by Sarah Price
“Shocked, ja. And not just Christian, eh? A few others thought they knew something they didn’t.” Mary Ann shook her head with a renewed sense of anger at how people speculated about her and her pregnancy. “I can’t imagine their surprise when the bishop called on them, asking for repentance for gossiping, especially that Widow Jennings.”
“The one who gossiped the most suddenly found herself being gossiped about, I reckon.”
Mary Ann scoffed. “About time she got a good dose of her own medicine! And I hope it was as bitter tasting as it comes!”
At this comment they both laughed, the happy sound seeming to echo across the fields.
“I can’t imagine how big I’ll be in five more months!” Mary Ann leaned against Eleanor as she rubbed her stomach again.
“Five? Only that?”
Mary Ann thought for a moment. “April, May, June,” she counted off, using her fingers to keep track. “July, August. Ja, just over five more months if they’re to be born on their due date, the first of September.”
They slipped into a comfortable silence, both of them watching Edwin as he approached the fence line closest to the house. He looked up, and on seeing the two women, he raised his hand and waved. Eleanor felt as if her heart expanded, her happiness so great that it filled her from head to toe with joy. After four months of marriage, his beard was beginning to fill in, and while it had taken her some time to get used to it, she thought him just as handsome with it as without.
With a sigh Mary Ann leaned her head against her sister’s shoulder. “What fortunate women we are, don’t you think? What amazing husbands we have to take care of us.” She paused before adding, “Like God took care of us when we both were on our knees. He knew what we needed even when we did not.”
Eleanor smiled to herself, overcome with the wisdom of her sister’s words. Not only had God led them through the center of a storm, carrying them when they could no longer support themselves, but He had guided them through and delivered them to a better place than either of them could imagine. Not only had they been married within two weeks of each other, but they now resided on the same farm. While Edwin and Eleanor resided in the main house, Christian and Mary Ann resided in the smaller grossdaadihaus. Mary Ann’s house, a remnant of Christian’s days of living as a bachelor, was smaller than Eleanor’s, but Mary Ann couldn’t have been happier, for the close proximity allowed the two sisters to visit and work together every day.
During the middle of the day, Mary Ann often disappeared to the harness store, spending a few hours helping the workers so they could take their midday dinner break. Afterward, Mary Ann would walk back to the house with Christian so they, too, could sit down and eat the meal she had prepared earlier. Eleanor often saw them walking together side by side, Christian always attentive to whatever Mary Ann was saying. As she watched them, Eleanor would smile, so happy for her sister and the good fortune she had in marrying Christian Bechtler.
Every afternoon the two sisters would visit over coffee and a freshly baked cake or cut-up fruit. Not a day went by that they were not together.
It was the best of circumstances.
“Oh, I’ll be so glad when winter is over,” Mary Ann said. “The snow seemed nonstop this year, ja?”
Eleanor agreed with the last part of Mary Ann’s statement but not the first. She had enjoyed the winter, the early sunsets allowing Edwin to visit with her longer in front of the wood-burning stove that heated their large gathering room. Often they sat together, Eleanor curled up by his side with his arm around her shoulders, just listening to the crackle of the wood and enjoying a moment of peace together. While she was not a big fan of the cold, she would miss those evenings, knowing all too well that during the warmer months their days would be longer, filled with more hours to work as well as chores to fill them.
Already, it being the middle of March, the days were beginning to lengthen. This last snowfall, while unexpected and undesired by most, guaranteed that Eleanor could cherish a little more time alone with her husband in the evenings. But as soon as it melted, those special moments of just enjoying each other’s presence in the quiet of the house would end.
Of course she knew that she would work beside Edwin, helping to prepare the fields for the early spring planting. However, she suspected that once she told him the good news, he would be less inclined to accept her assistance with some of the harder jobs, such as baling the hay or mucking the stalls, as the summer progressed.
Edwin shut the gate behind him and began to cross the large patch of yard toward the house.
Taking a deep breath, Eleanor took a step back from her sister. “Ja, vell, I best get going.” She paused for a moment, wanting to share her secret with her sister but knowing she couldn’t. Not yet, anyway. But despite wanting to let Edwin know first, Eleanor suspected a little hint wouldn’t harm her sister. “I have some wunderbarr news to share with my husband.”
Mary Ann caught her breath, her eyes glowing and a smile playing on her lips. “I suspect I should be knitting three of everything, then?”
Eleanor gave a little shrug of her shoulder as she pulled away from her sister. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” Eleanor said, lowering her eyelids in a coy manner.
“Ah, I see,” Mary Ann teased. “Then I best let you get over to your husband to share whatever this secretive news might be.”
Waiting for her sister to disappear around the side of the porch to where she lived with Christian, Eleanor took a deep breath. All day she had been waiting for this moment, the moment when she would tell Edwin that he was going to be a father. Carefully she held the handrail as she stepped down the three stairs and shuffled through the four inches of snow toward her husband. He greeted her with open arms, glancing around to make certain no one was looking before he gently kissed her lips. When she whispered into his ear, he lifted her into his arms, swinging her around as he held her, their laughter echoing in the quiet of the snowy afternoon.
