The Revealing (8 page)

“I suppose not,” Mim said. “But I wouldn’t be able to get it to you until late in the day. I have chores in the morning, then I have to go to school. And I have chores in the afternoon.”

“That’s fine. I’ll just save it for the next day’s breakfast. Old news is still news.”

Mim considered pointing out that the very word
news
meant it was new, thus, old news was an oxymoron. But she didn’t think her suggestion would be appreciated. Her family never appreciated her grammatical corrections, so why would a guest whom she’d just met?

“I’m not sure how long I’m going to stay here. Maybe for a while. I want a newspaper for the entire time I’m here, rain or shine. I’ll pay you for your trouble.” She pushed the dollars into Mim’s hand.

“Sure.” Mim pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her
nose. “Sure,” she repeated, nodding vigorously. In fact, it was an ideal opportunity to read her Mrs. Miracle column. Usually, she only saw a copy of the paper if she was at the Sisters’ House because her grandmother refused to subscribe. “Rubbish!” her grandmother called the newspaper. Mim spotted the black hats of her brothers as they disappeared over the hill and realized she’d better hurry or she’d be late for school. “Today. I’ll bring you a paper later today.”

As Mim ran up the hill, she tried to figure out why the guest would bother reading a newspaper like the
Stoney Ridge Times
. It was filled with stories about local people, stories like the one about the mayor who had just been reelected for the sixth time, which might sound impressive until you learned that no one ever ran against him. Then there was the police report, which mostly consisted of parking tickets. Once or twice a month, there were some scandals. Bennie Adams had been fired at the bank because he’d come to work drunk. Junior Jackson’s wife had run off with the high school track coach. Those kinds of stories were why Mammi Vera called the
Stoney Ridge Times
the gossip buzz line. The sisters at the Sisters’ House had a different point of view. They liked knowing what was going on in town. She wished for the hundredth time that Mammi Vera were more like the sisters—any sister, even Fannie, who was often prickly and her least favorite.

It wasn’t that Mim didn’t like Mammi Vera. After all, she was her grandmother. She had to like her, or maybe she just had to love her. Maybe it was the liking part she had a choice about. It wasn’t Mammi Vera’s fault that she wasn’t like the old sisters.

That afternoon on her way home from school, Mim stopped
at the Bent N’ Dent and bought the last copy of the
Stoney Ridge Times
. She spoke to the clerk Katrina, the sister of the incorrigible Jesse Stoltzfus, and asked her to save a copy each afternoon. The sister, she noted, was nice to her despite being irritatingly pretty. Katrina seemed to glide around the store, not walk like a normal person. Of course,
she
didn’t wear glasses.
She
would never be called Four Eyes or Owl Eyes by the sixth grade boys.

The Mrs. Miracle column was running twice a week now, and the receptionist had confided in Bethany that there were even rumblings about expanding it to three times a week. Such an opportunity only filled Mim with panic: Someone, somewhere, was going to find out! Bethany was the only one who knew the true identity of Mrs. Miracle. No, that wasn’t exactly accurate (and Mim prided herself on accuracy). Ella of the Sisters’ House had guessed once, but she had memory woes and had already forgotten. No one else in all of Stoney Ridge suspected that Mrs. Miracle was actually a fourteen-year-old Amish girl.

Mim loved her role as Mrs. Miracle and took it very seriously. When she didn’t know the answer to something, she would research it or carefully, cautiously, question the right people. She liked helping others and, not to brag, but she gave excellent advice. Excellent. Mostly, though, she was just reminding people to use common sense. It seemed to be in short supply.

But the Mrs. Miracle column was supposed to be a tiny little side job for her. It brought in only five dollars a week, and it gave her something interesting and challenging to do. No big deal. Just a once-a-week column.

She hadn’t expected the readership to explode. She hadn’t
expected the editor to expand it to twice a week. And now . . . three times a week? Each time she thought of it, she couldn’t even swallow. What if she was found out? What if the bishop learned of her secret job? What would her mother say?

She walked as slowly as she could back toward Eagle Hill, reading the newspaper, admiring the Mrs. Miracle column. It was well written, and she tried not to feel proud, but she did. When she had nearly reached the driveway to Eagle Hill, she felt someone over her shoulder.

“My sisters love that column too. They fight over who gets to read it aloud.”

Jesse Stoltzfus, of all people! Mim snapped the paper shut and tucked it under her arm. “Mrs. Miracle would say that it’s only good manners for a person to let another person know that the person is there.”

Jesse was staring at her with his mouth open, as if he didn’t hear her properly. He thumped the side of his head with the palm of his hand, like he was shaking water from his ear. “But . . . I did.” He tipped his felt hat back on his forehead. “Good thing you’re not writing a newspaper column. That was the most confusing sentence a person ever said to another person.” He grinned and took off his hat, bowing and sweeping his hat in a big arc. “This person needs to be on his way, if the other person will excuse this person.”

Jackanapes!
That
boy always tried to best her. It irked her that Danny—who used to be her special friend before he got so high and mighty and puffed up—he only encouraged Jesse Stoltzfus’s gargantuan ego. Just this afternoon, he had read Jesse’s composition aloud. “I am sure,” Danny told the class, “that all of you were as impressed as I was by Jesse’s exciting essay.”

Impressed? Mim was dumbfounded. Jesse wrote a heartstopping composition about a time when he was lost in a snowstorm and had to make a snow cave to survive the night. Jesse described the sound of the wind and the bite of the cold so clearly she felt right there with him, in the middle of the blizzard, gasping for breath, trying to push down panic as he dug a snow cave deep down in a world of no light and little air.

