Posts
THE FORGIVEN
Chapter One
Rebecca
Fisher hadn’t summoned her family to meals with the bell on the back porch
since Paul died. Today wasn’t the day to start, she decided. Instead she stood
at the railing and called.
“Katie! Joshua! Come to supper.”
She stayed on the porch until she saw her two kinder
running toward the farmhouse. Katie came from the big barn, where she’d been
“helping” Rebecca’s father and brother with the evening chores. Katie adored
her grossdaadi and Onkel Simon, and Rebecca was grateful every day that Katie
had them to turn to now that her own daadi was gone.
Joshua had clearly been up in the old apple tree by
the stream that was his favorite perch. Paul had talked about building a tree
house there for Joshua’s sixth birthday. That birthday would come soon, but
Paul wasn’t here to see it. Rebecca’s throat tightened, and she forced the
thought away.
“Mammi, Mammi.” Joshua flung himself at her,
grabbing her apron with grubby hands. “Guess who I saw?”
“I don’t know, Josh. Who?” She hugged him with one
arm and gathered Katie against her with the other. Katie let herself be hugged
for a moment and then wiggled free.
“I helped put the horses in,” she reported. “Onkel
Simon said I’m a gut helper.”
“Mammi, I’m talking.” Joshua glared at his sister.
“Guess who I saw?”
“Hush, now.” Rebecca hated it when they quarreled,
even though she remembered only too well how she and her brothers and sisters
had plagued each other. She shooed them into the kitchen. “Katie, I’m wonderful
glad you’re helping. Joshua, who did you see?”
It had probably been an owl or a chipmunk—at five,
Joshua considered every creature he encountered as real as a person.
“Daadi!” Joshua grinned, unaware of the hole that
had just opened up in his mother’s stomach.
“Joshua—“ She struggled to find the words.
“That’s stupid,” Katie declared from the superiority
of her seven years. Her heart-shaped face, usually so lively and happy,
tightened with anger, and her blue eyes sparkled with what might have been the
tears she wouldn’t shed. “Daadi’s in heaven. He can’t come back, so you can’t
see him, so don’t be stupid.”
“Katie, don’t call your brother stupid.” Rebecca
managed the easier part of the correction first. She knelt in front of her son,
feeling the worn linoleum under her knees as she prayed for the right words.
“Joshua, you must understand that Daadi loves you always, but he can’t come
back.”
“But I saw him, Mammi. I saw him right there in the
new stable and—“
“No, Josh.” She had to stop this notion now, no
matter how it pained both of them. “I don’t know what you saw, but it wasn’t
Daadi.”
His small face clouded, his mouth drooping. “Are you
sure?”
“I’m sure.” Her heart hurt as she spoke the words,
but they had to be said. Paul was gone forever, and they must continue without
him.
“Go and see, Mammi.” Josh pressed small hands on her
cheeks, holding her face to ensure she paid attention. “Please go look in the
stable.”
Obviously it was the only thing that would satisfy
him. “All right. I’ll go and look. While I do that, you two wash up for supper.”
Josh nodded solemnly. Rebecca rose, giving her
daughter a warning look.
“No more talking about this until I come back. You
understand?”
Katie looked as if she’d like to argue, but she
nodded as well.
Pausing to see them headed for the sink without
further squabbling, Rebecca slipped out the back door.
A quick glance told her there was no further activity
at the main barn now. Probably her daad and brother had finished and headed
home for their own supper.
It wasn’t far across the field to the farmhouse
where she’d grown up. That field would be planted with corn before too long.
Daad had mentioned it only yesterday, and she’d thought how strange it seemed
that Paul wasn’t here to make the decision.
Turning in the opposite direction, Rebecca skirted the
vegetable garden. Her early onions were already up. In a few weeks the danger
of frost would be over, and she could finish the planting.
Beyond the garden stood the posts from which the
farm-stay welcome sign should hang. If she were going to open to visitors this
summer, she’d have to put it up soon. If. She had to fight back panic at the
thought of dealing with guests without Paul’s support.
The farm-stay had been Paul’s dream. He’d enjoyed
every minute of their first season—chatting with the guests, showing them how
to milk the cows or enlisting their help in cutting hay. It had seemed strange
to Rebecca that Englischers would actually pay for the privilege of working on
the farm, but it had been so.
She’d been content to stay in the background, cooking
big breakfasts, keeping the bedrooms clean, doing all the things she’d be doing
anyway if the strangers hadn’t been staying with them.
Last summer she’d been too devastated by his death
to think of opening, but now…well, now what was she to do? Would Paul expect
her to go on with having guests? She didn’t know, because she’d never imagined
life without him.
The stable loomed ahead of her, still seeming raw
and new even though it had been up for over a year. They’d gone ahead with the
building even after Paul’s diagnosis, as a sign that they had faith he would be
well again.
But he hadn’t been. He’d grown weaker and weaker,
and eventually she had learned to hate the sight of the stable that had been
intended for the purebred draft horses Paul had wanted to breed. She never went
near the structure if she could help it.
