Hiding Her Amish Secret
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Carrie Lighte
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HarlequinChapter One
Amish women typically owned four dresses: one for wash, one for wear, one for dress and one for spare. Anything more than that was considered excessive. But there was no limit on the number of socks they customarily owned, and Arleta Bontrager’s filled half of her suitcase.
“I didn’t know you had so many pairs,” Leanna marveled as she sat on the bed, watching Arleta pack. “Do you really need to take them all?”
“Jah. You know how cold my feet always are,” Arleta answered, feeling guilty for misleading her fourteen-year-old sister. But she would have felt worse for setting a poor example for her. Besides, her feet were often cold—although that’s not why she wore socks every day. Actually, the reverse was truer; because she wore socks every day, her feet felt cold whenever she went without them.
“I’d hate it if my feet got too cold to go barefoot,” Leanna said, holding her legs straight out in front of her and stretching her toes apart. “I love to feel the dew on the grass in the mornings when I’m hanging laundry and the softness of the earth in the garden.”
“How about the stones or the heat of the pavement when you’re walking down the road to your friend Emma’s haus? Do you love that, too?” Arleta teased.
Leanna shrugged. “I walk on the shoulder of the road most of the way. When it comes time to cross the pavement, I run so quickly I hardly feel the heat.”
Few of the women in their little community of Serenity Ridge, Maine, donned footwear during the warmer months, unless they were going to church or to one of the Englisch shops. Going barefoot was cooler, more convenient, and it saved wear and tear on their shoes. And as Leanna pointed out, going barefoot allowed them to appreciate the Lord’s creation in a way they couldn’t if they were wearing shoes all the time.
Arleta used to love it when the weather warmed enough for her to shed her shoes for the season, too. Not anymore. Now she rarely went without shoes and socks—or sandals and socks—outdoors. And when she was indoors, if she had to remove her shoes she always kept her socks on. She even wore them to bed. She’d gotten so used to wearing them they almost felt like a second skin.
“Maybe you have a low thyroid. Emma’s mamm has that and it makes her fingers and toes cold,” Leanna suggested.
“My fingers aren’t cold. Feel.” Arleta squeezed Leanna’s hand. She didn’t want her sister to repeat her comment about her thyroid in front of their mother, especially since Arleta was about to leave town for the next four months. She’d stop Arleta from going until she visited the doctor. And Arleta knew there was nothing wrong with her thyroid.
There wasn’t even anything wrong with her feet. Nothing physically wrong, anyway. But beneath her socks, Arleta was hiding a shameful secret: two years ago she’d gotten a tattoo on her left ankle. The red heart with her Englisch boyfriend’s initials in black ink was tiny, no bigger than her thumbnail. But it was in complete violation with Amish beliefs about modest appearances, especially for a female.
When she’d gotten it, Arleta was on her rumspringa and she had already decided she was leaving the Amish. In fact, that was exactly why she’d gotten the tattoo—to prove she intended to “go Englisch” and marry Ian Fairfax, the grandson of the people whose lake house she cleaned. She’d met Ian when he’d come to visit his grandparents in between his junior and senior years of college. His parents were going through a contentious divorce and Ian didn’t want to stay with either of them, so he spent his summer at the lake house.
Ironically, Arleta was so levelheaded her parents hadn’t had any qualms about her “working out,” meaning working outside their community, with Englischers. And Arleta certainly never intended to engage in a personal relationship with one. But Ian was utterly forlorn, and when he followed her around the house, practically begging her for conversation, she figured there was no harm in chatting with him...
And there wouldn’t have been, if all they’d done was talked. But one thing led to another and by the end of the summer, she and Ian were so smitten with each other he asked her to marry him and she agreed. Since she had turned eighteen in August, they could have gotten married right then, but Arleta’s father had suffered a heart attack that spring—that’s why she had to work in the first place—and she wanted to wait until he was fully recovered before she broke the news to him that she was leaving the Amish. She suggested that Ian finish college first, and they could get married after he graduated.
Ian was crushed Arleta wanted to put off their wedding, which was understandable. After all, he’d just seen his parents break up after twenty-five years of marriage; Arleta had only known him less than four months. So she’d gotten the tattoo to show him there was no going back on her word. It was a symbol of her love for him. Of her intention to have him in her life forever.
