Home to Paradise Read online

  “Wipe your feet.”

  “I always do,” he responded as he stamped his boots on the rug before shedding his jacket and hat.

  “Don’t backtalk your mudder,” his father said as he walked into the room.

  John glanced over at her, and she cast him a beseeching look. Don’t argue, her look said.

  “Sorry, Mom,” he said. “Something smells good.”

  “Always shows up for a meal,” Amos grumbled as he took a seat at the table.

  “So where’s David and Lavina?” he asked as he walked over to the stove and looked over his mother’s shoulder at the contents of the pot she was stirring.

  “They’ll be home soon. They went to visit some friends.” She glanced at the kitchen window. “Snow’s really starting to come down.”

  “So what were you doing having a snowball fight with a maedel?” Amos demanded, his bushy black eyebrows drawn together in a frown. “Aren’t you a little old for such childishness?”

  “She started it,” John told him. He endured his father’s steely gaze and shrugged. “We were just playing around.”

  “What if the bishop had been passing by?”

  “He doesn’t need to be bothering people having a little fun.”

  “Now you’re telling the bishop his job?”

  John felt his temper rising. “Look, can we drop it?”

  “Sounds like home,” David said as he strolled into the room.

  “Your bruder here—” Amos began and then abruptly stopped when he saw Lavina walk in with her boppli in her arms. He jumped up and crossed the room to take his grosssohn from her so she could shed her coat.

  “He fell asleep on the way home,” Lavina told him. “I’m going to take him upstairs and put him in his crib for a nap.”

  Amos frowned. “I was hoping to spend some time with him.”

  She smiled. “He won’t sleep long. I promise you’ll have a visit with him before he goes to bed tonight.” She carefully lifted Mark from his arms and went upstairs.

  “He likes Mark because he can’t talk back yet,” John muttered to David as he took a seat next to him.

  “I heard that.” Amos sat at the table again.

  “John, could you go down to the basement and get me two jars of green beans?”

  “Happy to.”

  Relieved to get away from his father, John went on the mission even though the basement was cold. He grabbed the flashlight kept at the top of the stairs and walked up and down the rows of shelves until he came upon the Mason jars of green beans canned during the harvest. With them tucked in one arm he went back upstairs and found Amos engaged in a conversation with Lavina.

  “Here you go,” he told his mother and put the jars on the kitchen counter next to the stove.

  And that’s when he saw green beans warming in a pot on top of it. “What do you call that?” he asked quietly, pointing to the pot with steam rising from it.

  “Keeping the peace,” she said, smiling. “Supper’s ready!”

  Feeling chastened, he took his seat at the table.

  ***

  Rose Anna sang along with the congregation during the long worship service. She glanced around the room, absorbing the peace, wanting to carry it with her until the next service.

  It was so wunderbaar to be with friends and family and celebrate their faith.

  The trouble was she found her attention wandering as the minister spoke. She couldn’t help remembering her childish behavior earlier in the week.

  She couldn’t do something like lose her temper and do something so impulsive like pelt John with snowballs the next time she saw him. What if someone had seen her the other day? But she couldn’t help smiling as she remembered how it had felt to surprise him. It had been worth his retaliating when she escaped into his house. She had a feeling that his mudder had chastised him gut when he came home later.

  “Something funny?” her schweschder Lavina whispered.

  Rose Anna wiped the expression off her face. “Nee.”

  “I’m going to go check on Mark. Waneta’s watching him and several boppli while they nap in a bedroom.”

  She slipped from her chair and left the room. Rose Anna found herself studying the faces of family and friends gathered in the Miller home for the service. She loved it that church service took place in a home in her community. Home was church, and church was home. Gathering to worship in the home of a member was something that was such a part of their lives she couldn’t imagine anything that touched her heart as much. What had started as a way for her ancestors to avoid religious persecution had strengthened families and enriched the lives of all who came after them.

  One day, if she married, she and her mann would host services in their home, and their kinner would grow up with church services in their home as she had. And she hoped that they would make their faith as much a part of their daily life—not just on alternate Sundays—as she had growing up.

  A slight movement in the men’s section of the room caught her attention. Peter smiled at her. She smiled back. He was such a nice man. They’d known each other all their lives and had gone to schul together. She might have dated him sooner if she hadn’t had eyes only for John Stoltzfus. Stung by his leaving their community to live in the Englisch community in town, and his refusal to have anything to do with her, she’d decided to move on.

  And practically no time later she’d walked into Sewn in Love delivering craft items sewn by the women in the shelter where she volunteered. She had taken one look at Peter, seen him in a different light, and they’d started seeing each other.

  Her schweschders accused her of flirting with him to make John jealous, and maybe she’d been a little guilty of that in the beginning. It felt gut to have a man pay attention to her. John had enjoyed his time away from the Amish community a little too much in her opinion. When she’d confronted him and wanted to know when he was coming back, needing so desperately to know if he had any feelings at all for her, she’d found that he didn’t.

  Remembering how she’d felt being rejected still rankled. After all, she and John had dated for more than a year before he left home. Any maedel would have been hurt by his behavior. She took a deep breath to calm herself, then another. And reminded herself she should be paying attention to the church service and not thinking about her dating life.

