Hidden Life (9781455510863) Read online

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  For Nyree, Skully, Jenny, and Jackie

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks go to my agent, Jennifer Jackson, for her help and encouragement—and for taking me to cool New York restaurants I can subsequently put in books. My thanks, as well, go to Melody, Police Services Representative with the Springfield Police Department, for walking me through the process by which someone could find a missing person—it’s harder when they’re Amish. And as always, love and thanks to my husband, Jeff. You make a great tour manager, sweetie.

  Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts:

  and in the hidden [part] thou shalt

  make me to know wisdom.

  —Psalm 51:6 (KJV)

  Chapter 1

  In the absence of a husband or children, the written word was pretty much the only way a woman could prove she existed. Of course, God knew the existence of every sparrow, and had numbered the hairs on her head, but to Emma Stolzfus, this knowledge no longer held the comfort it used to. Not when her thirtieth birthday had come and gone and she was left staring at the wasteland of spinsterhood on the other side.

  Had she said anything like this aloud, her mother would have suggested in her humble but inflexible way that she plant something in the wasteland and ask the Lord to make it yield some fruit. Well, Emma was doing that very thing. She loosened the strings of her black “away” bonnet and pulled open the glass door to the Whinburg post office. She laid a large manila envelope on the counter.

  “Sending off another article?” Janelle Baum had told Emma once that reading the addresses on people’s mail was as good as reading their diaries. People sent care packages to their boys in the Middle East. They returned clothes that didn’t fit. They sent each other presents. And Janelle found out about all of it, mostly because for the foreign packages you had to say what was in there, and for the domestic ones, she’d act interested and ask nosy questions until you told her.

  Emma nodded. “Family Life, this time.” Which was written right there on the front, so there was no point in trying to hide it.

  “Too bad you Old Order folks can’t have the Internet,” Janelle said. “It’d be a lot faster, sending things back and forth.”

  “I wouldn’t want to put you out of a job.” Emma smiled, paid the postage, and left, feeling as though she’d put one over on Janelle at last. If Family Life depended on electronic submissions, there wouldn’t be much of a magazine, since its audience and its publisher were plain. She got along just fine without the Internet or a computer. Her pen and her old turquoise Smith-Corona worked no matter what the weather did to the power poles running down the side of the highway, and if that wasn’t an advantage, she didn’t know what was.

  She untied Ajax’s reins from the rail in front of the post office and patted his nose. “Patient boy. You weren’t expecting to go all the way to Strasburg earlier, were you? Now we can go to Amelia’s and I’ll put you in her nice warm barn to visit with Daisy for a couple of hours.”

  Ajax snorted and allowed her to back him around before she climbed into the buggy, pulled the heavy wool blanket over her legs to keep the chilly air out, and shook the reins over his back.

  What nosy Janelle didn’t know was that she had two envelopes to mail, but she’d gone all the way over to Strasburg to send the other one. Its address would have told a tale she wasn’t ready for anyone to read, and the postal employees in the bigger town didn’t know her. Why should they care that an Amish spinster was sending an envelope to New York City? Or that it was addressed to a contest coordinator care of one of the biggest publishers in the country?

  Emma gulped and tried to calm the sickening swoop in her stomach at the thought of her envelope, probably already on a truck and heading down the highway.

  She took a deep breath and let the cold air blow away her nerves. Winter might have eased its grip on Lancaster County just a little, but it hadn’t given up yet. Here they were at the beginning of March and you’d think it was still January. Emma eased onto Whinburg’s main street and kept Ajax under tight rein until they were out on the county highway, which was straight and offered the cars coming up behind her plenty of warning that there was a gray buggy in the road, even if its color matched both asphalt and sky.

  The men were probably gathered even now in Moses Yoder’s barn, leaning on bales of hay and anxiously watching the sky for signs of change in the weather. If the planting were delayed, it would throw the whole year out. From her point of view, there was an even worse consequence.

  Wedding season would go on even longer than it already had.

  No, she wouldn’t think about wedding season. That was worse than thinking about her envelope. About the sweet young brides and awkward grooms, about the oceans of food, about the gatherings of everyone in the Gmee and neighboring communities—during every one of which at least one person would ask her when her turn was going to come.

  She’d stopped making up witty answers years ago. Now she was reduced to a sickly smile and a swift return to whatever task occupied her. It was safer to become one of the many pairs of helping hands at a wedding. That way, you always had a reason to disappear and no one questioned you about it.

  And now, here was her best friend Amelia Beiler putting her black dresses away, dressing in purple ones, and looking at courtship a second time. If she didn’t love her so much, Emma would be tempted to give in to despair, which was a sin. Everyone knew, even if they didn’t say so, that there were more women than men in the church. Much as her heart was gladdened that Amelia’s smile now held genuine happiness instead of the wistful sadness of the last year or so, in the dark of the night she allowed herself to think, It just isn’t fair for you to have two and me to have none.

  Which was ridiculous and selfish and—for that brief second—a betrayal of the friendship they’d treasured for more than two decades. In the practical light of morning, Emma knew herself to be a healthier person than that. But practicality tended to keep its mouth shut in the middle of the night.

