A Simple Hope: A Lancaster Crossroads Novel (6 page)

Chelsea Darby had told her daughter to leave, but Shandell didn’t think she meant it, not really.

“I already missed three days of school,” she told Gary. “If I miss too much, I won’t graduate.”

“Too bad, so sad. You’re old enough to drop out of school, and what would you do with a high school diploma, anyway? There are no jobs for people like us anymore. We have to blaze our own trails. Do something different.”

Gary considered himself to be industrious, but at twenty-one he was three years older than Shandell and still didn’t have much to show for it. He had dropped out of school when he was seventeen and taken a job with a moving company in Baltimore. But there were slow periods when they didn’t need him. Like now.

When they’d left Baltimore, she’d thought that Gary might be her savior; now she recognized that he was an ordinary thief. Twice they had bolted from gas stations without paying for the gas, and she realized that the hot food from the convenience store was probably stolen, too. The excitement of the road trip had soured into a bad dream, one of those feverish dreams where Shandell kept climbing a mountain but every time she looked up, she was miles from the top. And when she looked down, the steep drop paralyzed her with fear.

She wanted out of the road trip.

“Maybe I want to do something different,” she said, “but just back in Baltimore. It would be nice to sleep in a bed again. I’ll be better at blazing a new trail with a good night’s sleep.”

“You can be such a dweeb. But okay. We’ll head back after dark. I just want to hit a few more of these Amish towns. Lancaster County is full of them.”

“They are really quaint,” she said, though she was surprised that Gary was into patchwork quilts and buggies.

When they passed over the rise, the road descended steadily into a green valley flanked by farms on either side. The dark road seemed to reach into the future.
My road
, she thought, not sure where it
would lead. Still, it was a lovely road, smooth and steady. And the green, growing life surrounding it gave her hope. She would work things out with Mom when she got home. And Phil? Well, that wouldn’t be so easy if he didn’t want to help himself. But maybe Mom would help her convince Phil to get help.

Up ahead on the right was a little farm stand—a small white shack with a sign that read FLOWERS & PIE FILLING. NO SUNDAY SALES. It was tidy, with flowers and jars set out on the counter. Shandell was wondering about the Amish people who ran it when Gary pulled off to the side of the road and rolled to a stop in the gravel near the white hut.

“It’s closed,” Shandell said. That was too bad, because she wouldn’t have minded seeing some Amish people again. They were kind of brusque and blunt, but they didn’t gush or waste words. She had gotten used to their uniform clothing—the way all the women parted their hair in the middle and pinned it back under a kapp. All the women wore brightly colored, loose dresses and the men could be seen in black pants, colored shirts, and black felt or straw hats. Although they kept to themselves, there was something intriguing about them, as if they knew a secret path to peace that they couldn’t share with outsiders like her.

“Let’s see what they got,” Gary said, cutting the engine.

She shot him a suspicious look, but he ignored her, leaving the car door open as he strode ahead. She followed him over to the counter, which was nearly covered in neat rows of potted yellow daffodils and fragrant hyacinths. The crowded blossoms of the pink, purple, and white hyacinths reminded her of fireworks exploding in the sky. Only these had a deliciously sweet scent.

Gary moved out from behind the counter and circled round to the back of the stand.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Just checking. There’s nobody here.”

“I told you, they’re closed. They’re probably in one of these farmhouses, eating dinner.” With their family. Longing blossomed in her chest, but she tamped it down. She would be home soon enough. Right now, she just needed to keep Gary on track.

“We should go,” she said, “unless you suddenly have a yearning for hyacinths.” She turned to the jars on the side of the counter. “And cherry pie filling.”

He rubbed his ear, considering. “You know, I think I do need some flowers.”

He lifted up the entire carton of hyacinths.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. These are a deal at a dollar apiece. We’ll take them home to butter up your mother.”

“Wow. That’s kind of sweet, Gar.” It had probably been years since anyone gave her mom flowers, and once these were planted in the yard, they would come back year after year. She softened as he carried the flowers to the car and placed them in the trunk.

Shandell calculated what they owed. Basic math came easily to her; it was the multistep procedures that lost her. She lifted the lid of the little gray cash box. “That’s twelve dollars,” she told him. “You just leave the money in this box.”

He grabbed two jars of cherry pie filling. “Since we’re here, might as well take these, too.”

“Then that’ll be twenty, even.”

She imagined the pleasure of the Amish people when they noticed the big sale tomorrow. The thought of it made her smile, too.

But that faded when she heard Gary cackling behind her, on his way to the car.

“Get in the car, girl. You don’t pay for stuff when you can get it for free.”

“But it’s the honor system,” she insisted, wheeling around to face him. “You can’t steal that stuff.”

His laugh was giddy. “Oh, yeah? Watch and learn.”

“Come on, don’t do this. It’s wrong and … and you don’t even need it. Come on, Gary, just leave the money.”

“I’m not leaving these people a nickel. Honor system, my ass. They don’t need my money. They got plenty of money and cows and horses. Look at all the land they got. Now get in the car, before I throw you in the trunk, along with the flowers.”

This time, Gary was not laughing.

Her jaw dropped as she stared at him. Did he mean that? He wouldn’t hurt her, would he? She didn’t think so, but then again, she hadn’t thought he was a thief when they’d left Baltimore three days ago.

