Jacob's Return (39 page)

He squeezed her hand. “Like us.”

He pulled their buggy to a stop, the heavy traffic at the Strasburg crossroads making it necessary to wait their turn.

Jacob looked toward the Valley and sighed. “Family and community are unusual gifts,” he said. “I have learned, with your help, Mudpie, that it is not the place makes a home, it is the people. You were right, wherever we are together, we are home.”

Rachel leaned over and kissed his cheek, right there before God and half the village, and took his hand. “And what better home is there, than where one is welcomed with open arms, where the past is forgotten, and the future is filled with hope.”

Jacob looked back at the row of buggies.

His Datt waved. So did Ruben. The Bishop nodded.

“And if the people there happen to be the ones we love, there is nothing more perfect under God’s heaven than that.”

Epilogue

In marriages between widows and widowers, the December wedding rule did not hold. This sun-blessed, late September day Bishop Ezra Zook’s daughter, Rachel, was marrying the man she had loved since she was three, she insisted, Jacob Sauder.

As Bishop of the Winesburg, Ohio, Bontranger Amish Community, he stood proudly — sorry, Lord, make that humbly — waiting for the bride and groom to rise from their knees, so he could join two people who’d traveled to perdition and back to reach each other.

His daughter, Esther, big with child, and her husband, Ruben Miller, a good, hard-working man, stood witness.

The congregation — their new friends — shared joyously in the blessing on the couple, smiling openly at the first row of guests, Ezra’s five fidgety grandchildren, four of them, children of the bride and groom.

There, the Bishop saw in many eyes, was a story they would like to know. But he had lived among them for weeks and he knew no questions would be asked. They had stories aplenty of their own that would never be told.

Only their devotion to living the Plain and simple life, in accordance with God’s plan, mattered to their scarred souls.

With open arms, they welcomed blemished and wounded spirits.

As should be.

This morning Ezra had helped Jacob move his things from the
daudyhaus
— which the poor man had patiently shared with him and Levi since they arrived — into Rachel’s bedroom in the main house, where she and the children had settled.

In nine months time, Ezra fully expected at least one more grandchild, if not two, to be added to their family.

Esther and Ruben occupied the house on the opposite side from him and Levi, one as large as the main house, praise be, because they were set upon filling it with Amish offspring themselves.

What did it matter if they were Beachy Amish, Bontranger Amish, or Amish Mennonites, North Dakota Amish, Pennsylvania Amish or Ohio Amish, as long as they lived their faith?

Go out from among them and be ye separate
. That’s what all of them were doing … as a family. Together.

He placed his hands on Jacob’s and Rachel’s heads for their first blessing as man and wife, and looked up, far beyond blue skies and sun-splashed clouds. Well, Mary mine, we have come a long way together. Rachel and Jacob will sit at the corner table today. Esther expects a little one soon, and much to our Ruben’s dismay, he is a favorite choice for preacher come spring.

Ach, Mom, our Rachel and our Esther are happy.

Author’s Biography

Annette Blair is a national bestselling, award-winning author. In her thirty plus books, she’s explored nineteenth-century Amish Country; Regency and Victorian Britain; and madcap, modern Salem, Massachusetts, where bold women follow the Celtic faith with heart. There, she fought dragons, and fell in love with an angel. More recently, she’s solved mysteries beside Connecticut’s Mystic River. Wherever she’s landed, she thrived. An adventurer and storyteller at heart, she’s second generation American and takes great pride in her French Canadian roots.