  She pulled on the reins and Ajax slowed to take the turn into Amelia’s lane. The cure for dissatisfaction was to remember that the gut Gott held her life in His hands to use for His own purpose. And if that purpose was that she should care for Mamm in her old age, then she, Emma, must rejoice that she had good, rewarding work to do.

  What would happen to her after Mamm passed on to be with God, she didn’t know. Would she be permitted to live in the Daadi Haus on her own? Her sister Karen’s John had aging parents also, and it wasn’t too far-fetched to imagine he might want to bring them here. Her practical side told her that Karen would welcome someone in the upstairs bedroom to give her some help with the children and the household, since there was a fifth baby on the way. But somehow, living under Karen’s thumb in the big, noisy farmhouse when she’d learned to appreciate the quiet of the little Daadi Haus wasn’t very appealing.

  And most important of all, where would she write?

  I should never have mailed that envelope. What was I thinking? I have an eighth-grade education and I’ve never been farther from home than Lebanon County. What do I know about the world that smart folks from the city didn’t learn when they were babies?
They’ll laugh at my pages. Of course they will.

  She would put it out of her mind. She’d done what she’d done and now she knew how foolish it had been. So when the letter from the laughing people came telling her some bright young city person had won the contest, she’d accept it as being only right, and that would be that.

  No one would know but herself.

  But at least you’ll have tried. And then maybe you’ll have learned a little humility and you’ll be satisfied with writing articles about canning bean pickles and putting indoor plumbing in the schoolhouse.

  When she’d unhitched Ajax and made him comfortable in the stall next to Daisy, she crossed the neat little yard and looked up to see Amelia on the back porch, wiping her hands on her kitchen apron.

  “Come inside, quick!” Her friend gave her a hug and practically dragged her through the door. “It’s raw out here.”

  “March came in like a lion and will probably go out the same way.” Emma pulled off her bonnet and coat, and unwrapped the knitted scarf that she’d wound around her neck, crossed over her chest, and tied in the back. She knitted them long just for that reason. “No Carrie yet?”

  While the Stolzfus place lay just on the other side of Moses Yoder’s alfalfa field, Carrie was way over on the other side of the highway and had farther to come.

  “She’s walking, I think, since Melvin had the buggy when he came to the shop this morning. I’ve been watching at the window.”

  “Oh, I wish I’d known,” Emma said in distress. “I’d have gone around that way to give her a ride. When is Melvin going to sell that poor mess of a farm and move closer to town?”

  Amelia opened the oven door and pulled out two pans of cupcakes. As she lifted each papered cupcake out of its well with a knife and lined them up with the others cooling on racks on the counter, she spoke over her shoulder. “Every time I’m tempted to ask, I bite my tongue. It’s not my place to poke my nose into his business, much as I want to. I do know he’s leased his fields to Young Joe Yoder’s Amos, since his land marches with Melvin’s.”

  “I should hope so. If he doesn’t plan to plant them, he may as well lease them to someone who will.” And just in time, too. Amos Yoder was probably one of the men in Moses’s barn eyeing the sky. A Yoder to the core, he was a faithful steward of the land and would make a much better job of those fields than poor inept Melvin ever had.

  A movement outside the sitting-room window caught Emma’s eye. “There’s Carrie. I’ll get the door. Are those carrot cupcakes?”

  Amelia grinned. “Carrie’s favorite.”

  “Mine, too. With lots of cream-cheese icing.”

  Laughing now at a hint that couldn’t be any broader, Amelia dug the knife deep into the bowl of frosting and dropped a heavy dollop onto a cupcake in the coolest row. “You have to promise to save some for Matthew and Elam. My little men will be hungry when they get home from school.”

  Amelia’s boys were six and eight, and both Emma and Carrie enjoyed honorary aunt status. That didn’t mean they could eat all the cupcakes, though.

  “I’ll only eat one, I promise.” Emma swung the door open and gave Carrie a hug. “I’m so sorry. If I’d known you were walking, I would have come and got you.”

  Carrie pulled off her wraps and hung them on the coat tree next to Emma’s. “I wouldn’t say no to a ride home. Goodness, it’s cold out there. If a crocus tried to lift its head, it would be frozen right off.”

  “They’d be smart to stay underground.” Trust Carrie to think about the crocuses. But that was the way she was—mothering her chickens and giving them names, seeing personalities in flowers, talking to the birds digging worms in the garden. To her, everything was her family. Which made sense, when you considered the pain she carried inside—​married ten years and no children. As she’d told Emma once in one of her rare gloomy spells, there were worse things than being single.

  But now her smile was as warm as the stove, where they both gravitated to toast the backs of their dresses and watch Amelia ice the cupcakes. “You two are like a pair of starlings in a cherry tree,” Amelia observed. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

  “I’ll wash your baking dishes as soon as I get one of those,” Emma said. “I’m like to fall down from hunger and they smell wonderful.” Amelia handed them one each and Emma bit into hers, her eyes sliding closed in bliss. She’d start watching her desserts tomorrow. If her waistband was getting the tiniest bit tight, she only needed to get out the brushes and mop and attack the kitchen floors and that would take care of it. A person just couldn’t pass up carrot cupcakes with cream-cheese frosting, could she?

