Willow_Bride of Pennsylvania

by Merry Farmer

  She gasped, terrified that she had revealed her shameful secret.

  Amos was still off in his own world. “Fifteen years, and some things never change. The Bylers are still doing everything in their power to put me and my family in what they see as our ‘place.’ Well, my place is protecting my family and doing my duty to them, to my community, and to God.”

  He paused for a moment, slowing his steps and sending Willow a sideways look.

  It wasn’t until he started walking again, as fast as before, that she caught up to his slip. His community. A community that he didn’t have anymore. A community Willow could see that he desperately wanted to be a part of. She had seen the way he stood with the other men, discussing ordinary farming business. He’d looked so natural with them, so right. So why didn’t he start the process of becoming one of them again, of joining the Amish church and returning to the fold of his neighbors?

  Because of her. The answer hit her as fast as the crash of Laura Byler’s dish on the floor. Because she wasn’t the kind of woman that good, upright people would accept as one of their own.

  “I am stupid,” she finished the gloomy thought aloud. “I’m a ham-fisted troublemaker.”

  Amos stopped again, only this time he spun her to face him, grabbing her arms. The colors of sunset were still bright on the horizon, even though a canopy of dark blue with pin-prick stars and a crescent moon shone behind him. He was as handsome as he was intimidating with the golds and oranges of sunset lighting his face.

  “You’re not stupid, Willow. Far from it. And none of that was your fault.”

  “But—”

  He pressed his fingertips to her lips. “Some people are just mean. They’re so eaten up with anger inside that they lash out at others to make themselves feel better. They can’t stand to see anyone else happy or successful. It has nothing to do with you.”

  As much as his words were a comfort to her, they held within them a bitter irony. “Are you eaten up with anger inside?” she asked before she could stop herself.

  Amos’s grip on her arms tightened, and Willow regretted opening her mouth, regretted convincing him to come to the Lapp’s for supper, regretted speaking to Beth in the first place.

  And at the same time, she didn’t regret a thing. In an instant, she saw by the pinch of sadness in Amos’s eyes that she’d asked the right question.

  “This isn’t about me either,” he said, letting her go, taking her hand, and marching on down the road with her. “It’s about spiteful people who should try a little harder to live their faith.”

  But he was wrong. She could see it plain as day now, though she kept her lips sealed. Amos wanted to go home. Not just home to the house his parents and grandparents had grown up in. He wanted to go home to the faith and community that had raised and nurtured him, and that he had been forced out of against his will. She didn’t know much about that community—even though it was a part of her past too—but a strong voice within her said it was time to find out more.

  Whatever the reason Amos’s advertisement in The Grooms’ Gazette had caught her eye, she saw now that she had been compelled to answer it because God had sent her a calling. He was telling her that He needed her help to bring Amos home.

  Chapter Six

  Dear Gillian, Emma, and Rose,

  How I wish things had turned out differently at the Lapp’s supper party! I can’t help but feel as though I was to blame yet again. Still, I can’t shake a certain suspicion that the woman who handed me the hot dish was trying to make me look like a fool. I don’t understand why anyone would do that. I still have doubts about the situation, and strangely enough, they’ve raised doubts in me about the factory fire. Have you learned anything new?

  Meanwhile, I’m distressed about the way Amos has taken the incident. After seeing him with the other Amish men at the Lapp’s, I know deep in my heart that he belongs with them. These are his friends from childhood, after all. And I enjoyed being with the women myself. I may not have the right to interfere, I’m not even sure I have the courage to say anything, but I have a deep, deep feeling as though I must….

  By late morning the next day, Amos still carried a tight coil of anger in his gut. It was a blessing that there was so much work still to do for the harvest, though by the end of the day he would have finished cutting down the last of his corn. He swung the tall, sharp-blade scythe through the last section of stalks, clenching his jaw and feeling the burn in his muscles with each pass. Blisters were forming on his hands and sweat dripped down his back. His hired hands couldn’t keep up with his pace as they bundled stalks to dry behind him, but none of that mattered.

  For a few minutes, hardly the blink of an eye, he’d let his guard down, let himself think that maybe, just maybe, for Willow’s sake, he could be a part of a community again. Willow had seemed so happy in that brief moment when Beth had drawn her into the kitchen with the rest of the women. But no. Before supper had even been served, they’d been humiliated and rejected all over again.

  He should have known better. He should have realized that once a group of people turned you out, they turned you out forever. He should never have—

  “That’s quite a pace you’re setting, Amos. At this rate, you’ll have the jump on the entire district when the wholesalers come around.”

  Amos flinched at the sound of Mark’s voice, losing his rhythm and fumbling the scythe. Huffing out a breath, he swung to face his old friend, in no mood for company.

  “What do you want?” It was a surly, unnecessary greeting, but there was little else left in Amos’s soul but hurt at the moment.

  Mark must have known what he was heading into. He lowered his head, the brim of his straw hat shading his face, and raised his hands. “I came to apologize,” he said, squinting up at Amos, searching for some sign that his words would be welcome.

