Gabriel's Bride (4 page)

3

G
abriel had just rounded the last turn that would take him by the deacon’s house when the old man spoke again.

“That Rachel Yoder is a handsome woman.”

He wouldn’t call her handsome, and he certainly wouldn’t call her a woman. Slip of a girl was more like it. She had light brown hair and big brown eyes that somehow seemed bottomless and lost when they looked at him. She was easy enough on the eyes, he supposed.

“It’s a shame. Don’t know what she will do now.”

He shouldn’t be so suspicious, but something told him that he was being set up for something bigger than he could imagine.
“Jah?”

Esh gave a quick nod. “Her aunt had mortgaged the property and now the bank will take over. Poor Rachel will have to move.”

“That so.”

“Course’n her next kin lives on up in Holmes County.”

“Hmm . . .”

“In Ohio.”

Gabriel gave a swift nod. “That’s where Holmes County is.”

“I hate to see her go. Never been married, that Rachel Yoder.”

Just what was the deacon hinting toward?

“Make a good wife for someone who needs a partner. Hard working. God loving.
Gut
Amish woman.”

Ah-ha. So that’s what he was getting at.

“I’m sure she’d make a man a
gut
wife,” Gabriel said.
Just not me.

“You say the words, Gabriel Fisher, but you don’t have your heart behind them. When the time comes, you will see.”

Gabriel pulled the buggy to a stop in front of the deacon’s house. Nothing much stirred except the chickens and the dogs, and Gabriel figured Zane Carson was still with Katie Rose.

“A man should have a good woman behind him when he stands up for the Lord.”

How was he supposed to answer that? Esh hadn’t even stepped down yet, and Gabriel as surely hadn’t been chosen. God knew that he had enough on his plate raisin’ his family. The Good Lord wouldn’t lay this burden on him too.

“If you marry her, you’ll get the goats.” Esh opened the door and started to get down from the buggy while Gabriel stared at him gape-mouthed.

Gabriel roused himself with a shake of his head. “Marry her?” He climbed down, hustling around the front of the horses in order to brace the deacon as he stepped to the ground. It was well known that the Amish were an old-fashioned lot as it were, but he wasn’t about to barter a bride for a passel of goats. “I do believe you have been in the sun too long. Perhaps a wider brim on your hat is in order.”

“You know the bishop’s stand on that,” Deacon Esh said. “The wider a man’s hat brim, the more he has to hide.”

Gabriel laughed, hoping the deacon would let the subject drop. But it seemed that fortune was not on his side today.

“I saw you looking at them. They are fine goats. Many a marriage has been started with less.”

Gabriel sighed. The deacon meant well, but it seemed his good sense was as failing as his body these days. “I don’t need a wife.”

“But there’s where you’re wrong, boy. You need help with the
kinder
and the farm. A
gut
woman to cook and clean for you and help you raise your family. Rebecca would have wanted it that way.”

The deacon’s words cut him like a knife across his heart. It had been over six years, and he missed her like it had only been yesterday that she had gone to the Lord. He and his Rebecca, they had shared a love like the
Englisch
talked about, a once-in-a-lifetime bond that even death could not break. It wasn’t right for him to marry another knowing what he had with her could never be repeated.

“Now that Katie Rose and Mary Elizabeth have found their paths, you can’t put it off any longer. There comes a time in every man’s life when he must put aside his needs for the good of his family. In this case, you will benefit too. Stop acting like an old mule and hear what I’m telling you.”

Gabriel guided Ezekiel up the steps to his front door, opening the screen with one hand while still grasping the old man’s elbow in the other.

The deacon stepped into his house. Then he turned, his blue eyes as sharp as the blade on a hunting knife, and pointed a gnarled finger at Gabriel. “The Lord sees a need, and He provides for it. It is a sin to waste opportunities as surely as it is to defy God Himself.”

The deacon’s words kept repeating in his head over and over for the rest of the day and all of the following one. His house was slowly falling to disarray. Dirt piled up on the floor. Dishes stacked in the sink. He himself had been plowing all day.

After scrounging through the refrigerator for all the leftovers he could find, he managed to present the boys with a meal. Although it was odd in content, it was filling, and they wouldn’t go to bed hungry. He couldn’t say the same about the next day.

Gabriel sent the children to bed and eased his tired body into the rocking chair. He would read for a while, then get some rest himself. The dishes and such could wait. Plowing and planting were more important today.

He took his Bible from the knitting basket next to his chair and pulled on his wire-rimmed reading glasses. Yet the Lord’s verses could not hold his attention this night. It was the deacon’s words that kept coming back to him.

