Amish Homecoming

Leah paused out of earshot of the sleeping girl and faced Ezra. The sunlight turned his brown hair to the shade of spun caramel that made his brown eyes look even darker. How many times she had teased him about his long lashes she had secretly envied! Then his eyes had crinkled with laughter, but now when she looked into those once-familiar eyes, she saw nothing but questions.

“Johnny was hurt in a really bad construction accident, and he never fully recovered.” She looked down at Shep, who was whining at the mention of his master’s name. The poor dog had been in mourning since her twin brother’s death, and she had no idea how to comfort him. “In fact, Shep was his service dog.” She stroked the dog’s silken head.

“Why didn’t you come home after Johnny was hurt?”

“He said he didn’t want to be a burden on the community.” She thought of the horrendous medical bills that had piled up and how she had struggled to pay what the insurance didn’t cover. Johnny’s friends told her that they should sue the construction company, but she had no idea how to hire an attorney. Instead, she had focused on her quilts, taking them to shops to sell them on consignment or to nearby craft fairs.

“No one is a burden in a time of need.” Ezra frowned. “Both of you know that because you lived here when Ben Lee Chupp got his arm caught in the baler, and the doctors had to sew it back on. Everyone in our district and in his wife’s district helped raise money to pay for his expenses. We would have gladly done the same for Johnny.”

“I know, but Johnny didn’t feel the same.” She bit her lip to keep from adding she was sure the financial obligations were not the main reason behind her brother’s refusal. He had told her once, when he was in a deep melancholy, that he had vowed never to return home until their daed apologized to him for what Daed had said the night Johnny decided to leave.

That had never happened, and she had known it wouldn’t. Johnny had inherited his stubbornness from Daed.

Ezra looked past her, and she turned to see Mandy standing behind her. Her niece was the image of Johnny, right down to the sprinkling of freckles across her apple-round cheeks. There might be something of Mandy’s mamm in her looks, but Leah didn’t remember much about the young Englisch woman who had never exchanged marriage vows with Johnny.

Leah knew her mamm had been pleased to see her granddaughter dressed in plain clothes at breakfast, and the dark green dress and white kapp did suit Mandy. However, Leah sensed Mandy viewed the clothing as dressing up, in the same way she had enjoyed wearing costumes and pretending to be a princess when she went to her best friend Isabella’s house. Mandy seemed outwardly accepting of the abrupt changes in her life, but Leah couldn’t forget the trails of tears on her niece’s cheeks that morning.

Motioning for Mandy to come forward, she said with a smile, “This is Amanda, Johnny’s daughter. We call her Mandy, and she is my favorite nine-year-old niece.”

“I am your only nine-year-old niece, Aunt Leah.” Mandy rolled her eyes with the eloquence of a preteen.

“Ja, you are, but you’re my favorite one.” She put her arm around Mandy’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “This is Ezra Stoltzfus. He lives on the farm on the other side of our fields.”

“I spoke with your daed the day before yesterday,” Ezra said as he looked from Mandy to Leah, “and he didn’t say anything about you coming to visit.”

“Coming home,” Leah corrected in little more than a whisper.

“I see. Then I guess I should say welcome home, Leah.” He didn’t add anything else as he strode away.

She stood where she was and watched him go into his brother’s buggy shop. When he did not look back, she sighed. She might have come home, but her journey back to the life she once had taken for granted had only begun.

Chapter Two

Ezra walked between the two rows of cows on the lower level of the white barn. He checked the ones being milked. The sound of the diesel generator from the small lean-to beyond the main barn rumbled through the concrete floor beneath his feet. It ran the refrigeration unit on the bulk tank where the milk was kept until it could be picked up by a trucker from the local processing plant.

He drew in a deep breath of the comforting scents of hay and grain and the cows. For most of his life, the place he’d felt most at ease was the bank barn. The upper floor was on the same level as the house and served as a haymow and a place to store the field equipment. On the lower level that opened out into the fields were the milking parlor and more storage.

