The Amish Widower

by Virginia Smith

  We all shared a smile, knowing that the women in there would have an absolute fit if they ran short of fuel before they were finished roasting all the chickens this day would require.

  “Happy to do it.”

  Jake and I went outside to the toolshed, grabbed some axes, and then made our way to the woodpile, where we pulled out logs of birch and oak and began breaking them down into smaller, stove-sized pieces. Across the driveway from us, the barn’s big doors were open to the sun, and I could see people milling around inside, setting up for the reception.

  We chopped for a while, quiet except for the thwack of our axes and the crisp splitting of wood.

  “I guess I’ll let you off the hook—for now,” Jake said finally, pausing to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “But just let me say that I really am glad you have Rachel.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, relieved he was willing to let it go.

  Then he added, “After all, you’ll need someone to fill the lonely hours once I leave tomorrow.”

  I couldn’t help but smile as I reached for another log and placed it on the chopping block. “Oh, yeah? You think I’ll be counting the days till you get back?” I slammed the ax down, splitting the log neatly in two.

  “Absolutely. Mark my words. You’re going to miss me while I’m gone more than you can imagine.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, leaning down to pick up the larger of the two pieces and placing it on the block to split it again. “More likely, I’ll forget all about you. You’ll come back in four months’ time, and we’ll have to be reintroduced. I’ll be all, ‘What’s that? Jake who? I suppose you do look kind of familiar…’ ”

  I grinned, he smirked, and together we continued working side by side, the only sounds our occasional grunts and the steady rhythm of our task. I was glad he had dropped the discussion of Rachel, but I would have liked to avoid this topic as well. We both knew that his teasing words held more than a little truth. I couldn’t imagine what the next months were going to be like without Jake around. He was headed to Missouri for blacksmithing school, something he’d been looking forward to for a long time. Though Jake had always labored alongside me in Daadi’s buggy shop, his first love was the horses that pulled those buggies. Shoeing took skill, craftsmanship, and a level of trust between animal and man that few people appreciated. I did, but only because Jake had been talking about it since we were kids.

  Now that he was going to become a blacksmith, he’d be the first of the Millers to leave the buggy trade. His older brothers, Thom, Eli, and Peter, all worked in the buggy shop, as did some of their sons. On a busy day, there could be a dozen of us in there. Now it would be eleven.

  “So I suppose you’re all packed,” I said, clearing my throat.

  He smiled at me. “Just about.”

  “You probably won’t want to come home,” I said, pretending that wouldn’t bother me in the least.

  We both knew it would, though. Low-key guys like me didn’t have a lot of close friends. But since the day I’d come to live here seventeen years ago, I’d had Jake, the best friend of all.

  “Are you kidding? Of course I’m coming back. You might forget me, but the horses in Lancaster County won’t. They need me.”

  “At least the horses, if not the ladies,” I teased.

  Before he could respond, we both heard the distinct clip-clop of hooves behind us. Turning, I spotted a familiar market wagon coming our way, a sight that always filled me with inexplicable warmth. I watched until it rolled to a stop nearby. My eyes met those of the driver, and then she softly said my name. Hers was the sweetest voice I knew beyond that of my mother’s echoes.

  Rachel.

  She climbed down from the wagon, a casserole dish tucked under one arm.

  “Guder mariye, Tyler. Guder mariye, Jake,” she said. She smelled like a summer morning, like sweet pea blossoms. The ties of her kapp flitted in the slight breeze like butterflies.

  We tipped our hats, and she and I shared a smile. As Anna’s closest friend, Rachel was one of her two newehockers, or attendants, so I wasn’t surprised that she had come early.

  “Mariye, Rachel,” I said. “You’re looking pretty today.”

  Blushing, she was about to respond when Jake interrupted.

  “Got a full load here?” he asked, moving to the back of the wagon and peeling up a corner of the tarp to peek underneath.

  “Ya. The last of the dishes and table linens.”

  “Okay. We’ll get them into the barn once we’re done here.”

  “Danke, Jake.”

  He took over with the horse, leading it toward the hitching post nearest the barn as Rachel turned back to me and spoke in a softer voice.

  “How’s Anna?” she asked, her eyes sparkling. “Excited, I bet.”

