The Hope

by Patricia Davids

  “Can’t you come with us?” Grace asked.

  She sank to her knees in front of the child. “I have all my lambs to look after. I can’t leave them. Goodbye, Grace.” Ruth rose to her feet and held out her hand. “Goodbye, Owen.”

  He grasped her fingers gently. “Goodbye, Ruth. May Gott bless you and yours.” Letting go of her hand was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

  * * *

  THE TRIP TO Rebecca’s farm took three and a half hours. Owen was plagued by the thought that his sister had made the drive while she was dying. Grace remained quiet the entire trip, but she sat up to look out the window when the car turned down a gravel drive and stopped in front of a small neat house with a large flower garden out front. The door of the home opened, and an elderly couple came out.

  Grace pushed open her car door and ran to the woman’s welcoming arms. “Mrs. Clayton, I’m back.”

  “My little Grace, I’ve missed you so.”

  “This must be the place,” Owen muttered as he got out and paid the driver. The man unloaded their suitcases.

  The elderly man came forward with his hand outstretched. “Welcome. You must be Owen Mast. The sheriff said you’d be the one who came to look after Rebecca’s estate. Not that she had much, but she never complained. Let me take your bags in. I assumed you’d want to stay in her house. The wife and I live just down the road.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Come in,” Mrs. Clayton said. “I’ve got lemonade and gingersnap cookies.”

  Owen lagged behind as the others went in the house. He studied the house, the garden and the small stable. It was all in fine shape with fresh red paint on the stable and white trim.

  In the garden he saw his sister loved irises. They bloomed along the white picket fence in a dozen colors from pale yellow to deep purple. Their mother had loved the stately iris, too. There were other flowers, some he didn’t know the names of. It felt good to admire something she must have loved.

  In the house he found the Claytons waiting for him at the kitchen table. Mrs. Clayton poured him a glass of lemonade. “Grace has gone to see her pony. Sit. We know you must have questions for us. We have some for you.”

  He sat down and spread his hands on the tabletop. “I don’t know where to start.”

  Mrs. Clayton smiled at him. “Then I’ll tell you a little about your sister. She was so excited to meet you. You can’t believe how happy she was to have found some family. After Thelma died, Becky thought she was alone in the world.”

  “I have to say she didn’t seem excited when I spoke to her.” Had she really been happy that he’d found her?

  “That was her way. Always cautious. The same with Thelma. She was more than cautious, she was paranoid that someone was coming to steal Becky. We didn’t understand but maybe now we do. How sad that she couldn’t share her child with you and your family.”

  “What was Rebecca like when she was little? Did she talk about her family at all? Did she mention me?”

  Mr. Clayton shook his head. “We didn’t meet her until eight years ago. She never mentioned you.”

  Mrs. Clayton held up one finger. “Now, maybe she did. She told me once she had a recurring dream about a young boy who saved her from terrible danger and promised to take care of her forever. She never had a name to put to him, but I think it might have been you.”

  Some of the tension drained from Owen’s shoulders as a weight lifted from his chest. She hadn’t completely forgotten him. “She wrote to me and said she needed my help. Do you know what that was about?”

  They exchanged sad glances. Mrs. Clayton sighed deeply. “She knew Antonio would find them someday. She wanted Grace in a safe place. She was going to ask you to take the child. Isn’t it strange how things worked out?”

  He shook his head. “She didn’t even know me.”

  “I think maybe she did. I think she saw the boy in her dreams in you.”

  He smiled at the couple. “Tell me everything about her.”

  Hours later, he was outside petting Rebecca’s pony when Grace came around the side of the house. He finally thought he knew who his sister had been. A proud mother, a sweet friend, a member of the faithful, a sad woman trying to protect her child from her own worst mistake. That child came toward him, but she wasn’t smiling as he had expected her to be.

  “What’s the matter, Grace? Isn’t it goot to be home? Pansy has missed you.”

  The pony put her head over the fence so Grace could rub her forehead. Grace complied. “Mamm’s not here. I thought she might be. Whenever she went away she always came back here. I looked everywhere.”

  His heart ached for her sadness. “She isn’t here but all the things she loved are here. Her flowers, her house, her friends. They are here to remind you of her. I’ll never let you forget her.”

  “I won’t forget her, but what if Ruth forgets about me?”

  He smiled at the thought. “I doubt Ruth will forget you. She’s more likely to forget the sun rises in the east.”

  “Meeka is going to forget me. Who is changing her bandages?”

  “I’m sure Ruth will.” It hurt to talk about her not knowing when he would see her again.

  “I miss her. Don’t you miss her?”

  Far more than he cared to admit. “We can go visit her someday.”

  Grace’s eyes lit up. “Tomorrow?”

  “We just got here. I thought you wanted to come home.”

  “I did, but I don’t think this is home anymore. Mamm used to say home is where your heart is happy.”

  “That’s something our mother used to say.”

  His heart wasn’t happy. He loved Ruth. He would never be truly happy without her.

  Grace narrowed her eyes as she stared at him. “I think home is with Ruth and Polkadot and Meeka now because they love me.”

