Elnora nodded. Rebekah noticed the hint of a glistening tear at the corner of her eye. “How do you make well a heart seizure, Mr. Williams?”
Mr. Williams twisted his hat faster. “Well ma’am, thing of it is—” He glanced down at her pa. His face had grown ghastly pale and he lay stiller than still, unnaturally still, in the bed. “Some folks come out of it, Mrs. Stoll. Most don’t.”
Elnora’s bottom lip began to tremble as the weight of Mr. Williams’s words found their way through the web of German and met their intended mark. “Oh no. Oh my, oh...my Samuel.” Elnora dipped low and cupped her husband’s limp hand in her own. A quiet, mumbled prayer filled the room with musical, somber German tones.
Staring at her heartbroken mother and dying father, improper words escaped Rebekah’s lips in a whisper. “Can the English doctors help my father, Mr. Williams?”
“I think they’re the only chance he’s got, little lady.” He glanced at Elnora. “With your permission ma’am, I can’t help but feel that time is of the essence.”
For the first time that Rebekah could recall, her mother’s eyes looked empty. Lost. Unsure. In all their years, she and her father had made decisions together. Especially big ones. And choosing whether or not to go against Amish tradition and accept treatment from English doctors was about as big as a decision could get.
Elnora opened her mouth, but no words came. Instead, her lips opened and closed in silence. Indecision was not a trait Rebekah normally attributed to her beautiful, knowledgeable mother.
“Ma?” Rebekah’s voice was meek. “May I offer a suggestion?”
Elnora closed her mouth. Her eyes crinkled at the ends, showing her age. She nodded.
“The people of Gasthof were accepting when you saved me on The Pike, even though I was of English blood. Then, they accepted my brother Peter...” She let her words trail off into the dark corners of the room and hang there, hoping their meanings would take root.
Finally, Elnora raised a hand. “Mr. Williams, my daughter is very wise. Life is most precious when it belongs to those we love the most. Thank you. We accept offer to take Samuel to English doctor in Montgomery.” Closing her eyes humbly, she stepped to the side.
“Rebekah, you or one of your brothers run down and pull my rig up to your doorstep. I’m going to carry your pa down.” He didn’t look at her as he gave the order, but moved quickly to Samuel’s side and began pulling back the covers. “Hurry now.”
Whirling with her dress skirt in hand, Rebekah didn’t stop to tell the new development to her waiting brothers in the hallway. Instead, she fled down the stairs, taking them two and three at a time. Stumbling over the bottom stair, she skipped across the floor and ran into the door sideways. She sucked in a gasp as her hand flew on its own to her shoulder.
Feels jammed, she managed to think before flinging open the door and racing into the freshly fallen darkness.
No sooner had she maneuvered Mr. Williams’s horse and wagon up to the front steps by moonlight, the husky Englishman appeared in the doorway with her father draped in his arms like a sick child. Jeremiah dashed around from the back, an armload of quilts in tow. “To make a bed for Pa, like he always did for us,” he muttered as he flung the fluffy blankets into the bed of the Williams’ wagon.
Rebekah attempted to tidy them as Mr. Williams laid her pa into the hastily constructed nest. He took care to pull a cornflower-blue one up to his chin. “I’ll have someone bring you word...unless one of the boys would like to come stay with me and my wife, so as to keep a better eye on Samuel?” He stepped around to the driver’s box and hefted his large frame up onto the seat.
Jeremiah climbed up onto the seat next to him with a deep nod. “I’ll come, Mr. Williams. Danke.”
“We’d certainly be honored to put you up, son. Rebekah, you’ll tell your ma, won’t you?”
Rebekah nodded. She stepped back and rubbed her throbbing shoulder. Mr. Williams snapped the reins and his rig, which carried two of the most important men in her life, and disappeared furiously down the dark path to town.
Rebekah squeezed her eyes shut and prayed through tight lips. “God, please be with them on their journey. Hold my father in Your hands and let us who are left behind accept Your divine will. Hold Mr. Williams’s family in Your hands and bless them and show them kindness, if it be Your will, as they have done for us. Amen.”
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.
