Redeeming Grace

“His father?”

“Dead.”

“He’s little for three,” Aunt Jezzy observed.

“But he’s strong. He was always a good baby, and he’s hardly ever sick. His father wasn’t a big man.” Grace looked into Hannah’s eyes and tried to keep from trembling. “Could you tell Jonas I’m here? Please. I’ve come a long way to find him.”

“How did you get all the way from Nebraska to Pennsylvania? Do you have a car?” Hannah asked.

Grace sighed. Her father’s wife was stalling, but she didn’t want to be rude. After all, Hannah had let her into the house and hadn’t kicked her out when Grace told her who she was. “We had a car, but the transmission went out on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It wasn’t worth fixing, so we left it.” She looked down at the floor. No use in telling them that the insurance had run out two weeks ago and that she had barely enough money for food and gas to get them to Belleville, let alone repair a 1996 Plymouth with a leaking radiator and 191,000 miles on it.

“So you went on to Belleville and then came here looking for Jonas?” Hannah looked thoughtful.

“I’m not asking for money. I don’t want anything from him or from any of you. I just want to meet him.” Grace chewed on her lower lip. “Since Trudie died, I haven’t had any family.” She hung her head. “Not really.” She looked up again. “So, I thought that if I found my father...maybe...” Her throat tightened and she could feel a prickling sensation behind her eyelids. Grace took a deep breath. She didn’t need to tell her father’s wife the whole story. She’d save it for him. She looked right at Hannah. “I need to talk to my father. Please,” she added firmly.

Hannah clasped a hand over her mouth and made a small sound of distress. “Oh, child.” She closed her eyes for a second and hugged Dakota. “Oh, my poor Grace. It pains me to tell you that your father...Jonas...he died four years ago of a heart attack.”

Grace stared at her in disbelief. Thank goodness she was sitting down; her legs felt a little weak. Dead? After she’d come so far to find him? How was that possible? Bad things come in threes, and if you don’t expect much out of life, you won’t be disappointed. Her mother always said that. But the awful words Hannah had just spoken were almost more than she could bear.

Her father was dead, too?

Dear God, Grace thought, how could You let this happen? First my mother, then Joe and now my father. Now she was glad they hadn’t eaten since her breakfast of Tastykakes. If she had anything in her stomach, it would be coming up.

“I’m so sorry,” Hannah said. “It must be a terrible shock to you. We’ve all had time to get used to Jonas’s passing. We miss him terribly. He was a good man, your father, the best husband in the world.”

“Not so good as we thought, that nephew of mine,” Aunt Jezzy observed, more to herself than the others. “Not if he fathered a child and didn’t take responsibility for her.”

“Hush, now, Aunt Jezzy,” Hannah softly chided. “We shouldn’t judge him. Jonas was a good man, but he was human, as we all are.” She kept her gaze fixed on Dakota’s sweet face. “He told me that he and Trudie Schrock had made a mistake, and that he’d repented of what he’d done. She left, suddenly, without telling him. No one knew where she went. She just left a note, telling her father that she didn’t want to be Plain anymore. Jonas never knew about you,” she told Grace, lifting her gaze. “You have my word on it.”

Grace nodded, trying to get her bearings again. Trying hard not to cry. What was she going to do now? Her whole plan had been based on getting to her father. She was going to come to him, tell him the mistakes she’d made and beg him to let her into his life. She was going to promise to make only good choices from now on, to find a good man who wouldn’t lie to her and deceive her. She was going to tell him she wanted to become—

“So.” Hannah smiled at her with tears in her eyes. “What do we do now, you and me? Where do we start, Grace Yoder?”

Grace felt shaky, her mind racing. What did she want the Yoders to do with her? What was her plan B?

Joe always said you had to have a plan B. “Maybe I could have that cup of coffee?”

Hannah chuckled. “You have your father’s good sense, Grace. Of course you shall have your coffee, and the soup I promised. Then we’ll all take ourselves off to bed. You’ll stay here tonight, and I won’t hear any arguments. I’ll put you and Dakota in the guest bedroom.”

“You’ll just let me stay?” Grace asked, truly surprised by Hannah’s kindness. Especially after the news Grace had just dumped in her lap about her husband. “You don’t know me. I could be a thief or an ax murderer.”