He enjoyed working with the animals and watching calves grow to heifers before having calves of their own. He kept the best milkers and sold the rest so he could buy more Brown Swiss cows to replace the black-and-white Holsteins his daed had preferred. The gray-brown Swiss breed was particularly docile and well-known for producing milk with the perfect amount of cream for making cheese.

He hoped, by late summer, to be able to set aside enough milk to begin making cheese to sell. That was when the milk was at its sweetest and creamiest. He might have some soft cheese ready to be served during the wedding season in November or December if one of his bachelor brothers decided to get married.

He squatted and removed the suction milking can from a cow. He patted her back before carrying the heavy can to the bulk tank. She never paused in eating from the serving of grain he’d measured out for her. Opening the can, he emptied the milk into the tank. He closed both up and hooked the milking can to the next cow after cleaning her udder, a process he repeated thirty-one times twice a day.

Usually he used the time to pray and to map out what tasks he needed to do either that day or the next. Tonight, his thoughts were in a commotion, flitting about like a flock of frightened birds flying up from a meadow. He had not been able to rein them in since his remarkable conversation with Leah.

Johnny was dead. He found that unbelievable. Leah had come back and brought Johnny’s kind with her. Even more unbelievable, though he had hoped for many years she would return to Paradise Springs.

Her mamm must be thrilled to have her and her niece home and devastated by Johnny’s death. How would Abram react? The old man had not spoken his twins’ names after they left. But Abram kept a lot to himself, and Ezra always wondered if Abram missed Leah and Johnny as much as the rest of his family did.

If his neighbor did not welcome his daughter and granddaughter home, would Leah leave again and, this time, never come back?

“Think of something else,” he muttered to himself as he continued the familiarly comforting process of milking.

“If you’re talking to the cows, you’re not going to get an answer,” came his brother Isaiah’s voice.

Ezra stood. Isaiah was less than a year younger than he was, and they were the closest among the seven Stoltzfus brothers. Isaiah had married Rose Mast the last week of December. He had been trying to grow his pale blond beard since then, but it remained patchy and uneven.

“If I got an answer,” he said, leaning his arms on the cow’s broad back, “I would need my head examined.”

“That might not be a bad idea under the circumstances.”

“Circumstances?”

Isaiah chuckled tersely. “Don’t play dumb with me. I know Leah Beiler’s reappearance in Paradise Springs must be throwing you for a loop. You two were really cozy before she left.”

“We were friends. We’d been friends for years.” Friends who shared one perfect kiss one perfect night. He wasn’t about to mention that to his brother.

Isaiah was already worried about him. Ezra could tell from the dullness in his brother’s eyes. Most of the time, they had a brightness that flickered in them like the freshly stirred coals in his smithy.

“Watch yourself,” Isaiah said, as always the most cautious one in their family. “She jumped the fence once with her brother. Who knows? She may decide to do so again.”

“I realize that.”

“Gut.”

“Gut,” Ezra agreed, even though it was the last word he would have used to describe the situation.

His brother was right. When a young person left—jumped the fence, as it was called—they might return...for a while. Few were baptized into their faith, and most of them eventually drifted away again after realizing they no longer felt as if they belonged with their family and onetime friends.

While he finished the milking with Isaiah’s help, they talked about when the crops should go in, early enough to get a second harvest but not so early the plants would be killed in a late frost. They talked about a new commission Isaiah had gotten at his smithy from an Englisch designer for a circular staircase. They talked about who might be chosen to become their next minister.

They talked about everything except the Beiler twins.

Ezra thanked his brother for his help as they turned the herd into the field as they always did after milking once spring arrived. Letting the cows graze in the pasture until nights got cold again instead of feeding them in the barn saved time and hay. When he followed Isaiah out of the barn and bade his brother a gut night, low clouds warned it would rain soon. The rest of his brothers were getting cleaned up at the outdoor pump before heading in for supper. Again, as they chatted about their day, everyone was careful not to talk about the Beilers, though he saw their curious looks in his direction.

As he washed his hands in the cold water, he couldn’t keep himself from glancing across the fields to where the Beilers’ house glowed with soft light in the thickening twilight. He jerked his gaze away. He should duck his head under the icy water and try to wash thoughts of Leah out of his brain.

