Love Inspired June 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 Read online

  “Only because we’re trying our best to make this a peaceful time for Mammi,” she said. “If it weren’t for her, we would be.”

  Amos licked his lips, then took a step back. “Maybe I shouldn’t have kissed you, but I do care about whatever it was that made you look so heartbroken a minute ago.”

  “I’m not heartbroken...” She swallowed, and as if to prove her wrong, tears misted her eyes.

  “You are...”

  She looked around the kitchen, at the newly familiar table and chairs, the cupboards that used to be hers, the chipped blue teapot that sat on the counter, still warm with leftover tea.

  “I’m going back to Edson to run my own business,” she said softly, and she looked up at Amos, then wiped an errant tear from her cheek. “That’s all.”

  And she’d be forced to walk away from this house all over again—put it behind her, and go start over in Edson, where people knew and respected her, and where there was no husband to cook for, no old woman to care for... No one who needed her.

  “You wanted that life in Edson,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  “I still want it,” she said. “But I suppose coming back has reminded me of all the things I’d wanted when we first got married—all those silly, girlish hopes I had for our life together.”

  “I had a few hopes, too,” he said quietly.

  “Oh?” Was this where he told her where she’d let him down?

  “I’m just saying that when you leave, it’s going to be hard for me, too,” he said. “But I won’t apologize for kissing my own wife. There was no sin in that.”

  Kissing him had always been easier than talking to him. It had been easier than facing their differences, or finding solutions. Of course, a married couple should have a life filled with affection and love, but they hadn’t used married love to tie them together—they’d used it to forget their last fight.

  “Amos, I can’t do this,” she whispered. “I’m tired and I’m sad. I’m dealing with my father’s death, and your grandmother’s illness, and—” She swallowed. “I’m not at my strongest.”

  Because when she was at her strongest, she could see her way through all of this. She could see the other end—when she got past the heartbreak again, and she realized that while neither of them had dreamed of this separate life, they were happier apart.

  “I know. Me, neither,” he said. “But having you here is nice all the same.”

  For now. But for how long? Their relationship didn’t have what it took to last, and it was easy to forget that in emotional moments like this one.

  “Natasha Zook was telling me why she was willing to become Amish,” Miriam said. “Because if you get to know that woman, her becoming Amish makes no sense! She’s not even Mennonite! She’s English to the core, and yet here she is dressed in Amish clothing, burning her food on a woodstove and driving around in a pickup truck.” Miriam shook her head. “And she’s determined to be Amish. Why?”

  “The Amish faith is pure and she can see the Christian love we have here—”

  “The Amish faith is many wonderful things,” Miriam said, cutting him off. “But that’s not why. Her decision was far from theological, Amos. She said she was willing to do it because she loved him. But more than love, she said she truly believed that Gott had created her and Wollie for each other. She says no other man can make her happier than Wollie can, and she’s willing to uproot her entire life, alienate her family, who thinks she crazy for doing this, and start this brand-new life that she knows very little about.”

  “For him,” Amos said, his voice low.

  “For him.” She nodded. “Did you ever think that Gott looked down on this planet some thirty-five years ago and decided to create the perfect woman for you in the form of...me?”

  Amos blinked at her, and she felt the heat in her face.

  “Have you ever considered that?” she pressed. “You and I decided that we wanted to get married—we wanted to be married. It wasn’t about us being such a perfect match. It was about us both being left over!”

  “Maybe Gott was working with that,” Amos said.

  “Then you must also think that Gott isn’t a very good matchmaker,” Miriam said. “Because you and I are terribly matched. We were just too foolish to see it, and we didn’t ask for anyone else’s opinion before we insisted that we were ready to marry. We thought we could make our marriage something beautiful with sheer willpower.”

  Amos was silent.

  “We are married, Amos,” she said. “But we aren’t like Wollie and Natasha. We aren’t like Fannie and Silas. I married you, but I wasn’t willing to have kinner with you. I wasn’t willing to risk my health to grow our family.”

  “I understand that now,” he said.

  “Yah,” she said. “But I also realized that my logical approach to all of these things tells me a lot, too. There was a lot I wasn’t willing to do for our relationship. And I think what you are willing to do is just as telling as what you aren’t.”

