A Simple Hope: A Lancaster Crossroads Novel (15 page)

“Hi,” she said. “How’s it going?”

What kind of question was that? She had a young face: the round, innocent eyes of a baby deer, a button nose, thick lips that puckered in worry.

He paused in the doorway and squinted into the shadows, looking for others. He didn’t want trouble. Sometimes kids and wanderers came through these parts. His parents usually offered them some food and sent them on their way. This one seemed to be alone.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“To be honest, I stayed here last night.” Her voice held a calm that didn’t come through in her eyes. “It was late, and I needed to sleep.” She shrugged. “Sorry if I’m trespassing. I was planning to sleep outside, like camping, but when I saw this place, I couldn’t resist. Is this your house?”

He shook his head. “This is my family’s orchard. Most years, we use this building for sugaring maple syrup.”

“I thought it was something like that, seeing all the buckets and all the burners on the stove.” She spoke lightly, as if they were two old friends who’d met in town.

He took in the room as she talked. The floor and walls had been swept. Red coals glowed in the stove. She sat on a dark red sleeping bag that had been spread out on the wide bench. From the bucket
of water heating on the stove, it was clear that she’d found the pump. There was no harm done here. In fact, she had made the shack good and tidy. But she had to go. Dat would not abide any more Englishers at the orchard.

“Why aren’t you making maple syrup this year?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts. “Is there something wrong with the trees?”

“The trees are fine,” he said. “How did you find the sugar shack?” It was at the back of the property, well secluded.

“That, I think, was luck, or else God took mercy on me and led me here. I needed a place to hole up, a place to hide, really, and for some reason, I turned off the main road in the dark last night, and I landed here.” She brushed her dark hair back off her face and cocked her head to one side. When she looked him in the eye, he could see that she wasn’t quite a woman. A teen, older than his sister Verena, but not old enough to be wandering the countryside alone. “I’m Shandell, by the way. Shandell Darby.”

He nodded. “James. How old are you?”

“Eighteen. Too old to be a runaway. That’s what the police told me.”

And you can’t stay here. You need to go. It’s time to move on
.

There were a million ways to send this Englisher on her way, but somehow James couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

What was wrong with him? Paralyzed legs, and now a frozen tongue, too?

“Is it James Lapp? I mean, the sign said the Lapp orchards, and I met a girl named Elsie Lapp at the Country Store in Halfway. Do you know her?”

“Elsie is my cousin.”

“Really? She’s awesome. She saved my life yesterday.”

“Is that so?” He hadn’t heard any recent stories of Elsie’s good deeds, but then Elsie would never be so proud as to talk about herself that way.

“She helped get me out of a very scary situation. I was trying to get away from this guy … Gary? I thought he was my friend, but I was so wrong about that. I was wrong about a lot of things. And by the time I figured it all out, we were here in Lancaster County, miles from home. He sort of turned on me. I was really scared, but Elsie helped me hide. She is one brave girl. And after Gary left, she and Ruben gave me some food. And Elsie showed me how to finish a patch for a quilt.” She shifted to the side to reach down into her backpack. “She even gave me my own little rag bag to keep working on.” She smoothed out a lavender patch with finished edges.

“That sounds like Elsie.” His cousin had a heart of gold. “So. This bad friend is gone. Why don’t you go home?”

“I’ve got no way to get there. No money for the bus, and Baltimore is too far to walk.”

“Baltimore, Maryland?”

She nodded. “My mom is going to come get me, but she can’t do it until Thursday night. She works two jobs, and that’s the soonest she can get away. Do you think I could stay here until then? I won’t cause any problems for you, James. I’ll stay out of the orchards, and I’ve got enough granola bars and stuff to last me until then.”

He knew the answer to that had to be no. Dat would not want an Englisher staying on their land, especially after his decision to restrict outsiders from their home. He drew in a breath to tell her, but something about this girl brought him to a place he hadn’t known for many months. A place of compassion.

“For you to stay here … it’s not allowed,” he said, thinking of his father’s rules.

“I know, I’m not Amish. I don’t belong here, but please don’t kick me out. I won’t mess anything up. And I promise you, I’ll leave on Thursday. It’s just a few days. Please. I’ll be quiet as a mouse.”

James frowned. A mouse would not make a good guest. A mouse scratched around in the wall and made a mess of things. No, this girl could not stay.

Open on the bench was a child’s book of Bible stories. That did not seem to match the teen sitting in front of him. A stranger and an outsider. An Englisher.

But underneath all that, she was just a frightened girl. She could be one of his sisters, gone astray during rumspringa. This one needed help.

“You can stay the night,” he said. Not even Dat would send a young woman packing after nightfall.

“Thank you.” Her eyes swam with relief. “It’s weird, being out here in the middle of nowhere, but last night I really slept. I feel safe here.”

