Joseph stepped nearer, close enough to embrace her. His breath was warm on her face, which was chilled by the night air. However, from the uneasiness that swirled behind his glittering eyes, Rebekah knew an embrace was the furthest thing from his mind. “Peter didn’t tell you? Katie is missing in Montgomery.”
The spell cast by his enchanting eyes and full lips was broken by his words. “Katie is...missing?”
Joseph inched nearer still, erasing the already infinitesimal distance between them. “Rumspringa is finished. She was supposed to meet Peter, but didn’t show up. He looked all over the city, but the shops were closed and nobody could tell him if they’d seen her.”
Fighting the urge to wrap her arms around him, Rebekah listened.
“Peter came home long enough to pack some supplies and find me. We’ve got to go find her, but I couldn’t leave without telling you goodbye.” He glanced at Elnora and touched the tip of his hat. “With your permission, Mrs. Stoll.”
Elnora closed her eyes and nodded a deep nod.
Leaning, Joseph pressed a kiss to Rebekah’s forehead and gave her shoulders a warm squeeze.
When her voice returned, her words came out throaty and deep. “There’s been an occurrence here too.”
When she was finished with the entire story of her father and Mr. Williams, Joseph turned and dashed into the barn. Moments later, he emerged with Samuel’s hand-hewn wheels, one under each arm. After they were deposited in the bed of his wagon, he made the trip again and again. Soon, all the finished wheels were loaded.
Joseph wiped one arm across his forehead. “I know your father would want his customers happy. If he isn’t able to make his delivery to Williams’s Livery right now, I will do it for him.”
A slow smile spread across Rebekah’s face as a quiet prayer of thanks bounced around in her mind. Thank you for making this selfless man my partner.
“Danke, Joseph,” Elnora breathed.
Joseph produced a hanky from his back pocket and dabbed at his glistening throat before flashing a dimpled smile to his intended. “I’ll be back soon, Rebekah. We have a special day coming up December the third.”
Before she could shake the fog from her mind, Joseph turned and clamored back onto the driver’s seat. He snapped the reins and turned his horse’s head.
“Gelassenheit,” Rebekah whispered as she waved to his retreating back, her heart heavy in her chest. “What is meant to be...will be.”
Rebekah glanced at her mother, whose knowing eyes glimmered with anticipation, as she waited for the almost imperceptible nod she knew was coming.
“Follow your heart, child, and trust in God,” Elnora whispered.
Rebekah’s heartbeat quickened to a gallop. “Joseph,” she called. “Wait!”
She hiked up the ends of her dress as she dashed into the house and up the stairs. Her quilting bag sat in a disheveled heap in the corner of the room. Not bothering to pause, Rebekah sprinted around the room and swooped up the bag, stuffing the fabric that would be her wedding dress down deep inside as she dashed back down the stairs in smooth stride.
Joseph sat in wonder, his eyes wide and sparkling, on the wagon seat. A smile lit his face as she dashed out the door and down the front steps, her bag in hand. Her breath came in huffs as she tossed her quilting bag into the wagon bed. “I’m coming with you.”
Chapter Three
Montgomery, Indiana
The night wind brushed Rebekah’s cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut in the wagon bed beneath the quilts Joseph had brought. I wish I had the foresight to bring something besides my quilting bag. She adjusted her makeshift pillow beneath her head. My fabric is going to be rumpled beyond repair in the morning...
Once they picked up Peter, snippets of their charged and ongoing conversation floated back from the wagon seat and filled Rebekah’s ears on the bumpy road to Montgomery.
“I had the feeling she wanted to stay with the English,” Peter lamented, his voice heavy and broken. “I went on Rumspringa to watch out for her, and I let her slip away at the last possible moment.”
Joseph’s voice was calming in its own special way. “You did the best you could, Peter.”
“But now here we are, only a few weeks from your wedding to my little sister, on a dark road back into the world of the English.” Peter’s voice turned to a growl. “Not how it’s supposed to be.”
The rocking of the wagon drew Rebekah into a light sleep, despite her inability to fully relax when Joseph was near. His words made her eyes flutter open a few moments, or hours, later. “What if she doesn’t want to come back, Peter?”
It seemed that Peter was no closer to sleep in that moment than she was. However, at Joseph’s heart-wrenching question, his voice was meek. “Then I believe that will break my heart, Joseph.”
