Hidden Mercies

by Serena B. Miller

  Still staring at him, the clerk automatically started to blow a bubble, thought better of it, and sucked it back into her mouth.

  Ever since he’d left the hospital two days ago, he’d found that a joke and a quick explanation made it a little easier on the civilians he interacted with. They could file the information neatly away in their brain, probably along with a new determination never to let a relative of theirs set foot inside of Afghanistan for any reason whatsoever.

  “Sorry.” The girl ran his credit card through the machine, handed him a receipt, then studiously went back to her magazine.

  The plastic surgeon had said that the scars would fade with time. He wished the fading would hurry. He was not a vain man, nor had he ever considered himself particularly handsome, but having people steal sideways glances at him wherever he went got old real fast.

  Hunger was gnawing at his stomach by the time he neared his hometown. This was not the kind of hunger that could be filled at the window of a drive-through. As he got closer to home, he began to crave a meal that would fill the emptiness in his heart as much as his stomach.

  He wanted comfort food—Holmes County soul food. Homemade egg noodles. Slow-roasted chicken. A custard pie with a crust so light it melted in your mouth. Whipped potatoes that didn’t come out of a box. Gravy made from honest-to-goodness meat drippings. Home-canned green beans seasoned with onions and bacon. A mile-high apple pie topped off with a piece of the best-tasting cheddar cheese in the world—prize-winning cheese made with milk produced right there in the heart of Ohio.

  If he was lucky, every bite would be seasoned with the soft, comforting sound of Pennsylvania Deutsch being spoken all around him. It would be a nice contrast to the Farsi he was used to hearing until the day he had been flown out of Afghanistan with an IV in his arm and a sling holding his jaw in place.

  As he drove through Mt. Hope, he was a little surprised to discover that a large restaurant had been built in the middle of the small village. Mrs. Yoder’s Kitchen, the sign said. He wondered exactly which Mrs. Yoder had decided to start this establishment. The name was so common here, it could have been any one of a hundred Mrs. Yoders.

  It was exactly the kind of place he’d been hoping for, and the minute he walked in, he knew he was finally home. Many of the patrons were Amish, and he knew that the Amish spent their hard-earned money only at restaurants where they knew the food to be good and plentiful.

  The specialties appeared to be broasted chicken and slow-cooked roast beef. He ordered the chicken, asparagus with cheese and bacon sauce, and bread dressing.

  The Amish waitress brought his order, and he sat at a table near the window, consuming crispy, moist chicken, along with homemade bread slathered with his people’s favorite condiment, Lattvarick, slow-cooked apple butter. He had healed enough to swallow real food again, and was grateful for every bite.

  The sight of buggies trotting past the front windows brought on a wave of homesickness so strong it nearly took his breath away.

  “Can I get you anything else?” The waitress laid the bill down on his table. There was something familiar about her. He took a good look at her face.

  He realized the tired-looking, worn-around-the-edges waitress was Rose. He had known her since they were both in diapers. She was Claire Keim’s twin. They’d come within hours of being in-laws. He almost greeted Rose by name, but some instinct stopped him.

  “I’m trying to decide between the pies.” So many memories he had of Rose and Claire. He remembered playing baseball with them during recess. Those two girls had been able to run bases like colts, even in their long dresses.

  “The Dutch chocolate looks good—but I’m also partial to custard. It’s hard to decide.”

  “They’re all good.” She showed no sign of recognition, nor did she show any interest in his order. She seemed to be a woman from whom the drudgery of life had stolen all signs of the high spirits he remembered when they were young.

  “Custard, please.”

  Without a word, Rose headed back to the kitchen.

  Not once, through the entire exchange, did she show any sign that she knew him. To her, he was just another tourist wandering through Amish country. It was a little disturbing to discover that the change in his appearance was that profound.

  He had not considered the possibility of coming back to Holmes County and not being recognized. From Rose’s reaction, it appeared that he might have a choice whether or not to reveal his identity.

  Rose brought the pie, and as he cut through the thick custard with his fork, he noticed that a woman had come in and was talking to Rose as she wiped off tables. The woman was the same age and height as Rose. She turned just enough that he could see the side of her face. It was Claire. It had to be Claire. So she was still here.

  He had driven all the way here to talk with her, but he couldn’t do it here. There were questions to ask, and apologies to make, but not yet. Not until he had rested and washed the long trip from his body.

  In fact, his need for rest right now was so great, it was making him a little light-headed. He needed to pay his bill and concentrate on getting to the hotel. This was not the time or the place to talk with the woman who had haunted his dreams for most of his life.

  In a few days he would go see Claire. If Claire would speak to him, he would tell her that he had once been Tobias Troyer, the younger brother of the man she had expected to marry. He would explain that he had spent a lifetime regretting his part in his brother’s death. Most important of all, he would ask forgiveness for having made her a widow before she could become a wife. Maybe, if he was very lucky, she would make it possible for him to meet his brother’s son.

  He also planned to check in with his father and sister, assuming that either of them were willing to speak with him. There was no guarantee they would. He did not hold out a lot of hope that his uncles, aunts, and cousins would talk with him. They would probably simply follow his father’s and sister’s lead. When Swartzentruber Amish banned someone, they were banned indeed.

