An Amish Christmas Quilt (28 page)

C
HAPTER
1

“Welcome back to Willow Ridge, Nora. It's a pleasure doing business with you.”

How weird is this?
Sixteen years ago, Nora Landwehr had never imagined herself returning, much less accepting the keys to a prime property from the man who'd been the bishop when her father had sent her away. But this little Amish spot in the road had changed a lot. And so had she.

“Thanks, Hiram,” Nora murmured. “I hope I've done the right thing.”

“At least you've arrived while your parents are still alive—if you can call it that.” His gaze followed the road toward where the Glick house stood a ways back from the county blacktop. “Mending fences in your situation will be much like opening Pandora's box. Once you raise the lid, all your secrets will swarm out like hornets, whether you're ready or not.”

His choice of words made her wonder if she'd been wise to confide in Hiram Knepp . . . to even go through with this transaction. But it was too late for second guessing. As her gaze swept the panorama of Willow Ridge farmsteads, Nora was amazed at what she saw. From this hilltop perspective, Willow Ridge looked like an idyllic little town where nothing hostile or cruel could ever happen—like Mayberry, or Walton's Mountain. But appearances could be very deceiving. “So, does Tom Hostetler still live there where all those buggies are parked?”

“He does. He's the bishop now.”

“This being Thursday . . . is that a wedding or a funeral?”

Beneath Hiram's short laugh, Nora imagined the
bwah-hah-hah-hah
of a melodrama villain. “As you probably realize,” he replied wryly, “a wedding, in retrospect, might indeed be a funeral of sorts, depending upon how it all works out. Annie Mae's marrying Adam Wagler today.”

Nora thought back . . . waaay back, to when Adam must've been about school-age and Annie Mae Knepp had been a toddler—

And you're not there to see your daughter marry, Hiram?
She bit back her retort. Her realtor had hinted that Hiram had committed even more heinous sins than she had . . . and after all, her father hadn't attended
her
wedding, either. If Hiram had been run out of Willow Ridge, she and this man with the devilish black goatee had a lot in common.

Nora didn't want to go there.

She was looking for a way to move Hiram along, so she could figure out where her major pieces of furniture would fit before the moving van got here. And yet, if everyone in town was at the wedding, this would be a fine time to look around . . .

“I'll have my crew remove the Bishop's Ridge entryway sign tomorrow.” Hiram's voice sliced through her thoughts. “That way you won't be living in my shadow.”

Nora didn't miss the irony there. Every Amish colony lived in its bishop's shadow—and she sensed the cloud over Willow Ridge had gotten a whole lot darker of late, even if Hiram no longer resided here. “That'll be fine. Thanks again.”

“What will you do with that big barn? I miss that more than the house.”

Nora smiled. No need to tell this renegade everything, for who knew what he'd do with the information? “I have some ideas,” she hedged. “Figured I'd live here a while before I committed to any of them.”

Finally, Hiram was headed down the road in his classic, perfectly preserved black Cadillac. Nora closed her eyes as the summer breeze caressed her face. She'd really done it . . . spent her divorce settlement on this house and acreage with the huge barn, in the town where she'd probably be greeted with hatred and hostility as she stirred up old grudges like muck from the bottom of a farm pond.

Once the shock and accusations ran their course, Nora sincerely hoped to reconnect with her family. To ask forgiveness and make her peace while creating a purposeful, productive new life. Was she acting even more naïve and fanciful than when she'd believed
Englischer
Tanner Landwehr was her ticket to a storybook ending?

Nora glanced at her watch. Still an hour before the van was to arrive. She slid into her red Mercedes convertible to cruise town while she could still pass as an
Englisch
tourist—not that anyone would see her. Everyone from Willow Ridge and the nearby Plain settlements would be at Adam and Annie Mae's wedding.

Once on the county blacktop she turned left, away from town, and drove past a timbered mill with a picturesque water wheel. With its backdrop of river rocks, wildflowers, and majestic old trees shimmering in the breeze, the Mill at Willow Ridge was a scene straight out of a Thomas Kincaid painting.

Nora turned back toward town. Henry and Lydia Zook's home looked added-onto yet again, and Zook's Market had expanded as well. The white wooden structure sported a new blue metal roof that glimmered in the afternoon sunlight. A handwritten sign on the door proclaimed the store closed today for the Knepp-Wagler wedding.

Purposely not yet looking at her childhood home, Nora focused on the fine new house built on what had been the northeast corner of her father's farm. Across the road sat a building that housed the Sweet Seasons Bakery Café and a quilt shop—more new additions, although she recalled the blacksmith shop behind them, and the large white home down the lane, which had belonged to Jesse Lantz. From what she could tell on the Internet, Jesse had passed on and Miriam had opened a bustling business. Who could've guessed an Amish woman would have a website with delectable pictures of her meals and bakery specialties?

