Finding Hope

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  “Rebecca must have forgotten to take down and fold the laundry,” he said in an attempt at good humor. He was hungry, and had a bad feeling that they’d finished the fried chicken from last night at middaagesse today.

  “She said she didn’t have time,” his daughter told him. “Some boy is taking her to town for a hamburger and fries.”

  “Her mamm and daad said she could do that?” he said in surprise.

  “The boy is Englisch.” Zeb looked envious. “She says he has a red pickup truck.”

  “They’re going to the Sonic Drive-In,” Rebekah added.

  Gideon’s gathering frown momentarily silenced his kinder. He made himself smile at them. “Ach, she’s having her rumspringa. Let’s hope the boy doesn’t drive too fast.”

  Gideon didn’t like the expression that flitted across Zeb’s face. Many Amish boys were drawn to the idea of driving a fast car or flying an airplane until they became settled in their faith and understood why so many modern ways had to be resisted. But he wouldn’t have expected it of his own son, not after what happened to Leah. That wasn’t a subject he wanted to raise with his kinder, however, not when he’d been glad to see them start to step out from under the shadow cast by their mother’s death.

  “Well, when you see her tomorrow, you can ask her about eating at the Sonic Drive-In,” he said.

  “Oh!” His daughter looked guilty. “I almost forgot, she said to tell you she won’t be here tomorrow.”

  She’d left a message with a six-year-old girl, but hadn’t been able to tell him in person when he harnessed her horse and wished her gut’n owed? Although he might not have said good evening, if he’d known her plans.

  Gideon silently went back to taking down the clean clothes, dumping more than folding them into the basket. He could feel dampness in the air. If he and his kinder—and the clothes and linens—ended up sopping wet, he was going to be annoyed.

  He’d hoped Rebecca King would be a good employee. She’d seemed cheerful and willing when she first came, but he was wishing he’d never hired her. Firing her would be awkward when her family was part of the same church district as his. If she’d done something like leave the kinder alone because this Englisch boyfriend came by to take her for a ride, he’d have fired her anyway. As it was . . . she might have a good excuse for tomorrow. And who could he find to take her place? Some help was better than none.

  He let out a heavy sigh. It was times like this when he missed having family nearby, the men who would expect to help him plow and harvest, the women who wouldn’t hesitate to step in when he needed them. And, ja, he knew perfectly well that most of the women in the church district wouldn’t hesitate, either, but he didn’t like to ask.

  Pride. He grimaced, dropping clothespins into the basket.

  “Hurry!” Zeb exclaimed.

  Gideon looked up to see a wall of slanted gray rain engulfing the barn and heading for them. “Run,” he told the kinder, snatched up the overflowing basket, and jogged for the back door right behind them, abandoning some of the clothes still on the line. They could dry the next time the sun came out.

  * * *

  * * *

  Showered and presentable, Hannah was on her way out to her car when her phone rang. Immediately tense, she groped for it in the side pocket of her handbag. Please don’t let Granddad be having a crisis, she prayed. Or worse.

  But the caller was Mom.

  She had to talk to her eventually. Why not now?

  The day was gray and drizzly, so she unlocked her car as she was answering. “Mom.” She slid in behind the wheel and shut the door.

  “You’ve been ignoring me,” her mother said piteously. “And after I asked you to trust me.”

  Her heart hardened. “Trust you? When you kept me from the rest of my family? Do you know what it means to me to meet my grandparents and my father? Not to mention my half sisters and brothers?”

  “Illegitimate, since your dear father is a bigamist.”

  Hearing the spite, Hannah thought her head might explode. “How can you say that? You had—what was his name? Kevin?—call to say we were dead. You had him fake death certificates for us. Daad remarried in full faith that he was a widower.”

  “Why do you believe them instead of me? I didn’t do that. Why would I?”

  “Because you were trying very hard to be sure we weren’t found.”

  “For a good reason.” Was that an admission that she had been responsible for those death certificates? “Can’t you understand? I ran away because I was scared for both of us, and my parents wouldn’t help. They said I was married and had to go home, that I had to live with my decisions.” Mom was crying. “I was hoping you never had to find out how awful it was.”

  “Tell me.” Hannah didn’t sound like herself, and didn’t care. “What did Daad do that was so terrible? What did Grandma and Granddad do but bail you out of trouble over and over, pay for college classes you never completed?”

  There was a gasp in her ear. “You believe everything they told you without ever asking me about what really happened? I raised you, protected you, loved you.”

  Hannah closed her eyes. “I know you loved me. I’m not sure moving from a battered women’s shelter to a sleazy apartment to living with an abusive man was exactly protecting me.”

  “I had to keep running, or he would have found us!”

  “He?” Hannah said inexorably. “The kind, steady man I’m getting to know, the man whose children love and respect him? The man who would never go to the police, or hire a private investigator, or even search records on a computer?”

  “It’s pretend!” her mother screamed. “They’re vile people! They were hateful to me!”

  “Including my sweet grossmammi?”