Hannah smiled at her. “I doubt that, not if you’re

Jonas’s girl. A straighter, more God-fearing man never lived. He might have stumbled once, but he never faltered. I’m sure you’re as trustworthy as any of your sisters.”

Susanna giggled. “A sister.”

“Thank you,” Grace managed. “Thank you all.” She looked at the women and the boy, all looking at her.

Exactly what she was going to do now?

* * *

Grace hadn’t thought she’d be able to sleep a wink, but she’d drifted off to the sound of rain falling against the windowpanes and the soft hum of Dakota’s breathing. And when she’d opened her eyes, it was full morning, the rain had stopped and the sun was shining.

My father is dead, she thought. She’d come all this way, only to find out that he was as lost to her as Trudie. She felt numb. What was plan B? Where did she go now? What did she do?

“I’m hungry,” Dakota said, interrupting her thoughts.

“Can I have more cookies?” He popped his thumb in his mouth.

“No cookies this morning,” she said.

No one had said a thing about Dakota’s dark skin the night before, but she’d be ready for their questions. When Hannah and her sisters asked, and Grace was sure they would, she’d tell the truth—that Dakota’s father had been Native American. Marg had said that the Amish were backward, old-fashioned and set in their ways. Grace hoped that didn’t include judging people by the color of their skin, because if they couldn’t accept Dakota, then she wanted no part of them.

But they hadn’t seemed to care.

Grace looked down at Dakota’s little face as her mind raced. Plan B. She had to have a plan B. But maybe...maybe plan B should be the same as plan A. Or close. Why couldn’t it be? Hannah had been so nice to her. So welcoming.

“Cookies aren’t for breakfast,” she told her son as she got out of bed and put her arms out to him. “But I’m sure Miss Hannah will be able to find something for you in her kitchen.”

Just thinking of that kitchen made a lump rise in Grace’s throat. It was exactly the kind of kitchen she’d expected to find in her father’s house, only better. It was big and warm and homey, all the things that the kitchens she’d known in her life weren’t. And the Amish she’d met last night, even suspicious Aunt Jezzy and tough Johanna, were right for Hannah’s kitchen.

What would it have been like to grow up here? she wondered. To belong to a world as safe as this one? To be part of a family who could welcome total strangers into their home and feed them and give them a place to sleep without asking for anything in return?

It all seemed too much. She’d just do what she’d always done when things got scary or uncertain. She’d do what was most important first and worry about the rest later. And now, finding something to feed her hungry child was what mattered. Plan B could wait.

She tidied the two of them up in the bathroom, took Dakota by the hand and, heart in her throat, led him back to the spacious kitchen.

Grace could smell coffee, bacon and other delicious odors coming from the kitchen as she walked down the hall. “Now, you be a good boy,” she whispered to

Dakota as she led him by the hand. Nervously, she slicked his cowlick back and tried to pat it down. “Show all these nice people just how sweet you are.”

Hannah, two of the sisters that she’d met the night before and Aunt Jezzy were gathered at the kitchen table.

“Miriam’s taking my place at the school this morning,” Hannah explained. “You’ll meet her, Ruth and Anna later. And this...” She waved toward a thirtyish brown-haired man in a blue chambray shirt and jeans sitting at the head of the table. “This is our friend John Hartman. John, this is Grace.”

Grace nodded. He didn’t look Amish to her. His hair was cropped short, almost in a military cut, and he had no beard. Definitely not a cowboy type; he was nice-looking in an old-fashioned, country way.

John rose to his feet, nodded and smiled at her. “Pleased to meet you, Grace.”

“He’s having breakfast,” Susanna explained as John sat down again. “He eats breakfast here a lot. He likes our breakfast.” She picked up Dakota and sat him next to her on an old wooden booster seat in a chair.

“I stopped by to check on one of Johanna’s ewes that got caught in a fence and Susanna caught me and...forced me to the table.”

Grace wanted to ask if he was a farmer; it sounded as if he knew something about animals. She liked animals, especially dogs, and she’d always felt more at ease around them than people. The best job she’d ever had was working at a kennel where she cleaned cages and took care of dogs boarded there while their families were on vacation. Trying not to say the wrong thing in front of her new family, though, she decided that the less she said to a strange man, the better.

Susanna laughed. “You’re silly, John. You said you were sooo hungry and Mam’s biscuits smelled sooo good.”

