An Amish New Beginning
Autore
Jo Ann Brown
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Chapter One
He was going to be late.
No, he was already late.
Benjamin Kuhns grimaced as he hurried along the road that edged the narrow beach following Shushan Bay on the southeastern corner of Prince Edward Island. He shouldn’t have stopped, though it’d been just for a moment, to admire the soft lapping of the waves on the incredible red sand or to watch birds embroidering their patterns through the sky. Then his eyes had been caught by lovely maple trees along the road. Their bare branches rocked in the wintry March breeze coming off the bay.
Maple was his favorite wood to use in the woodworking shop he’d built among the trees behind the house he shared with his brother in Harmony Creek Hollow. Making clocks was his secret pleasure because his brother would think it was a waste of wood. For the past few months, Benjamin had been wondering if he could make a living selling his creations, but he hadn’t done anything about it.
Not yet.
If he tried and it didn’t work out, that dream would be gone. He wasn’t sure how many more dreams he could watch die.
And he was late. Being late was something he hated, but today it was more important.
“Time is short,” his friend James Streicher had said when Benjamin agreed to help James’s new neighbor Mark Yutzy from Ontario do repair work on the farm shop he’d bought with his cousins. James had planned to help as well this morning, but a delivery for James’s new blacksmith shop had arrived, more than a week late. While James oversaw the setup of his new forge, Benjamin had decided to get out of the way and help the Yutzys.
According to James, the five cousins had to have the shop opened in less than two months. He hadn’t explained why, but Benjamin guessed the cousins had sunk all their money into the project. Like James, the cousins had moved to Canada’s smallest province in the last few weeks. The new residents were working together to get their businesses up and running so they could attract people to their settlement.
When James had invited Benjamin to travel from northern New York to help establish his smithy, Benjamin had discovered his friend had an ulterior motive. James hoped Benjamin would put down roots in Prince Edward Island, or the Island as locals called it. His friend had already discovered there was a farm for sale about ten miles away. Or sixteen kilometers, he reminded himself, knowing that Canadians used the metric system. The farm was suitable for growing Christmas trees. Since Benjamin had enjoyed selling trees in New York, James had assumed he’d be excited to do the same in Canada.
The truth was that Benjamin hadn’t come to the island to see a tree farm, though he’d look at it to placate his friend. He’d come to get away from his brother. Menno believed, as the oldest, he could tell his brother and sister what do to and how to do it. Their sister, Sarah, had stopped listening to him and found the life she wanted with the man she loved. She’d urged Benjamin to follow his heart.
Benjamin was trying. For too long, he’d put off having the adventures he’d craved since he was a kid. He’d tried once, but that had ended in disaster when his heart had led him to a woman who let him believe she shared his values long enough for him to fall in love while she was being courted by another man. She’d used him to make the other guy jealous. Worst, he’d thought her family’s welcome was genuine, that they approved of him walking out with Sharrell. How completely they’d fooled him!
His thoughts were interrupted by a shout. “Hey, mister! Help! Hey, mister! Help! Help! Mattie’s hurt. Hey, mister! Help!”
The frantic voice came from his left on the opposite side of the road from the bay. A young voice. A scared voice.
He ran toward an opening in the trees that had been planted as a windbreak. In astonishment, he stared at the ruins of a trio of Quonset huts set on a small hill. The two at the rear of the much bigger one were nothing but curved spines. Garbage was piled around them, overgrown by grass and weeds and briars. The bigger one wasn’t in much better shape, though it had its metal skin, dulled by sand and wind and salt.
Benjamin saw a teenager rolling a wheelchair toward him. A plain teenager, wearing a kapp that bounced on her head as she shoved on the wheels. Her black wool coat was unbuttoned. What was she doing near these ruins?
He put out his hands to keep her from rolling past him, but he needn’t have bothered. She brought the chair to a stop with skill he wouldn’t have expected for a kind with Down syndrome.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Her panicked eyes searched his face. “The wood fell. She tried to stop it. It fell on my sister. She’s not moving. Help!”
“Where?”
She pointed toward the largest Quonset hut.
He groaned. He couldn’t help it. From where he stood, the place looked like a tsunami had swept out of the calm bay to propel debris through the double front doors. Why had the kid’s sister gone inside?
“Where in the building is she?”
“About halfway in.” Without a pause, she added, “My name’s Daisy.” She picked up the doll on her lap. “This is Boppi Lynn. She’s scared for Mattie.”
“Your sister is Mattie?”
“Ja. Can you help her?”