  “Don’t use that horrible, crude language with me! I’m your mother!”

  Voice shaking, Hannah blurted, “Do you have any memory of how often we went hungry? Do you remember the creep you moved in with who whipped me with his belt? The ones who beat you black and blue? Do you have any idea how hard school was for me, when I could never even complete a semester at any one school?”

  “You’re being hateful.” Her mother’s breath hitched. “I’ve never given you an excuse for that.” And she was gone.

  Hannah closed her eyes. Feeling both sick and remorseful, she had to ask herself: Who would she be, if she couldn’t forgive?

  * * *

  * * *

  “I did it,” she told her grandparents a few days later. She’d come over to join them for lunch in the communal dining room, but arrived a little early. “I quit my job.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” Helen said with regret. “I hoped your boss would give you longer.”

  “He really was generous. And you know, he did pay me for a week on top of the two weeks of vacation time I was owed. He offered another two weeks, paid, but he can’t do any longer without a sous chef. It sounds like there have been lots of problems. He needs to find someone who isn’t just filling in, who’s good.”

  Letting her ideal job go hadn’t been easy, but she wasn’t ready to tell her father and grandparents what a pleasure it had been, and then leave Tompkin’s Mill, either. Leave with no idea when she could take the time to come back for more than a weekend. One comfort was that Greg had promised her he’d give her a good reference when she was ready to focus again on her career.

  Right now, that was low on her list of priorities. No matter what her mother said, Hannah had to discover what really having family meant. She was a little scared that she’d find dark secrets among the Amish, or just that Samuel would quit hiding a brutal streak once they were past this . . . well, honeymoon period wasn’t quite right, but close enough.

  And what if her grandparents were lying to her, excusing their own failings with a daughter who’d had no one else to depend on?

  Hann
ah didn’t believe any of that—but she’d have told anyone that she knew her mother’s weaknesses, through and through. Mom didn’t hesitate to use what she called little white lies, but to fake her own and Hannah’s deaths? And, really, to take off the way she had in the first place, instead of contacting social services, filing for divorce, insisting on supervised visitation for Hannah with her father? There was a right way to do things, and a wrong way.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I know I told you I was going to look for a rental, even if it was just a room, but Daad and Lilian have asked me to stay with them. I was a little bit horrified because they already have such a crowd, but it turns out Daad has an office downstairs. He plans to move the desk and file cabinet out to the living room so I can have a bedroom to myself. I couldn’t say no when they looked so hopeful.”

  “Of course you shouldn’t say no!” Helen insisted. “You need to get to know your father and the rest of your family. This will be perfect.”

  Hannah thought so, too, except that the differences between her, raised Englisch, and her father’s family weren’t so important when she was there just for a meal or to help out in the garden. Living there, though, would be different.

  They wouldn’t have wireless, so she might as well leave her laptop locked in the trunk of the car, but she couldn’t exactly whip out her mobile phone and check the national news in front of them, could she? If nothing else, she’d be setting what they’d see as a bad example for the children, especially Mose, at an impressionable age. Then there was her wearing pants or skirts that only came to midthigh, and the fact that a car would be semipermanently parked in their driveway, and the kids would see her driving into town to do errands and visit her other grandparents. What if they asked to ride in the car with her?

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, she thought, deflated.

  A few minutes later, after having pushed her grandfather in his wheelchair into the elevator and downstairs so that he could join her and her grandmother at a small table in the dining room, she said, “Daad thinks he might have found a job for me, too.”

  Robert watched her with surprising alert eyes.

  “Do you need to work?” Helen asked in surprise. “If you’re living with them, I mean?”

  “I should contribute—”

  “We’ll be glad to help you out financially.”

  Hannah shook her head firmly. “Thank you for offering, but I’d rather work at least part-time. If nothing else, I need to let Daad and Lilian and their children be a family without me some of the time.”

  Helen smiled her understanding. “What kind of job is it?”

  “Childcare and, I guess, some housekeeping and cooking for a widower with two kids. I’ve never spent time with children, so I’m nervous about that, but you know how much I love to cook.”

  Her grandmother laughed. “Just so there’s not a baby! That would have you diving in at the deep end.”

  “I’ll find out more tomorrow.” She smiled her thanks at the waitress who set her entrée in front of her. The food here wasn’t up to her standards, but she guessed the elderly residents preferred bland to subtle or spicy. “I have an interview.”

  “Is the widower Amish?”

  “Yes. He may decide not to hire me once he realizes I don’t speak the language.”

  “It wouldn’t be bad for you to learn some of your father’s language.”

  “I . . . already am. I’ve actually surprised myself. It’s coming fast enough, I have to wonder whether . . .” Would it sound silly if she said—

  “You already speak it?” Her grandmother had either read her mind or thought the possibility to be logical. “There are concepts a four- or five-year-old wouldn’t know, but otherwise you were fluent when Jodi took you away. Maybe this will be more like opening the gates to release water from a dam than learning the language afresh.”

