An Amish Christmas Promise and Amish Christmas Hideaway
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Jo Ann Brown
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42
Chapter One
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 where 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.
“Watch where you step,” shouted the bus driver before he went out.
Michael stood and grabbed his small bag off the shelf over his head, stuffing the mask into a pocket. He noticed a few people on the bus had donned theirs.
His larger bag, where he’d packed the tools he expected he’d need, was stored under the bus. Nobody spoke as they filed out, and he knew he wasn’t the only person overwhelmed by the destruction.
As his feet touched the muddy ground, he heard, “Look out!”
He wasn’t sure whether to duck, jump aside or climb back on the bus. Looking around, he saw a slender blonde barreling toward him, arms outstretched.
Squawking was the only warning he got before a small brown chicken ran into him, bounced backward, turned and kept weaving through the crowd of volunteers moving to get their luggage from beneath the bus. The chicken let out another terrified screech before vanishing through a forest of legs and duffels.
The woman halted before she ran into him, too. Putting out her hands, she stopped two kinder from colliding with him. The force of their forward motion drove her a step closer, and he dropped his bag to the ground and caught her by the shoulders before she tumbled over the toes of his weather-beaten work boots. He was astounded that though her dress was a plain style, the fabric was a bright pink-and-green plaid.
“Are you okay?” Michael asked.
She nodded and looked at him with earth-brown eyes that seemed the perfect complement to her pale hair. She was so short her head hardly reached his shoulder. Her features were delicate. Thanking him, she turned to the kinder.
He hadn’t expected the simple act of gazing into her pretty eyes to hit him like the recoil of a mishandled nail gun. Was she plain, or dressed simply because she was cleaning up the mess left by the flood?
He glanced at the kinder who’d been chasing her and the chicken. The boy appeared to be around six or seven years old. He had light brown hair, freckles and blue-gray eyes. Along with jeans and sneakers, he wore a T-shirt stained with what looked like peanut butter and jelly. Beside him, and wearing almost identical clothing, though without the stains, the little girl had hair the same soft honey-blond as the woman’s. Like the boy, she had freckles, but her eyes were dark. When she grinned at him, she revealed she’d lost her two front teeth.
He couldn’t keep from smiling. The kind was adorable, and he could imagine how she’d be twisting boys’ hearts around her finger in a few years.
Just as Adah Burcky had with every guy who’d glanced her way. What a dummkopf he’d been to think he was the sole recipient of her kisses and flirtatious glances! He could hear her laugh when she’d walked away with another man. There had been a hint of triumph in it, as if she took delight in keeping track of the hearts she broke...including his.
What had brought Adah to mind? He’d come to Evergreen Corners to decide what he wanted to do with his future, not to focus on the past. For too long, he’d been drifting, following his twin brother to their new home, a place where he wasn’t sure he belonged. Was his life among the plain folk, or was the route God had mapped for him meant to take him somewhere else? He had three months to figure that out.
“She’s getting away,” the boy insisted in an ever-louder voice, breaking into Michael’s thoughts. “We’ve got to catch her before she gets hit by a car.”
“There aren’t a lot of cars on the road,” the woman replied, ruffling his hair in an attempt to calm him.
“But there are buses.” The boy flung out a hand toward the one that had brought Michael to Evergreen Corners. “See?”
Michael wasn’t the only one trying to stifle a grin as the woman said, “We’ll pray she’ll be fine, Kevin. Place her in God’s hands and trust He knows what’s best.”
Though he thought the boy would protest, the kind nodded. “Like you placed us in God’s hands when the brook rose.”
She nodded, but her serene facade splintered for a second. By the time she’d turned to Michael, it was again in place, and he wondered if he’d imagined the shadows in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “We’ve been chasing Henrietta for the past fifteen minutes.” She gave him a wry smile. “Not an original name for a chicken, but the kids chose our flock’s names.”
“She went that way.” He pointed down the hill where a shallow brook rippled in the late-afternoon sunshine.