“Get in the car.”

Biting back tears, Shandell got into the car and began to plot her escape.

T
he lavender light of sunrise filtered through the curtains in the attic room as Rachel put the finishing touches on her painting. Wanting to bring James a little gift today, she had risen early and crept upstairs to her old bedroom to finish this small canvas, a close view of a ripe peach still hanging in a tree.

As this was the only space in the house suitable for painting, she had to work quietly while Rose slept in the single bed against the wall. The steady whisper of her sister’s breath reassured Rachel as she sat at her homemade easel, a pyramid of wood sticks her dat had built for her last year as a birthday gift. She hoped that the soapy paint smell and stirring noises didn’t disturb Rose, but so far there’d been no complaints from the lump curled under the patchwork quilt.

Rachel swished her brush in water and added a dab of cerulean blue to the palette of bright colors. She had finished painting the peach in a combination of magenta, cadmium orange, burnt umber,
and sienna, and she had to admit, the sight of the fat fruit made her mouth water. Usually her work wasn’t so realistic. Most of her paintings focused on the colors of Amish life: a patchwork quilt, gem-toned dresses swaying from a clothesline, flowers blooming beside a bright blue watering can, a dark horse and buggy silhouetted against an orange sky and autumn gold fields. But today, for James, she had tried something different—a close still-life. She had worked hard to make the peach look real and delicious, with sundappled rose streaks and dewdrops on the skin. Even a bit of peach fuzz.

Now as she layered on a cloudless, bright blue sky, she hoped that James would like the reminder of the orchard he so loved. These days he was able to move through the wide aisles between trees, but he wasn’t able to help much with the mulching and spraying. When it came time to prune or harvest … Well, no one could say if James would be able to run the orchard in the coming seasons. Only Gott in heaven knew if he would ever be able to rise from his chair and climb the fruit trees like the monkey he once was.

A tender smile softened her lips as she painted, circling the brush to create round texture in the sky. How easy it was to lose herself in her art! James sometimes teased her about it, telling her to return to the farm, but she found such contentment in re-creating the stillness of Amish life. And the bright colors of life brought her such joy! The temptation to paint the day away was strong, but Amish life was not a life to be spent alone. Although her parents enjoyed her artwork as a gift from Gott, they often reminded her not to spend too much time on her hobby. And many Amish thought that things like art and music were an indulgence—a way to show that you were special and superior, which was never a good thing for a person.

“It’s good to have a little something on the side,” Mamm always said, “but the center of life is your family and your community.
Family is among Gott’s greatest blessings—the unbroken chain of life.”

Before the accident, Rachel hadn’t really seen their noisy, boisterous family as such a blessing. Her tall, muscular brothers who swiped the last of the bacon or spiked the ball right at her in a volleyball match? And her sisters, who seemed glued to their beds nearly every morning? One look at the kitchen after a meal, and any person in his right mind would run in the opposite direction. Her siblings teased one another mercilessly at times, and they could raise some thunder, but when one person was hurting, the way she had been after the accident, they all pulled together to help. She loved them dearly.

After the accident, folks had come through for her in small and large ways. Mamm and Dat had rushed to the hospital to see her, even though she was unharmed. The main concern had been to take care of the injured folk, and after the first few days that had included all the young people in the van who had been spared physical injury but hurt inside—traumatized. Dr. Monroe offered to do group counseling, and it was a blessing that the bishop allowed it because talking about the worst parts of the crash had eased the terror in Rachel’s heart. It was still a sad thing, especially losing Tom Lapp and seeing James and old Jacob injured. But now Rachel could talk about the accident without quivering inside.

Stepping back from the painting, her blue brush tipped in the air, she thought about James. How she wished he’d been able to join in the group therapy. Dr. Dylan had been going to see him, but that wasn’t the same as hearing that Elsie, Ruben, Zed, and Rachel were battling the same feelings, suffering the same dreams. Was James getting the support he needed from his Amish family—the folks in the church district, the Plain folk of Halfway?

She hoped so. Now, more than ever, James needed his Amish family.

Later that morning, James was still on Rachel’s mind as she drove the buggy toward town. Mamm had given her a list of items to buy at the bulk store, but first she was going to drop sisters Molly and Bethany off at the farm stand on the road by the other family dairy farm, run by cousin Adam King.

“I can’t wait to see what’s come out of Mammi Nell’s greenhouse,” Molly said, clapping her hands together in delight.

This was the first year that the younger girls had been put in charge of running the family farm stand, which was used to sell off extra vegetables from the garden as well as items their grandmother grew in the greenhouse. Last year at this time, Rachel had managed the stand with her cousin Sadie. Dear Sadie! She had gone off to the city during her rumspringa, and Rachel missed her so.

“Look at that! Ruthie’s already there.” Bethany pointed ahead at the white roadside hut down the hill. Today the chalkboard sign said FLOWERS & PIE FILLING. Underneath was the painted sign that read NO SUNDAY SALES.

“Do you think we’ll get many customers today?” Molly asked, holding a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun.

“I reckon so,” Rachel said. “A lot of Englishers come out this way on weekends, especially in the good spring weather.”