  “I love you.”

  She grinned at him. “I love you, too, and so does Ruth. Can we go back? Ruth is missing us an awful lot. She’s crying.”

  “We’ll see, but not tomorrow. We only just got here.” The child would change her mind again, he was sure of it.

  She folded her hands together. “Please?”

  “Definitely not tomorrow.”

  “Why not? Don’t you miss Ruth and Meeka and the sheep?”

  “I do miss her,” he said softly. So why was he trying to talk himself out of going back?

  He loved Ruth. Even if she couldn’t love him he could at least be near her. He thought it would be less painful staying away, but he had only been fooling himself.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think Ruth wants me hanging around the place.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  It couldn’t be that simple. Could it? Was he brave enough to ask her how she felt or was he going to keep running away?

  He looked into Grace’s hopeful eyes. “Okay, you win. We’re going home.”

  * * *

  SHE WASN’T GOING to cry anymore. Ruth rubbed her scratchy eyes and opened the front door two days after Owen and Grace had left. She stood staring out across the pasture, wondering if she would ever see them again. If she had just told him how she felt. If she could have made him see that loving Nathan didn’t mean she couldn’t love him. She should have tried, but women didn’t propose to men. Not in her community. The Amish took their modesty seriously.

  The sun was barely over the horizon. The warm golden light radiated in bright rays above and below a solitary gray cloud promising a gorgeous spring day. She had learned that life went on even in the face of unbearable sadness. The sun always rose. And the sun always set.

  She didn’t know how long she stood staring out the door until she noticed a commotion in the pasture. The flock was breaking in two and running in different directions as a child came barreling through them. The lambs darted away and then came back to
leap beside her.

  Ruth couldn’t believe her eyes. It was Grace. She rushed down the steps, through the gate and out into the field.

  Grace skidded to a halt in front of Ruth and struggled to catch her breath. “I need to ask something.”

  “What are you doing here?” She gathered the child in a tight embrace not certain she wasn’t dreaming.

  “I missed you. Onkel Owen doesn’t think you want him to live here. Can I tell him this is his home, too, so we don’t have to leave and our hearts can be happy?”

  She brushed a few stray strands of hair from Grace’s face. “If only it were that simple.”

  “What’s hard? Tell him you want him to stay.” Grace pushed against Ruth. “Tell him this is a safe place.”

  Ruth looked up to see Owen walking toward her. “I think Owen is looking for his own safe place.”

  “Our home is a safe place. You said so.”

  “Oh, Grace, it’s my fondest hope that Owen will realize that someday.”

  “I’ll go tell him.” Grace squirmed out of Ruth’s grip and took off running across the grass with the ribbons of her kapp streaming behind her.

  * * *

  “OWEN! ONKEL OWEN! Ruth says we can stay.” Grace didn’t slow down but plowed into Owen and almost knocked him over as she wrapped her arms around his leg. “Ruth wants you to stay. Her home is a safe place. You don’t have to look for another one. Our hearts can be happy here.”

  Owen gazed at her upturned face so full of hope. Suddenly his jumbled world clicked into place and he knew exactly what he had been searching for and never found. A safe place. A home. For his body and his heart. Ruth was his safe place. The place where his heart longed to rest. He hadn’t seen it before because the shadow of Nathan obscured it. He wasn’t half the man his cousin had been. How could Ruth settle for less?

  “Please stay, Onkel Owen. Ruth wants us to stay. She said it was her fondest hope.”

  “She did?” For the child, he understood that, but for him?

  Grace nodded vigorously. “It’s Meeka’s fondest hope, too. And Polkadot’s.”

  He looked toward the house. Ruth was running toward him. She didn’t slow down. She slammed into him, too, and threw her arms around his neck.

  “I can’t stand it. I can’t watch you walk away from me again. I love you, and you are an idiot if you don’t know that. This is not the proper way for a woman my age to behave. Forgive me but I can’t lose you.”

  Owen held her tight as despair gave way to happiness. He had found the home he’d been searching for and never knew it. He rocked back and forth with her in his embrace.

  Ruth pulled back. “You can tell me that you don’t love me, and I’ll go back to the house.”

  “Stop talking.”

  “Just know I’m going to love you for the rest of my life even if you don’t love me.”

  He pulled her close and laid a finger on her lips. “Stop talking so I can kiss you.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “I love you. Of course I love you. I love you more than my life, you sweet, darling woman.” He bent to kiss her and she rose on tiptoe to meet him. It wasn’t simply a sweet kiss. It was a kiss filled with tenderness and the promise of a future together. His head reeled as his pulse thundered in his ears. No more waiting and wishing. She was his.

  “Are your lips stuck?” a little voice asked by his side. He had forgotten about Grace.

  He pulled back but didn’t let Ruth out of his arms. “I love you.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” she muttered against his chest.

  “Because Nathan was your soul mate. How can I compete with that?”

  She reached up to cup his face in her hands. “You don’t have to compete with Nathan. I can love you dearly because you are Owen. There is no limit on how much love a heart can give.”

  “He was a better man than I am.”

