“Why isn’t Zach marrying her if he’s living with her?” Anne asked.

  “I don’t know,” Danny said. “I guess they don’t want to.”

  “How much does he make at his job?” Toby asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Daet said. “Gott won’t bless disobedience. If you go against Gott’s will, you can make all the money in the world, and it won’t buy happiness or contentment. Gott gives sleep to those he loves.”

  Toby nodded, but Danny saw an unsettled glimmer in his younger brother’s eyes. That wasn’t a good sign.

  12

  Service Sunday was a cheerful day in Beth’s home community, and it was no different here in Shepherd’s Hill. Beth and Mammi put on their best dresses, and Beth helped her grandmother pin her apron. Outside, the third buggy that morning went trotting past the house on its way to church. With the bright summer sunlight warming the dew-laden grass outside the open back door, Beth couldn’t help but feel the refreshing Sunday glow.

  She loved Service Sundays in her Amish life. The day when the whole community came together to worship was both holy and celebratory. Beth had gone to church with Cadence a few times over the last couple of years, and while Cadence really loved her church, it didn’t have the same feeling to Beth. If Beth did choose to go Englisch, she’d have to find a church to attend, and that thought was daunting. She believed that she could find Gott there, and even if she took the wings of the morning and dwelt in the uttermost parts of the sea, Gott would be with her, as Psalms said. Still, she’d miss Amish church.

  Beth hitched up the buggy, Mammi gathered up her Bible, and before long, they’d joined the line of Shepherd’s Hill Amish heading to the service being held at one of the district farms.

  They arrived at the same time as Aent Mary, Onkel Nathaniel, and Jonas, and Jonas walked with Mammi up toward the house, where the furniture would have been cleared to the side to make room for the church benches.

  Other women quickly came to gather up Mammi into their midst, and Beth let her steps slow, feeling the relief of being “off duty” with her grandmother.

  “Are you doing okay, Beth?” Aent Mary put a hand on her arm.

  “I’m fine.” Somehow the smile that normally came so easily to Beth’s lips faltered.

  “Yah?” Mary didn’t sound convinced, and suddenly Beth desperately missed her own mamm. Mamm could always see right through her too.

  “It’s just nice to have people come take care of Mammi for a while,” Beth said.

  “I’ll come by and help you out more often,” Aent Mary offered.

  “Danny wants me to go to the Youngie Singing tonight. Do you think you could come by and stay with Mammi?”

  “Of course. I think it’s a good idea. You should get out with people your own age.”

  “Danke.” Beth felt some of the pressure coming off her shoulders. “You know, I wanted to catch you alone because I had some questions that I didn’t want to ask in front of other people.”

  “Like what?” Her aent hooked her arm through Beth’s and guided her toward the parked buggies, away from others who might overhear. Children’s chatter came from the direction of the stable, where some boys were catching up after not seeing each other for two weeks.

  “It’s about my father.” A warm breeze plucked at Beth’s dress. “About his childhood. I realized after he died that I didn’t know any stories about him from before he was an adult. The stories start with him meeting my mamm when she visited Pennsylvania, and how they wrote letters and fell in love and got married. It’s like my daet’s life started with her.”

  “That’s rather beautiful.”

  “It’s romantic, sure, but it’s strange. I mean, he had a whole childhood that no one speaks of. Can I just tell you what I’m thinking without you ever telling anyone else?” Beth asked. “Because I might be wrong. But you’re the only one who will give me a straight answer about anything.”

  “Of course.” Mary leaned forward. “Go ahead and tell me. You can trust my discretion.”

  “All right.” Beth swallowed. “Daet never told me about his childhood. Nothing. No funny stories. No sad stories. Just . . . nothing at all. And when I ask Mammi about it, Mammi won’t say much. She says—” Beth hesitated, unsure if she was betraying a confidence, but then she plunged on. “She says she wasn’t married, though. That’s all she’s confirmed for me.”

  Beth watched her aent for a reaction, but Mary just frowned, looking down at her feet.

  “You were my daet’s age, right? So you knew him growing up?” Beth pressed.

  “I knew him after they moved here.” Mary raised her eyes to meet Beth’s. “Before your mammi and your daet moved here, they lived in Indiana somewhere. Your daet was about sixteen when they moved. I mean, he was starting his rumspringa. But he was the most conservative teenager. He didn’t care for pushing any boundaries. As soon as he could join a baptismal class, he did.”

  “So you didn’t know my daet when he was little?”

  “Nee.”

  “Mammi said she never married,” Beth continued. “So that means she was a single mother. But I’m curious about who my dawdie was.”

  Mary was silent for a moment, then shook her head. “Just because I don’t keep big secrets doesn’t mean I have big answers either. I honestly don’t know. Iris didn’t like to talk about the past, and no one liked to question her about it. It was considered rude to pry into someone else’s pain. All I know is that your mammi was accepted once more as a full member of the community when she returned with your daet when he was about sixteen. There was no confession before the church.”

  “Did Mammi always live in Indiana?” Beth asked. “Before she moved here?”

