Fearless Hope: A Novel (21 page)

“He is Amish but he knows how to rewire a house for electricity?”

“Oh, yes.” Hope was matter-of-fact. “Do not worry, he does not have electricity in
his
house.”

“Give me his number and I’ll give him a call.” He walked away, amazed at the inconsistencies among the Amish people.

•  •  •

Over the next few days, his house experienced quite a few changes as electricity was brought in. Hope’s cousin Silas was indeed very good. He seemed to understand exactly what the old house needed. Simon was entranced with the changes and followed the Amish electrician around, soaking up everything. As the days passed, the bruises on the teenager’s face and body began to heal.

Once the work was complete, and the outlets installed, Logan enjoyed purchasing and bringing in new, labor-saving devices and explaining to Hope how each one worked. She was quick to learn and it took only one or two demonstrations for her to have it down.

“With all these things, you will no longer need a housekeeper,” she said, after he’d introduced her to the joys of the dishwasher and an electric iron. “You will be able to do everything for yourself so easily.”

“Of course I’ll need a housekeeper,” he quickly reassured her. “I just thought a few new things might make your work a little easier.”

“Do I have to learn how to use a computer?” she asked.

“Of course not,” he said. “That’s one thing I can handle all on my own.”

To his surprise, she seemed disappointed.

“That is too bad,” Hope said. “I think I would have enjoyed learning how to use the computer.”

“I’ll be happy to teach you . . .”

“How is your wife?” Hope abruptly changed the subject. “Will she move here now that you have electricity?”

“Why are you asking?”

“I ran into Verla Grayson again yesterday. I told her that the three children and the pregnancy were a joke Marla had played on her.”

“How did Verla take it?”

“She was surprised, but relieved. She said she had been worried about those children being raised without a father.”

“I’m sorry we worried her.”

“That’s okay, she’s not worried anymore.”

Hope appeared to lose interest in the conversation as she inspected the new coffeemaker.

He was wrong. Hope had not lost interest in the conversation at all.

“So,
will
Marla be moving in now that you have electricity? Perhaps if she does, you could give her some real children instead of your wife having to make up joke-children.”

She smiled to let him know she was teasing him, but he had been around her enough to know she wasn’t really joking. If there was one thing she was passionate about, it was children.

It was one thing for Marla to tease him in front of a stranger. It was entirely another thing to live a lie to a woman whom he saw almost on a daily basis. “Seriously”—Hope was unpacking small containers of coffee from the box the coffeemaker had come in—“do you plan to have children anytime soon? You are very good with them.”

Really? It surprised him that Hope felt that way. He knew the Amish had high standards for fatherhood.

“No. Marla and I won’t be having any children.”

Hope blinked. “What did you say?”

“Marla doesn’t want children.”

“Your wife does not want
children
?” Hope was genuinely astonished.

He decided it was time to come clean with Hope about his and Marla’s relationship, even if it
would
offend her religious sensibilities. The better he got to know Hope, the more he felt it was wrong to keep this from her. He was sick of pretending.

“Marla’s not exactly my wife.”

“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?”

“We are planning on getting married in a few months. Marla is making the wedding arrangements . . . and we’ve shared an apartment for a while.”

“You two have been living together?” Hope’s voice rose in shock. “Without being
married
?”

“Yes.”

“But that is a sin!”

“Well, we aren’t very religious,” he explained.

“I do not understand. You do not want children together. You do not have a problem with living in sin together. You are not religious.” Hope crossed her arms over her chest. “Why bother to get married at all?”

He’d been wondering that himself recently, only for different reasons. The longer he spent in Holmes County around Hope, the less attractive he found the idea of marrying Marla.

“I will be more careful to keep the children out of your way from now on!” Hope said. “I did not realize you did not like them.”

“I never said that I don’t like children, I said that Marla doesn’t want any.”

“Then you
do
want children?” Hope shook her head as though to clear it.

“Yes, I do, but it isn’t fair to ask her to bear children that she doesn’t want.”

“Oh—it is a
very
good idea for her not to have children she does not want,” Hope said. “A very good idea indeed! Children should be wanted and loved.”

“You wouldn’t understand, Hope. Marla and her friends . . . they are different from you.”

“You are right. I do not understand. When we can’t have children, we adopt. There are many children who need good homes. Or we take in a relative’s child if that child needs a good home. To us, children are our hope for the future and a gift from God.”

He knew these were not just words to her.

“You’re a good mom, Hope,” he said. “Your kids are lucky to have you. I don’t think Marla would make a very good mother.”

The look Hope gave him was an interesting mix of pity and scorn.

“A visiting bishop spoke with Titus and me before we were married,” Hope said.

“And what did this visiting bishop have to say?”

“The bishop said, ‘Do you know the best time to get a divorce?’ Titus and I were surprised by his question. We said that we didn’t. The bishop told us that the best time to get a divorce was before we got married. He warned us to be very careful in choosing our spouse.”

“Are you suggesting I should not marry Marla?”

“You do not act like a man who is happy about the woman he is supposed to love.”

That stung. Of course he was happy. “You don’t like her.”

“It doesn’t matter if I do or not. All I know is, if I were married to a man like you . . . I would
never
value my job over my
husband.” Hope gasped and put her hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean . . .” A miserable look swept over her face. “Really, I didn’t mean anything by that. I—I just miss my husband very much.”

“Of course you didn’t mean . . .” His mind was whirling. What exactly
had
she meant? Was it merely an unfortunate slip of the tongue, or had she begun to care for him?

The possible ramifications that someone like Hope was possibly falling for him were mind-boggling.

“Marla’s okay.” He backed away from the emotional precipice they were teetering on. “We’ll be fine.”

“Of course you will.” Hope scrambled to hide her embarrassment. “And if you are not . . . well, that is none of my business. I need to go finish my chores now.”