How could she be all in a tremble just listening to Danny read about it? It actually hurt to listen—she was
that
jealous of Jesse’s writing ability. Mim labored painfully over her writing, every single sentence; Jesse scribbled things down and turned them in before school or during recess. She had seen him! He had forgotten the essay that was due today and dashed it off during lunch.

On the other hand, Danny always caught Mim when her mind was on vacation, though he never suspected Jesse of not paying attention. Danny had one of those tricky voices. It would buzz along for several minutes quite comfortably, then
bang!
he was focused in and asking you a question.

Earlier in the week, Danny had cornered Mim with a question out of the blue, when she was a million miles away. Her mind went completely blank. Throughout the classroom she heard a shuffling of feet and paper, waiting for her to answer him. She could feel everyone’s eyes boring into her. Mose Blank was staring at her so intently she thought his crossed eyes might switch sockets. “Parakeets can live nearly twenty years,” she blurted out and the class roared with laughter. Turned out Danny had asked her the names of the different kinds of cloud formations in the sky.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Then he asked Jesse the names of clouds and of course
he knew the answers, including the Latin translations of the words:
cumulus
, heap;
stratus
, layer;
nimbus
, rain;
cirrus
, curl of hair. Wasn’t that just like Jesse, to answer more than the teacher had asked for? Danny was delighted. Mim thought Jesse was showing off.

Jesse was one of those boys who sat quietly at his desk doing beautiful schoolwork, never daydreaming or shooting spit wads or chewing gum, and yet he was so full of shenanigans that if Teacher Danny could have once known what was running through that carrot-red-sticky-up-haired head, he would have thrown him out of the schoolhouse in horror.

She sneaked a glance over at Jesse. He was totally absorbed in his geography book, or so it would appear to anyone who didn’t know. He must have sensed she was watching him, because he slowly turned his head in her direction. “I’ve always been fond of parakeets,” he whispered, grinning widely.

Did Jesse Stoltzfus ever stop grinning? He grinned when he saw her come in the schoolhouse in the mornings. He’d grinned when she made a fool out of herself by spouting out the lifespan of parakeets (which, incidentally, was a well-known fact). He’d even grinned as he was bringing in wood to stoke the stove and a large spider crawled up his sleeve.
Who
could smile at a spider? She had never known anyone as maddening as Jesse Stoltzfus. Not even Luke, and he sorely tried everyone’s patience.

They reached the turnoff to Jesse’s driveway and he stopped at the mailbox, opened it, found it empty, then shut it tight. He started up the hill toward his farmhouse.

“Jesse!”

He stopped and turned to face her.

“Did that really happen? That snowstorm?”

He took a few steps toward her, grinning. “Now, why would I make something like that up?” Then he began scissoring up the driveway in great strides and Mim couldn’t help but watch. He ran as though it was his nature. It reminded her of the flight of wild ducks in the autumn. Smooth and effortless. The word “glorious” came to mind, but she shook it away and hurried toward Eagle Hill.

The first time that David Stoltzfus delivered a Sunday sermon, a shaft of sunlight broke through the gray skies and came through a crack in the barn roof to touch his face, making him look more saintly than ever. In the short time that David had lived in Stoney Ridge, the people had quickly grown to love him, and in her heart Rose felt a little sorry for the other ministers, who were instantly overshadowed.

It wasn’t the other ministers’ fault; their sermons were full of good examples and strong admonishments. And yet Rose had to admit that David brought with him some new sense of excitement and inspiration that the other ministers, including the bishop, didn’t have.

David fired the church members with an enthusiasm never before known in Stoney Ridge. He was so . . . clear, so vivid. He had a conviction that sermons should be kept to the comprehension level of children, to nourish the spiritual life of young people. He had confidence the adults would still be fed and, of course, he was right.

On this gray morning, he reminded them of how fortunate their congregation was to live in the safety of Lancaster County. He spoke of those, years ago in the Old Country, who had been martyred rather than renounce their faith. He
described with vivid detail the horrific persecution their great-great-grandparents had endured. Even Jesse Stoltzfus, whom Mim called abominable, was on the edge of his seat, Rose noticed, listening to his father’s sermon with rapt attention.

As they sat in the barn on that Sunday morning, the church of Stoney Ridge was transported miles away to another continent. They felt rich beyond the dreams of kings compared to their ancestors in Switzerland and Germany and France, who had cried out in their dying breath to hold tight to their faith. The barn might have been full of people sneezing and coughing, wet from the trek across miles of roads to get there on a rainy, blustery spring morning, but everyone felt warm and safe and grateful. Their life was a paradise compared to their great-great-grandparents’.

Rose gazed around the barn: at Mim and Bethany, seated behind Vera. At Sammy, at Luke, nodding off; at Galen, who nudged Luke awake with a jab from his elbow—and she gave thanks.

After youth group on Sunday night, Jimmy drove Bethany home. It was a cold night, but the stars were out and the moon was full and the brisk air gave them an excuse to cuddle. Jimmy took the long way home so he could pull up to the shores of Blue Lake Pond. Just to talk, he assured her, but she knew kissing was on his mind. Kissing was always on his mind and he’d been staring at her lips all night. Kissing Jimmy was one of Bethany’s favorite things to do, so she didn’t object when he stopped the horse and reached out to pull her close to him. But she also had something else to discuss.