Maybe Esh was right. Maybe Gabriel did need a woman to help care for his brood, cook and clean, and otherwise handle the womanly chores. He had made it all these years without a wife. At first he’d had his sister, Katie Rose, and then Mary Elizabeth had grown and taken over more and more of the work load. Except for the cooking.

The thought brought a sad smile to his face. His Mary Elizabeth had never mastered the art of cooking. Her mother had been one of the finest in the county, but the skill had not been passed on.

Jah
, he needed womanly help at his farm, but that didn’t mean he had to take a wife. There was more than one way to skin a cat.

Decision made, he climbed the stairs to his room, the weight of the day a little easier knowing there was help in sight.

“
Guder mariye
, Rachel Yoder.”

At the
Deutsch
greeting, Rachel smiled at the postmaster behind the big wooden counter. For her it was always so special when the
Englisch
members of Clover Ridge welcomed the Plain folk so openly. She had read about the troubles others had in different communities all over the country. Why, there was even a group of Swartzentruber Amish who were being forced from their land in Pennsylvania. The group of nine families would have to move to another state where they would be allowed to carry on with their ultra-conservative ways. ’Course, she wasn’t sure that not allowing caution triangles on the back of their buggies was safe, and it did make a home look better to everyone if the owners were allowed to plant grass and pretty flowers, but it wasn’t hers to judge. She was just thankful that she lived in a community where such luxuries were approved.

Not for much longer,
the dark voice in her head reminded her.

She pushed the thought aside. She knew that the community where her cousin lived was more conservative than the districts in Clover Ridge, but that didn’t mean they went as far as the Swartzentruber. They were still in Holmes County,
jah
?

She smiled and handed Kevin the postman the card her delivery man had left in her box yesterday.

“Registered mail, huh? Must be real important. Give me a minute to find it.” He slapped the palm of one hand on the counter, then winked. “Be right back.”

“Danki.”
She gave him a quick nod of her head and watched as he disappeared into the back rooms of the building.

She had to look at this move as an adventure. A reluctant, misguided, unwanted adventure. Such was her lot in life. She was unmarried, orphaned, and had very little extended family. Even the community that, under normal circumstances, would have been like a family in her life, had been kept at a distance by her maiden aunt.

When she had first moved to Clover Ridge, injured and grieving the loss of her family, she hadn’t minded the seclusion. Now she could see the repercussions, and there were many.

“Here we are.” Kevin appeared behind the counter holding an official-looking letter with red, white, and blue stickers and bearing the name and address of the attorney her
Aenti
Katherine had used to finalize all the mortgage details.

Rachel’s heart gave a hard thump at the sight of it.

Kevin pushed a small card across the counter toward her. “Sign here by the
X
, and we’re all done.”

She hated that her hand shook as she penned her name on the line he indicated. She could pretend that moving wasn’t a reality as long as she didn’t have that paper in her possession. Now, pretending wasn’t an option.

“This just came in for you as well.” Kevin handed her another letter, this one not as official looking and bearing the return address of her distant cousin in Ohio. Or at least from his eldest daughter who was about to get married and start her own family away from her father’s house. That was why Albert Byler needed her help.

You should be thankful that you have a place to go, and family, however distant, that needs you and is willing to take you in.
Yet she wasn’t. She only felt sadness that she was about to be forced to leave Clover Ridge, as well as a twinge of jealousy that she would remain an old maid, never to have children of her own and the family that she’d desired for as long as she could remember.

She blinked back sudden tears and nodded her thanks to Kevin before hurrying out of the post office and into the bright morning sun. She still had to stop at the general store and pick up a loaf of bread. Of all the accomplishments of most Amish women, bread was not among Rachel’s. Baking just took up so much time. Time that could be spent tending her goats, making her cheese. Really, doing anything else.

First she had to see what Albert’s oldest daughter, Amanda, had to say.

Rachel stopped at the bench just outside the post office and sat down, tearing into the letter like a starving man tears through a
snitz
pie.

With trembling hands, she held the letter as steady as possible and began to read.

Dearest Cousin,

I suppose we are cousins even if four times removed. What a joy to learn that you are alive and well in Oklahoma. Everyone lost touch with you after the terrible accident that killed your
mamm
and
dat
and your
bruders
as well. And what a blessing for us that you are coming here to live after all these years. Even though I am saddened at the passing of Katherine, I am so looking forward to meeting you at last.

Our farm is not the largest in these parts, but
Vatter
does have a goodly amount of land to till and livestock to care for. It is for this reason that he regrets you will not be allowed to bring your goats here to Ohio. I’m confident that you can find a suitable buyer there in Clover Ridge who will be willing to give them a good home and surely at a fine price as well.