Hadn’t he learned anything in the past ten years? Did he want to endure that grief and uncertainty again? No! Well, there was his answer. He needed to stop thinking about her.

The kitchen was busy as it was every night, but even more so tonight because Joshua and his three kinder were joining them for supper. Most nights they did. Sometimes, Joshua cooked at his house down the road, or his young daughter attempted to prepare a meal.

With the ease of a lifetime of habit, the family gathered at the table. Joshua, as the oldest son, sat where Daed once did while Mamm sat at the foot of the table, close to the stove. The rest of them chose the seats they’d used their whole lives, and Joshua’s younger son, Levi, claimed the chair across from Ezra, the chair where Isaiah had sat before he got married. Esther put two more baskets of rolls on the table, then took her seat next to Mamm. When Joshua bowed his head for silent prayer, the rest of them did as well.

Ezra knew he should be thanking God for the food in front of him, but all he could think of was his conversation with Leah and how he was going to have to get used to having her living across the fields again. He added a few hasty words of gratitude to his wandering prayer when Joshua cleared his throat to let them know grace was completed.

Bowls of potatoes and vegetables were passed around along with the platters of chicken and the baskets of rolls. Lost in his thoughts, Ezra didn’t pay much attention to anything until he heard Joshua say, “Johnny Beiler is dead.”

“Oh,” Mamm said with a sigh, “I prayed that poor boy would come to his senses and return to Paradise Springs. What about Leah?”

Amos lowered his fork to his plate. “She came into the market today and asked if I would be willing to display some of her quilts for sale.”

“What did you say?” asked Ezra, then wished he hadn’t when his whole family looked at him.

“I said ja, of course.” Amos frowned. “You know I always make room for any of our neighbors to sell their crafts. From what she said, she hopes to provide for her niece by selling quilts as she did when she was in Philadelphia.”

Joshua looked up. “I have room for a few at the buggy shop. You know how many Englisch tourists we get wandering in to see the shop, and they love quilts.”

“I will let her know.” Amos smiled. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”

“That is gut of you boys.” Then Mamm asked, as she glanced around the table, “How is Leah doing?”

As if on cue, a knock sounded on the kitchen door. When Deborah, Joshua’s youngest, ran to answer it, Ezra almost choked on his mouthful of chicken.

Leah and her niece stood there. For a moment, he was thrown back in time to the many occasions when Leah had come to the house to ask him to go berry picking or fishing or for a walk with her. As often, he’d gone to her house with an invitation to do something fun or a job they liked doing together.

But those days, he reminded himself sternly, were gone. And if he had half an ounce of sense, he’d make sure they never came back.

* * *

“I’m sorry to disturb your supper,” Leah said, keeping her arm around Mandy as she stepped inside the warm kitchen where the Stoltzfus family gathered around the long trestle table. The room was almost identical to the one at her parents’ house, except the walls behind the large woodstove that claimed one wall along with the newer propane stove were pale blue instead of green. Aware of the Stoltzfus eyes focused on them, she hurried to say, “Shep is missing, and we thought he might have come over here.”

“Shep?” asked Esther. “Who is Shep?”

Leah smiled at Esther, who had been starting fourth grade when she and Johnny went away. Now she was a lovely young woman who must be turning the heads of teenage boys. When Esther returned her smile tentatively, Leah described the little black Cairn Terrier, which was unlike the large dogs found on farms in the area. Those dogs were working dogs, watching the animals and keeping predators away. Shep had had his own tasks, and Leah wondered what the poor pup thought now that he didn’t need to perform them. Did he feel as lost as she did?

“Let me get a flashlight, and I’ll help you search.” Ezra pushed back his chair and got up.

His brothers volunteered to help, too, but everyone froze when Mandy said, “I didn’t know Amish could use flashlights. I thought you didn’t use electricity.”

Heat rose up Leah’s cheeks, and she guessed they were crimson. “Mandy...”

“Let the kind ask questions, Leah,” Wanda, Ezra’s mamm, said with a gentle smile. “How else do we learn if we don’t ask questions? I remember you had plenty of questions of your own when you were her age.” She patted the bench beside her. “Why don’t you sit here with Deborah and me? You can have the last piece of snitz pie while we talk.”

