A Simple Winter: A Seasons of Lancaster Novel (34 page)

Remy astride a horse, her skirts flapping as she galloped ahead.

Remy with child, her small hands rubbing her round belly.

Remy seated at his right hand, passing a platter around their dinner table.

He could see her here, living on this farm as his wife.

He leaned back in the chair, counting the familiar points of the dark kitchen. The potbellied stove. The window facing the paddocks. The cabinets that were built by his grandfather.

His palm pressed the ancient grain of the oak table, where countless meals and meetings had taken place. This old slab of wood had supported the elbows of his family members through laughter and tears, joy and grief. He could see Mamm sitting in her spot at Dat’s right hand, showing Mary how to even out her stitches on a quilt. Dat sat there, at the head of the table, the first one to start talking every morning at breakfast.

Adam had inherited Dat’s place at the head of the table. Was there any way on God’s good earth that Remy could find a place beside him?

He reached for hope. The fact that Remy kept coming back was no accident; God was at work in his life.

“So …” She turned back to him, her lips still swollen from their kiss. “Sadie says you’re the man to talk to about becoming Amish, since you’re baptized and everything.”

“What do you mean? That you’re curious?”

“More than curious. I’ve been feeling at odds with God … sort of drifting. Honestly, I haven’t been a member of a church since I was a little kid, but I’m searching now.”

“A seeker?”

“That was what Sadie called me, and I sort of like the sound of that.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint you, but most seekers do not become Amish.”

“Oh. Why not?”

He smiled. “Too much work?”

“I’m not afraid of work.”

He’d seen that. “In the end, I don’t think they’re willing to give up their personal freedoms to follow the Ordnung.”

“That sounds like more of a challenge, but I don’t scare easily.”

He smiled at the way Remy wiggled bits of light into the dark cracks. They talked for a while about the Amish faith. Remy already knew some history. She had learned about their beginnings in Europe and their belief in adult baptism, but she had some questions about the structure of their Order.

Adam tried to answer her questions. “If you’re interested you should talk to the bishop sometime, or Preacher Dave. They could answer your questions better.”

“Would you come with me?” she asked.

“Ya, sure. Just as long as you know that joining the Amish, getting baptized, isn’t something to take lightly. It’s the biggest decision of a person’s life. And you haven’t even been around Amish much. A few weeks with one family is nothing.”

“We’ll see,” she said, hiding a yawn.

“It’s late.” Adam rose. “We’d better get some sleep.”

Remy took the lantern from the table. “I’ll take the light. That one’s a bit too much for me to carry.”

“I got him.” With ease Adam lifted his little brother into his arms and headed up the stairs. Simon’s bare feet dangled, but he burrowed his head against Adam’s chest.

Following the glow of Remy’s lantern, Adam felt that sense of rightness once again. If he followed her up the stairs every night with a child in his arms, that would be a good life. A very good life.

Over the next few days snow fell continually, piling on layers of powder that made every nook and cranny on the farm seem clean and new. God’s hand over everything.

Adam felt cleansed, too, washed white as snow by the grace of the Father. Something about Remy chipped away at his bad temper, warming his heart with the light in those moss green eyes. And if the milk truck couldn’t get through, there was no way a city girl like Remy would be able to drive these country roads. Who could argue with God’s hand through a blizzard? For now, Remy belonged here, and he no longer felt guilty about the joy he felt in her company.

Now, in search of Gabe, Adam moved through the shoveled lane of snow between the house and barn. A few yards from the barn he spotted Gabe and Simon in the paddock. Simon was walking Shadow, his favorite horse, in the area of mashed-down snow, while Gabe sat on a hard ridge of snow by the fence, giving him a few pointers.

Adam reached up onto a snowbank, gathered a mound of fresh snow, and packed it between his gloved hands.

The perfect snowball.

He launched it at Gabe—and struck! A patch of white snow clung to his black pants, just above the knee.

“Hey!” Gabe swiped at the spot, his narrowed eyes searching the perimeters before they landed on Adam. “You!”

Simon held back a grin as he kept his horse steady. “Don’t hit Shadow!”

“Don’t worry, my aim isn’t that bad.” Adam ran one glove over the packed bank of snow. “We need you at the house, Gabe. Mammi wants to go over the costs for bathroom renovations and adding to the herd.”

Gabe waved him off. “I’ve got no head for numbers. And you know how I feel about those changes.”

Striding toward the paddock, Adam knew his brother didn’t want changes to the farm procedures or the house. Gabe said it was all in the name of loyalty to Dat, who believed that milking the cows by hand helped to maintain their way of life, with its slower pace and simpler ways.

And Adam respected his father’s decisions, but he also knew that Dat would want the farm to survive. That meant some modernization in the cowshed. Their current methods of milking did not allow them to sell fluid milk, and that limited their earning power and profits. Based on the numbers Adam had gone over with his grandmother, expansion of their cow herd with the addition of milking machines could triple their profit, which was now marginal at times.

Add to that the fact that a machine could milk a cow in five minutes, while the process took fifteen to twenty minutes by hand. Adam was convinced that this would be better for the entire family.

“Come on, Gabe. We need your help with this. You know the cow herd best.” He also needed Gabe on board, and he believed that if his brother heard the details, he would see the logic in making the changes permitted in their district.

“Gabe?” Adam rounded the snow bank and faced the paddock, just as a white missile shot toward him. “Ach!” At the last minute he spun, and the snowball hit him squarely in the back.