  Amos stared at him, jaw clenched so tight that his teeth hurt. He wanted to turn around and go back to work, ignoring the man who had ignored him, his family, and their plight for so long. Willow wouldn’t have liked it.

  “Apology accepted,” he ground out, for Willow’s sake and hers alone.

  Mark wasn’t convinced. He let out a frustrated breath and dropped his hands. “I never should have invited Saul and Laura to join us. In fact, I didn’t invite them. Saul found out from Gregory, who was standing with Jonah and Carl when I asked them to come. He made it so that I couldn’t get out of inviting him as well.”

  The explanation did nothing to soothe Amos’s anger. “So you planned all this? Planned an ambush to remind me that I have no place within the community.”

  “No,” Mark snapped, on the defensive. “I invited our old gang so that I could show you that you do have a place in the community.”

  Amos grunted and stepped back to his work. He swung the scythe in a slower rhythm, but with every bit as much force as he’d used before. Hiding under his anger was a pleading voice that told him to listen to his old friend and take him at his word.

  Mark persisted, following Amos as he made his way down the row of browning corn stalks. “I have always regretted what happened to your family,” he insisted. “We were just boys at the time, you and I, and we’d been taught to respect and obey our elders from the time we opened our eyes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I’d been older back then, old enough to understand what was going on.”

  “I understood what was going on, all right,” Amos growled, “and I was the same age as you. We were pushed out for a reason that had nothing to do with God or the community or even the Ordnung. My family never recovered, and scattered to the four winds because of it, and no one tried to stop it.”

  “Actually, they did.”

  Mark’s simple, soft-spoken words brought Amos up short. He twisted, planting the head of the scythe in the ground and barked, “What?”

  Mark sighed, glanced off toward the woods that separated their property, then met Amos’s eyes. “I didn’t find out until years later, once I
’d joined the church and was selected to serve as a minister. An issue came up a few years ago, and in discussions about what to do, the case of your family was mentioned as a time when the wrong decision was made.”

  The air rushed out of Amos’s lungs and the strength and tension left his back and shoulders as it did. For one, glorious second, he saw a glimmer of hope, that things which had been badly broken could be repaired. It vanished as his anger rushed in once more. “Why did no one do anything, then?”

  Mark shrugged. “None of us knows the way God works in our lives. Maybe the time to do something is now.”

  Amos watched him suspiciously for a moment, then looked away and raised the scythe to swing again. Still, Mark didn’t leave.

  “I don’t know if this will help or hurt,” he said, “but after you left, it came out that Laura Byler handed Willow that dish with the cloth out of place on purpose to shame her.”

  “She what?” Amos rounded on Mark, the ferocious need to protect Willow eclipsing any anger he had for his own troubles.

  Mark raised his hands in defense. “The admission didn’t reflect well on her or Saul. It may have done them more harm than good. Few people spoke to them for the rest of the meal.” He paused, lowered his arms, shifted his weight, and said, “Beth likes Willow, you know, and Sarah adores her. Prissy Yoder said that she found Willow to be sweet and friendly, and Beverly—” He stopped, shaking his head and chuckling. “Listen to me. I sound like one of the womenfolk at a quilting bee.”

  Amos frowned, the muscles in his face hard and unamused.

  Mark lost his brief grin and kicked his toe against the stub of a corn stalk by his feet. At last, he met Amos’s eyes and said, “It’s not too late to attend baptismal classes. There’s no age limit on baptism. You and Willow would both be welcomed back with open arms.”

  The pull of that invitation touched something old and dusty in Amos’s soul. He leaned toward Mark for a moment before turning away. “We’re just fine on our own.”

  “Are you?” Mark asked before Amos could lift the scythe again. “You may be content with isolation, but are you certain Willow would be? She seems like the kind of woman who enjoys the company of other women. Are you certain you wouldn’t be causing undue suffering by denying her that?”

  “I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of my marriage,” he snapped, slicing the scythe through a swath of corn stalks with particular vigor.

  “I’m sorry, you’re right,” Mark said, backing up. He turned to go, but before he got too far away, he turned back to say, “It would be good to call you my closest friend again.”

  Amos pretended not to hear him, pretended to concentrate on the energy it took to cut down the corn. Mark walked off, and when Amos stole a glance at his back, he spotted his two hired hands loitering by the edge of the field. It galled Amos that they’d given him and Mark space to have it out. Although he supposed he’d have been twice as upset if they’d barged in on the conversation. Then again, if they had, maybe the conversation wouldn’t have happened. Maybe Mark’s words wouldn’t be ringing in his head, not letting him rest.

  They continued working until the row was cut and bundled. The sun was high overhead by then, and even though a cool, autumn wind blew, sweat plastered Amos’s shirt to his back. It itched…or at least he told himself that’s what was itching. The truth was that too many things Mark had said hit home. What if Willow wasn’t happy living a life without a large circle of friends? What if he and the children they were bound to have weren’t enough for her? He wanted so desperately for this sudden, calculated marriage to work.

  He wanted it to work so that he wouldn’t have to live the rest of his life alone.

  The truth sat uneasily in his gut.

  “Boys, I’m going to head back to the house for an hour or so,” he told his hired hands. “Think you can finish the next row on your own?”