Yes, Eleanor thought as she walked hand-in-hand with Edwin back to the house, God’s plan was sometimes difficult to understand, but as long as a person believed, God’s plan would never disappoint.
Coming in 2016 from Sarah Price
Mount Hope
Prologue
NOT ONCE IN her short ten years had Fanny thought of any other place but Colorado as her home.
She loved waking up in the mornings and seeing the white-capped Sangre de Cristo Mountains from the small window in the room she shared with her four sisters. Often she awoke early just so she could stare out the window, watching the sky change from dark blue to gray to a steely white as the sun rose to the East and cast shadows on the mountain. She would lie in her bunk, her face turned to the window, and wonder what, if anything, lived on top of the mountain. One day, she thought, I will climb to the top of that mountain.
It was a ten-year-old’s dream.
Since the Amish community had settled just outside Westcliffe, Colorado, starting with just a handful of families, they had attracted almost thirty new families to join their community. Most of them were young couples with small kinner. They made the move west in order to buy farmland that cost a quarter of the price for similar acreage in Pennsylvania. For Fanny’s daed, that meant he could finally buy the larger farm of his dreams to provide for his family.
With the help of the g’may, he built a three-bedroom house in the San Luis Valley at the base of those beautiful mountains. Everyone admired the view, remarking on how the snow at the top of the mountain range contrasted sharply with the beautiful, lush green evergreen trees at its base that trickled into the green valley where Fanny’s parents settled on thirty-two acres of land. Yet, as far as Fanny knew, despite the majestic beauty of those mountains, not one member of their church district had ever built farther than the tree line.
From the other room, Fanny heard her father starting to move around. Clearly it was time for morning chores. With a sigh, Fanny shut her eyes and waited until she he
ard the creak of her parents’ bedroom door and her father’s footsteps heading to the kitchen. She knew that if she waited three minutes (not two and not four), she would hear her mother’s footsteps next. While the baby was still nursing, her father awoke earlier to fetch his own coffee. It would be ready by the time Maem joined him in the kitchen.
Usually Fanny waited until she heard her older bruder, William, stirring from the boys’ room before she slipped down from her top bunk and, in the cold of the morning, shivered out of her nightgown in order to dress for the day. She didn’t like going into the kitchen unless William was already there. His presence felt like an added layer of protection to Fanny, especially in the days following the birth of baby Ruth.
“You up, then?”
Fanny lifted her head, her long brown hair tousled and covering her face. She pushed it back and looked at the door. To her surprise, it wasn’t Maem; it was William. “Ja. Are you?”
He gave her a silly look. “No, goose! I’m just standing here talking to you in my sleep!”
She giggled and slid out from under the quilt, careful not to wake her younger sister Susan who shared the bunk with her.
“You best hurry,” he said. “I heard Maem and Daed talking again about Pennsylvania.”
Fanny stopped herself from dropping to the floor. Her heart began to beat rapidly. “Oh, help!” she whispered. She felt frozen in place and not just from the chilly autumn air.
“Hurry!” he whispered one more time before following his own advice and scurrying back to his own bedroom to change.
For two months Fanny and William had watched their parents whispering about something. They did not know what it was, but they sensed that it involved them as well. More often than not, Maem and Daed would glance in the direction of their two oldest children when they did. Several times William heard them talking about their other family back in Lancaster County and would pinch Fanny to stop fidgeting so that she wouldn’t distract him from eavesdropping.
In the barn they would speculate what their parents were talking about, and they could only come up with one thing: the family was going to move back to Pennsylvania and give up on the whole idea of farming in Colorado.
“What else could it be?” William had asked her just last week, abnegation in his voice as they mucked the small dairy shed.
The higher altitude of Westcliffe had made it next to impossible to maintain a large dairy herd. The paddock grass was not rich enough to sustain the number of cows their father needed to make enough money for sustaining the family. And the season for growing hay was too short to supply enough forage for the winters. Little by little, the herd had begun to shrink with one cow after another sold or butchered until there were only ten cows left. And then it came: the drought.
Fanny had responded with a sneeze, wiping her nose under her sleeve.
“You sick again?” William had asked, forgetting about Pennsylvania for the moment. “You need a better jacket, Fanny Price! Winter isn’t even here yet! You’ll catch your death from it, that’s for sure and certain!”
But Fanny had ignored him, knowing only too well that she would not get a new jacket that winter. She didn’t complain about it to her parents, knowing that they both had enough on their minds trying to figure out how to feed their nine children on their thirty-two acre plot of land, purchased eight years ago based on the bishop’s encouragement. With such glowing reports of the slower-paced lifestyle and lack of intruding tourists, they wasted no time deciding to move from Gordonville, Pennsylvania, to join the growing community. The choice had been an easy one for their parents.
With their two children, three-year-old William and two-year-old Fanny, the Prices sold what little they had and moved out West. The money they brought with them went for a down payment on the thirty-two acres farm. After all, the Prices had reasoned, thirty-two acres of land in Colorado was an awful lot better than just barely being able to buy twelve in Gordonville. No one could live as a farmer on such a small piece of land, and larger farms were outrageously unaffordable to most young Amish couples.