  If he was very lucky, she would grant him the forgiveness he’d craved for a lifetime. Or she might unleash all the words she had saved up all these years to say to him.

  That would be her decision. All he knew was that in order to live the rest of his life with any measure of peace, he had to tell the people he cared about how sorry he was for causing such pain.

  • • •

  Claire noticed a tall, broad-shouldered man rising from his table as she talked to Rose. His hair was short. There was an angry scar running along the entire length of his jaw, and another one directly above his left cheekbone. As he pulled money from his billfold for a tip, she saw that he used his hands with some difficulty—hands that appeared to have been badly burned—and when he walked away, he walked with a limp.

  She knew of poultices that might draw some of the pain from those wounds. Had the man been Amish, she would have considered approaching him and offering a suggestion or two, but he was not Amish. In fact, there was something about him that made her think he might have been a soldier at one time.

  No, she would not be talking to that man anytime soon. Of all professions, that of soldier was one of the most alien to her culture. Quickly, she turned away before he caught her staring.

  chapter THREE

  Room 214 of Hotel Millersburg had a king-size bed, an antique desk, and three large windows that overlooked the historic hotel’s brick-lined courtyard. The brochure said that live entertainment would perform there during summer months, but in May, the only entertainment Tom could see was two hardy little sparrows quarreling over a scrap of bread.

  He smiled when the drab little female won and flew off, the male following close behind her.

  He was contemplating the possibility of driving somewhere for lunch when there was a soft knock on the door.

  “Housekeeping,” a voice called.

  He unlocked the door. A worried-looking woman stood on the other side. The sixtyis
h housekeeper, her gray hair done up inside a white prayer Kapp, apologized.

  “I am sorry to disturb you. It’s just that . . .”

  “I need to let you do your job,” he said. “I’ll go get some lunch and give you time to do whatever you need.”

  He knew that she would change the sheets, open the windows to the spring air, and give the room the kind of good cleaning any self-respecting Amish woman would.

  He had missed his people.

  Once he got on the road, he realized that his leg had started to throb again. He fumbled in his pocket, brought out a small pill bottle, flipped open the lid, shook out four pills, tossed them into his mouth, and swallowed, chasing them down with a swig of cold, leftover coffee.

  Soon, the pills began to work their magic and he could relax a little and enjoy the scenery. He marveled at the timelessness of the area. No electricity poles or wires marred the sky. No mobile homes dotted the landscape. Silos thrust up from the earth as though they were organic things growing straight out of the soil. The very number of them was a witness to the richness of the land.

  Farmers walked behind their patient, glistening workhorses, their boots and homemade denim pants stained with the earth from which they wrested a living.

  The smell of that earth being split open with steel plow points, now exposed to the air and sunshine, wafted in through his open window and tickled his senses. He well knew the feel of leather reins in his hands, the tug of the horses, the smell of horse sweat. It almost made him want to stop the car and ask to plow a few rows.

  Almost.

  Nostalgia aside, he had no desire—no true desire—to trudge along staring at the rear end of a horse.

  He turned his mind back toward his goal. Perhaps today he would see Claire and apologize for having killed the father of her child.

  • • •

  Maddy was sweeping the porch when Claire arrived home from her second birth that week.

  “You’re back from Kathleen’s so quickly?” Maddy greeted her. “That was a short labor.”

  “Four hours,” Claire said. “She even fixed me a cup of tea before I left.”

  “You let her do that?”

  “She insisted. Oh, and she had a basket of boys’ pants sitting beside the bed so that she could mend them while she was in labor. Kathleen does not allow any grass to grow under her feet.”

  Maddy grinned. “She is a bit of a show-off, that one is.”

  “True.”

  Maddy’s competent presence freed her to take on more maternity clients than she could have managed otherwise—especially with two-year-old Daniel at home. In her opinion, taking in her brother’s two orphaned daughters had been an even greater blessing to her than to them.

  “I cautioned Kathleen about trying to do too much too soon.” Claire stepped out of the buggy and began to unhitch old Flora. “I doubt she will listen.”

  Her married son, Levi, appeared in the doorway of the nearby workshop wiping his hands on a rag. “I’ll do that for you, Maam.”

  “Denke, Son.” She gathered the two shoulder bags in which she kept the supplies she needed to attend a birth and headed for the house.

  Amy, Maddy’s thirteen-year-old sister, looked up from a small table on the porch where she was busy practicing her newest hobby, calligraphy. “We had some tourists stop by today.”

  “Oh?”

  “They saw the signs down by the road and came in to buy one of Levi’s baskets. The woman said one of his big ones would be perfect for storing the quilts they had purchased.”

  Amy, with her freckled face and sweet smile, tried hard to be enthusiastic about life, in spite of being confined to a wheelchair. Claire appreciated the girl’s valiant spirit. It would have been hard on everyone if Amy gave in to the despair Claire knew she sometimes felt.

  “Is that all they wanted?”

  “No. Once they got inside the house and saw all the jars of honey and maple syrup on the shelves, they bought some of that, too. And . . .” Amy liked to draw good news out and savor it. “The wife saw the greeting cards I made and bought all of them!”