  I glanced toward the house and admitted I didn’t know, that we hadn’t really taken the time to speak—other than a quick hello—since I’d arrived.

  “Ach, well, she’s probably busy in the kitchen. Guess I’d better get in there too.”

  “Guess you’d better,” I said, but then neither of us made a move to go. Instead, we just stood there, our eyes locked. Rachel really did look especially beautiful today, her cheekbones a rosy pink, her skin perfect cream, her lips soft and full.

  “What?” she whispered, giving me a sexy smile, as if she could read my mind.

  “Nothing,” I said, a twinkle in my own eye. She and I both knew that what I wanted more than anything in that moment was to give her a kiss.

  “All right you two, enough with the googly-eyes,” Jake said, returning to the woodpile. “Tyler, get over here. We’re not done yet.”

  I tipped my hat again and Rachel gave me a wink before she turned and headed for the house.

  Jake was right: Rachel really was the perfect woman for me. So why did I keep putting things off?

  I returned to my work—lift, place, thwack, split—my mind racing despite the calming scent of fresh-cut wood that wafted up from every chop. Rachel had been so patient with me thus far, but how much longer would she wait before giving up on me—on us—for good?

  Reaching for another log, I thought again of that time long ago, back when we were children in school. After the “twins” incident and our teacher told her that Jake was my uncle, not my brother, I had expected Rachel to be mad and to keep her distance.

  Instead, it seemed our deception had only fueled her curiosity. That night she must have put two and two together and begun to wonder that if I was being raised by my grandparents, then where were my real parents?

  She came to me in the schoolyard after lunch the very next day, concern etched into her face. “Do you not have a mother and father?” She was practically crying.

  “Everybody has a mother and father,” I said, pretending I was not moved by her concern for me. “You can’t be born without parents.”

  She was unfazed. “Are they…are you an orphan?”

  I frowned. “No, I’m not an orphan.”

  “So where are they?” Her eyes glistened.

  Even then, I hadn’t known how to explain. What could I say? My mother had died. She was gone for good, living now in a place very far away, as she had since the moment she’d passed. But what of my dad? I had seen him just twice in the past three years. At the time Rachel asked me that question, he was in Japan, by choice, on an extended tour that would keep him gone until I turned eleven. And even though I knew he was very much alive, most days he seemed just as far from me as my mother was.

  “They’re not here,” was all I said. Then I’d walked off in search of someone to play with who already knew my story and didn’t need to ask stupid questions.

  But Rachel wasn’t giving up that easily. The next day, she tried again, this time taking a seat on the swing beside mine and saying, “Tell me about your mother. What was she like?” Obviously, someone had filled her in, at least a little bit. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have put it quite that way.

  I wanted to rebuff her, but
again, her question left me silent and confused. What had my mother been like? Did I even know anymore? I still had some memories of her, of course, but Rachel had asked me not for memories but for a description.

  Sitting on the swing, my toes digging a rut into the dry, dusty ground at my feet, I tried to picture my mom. I could barely recall her face by that point, though I could still hear the faintest echoes of her voice, sometimes in English, sometimes in the Pennsylvania Dutch she’d grown up speaking.

  What else?

  I remembered her smile, from when we lived in Germany and I found three pfennigs in the street as she and I walked to the backerei to buy bread.

  I remembered her eyes, from when she watched me blow out the candles on a cake she’d baked for my birthday—white frosting with sprinkles on top, just like I’d asked for.

  I remembered her long brown hair, flowing out behind her as we pedaled down the street together on our bicycles.

  Of course, that had been back when we still lived in Germany. I couldn’t remember moving out of our house in Heidelberg or the long airplane ride to the States, but I remembered my mother calling her parents once we were settled into our new home in Maryland to tell them we had returned from overseas at last. I remembered that conversation well, remembered hearing her say that we wanted to come for a visit. But then after she hung up the phone, she just cried for a long time. And that visit never happened. I never even met my grandparents, in fact, until the day of the funeral, the day they took me home and my old life came to an end and my new one began.

  “My mother?” I said finally, turning to Rachel. “She was smart and funny and nice and everybody liked her.” Glancing her way, I couldn’t help but add, “She wasn’t Amish, you know. Neither is my dad.”