“Snitz?” asked Mandy with an uneasy glance at Leah. “What’s a snitz?”

“Dried apple pie.” Leah smiled. “Wanda makes a delicious snitz pie.”

“Better than Grandma’s?”

Wanda patted Mandy’s hand and brought the kind to sit beside her. “Your grossmammi is a wunderbaar cook. There is no reason to choose which pie is better when God has given you the chance to enjoy both.” Behind the girl’s back, she motioned for Leah and her sons to begin their search for the missing dog.

While Ezra’s brothers headed into the storm, Leah went out on the back porch and grimaced. It was raining. She should have paused to grab a coat before leaving the house, but Mandy was desolate at the idea of losing Shep. When Mandy asked if the dog had gone “home to Philly,” Leah’s heart had threatened to break again. The little girl didn’t say much about her daed’s death, but Leah knew it was on her mind all the time.

As it was on her own.

“Here.”

She smiled as Ezra held out an open umbrella to her. “Thank you.”

He snapped another open at the same time he switched on a flashlight. “Where should we look?”

“Shep likes other animals. Let’s look in your barn first, and then we can search the fields if we don’t find him.”

“I hope he hasn’t taken it into his head to chase my cows.”

She shook her head. “From the way he’s reacted to cows and horses, I don’t think he knows quite what they are. He is curious. Nothing more.”

“Let’s hope he’s in the barn. There have been reports of coydogs in the area. Some of our neighbors have lost chickens.”

Leah shuddered. The feral dogs that were half coyote were the bane of a farmer’s life. They were skilled hunters and not as afraid of humans as other wild animals were. Little Shep wouldn’t stand a chance against the larger predator.

As they left the lights from the house behind, she added, “Thanks for helping. I didn’t mean to make you leave in the middle of supper.”

“Your niece looked pretty upset, and Esther offered to keep our suppers warm in the oven. The cows are this way.”

“I remember.”

He didn’t answer as they walked to the milking parlor. Spraying the light into the lower floor, he remained silent as she called Shep’s name.

“I missed this,” she murmured.

“Walking around in the rain?”

She shook her head and tilted her umbrella to look up at him. “Barn scents. The city smelled of heat off the concrete and asphalt, as well as car exhaust and the reek of trash before it was picked up. I missed the simple odors of this life.”

“You could have come home.”

“Not without Johnny.” Her voice broke as she added, “Even though when I finally came back, he didn’t come with me.”

“I’m sorry he is dead, Leah. I should have said so before.” He paused as they closed their umbrellas and walked together between the gutters in the milking parlor. “My only excuse is that I was shocked to see you.”

“I understand.” She shouted the dog’s name. The conversation was wandering into personal areas, and she wanted to avoid going in that direction.

She wouldn’t have come over to the Stoltzfus family home tonight if Mamm hadn’t mentioned possibly seeing Shep racing through the field between their farms. Even then, she would have suggested waiting until daylight to search for the pup except that Mandy was in tears.

“I don’t think Shep is here,” she said after a few minutes of spraying the corners with light.

“Let’s walk along the fence. Maybe he’s close enough to hear you and will come back.” His grim face suggested he was unsure they would find Shep tonight.

She put up her umbrella so she didn’t have to look at his pessimistic frown. If she did, she might not be able to halt herself from asking where the enthusiastic, happy young man she’d known had vanished to.

How foolish she had been to think nothing would change!

If she could turn back the clock, she might never have gone with Johnny that night when he promised her ice cream and then took her far from everything she’d ever known. She sighed silently. Johnny had asked her to come with him because he needed her. Not that he had any idea then how much he would come to depend on her, but she had always rescued him from other predicaments. Maybe he had hoped she would save him that time, too, but he was too deeply involved with Carleen, his pregnant Englisch girlfriend, by then.

Leah wondered what Ezra was thinking as they walked along the fence enclosing the pasture. She guessed she’d be smarter not to ask. He remained silent, so the only sound was the plop of raindrops on the umbrellas except when she shouted for the dog.