The gentle clopping of the horse’s hooves on the gravelly trail punctuated the all-too-noticeable lull in conversation.
“You have been living with the Wagler’s, living Amish, for almost a year now, haven’t you?”
“Ya. My one-year anniversary will come right before you and Rebekah marry.”
Joseph exhaled audibly. “If Katie doesn’t come back, will you still be baptized in the Church?”
Rebekah propped up on one elbow. The prospect of being baptized in the Church was not one that was taken lightly by those born Amish, much less by those invited into the Amish culture—as Peter had been once it was discovered he was Rebekah’s brother.
When it was decided that Peter would stay on at Gasthof Village, the question had come up of where he would live. Rebekah’s parents, the Stolls, had been ready to volunteer their home; however, they just had their seventh child when Peter came along. Before they could speak up, Louise and Simon Wagler offered to take him on. Not only to teach him the Amish ways and school him on the faith, but to take him in as a son. Their only son, Rebekah’s age, had gone on Rumspringa and never came home, having chosen to stay English. Now, once he was baptized, Peter would become the Wagler’s son. He would take their name and become a member of the Church. He would become Amish. All of this had never been a question until Katie won his heart and then decided to miss their meeting to come back to Gasthof Village...back home.
Katie had never been Rebekah’s favorite person, especially not when she was intent on winning Joseph’s affections before Peter came into the village. Something about this particular Knepp twin, who was astoundingly opposite her twin sister and Rebekah’s friend, Annie Knepp, never sat right with her. Whether it was the sideways glances at Joseph when she thought Rebekah wasn’t looking or her shameless flirtation with him when Rebekah had been burned in her family’s barn fire, she wasn’t sure. But one thing remained. Rebekah simply couldn’t place all her trust in Katie Knepp.
Did something happen to Katie? Is she all right? The thoughts borne of concern for a fellow Amish girl flooded Rebekah’s mind, and she was powerless to stop them.
Was Katie really innocent in her disappearance? Was she simply trying to break away from my brother? Rebekah prayed incessantly for forgiveness for having thought such unforgiving thoughts, even as the most disturbing one of all swirled at the forefront of her mind. Rebekah’s jaw clenched.
Or could this be one last attempt at winning Joseph’s heart?
Peter shifting his weight on the creaky seat drew her from her brooding daydream. “I don’t know, Joseph. If I can’t have a life with Katie like you will have with my sister...” His voice trailed off into the Indiana night and spoke volumes. All three were no doubt thinking the same depressing thought. If your decision to become Amish is so loosely hinged, perhaps it isn’t the right decision for you, after all.
***
Katie Knepp sat alone on the wooden boardwalk of Montgomery’s Main Street, wondering what to do next.
It’s been hours since I missed meeting Peter, she thought as the guilt rose up into her throat. He looked so worried as he waited at the train depot before dashing down the street, glancing in alleyways.
But he’d never thought to look in the depot’s outhouse. She knew he wouldn’t, he was a gentleman. Which was precisely why she’d chosen that place to hide.
Thoughts of her parents and her sister, Annie, chased each other around in her mind. The urge to see them after so long with the English was suppressed only by knowing she would have to explain her absence at the depot and face a scolding. Or worse.
Somehow, I wasn’t ready to come home just yet. Leaving the English world just didn’t feel right at the time. Or, the thought of coming back and being plain again made my head hurt, weren’t things her loved ones would want to hear and would only hurt them. Katie shook her head. She never wanted to hurt those she loved, but it seemed that’s what she was best at nowadays.
The sky deepened to a hazy blue-black hue and the icy November winds swirled along the empty street. Katie hugged her knees to her chest. “I didn’t think this through very well.”
“Yah! Giddap!” A mishmash thundering of hooves on the packed earth made her jump. An Englishman in a tall, white hat drove a wagon at breakneck speed down Main Street before reining to a halt in front of the only door on the storefront façade with a candle still lit. “Doc, wake up! I got a sick man here.”
Katie watched, her mouth agape, as the man leapt from the wagon seat without bothering with the step. He flung back a cornflower blue quilt and exhaled audibly.
The familiar, musical tone of Pennsylvania Dutch came from the wagon. “He hasn’t moved since we left.”