  “Yes, sir,” they answered, nodding with an understanding that Amos didn’t like. It seemed like his business was out in the open for everyone to have an opinion on, Amish and Englisch. Then again, that’s part of what community was.

  With a sigh, he wiped his sweating brow on the back of his sleeve and headed up through the fields dotted with the stubble of corn stalks to the house.

  Willow’s limbs were heavy with exhaustion as she swept the upstairs hallway. Aside from the way dust from the corn fields got in through every crack and crevice, making her job that much harder, she hadn’t slept well the night before. The restless night had nothing to do with the shame and humiliation of causing a scene at the Lapp’s house and everything to do with Amos lying stiff and boiling in the bed next to her. A blind woman could see that he was frustrated and that he hadn’t slept a wink. He’d marched off into the fields that morning with few words for her and not a single smile, and though she knew it wasn’t her fault, her back ached with restlessness to figure out a way to fix things.

  “It’s just so sad,” she commented to Dusty as the cat sat atop the wooden chest of linens in the hall, sunning herself in the light from the window. “Beth and Mark obviously want to patch things up, and I think the rest of them do too.”

  Dusty replied by closing her eyes and turning her face to the sun.

  Willow shook her head and continued her sweeping. She would find a rag and wipe down the windowsills next. It was a small thing, but if she could keep Amos’s house clean and cheerful, maybe his smile would return as well.

  She reached the end of the hallway and the closed door to the left of the stairs. In the whirlwind of moving in and setting up her new life as Amos’s wife, she had only been in the room once. It was a plain bedroom. The bed wasn’t even made. Maybe if she did something as simple as laying out a quilt and opening the window to let a breeze into the empty space, the house would feel better.

  With a determined nod to Dusty, she opened the door and headed to the far end of the room to throw the window wide. That simple move improved her mood in a trice. She smiled, then turned to see what else she could do.

  In the chest at the foot of the bed, Willow found a collection of quilts that took her breath away. They were far nicer than the simple patchwork that adorned her and Amos’s bed. These quilts looked brand new, their simple patterns sewn with plain, bright colors in the Amish style. She pulled one out and shook it open, gasping at the intricacy of the work. Something about it felt so familiar, so right, to the depth of her soul. She spread the quilt across the bed, then searched through the chest to see what else she could find.

  Along with a few other quilts, the chest contained a worn bag filled with quilting supplies.

  “This is wonderful,” Willow commented to Dusty, who wandered into the room to be sure she wouldn’t miss out on anything. “I would love to take up quilting.”

  She set the bag on the bed, then continued to search. At the bottom of the chest were simple, carved children’s toys, a few school primers in Pennsylvania Dutch, and a few paintings of birds in frames.

  “I wonder who made these?” she said as she spread the items on the bed.

  Curiosity got the better of her. She moved to the large bureau next, pulling open its top drawers. Inside were several pairs of sturdy stockings and, of all things, an old, slightly faded prayer kapp. Willow brushed her fingertips along its wispy, white material, threading one ribbon between her fingers, then set it on top of the bureau.

  In the next drawer down were several simple dresses, sewn in the Amish style, as well as men’s shirts. She pulled a dark green dress out and shook it open. A thrill zipped through her. Old though the dress was, it looked to be her size. She draped it over her arm and continued to search through the drawer and the next one down. Sure enough, she found several aprons, some black, some in deep colors. She took one of the black ones out and laid it on top of the green dress.

  A twist of mischief and something deeper—almost like longing—hit her. Beth and her friends had worn dresses exactly like this last night. They’d all seemed so pret
ty, even though the dresses were the same, simple pattern. They’d all looked as though they were a part of something. At the factory, many of the girls had worn similar dresses, though nothing that could be called a uniform. It had always made Willow feel as though she belonged.

  Belonged. With a wistful smile and a quick thought for her friends, Willow set the green dress and black apron on the bed and reached for the ties of her own apron. She shrugged out of it, then undid the fastenings of her dress. Sure enough, as she slipped the green dress on over her head, it fit perfectly. It took her a moment to figure out how to fasten it and to slide the apron on over it, but as soon as everything was in place, she looked down at herself and smiled. There was only one thing left to complete the outfit.

  She dashed over to the bureau and lifted the prayer kapp to fit it over her hair. A solemn rush of something special filled her as she snugged it in place. How many prayers had been silently offered by a woman wearing this kapp? What were those prayers, and had God listened to the wearer?

  At last, Willow studied herself in the oval mirror over the bureau. What she saw took her breath away. She twisted her shoulders this way and that to get a better view. If she didn’t know any better, she would think that she was Amish, that she belonged with Beth and Prissy and Beverly and the rest of the women she had met last night. More than that, it was as if she could feel her roots, stretching all the way back to her great-great-grandparents and more, telling her that this was who she was, this was where she belonged.

  This was the wife she was meant to be.

  Willow was so wrapped up in her imaginings that she didn’t hear the footfalls on the stairs. It wasn’t until she caught a flash of movement in the doorway, the gray of Amos’s shirt and the dark of his hair against a work-worn face, that she realized she’d been caught. She gasped and spun to face him.