“She’s headed toward our place, so maybe she’ll turn up in what’s left of our yard if she gets hungry enough.” She wiped her forearm against her forehead and readjusted the black kerchief she wore over her honey-blond hair that was, he noticed for the first time, pulled into a tight bun at her nape.
“So your house is okay?” Michael asked.
She bit her lip before standing straighter. “No. Our house is gone.”
He was shocked that anyone who’d lost their home could smile as she had. Could he have faced the situation with such aplomb and the gut spirits she did? That was a question he hoped he’d never have to answer.
Carolyn Wiebe knew she’d astounded the handsome dark-haired man who’d stepped off the bus. What had he expected her to do? Rage against the whims of nature? The storm that decimated everything she’d worked for during the past four years had been a mindless beast whose winds tore up the valley before sending water barreling down it. Be angry at God? How could she, when He’d spared their lives and everyone else’s in Evergreen Corners? That hadn’t been the situation in other towns, or so rumor whispered. No one could be sure of anything, but she’d heard of five deaths. People swept away as she and her children could have been. She’d made a promise to look after them forever, and she wasn’t going to let a tempest change that.
Scanning the group from the bus, she dared to take a deep breath. She didn’t see any sign of Leland Reber. There were other brown-haired men, but not the formerly plain man who’d married her late sister and had two youngsters with her. Though she hadn’t seen his photo in over four years, she was sure she’d recognize him whether he dressed like her Englisch neighbors or in plain clothing. He had a square jaw with a cleft in his chin, which her sister Regina had found appealing...until the beatings started within weeks of their marriage.
For four years, Carolyn had managed to push Leland out of her mind while she focused on raising the children her sister had entrusted to her, children who called her Mommy. Then a neighbor had told her about hearing how Carolyn and the kids had been shown on national television news when reporters had appeared the day after the flood. If so, Leland, who’d embraced an Englisch life, most especially television and alcohol, could have learned where they were.
Carolyn’s first thought had been to flee as they had when she’d left her beloved plain community in Indiana. She realized doing that was impossible when the roads were open only to authorized vehicles. Her car had been swept away in the flood and hadn’t been found so she couldn’t take Kevin and Rose Anne anywhere.
Her one consolation was Leland should have as much trouble getting to Evergreen Corners. The one way he could gain entry was to pretend to volunteer and get a ride with one of the disaster services. So she asked about vehicles bringing volunteers into Evergreen Corners, and she’d devised an excuse to be nearby when the newcomers had stepped off the bus. Today, Henrietta had provided her with one. She couldn’t chance Leland sneaking into town and finding her and his son and daughter.
“Do you know where we’re supposed to go, Mrs.—?” asked the man who’d been accosted by Henrietta.
He wasn’t classically handsome. His straight nose was prominent, but his other features, especially his kind eyes, drew her attention away from it. Sharp cheekbones and a firm jaw suggested he wasn’t someone to dismiss. In the sunlight that had shone every day after the hurricane, red accents glistened in the brown hair beneath his straw hat. The breadth of the black strap on his hat as well as his accent told her that he must be from Pennsylvania.
She warned herself to be cautious. Though Leland wasn’t plain, he had many friends who were. Could he have sent one to look for her?
Stop being paranoid, she scolded herself. She wasn’t worried for herself, but for her niece and nephew.
“I’m Carolyn Wiebe.” She spoke the name without hesitation. She’d given it to herself after leaving Indiana, and she didn’t correct his assumption she was married. Even in her thoughts, she sometimes forgot her real name was Cora Hilty. She was glad neither of the children recalled the surname they’d been given at birth. “This is Rose Anne, and that is Kevin.”
“Kevin? Like Hurricane Kevin?”
“Appropriate for a five-year-old boy, don’t you think?” She laughed at the surprise on the man’s face. She didn’t want to tell him that, with her emotions so raw, she had two choices: laugh or cry. During the day, she laughed. At night when everyone else was asleep, she gave in to tears at the thought of how the flood had taken her home and livelihood. With her kitchen gone, she could no longer bake pies and cookies for the diner in town as well as a trio of tourist farms not far out of town.