  “No. She’s my daet’s sister. They grew up here.”

  “So Mammi grew up here, left for Indiana, and came back with a child.”

  “Yah. That’s all I know.”

  “Did my mammi have a man she loved at one point?” Beth asked.

  “You’d have to ask her. I was the generation beneath her. There were stories the adults shared with us, and then there were the stories they didn’t.”

  Beth sighed. “So I could have a family out there,” she said. “I mean, more family. My daet might have brothers and sisters. I might have cousins.”

  “You might, depending on who fathered your daet.” Some women were walking toward the house, and one waved to them. “We’d best get into service.”

  “Yah. We should,” Beth agreed.

  As she walked toward the house, her mind spun from her conversation with her aent. Mammi had grown up in Shepherd’s Hill, and then she’d moved to Indiana and returned with a son. . . . Even Aent Mary knew little about what had happened while she was gone.

  Had Mammi left pregnant?

  The church service was a comforting one. The preacher spoke about how Gott’s ways were higher than their ways, and his thoughts were not their thoughts. It got Beth thinking about her own choices, and she silently prayed for Gott to guide her. She didn’t want to go against Gott’s will for her life, but how was a woman supposed to know what that was? Did she follow her gut feelings, trusting Gott to guide those? Or was that wrong too?

  The sermon ended just after noon with the preacher calling upon the youngie to make their decision for baptism and to join the church, which left Beth ill at ease. Was that the right step for her?

  After the service, they stayed for the community meal of soup and bread. Mammi sat with some of her friends—other elderly women who visited together in a little group, sitting on lawn chairs because of their age.

  Danny found Beth as she was putting her empty bowl on the pile to be washed.

  “You made it,” Danny said, and his smile was as warm as the sunshine on her shoulders.

  “I made it,” she confirmed. “Did you like the sermon?”

  “Yah, it was good.” He eyed her uncertainly. “And you?”

  “I wasn’t put off by the call to baptism, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said with a short laugh. “I liked the sermon. He made some very good points about Gott’s way being different from ours. We always think we know what he wants from us, but we don’t always.”

  “I guess life is complicated,” Danny said.

  Beth noticed that Tabitha Schrock was alone eating a bowl of soup, and she wondered how lonely it was to have come back home after all that time. One would expect that she’d find community again, but Beth could understand how all that education and a divorce could put some distance between Tabitha and the other women.

  “Oh, I should tell you that my aent will come stay with Mammi while we go to the Singing tonight,” Beth said.

  “Perfect.” Danny’s voice was low. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  And Beth couldn’t help but smile. She was looking forward to it too, but when she glanced in Tabitha’s direction again, she noticed that another young woman had stopped to talk to her. Maybe the veterinarian wasn’t completely isolated, but she did look lonesome. That was a warning right there—coming home again wasn’t always easy. Every last choice came with its own consequences, good or bad or maybe a mixture of both.

  That evening, Aent Mary arrived at the house as promised, and shortly after, Danny arrived in his buggy. The sun was setting, the air cooling, and the crickets chirped their evening song from the fields.

  “Have fun!” Aent Mary called cheerily as Beth headed out the side door.

  Danny waited in the buggy, and Beth pulled herself up and settled in next to him. It felt nice to be getting away for an evening, she had to admit. Danny flicked the reins, and the horse started forward.

  “How was your brother’s visit?” she asked.

  Danny shook his head. “We met Zach’s Englisch girlfriend for the first time. Her name is Meghan.”

  “That’s news. What’s she like?”

  “Nice enough. Very different. They’re living together.”

  Beth coughed. “They’re what?”

  “Yup. You heard that right. And we’ve been told it isn’t our business.”

  “Wow . . .” She remembered Zach over the years. He was older than Danny, so he hadn’t spent much time with them. He’d always been a bit rebellious. She remembered when he got a battery-operated radio and would blast worldly music from his buggy. That had been a huge upset to everyone, including Mammi, who had been thoroughly disapproving of it.

  “I mean, I guess there comes a point when you’re grown and you’ve made your choices, but I think that you’re always your family’s business,” Danny said.

  “Thank Gott for that,” she said. “What did his girlfriend think of all this?”

  “She seemed quite upset. She went outside while we finished our conversation with him, but I don’t think that went the way she’d hoped.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Zach was in his usual argumentative form too,” Danny went on. “He’s pointing out that Tabitha Schrock is very educated, and that it isn’t a problem around here.”

  “The veterinarian?” Beth asked. “I mean, she got divorced and can’t remarry. That’s a pretty big deal.”

  “He’s talking about her education level,” Danny said. “That’s his newest argument about our way of life—that we don’t go to school beyond eighth grade. He says that if we could go to school, we’d be able to pursue occupations that are good for the community.”

  “I mean, he’s not wrong. . . .” Beth leaned back in the seat, watching the sun slip behind the hills, the sky smudged pink and orange.

  “You don’t think so?” Danny shot her a questioning look.

