Her father’s illness, his desire for her to marry quickly, finding out her brother was ten times more foolhardy than she believed possible—it all added up to a burden too big to carry alone. Luke Bowman’s arrival today was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back.
And she was a weak camel to begin with. She sat down on the edge of her bed, wishing she could start the day all over again and have it turn out differently.
A gentle tap at her door proved that wasn’t going to happen. “Emma?”
“Come in.”
Her father peeked around the door. “Are you all right?”
“Nee, I’m not. How can I be after your sad news today?”
He entered the room and sat down on the chair against the far wall. Leaning forward, he braced his elbows on his knees. “You will be fine. You are so much like your mother. She was a strong woman, too.”
He was wrong. Emma wasn’t strong, but he was being brave in the face of his illness. She could do no less. She would pretend to be brave. For him. “What are we going to do with Roy? He’s gone too far this time. He could have been killed. Alvin could have been killed. I think you should tell them how ill you are. Maybe that will shock them into behaving.”
“They will learn of it soon enough. Let them be boys for a few more weeks. Perhaps Roy’s dunking in the river has taught him a lesson.”
At sixteen, Roy was in his rumspringa, the years between childhood and adulthood when Amish youth were free to experience the outside world before they were baptized. Once an Amish man or woman chose to be baptized, they embraced the strict rules of the Amish faith, rejecting the outside world forever. If they chose to remain a part of the English world before baptism, they would be able to do so without being shunned by her church group, although not all Amish churches were so open-minded.
Emma had left her rumspringa behind at twenty and joined the faithful that same year. She knew Luke had yet to make that decision. He had been living Amish for a year and a half, ever since his release from prison, but he hadn’t taken his vows. At twenty-five, his family and the congregation would soon begin pressuring him to make a choice. He couldn’t stay on the fence forever. It was time to declare his intentions. Was he going to be Englisch or Amish?
She forced herself to stop thinking about him. “I pray you are right and Roy has learned his lesson, but he is hardheaded.”
“Like I was. There’s an old Amish proverb my father was fond of using. ‘Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first, then the lesson afterward.’”
“At least Alvin may not follow him so willingly in the future.” Alvin was a sensitive boy and not prone to troublemaking unless Roy put him up to it.
“Alvin looks up to Roy as only a younger brother can. It will take more than this incident to tarnish Roy’s image in Alvin’s eyes.”
Her father was probably right. “Did you look up to your older brother in such a fashion?”
Zachariah chuckled. “Your hair would turn gray if you knew half the things my brother, William, and I pulled when we were their ages.”
She giggled, amazed she could smile after all that she had learned. “You should go and visit him.” Her uncle and his wife along with her father’s sister had remained in Missouri when her father moved to Ohio twenty years ago. He had been to visit them only once in all that time.
“Before it’s too late, you mean? Don’t look so sad. You’re right. I should go. Perhaps I will after the New Year. Until then, I have a lot to do here.”
Besides farming, her father had always planned to open a hardware business that catered to a few of his Amish neighbors with things like lanterns, nuts, bolts and his prized key-cutting machine that was powered by an ancient diesel generator. Only the shell of the building had been completed. The rest of the things he had collected over the years were junk in her eyes, but occasionally someone needed a part for a broken bailer and Zachariah Swartzentruber was the man to see. He had five bailers in various stages of rust sitting in a long shed he’d built to house them. He never came home from market day empty-handed.
Tears pricked her eyes again. What would she do without him? The doctor had to be wrong. “The boys and I will help with whatever you need.”
“I know you will. I want to get my store finished and stocked by Christmas. I have loads of things just waiting to be put out on shelves.”
His store was a room he’d built off the side of the house. The roof was on and the walls were framed, but that was all. His shelves were nothing more than long boards stored in the shed alongside the rusting bailers. “Roy and Alvin can help you finish the store.”
“I need more help than they can give me. My hands are getting weak, and I can’t swing a hammer the way I once did. I need a man’s help.”
“You’re not going to ask Wayne Hochstetler, are you?” The idea of seeing him daily while the work was completed was troubling. What if she didn’t like him enough to walk out with him? How could she face him day after day knowing he was sizing her up to be his wife?
“Nee, for if Wayne has his mind on courting you, he might not be any use to me. A lovesick fellow often makes a poor worker.”
“Then there are a number of young men who should suit your needs nicely. How much will this cost?”
He rose and cupped her cheek with his hand. “Don’t worry your head about it, daughter. Buy the material for a new dress, and let me worry about the money.”
“All right.” She smiled for him.
“That’s my girl.” He started to leave the room.
“I’ll put an ad for a hired man in the newspaper tomorrow.”
“No need. I’ve already hired someone. He starts on Monday.”
Her heart dropped like a rock and she closed her eyes. Please, please, please, don’t let it be him.
“Who did you hire, Daed?”
“I don’t feel so goot. I don’t think I’m ready to go home.”
Luke suppressed a smile at Roy’s downcast expression as he sat on the edge of the boy’s bed the following morning. Roy looked less like a drowned rat today and more like a fella ready to get up to mischief as soon as Rebecca let him out of bed. Both of them knew better than to make that move without her permission. Luke’s sister-in-law was a force to be reckoned with. She and Emma were cut from the same cloth.
Why hadn’t Rebecca mentioned that Emma was seeing someone? While most Amish sweethearts kept their relationship a tightly guarded secret from the community until the banns were read a few weeks before the wedding, family members usually knew what was going on when a couple became serious. Zachariah’s announcement yesterday had hit Luke like a ton of bricks, although he wasn’t sure why.
That was a lie. He knew why. Emma held a place in his heart that no other woman had been able to fill.
She should marry. Wasn’t that why he had stepped aside all those years ago? Because he wanted her to be happy? He wanted her to build a life in the Amish community where they had grown up. Emma belonged here. She embraced the Amish way of life. It was something he had never been able to do.
All through the rough times when he was on drugs and then behind bars, he imagined Emma living a contented life. He was able to find comfort in that. It had soothed the pain of knowing how poorly he’d treated her. His words that night had been cruel, but they had been for her own good. He knew how much her family was going to need her. He had learned her mother didn’t have long to live, but he had been forbidden to tell anyone, even Emma.
Roy