabe’s cousin sitting beside him, it was Glenn. As he flashed Lydianne a triumphant grin, she had to clench her jaw to keep from crying out in protest.

  How did this happen? Where’s the fellow from out of town—the cousin Gabe had invited to stand up with him right after he proposed to Regina?

  Regina sucked in her breath. “Oh my,” she murmured. “I wasn’t expecting—”

  As Bishop Jeremiah rose to begin the worship service, he appeared displeased about Glenn’s presence, as well. Lydianne tried to focus on his low, resonant voice as he opened the service with prayer—and then she forced herself to follow Preacher Ammon’s first sermon, Deacon Saul’s reading of the day’s Scripture, and Preacher Clarence’s longer second sermon.