A little way down the road stood the Willow Ridge Clinic, with what appeared to be a horse-drawn medical wagon parked beside it. Yet more startling changes . . . but as Nora headed down the gravel road on the left, the Brenneman Cabinet Shop looked the same as always. So did Reuben Riehl's place, and Tom Hostetler's dairy farm, where black and white cows grazed placidly in the pasture with the red barn in back of the tall white farmhouse. Dozens of black buggies were parked along the lane and around the side of the barn, yet the place looked as manicured as her former lawn in Ladue. Not so much as a scrap of paper or a missing shingle marred the Plain perfection of the scene.

The sound of an ancient hymn drifting out of Tom's windows compelled Nora to stop. She'd all but forgotten the German words, yet the power of hundreds of voices singing with one accord made her suck in her breath. She swallowed hard as the melody seeped into her soul, its slow, steady cadence slowing the beat of her heart.

Quickly swiping at tears, she drove on. Could she
really
go back to three-hour church services, hard wooden pew benches, and endless, droning sermons? She couldn't recall the last time she'd attended a worship service. You couldn't consider a quickie ceremony in a Vegas wedding chapel
worship
, after all.

Nora drove around the large loop that passed the Kanagy place and then a few homes where the Schrocks and other Mennonite families lived. She rolled past the fork that led to Atlee and Lizzie Glick's place—she wasn't ready to go down
that
road yet—and followed the curve that meandered in front of the Waglers' house and then past her own new residence. Definitely the finest house in town.

Nora let out a humorless laugh. Her father, ever the sanctimonious Preacher Gabe even among his immediate family, had often quoted that verse to chastise her for wanting new dresses or some doodad she'd seen at Zook's. The mere memory of his harsh discipline tightened her chest even after sixteen years of living in the English world. If that was her visceral reaction without even seeing him, how did she think she could face him in person? So much water had gone under that proverbial bridge that Gabriel Glick would never,
ever
cross it to see his errant, banished daughter.

Nora brought herself back into the present. The moving van hadn't yet arrived, so she pulled back onto the county highway where she'd begun her trip down memory lane. While everyone in town was at the wedding, she had the perfect chance to revisit her childhood home. To prepare herself for the ordeal she would soon face.

She pulled into the lane and parked behind the house . . . slipped into the back door, knowing it wouldn't be locked. Stood in the kitchen, which appeared smaller and shabbier than she recalled, as though it hadn't seen fresh paint since she'd left. How odd—and how sad—to stand in this hub of the house and not detect even a whiff of breakfast.

Nora moved on before she lost her nerve. She felt like an intruder—and she wanted to be long gone before anyone came home from the wedding. She peeked into the small downstairs room where she and her mother had sewn the family's clothes on an ancient treadle machine—

Nora gaped. On a twin bed lay a motionless female form, like a corpse laid out in a casket. Was this what Hiram had meant by implying her parents were barely alive? Did she dare approach, or would this woman pop up like a zombie from an old horror movie and leer at her with hollowed eyes and a toothless grin? Nora wanted to bolt, yet she felt compelled to at least look this woman—surely her mother—in the face. If Mamm was so far gone, why wasn't someone sitting with her? Or was she merely napping, too tired to attend the wedding?

Holding her breath, Nora slipped silently to the bedside. Even though the room felt stuffy in the July heat, a faded quilt covered her mother's shriveled form up to her chin. A
kapp
concealed all but the front of her white hair, so all Nora saw was a pallid face etched with wrinkles. The eyes were closed, and again Nora felt as though she was observing a stranger in a casket rather than looking at her own mother. Last time she'd seen Mamm, her face had been contorted with indignation as disgust hardened her piercing hazel eyes—

And suddenly those eyes were focused on her.

Nora froze, unable to look away. Not a muscle moved in her mother's face yet Mamm's gaze didn't waver—until her eyes widened with recognition. Or was it disbelief, or fear? Or an emotion Nora couldn't interpret without other facial cues?

She didn't stick around to figure that out. Hurrying from the airless room and back through the kitchen, Nora burst through the back door. She couldn't gulp air fast enough as she climbed into her car and sped down the lane. She felt as though she'd stared Death in the face and Death had stared right back. If she looked in the rearview mirror, would a skeleton in a cape dress and
kapp
be chasing after her?