But now it had become a symbol of her stupidity. Of how she’d almost given up everything she’d held dear. Her faith. Her family. Her community. And for what? A young man who told her—in a letter, no less—that he decided he was too young to get married. That he’d confused his feelings of dejection over his parents’ divorce with love for Arleta. And that he hoped she’d find a good Amish man who would marry her and give her a family like she wanted.
Ha! What gut Amish man would want to marry a woman with a tattoo of an Englischer’s initials on her skin? Arleta thought as she rolled another pair of socks to stuff into her suitcase.
She didn’t know of any Amish boys who’d gotten a tattoo during rumspringa, much less girls. Girls were less likely to rebel against their customs during their rumspringa than boys were. Oh, they might wear their hair down and experiment with makeup, but they wouldn’t do something that left a permanent mark, like getting their ears pierced. Or a tattoo. The most scandalous thing any girl in her district had done during rumspringa was to put purple streaks in her hair, but they washed out eventually.
Ideally, the Amish weren’t supposed to hold what Arleta had done during her rumspringa against her now. The running around period was a time to test one’s beliefs. To make sure the young person wanted to commit to the Amish faith and lifestyle. It was only after formalizing that commitment by being baptized into the church that the Amish were held accountable to the Ordnung as adults.
But in practice, Arleta knew that people would judge her if they found out she had a tattoo. She wouldn’t have blamed them; she judged herself, too. Not just because of the tattoo, but because she’d pledged her love to an Englischer, which was a violation of her Amish faith, regardless of whether she’d been on rumspringa or not.
As much as she regretted the past, she couldn’t undo it. She had confessed her sin to God and she’d repented and joined the Amish church, yet she couldn’t seem to put her shame behind her. But maybe, just maybe she could get rid of the visual reminder of what she’d done. She’d heard that the Englisch had a procedure for erasing tattoos. It was expensive, but with what she earned from her new job—
Leanna’s laughter interrupted Arleta’s thoughts. “It looks like you’re bringing a pair for every day of the month, not for every day of the week.”
“I don’t want to run out of clean pairs.”
“Your socks shouldn’t get that dirty. It’s not as if you’re going to work on a potato farm.”
“Jah, that’s true. I’ll probably spend most of my time indoors tending to Noah’s groossmammi’s needs and cleaning and cooking. But I’m sure there’s gardening to be done, too. I want to be prepared so I can help Noah however he needs me to help him.”
Noah Lehman was a metal roofing installer who lived in New Hope, a tiny Amish community north of Serenity Ridge and Unity. Arleta had only spoken to him briefly on the phone, but she knew that his immediate family had all been killed in a house fire about six years ago. Noah hadn’t told her that—she knew because all the leit from Serenity Ridge and Unity had helped rebuild the house. Usually barn raisings and house building were joyous occasions, but that one was so solemn it brought tears to Arleta’s eyes just to remember it.
Now his groossmammi is ill, what a pity, she thought, snapping her suitcase closed.
Ordinarily, Amish families and communities pitched in to tend to those within their church districts who were ill, but the New Hope community was only about ten years old, and it was still so small that there weren’t enough people to care for Noah’s grandmother. So he had asked the deacons in Serenity Ridge and Unity to put the word out he was hiring a woman for the summer to take care of his grandmother, who had been undergoing cancer treatments and was recovering at home.
“I can’t believe you’re going all the way to New Hope,” Leanna said with a sigh. “Now Mamm and I will really be outnumbered by the buwe. Are you sure you want to go?”
Although New Hope was only twenty miles away, it was a two-day round trip by buggy, and Arleta understood why her sister was confused by her decision. With the exception of the time when Arleta’s father had a heart attack, she’d never worked outside of her home. Her role was to help her mother and Leanna with domestic chores, while Arleta’s father and brothers supported the family financially, by working with an Englisch lumber company. But Noah’s sad situation gave Arleta a worthwhile way to earn the income she required to have her tattoo removed and her family didn’t object to her leaving, because they recognized Noah needed her assistance more than their own household did.
Knowing her little sister looked up to her and would be lonely without her around every day, Arleta assured Leanna. “Jah, I’m sure I want to go. I’ll miss you, but it’s only for a few months. May is almost over and I’ll be back before September.”
“What if you like New Hope so much you decide to stay there?”
“Don’t be lappich. My familye is here,” Arleta said. “My favorite little schweschder is here.”