“I did and they do,” he agreed.

“He wanted to get married with Miriam,” Susanna happily explained, offering Dakota a cup of milk. “But she got married with Charley.”

John’s face flushed, but he shrugged, and looked right at Grace. “What can I say?” He grinned. “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.”

The others were laughing, so Grace forced a polite smile. John seemed like a stand-up guy, a real gentleman. As she accepted the cup of coffee Hannah handed her, Grace couldn’t help wondering why her half

sister had turned John down. If a man as good-looking as John, who had a job he could work when it rained, asked her, she’d marry him in a second.

Chapter Three

John finished off two slices of scrapple, two biscuits and a mound of scrambled eggs, but as much as he normally enjoyed Hannah’s cooking, he may as well have been eating his uncle’s frozen-in-a-box sausage bagels. He couldn’t take his eyes off the attractive, almost-model-thin redhead, wearing the strangest Plain clothing he’d ever seen on a woman.

Her name was Grace. A pretty name for a pretty girl. He knew he would have remembered her if he’d ever seen her before. She was obviously related to the Yoders; she looked like Hannah’s girls. From the attention she was giving the boy, she was probably his mother or at least his aunt. He didn’t look like the Yoders, though. And the two of them sure didn’t look Amish. So why had they spent the night here?

John was Mennonite, and among his people, staying in the homes of total strangers who shared the same faith was commonplace. Mennonites could travel all over the world and always be certain of a warm welcome from friendly hosts, whether it was for a weekend or a month. But the Amish were a people apart and rarely mingled socially with outsiders, who they called Englishers.

“‘Come out from among them and be separate.’” 2 Corinthian 6:14. It was a verse that John had heard quoted many times since he’d come to join his uncle’s and grandfather’s veterinary practice. Because he specialized in large farm animals, many of his clients were Old Order Amish. Mennonites and Amish shared many of the same principles, and because he’d come close to marrying a Yoder daughter, he’d gotten to know the Amish in a way that few Englishers did.

Who was this mystery woman with such a haunting look of vulnerability? And what was so important about Grace’s visit that Hannah—who never missed school—had taken the day off from teaching? John couldn’t wait to get one of the Yoders alone and find out.

He lingered as long as he could at the table, having more coffee, eating when he wasn’t really hungry and trying his best to engage Grace in conversation. But either she didn’t answer or gave only one-word responses to his questions, intriguing him even further.

Eventually, he ran out of excuses to sit at Hannah’s table and glanced at his watch. “I hate to leave such good company,” he said, “but I have an appointment out at Rob Miller’s farm.” Repeating his thanks and wishing the others a good day, he gave Grace one last smile, and left the kitchen.

Hannah followed him out onto the porch, carefully closing the door behind her. “Well, what do you think?” she asked, drying her clean hands on her apron. “Of our visitor?”

He wondered whether to play it safe and be polite or to be himself. Himself won. “Um...she’s nice. Pretty.” He met her gaze. “But, Hannah, I’m confused. Grace isn’t Amish, is she?”

“Ne, John, that she isn’t.”

“A friend of the family from out of town?”

“None of us had ever laid eyes on her until last night. She came to us out of the storm, soaked to the skin and near to exhaustion. She’d been hitchhiking.”

“Pretty dangerous for a young woman,” he observed, not sure where the conversation was going.

John could tell that Hannah was pondering something, and that she wanted to talk, yet the Amish tradition of intense privacy remained strong. John waited. Either she would share her concerns or she wouldn’t. No amount of nudging would budge her if she wanted to be secretive.

But then Hannah blurted right out, “Grace is my late husband’s daughter.”

“Jonas’s daughter?” John stared at her in disbelief. He’d never heard that Jonas had been married before. “Jonas was married—”

“Jonas and Grace’s mother never married. She ran away from the church. Jonas never knew she was in the family way.”

John couldn’t have been more shocked if a steer had been sitting at Hannah’s table this morning. For a moment he didn’t know what to say. Jonas Yoder had been one of the most genuinely kind and decent men he had ever known. It just didn’t seem to fit that Jonas would... “You’re certain this isn’t a scam of some kind?” He couldn’t imagine that the young woman he’d met inside could do anything dishonest, but Uncle Albert had often told him that he was naive when it came to seeing who or what people truly were. “She’s not trying to get anything from you? Money or something?”

