River of Mercy (4 page)

“Young Gideon?” Asa scratched his head as if to consider. “No, as a matter of fact, I haven't seen a sign of him all day. Have you?”

Gant shook his head. “No, but that's not unusual for a Sunday. He goes out to the farm sometimes on Saturday evening and stays through Sunday.”

“Didn't you say his mother and the doctor are out of town?”

“They are, but Gideon looks after things all the same. He still does quite a bit to help out around the farm whenever he can.”

Asa nodded, waiting while Gant poured the hot water into the sink. “He's a good boy. A good son.”

“He is,” Gant said, “but I think his mother would be a sight happier if he'd come home and be a good
Amish
son.”

“It's my night for the dishes,” Asa said, waving Gant out of the way. “Do you think he'll ever go back to the Amish settlement?”

Gant shrugged, standing back while Asa rolled up his shirtsleeves and plunged his hands into the sudsy water. “I'll dry,” he said, going in search of a clean dish towel. “There was a time when I would have thought he'd be unlikely to go back. Now I'm not so sure. I suspect there might be another attraction out that way besides the farm.”

Asa shot him a glance as he scrubbed a plate. “Oh?”

Gant grinned. “I've seen him talking to a certain young Amish lass every now and then when she comes to town, and he gets this spoony look on his face every time he manages to get within speaking distance of her.”

“Aha! So if he should go back to his people, do you think you would lose him from the shop?”

“Not necessarily, unless he wanted to return to farming full-time. A few Amish men are beginning to work elsewhere besides their farms. Not many as yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if more don't follow suit in the future.”

“Why? I thought the Amish preferred to stay mostly to themselves.”

“Oh, I'm sure that's their preference. But I wonder if the day won't come when land will be too scarce for them to make a living from farming alone. Huge sections are being grabbed up all over the place these days, and there's also the way the Amish pass land on to the families. Sooner or later they may have to branch out into other areas.”

Gant hung up the towel after drying the last dish. “In any event, I'd hate to lose Gideon. He has a natural flair for the wood, and the longer he works for me, the more conscientious he seems to be.”

Asa muttered something that sounded like “Probably afraid to be anything
but
conscientious.”

“I heard that.”

“Never was anything wrong with your hearing,” Asa said.

After that, Gant made an effort to be better company. As always, Asa had picked up on his dark mood. Ordinarily, Gant probably would have confided in his friend about what was bothering him. But he wasn't willing to discuss Rachel, not even with Asa.

And of course, it was Rachel who was troubling him.

Long after Asa went to bed, he sat up, thinking about the day. He'd been feeling pretty good after visiting with Ellie and the baby in the boardinghouse kitchen. The little one had a way of smiling her way into his heart, and Ellie, despite the loss of her husband, somehow always seemed to have a bright way about her. Ironic that she, who had endured such a terrible tragedy, should be responsible for lifting his spirits.

In a way, Ellie Sawyer puzzled him. She was almost childlike in her cheerful mannerisms and behavior. True, she was young—little more than a girl—but she was also a widow and a mother. Yet she had a way about her, a kind of innocence and optimism that didn't quite fit the hard life she'd apparently lived. Raised in an orphanage, obviously not much more than a child when she'd married, and now widowed with an infant to take care of, she still found it within her to make the best of what she'd been given.

It was entirely peculiar that he never left her without feeling a bit more lighthearted—but confused. That had been the way of it today.

And then, right after leaving the boarding house, he'd met up with Rachel, and the old ache had started up in him again. All he had to do was look at her, and the possibility that they would never be together brought a sadness that came rushing in on him like the winter wind.

No, not with Asa or anyone else could he talk about Rachel. But he couldn't stop thinking about her either, no more than he could stop loving her. And he couldn't quite bring himself to give up entirely on the hope that they might still have a future. Folly though it might be, a part of him deep within still clung to the hope that a new bishop would eventually be chosen for the Riverhaven Amish, and a new bishop could make all the difference for him and Rachel.