“Wait here. I’ll find her.” He edged around her. Over his shoulder, he added, “My name is Benjamin.”
He heard wheels and turned to see Daisy right behind him.
“I can help you find her,” the girl said.
He had no idea how she’d maneuvered the chair the first time through the hulking stacks of boards and broken pieces of wallboard. A single bump could have collapsed the whole pile. He couldn’t let her risk it again. “Stay here. I’ll call you if I can’t find her.”
“Promise?”
He heard distrust in her voice, and he had to wonder how many people had made vows to Daisy and then broken them.
Putting his hands on the arms of her chair, he leaned forward until his eyes were level with hers that were the same deep blue as the bay. “I promise, Daisy. If I need help, I’ll call you. In the meantime, stay here and if you see someone passing by, try to get them to stop in case we need more help. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Benjamin gave her a grim grin, then ran to the Quonset hut. Half the glass in the two windows on either side of the door was missing. The remaining panes cracked.
The damage was more extensive inside. Though the building was open, the interior reeked of mold and mildew. Shelves had fallen into piles of broken timber. He looked at the half-dozen skylights marching from the front of the building that was large enough to hold two hay wagons pulled by full teams. Only one skylight was intact. Vines were growing from the openings. The floor tiles had been loosened, sitting at odd angles across the space between the front door and a wall of cardboard boxes. Was the destruction as bad beyond the boxes? He couldn’t imagine how it could be worse.
What had happened? Was the damage intentional or the result of neglect?
Glass crunched under his work boots. “Mattie?”
No answer came.
He raised his voice and shouted again. Once. Twice.
After the third time, he heard a soft sound. Not an answer. More like a moan.
“Mattie?” he yelled.
“Is she all right?” called Daisy.
He saw her silhouetted in the doorway. “Wait there. You need to be quiet, so I can hear your sister’s answer.”
“Quiet. I’ll be quiet. Quiet. Right.”
Under other circumstances, he would have grinned at her chatter to confirm she’d be silent, but that faint moan had unnerved him. How badly was Daisy’s sister hurt?
He inched forward, watching out for nails in the boards. His boots were thick enough to protect him from broken glass, but long nails could puncture his foot on one careless step.
Benjamin called Mattie’s name again. This time the moan was a bit louder. To his left. Beyond the wall of boxes. Keeping his gaze on the floor, he rounded the end.
His breath caught when he saw who was lying on the other side with boards scattered over her. Not a kind as he’d imagined from Daisy’s terrified voice. Not a teenager like the girl, but a woman. She was on the cold concrete floor, her eyes closed. She must be a full head shorter than he was. Her hair was the color of spun sunshine. Her white kapp was askew, and her black apron over a dark purple dress was littered with dirt from the moldy lumber.
Her cheeks were round, but gray. Above them, her brow was furrowed with lines of pain, and a large bruise was already darkening near her left temple. The length of wood beside her must have struck her, knocking her senseless.
He knelt to examine the boards that had tumbled onto her. He guessed she’d managed to jump away because only a few lay on top of her. Through God’s grace, she hadn’t been pierced by any of the rusty nails protruding from the wood. Some were grazing her, so he must be careful when he lifted them away in a bizarre and dangerous game of pick-up sticks. Worse, he had to make sure none of the other teetering boards cascaded on them.
“Daisy?” The woman’s voice was a whisper.
“She’s outside. She’s fine,” he said to reassure her. “Don’t move.”
“Don’t...?” Her eyes, which could define the color blue, popped open, and she started to raise her left hand to shield them from the light pouring through a broken skylight. She halted with a moan.
“What hurts?”
“My shoulder.” With quivering fingers, she tried to reach her left shoulder, but boards blocked her way. “What happened?”
“It looks as if a stack of wood fell on you. Let me get them off.”
“I can—”
“You need to be as still as you can while I move the boards.”
He half expected her to protest further, but she was more patient than he guessed he could have been if their circumstances had been reversed. He checked each board before he shifted it. Praying he wouldn’t make a mistake and cause her more harm, he kept working.
Breathing another prayer, this one of gratitude, as he tossed aside the last board, he helped her sit. She hung her head and sighed with obvious pain. He guessed she’d have a lot more bruises in addition to the one on her head.
“Daisy?” she murmured. “Are you all right?”
“She’s fine. She’s waiting outside.”
“I should—” Another moan slipped past her pursed lips as she continued to stare at the floor. “My shoulder. It hurts. Really bad.”
“You need to see a doktor. Is there one nearby?”