  Because she hadn’t been willing to take any leaps of faith with Amos. And when she’d heard Natasha talk about her love for her husband, Miriam had felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time—envy.

  It was easy to be around people who’d married for logical reasons and were kind and decent to each other. She didn’t feel so different from them—she’d married for similar reasons, even if it hadn’t worked out as positively. And then she heard the story of a woman who’d married a man from a completely different culture because she’d fallen in love with him. And she’d poured herself into his culture because she believed that Gott had created them from embryos to be together.

  Some people might mock that kind of romantic view, but Miriam couldn’t bring herself to. She couldn’t make fun of it, because she did believe in a Gott who cared about the details. She did believe that Gott guided their steps and showered blessings upon them. But somehow, Miriam had missed Gott’s guidance with the most important decision of her life.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Amos said at last.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “We weren’t in love with each other, Amos. And we thought it wouldn’t matter.”

  Amos stayed silent, and she felt tears rising inside of her. She wouldn’t cry over this—not in front of him.

  “I’m going to check the horses,” she said, standing up.

  It wasn’t her job, but keeping busy was easier than focusing on the happiness she may very well have given up because she was in too much of a hurry and had wanted to make things happen on her own.

  Miriam headed for the door.

  She didn’t need her husband’s kisses, or his sympathy. She needed to get her balance back.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Amos drove to the shop the next morning to tell Noah and Thomas that he wouldn’t be working that day, and as he drove his horses down the familiar roads, his mind was stuck on the kiss from the night before. He wasn’t sorry, and he wouldn’t apologize for it. They’d doomed each other to a life without romance, and if all he had to think about at night was a single, honest kiss that they’d shared, then he’d hold on to it.

  And yet, he knew that brief moment of weakness would come with its own punishment. The most honest moments of his life always did. Like when, as a ten-year-old, he’d finally demanded that his father pay for his mother’s medication after she had taken to bed in depression. He’d told his father that she would have her pills, or Amos would start telling anyone who would listen what was happening behind those walls. Let the bishop and the elders come—Amos would tell them an earful! And his father had believed him. He pulled out his wallet and handed the cash over. But his relationship with his father had never been the same. His daet had never been the same, either... He was more cowed. More wary. He stopped thundering and booming when he was angry, too.

  When Daet died the next winter during
a bad bout of the flu, Amos had felt like he was partly to blame. He knew that he’d broken his father’s spirit, and while he’d meant it for good, there were a whole tangle of consequences.

  His mamm had never felt quite right about taking the pills again, either. If Amos had reined in his emotions and dealt with it differently, would his mother have taken her medication without guilt?

  Amos arrived later than usual, and Noah was just flipping the sign in the front window to Open.

  “I’m not staying today,” Amos said. “Mammi is getting weaker. I wanted to take a day with her while I can.”

  “Yah, understandable,” Noah said. “Is she in much pain?”

  Thomas came out of the woodshop and leaned against the door frame.

  “The medication helps with the pain,” Amos said. “But it also makes her sleep a lot, and...maybe that’s a blessing, but—”

  Thomas came into the showroom, and they all stood in silence for a moment.

  “It’s good that you’ll have time with her,” Thomas said. “How are things with Miriam there?”

  “Miriam is great,” Amos said. “She’s helpful, she’s efficient, Mammi just loves having her back in the house and...” He sighed. “I’m not saying that it isn’t complicated. You’re both married men now, so I’m sure you understand. Miriam is my wife—she’s not just a woman in the home. She’s...my wife.”

  Did they understand all the emotion that was locked in those two little words, my wife? Because he’d taken vows before Gott and his community that he’d love and care for her. She might not have wanted either of those things in the end, but it didn’t stop that he’d vowed to do it. There was something about a wedding—a woman in her wedding apron, a bishop to give the blessing—that locked things down inside of a man whether it was good for him in the long run or not.

  “Do you think she might stay, after all?” Noah asked quietly.

  Amos shook his head. “No. I don’t. We both know how this is going to end. It just isn’t easy. That’s all.”

  And it was his burden to bear.