Recently it had come to light that their current bishop, the elderly Isaac Graber, would be retiring. Apparently his mind was going bad, and he also had a number of physical problems related to a long battle with diabetes. As Rachel had briefly explained the day of her mother's wedding to Doc Sebastian, a new bishop would eventually be chosen by lot from among their own.

Bishop Graber had refused to allow Gant to convert to the Amish church and marry Rachel, but Gant hoped that a new bishop might be more open-minded. Of the three men eligible to be included in the lot, Abe Gingerich or Malachi Esch might reconsider Bishop Graber's decision. Unfortunately, there was another man who might be considered for the position of bishop.

A man who had pursued Rachel for years with the intention of marrying her. A man who seemed to have appointed himself Gant's personal nemesis. A man who would take great delight in making certain that Gant and Rachel would never be free to wed.

If Samuel Beiler should be chosen as the next bishop, any hope Gant might ever have had for a future with Rachel would be forever lost.

3

Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing,
But tares, self-sown, have overtopp'd the wheat.

A
UBREY
T
HOMAS DE
V
ERE

T
uesday was Gideon Kanagy's usual day off from the carpentry shop. Typically, it was also the day he spent working at the family farm—the farm that would be his whenever he wanted it.

If
he ever wanted it. As the only son of a deceased father, he became the owner of the farm. Gideon, however, had no intention of settling down to a life of farming for a long time, if ever. So instead of his mother living in the nearby
Dawdi Haus
—a residence provided by the Amish for their retired parents—she remained in the main house for now while Gideon lived in Riverhaven above the carpentry shop.

He wasn't living Amish, and he didn't know if he ever would again. He sometimes dressed Plain—when he attended an Amish event with his mother, for example—but for the most part he lived
Englisch
and had for some time.

Even so, he still spent some of his time at the farm, doing what needed to be done, especially those tasks he thought too demanding for his mother. Today was no exception.

Although his recently married mother and Doc Sebastian had been in Baltimore paying a visit to Doc's son, they would be returning by train tomorrow. Gideon wanted to have the house in good condition when they arrived. He had spent the better part of the day doing inside work. He did his best to keep the house and other buildings on the property in good repair on a regular basis, but he'd still found a number of jobs that needed doing: patching here and painting there, fixing the stubborn handle on the pump in the kitchen, securing the threshold at the back door, and a few other things. He planned to spend the night in order to keep the fires going so the house would be toasty warm for Mamm and Doc the next day.

By two o'clock he'd managed to finish up most of what he had hoped to accomplish and was headed back toward Riverhaven in the shop wagon Captain Gant had let him use for the day. He wanted to stock up on some supplies for his mamm and Doc so they could enjoy their return home without having to make a trip into town right away.

The day before had brought sleet and wet snow to the area, which then turned sloppy and slippery, freezing overnight to leave a coating of ice on top. The road was treacherous in places, so he let Duffy, the shop horse, take his time along the way.

He was nearly to the crossroads when he spied a buggy in the ditch on the opposite side of the road. After another moment he realized that the young woman standing alongside was Emma Knepp.

He saw Emma fairly often, sometimes in town with her
dat
or a brother. Seldom did he meet up with her alone. When he did, she always seemed awkward, hesitant even to carry on a conversation. He hated that. Their families had been friends for years, and he and Emma's older brother, Joe, had spent a good amount of time together.

But of course the Knepp family would disapprove of him these days for living
Englisch
. They were civil if they chanced to meet—Gideon had never joined the church, so he wasn't under the
Bann
for living outside the community—but they showed no real warmth toward him. He sensed that Emma might like to be friends but was too reserved to respond to any gesture he might make in that direction.

When they were younger, some of his friends liked to tease him about Emma Knepp having a crush on him, but he'd never thought much about it one way or the other. At the time, she'd simply been Joe's little sister. And even if there had been something to their teasing back then, that was obviously no longer the case.

He was surprised to realize that the thought brought a faint twist of regret.