She started to shrug, then groaned. “I don’t know. I moved here two days ago.” She opened her eyes, and he wondered if they were able to focus because she swayed. “Don’t you know where there’s one?”
“No.”
“Daisy has our cell phone.” She closed her eyes and cupped her left elbow with her right hand. Gritting her teeth, she said, “For emergencies.”
“I’ll get it.”
“Danki...”
“Benjamin,” he supplied as he got to his feet. Before he could add more, he heard rubber tires on the concrete floor. “Don’t come over here,” he said at the same time Mattie did.
His and Mattie’s eyes met for the first time, and a zing of recognition cut like a bolt of lightning through him. A woman named Mattie with a sister who had Down syndrome. Sharrell Albrecht, the woman who’d led him on and broken his naive heart had a younger sister named Mattie and another sister with Down syndrome. Had her name been Daisy? He’d been so caught in his fantasy of having found his perfect woman that he hadn’t paid much attention to Sharrell’s siblings. But he remembered Mattie, who’d made sure he had an extra piece of pie or the last cookie. She’d had blond hair.
Like this woman.
She’d had apple-round cheeks.
Like this woman.
She’d had bright blue eyes.
Like this woman.
Bile filled his throat as he asked, “Mattie? Is your name Mattie Albrecht?”
He prayed she’d say no. He’d spent the last five years pushing aside his vexation with his brother’s dictates and living under Menno’s thumb so he could try to bury his horrible, humiliating memories about how Sharrell and her family had duped him.
Had that hiding from his own shame for failing to see what had been right in front of him been for nothing?
Trying to focus on shallow breaths, so the pain in her left shoulder didn’t sear across her collarbone, Mattie Albrecht struggled to keep the darkness nibbling at the edge of her vision from sucking her into it. How could she have gotten injured now? She, her sister and their three cousins had come to Prince Edward Island to make a fresh start in the new plain settlement. Mark Yutzy was their unspoken leader, though he was a year younger than Mattie. Lucas and Juan Kuepfer had joined them, pooling what funds they had to buy three farms. With what had been left, they’d purchased the ruined building and two rusting greenhouses. Before she’d left Ontario, they’d assured her that she could easily get all three buildings repaired, then she’d seen the reality this morning.
A shudder raced through her, and she couldn’t hold back the moan as her shoulder resonated in agony. How could her cousins expect her and Daisy to get the shop open by the end of April, just over seven weeks away? After running a farm stand which sold vegetables, baked goods and a few craft items at her family’s farm in Ontario, she’d been the obvious choice to handle the shop. She had a lot to learn, but knew getting items ordered and displayed would require weeks, even if the shop had been in pristine condition. As it was...
She groaned again, but not because of the pain. How was she going to do the impossible? If she failed to turn a profit quickly, there wouldn’t be enough money left for payments on the farm mortgages. She’d be letting her cousins down as well as her own family.
“Are you?” asked the man who’d pulled the lumber off her. His deep voice pounded against her skull and her damaged shoulder.
“Am I what?” she whispered, wishing he’d speak more quietly.
“Are you Mattie Albrecht?”
Wondering why her name was important to him, she said, “Ja.”
He muttered something under his breath, but turned to her sister who peeked around the stacked boxes. “I need your phone.”
“Mattie says it’s for emergencies,” Daisy said.
“Your sister is hurt. Isn’t that an emergency?”
“If Mattie says so. If she says it’s an emergency, I can use the phone.”
“Daisy, let him use the phone,” Mattie urged.
Her sister didn’t take offense at the sharp edge on her voice. Daisy seldom did, though she’d faced many challenges in the fourteen years since she’d been born with Down syndrome and then lost her ability to walk after jumping from the hayloft when she was ten years old. Her round face was usually lit with a smile. It glittered in her blue eyes. Her hair, several shades lighter than Mattie’s, was as soft as milkweed and refused to stay beneath her kapp. Its wisps framed her pudgy cheeks and wove along her kapp’s strings.
Pain swelled over Mattie again, and she almost sank into the darkness. From beyond it, she heard the rumble of Benjamin’s voice and Daisy’s lighter one. She wasn’t sure when she curled up again on the cold concrete floor, but her head had become too heavy for her left shoulder. With her hand under her right cheek, she closed her eyes as hot contorting lines of pain ricocheted down her left arm.
Seconds, minutes, hours... Mattie had no idea how much later she heard new voices. They were cautioning each other to be careful around the debris.
Someone patted her cheek and called her name. Grateful the person hadn’t touched her shoulder, she looked at a woman who was wearing a uniform.