  “I mean . . . what if we could get more education?” Beth asked. “What if we could go to school for longer and learn how to do things that Englischers do? Personally, I’d love to work at a bank. Wouldn’t it be helpful if we understood money and banking? We just trust the Englischers to take care of our money in a bank account, but we don’t know more. I think it would be interesting and helpful to us as a community. We’d be more self-sufficient.”

  “But where does it end?” Danny asked.

  “Why does it have to?” she countered. “What if we had Amish doctors who used technology and science as well as natural healing? What if we had Amish dentists? That’s a thought, isn’t it? An Amish dentist to help us keep our teeth in good shape, who would understand our ways.”

  Danny pressed his lips together, and she knew she was really pushing the limits, but this was part of her frustration. He glanced over at her, and she met his gaze with an impish smile.

  “Don’t help his argument,” Danny said with a short laugh.

  “Does it bother you that Zach disagrees with the Amish ways?”

  “It does, but that’s not what bugs me the most,” he replied. “He’s trying to get Toby and Anne to consider going Englisch. My parents are furious.”

  “What does he want your little brother and sister to do?” she asked. “Just . . . leave?”

  “He wants them to go to school beyond the eighth grade.”

  Beth was silent. Was it so terrible for the Amish to get an education, though? Was it so awful to have an Amish veterinarian instead of an Englisch one? Was it so terrible for an Amish woman to teach swimming so that people didn’t drown? Or for Amish people to work in finance so that they could understand how money worked and help Amish businesses grow accordingly?

  “What are your parents saying?” she asked.

  “Daet is considering telling Zach that he can’t come back until he can be respectful of our way of life.”

  It would be harsh and painful, but Beth could understand that line. They had to protect Danny’s younger siblings from bad influences. Ironically, this was the same thing her family had tried to do—protect the younger generation from something that might influence them. But eventually, every person had to make their own choice, and a young person didn’t stop thinking things through just because the older generations wished they’d just take their word for it.

  “Danny, do you have a library card?”

  Danny shot her a quizzical look. “That’s a change of subject.”

  “Sorry.” She smiled faintly. “It isn’t really. I was thinking about family dramas and problems, and how mine has done a very good job of hiding theirs. Do you have a library card?”

  “Yah.”

  “What are the chances you could take me into town for a trip to the library?” she asked. “I want some access to their computers. I want to look up a few things on the Internet.”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “You’ve trusted me with your family problems,” she said quietly. “Can I trust you with mine?”

  “Beth, I’ll keep your confidence,” Danny said. “And I’d just assumed that you’d do the same for me.”

  “Of course, Danny.”

  Danny met her gaze for a moment. “So what’s happening?”

  “Well . . . honestly, I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I want to do an Internet search about this lake and the area over the last fifty or sixty years—my daet’s lifespan. I want to know who my grandfather is. Mammi admitted that she wasn’t married when my daet was born, and my aent told me that Mammi left the area for a long stretch of time and only returned when Daet was a teenager. I think someone got her pregnant, and she’s protecting him still.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Someone she loved? Or maybe it was something more sinister, and she was forced. Why wouldn’t she say? It must be something very serious. Because if it had been an Amish boyfriend, the community would simply have made sure they married.”

  “I doubt an Amish pregnancy would make a newspaper,” Danny said.

  “I agree. That’s why I’m not really looking for anything in particular, I’m just nosing around. Maybe there were other women who found themselves in the same situation. The Amish might not talk, but Englischers do. I want to see if I can dig up any information that might make something click in my head and make it all make sense. Who knows, right?”

  “Yah, we could do that,” he replied. “How about tomorrow afternoon? The library is open on Mondays. I could be done with my work here at three, I think.”

  She nodded. “I can probably do that. But I’ll need to see if my aent can come back or maybe someone else. I’ll let you know.”

  And somehow she felt better already. Families meant well, but some secrets had an acidic way about them that ate away at the very foundation a family was trying to protect. If the Amish life was good and Gott-pleasing, then it should stand up to the light of day, even if some fallible human beings had made mistakes.

  13

  The Singing was held at the same farm as the church service had been. It only made sense for the hosting family to do both. They’d already cleaned and prepared everything for the service, and then the youth came back later on in the evening.

  They arranged themselves with girls on one side and boys on the other on benches outside, the evening lit up by bonfires and kerosene lanterns. Danny sat on the boys’ side. He was one of the older ones who still attended. Most of the others were younger than him now. The girls were being nice to Beth, inviting her to look at their hymn books to choose a song, and she snuck a look at him while he was watching her and he chuckled.

  He’d started to wonder if he should stop attending the Singings, but it was nice to have Beth here.

  “She’s new,” Benjie Yoder whispered, nudging Danny’s arm. Benjie had just turned nineteen, so he was a little younger, but when a new girl came to a Singing, every guy there took notice unless he was already courting someone.

  “That’s Beth Peachy, Iris Peachy’s granddaughter,” Danny said. “And she came with me.”

  That was a hint for Benjie to look elsewhere if he was looking for a girlfriend.

  “Yah?” Benjie looked impressed. “Are you driving her home too?”

  “Sure am.” Danny laughed.