Wonderful Lonesome (48 page)

“Come inside, Abbie. See for yourself.”

Abbie had not even gotten out of the buggy. Willem expected she would click her tongue and get the mare moving again.

Instead, she met his gaze. “Where shall I park?”

With a strangling knot in her neck, Abbie followed Willem inside the house and into the room where Jake had pushed the furniture around.

Mary Miller jumped up from the sofa. “Abbie!”

Abbie gave a wan smile. “You never expected to see me here.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you.”

The Troyers stood. “Thank you for coming,” Moses said.

Abbie nodded in the smallest gesture she could manage. She had not exactly come. She had followed Mary, first out of curiosity, then confusion, then aggravation. Entering the house was simply more provocation to see for herself what the row of buggies outside meant. Her mind’s eye saw two more squares in her quilt fade into frayed fragments of the beauty she intended.

The Mullets, the Yoders, Martin Samuels, the Nissleys, and Abbie. Of twelve households, only four remained. Abbie could not count herself a household. The place where she lay her head at night might belong to someone else by next week. She was in no position to bear the expense of running a farm or to manage the physical labor on her own.

Jake crossed the room. “Welcome, Abbie. Let us worship our God together.”

“I’m sorry,” Abbie mumbled. She bumped into Willem when she turned around and immediately pushed past him and hurtled herself toward the outside air.

She stood, planted, outside the house. Inside was an unimaginable compromise. Outside failure slapped her in the face.

“Abbie.”

She should have known Willem would follow her out. “No, Willem.”

“I have not asked a question,” he said. “Yet.”

He stood near enough that her breath drew in his comfortable, familiar scent. Every muscle in her body wanted to surrender, to drink in the assurance of this man.

“You’re here,” Willem said. “Your friends are here. Would it be so terrible to come inside?”

She wavered. “There’s no point.”

“There is every point,” Willem countered. “These are people who seek God’s face, and we will worship together. We will sing hymns you love and pray. Jake will teach us from God’s Word. These are people who care for you and want to share their lives together. Is that not the church you seek?”

She raised her face to his, then ducked down again. “Ruthanna. My family. Rudy. You. I’ve lost one thing after another. Now you ask me to lose my church as well.”

“You never lost me, Abigail.”

“You’re trying to profit from the loss of others. The man I loved would not do that.” She choked on using the past tense.

Willem crossed his wrists in front of him. “Of late I have realized the ingratitude in my heart. I am choosing to receive the abundance God has already given me. I’d like your help in keeping me on my path.”

“You have Mr. Heatwole.” She hardened. “You chose the Mennonites.”

“I chose church, Abbie. I chose worship. I chose the same thing you’ve been fighting for all these months.”

She bit her bottom lip. “But what if my father and the others are right? What if this is not truly a church?”

“Isn’t that for God to judge? What if you are starving your soul for nothing while the blessing you crave is right here?”

Abbie could not speak. Her mother’s parting advice ricocheted around her mind.
I hope God will bless you, and I hope you will recognize it when He does
. She had thought the blessing was Rudy, had chosen to embrace it with all her heart. And Rudy left. Was blessing still possible after everything she had lost? Tears welled as her face scrunched and she stared into Willem’s gentle, confident eyes.

“Here is the church.” Willem offered an open hand to her. “Come with me.”

Come with me
. How many times had he said that in past weeks?

The gasp pent up in her chest wriggled free like a determined goat. “I love you, Willem.”

“I know. I am only waiting for you to let me love you.”

Abbie drew in a deep, overdue breath. “I might not be very good at it.”

“We’ll learn together.”

Abbie rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. His hand was still open, stretched toward her. As soon as she laid hers in it, and felt his fingers close around hers, the quivering ceased.

Abbie met his eyes, clear as she had ever seen them. “Let’s go inside.”

Author’s Note

Ever since I began writing about the Amish, their history has fascinated me. Many people are intrigued by what they think is the simpler lifestyle of the Amish and their strong family values. Anyone tracking trends in church membership will find it curious that the Amish have a phenomenal rate of young people who choose to join the church—far above the larger, more well-known denominations with much less strict lifestyles.

In the early days of their history, the Amish would not have looked so different from the general population as they do today. They lived apart from people they regarded as unbelievers and practiced a form of Christianity that was not popular, but they dressed and cooked and farmed the same way everyone else did. It was the culture around them that evolved and accepted change at increasing speeds, and the Amish had the strength to ask, “Is this good for our community?”

This is the question of
Wonderful Lonesome
. And what is community? How does community intersect with faith? We each must ask and answer these questions, just as the characters in this story did.

The band of settlers in this book is based on a real settlement in eastern Colorado a hundred years ago. It failed for the myriad reasons woven into this story. I have taken some liberties with the characters, most of whom are products of my own imagination, though I’ve used some names from the known record of the settlement. The title comes from a note one of the settlers sent to the
Sugarcreek Budget
, the newspaper read widely among the Amish, in which she said that the lack of a church service for over a year made it “wonderful lonesome” to live on the Colorado plain. The turn of phrase caught my imagination, and the story spun out of it.

Acknowledgments

David Luthy’s book,
The Amish in America: Settlements that Failed 1840–1960
, was an invaluable resource in stirring up in me the tone for this story, along with providing informational hooks from known history on which to hang story events. I’m grateful for his scholarship and thorough investigation.

If I can credit one person for my journey into Amish stories, it is my agent and friend, Rachelle Gardner, who first piqued my curiosity by pointing out her discovery that modern Colorado has Amish settlers who are once again trying to take hold in an environment very different from what is familiar to them in more eastern states.

I appreciate the vote of confidence from the team of Barbour Publishing in taking on a second series of Amish stories and allowing me to take the Amish Turns of Time stories from Amish history.

My friends at church have rallied around my relatively new fiction writing career and give me weekly encouragement to keep going! You know who you are, because I am certain you will read these words, and I thank you.

About the Author

Olivia Newport’s novels twist through time to find where faith and passions meet. Her husband and two twenty-something children provide welcome distraction from the people stomping through her head on their way into her books. She chases joy in stunning Colorado at the foot of the Rockies, where daylilies grow as tall as she is.

Also Available from
Shiloh Run Press

Wonderful Lonesome
Unabridged Audiobook

Available wherever audiobooks are sold.

Next in the
Amish Turns of Time
Series

M
EEK AND
M
ILD

Will Clara and Andrew’s relationship withstand a possible shunning?

Available February 2015

Also by Olivia Newport

V
ALLEY OF
C
HOICE
S
ERIES
Accidentally Amish
In Plain View
Taken for English
Hidden Falls