“She’s asked for nothing. She came here looking for Jonas and I had to tell her he’d passed.”

Poor Grace, he thought. How terrible for her. But how terrible for Hannah, too. Not just to hear this news, to learn the awful truth about her beloved husband, but to have to tell his child that he was dead.

“I...believe the girl is who she says she is,” Hannah admitted, going on slowly. “Jonas told me...confided to me his affection for her mother, Trudie. Jonas was under the impression they were courting, then Trudie left the church and her family and disappeared. Jonas never knew anything about a baby. I would suspect her family didn’t, either.”

“It’s possible, I suppose.” John glanced out into the farmyard, feeling so badly for Hannah. Not wanting her to feel uncomfortable. This kind of thing was a delicate matter. Unwed young Amish women occasionally got pregnant, but it didn’t happen often. And when it did, there was repentance, then a quick wedding and the matter was settled. “She has the same color hair as your girls.”

“And Jonas’s blue eyes.”

John glanced toward the kitchen door, picturing again the guarded expression in the young woman’s gaze. “I thought there was something familiar about her. She favors Johanna, not as tall, and she’s a lot thinner, but...”

“Too thin by my way of thinking, but Miriam was always slender, too.”

John nodded. It hadn’t been easy, coming to accept losing Miriam. But after two years, he could see her or hear her name without feeling as though a horse had kicked him in the gut. And he could see that she’d made the right decision. She wouldn’t have been happy leaving the Amish, so as much as he hated to admit it, Charley was right for her.

“How do you feel about Grace coming here?” he asked. “It must be a shock to you.”

“Ya, a shock. It...is. My Jonas was as capable of making a mistake as any of us. As much as I loved and respected him...” She shrugged. “A bishop, my Jonas was, but I knew him to be a man first. His girls think him perfect.” She chuckled. “And the longer he’s dead, the more perfect he becomes.”

John grinned. “That happens a lot, and not just in your family. My mother and father didn’t always see eye to eye, but once he died, Mom promoted him to sainthood.”

Hannah laced her fingers together. “Whatever Jonas’s faults, he repented of them and asked God’s forgiveness every day. When he passed, he left me the means to care for his children and myself and nothing but good memories.” She walked down the steps and into the sunshine.

John followed her, giving her a moment before he spoke again. “You are the most remarkable person, Hannah Yoder. Most women would have been furious or so hurt, so bitter that they couldn’t have considered inviting the girl into their home.”

“Ne.” She shook her head and slowly slid down to sit on the top step of the porch. “I am not remarkable, only numb, like after you hit your thumb with a hammer. Before the pain starts.”

“But you didn’t take it out on Grace. That’s what matters. You had compassion for a stranger.”

“Why should I blame her? None of this is Grace’s fault. She’s innocent. I need to remember that. My girls will look to me to see how to treat her, as will the community.”

“I’m just saying, as your friend, that you have a right to be upset.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Her coming here changes your family. Forever.”

“And her,” Hannah said. “I don’t believe she has had an easy life. Her mother died when she was a child.”

“So she’s left without a mother or a father?” No wonder she had the look of a lost puppy, he thought. But then, he corrected himself. Not a puppy, but a feral kitten, wanting so badly to be loved, but ready to scratch to defend itself. “So now that she’s here, what are you going to do with her?”

Hannah frowned ever so gently. “Honestly, John, I have no idea.”

* * *

Later, after John left and the breakfast dishes were cleared away and Rebecca and Jonah had left for the other sister’s house, Grace watched as Johanna settled at the kitchen table with a pile of quilting pieces. Her daughter sat beside her, playing with her own squares of cloth. Just as the night before, Johanna seemed stiff and reserved. Grace couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t every day a stranger showed up claiming to be a long-lost sister. Katie, however, was all dimples and giggling personality in her Amish dress, apron and white cap.

“How old are you?” Grace asked the child.

“Drei!” Katie held up three fingers.

“My goodness, you’re a big girl for three,” Grace said. She and Dakota were the same age, but Katie was nearly a head taller and much sturdier. Shyly, her son hid behind her skirt and peered out at Katie. “Come out and meet Katie,” she said, taking his hand. She squatted down so that she was closer in size to the two of them. “Katie, this is Dakota.”