“Can you sit, Mattie?” the woman asked.
“I think so.”
“Let me help you.”
She was about to say she was fine, but she wasn’t. Even with the woman’s help, she collapsed as she moved her left shoulder. If she couldn’t sit on her own, how was she going to get the shop open in a little more than seven weeks? Tears sprang into her eyes as she imagined her cousins losing their farms because she’d been as clumsy as usual.
Telling the woman what had happened and where she hurt, she looked around for her sister. As if she’d spoken aloud, the woman reassured her Daisy was fine.
“Your name?” asked a man.
Mattie was about to reply when she realized the man who held a small computer was speaking to Benjamin. The man and the woman must be paramedics.
“Benjamin Kuhns.” Benjamin answered.
No!
She started to jerk her head, but froze when agony raced along every nerve again. Shifting her eyes, she peered through her eyelashes at the man beside Daisy’s wheelchair.
Pain must have blinded her. Otherwise, she would have recognized the man who’d filled too many of her dreams during the past five years. He’d walked out with Sharrell, paying no attention to Mattie. She hadn’t been surprised that he never noticed her. Men noticed Sharrell who knew the right thing to say and moved with a birdlike grace.
Mattie, on the other hand, had never stood out among her eight siblings. She fumbled with words when she was nervous. She wasn’t graceful. Everyone joked it was easy to figure out where to sweep the floor because Mattie could trip over the smallest crumb.
Benjamin’s dark brown eyes focused on the male paramedic. She couldn’t let him guess how she’d wished he’d look at her the way he had Sharrell. That had been before her sister had married another man while Mamm had been planning, after more than sixty years of the plain life, to jump the fence and abandon her husband and family.
“Can you move your arm without pain?” asked the female paramedic.
Mattie focused her eyes on the woman’s name tag. Erin. She kept her gaze on it as she tried to obey the paramedic’s request. Any motion brought torment.
“I think you’re going to need to have that shoulder x-rayed because it might be dislocated,” Erin said. “Let me help you get up.”
As she did, Mattie asked, “If my shoulder’s dislocated, how long will it take to heal?”
“It’s hard to say before a doctor can see what’s happened in there. If muscles or tendons were damaged, it can be a month or two before you can have full use of the arm again.”
“A month or two?” The words came out in a frightened squeak. “I don’t have a month or two. I’ve got to get the Celtic Knoll Farm Shop open again.”
From where he stood beside her sister, Benjamin gasped. “This is the farm shop?”
She grimaced as Erin guided her toward the door. Her foot caught on the edge of a board and her heel dropped to the concrete floor, jarring every bone. Swallowing her pain, she said in a strangled voice, “It will be once we get it cleaned.”
“Honey,” Erin said, steering her around another pile of wood that glittered with pieces of broken glass, “you aren’t going to be doing any cleaning anytime soon. You need to give that shoulder time to heal.”
“But I have to get the shop open by the end of April.”
If she failed...
No, she couldn’t.
As she emerged into the sunshine to see an ambulance parked in front of the shop, she heard Benjamin say, “I’ll help.” Her dismay at the idea of him hanging around must have been visible on her face because he added, “That’s why I came over today. Your cousin Mark asked for extra hands to help.”
The paramedics exchanged a look that was easy to read. They thought it would be impossible to make the Quonset hut into anything other than the garbage dump it was.
“That’s good news,” Erin said in a chirpy tone as she motioned toward the lowered stretcher beside the door. “Let’s get you to the hospital and get you x-rayed, and maybe you’ll get more good news.”
As soon as Mattie sat and swung her feet onto the sheet, the paramedics raised the gurney and began pushing it toward the ambulance.
“Wait a minute!” she cried. “I can’t leave Daisy.”
“I’ll watch her,” Benjamin said, walking over to the vehicle. “And I’ll bring her over to your house. I’m sure she’ll want to be there when you come home.”
“Don’t leave her alone.”
“I won’t.”
Mattie’s uncertainty must have been on her face, because Erin asked, “Is that okay with you if your sister goes with him?”
“She knows me, ain’t so?” He scowled at Mattie as if daring her to deny the truth. “Like I said, I’m helping get this place into shape. Isn’t that right, Mattie?”
She wanted to say she didn’t need his help, but that would have been a lie. Before the stack of boards had fallen, she’d been praying God would send her help. He had, and she couldn’t let her pride get in the way of making sure the plans she and her cousins had made succeeded. Benjamin would be there only a short time. She could live with the open wound from her past until the shop opened.
Couldn’t she?