“But you might find a suitor there and fall in love and then he’ll ask you to get married and stay in New Hope with him.”
There’s absolutely no chance of that happening. Arleta cupped her sister’s chin and looked into her eyes. “I’ll be back before you know it. And by then, you’ll be so used to having an entire bedroom to yourself, you’ll want me to leave again.”
Leanna was still skeptical. “You promise you won’t marry a potato bauer from New Hope?”
Arleta chuckled at her sister’s fear that she’d meet and marry a potato farmer, as opposed to a man who had a different vocation. “I promise you, I’m not marrying a bauer of any kind.” I’m not marrying anyone, period.
Noah Lehman stopped pacing in the living room to peer out the window. It was already eight forty-five. What was keeping Arleta Bontrager? He’d specifically asked that she arrange for the van to drop her off before eight o’clock in the morning so he could talk to her alone before his grandmother woke at eight thirty. She was already up, and Noah’s Englisch coworker was due to pick him up at nine o’clock to take him to the house where they were finishing an installation.
For the past six years, Noah had been working for an Amish family’s metal roofing supply and installation business. The owners, Colin and Albert Blank, were brothers who lived in Serenity Ridge. Because of Maine’s harsh winters, metal roofs were in high demand and the Blank brothers had such a good reputation for their work that they began getting installation requests from Englischers who lived in New Hope, too. Initially, they’d turned down those orders, because the distance would have required them to travel too far and they didn’t have enough employees to meet the demand. Although they did employ Englischers who transported equipment and metal sheeting to their various worksites, the Blanks preferred the majority of their staff to be Amish.
That’s where Noah and two other New Hope district members—David Hilty, a man in his late fifties, and Jacob Auer, a teenager—came in. Together, the men worked with Mike Hall, an Englischer. Mike drove a truck with supplies, and sometimes he picked up the other crew members when the site couldn’t easily be reached by buggy. Maine had endured a particularly severe winter, so business was booming; no one wanted to be caught without a metal roof next year. Their four-man team was usually hard at work by seven or eight o’clock, but today Noah had asked them to postpone their start time so he could be home when Arleta arrived.
“You’re going to make sawdust out of the floorboards, pacing like that,” his grandmother, Sovilla, scolded, but her tone was one of concern, not annoyance. “Arleta will get here when she gets here.”
Her voice startled Noah and he glanced over at her. Instead of wearing her usual white organdy prayer kapp pinned to her hair, she had covered her bald scalp with a white kerchief. His grandmother used to have such dark hair and eyebrows—but even those had fallen out after the chemo treatments, along with her eyelashes. She looked so pale. So faded.
“Jah. But I hope she gets here before Mike does so I can let her in.”
“I’m not so old I can’t get off the sofa to answer the door.”
Neh, but you might be too frail, Noah thought ruefully. And she won’t just kumme in, like our neighbors do.
For the past two months, whenever Sovilla wasn’t in the hospital, the deacon’s wife, Almeda Stoll, and their nearest neighbor, Sarah Troyer, had been looking after her while Noah was at work. In exchange, Noah helped their husbands install metal roofing on their workshops and homes. But recently, Almeda had traveled out of state to help her ailing elderly sister. Sarah had just given birth to her first child, a son, so she could no longer tend to Sovilla, either.
Almost all of the other Amish women in New Hope, old and young alike, either had family or farming commitments that prevented them from staying with Noah’s grandmother, too. Oh, they were more than willing to patch together a schedule that would allow for someone to drop in on her several times a day, but the more people who came in and out of the house, the greater her chances of catching an illness. Besides, Noah believed his grandmother needed someone with her around the clock as she recovered from her final round of cancer treatments.
That meant Noah either had to take time off from work for a couple of months until she was stronger and Sarah could return, or he had to hire someone from Serenity Ridge or Unity. While Noah wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of a stranger, even an Amish one, living in their home with them, he knew a woman could take far better care of his grandmother and the housekeeping than he could. Plus, this was one of the busiest periods of installation. Even with Arleta’s salary to pay, he’d still be making much more than what he’d lose if he took time off work.
Earning as much money now as he could was crucial, in preparation for providing his grandmother further medical care if her most recent course of treatment didn’t work. Although the Amish community helped pay each other’s major medical bills, Noah was reluctant to tap into New Hope’s dwindling mutual aid fund more than he already had. Like most Amish, he’d been conscientious about what kind of medical services he’d agreed to for his grandmother, since American hospitals had a tendency to run all sorts of tests, which were costly and sometimes seemed unnecessary.