The middle of nowhere?
He squinted. Didn’t she know she was sleeping in the back acres of a family orchard? Shandell seemed sweet, but not very wise of the world. “That’s good. But till Thursday is a long time, and we’re not in the business of putting up strangers here. It would be good if you could find some other place to go tomorrow.”

Before Dat or anyone else sees you back here
.

She nodded. “I’ll work on that. First thing in the morning.”

“All right.” As he switched off the brakes and turned the wheelchair, he realized that Shandell was one of those rare people who spoke to him without even seeming to notice that he was in a wheelchair.

“Good night,” she called, as he headed out the door into the darkness.

He wouldn’t have minded staying and talking some more, but he didn’t want to arouse concern back at the house. He didn’t want Dat coming out this way to search for him.

“Good night,” he answered without looking back. There was a curious ripple in his chest as he rolled into the velvety dark of the April night. An odd feeling of responsibility.

The memory of Shandell’s face in a pool of light, the way her legs swung from the bench, too short to reach the ground. Shandell needed to be taken care of. And right now, James was the person Gott had chosen to do that.

PART TWO

The Long Road to Paradise

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face-to-face:
Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three;
But the greatest of these is charity
.
—1 C
ORINTHIANS
13:12-13

R
achel sat in the patch of moonlight spilling into the attic room and added dots of silver to the starry sky of her painting. Behind her, Rose’s breath whispered in a steady rhythm, a reminder that it really was time to sleep. Anyone who saw Rachel now would think she was verhuddelt! Crazy to be awake so late at night.

But after such a day of hurt feelings and raw emotion, this was just the thing to soothe her. There was something calming about Gott’s magnificent sky, and as she added dots of purple, blue, white, and silver to her painting, she felt her sorrows begin to fade ever so slightly.

Moving close to the canvas, she painted tiny lines radiating out from the stars.

She didn’t quite understand why painting eased her burdens. Sometimes she wondered why Gott made her to think that way, in bits of color and light. It was not the Amish way. True art was viewed as self-expression, and the Amish believed that garnered
feelings of pride and superiority—hochmut. That seemed funny to her, since she didn’t feel proud about her art. It was just something that flowed from her, and that was that.

All done with the silver, she plunged her brush into a jar of water and stood up to get a closer look out the window. Under the starry sky, the lawn stretched away from the house, the dark grass crossed by pale paths and lanes.

It wasn’t hard to remember how James had stood down there in the yard, courting her on Saturday nights last year. He used to shine the beam of a flashlight on her window to let her know he was here, and she would rush downstairs, padding quietly in bare feet, and let him in. He would add some wood to the embers in the stove, and she would ease into his arms, secure in his embrace, secure in his love.

A few times in the winter they had met at the sugar shack for innocent but delicious kisses by the fire. Now, as she hugged herself to ward off the chill, she tried to remember the wonderful warmth of being in James’s arms. His strength had made her feel secure and safe. She had believed that there was no problem they could not solve if they worked together. And his unquenchable sense of humor had promised a lifetime of laughter.

Once, when he was visiting while she was working on a scrap-book page for a sick cousin, James had penciled in a little joke while she wasn’t watching.

What starts with T, ends with T, and is full of T? Answer: Teapot
.

“What a rascal he could be,” she said aloud, and then looked behind her, glad to find that Rose was still sleeping. Sadie was the only person she’d told about what had happened that day. The ache in her heart was still too raw as she wondered if she was really losing James. Had his love for her drained away like his sense of humor?

She pulled a quilt over her shoulders and tiptoed across the cold
wood floor to the dresser. There was the clock James had given her, a pretty round face with fancy arrows, set behind clear plastic with silver trim. It had been an engagement gift, a private thing between a fella and his girl. When she moved downstairs, she’d left it up here, thinking it would be safe until she and James were married and moving into a home together. But now that their engagement was in question, should she give the clock back?

No, that would be like saying she didn’t love James anymore. She wasn’t going to give in so easily.

Pressing the clock to her heart, she remembered how she had refused his words.

You and me, we don’t belong together
.

Ha! He had a lot of nerve saying that. Didn’t he know how those words would break her heart?

She had fended him off, but now she wasn’t sure where she stood with him. It was a terrible mess, and she didn’t know how to fix it.

With a sigh, she turned away from her paintings and headed downstairs to bed. The house was silent now, but come four
A.M.
, Mamm and Dat and the men would rise to tend to the cows and other chores. Along with the scuffle of her feet, she heard the small beat of the clock’s second hand.

Downstairs, she huddled under the quilts and placed the clock at the edge of her pillow. She couldn’t make it out in the darkness, but she heard it ticking softly. She yawned, listening as time moved on. This was the thing James didn’t understand. True love would beat on, like the flapping wings of a bird, like the beating of a heart.