  “That’s not true. I did love him above all others. It hurt so much to lose him. I never wanted to feel that agony again. I couldn’t risk loving someone so much it would tear my heart in two. I didn’t plan to love you. I fought against it. The night Winters came after us, I saw what it would be like to lose you. When I saw Grace running to you the way I wanted to run to you, and I had to follow. I will love you for as long as Gott wills. I pray He gives us many years together. Never doubt that I love you most dearly.”

  “I love him most dearly, too,” Grace declared, sandwiched between them.

  Owen picked her up and kissed her cheek. “I love you the mostest dearly of all.” He settled her on his hip with one arm and held his other out to Ruth. She slipped into his embrace without hesitation. Gazing into her eyes, he saw a future as bright as the rising sun.

  “Gott has been good to me,” he said softly.

  “He has been merciful to all of us. I think it’s time we went home, Owen Mast.”

  He kissed her forehead. “I’m comfortable right where I am. I could stay here all day.”

  Grace frowned at him. “But I’m hungry for breakfast.”

  He chuckled. “Ja, I can see the future clearly. I’m going to have to compete with pancakes for my little girl’s love.”

  “I promise to share with you,” she said.

  “That makes me feel better.” He lowered the child to the ground and gripped Ruth’s hand as they walked side by side. “Well, my future wife, what is for breakfast?”

  Grace stopped in her tracks. “Ruth is going to be your wife?”

  “I hope so. If she says yes. Will you marry me, Ruth?”

  “I believe I must for I’ve never met anyone in more need of a home and a family.”

  “And love?”

  “And lots of love.” She smiled so sweetly, he almost took her in his arms again.

  “Danki.” He leaned over and kissed her instead.

  “If we are going to be a family, can I be the daughter and you two be the daed and mamm?”

  “That sounds like a fine plan. Don’t you think so, Ruth?”

  “I do. I think it’s a very fine, very smart plan.”

  Grace stood beside them grinning. “See, I told you finding a wife is a lot smarter than doing your own cooking, Onkel Owen. I mean, Daed.”

  * * *

  If you enjoyed this story, look for the next book in the Amish of Cedar Grove series, The Promise by Patricia Davids, available May 2020 from HQN Books.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from An Amish Christmas Promise by Jo Ann Brown.

  An Amish Christmas Promise

  by Jo Ann Brown

  Chapter One

  Evergreen Corners, Vermont

  The bus slowed with a rumble of its diesel engine.

  Michael Miller opened his eyes. A crick in his neck warned him that he’d fallen asleep in a weird position. The last time he’d ridden a bus was when he caught one to the train station in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Then he’d traveled with his twin brother and Gabriel’s bopplin to their new farm in Harmony Creek Hollow in northern New York.

  Now he was on a bus on a late October day because he needed time away, time with peace and quiet, to figure out the answer to one vital question: Should he remain in their Amish community, or was the future he wanted beyond a plain life?

  Today Michael was in Vermont, on his way to Evergreen Corners. The small village was at the epicenter of powerful flash floods that had accompanied Hurricane Kevin when the massive storm stalled over the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains last week.

  The bus hit another pothole in the dirt on what once had been a paved road. He was shocked to discover the other lane had been washed away. The road, a major north–south conduit in the state, was barely wider than the bus’s wheels. He didn’t see any cars anywhere, just a couple of trucks with what looked like a town seal on their doors. They were parked near a building wher
e all the windows and doors were missing.

  His stomach tightened. Had those vehicles been commandeered as ambulances? Were the people working there looking for victims?

  The stories coming out of Vermont had warned that the situation was dismal. Whole sections of towns like Evergreen Corners had been washed away by torrents surging along what had been babbling brooks. People left with no place to live, all their possessions gone or covered with thick mud. Trees torn from the banks. Rocks—both giant boulders and tons of gravel—swept beneath bridges and damming the streams, forcing the water even higher.

  Michael could see the road—or what there was left of it—followed a twisting stream between two steep mountains. The job of rebuilding was going to be bigger than he’d imagined when he’d stepped forward to offer his skills as a carpenter.

  How much could he and the other fifteen volunteers on the bus do in the next three months? Where did they begin?

  And what had made him think he’d find a chance to think about the future here?

  God, I trust You know where I should be. Help me see.

  The bus jerked to a stop, and the driver opened the door. “Here we are!”

  A pungent odor oozed into the bus. It was a disgusting mix of mud and gasoline and the fuel oil that had been washed out of household storage tanks. Michael gasped, choking on the reek.

  When a mask was held out to him, he took it from his friend, Benjamin Kuhns, who was sitting beside him, but didn’t put it on. Like Michael, Benjamin had volunteered when a representative of Amish Helping Hands had come two days ago to Harmony Creek Hollow. Amish Helping Hands worked with other plain organizations to help after natural disasters. Benjamin announcing that he wanted to come, too, had been a surprise, because he’d been focused for the past year on working with his older brother, Menno, in getting their sawmill running. Business had been growing well, and Michael wondered if Benjamin was seeking something to help him grasp onto his future, too.