  She’d see Peter soon enough. They were having lunch after church today. He’d told her he was taking her to her favorite restaurant. She’d argued with him about it. The restaurant was pricey, and with him working two jobs, she didn’t think he should be spending the money. But he’d overruled her objections so charmingly that she’d said okay.

  Thinking of an afternoon spent in his company in one of her favorite places put her in a gut mood. She joined in another hymn and must have done so a bit too enthusiastically because Mary Elizabeth nudged her with her elbow and frowned at her.

  As soon as the service was over Rose Anna stood and went to help some of the women in the kitchen. Everyone had a job to do after the service—the men converted pews to seating areas, and the women served and cleaned up after a light snack. She was hungry, but she had volunteered to help serve so she could leave right afterward. It was hard to resist the church spread. The peanut butter-marshmallow spread on a slice of bread smelled so gut, but she was determined to save her appetite for the restaurant. She’d eaten there four times now—twice with her schweschders on special occasions and twice with Peter.

  Today she thought she’d order the chicken cordon bleu. The name just rolled off her tongue. It was so rich. So fancy.

  Seeing how much she’d liked it Lavina had looked up the recipe and made it for her birthday supper. She’d told Rose Anna the recipe wasn’t hard. Just a chicken breast rolled around a slice of Swiss cheese and ham and baked to a golden deliciousness. It was sweet of her oldest schweschder to prepare it, but Rose Anna liked having it at the restaurant as a special treat. Followed of course by a fancy French pastry. That was even mo
re special than the chicken.

  And she really enjoyed going out with Peter. It felt gut to have him smile at her the way he did every time he saw her. What maedel wouldn’t feel her self-esteem restored by having a handsome Amish man like Peter waiting in his buggy outside to take her to lunch when she finished in the kitchen?

  She could tell Peter liked simpler food and surroundings more than her favorite place. He’d teased her about her favorite chicken saying, “Fancy name for chicken stuffed with ham and cheese.” But he indulged her.

  Peter was tall and lanky, but he ate like he had a hollow leg. He ordered the baked chicken and ate hungrily. When he eyed her plate, she pushed it toward him so he could finish the last few bites of her meal.

  “You can’t still be hungry,” she told him indulgently. “I saw you having a snack earlier.”

  He chuckled. “Mamm says I’m a growing boy.”

  They were both twenty-three, so he was hardly a boy, but it did seem as if he had grown taller over the previous summer. Was that possible? Before she could ask him his attention was drawn to the dessert cart their server wheeled beside their table.

  He ordered the chocolate cake—here it was called gateau au chocolat—and she got her favorite, a napoleon.

  They lingered over dessert, and then he took her for a long drive in the country. Of course, whenever they traveled through a covered bridge they had to stop midway and do what all Amish couples did and share a quick kiss.

  It was a pleasant afternoon. Peter was charming, attentive, and a wonderful man to date.

  But as she stood on the porch and watched Peter drive off, she found herself looking in the direction of the farm where John lived and wondering what he was doing.

  2

  If there was anything Rose Anna loved more than quilting, it was teaching the twice-weekly quilting class at the women’s shelter in town.

  She’d started volunteering there with her schweschders, and now whether or not they were able to come, she continued because she enjoyed it so much.

  The shelter was a big, rambling house just outside the town proper. There was no sign in front. People passing by wouldn’t know it was anything but a family home. That was because the women and kinner inside wouldn’t be safe if the husbands and boyfriends the women fled from knew where they were.

  She knocked and Pearl, the woman who ran the shelter, answered the door herself and greeted her with a big smile.

  The shelter should have been a sad place. Actually it had been at times when she first came with Lavina. She’d never seen women with bruised faces or kinner with eyes full of fear who hid behind their mudder’s skirts. It wasn’t that abuse didn’t happen in the Amish community. But it wasn’t something that she had come into direct contact with like she saw here.

  Gradually she’d seen the women’s shelter as a place of hope. Because the place itself had changed.

  The quilting classes taught by Kate Kraft, the police officer and quilting enthusiast, had made a difference.

  One by one, women climbed the stairs to the second floor of the shelter to a room Pearl had converted into a sewing room with long tables and donated sewing machines. Kate had volunteered to teach the quilting classes, and being Kate, she’d convinced others to join her.

  Lavina hadn’t believed she could contribute anything, but Kate showed her that she could. And then Lavina had gotten Mary Elizabeth to come.

  So, of course, Rose Anna had to see why her two older schweschders took time off from their work and daily chores to teach quilting at a woman’s shelter.

  And she’d been hooked.

  Kate had made a difference, and then Leah, an Amish woman who owned the Stitches in Time shop in Paradise, had seen a way to help the women even more. The two of them had come up with the idea for Leah to open a second shop called Sewn in Hope to sell the crafts they made.

  Now the room was filled with women who happily sewed their way out of despair and financed a way to build a future for themselves and their kinner.

  Today, many of the women were sewing Thanksgiving and Christmas crafts. They were the most popular items offered at Sewn in Hope at any time of the year.

