She lifted the walnut box he’d made off her nightstand and held it close to her chest, wondering again what he’d locked inside. Carl Vinzenz or Jonah could probably open it for her, but as much as she wanted to see its contents, she wouldn’t open it until Matthias returned to her.
Weeks had gone by without any word from Matthias or Mr. Faust. Not even a telegram. Every night, their community prayed together that Matthias was safe, wintering with the troops someplace. Last week Jonah returned from Marengo with the news that the Union had won back Chattanooga, and supplies were beginning to trickle into the town. The whole community rejoiced.
She began to scoot back down into her covers. She didn’t dare allow herself to compare her fear of losing Friedrich with her fear that she would lose Matthias, but in the dark hours of the night, when her hands were idle, she was terrified that he would be taken from her as well.
Plunk.
Her heart leapt again at the sound of something hitting her window. It was probably a tree limb, but still, she had to know for certain. Holding her breath, she stole across the bare floor, to the window, and she looked down at the yard below. At the dark form looking back up at her.
Her fingers shaking, she struggled to open the window. Wind blasted her face, her hair swirling around her head. As she pushed her hair back, she squinted into the darkness.
“Who’s there?” she called, her voice hushed.
There was a long pause before he spoke. “I’m home, Amalie.”
She caught herself against the windowsill, her knees wobbling at the sound of the familiar voice.
“Don’t move,” she said, louder this time. She didn’t care if she woke everyone in the residence. Matthias was home!
Amalie buttoned her dress quickly before wrapping her heavy shawl around her shoulders, a scarf around her hair. Securing Matthias’s box inside the folds of her shawl, she rushed down the stairs and out into the night, right into Matthias’s open arms.
She could smell the dust on his collar, feel the soft bristles from the beard he’d grown in Tennessee. And she didn’t want him to let her go. Time seemed to stop for a moment before he held her out in front of him, searching her face in the dim light. “I couldn’t wait until morning to see you.”
“I would have been disappointed if you had.”
“There’s so much to tell you,” he said, but the words faded away. For now, silence was enough.
“Come,” he said gently, reaching for her hand.
It wasn’t until they stepped onto the dirt street that she realized she had forgotten to put on her shoes, but even with the coldness, she didn’t care.
A fire roared inside the carpentry shop, shadows from the tools flickering across the wooden walls. The heat warmed her skin, and the presence of Matthias soothed her. This was exactly where she was supposed to be.
He patted a bench and she sat down beside him, tucking her cold feet under her dress. “I missed you, Amalie.”
“You were gone too long.”
He nodded. “We made it to Chattanooga without harm, but Faust didn’t think it was safe to return until after the Federals took back the town.”
“Did they need the supplies?”
“Very much.”
“Then I’m glad you went,” she said. “And I’m glad you returned.”
“The war is almost over now.”
“Does that mean they will free the rest of the slaves?”
“I pray so.” His eyes softened in the firelight. “Did you bring the box?”
She unwrapped the walnut box from her shawl and slid it toward him. “I wanted to know what was inside.”
“You could have broken the lock.”
She shook her head. “I wanted to wait even more to open it with you.”
He took the satchel out of his pocket and removed the key. His gaze on her, he took the box out of her hands and then looked down for the briefest of moments to unlock the box.
“Can I open it?” she whispered.
He lifted the box up to her hands and she slowly opened the lid.
Something sparkled inside, green and red and blue dancing with the firelight. The box didn’t harbor a letter or flower petals or locks of hair. It held a piece of jewelry.
Reaching inside, Amalie lifted out a gold chain with gems and trinkets dangling from it. She stared at all the colors, mesmerized. She’d never seen anything so beautiful.
Her fascination turned slowly into fear as she looked back at Matthias, her eyes wide. “Where did you get this?”
“It was my mother’s.”
Her fingers brushed over the stones and a gold coin and copper pendant. Part of her was frightened by this information while another part of her was intrigued. Sophia had said Matthias’s mother had been a witch—did this piece carry some sort of enchantment with it?
But that didn’t seem right. Why would Matthias keep a piece like that, even if it had been his mother’s?
“My mother was a gypsy,” he said softly.
Amalie stared at the stones on the bracelet again. Her father had told her stories about the gypsies in their Fatherland. The Roma. Many of them were enslaved in Europe and the few who weren’t slaves were despised and often feared, so much that the German government often took away the children of gypsies to give to families they considered more respectable.
“Was she—was she a slave?”
He nodded. “She ran away from her owner when I was three.”
Amalie tried to speak, but the shock seemed to capture her tongue. If Matthias’s mother had been a slave, then he would have grown up as a slave as well.
Finally she spoke again. “Do you remember it?”
“A little. It was a hard life, but my mother protected me as much as she could.”
He took the bracelet gently from her hands, his voice distant for a moment as if he were traveling back to a place she couldn’t possibly understand. “My grandmother made us this bracelet so we would remember.”
“Remember what?” she probed.
“The secrets passed down through our family.”