Her tires squealed as she turned onto the hot blacktop and sped toward her new home. What a relief to see the moving van lumbering across the bridge by the mill! Nora made the turn onto Bishop's Ridge Road too fast and fishtailed in the gravel, righting herself just in time to steer up the driveway toward the house. She pulled around behind the huge barn—to be out of the movers' way, but also because she felt compelled to conceal her car.

Better get over that
, she chided herself as she got out.
You live here now, whether the neighbors like it or not.

She was approaching the house when a tall, broad-shouldered figure stepped out of the shade behind it. His straw hat, broadfall pants, and suspenders announced him as Plain, and there was no mistaking the fascination on his handsome face. Yet Nora hesitated. Had this stranger been roaming around in her house?
Note to self: call a locksmith.

“Something I can help you with?” she asked breezily. Better to believe in basic Amish honesty than to accuse him of something he might not have done. It wasn't as if he could take anything from her empty house.

“Just coming over to meet my new neighbor,” he replied in a resonant voice. “I'm Luke Hooley. That's my gristmill on the river.”

P
ROLOGUE

 

C
HAPTER
1

 

Associate Professor of Amish Studies Jude Lyons squeezed his eyes shut in the bright light of the summer sun and pretended he hadn't heard what the girl said.

But the word rang indelibly through his mind . . .
dishonored.
He opened his eyes and stared down the wooden porch step into the serious young face of the Amish girl, Mary King. Her dark hair was neatly coiled beneath her
kapp
, displaying only a straight, white part, her hazel eyes were soulful, mournful, and the pale skin of her throat was even whiter than he remembered.

Say something, you idiot
. . . his brain chided him. But he couldn't seem to get past the heated imagery that flashed through his memory—the day had been hot, the blueberry patch more than cool. And maybe he'd known somehow that their relationship would build to that sudden torrential burn of intense moments, but he stupidly hadn't considered the consequences. And he certainly hadn't imagined that Mary's older brother, Joseph, might have been observing from the forest.

Jude usually never let himself go physically, not even with his fiancée. The blood thrummed in his ears—Carol . . . what would he say to Carol about this? But of course he was overreacting. He needn't mention making out with Mary at all . . .

“My
daed
and
bruders
will be along shortly—to make sure you do the right thing.”

Her melodic voice was calm, rich with decades of dialectal purity, but he blinked at her words.

“What?”

“I expect they'll take a while to rouse the bishop. He likes to sleep, you know.”

He likes to sleep . . .
Jude took a shaky step down to the flagstone nearest her and her small bare feet.

“Mary, I'm sorry. It was all a mistake . . . I'm due to be married in the fall. Are you sure Joseph saw . . .” He let his eyes drop to her shoulders, as if she'd bear the imprints of his fingertips somehow, but there was nothing visible between the covering of her apron and dress.

“You know you were the first man who ever kissed me like that or touched—”

“I know. I know,” he broke in hastily, not wanting her to verify what he remembered all too well. Her innocence had been as palpable as his own heartbeat, her novice mouth returning his kisses with a tentative response that had made his throat burn.

“
Dat
wasn't happy what with you being an outsider and all, but he's willing to settle seeing that you're
schmart
in the head.”

Jude thought of the endless hours of study, sleepless nights upon nights, now his doctorate work, and his almost-completed book about the Amish of Ice Mountain, Pennsylvania. He had plans of returning home and breaking away from his father's successful business and wealthy lifestyle and becoming a professor of Amish Studies. He told himself that there was no way he was going to be coerced into “doing the right thing” for kissing a willing girl in the broad light of day. But he should have known better. If there was anything that he'd learned from his study of this people, it was their inherent sense of old-fashioned honor. The Mountain Amish were also about a hundred years farther behind the times than other Amish both in values and circumstances, and he was in the middle of nowhere with not a single soul to speak in his defense.

He scrambled in desperation for an answer, an angle . . . “Mary, your dad isn't going to want you to leave the mountain and you'd have to if I . . . if we did anything hasty. You know I'm supposed to go back to Atlanta in two weeks.”

“Metro Atlanta.” She emphasized what he knew she had heard him say from time to time.

“Never mind,” he muttered, but then another thought came to him. He peered into her eyes. “Mary, how old are you?”
And why in heaven's name have I not asked that before?

“Eighteen—nineteen in October.”

“Well, that's something . . .” She wasn't underage by his world's standards at least. At least—what the devil was he thinking? He owed her nothing
.
“I'm twenty-six,” he offered in spite of himself.

“Way past marrying age,” she observed.

“Yeah.”
From your world's view.

She glanced behind her as instinctively, he knew, as a doe. “Here they come.”

Jude was suddenly more than nervous. He wanted to sink into the ground, dissolve, or at least run as the four men broke from the line of trees, their faces set like stone. And then he felt everything go black . . .