He stared at her, and Grace ruffled his hair. No matter how much she slicked it down, his coarse Indian hair insisted on sticking up like the straw in a scarecrow. No wonder Joe had grown his long and braided it. “Say hello,” she urged her son.

“’Lo,” he managed. Grace could tell that he wanted to play with Katie. Since she’d had to pull him out of day care back in Nebraska, Dakota had missed his friends.

Katie put a finger in her mouth and stared back.

“She doesn’t speak English very well yet,” Hannah said, walking into the kitchen. “But she understands it. Most children learn when they start school, but Jonas always insisted that we use both English and Pennsylvania Dutch at home, so the girls wouldn’t feel uncomfortable among the Englishers.” She looked at Johanna. “I know you need to get to your quilt, but if you, Grace and Susanna could hang out the wash, I can get that turkey in the oven.” She glanced at Grace. “I hope you don’t mind. We all pitch in to do the housework.”

“Sure,” Grace said. “I’ll be glad to help. Tell me what to do.”

“I’m just glad we’ve got sun and a good breeze,” Hannah said. “We’re expecting company this afternoon, and I’ve washed all the sheets. If it had kept raining, they would have been a mess to get dry.”

“Right,” Grace mused. “No electric dryer.” Then she considered what Hannah had just said and started to get nervous. About her new plan: plan B. “You’re getting company? I guess I picked a bad time to show up here.”

“Ne,” Hannah said. “It’s a big house. Friends of ours, the Roman Bylers, have relatives moving here from Indiana. Sadie and Ebben King bought the little farm down the road from us. They’ll be part of our church. Two of their sons and a daughter, all married, live here in Kent County, so they decided it was time to move east. They’ll be staying with us until the repairs are done and they get a new roof on.”

Grace wanted to ask why the Kings were staying with the Yoders instead of their own relatives, but she thought it better to keep her questions to herself. She didn’t want to be rude.

“They have one boy left at home,” Hannah continued. “David. He’s their youngest. He’s like our Susanna. Special.”

It took Grace a second to realize what Hannah meant. The son must have Down syndrome like Susanna. She nodded in understanding.

“Get those wet sheets, Johanna?” Hannah asked.

Minutes later, Dakota and Katie were happily playing together under Hannah’s watchful eye in the kitchen, while Grace, Susanna and Johanna hung laundry on the clothesline in the backyard.

As Grace hung a wet sheet on the line running between two poles, she took in her surroundings. It seemed almost too good to be true to Grace. The white house, the wide green lawn with carefully tended flower beds, and not a car or TV antenna in sight. The only sounds she heard were the breeze rustling through the tree branches, the creak of the windmill blades and the joyous song of a mockingbird.

Johanna, her mouth full of clothespins, was intent on attaching a row of dresses—blue, lavender and green dresses—while Susanna and Grace hung items from an overflowing basket of towels and sheets. Grace eyed the dresses and aprons wistfully. Today she’d put on a clean blouse from her bag, but she didn’t have another long skirt or apron so she’d had to put the same ones on again. Susanna and Johanna both wore modest Amish dresses in different shades of blue with white aprons and stiff white caps. Grace felt foolish with her men’s handkerchief tied over her hair, but no one had mentioned it, so maybe it wasn’t as bad as she thought.

Susanna hummed as she worked, but her older sister was clearly out of sorts. After a while, Grace took a deep breath and peered over the clothesline at Johanna. “I don’t blame you,” she said in a low voice.

Silence.

“I can see how it would be upsetting,” Grace went on. “Me coming here.”

Johanna reached down for a boy’s pair of blue trousers. “If you must know, I’m not sure I believe you. I don’t want to see my mother hurt.”

Grace felt her cheeks burning. She’d expected her stepmother to be the one who would try to deny her, not a sister. Not that Grace had even expected a sister. She’d never allowed herself to think any further than finding her father and hoping he’d claim her. Oh, there had been a family in the background in her daydreams, sort of a shadowy idea of younger brothers, but never in a million years had she considered that she’d find seven sisters.

And Johanna had been a surprise. She and Johanna looked so much alike, almost like twins, although Grace was shorter and skinnier. It was weird to Grace, seeing a stranger who looked so much like the face she saw in the mirror every time she brushed her teeth. And their light auburn hair, a shade you didn’t often see, was exactly the same color that Marg had said that Grace’s father’s had been.