The trinkets and gemstones traveled between Matthias’s strong fingers, and she had a feeling that he had clung to this piece often, remembering his past.
He held out the blue gem on the bracelet. The edges weren’t as smooth as some of the other stones, but the color was as vibrant as the winter sky.
“This is a blue quartz. My mother used to say that the flaws in its beauty represented life’s greatest secret.”
Amalie leaned forward.
“She said no one can buy joy nor can any man take it away. It is a gift bestowed only from God, and it was a gift she wanted to pass down to me.”
“That’s a beautiful gift.” She rubbed her fingers over the roughness of the quartz and then he showed her the gold coin, tinged orange in the light.
“This piece represented wealth. Even though we had no pillow to lay our head on at night, we were blessed with abundance because we had each other.”
“You were very blessed,” she repeated in a whisper.
He dangled a piece of leather against his palm. “This was from a whip, once used to beat my grandfather,” he said, and she cringed at his words.
“My grandmother cut one of the tassels off the whip and made my mother promise that when she received her freedom, she would cherish it forever.”
Tears filled Amalie’s eyes. No son should ever have to carry the burden of slavery for his family. And no mother should ever have to tell her child to cherish his freedom.
Not long ago, she had tried to educate Matthias about the evils of slavery. No wonder he had been so irritated with her. He knew much more about it than she could ever imagine.
“You’re crying,” he whispered, wiping the tears gently off her face with his sleeve.
She nodded. For the first time since childhood, her tears flowed outside the solitude of her room. And Matthias didn’t try to stop her.
She pointed at a copper p
iece that looked like a small butterfly. “What is this one?”
“It represents new life,” he said. “The old passes away when God redeems us. No matter our circumstances, we are a new creature in Him.”
The fire popped, and he glanced over at it before his gaze fell back on the bracelet.
Amalie pointed at a piece of green-colored glass that glowed in the light. “And this secret?”
He held up the smooth glass. “We look through the window of this life like glass, into the splendor of eternity,” he explained with a smile. “The hardships in this world last only but a short time, and if we endure, we will be harbored by our Savior forever.”
He skipped over several of the gems and trinkets until he held out one last jewel, this one a bright red. He paused, staring at it for a moment before he lifted his eyes back to her. “My mother added this ruby to the bracelet as our secret. It was her promise to me.”
She swallowed at the intensity in his eyes. “What did it mean?”
“That she loved me from the day I came into this world, and no matter what happened, she would never stop loving me.” He looked back down at the bracelet. “But she didn’t keep her promise. She left me alone at the castle gate, with this bracelet hanging from a chain around my neck.”
“She never stopped loving you, Matthias.”
He shook his head. “She gave up.”
“Or she was afraid. Maybe she thought you would have to return to slavery if she kept you or maybe she didn’t want you to have to wander anymore.”
A little boy seemed to emerge from within him, the hurting child who had been abandoned by the one person who was supposed to love him forever. “The Vinzenz family would have adopted her into their family, like they did for me.”
Amalie stared at the red gem again and marveled at its beauty. Then she reached out and touched the butterfly.
“She sacrificed her heart for you, Matthias. She gave up what she loved most so that you could have a new life, like the butterfly.”
With her words, the hurting child swelled back into the strength of a man. “Sacrifice is what love is about,” he said.
“Yes, it is.”
He held out the bracelet to her. “I’d like you to have this.”
Her hands froze in her lap, and she couldn’t seem to move them. “Oh, Matthias.”
“They’re the secrets of my family,” he said. “Of my past.” His eyes blazed like the fire behind him.
“And I want to share them with you.”
She reached out slowly and took the bracelet—his secrets—in her hands. “My heart,” she whispered. “It’s been shattered.”
He brushed a stray wisp of her hair behind her ear, and then his hand slipped back into his pocket. He removed a smooth stone from it, a shiny gray color with tan and red strands that rippled across it. “I found this along the riverbed in Tennessee,” he said, holding her in his gaze. “And I want it—I want it to represent my promise to you.”
“What promise?”
“I’m a carpenter, Amalie,” he said quietly. “I build things, and I help put broken pieces back together again.”
She couldn’t seem to breathe. “My heart?”
“Only if you’ll give me the pieces.”
When he held out the stone, she rubbed her fingers over it and then looked back at him. “I’m not the only one with a broken heart.”
His eyes wandered back toward the fire, but she reached up to his face, her fingers brushing over his beard as she turned his head back to her. “I want to help you put the pieces of your heart back together too.”
When his eyes locked her gaze, he pleaded with her. “I don’t want to be without you, Amalie, not for another day.”
Slowly she lifted the bracelet and slid it over her wrist. Pulling her face close to his, he encircled her with his arms.
Shadows danced on the wall around them, the fire blazing in the hearth, but it was his kiss that warmed her this time, all the way down to her bare toes.
Epilogue
Amalie knelt down in front of the white tombstone and placed the wildflowers on Friedrich Vinzenz’s grave. A spring breeze swept down Lookout Mountain and over the grassy hill that harbored the graves of the more than ten thousand Union soldiers who had died in battles around Chattanooga.