Fanny knew the story well; she had heard it so often.
Her parents arrived, her mother gave birth to twins, Jerome and Peter, and her father realized that not all land is equal. Too many rocks in the soil and the higher altitude made farming almost impossible. The shorter season did not help either. For a man familiar with growing and harvesting corn and tobacco, this realization did not sit well. Daed was a very talented and efficient laborer when it came to the technical part of growing and harvesting, but he had given very little thought to the fact that the weather and soil conditions in Westcliffe were quite different from those in Gordonville.
While Daed struggled to make ends meet, Maem dealt with four children under the age of three. A year later another baby arrived, and two years after that another double blessing. By the time baby Ruth arrived, the ninth (and, it was hoped, final addition to the family), a hard tension seemed to linger over the Price farm and its household.
Clearly decisions had to be made and the only logical one—the only one, in fact—was for the family to cut their losses, sell the three-bedroom log house and barn, and return to Gordonville. At least they had family there who could help them start over.
Neither William nor Fanny thought there was any shame in that. In fact, they were both rather excited about the prospect. The Amish community in Westcliffe was so spread out that they usually didn’t see another Amish person for days, even weeks. Maem homeschooled them since the schoolhouse was too far away for daily journeys, and church service was often missed since they had only one buggy. Fanny and her mother took turns missing it so the others could attend.
Yes, Lancaster County seemed like the answer to everyone’s prayers.
So, when William and Fanny slipped into the kitchen, quietly joining their parents at the kitchen table where two cups of hot chocolate waited for them, their parents’ announcement came as quite a surprise.
“Fanny girl, you need to pack up your things,” her father said, staring at her over the top of his coffee cup.
Confused, Fanny blinked, her brown eyes looking first at her father, then at her mother. If she first thought she had misunderstood Daed, when she saw that her mother was avoiding her questioning gaze, Fanny knew she had not.
It was William who spoke up, breaking the silence with the one question that lingered in the air. “You mean all of us, Daed, ain’t so?”
“Nee.” Daed’s response was curt and emotionless. He too did not look at his oldest daughter. “Just Fanny.”
Fanny’s hands began to shake, and she spilled hot chocolate on the table. Normally her mother would snap at her, but this time she merely pushed a dirty dish cloth in Fanny’s direction.
“Where’s Fanny going, Daed?” William had always pushed the limits with their father, and for a second Fanny feared William would find himself out behind the wood pile having a man-to-man “talk” with Daed.
But not this time.
“Ohio.”
Once again Fanny thought she did not hear her father properly. Ohio?
“Ohio?” William cried out. “What’s in Ohio? Our family’s in Pennsylvania!”
Maem took a deep breath and, without raising her head, looked at her son. “William!” She cautioned.
It surprised Fanny that her father did not reprimand William’s insolence. Questioning their parents was simply not something the children did.
“Your maem has family in Ohio. Fanny’s going to move in with Maem’s schwester for a while.”
Fanny glanced at William, the color drained from her cheeks. Maem had a sister in Ohio?
“Naomi is married to the bishop,” Maem contributed. “Their children are grown. And she lives on the property of my other schwester, Martha.” For the first time, Maem forced a small smile at Fanny. “She has two dochders just about your age, Fanny. And two older stepsons from her husband’s first marriage.”
“You’ll help them w
ith their basket-making business.”
“Baskets?” Fanny asked, more out of disbelief than as an actual question.
“They could use your help.”
Fanny wasn’t so certain this was true. Not once had she heard about these two sisters and their basket making. Nor did she know anything about basket making. Fanny suspected she was being sent away so her parents could provide for her other siblings.
William shook his head. “You can’t send Fanny without the rest of us!”
Maem’s hand fluttered to the back of her neck. Fanny stared at her, silently begging her mother to say something—anything!—that would indicate that this whole discussion was a mistake. But as she looked at her mother, she saw how tired she looked. While she had only just turned thirty-two, she looked almost fifty years old. Her hair was already thinning and turning gray at the roots, barely visible beneath her soft white prayer kapp.
“Please, William,” she said in a soft, pleading voice. “This is hard enough as it is.”
“I don’t want to leave,” Fanny whispered, her dark eyes wide and frightened. “Don’t send me away.”
“You both know we are struggling,” Maem replied, once again averting her eyes. “Just can’t make do out here no more.”
“But I thought we would all move back to Lancaster!” William cried.
“Would if we could,” Maem said. “But we’ve too much money invested in this place. Fanny’s going to return and help out the aendis. My older schwester, Naomi, offered to take her in, her kinner being all grown already and all. That will help us all.”
Neither Fanny nor William remembered Naomi, but they had certainly listened to Maem read the sporadic letters written to her by her oldest sister. Her husband had been selected by lot to become a preacher, and within two years he was elected the bishop of his church district. Naomi seemed to see this as a sign of divine appointment rather than lot. She often wrote disparagingly of the situation that her younger sister had fallen into when the Prices moved to Colorado. It wasn’t surprising to Fanny that Naomi had poked her nose into the family business. That seemed to be what she did best.