Because of that, she was able to hear a faint bark. It was coming from the direction of the creek that divided the Stoltzfus farm from her parents’. She ran through the wet grass, not paying attention to how her umbrella flopped behind her and rain pelted her face.

Ezra matched her steps, his flashlight aimed out in front of them. He put out an arm, and she slid to a stop before striking it.

“Careful,” he said. “You don’t want to fall in the creek tonight.”

“The bank—”

“Collapsed two years ago, and the water is closer than you remember.”

“Danki.”

He nodded at her thanks but said nothing more.

How had the talkative boy become this curt man? What had happened to him in the years after she left Paradise Springs? She wanted to ask that as much as she wanted to find Shep, but she didn’t.

Calling out the dog’s name again, she relaxed when she heard a clatter in the brush. “Ezra, point the flashlight a little farther to the left.”

“Here?”

She almost put her hand on his arm to guide him but pulled back. Even a casual touch would be foolish. “A bit farther.”

She let out a cry of joy when light caught in two big eyes and Shep yipped a greeting. She squatted as he burst out of the brush. He leaped up and put his paws on her knees, the signal he had learned to show he was ready to assist. With a gasp, she stood and stared at the pair of paw prints on the front of her skirt.

Shep deflated as if he had been scolded.

Bending over, she patted his soaked head. “Come, Shep. Stay with us.”

He jumped to his feet, his tail wagging wildly. His tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth in what was his doggy smile.

“Do you have a leash for him?” Ezra asked as she turned to walk back to the house with Shep happily trotting by her side far enough away so the rain didn’t run off the umbrella onto him. “If he ran away once, he’ll run again.”

Was he talking about the dog, or was he speaking of her, too? He’d made it clear he didn’t think she intended to stay in Paradise Springs. Pretending to take his words at face value, she said, “Shep is fine now that he has something he knows he should do.” She smiled sadly while they crossed the field back toward the house. “I need to keep him busy. He’s a service dog, not a pet.”

“You called him a service dog before. What does that mean?” He glanced at the dog and jumped back when Shep shook himself.

“Shep!” cried Mandy as she and Deborah ran from the house. “You found him! You found him!”

Leah snagged Shep’s collar before he could run up the porch stairs and get the two girls wet. She sent the girls to ask Wanda for some towels so they could dry off the dog and themselves. She didn’t want to track mud into the house.

“Old ones,” she called after them. As soon as the screen door slammed in their wake, she turned back to Ezra. “You asked what a service dog is. They are dogs trained to help people who need assistance with everyday things.”

“I’ve seen Englisch tourists with guide dogs. Usually German shepherds. What kind of service can something Shep’s size do?”

“Don’t let his size fool you. Shep is one-third heart, one-third brain, and one-third nose. After the accident, Johnny often had seizures. If he was doing something, like getting from his bed to his wheelchair, he could fall and be hurt. Shep helped by alerting us to an upcoming seizure.”

“A dog can do that?” He stepped aside when Amos came out on the porch with ragged towels.

“Heard you had a very wet dog out here.” He chuckled. “I can see the girls weren’t exaggerating.”

Taking a towel and thanking him, grateful for his acceptance of her as she’d been when he greeted her at his store as if she’d never left, Leah began drying the dog. She looked up at Ezra and said, “I didn’t believe it myself at first. The doctor told us some dogs can sense a change in a person’s odor that happens just before a seizure.” She gave Shep another rub, leaving the dog’s hair stuck up in every direction. “He let us know about Johnny’s seizures. That way, we could be sure Johnny was secure so he wouldn’t hit things when the seizures started. After we got Shep, Johnny no longer was covered with bruises.”

Ezra picked up the damp dog and rubbed his head. Shep rewarded him with a lick on the cheek.

“He likes you!” Mandy rushed out onto the porch. “Look, Aunt Leah! Esther gave me some of her date cookies. They’re yummy!” She paused, then reached into her apron pocket. “She sent some out for you, too.”

Ezra put the dog down and took the crumbling cookie she held out to him. Shep lapped up the crumbs the second they hit the ground.

“Can Deborah come over and play?” Mandy leaned into Leah and said in a whisper, “She’s my age, you know.”