The chirping of birds replaced the fighting now, the creatures oblivious to the bloodshed that soaked these hills and scarred the town six years ago. Instead of sending troops to battle each other, the States were united again. They were trying to rebuild, but it would take many years for their country to heal from her many battle wounds.
Amalie ran her fingers over the etching of Friedrich’s name and company on the tombstone. While she had long stopped wondering about his decision to fight, she often wondered if their country’s leaders would have pursued this war if they had known they would lose 600,000 men. Even after the Union won the Battles for Chattanooga, the war raged on for another year and a half.
Matthias proposed to her right after he returned from Chattanooga, and they were married in March of 1864. The whole community, including Carl Vinzenz, celebrated their wedding with them. Matthias had loved her like he promised and helped piece her shattered heart back together until it finally felt whole once more.
His heart had healed slowly alongside hers, and they worked together to supply food and clothing to Union soldiers until Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Grant at the Appomattox Court House the following spring. Thankfully, the war never came to Iowa, but families across their state were still hurting over the loss of their sons. She prayed their hearts would heal as well.
She wished she could tell Friedrich all that had happened since he left Amana, but perhaps he already knew. Niklas Keller finally married Friedrich’s sister and they were expecting their first child. And months after Jonah Henson joined their society, he married Karoline.
“You should see Jonah,” she whispered, as if Friedrich could hear her. His arm had healed, and now he and Niklas worked alongside Matthias as carpenters. It was as if Jonah had lived in their community his entire life.
Her gaze wandered beyond Friedrich’s grave, up the crags of the mountain. The Kolonie hadn’t changed much since his death but her people had changed. Amalie’s parents arrived with the last group from Ebenezer in 1864, and they settled in High Amana. Her parents visited the first Sunday of each month, but Friedrich’s parents had welcomed her into their family.
And then there was Sophia Paul.
After Christoph Faust traveled with Matthias to Chattanooga, he returned to Amana and visited Sophia in Henriette’s kitchen. The last Amalie had heard, Sophia was cooking for Mr. Faust on a wagon train bound for Oregon.
“Are you all right, Mama?”
Amalie blinked and looked down at her son. He wrapped his arms around her, and she gave him a big hug. “I’m happy and sad at the same time.”
He nodded like he understood, and at his sweet empathy, her tears began to pour.
“Don’t cry,” he begged.
She wiped the tears off with her sleeves. They were a mixture of happiness and sadness. Sorrow and joy.
“Uncle Friedrich is with Jesus.”
She kissed his forehead. “I know, Schatz.”
Treasure.
He stepped away from her, calling over his shoulder. “She’s crying again, Papa.”
She turned and looked at Matthias, holding their three-month-old daughter close in his arms. Gratefulness filled her heart. Matthias not only loved her, but he had suggested they travel together to honor their friend, the man she almost married. She was blessed in abundance.
Concern filled Matthias’s eyes as he walked toward her. “Are you all right?”
Amalie put her arm around his waist, and he held her close to his side as their son wrapped his arms around both of them. In the silence, she rejoiced at the joy God had given her in her husband and in her children.
“Uncle Friedrich was a brave man,” Matthias
told their son as he ruffled the boy’s hair. “He gave up his life to help rescue people who weren’t able to rescue themselves.”
Amalie leaned down and handed her son the box she once thought Friedrich had made for her, the fragments of rose petals still inside, and he slowly walked it over to the tombstone. Matthias kissed her hair, and she clung to him as their son placed the small box by the fresh flowers.
She wished Carl and Louise could be there to see the child they called grandson honor their son.
“He should be here soon,” Matthias whispered, and she nodded her head. Matthias took her hand, and together their family walked to the base of the hill to meet the man whom they had traveled eight hundred miles to see.
A carriage was waiting by the entrance to the cemetery. The door opened, and a handsome man stepped out of the carriage, dressed in a black suit and top hat, followed by a woman dressed in yards and yards of a vibrant green color, a newborn child secured in her arms.
The man took off his hat and stretched out his hand. “My name is Taylor,” he said. “Taylor Barnes.”
Matthias shook Taylor’s hand and introduced Amalie and their baby daughter. Then he nudged their son forward.
“This is our son,” Matthias said. “His name is Friedrich Roemig.”
Tears damped Taylor’s eyes. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, son.”
Friedrich placed his hands on his hips. “You don’t look one bit like a Rebel.”
Taylor laughed as he wiped his cheeks dry with a handkerchief. “What exactly does a Rebel look like?”
Amalie was horrified when Friedrich pulled his eyes back and crossed them.
“Stop that,” she commanded.
Taylor laughed again, messing up Friedrich’s hair. “I think your son is right, ma’am. A lot of Rebels looked exactly like that.”
Amalie took a deep breath, relief washing through her. She’d been afraid her heart was still filled with hatred for the man in front of her, but God had replaced the hatred with love.
Love Finds You in Amana Iowa Page 25