  “All of them?” Claire said.

  “Every last one. I had a dozen made up at two dollars apiece. She gave me two twenties and refused the change because she said my cards were worth more than I was charging. She and her husband were from Arizona. They were nice.”

  “Did you mark it on your map?”

  “The Englisch lady did it for me,” Amy backed her wheelchair away from the table and maneuvered it to a large map of the United States tacked to a board. She pointed out where the woman lived. “And she told me all about their hometown. She says it’s very dry there right now.”

  “So what are you going to do with your riches?” Claire asked.

  “I’m going to save up until we can go to Walmart and get more supplies. I’m in great need of card stock and a fine-point paintbrush.”

  Claire had not loved the idea of setting up a corner of her living room as a store, but it did give Amy an outlet for her homemade greeting cards and a steady stream of new people to talk to. In spite of her disability—or perhaps because of it—the girl was usually as sociable as a puppy. Every day was an adventure for Amy as long as someone came to purchase something. One customer had been thoughtful enough to send her a postcard of a Florida beach, which now adorned the wall of the bedroom she shared with Maddy.

  She supposed the little store—really just some shelves Levi had put up in one corner of the front room—was the equivalent to Amy of what a television would be to an Englisch child, except the store brought in a small stream of cash.

  Maddy joined them on the porch. “I’m glad you’re home. Rose is down in the back worse than usual, and the restaurant gave her permission to see if I could come in and take her place. Do you mind?” Maddy worked at Mrs. Yoder’s Kitchen a few hours a week, and the income she brought in was very much appreciated.

  Claire sat on the porch swing, took off her shoes, and massaged the arch of her right foot. Standing for hours, helping a laboring mother-to-be, took its toll. “If you like, as soon as Flora has a short rest, it would do you good to get out.”

  At that moment, little two-year-old Daniel toddled in from his favorite napping place, the front-room couch. He did not like being tucked away upstairs in his bed because he was too afraid of missing something. He reminded her of a hummingbird, buzzing here and there all day, involved in everything, until he would suddenly stop and nap, and then get up and start buzzing around again.

  “And how is my Danny?” she asked, as he climbed up onto her lap for a quick cuddle.

  He held up one little finger with a Band-Aid on it.

  “Ah, you put your finger where you should not?”

  Maddy laughed. “No, I nicked myself on a knife and when he saw me putting a Band-Aid on my cut, he had to have one, too.”

  Claire kissed the nonexistent hurt. Oh, how she loved this child that she had come so close to losing!

  Daniel, having received all the attention he desired for now, clambered off her lap, scooted carefully down the porch steps, and was off and running in the front yard. One of the chickens had gotten out, and Daniel thought it was his duty to catch it. The chicken thought otherwise.

  “Shouldn’t the boys and Sarah be home from school by now?” Claire asked.

  Amy looked up from the swirls of her calligraphy practice. “Albert and Jesse brought Sarah home and then went back to help the teacher clear some big limbs that fell yesterday during that thunderstorm.”

  Twelve-year-old Albert, stalwart and steady, could be trusted with as much responsibility as most adults. He would watch out for Jesse, who, at ten, with his quicksilver laughter and tendency to be distracted by a passing butterfly, was not quite as trustworthy. Fortunately, Albert would watch out for his little brother and Sarah.

  “I am pleased they are being helpful, but I wish they were home.”

  The sweeping finished, Maddy hung the broom in its wooden h
older in a corner of the porch.

  “They are obedient children, and will be careful, as you have taught them.”

  “Oh, I trust the boys, but you never know when a car might come around a curve too quickly.”

  “Then we will trust the Lord with their safety,” Maddy reminded her.

  She needed the reminder. The older she got, the more protective she felt about her family. She had seen enough bad things happen in her forty-four years that she had lost the blind optimism of her youth.

  “Where is Sarah now?”

  “Grace came by to get her,” Amy said.

  “Grace?”

  Claire was not thrilled with Levi’s choice of a wife. Grace was a good person, but . . . she was Englisch. “What did she want with Sarah?”

  “She said that she was learning how to bake cookies from scratch today and needed a child to practice on.”

  “Well, Sarah won’t mind that,” Claire said.

  “Yes . . . if she does not come home with a tummy ache.”

  The expression on Maddy’s face was studiously innocent, but Claire hid a smile. Her niece’s gentle dig at the quality of Grace’s cooking was as close as the sweet girl would ever come to saying anything negative about someone.

  “Grace tries to embrace our culture,” Claire said. “It’s a shame she will not go all the way and actually become one of us.”

  “She tries so hard to act Amish, without becoming Amish, Amy and I have made up a new name for her.”

  “Oh?”

  “We call her our Old Order Englisch relative.”

  Claire chuckled. “That well describes our Grace.”

  “She sent over some beef stew this morning with Levi.”

  “Have you eaten any of it?”

  Maddy paused. “I thought perhaps I would wait. I would hate not to share Grace’s efforts with the rest of the family.”

  “Ah. You prefer that we all face it together. Who knows, perhaps it has turned out well this time.”