  With the sustenance of the cupcake and the promise of good hot coffee and a raisin pie besides, Emma detached herself from the woodstove and made short work of the baking dishes. Carrie dried and put everything in its place while Amelia shook out the Crosses and Losses quilt top that Amelia had taken to calling “Sunrise Over Green Fields,” and draped it over the bed in the guest room. Emma had never given a quilt a name in her life, but then, Amelia looked at these things differently. To her, if you could make something beautiful at the same time as you were creating it to be practical, then you should do it for the glory of God. But in Emma’s mind, a quilt was a quilt. It was meant to use up fabric scraps and keep you warm in the winter, and the simple fulfillment of its purpose would glorify God. It didn’t need to have a name as well.

  But to each her own. Amelia made beauty with physical things, and Emma made it with words. As long as a person didn’t fall victim to pride while she was doing her making, that was the main thing.

  She was sure God must be proud of his handiwork in creating Amelia and Carrie. Because each of them in her own way was beautiful. Amelia’s dark hair, so thick and shiny, lay neatly coiled in its bob under her heart-shaped prayer covering. When they’d been teenagers, Emma had envied her that hair and wished her own mop were as well behaved. And Carrie? Behind that smooth blond hair and china-plate blue eyes, she was one of those people who appreciated small things and took a simple joy in them. She’d even told Emma once that she thanked the spiders in the corners of her attic. “Think how many more moths and mosquitoes there would be if the daddy longlegs weren’t there, Emma.”

  Think how many more moths and mosquitoes there would be if she didn’t have a good, old-fashioned fly swatter hanging by the door. But Emma would never say such a thing to her. Carrie had enough things looking to dim her smile. Emma would not add to them by even the smallest degree.

  “Will you survive until we have this measured up?” Amelia teased her. “Or should we have Kaffi now instead of after our work is done?”

  “Such rebels we’d be, playing first and working after.” Emma bumped her shoulder. “That cupcake will tide me over. So, what have we decided for our borders?”

  Amelia and Carrie exchanged a glance, and then Carrie said, “What do you think, Emma?”

  Why were they asking her? “I think that you two should decide. You’re better at making things pretty than I am.” Another glance. What were they up to? Did they think they were taking on too much and leaving her out? Because that was not so. “Anyway, we talked about this a little, before all Amelia’s excitement.”

  The arrival of Eli Fischer back in town when he’d heard outlandish rumors about Amelia’s health had broadcast to everyone in the settlement that he was head over heels for her, even if Amelia was the last person to find out. No one was surprised when he had quietly moved into a room at his cousin Martin King’s, since Martin’s boy Aaron had recently vacated it to go who knew where looking for work.

  “We did,” Carrie agreed now. “So then, a narrow strip of green around the piecing, then a narrow strip of color, and a wide border to quilt those twining feathers on, ja?”

  Emma nodded, and after a moment, Amelia did, too. “And why don’t we use the black and some burgundy as backing and binding? We can piece it in some nice way and use it up. The boys already have all the pants and shirts t
hey need for the spring.”

  “Eli might need some, too,” Emma said slyly, and tried not to smile when a blush crept up Amelia’s cheeks.

  “He already has Sunday pants and vests,” she said steadily while her face flamed. “What he’s really going to need are denims if he and my brothers ever stop talking about building a shop and actually do it.”

  “So he’s still going ahead with the mechanical conversion idea, then?” That would be wonderful gut. Right now, folks who wanted their washers and stoves converted from electricity to gas or hydraulic power had to go all the way to Strasburg to find someone to do the job. According to Karen’s John, having someone right there in Whinburg was a blessing akin to having vegetables in your own garden instead of going to town to buy them.

  Carrie turned from contemplating the quilt top. “But he can do that in Martin King’s barn. Building a real shop on your land for his business is a little premature, isn’t it?”

  Again, Amelia blushed. “It would be premature. And it would say something I’m not quite ready to say yet. No, such a shop would be for me to make pallets in. I still need to make a living, you know. It isn’t fair to ask Daed to support me until—I mean, if—”

  “But Amelia,” Carrie broke in, “it wouldn’t be fair to sell Melvin a share in your pallet shop and then start up another one so close.”

  “No,” Amelia agreed, and patted Carrie’s sleeve in reassurance. They all knew what it had meant to Carrie that her husband now had steady work as part of Amelia’s business. “All the commercial customers will stay with Melvin and Brian Steiner. But if a farmer out here or a smaller business in the district should happen to need some, then I can do it. Brian and Melvin will likely be too busy for the small, one-off orders, so we’ll be able to help out.”

  “We?” Emma raised an eyebrow.

  “I.” Amelia went to her sewing box and came back with a measuring tape. “Sometimes we. Eli can make a pallet as well as anyone.”