“Oh, come on.” Gabe faced him, hands on his hips. “That couldn’t have hurt.”

“No, but you wounded my pride. Are you coming?”

“Ya, sure.” Gabe started toward the shoveled lane. “Just as soon as I give you this.” He lunged for a pile of snow and paddled frantically, sending snow spraying toward Adam.

“Denki, brother!” Adam raced away, circling behind Simon before he ducked behind the cover of the snow bank. “Kumm, before
Mammi loses patience. And no fair smuggling snowballs into the house.”

As Adam headed toward the house, the sound of laughter floated toward him, muted by trees and snow flurries. On the other side of the bare trees the women and children stood in clusters on the frozen pond, their dark shapes recognizable against the brilliant white snowscape.

Mary skated slowly beside Samuel, who took small heavy steps on the ice. Sadie chased after Leah, while Susie and Ruthie practiced pulling each other along.

Sadie tripped and went down, her body sliding a few feet. Her laughter resounded through the trees as she stood up and dusted herself off.

And then there was Remy, skating carefully on the bumpy ice. Her arms were spread wide for balance, reminding him of a fledgling bird testing its wings.

From a distance, you would never know she wasn’t Amish. In her borrowed clothes, her coat, dress, bonnet, and boots, she looked every inch an Amish beauty.

But being Amish was more than a manner of dress.

For Adam, it was about an inner light. Faith. Love. Resilience. But at its core, it was a flame of steadfast peace … something he saw now every time he looked at her.

When had it happened? When had her scattered energy given way to the solid glow of Amish peace?

He couldn’t say. But at some point over the past few days she had changed, a gradual shift, a subtle transformation.

It only steeled his conviction to move ahead with changes on the farm.

Gabe would come to see the light; change could be such a good thing.

ust rock the needle, Remy.” Mary’s lips were pressed into a straight line of concern as she watched Remy work the small needle through the fabric spread out on the kitchen table. “I think you’re working too hard. I can tell by the way you’re biting your lower lip.”

Remy’s fingers paused as she blew a breath out through billowed cheeks. “Reading my tension, are you? I’m just trying to keep up. You guys have stitched five or six lines for my one.”

“It’s not about speed,” Sadie said. “There’s no prize for the person who finishes first.”

“I know, but I don’t want to be so obviously bad at this.”

“Because you’re learning?” Mary’s brows rose. “Give yourself a chance, and find the patience in your heart. This is not one of those things you can rush along like a fast car in the Englisher world. It takes time, and that’s a good thing.”

Moving her needle at a slower pace, Remy realized she hadn’t even thought of her real life—“the Englisher world,” as Mary had
just reminded her—for days. How many days had it been since she arrived Wednesday night? Counting back, she realized this was day four—Saturday. Four days and she had fallen into the patterns of the King household with an ease that surprised her.

Earlier in the week, she had been waiting to play a round of checkers with Leah and Sadie when Ruthie remarked about Remy’s hair.

“It’s so thick and wild, like a horse’s tail,” Ruthie observed.

Remy had answered with a wobbly smile. “Thanks … I guess.”

When Ruthie asked if she might comb it, Remy consented, and the younger girl had parted Remy’s hair down the center and twisted it back from her face at the temples in the way that the Lancaster County Amish girls wore their hair.

“You’re going to need to borrow a bonnet when you go out.” With skilled fingers, Ruthie pinned her hair at the back of her head. “It’s far too cold to be out there long without something on your head.”

“I’d appreciate that. Do I get to wear one of the white bonnets underneath?”

“You mean a prayer kapp?” Ruthie twisted around to face Remy. “It will bring you closer to God when you pray. He’ll hear your prayers.”

The notion had charmed Remy as she imagined prayers floating from the crisp white organdy bonnets, straight to heaven. “Would I be allowed to wear one? I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.”

“There’s no rule against fancy folk wearing it,” Leah chimed in, jumping two of Sadie’s checkers.

“Oops!” Sadie squinted at the board. “I didn’t see that coming.” She told Ruthie where to find an extra kapp, and within minutes Ruthie was pinning it onto Remy’s red hair.

Dressed in the prayer kapp, the vivid purple dress, and a white apron, Remy felt a strong sense of belonging here on the Kings’
farm. She fit in. And when she occasionally caught her reflection in a shiny window, she wondered at the new Remy, a woman so unlike the shell of a person who’d arrived here last Wednesday.

She had begun to awaken before dawn, in time to help with the milking. She and Mary had worked out an efficient assembly line so that they could make eighteen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a snap. She had figured out that evening was the best time to wash up in the house’s only tub on the mud porch. And every night, she had lain awake in bed to listen for Simon, who inevitably padded down the wood floor of the hall, lost in his subconscious need to escape from the killer who had taken his parents’ lives.

As head of the household, Adam was a fine supervisor, and he had helped her move toward tasks that utilized her strengths, much as any corporate manager might do. He had asked her to come along to help him check the fences, and she had cherished the time spent alone with him. She had also enjoyed riding a horse in the snow, using muscles she forgot she owned. One day he had surprised everyone by enlisting help in moving the sewing room downstairs. They cleared out the room that would become an upstairs bathroom, just as soon as the snow cleared long enough to get plumbers and fixtures onto the property. Remy believed in him as a leader, and that wasn’t just because he’d chosen her to ride the fences.