It wasn’t unusual for the Amish to seek experimental treatments in Mexico, where medicine was less expensive. Still, there would be train tickets to buy and lodging expenses to pay. Not to mention, the loss of income while Noah was away. But he figured if his crew accepted every project they could between now and the time his grandmother had her next tests in a little over three months, and if he took on a few individual installations after hours himself...
“Did you hear me?” his grandmother asked, pulling him back to the present moment. “You seem a hundred miles away.”
More like three thousand miles away, Noah thought, considering the distance between Maine and Mexico. But he didn’t want to tell her about his plan because it might discourage her if she knew he was worried the treatment might not work. Worse, she’d reject the trip out of hand, saying it wasn’t worth the expense. Better to earn the money first, and wait to see what the doctor said at her next appointment. “Sorry, I guess I was lost in thought.”
“Aha,” she uttered, and the familiar sparkle momentarily lit her dark brown eyes. “You’re wondering what kind of weibsmensch Arleta will be and whether or not she already has a suitor, weren’t you?”
“Neh!” he protested truthfully. “That’s the furthest thing from my mind, Groossmammi.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be. It’s only natural for you to want to court. To get married and start a familye of your own.”
Noah had heard this all before. Many, many times. He’d given up telling his grandmother he had no desire to court or get married. As for starting a family of his own, Noah just wished he had his old family back... He shuddered, thinking of his parents, two younger brothers and sister who died in a house fire one evening six years ago. Noah would have died, too, but he’d been out late. Too late.
Too late to make his curfew and too late to save his family from the fire he saw raging in the second story of the house when he pulled up the lane in his courting buggy. Even now, Noah had no recollection of getting out of the carriage and running into the house. All that stuck in his mind was the terrible noise of the roaring fire and the popping windowpanes. And the wall of heat that was as impenetrable as a wall of stone, stealing the breath from his lungs and prohibiting him from taking another step up the stairs.
And so he’d turned and run. Because his horse had gotten spooked and taken off with the buggy in tow, Noah had sprinted all the way to the phone shanty to call the Englischers for help.
“There was nothing you could have done to save them,” the firefighters told him afterward. Even with their equipment and protective gear, they hadn’t been able to rescue his family.
“It was Gott’s will,” was the refrain he heard countless times from the deacon, his grandmother, and his Amish friends and community.
Noah tried hard to accept that, but deep down, he knew he was to blame. If he had returned home even fifteen minutes earlier, as he was supposed to—instead of lingering to kiss Hannah Miller on her porch swing—he might have been able to save his family.
Now, with the exception of a few cousins and an aunt in Michigan, his grandmother was the only family he had left and Noah was going to do everything humanly possible to preserve her life. God willing, the last treatments she’d had were effective—they’d find out in another ten weeks or so—but if they weren’t, he wanted to be prepared. Which meant his sole focus was on praying for her healing and earning money for further treatment.
“Please don’t start on me about courting, Groossmammi,” he said affectionately. “You know how I feel—”
“I hear a vehicle. Is that her or is it Mike?” Sovilla interrupted, pointing to the window.
Noah turned to face the window again. A silver passenger van was driving up the dirt lane. “It’s her.”
“Well, don’t just stand there. Go carry her suitcase in for her. Make her feel wilkom,” his grandmother instructed, sitting up straight and adjusting her kerchief.
Noah shoved his feet into his boots at the door and trotted outside and down the porch steps just as the van was pulling away.
“Hi, Arleta. I’m Noah,” he said as the short woman with strawberry-blond hair approached him. “I can take that for you.”
Young, full-figured and energetic, Arleta looked perfectly capable of carrying her own suitcase, but she extended it to him anyway. “Denki. I’m sorry I’m late. The driver was following GPS and it directed him to the pond on the other side of Pleasant Road. It’s a gut thing I still remembered where your haus was from when I came here for the—”
Arleta stopped walking and cupped her hand over her mouth, obviously embarrassed. Noah realized she must have come there when the nearby Amish communities helped build a new house. As painful as it was for him to acknowledge the past, he was relieved that Arleta apparently already knew what happened to his family. It meant there’d be no troublesome questions later. “For the haus building?”