  Rose Anna stopped by the table near the window where a new resident sat staring at the quilt block handed out at the beginning of the class. The woman looked small, her chin-length brown hair falling forward over her thin face. She wore a faded T-shirt with an Army slogan and camouflage pants.

  “Hello, I’m Rose Anna.”

  The woman jerked and stared up at her with frightened green eyes. “I—hi. I’m Brooke.”

  “Would you like some help with your block?”

  “No, I think I can handle it.”

  She bent over it again, and Rose Anna couldn’t help wondering if she was intent on working on it or trying to hide the yellowing bruise around one eye.

  And Brooke kept glancing nervously at the windows at her side as her fingers plucked at the fabric block.

  “Just let me know if you need anything,” Rose Anna said quietly. “And welcome to the class. I hope you enjoy it.”

  Brooke nodded jerkily and kept her eyes focused on the block.

  Rose Anna walked a few steps away, and suddenly something bright and round whirled at her like a child’s Frisbee and chucked her on the chin. She grabbed at it and frowned at the fabric circle. “Why it’s a yo-yo.”

  “Sorry, Rose Anna.”

  She grinned at Jason, a little boy who’d come to the shelter last month with his mudder and two schweschders. “It’s okay. It didn’t hurt me.”

  “That’s not a yo-yo. Yo-yos are toys.”

  “My grandmother made these,” Edna told him. “I thought about making a quilt with them, but then I came up with something different.” She waved a hand at her table, and Rose Anna saw that she’d made various sizes of them, stacked them from largest at the bottom to the smallest at the top. Then she’d sewed a fabric ribbon at the top to hang them. They were little trees of fabric.

  “They’re darling,” Kate said as she stopped at the table and held one up. She smiled at Edna. “I think they’ll sell well at the shop.”

  “They’re easy to make and don’t take much fabric.”

  “Speaking of fabric,” Kate announced as she continued into the room. She held up a shopping bag in each hand.

  “I thought you had court this morning.”

  “I did. We finished early, and Leah’s shop was on the way here.”

  “Ha!” said Edna. “You know you find every excuse you can to stop by there.”

  “Guilty!” Kate laughed. “So I guess this means you don’t want to see it?”

  Edna jumped up. “You guessed wrong.” She turned to the other women in the room. “Kate’s got new fabric!”

  They swarmed over, eager to check out the new fabric. Kate stepped closer to Rose Anna.

  “I see we have someone new,” she said quietly, jerking her head in the direction of a woman who sat at a table near the windows.

  “Her name’s Brooke. She didn’t want to talk much,” Rose Anna told her. “So I told her to let me know if she needed any help and just let her be. Sometimes it takes a while for a person to feel comfortable.”

  Kate nodded. “I’ll put my things down and say hello.”

  A woman walked up to ask her a question, and after she left, Kate turned to Rose Anna.

  “Where’d Brooke go? I didn’t see her leave the room.”

  Rose Anna glanced around. “I don’t know.”

  “Could I have this piece, Kate?” Edna asked, her eyes bright with excitement. “It’d go great in a lap quilt I want to make.”

  “Sure. Take whatever you want.” She smiled at the women milling around the table admiring the fabric. “Malcolm said if I brought more fabric home he’d have to build an addition onto the house.”

  Rose Anna laughed. “My daed’s always saying things like that. But I noticed that he always smiles when he says it, and he keeps building more shelves in our sewing r
oom.”

  There was a tug on her skirt. She glanced down and saw Lannie, a little girl who was three, clutching at her skirt.

  Lannie popped her thumb out of her mouth. “Lady,” she said, pointing at the table by the window. “Lady,” she repeated and pulled at Rose Anna’s skirt to indicate she should follow her.

  She let the child lead her over to the table, wondering what she could be trying to tell her. “Lady,” she said again. She pointed under the table.

  So Rose Anna obliged and looked under the table and into Brooke’s terrified gaze. The woman had her arms wrapped around herself and was shaking.

  She knelt down. “Brooke? What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?”

  “Window,” she managed. “I can’t. The window.”

  Rose Anna turned and gestured to Lannie. “Get Kate, Lannie. Get Kate.”

  ***

  “So how are things going?”

  John dumped the shovel of manure in the wheelbarrow and grimaced at his older brother.

  “Couldn’t be better. It’s the weekend, and here I am helping my brother clean out a stall. As if I don’t shovel enough of this on my job.”

  David laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. “Well, Lavina’ll make it up to you. She’s fixing us lunch, and you know she’ll give you enough leftovers to feed you for a week. I heard she made an extra pie.”

  “Apple?”

  “Ya.”

  John paused and considered. “That makes me feel a little better.”

  “Still eating a lot of ramen noodles?”

  He laughed. “My specialty.”

  “Sam must be missing them now that he’s married to Mary Elizabeth.”

  “The two of you are getting to be soft old married men,” John jeered.

  “Marriage is great,” David told him as he set his shovel aside. “You should try it.”

  “Not me. Not for a long time. It’s up to me to keep up the Stoltzfus reputation now.” He grinned. “It’s hard for one man to carry the load, but I’ll try to do the job.”

  David frowned. “Sounds like you’re enjoying your rumschpringe a little too much.”