Now she had to steel herself to swing open one side
of the extra-large double doors. She stepped inside, taking a cautious look
around. Dust motes danced in a shaft of sunlight, but otherwise it was silent
and empty. The interior seemed to echo of broken dreams.
Sucking in a breath, Rebecca forced herself to walk
all the way to the back wall, her footsteps hollow on the solid wooden
floorboards. No one was here. Joshua’s longing for his daadi had led him to
imagine what he hoped for.
A board creaked behind her and Rebecca whirled,
heart leaping into her throat.
A man stood in the doorway. Big, broad, silhouetted
against the light so that she couldn’t make out his face. But Amish, judging by
his clothes and straw hat, so not a stranger. The man took a step forward, and
she could see him.
For a long moment they simply stared at each other.
Her brain seemed to be moving sluggishly, taking note of him. Tall,
broad-shouldered, with golden-brown hair and eyes. He didn’t have a beard, so
she could see the cleft in his chin, and the sight stirred vague memories. She
knew him, and yet she didn’t. It wasn’t—
“Matt? Matthew Byler?”
A flicker of a smile crossed his face. “Got it
right. And you’re little Becky Lapp, ain’t so?”
“Rebecca Fisher,” she corrected quickly. So Matt
Byler had returned home to Brook Hill at last. Nothing had been seen of him among
the central Pennsylvania Amish since his family migrated out west when he was a
teenager.
Matt came a step closer, making her aware of the
height and breadth of him. He’d grown quite a lot from the gangling boy he’d
been when he left. “You married Paul Fisher, then. You two were holding hands
when you were eight or nine, the way I remember it.”
“And you were…” She let that trail off. Matt had
been a couple of years older than they were, and he’d been the kind of boy
Amish parents held up as a bad example—always in trouble, always pushing the
boundaries of what it meant to be Amish.
Now Matt’s smile lit his eyes, and a vagrant shaft
of sunlight made them look almost gold. “You remember me. The trouble-maker.”
“I…I wasn’t thinking that,” she said. But of course
she had been. It was the first thing anyone thought in connection with Matt
Byler. “Are you here for a visit?”
Matt didn’t have a beard, so obviously he hadn’t
married. That was more than unusual for an Amish male of thirty.
Surely his unmarried state wasn’t for lack of
chances. A prudent set of parents might look warily at Matt as a prospective
son-in-law, but the girls had always been charmed by his teasing smile.
“My uncle needs some help with the carpentry
business, and he asked me to give him a hand.”
Everyone knew that Silas Byler had been struggling
to keep his business going since his oldest son had so unexpectedly left the
community. How strange life was that Isaiah, who’d never caused his parents a
moment’s worry, should be the one to leave the Amish while bad boy Matthew
returned to take his place.
“I’m sorry about Isaiah. It was a heavy blow to your
aunt and uncle, ain’t so?”
Matt nodded with a wry twist to his mouth. “Funny,
isn’t it? Everyone was so sure I was the one headed over the fence.”
It was an echo of what she’d been thinking. “You did
a pretty good job of making folks think so, the way I remember it,” she said.
“Ouch.” Matt’s teasing grin appeared. “You’ve
developed a sharp tongue, I see.”
“I’ve just grown up. I have two kinder of my own
now.” Rebecca hesitated, but she couldn’t help but resent what he’d made Josh
imagine, however inadvertently. “My little boy, Joshua, must have seen you here
at the stable. He thought it was his daadi.”
Matt’s face sobered in an instant. “I’m sorry,
Rebecca. Truly sorry. My uncle told me about Paul. You have my sympathy.”
“Denke.” Too abrupt, but she couldn’t seem to help
it. “Was there something you wanted here, Matt?”
He looked a little taken aback by the blunt question,
but he answered readily enough. “I’m looking for a building I can use for my
furniture business. Onkel Silas told me about the stable and how Paul was going
to…” He let that trail off. “Anyway, he said you weren’t using the stable and
might be willing to lease it to me.”
Everything in Rebecca recoiled at the thought of
putting another person’s business in Paul’s stable. “No.” Her tone was sharper
than she intended. “I’m sorry. It’s not available.”
Matt’s eyebrows lifted. “It’s standing empty. I can
pay you five hundred a month for the space.”
“It’s not available,” she said again, annoyed at him
for putting her in this position and unable to keep from thinking about what
she could do with an extra five hundred dollars a month.
Matt studied her face, his eyes intent and
questioning. “You don’t like the idea of turning Paul’s stable over to someone
else. I can understand that. But you have two little ones to raise. Can you
afford to have it sitting empty when it could be earning money for Paul’s
kinder?”
The fact that Matt was probably right didn’t make
Rebecca feel any more kindly toward him. “I don’t think that’s your concern.”
“Maybe not. But it is yours, Rebecca.” He held her
gaze for a moment longer, and she felt as if he looked right into all her grief
and uncertainty. Then he took a step back. “I wouldn’t do any harm to the
place, Rebecca. Think about it.”
Matt turned and walked away. He was silhouetted in
the doorway for a moment, and then he was gone, leaving Rebecca unsettled and
upset.