As she walked away, he wondered if this honesty thing was all it was cracked up to be. He’d told her the truth, and he didn’t feel a bit better for having done so. All he’d managed to do was upset both of them, find out her negative feelings about Marla, and maybe even caused the girl to trip up and accidentally confess that she had feelings for him. He had no idea what to think about that. The ramifications for both of them if he ever allowed himself to return those feelings were staggering.

The conversation he’d thought would purge his soul had not exactly been a success.

L
ogan was hard at work a week later when a small army of Amish men and women showed up to prepare his house for church. Most were Hope’s relatives, who—from what he could tell—cleaned every square inch of his house. With all of Hope’s hard work, he wondered what they found to clean. Then he found several women standing on stepladders and realized they were actually washing down all the walls and cabinets. Cleaning for church was apparently serious business.

With Simon’s willing help, the men started in on the yard. Weed eaters were pulled out of buggies and gasoline-powered push lawn mowers were fine-tuned and added their whir to the general noise as they cut the tender spring grass that had sprung up in uneven clumps.

Men worked in the massive old barn with pitchforks. Hay bales arrived on flatbed buggies, and were distributed to the various stalls. Small children seemed to be everywhere. Teenagers worked harder than he had ever seen teenagers work. It was as though everyone had been assigned a job by some unseen church foreman, but Hope told him that had not happened. They just all knew what needed to be done and did it.

Logan was left with nothing to do but watch in wonder as
Hope’s father and some others moved the partition out of the front room. Everything they did was accompanied by talk and laughter. He was wandering around, offering to help and finding nothing to do that wasn’t already being accomplished, when Hope’s mother took him in hand.

“We know you need to write,” Rose said firmly. “And we don’t want to disturb you, so we’ve set you up out under that tree where you can watch what’s going on and still get some writing done.”

He was astonished to find that someone had actually carried his writing desk out to the tree and his laptop was on it. An extension cord was curled beside it, long enough to reach a house outlet if he ran out of battery. Someone had even poured him a cup of coffee and set it beside the laptop. Freshly sharpened pencils were placed in a decorative cup, along with a new notebook. A sturdy piece of plywood was laid on the ground, to create a flat surface for his office chair.

In other words, they did not need him, were not thrilled with him trotting around offering his help, and were giving him something to occupy himself with so that he would stay out of their way. Adam and another little boy were sitting beside the same tree, each with three crayons grasped in their hands as they colored together in a single picture book with farm animals on the front.

“So—you’ve been sidelined, too, huh?” he said to the children.

In reply, Adam held the book up and showed him a badly colored green house.

“Good job!” Logan said. “Whatever you do, don’t color in the lines. It’s supposed to be bad for your creative development.”

Adam tilted his head to one side, and then once again became absorbed in his coloring book.

Logan could not begin to concentrate with all this activity
going on around him, so he simply typed “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over again, trying to look busy, while he watched the ultracompetent Amish take over his house.

Hope was so cute directing foot traffic. She was seven months pregnant now and glowing with health. He studied her, thinking of how he would describe her if she were a character in one of his books.

Hope Schrock was barefoot, modestly dressed, and pregnant. A preparer of food, a lover of children, an encourager to the elderly. Her name fit her well. Wherever she went, whomever she touched, she brought a lifting of spirits. In other words, she brought with her wherever she went . . . hope.

He read the words aloud and then deleted them, deciding that they did not do the woman justice. She was the most competent woman he’d ever met, and she managed to do it all with patience and a ready smile.

It was a pleasure to watch her with her children, or with the other women. He saw her touch an elderly woman’s arm and lead her to a rocking chair on the porch. Solicitous and kind. That was his Hope.

He caught himself. She was not
his
Hope.

A problem was developing and he did not know what to do about it. He had trouble taking his eyes off her. What if she were religiously free to marry whom she wanted? Would she consider him as a candidate?

Sitting here was giving him entirely too much time to watch and think about her, and yet it was a great pleasure to do so.

Then he saw Hope’s mother, Rose, staring at him with a concerned look on her face, as though she had read his thoughts. Immediately he dropped his eyes and began to write in earnest.

“You have an interesting job, my
Englisch
friend.” The man who had been introduced to him as Bishop Schrock startled him by dropping a copy of one of his own books onto his desk.

Logan picked it up. “Where did you get this, Bishop?”

“Hope brought a copy to me.”

“Why?” Logan was not ashamed of his books, but he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of an Amish bishop reading one.

“Because when she told me who you really were, I asked her to. It is possible to learn much about a man’s heart by what he writes.”

Logan hoped the bishop hadn’t come to the conclusion that he was a dangerous psychopath just because he wrote about them!

“I’m a storyteller,” Logan said. “I make things up. I don’t experience or believe in everything I write.”

The bishop nodded at this and said nothing.

“Did you finish it?” Logan probed.

“
Ja
,” the bishop said. “I finished it.”

Logan waited for him to say something else about it. Good or bad. The bishop seemed in no hurry to speak. He simply stood there, towering over him.

“So . . .” Logan prompted. “You hated it?”

“I did not hate it.”

“Then what?”

“
I am wondering what good they do, these books you spend your life writing.”

“What good?” Logan felt the sting of the bishop’s words. “They are how I make my living . . . just like building a house or shoveling manure.”

“Ah,” the bishop said. “That is true. Our honest labor does little except provide goods for others and food on the table for our family.”

“Then why do you ask what ‘good’ my books do? Why do they have to do ‘good’?”

“Like all Amish, I was only educated through the eighth grade,” Bishop Schrock said. “I am no judge of literature, but
even I can see that God has given you much talent. You put words together in ways that pulled me in and kept me reading much later at night than what was good for me.”