And laughing kept her from having to respond to the man’s amazement when she said Kevin was five. She’d heard comments about how big he was for his age and how advanced he was. She’d brushed them aside, not wanting to admit the truth. Kevin was almost eighteen months older. She’d changed his age, as well as his sister’s, to make it harder for Leland to locate these two sweet children. Assuming he was looking for them—and she had to—he would search for a nearly seven-year-old boy and a girl who’d had her fifth birthday. As far as the residents of Evergreen Corners knew, Rose Anne was four. More than one person had commented on how early she was losing her teeth, but that was always followed by a comment about how every kid was different.
“I’m Michael Miller,” the man replied with a wink at Kevin. “They told us to report to a check-in center at the school. Can you point us in the right direction?”
“I’m heading that way. It’s easier to show you than tell you.” Her voice caught, but she rushed on, “Almost all the familiar landmarks are gone.”
He nodded, and she saw his sympathy before he picked up the bag he’d dropped when she’d nearly run into him. His large duffel bag was set with others on a narrow patch of grass that had somehow not been washed away.
“We appreciate that, Mrs.—”
“Carolyn will do.” She wasn’t going to explain that her neighbors assumed she was a widow. Guilt tore at her each time she thought of the lies she had woven like a cocoon to protect Kevin and Rose Anne. “We’re not big on formality.”
After he’d introduced her to Benjamin Kuhns and James Streicher, two men who’d traveled with him from an Amish settlement across the New York line, she motioned for the trio to follow her and the kinder.
Children! She needed to say “children” not kinder.
She must remember not to use Deitsch. Or act as if she understood it. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed hearing the Amish spoken language until these plain men began using it. But she had to seem as ignorant of it as her neighbors. Revealing she understood the language was one of the clues that, if repeated beyond the village, could draw Leland’s attention to Evergreen Corners.
Holding Rose Anne’s hand to stop the curious little girl from peering over the broken edge of the road, Carolyn made sure Kevin and the men were following her as she walked along the street toward the single intersection in the village. Nothing appeared as it had a week ago. Wide swaths of ground had been wiped clean by the rushing waters, and teetering buildings looked as if a faint breeze would send them crashing onto the sidewalks.
Michael moved to walk alongside her and Rose Anne as they passed ruined buildings. She heard Kevin regaling the other two men with tales of trying to recover their ten missing chickens.
“Do you think they survived?” Michael asked. “The chickens, I mean.”
“We’ve seen most of them around the village. I opened the fence around the chicken coop before we evacuated.” She pushed from her mind images of the horrifying moments when she and the children had struggled to escape the maddened waters.
She couldn’t keep them from filling her nightmares, but she didn’t intend to let those memories taint her waking hours. If they did, she might get distracted and fail to discover Leland had found them until it was too late. She couldn’t take the chance he’d abduct Kevin and Rose Anne as he’d tried to before her sister died.
“And now everything is gone?” Michael asked, drawing her back from the abyss of her fears.
“Not everything.”
“What’s left?” he asked.
“Anything more than twenty-five feet above the brook survived, though several buildings were flooded a couple of feet into the first floor. The school, where we’re headed, is the closest building to the brook that wasn’t damaged at all.”
He looked along the road running east and west through the village. “You’re talking about more than five hundred feet away from the stream’s banks.”
“Uh-huh.” She’d started to say ja, but halted herself. “Look at the mountains. They make this valley into a funnel, and the water kept rising and rising. We lost two restaurants and three shops as well as parts of the town hall, the fire station, the library, the elementary school, a building supply store. Also some historic buildings like the old gristmill that used to sit next to the brook. And, of course, a lot of houses, including a couple that had been here from when the town was founded in 1750. Many of the records were saved from the town hall, and, thankfully, the local newspaper had stored its back issues from the nineteenth century in the library, because their building washed away.”
“What about the library books?” asked Benjamin. “Were the books saved?”
“A lot of them were lost. The cellar and first floor of the library were flooded, and many of the ones out on loan were washed away.”