  I could still see Rachel’s face in that moment, the hurt in her big blue eyes. I could still feel the shame burning my cheeks, shame at the way I had said the word “Amish,” as though it was something to be disdained, as though I wasn’t wearing Amish clothes myself or living an Amish life, day after day, in my grandparents’ Amish home.

  Once again she had walked away without a word. That was on a Friday, and I felt bad all weekend long about what I’d said. When I saw her again that Monday at school, I was ready to apologize. But before I could, she simply came up to me and gestured across the playground toward the swings. We ran there together, and that time we didn’t just hang still but instead tried to get ourselves going. By pushing off with our feet and pumping our legs, over and over—leaning back, stretching out, leaning forward, curling under—we eventually went so high we were nearly perpendicular to the ground.

  “We’re going to swing to the moon!” she cried.

  “We’re going to swing to the sun!” I responded.

  “We’re going to swing all the way to heaven!” she said. “All the way up to your mother!”

  I glanced at her, but she wasn’t making fun. She wasn’t even pretending, really. She was just trying to make me feel better, to say something kind. That was the first I became aware of Rachel’s gift for compassion.

  “All the way up to heaven,” I agreed, and in the look we shared as we soared toward the sky, I knew all would be well between us from that moment forward.

  The time for wondering is over.

  The time for commitment is now.

  And yet…

  Tyler Anderson is torn between two worlds—Amish and Englisch. Born to an ex-Amish mother and an Englisch father, he is raised as a military kid until his mom passes away and his dad places him in the care of his Amish grandparents. Now 23, Tyler knows it’s time to commit to the Amish church for good. Still he hesitates, unsure if he’ll ever truly belong.

  Rachel Hoeck has been patient as she waits for Tyler to make up his mind and become her husband. But as much as Tyler adores Rachel, he can’t be certain this is God’s plan for his life. Conflicted, he prays for direction and peace—only to find himself being pulled to the outside world yet again. During a stay with his father’s second family in Southern California, Tyler meets a free-spirited young woman named Lark, putting his future with Rachel even more in question.

  As pressure mounts on both sides, will Tyler choose to stay with Lark and remain an Englischer? Or will he find his way back to Rachel and become her Amish groom at last?

  A poignant novel of the search for identity and lifetime love, nestled between a beloved Amish community and an exciting modern world.

  Does time really heal all wounds?

  Six years ago, Priscilla Kinsinger’s mother died in a tragic accident, plunging the teenager into a grief so intense she was finally sent to live with relatives elsewhere. Now an adult, Priscilla has returned to Lancaster County hoping to find peace at last with her mamm’s death, for which she has always felt responsible.

  Talented horse-gentler Jake Miller, an apprentice blacksmith for the Kinsingers, is soon at odds with the beautiful but emotionally complex Priscilla. He much prefers the lighthearted, easy-going ways of Amanda Shetler, the local young woman he’s been courting. But his boss is Priscilla’s uncle, so when the man asks Jake and Amanda to help his niece reconnect with community life, they have no choice but to do just that.

  Surprisingly, as Jake spends time with Priscilla, he finds himself drawn to her. Just as he fixes troubled horses, he wants to “fix” her too by convincing her she was not to blame for her mother’s death. What he discovers instead will challenge everything he believes about the depth of emotion, the breadth of forgiveness, and the true nature of love.

  A tender novel of friendship, love, and the power of trusting God to change hearts and lives, set in the close-knit Amish community of Lancaster County.

  Only Time Will Tell

  Newlywed Matthew Zook is expanding his family’s tack and feed store when a surprising property dispute puts the remodel on hold—and raises new questions about the location’s mysterious past.

  Decades earlier, the same building housed a clock shop run by a young Amish clockmaker named Clayton Raber. Known for his hot temper, Clayton was arrested for the murder of his beloved wife, a crime almost everyone—including his own family members—believed he’d committed, even after charges were dropped. Isolated and feeling condemned by all, Clayton eventually broke from the church, left Lancaster County, and was never heard from again.

  Now the only way Matthew can solve the boundary issue and save his family’s business is to track down the clockmaker. But does this put Matthew on the trail of a murderer?

  A timeless novel of truth, commitment, and the power of enduring love, where secrets of the past give way to hope for the future.

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  About the Publisher

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  To learn more about Harvest House books and to read sample chapters, visit our website:

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