Exhaling a peaceful breath, Rebekah opened her eyes. She glanced down the dark path. Is somebody coming? She rubbed them, then squinted into the black. Sure enough, a rider was approaching, and fast. Something about him was familiar.
***
Peter Wagler’s face was glazed in sweat when he galloped onto the Stoll homestead, and his mouth, which was normally fixed in a perpetual smile since he joined the Amish community of Gasthof Village a year ago, was downcast and grim.
Rebekah’s own flash of a smile at her biological brother’s appearance flattened into a grim line as she studied his stormy green eyes. “Peter? I thought you were on Rumspringa with Katie?”
Rebekah had been more than a bit concerned at Katie Knepp’s sudden interest in her English-born brother with the gunfighter past when he appeared in her life a year ago. Rebekah’s life had been perfect, as perfect as could be, when Peter showed up and turned her world on end. He’d been tracking her for years, as soon as he was old enough, to find what happened to his infant sister after the wagon accident on The Pike that took their family and left them both orphans. After much prayer and a dash of pestilence, Peter decided to forsake the ways of the English and join the Amish. Since he was Rebekah’s biological brother, the village elders welcomed him with open arms.
After all, Katie had been her sole rival for the affections of Joseph Graber, but after much prayer and putting her own feelings aside, Rebekah was able to bless off on the budding relationship between Katie and Peter. Gelassenheit, it’s up to God’s divine reasoning.
Peter didn’t bother to dismount and his horse was jumpy. “Everything’s fine. Is Joseph here?”
“No, he isn’t.” Rebekah’s brow knit at Peter’s brash tone. “Should he be?”
Adjusting his hat, Peter wheeled his horse toward the blackness of the woods. “No time to chat. If you see him, please tell him I’m looking for him and it’s important.” Then, quick as he’d appeared, Peter was gone. She hadn’t even had the chance to tell him about her pa.
Heart thundering at her brother’s uncharacteristically charged display, Rebekah sucked in a deep, calming breath as she smoothed her plain dress. She exhaled hard, then breathed deep again. When her heartbeat was back to normal, she turned back to face her home.
Time to go in and check on everyone...and begin work on my wedding dress. Rebekah flinched at the thought of having to sew her dress. Alone.
As she trudged back to the house, thoughts of last year’s quilt she’d pieced together dampened her spirits further. Her quilt, which she’d worked on longer and harder than any other girl in Gasthof, had formed possibly the most lopsided, uneven set of stitches ever to grace a square.
How am I going to make an entire dress, one that is to be worn as I pledge my life to Joseph Graber, that won’t come apart at the seams and leave me in my skivvies in front of all Gasthof Village?
Butterflies took flight from the deepest recesses of her stomach and despite several more deep, calming breaths, they wouldn’t be quelled.
***
Elnora’s quiet cough from the corner of the quilting room didn’t surprise Rebekah when she dragged herself in.
“I thought you’d be coming here,” Elnora whispered. Moonbeams highlighted a complacent smile on her tired face. Wrapped in the unique quilt Rebekah had just been thinking about, baby Beanie slept in their mother’s lap as she rocked soundlessly in the chair Samuel had constructed so many little lifetimes ago.
“I’m worried about Pa,” Rebekah admitted.
“We’ve done what we can for your father, Rebekah. We placed him in God’s hands when he fell ill, and then the Englishman showed up as if on a prayer.” She glanced out the window into the night.
Rebekah studied her mother’s face. Ever-present lines, born from years of smiles and laughter, were smooth tonight. No doubt, Rebekah thought, Ma wishes she was there to care for the man she loves.
Her parents married earlier than other Amish couples in their quaint Austrian village. Elnora was a mere eighteen and her father Samuel, only nineteen. After marrying, they immediately joined up with other families bound for America and left Europe and all they knew behind. In all the years, from those early ones to this, never, not even for one night, had Elnora and Samuel Stoll been apart.
Elnora drew in a deep breath and turned back toward her. “Now, it’s up to God. Gelassenheit. He has a reason for everything He does, and it’s our job to accept, Rebekah. Not understand.”
Rebekah nodded, but still held the breath she’d sucked in.
“What else is bothering you, Daughter?”
Rebekah exhaled. “Peter rode up in a fever looking for Joseph. It was odd and I’m not sure what to make of it.”
“Your brother is a smart man, and wise to the ways of the English and the Amish. I’m sure he is fine.” Her pursed lips widened to a grin. “As is whoever he’s faughting over.”
“Katie Knepp,” they said in unison. Rebekah shifted her weight when their giggles subsided.
Elnora’s brow furrowed. “What else?”
Rebekah paused. “I’m worried about sewing this dress.” She cast a forlorn glance at her rumpled quilting bag. Other girls in Gasthof kept their quilting supplies pristine and crisp, but for Rebekah, it was all she could do to keep up with the bag itself. “Ma, what if it comes apart at the seams during the ceremony?”
A lesser mother would have laughed, but Elnora nodded thoughtfully. “Our customs say a woman is to sew her own wedding dress with her own hands.” She stopped rocking. “They also say to limit contact with the English. And their medicine.”
Rebekah studied the floor and ignored the burn in her shoulder.
“So tell me. Do you think a woman, one that lets her husband be treated by the English, would let her daughter be married in a dress that might fall apart?” Her blue eyes twinkled when Rebekah met her gaze.
A warmth that grew in her belly slowly replaced the last of the lingering bat-like butterflies. “I don’t think so.”
Rebekah plucked up her bag and situated herself in a straight-backed chair, opposite her ma. “Pride is wrong, but I can’t help but feel proud that you’re my mother.”
Almost cheerily, she pulled out a length of blue fabric that would hopefully be the front panel of her dress and a sleeve. Eventually.
Elnora absently patted baby Beanie. “We’ll see if you still feel that way when I tell you another of the bride’s duties that I’ve neglected to tell you until now.”
Needle poised just above the material, Rebekah’s smile melted from her lips.
“Once your dress is complete, custom says you are to begin work on dresses for your newehockers. How many maids will there be again?”
Rebekah let her deflated hands, still holding the needle and material, sink slowly into her lap. “Well, Annie Knepp,” she began, tears cracking her voice and burning in her throat. “And Katie.” She sniffled back the emotion that welled in her eyes. “Now none of us will have dresses that stay on through my wedding!”
Unable to help herself, Rebekah sobbed into her hands.
“Rebekah,” Elnora began. The thundering of horse hooves and a man’s yell cut into her words.
Rebekah lifted her head and sniffled.
Elnora was already on her feet. “Perhaps it’s word of your Pa.”
Her mother rustled out of the room and deposited Beanie in his crib. Rebekah let the fabric fall over her bag and she dashed to the top of the stairs. Elnora was already there and her breathless words emerged in a flutter. “Come on.”
Rebekah matched her mother’s footsteps down the stairs, all seventeen of them. At the bottom, Elnora flung open the door before whoever was on the other side could knock. Rebekah sucked in a breath when she saw who had come calling.
There he sat in a wagon box, tall and darkly handsome. Joseph Graber. His eyes glittered in the moonlight. Rebekah’s heart, which threatened to soar out of her chest when she saw her love, deflated as she tried to make sense of Joseph’s somber face.
Joseph didn’t bother with a proper greeting. “Peter found me. I couldn’t leave without telling you goodbye.” He sat the reins aside and climbed down from the wooden bench seat.
Rebekah’s initial surge of excitement at his sudden appearance further abated at his words.
Goodbye?
“Joseph, I don’t understand...”