“Jah.” Her light green eyes, fringed with pale lashes, were full of remorse. “I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t know whether she meant she was sorry for bringing it up or sorry about what happened to his family. Either way, that was as far as he wanted the conversation to go, so he gave a brusque nod of acknowledgment and then said, “Let’s go inside. I want to introduce you to my groossmammi before my coworker arrives to pick me up.”
To his surprise, instead of resting on the sofa, his grandmother was putting a coffeepot on the stove. “I’m Sovilla. Wilkom to our haus, Arleta.”
“Denki. I’m very glad to be here.”
Seeing Arleta wiping her shoes on the round braided rug at the door, Noah interjected, “Since my groossmammi’s immune system is compromised, you’ll need to remove your shoes at the door so you don’t track in germs.”
“Oops, I’m sorry.” Three wrinkles etched her forehead when she asked, “Is it all right if I leave my socks on? My...my feet get cold.”
Noah hesitated. “I suppose that’s okay, as long as they’re clean.”
Arleta’s cheeks pinkened. “Jah, they’re clean.”
“Of course she’s wearing clean socks,” Noah’s grandmother asserted, giving him a little scowl. To Arleta, she said, “I’m always cold, too, Arleta. You and I are going to get along like two peas in a pod.”
As Arleta bent over to unlace her shoes, Sovilla shook her head at Noah, no doubt to express her disapproval for embarrassing Arleta when she’d just barely crossed their threshold. Noah didn’t care. His grandmother’s health was at stake. Her life was at stake. He’d say or do whatever he needed in order to protect her. Besides, he asked everyone to remove their shoes at the door, so why should Arleta be any different?
“I’m afraid I need to go sit back down in the other room,” Sovilla said apologetically. “Noah, why don’t you take Arleta’s suitcase to her room for her? She can pour us a cup of kaffi.”
Stepping out of his boots, Noah dutifully carried Arleta’s suitcase down the hall. Noah had cleared his belongings out of his room, which was across from his grandmother’s, so Arleta could use it. He would be sleeping upstairs in the unfinished loft. When he returned to the kitchen, Arleta was standing on her tiptoes, pulling mugs from the cupboard.
“Don’t worry, I’ve washed my hands,” she informed him, as if reading his mind.
“I hope you understand that even a common cold could turn into pneumonia for my groossmammi—”
“I do understand. And I’ll be careful to keep everything extra clean.”
As Arleta turned to him and smiled, exposing a little space between her otherwise perfectly aligned front teeth, something about her seemed pleasantly familiar. She’d said she came to New Hope for the house building, but his memories of that day were foggy at best. Was it possible they’d crossed paths in Serenity Ridge more recently when Noah went there to finalize his partnership with the Blank brothers? She’d told him she didn’t have any relatives in New Hope, but maybe she had friends here and Noah had seen her in church when she’d come to visit them.
For all he knew, she could have been visiting a long-distance suitor; she seemed about the same age as some of Noah’s slightly younger peers. If she’s not being courted already, I imagine there will be a few men vying to be her suitor once they meet her. The thought unsettled Noah, primarily because he didn’t want anything to distract Arleta from helping his grandmother recover.
He lowered his voice to say, “My groossmammi is going to tell you not to fret so much, but her doctors said her immune system is like a newborn bobbel’s.”
Noah crossed the room to remove a notebook from a drawer by the sink. He had intended to review its contents with Arleta before his grandmother woke up, but since Arleta arrived late, he didn’t get the opportunity. He didn’t want Sovilla to overhear him, so he put the notebook on the countertop.
“This contains important information, like my groossmammi’s medication list and her doctor’s phone number. The shanty is about two miles south of us—you probably noticed it on your way here. But if you cut straight through the woods out back, you can reach Moses Schrock’s feed and grain store. He has a cell phone for business purposes, so if there’s an emergency—”
A horn interrupted him. Mike had just tapped on it gently, but Noah was irked. What if his grandmother had been sleeping? It was vital that she got enough rest.
“Don’t worry. I’ll read through the entire notebook. And there won’t be an emergency,” Arleta said. Then, because no one could have made such a promise, she added, “Gott willing.”
Noah should have been reassured by her confidence that everything would be okay, but as he headed outside to get into his coworker’s truck, all he could do was pray that she was right.
