Leah's Choice. Emma Miller

would have died and the kid with her if Daniel hadn’t known what to do.”

       “So he’s not a preacher. But he is a missionary. He must have been lots of places, known lots of English girls. Fancy foreign girls, too.”

       “I suppose he has, but he was nice. Is nice. And when he gives his program, I’m going to be there to hear it.”

       “If Mam lets you go again.”

       Leah’s brow creased as she tried to hide the annoyance she felt at Rebecca’s words. “Ne, sister,” she answered softly. “That’s not what I said. I said I’m going to hear Daniel’s talk and see the pictures of Spain and Morocco. I’ll be twenty-one in a few weeks, and I’m an adult. I think I can decide for myself if I’m going to hear a missionary speak about his experiences in spreading God’s word, without asking for my mother’s permission.”

       Rebecca slid off the bed, moisture gleaming in her dark eyes. “I’ve made you angry.”

       Leah shook her head. “Not angry.”

      “Ya.” A single tear blossomed on Rebecca’s cheek. “I never say the right thing to you, Leah. I try, but it always comes out wrong. I worry about you.”

       Leah opened her arms and Rebecca came into them. Leah enveloped her in a hug. “Worry about me? Why? Because I hunted for a lost child last night—”

      “Ne.” Her sister switched from English to Pennsylvania Dutch. “You have a good heart. It was wrong of me to tease you about the Mennonite boy. I only did it because I’m frightened that we might lose you.”

       “Lose me?” Leah pulled away to look down into her sister’s face. Rebecca was a small girl, like Miriam, not tall like Mam’s side of the family. “How could you lose me?”

       Rebecca clasped her hand and squeezed it hard. “You move too easily in the outside world. Since we were children, you always have. The English don’t make you uncomfortable, as they do me.”

       “But why should that frighten you?”

       “We’re Plain folk—we’re a people apart. Do you forget the martyrs who died that we might worship according to our beliefs?”

       Leah leaned close and brushed a kiss on her sister’s temple. “How could I forget? Being who I am—who we are—is bred into me, blood and bone. Surely, listening to a Mennonite tell about his mission work doesn’t change that.”

       “It’s not just that.” Another tear followed the first. “It was the Mennonite friends you made out in Ohio. You went to their charity auctions, and you went to the fair with Jeanine and Sophie. And at least once, you helped out at their bake sale for their church.”

       “I did, but that was to raise money for a mission in the Ukraine. They wanted to send books and school supplies to orphans in a remote town. I wasn’t attending worship services. And going to a fair to look at animals and eat cotton candy doesn’t mean that I’ve forsaken my own faith,” Leah protested. “I haven’t.”

       Rebecca’s chin quivered. “Everyone thought that you’d start classes for baptism this spring, but you didn’t. Even Ruth is concerned about you. She and Aunt Jezzy were talking about it last week after church.”

       “And Mam? What does she say?”

       Her sister sighed. “You know Mam. She just smiles and says, ‘All in God’s time.’ But it’s past time, Leah. You’re the prettiest girl in Kent County, but you’ve never had a steady boyfriend, and you don’t even let any boys drive you home from frolics and singings.”

       Leah wrinkled her nose again as she thought of Menno Swartzentruber, who’d tried to get her to ride home in his buggy last Sunday. “Maybe I haven’t met the right boy. The ones around here seem too young and flighty.” Menno was a hard worker, but his idea of a good joke was piling straw bales across the road to stop traffic in the dark or filling a paper bag with cow manure and leaving it on an Englisher’s porch. No, she couldn’t see herself dating Menno.

       “And what about Jake King from the fourth district church? He’s what? Twenty-eight or twenty-nine? He likes you, and you can’t think Jake’s too young.”

       “I like Jake—he’s a good man. But his wife’s only been dead six months. I wouldn’t feel right walking out with Jake so soon after his loss.”

       “You see how you are.” Rebecca stepped away and straightened her kapp, which had come loose when they’d hugged. “You always have a good excuse. But wearing that Ohio-style dress doesn’t help. You know how people are—how they will talk. They start to wonder if you are drifting away from us.”

       “It sounds as though you’ve been talking to Aunt Martha,” Leah said. “Or Dorcas.”

       “Aunt Martha has a sharp tongue,” Rebecca admitted. “But she means well. She knows Dat would have been worried about you.”

       “You miss him a lot, don’t you?” Leah murmured. Their father had been dead almost three years, but the hurt hadn’t faded. Rebecca had taken the loss especially hard.

       “I do.”

       “Me, too,” she admitted softly.

       “Leah! Leah!”

       Both Leah and Rebecca turned toward the stairs as the clatter of footsteps echoed down the hallway.

       “Leah! There’s a man!” Susanna’s eyes were wide, her cheeks red with excitement. “In a truck! In the kitchen!”

       “A truck in Mam’s kitchen?” Leah teased.

      “Ne!” Susanna was breathless from running up the steps. “An Englisher man. He wants…” She inhaled deeply. “He wants you!”