  “Maybe.” What an odd thought—but her earliest vivid memory was of her first weeks of kindergarten at a big elementary school in . . . She didn’t remember. She’d been paralyzed. Mom told her she had to quit being so shy. On a new spurt of anger, she realized that she’d been confused by the chatter of so many surrounding children all speaking English. She must have been bilingual to some extent, speaking English with her mother, but now, she thought she’d spent more time with her father and all those female relatives than she had with her mother. “Do you know how fluent Mom got in Deitsh?”

  “I heard her say things, but . . .” Helen looked at her husband, who only shook his head. “Mostly she spoke English when we were around. And knowing Jodi . . .”

  Hannah didn’t blame her for not wanting to finish. Her mother had disappointed her a thousand times, but it would be even worse when it was your own child. Your only child.

  So she said, “If this interview doesn’t work out, I could probably get a job cooking here in town.”

  That idea held little appeal. Slapping hamburgers or pouring premixed pancake batter onto a grill wasn’t her idea of cooking. And . . . she wanted to immerse herself in the Amish culture. Learn to feel at home among the people and with the faith she’d lost when her mother decided Hannah was better off forgetting her early years.

  Under the table, she crossed her fingers—and pictured the tall, stern man with the two children who had given her directions to her father’s house.

  She tried to justify her hope that he was the man needing to hire someone by thinking about how likable the children seemed . . . but she knew that wasn’t all of it.

  Thinking it through, Hannah realized she’d been touched by the way the man had rested his hand on his young daughter’s shoulder in automatic reassurance. Hannah had wanted that, so much. This little girl would feel safe with her father standing solidly behind her.

  While that was perfectly true, she tried to be honest with herself.

  She’d reacted to the man himself. His height, his strong body, his handsome face, and his strikingly dark eyes and hair. He was so . . . physical, nothing like the guys she’d known who had muscles only because they worked out at a gym.

  She’d felt heat in her cheeks and a quiver low in her belly at her first sight of the Amishman. That happened to her rarely to never.

  All of which meant it would be very bad if the prospective employer was him and he hired her. Right? What she should do was cross her fingers that Gideon Lantz was someone else altogether.

  Chapter Five

  Gideon paced from his front door to the back before retracing his steps, then doing it again. The woman wasn’t late yet, but he was already regretting having told Samuel that he’d talk to her. How could he hire an Englischer to watch over his kinder? Especially given their mamm’s history, her clinging to her Englisch friend even when it wasn’t wise? And, aside from his fear of how this Hannah could influence them, he had to wonder whether Bishop Amos might question his judgment as Bishop Paul had back in New York. Though the fact that Hannah was Samuel Mast’s daughter would weigh with Amos, too.

  Gideon wouldn’t have considered this if she’d worn makeup when she stopped to ask directions. She’d looked . . . plain in some ways, except for the lack of a kapp. What he’d seen was an honest, open face with big eyes and a sweet smile.

  Gideon groaned, not liking the turn his thoughts had taken. It was not good that he’d been drawn immediately by her appearance. Even born Amish, she wasn’t a plain woman. She was an Englischer, through and through, with her car and the blue jeans he’d heard she wore to work in the garden and the phone she carried everywhere.

  This was foolish. If he had a phone closer to hand than the shanty, he’d call her to cancel.

  That was when he heard the sound of a car coming toward the house. He grimaced. He couldn’t forget that he was considering her because no other good possibility had emerged to replace Rebecca King, and he was already falling behind on his work after only a few da
ys of trying to do that work and also take care of his kinder, feed them all and do a poor job of keeping the kitchen clean, never mind the rest of the house. They would have nothing clean to wear if Judith Miller hadn’t insisted on doing their laundry last week. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was organizing a group of women to sweep in and scour his house from top to bottom, as they’d done when Judith’s son, David, had moved into the house he inherited from his onkel. He should welcome such generosity, but instead shrank from it. Kindly meant, that kind of work frolic also said, You can’t take care of your kinder without the help of your neighbors.

  The women in his own family back home had often said such things, sure to notice and speak out when laundry didn’t get done or Rebekah’s kapp had gone missing or either kind was strubly on worship Sunday. His mother and two of his sisters had tried to talk him into letting Rebekah and Zeb stay with them. His father chastised him for resisting.

  Ja, that was another reason he had decided to start over far from that family. He had told himself they spoke up out of love without ever thinking how inadequate they made him feel or noticing how Rebekah and Zeb shrank from criticism. He was glad to move before he had become resentful.

  For the sake of his kinder, he could never let these new neighbors know he felt anything but grateful.

  Gideon sighed and went to the front window.

  If he hired Hannah Mast, he wouldn’t need the members of his church district to take pity on him, at least not if she did an adequate job.

  And, ja, he knew better than to be too proud to accept help when he and his kinder needed it. Hadn’t God said, Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets?

  Had he not joined with the members of his church district to help others, such as Esther Schwartz, the widow who lived next door? He should rejoice that they would joyfully help him in return.