The men exchanged glances, but she looked at Kevin and Rose Anne. She was glad they were talking to each other and paying no attention to the adults’ conversation. Her arms ached as she remembered holding them and trying to comfort them after their escape from the flood. They’d been upset about losing their home, but having the library flooded had distressed them even more. They’d loved going there and borrowing books or listening to one read aloud to them.
“Though the books have gone swimming,” Rose Anne, ever the diplomat, had said, as tears had welled in her eyes, “Jenna will tell us stories. She’s nice, and she has lots and lots of the goriest stories.”
Carolyn had translated Rose Anne’s mangling of the language as she did each time Rose Anne came up with a new “version” of a word. She’d guessed the little girl meant glorious rather than goriest, but she hadn’t wanted to take the time to ask. Instead, she’d offered the little girl what solace she could. However, after talking with her good friend Jenna Sommers, the village’s librarian and the foster mother of a six-year-old little girl whom Rose Anne adored, Carolyn knew it would be many months—maybe even a year or two—before the library was operational again. First, people needed homes, and the roads had to be repaired and made safe.
And the children needed to be kept safe, too. Her sister had won full custody of the two children in the wake of her separation from Leland. He’d fought to keep them. Not because he wanted them. They would have been in the way of his rough life of drinking and drugs. He’d fought because he hadn’t wanted his wife to have a single moment of joy. It hadn’t been enough he’d left Regina with bruises and broken bones each time he bothered to come home. At last, her sister had agreed to let Carolyn help her escape the abuse. Regina had been free of her abusive husband for almost three months before she became ill and died two days later from what the doktors had said was a vicious strain of pneumonia.
“Wow,” murmured one of the men behind her as they reached the main intersection where a concrete bridge’s pilings were lost in a jungle of debris and branches. “Is there another bridge into town?”
“Not now. There was a covered bridge.”
“Was it destroyed?” Michael asked.
“Half of it was except for a couple of deck boards. The other half’s wobbly. From what I’ve heard, engineers will come next week to see what, if anything, can be salvaged.”
“So the road we traveled in on the bus is the only way in or out?”
“For now.” She didn’t add it might be several months or longer before the lost and damaged bridges were repaired.
She led the men to higher ground. She listened as they spoke in hushed Deitsch about how difficult it would be to get supplies in for rebuilding. It was hard not to smile with relief while she listened to their practical suggestions. How splendid it was to have these down-to-earth men in Evergreen Corners! Instead of talking about paperwork and bureaucracy, they planned to get to work.
Hurrying up the street, Carolyn saw two of her chickens perched in a nearby tree. She was glad neither child noticed. Both were too busy asking the newcomers a barrage of questions.
The parking lot in front of the high school held news vans with their satellite dishes, so she cut across the lawn to avoid the curiosity of reporters looking for a few more stories before they headed to the next crisis. She nodded her thanks to Michael when he opened the door for her and the children but didn’t slow while she strode along the hall that should have been filled with teenagers.
The temporary town hall was in the school’s gym. She’d already heard grumbling from the students that the school had survived when so many other buildings hadn’t. By the end of next week when school was scheduled to restart, she guessed most of them would be glad to be done with the drudgery of digging in the mud and get back to their books. Kevin and Rose Anne were growing more restless each day, and only the hunt for their chickens kept them from whining about it.
Voices reached out past the gym’s open doors, and Carolyn said, “This is where volunteers are supposed to sign in. They’ll get you a place to stay and your assignments.” She flushed, realizing what she should have said from the beginning. “Thank you for coming to help us.”
“More volunteers?” A man wearing a loosened tie and a cheerful smile came out of the gym, carrying a clipboard. Tony Whittaker was the mayor’s husband. Asking their names, he pulled out a pen to check their names off. “Michael Miller, did you say?”
“Ja,” Michael replied.
Tony’s smile became more genuine. “I’m glad you and Carolyn have met already.”
“Really?” she inquired at the same time Michael asked, “Why?”
“You, Michael, have been assigned to the team building Carolyn and her children a new home.” He chuckled. “Hope you’ve made a good impression on each other, because you’re going to be spending a lot of time together for the next three months.”