  Thomas shuffled his feet uncomfortably, and Noah and Amos looked over at him.

  “Patience and I have a meeting with an adoption agent today,” Thomas said. “I know this is bad timing with Mammi being so sick, but we still long for kinner, and this is a chance at growing our family. If I could leave a bit early that would be really helpful. I can come back later on and get more work done in the shop if we’re behind—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Amos replied. “A meeting with an adoption agent is really big. Is there any news? A baby, perhaps?”

  “This is a long process,” Thomas said. “They told us to expect it to take a while, so we aren’t getting our hopes up just yet. I don’t want Patience to get disappointed again—” Thomas glanced toward his brother, and Noah froze.

  That was a complicated history between the brothers. The first child that Patience had thought she would adopt had been Eve’s, and Noah had married Eve and was raising her child as his own. Patience still didn’t have another baby in her arms...

  “I don’t mean it like that,” Thomas said. “Samuel is your son now, Noah, and there are no hard feelings there. But when we thought that we were going to adopt Samuel, Patience had her heart in it completely. And if this little boy ends up going to another home, I just don’t want her heartbroken again.”

  “So there is a child?” Noah asked.

  “There is a little boy who needs a home. He’s two years old, and he’s been in the foster system for a while. He has food allergies, and he has some attachment issues because he’s been to a few different foster homes already—” Thomas sucked in a breath. “He’d need stability and love—that’s what the agent said—and we have that in great supply. He’s been through so much upheaval in his young life already that he just needs a home that won’t change on him again.”

  “I’ll be praying for you,” Noah said earnestly. “Eve and I both will.”

  “Thank you,” Thomas replied. “Patience and I have been praying for the child Gott has for us, and I just feel—” Thomas shrugged. “I feel like Gott is working in this. But only Gott knows what He has in store for us.”

  “Mammi would say that Gott is working in every little detail,” Noah said.

  The men all smiled sadly at the mention of Mammi and for a moment they fell silent. Amos looked at the young men he’d raised in his home with Mammi’s help, and he saw the emotion brimming in their eyes. They loved her, too.

  “She’s a woman of faith,” Amos said. “She’s been praying all this time for both of you—I’m sure she’ll be glad to pray for this, too. When you need to leave, you can just put up a sign saying that we’re closing early today, and we’ll see people in the morning. Family first.” Amos patted Thomas on the shoulder. “Always.”

  “Thanks,” Thomas said with a nod and a grateful smile.

  “I’d better head back,” Amos said. Mammi was waiting.

  On the way, Amos prayed silently for Thomas and Patience. They’d been through a lot already. When Eve Schrock came to Redemption to give birth to her child and give it up for adoption, they’d thought they were getting an answer to their prayer to adopt a baby. But when Noah and Eve fell in love, Thomas and Patience had tearfully handed the infant back to his mother and stepped back to allow Noah and Eve to raise her son. That had been heartbreaking for Thomas and Patience, but they’d put family first—that was the Amish way. That was Gott’s way.

  And now, they had another chance to grow their family, and Amos prayed earnestly that Gott would grant the deepest desires of their hearts and give them this little boy into their care, if it be Gott’s will.

  It was always hardest to add that last little bit to a prayer: If it be Your will, Lord.

  There were other prayers deep in Amos’s heart that he was afraid to even bring out into the light. Like this growing hope that Miriam might decide to stay, after all. He wouldn’t say it aloud. He’d never tell Noah or Thomas...or even Mammi for that matter. Sometimes a man’s hopes were so fragile that he didn’t dare let anyone else see them.

  But having Miriam here had shown him what it could be like if they lived together...what it could be like if she were truly his wife again, in his heart and in his arms. And that kiss last night had settled deep into his heart. Was it stupid of him to hang on to it like that? Probably, but he couldn’t help it, either.

  * * *

  When Amos turned into the drive, he saw Miriam arranging a wicker chair underneath a cherry tree, an old, faded quilt spread over the grass nearby. She didn’t turn right away, her attention on the job in front of her, and when he reined in the horses, he watched her work for a moment.

  There was something about her presence at the house again that softened him. When she turned he hopped down from the buggy and circled around to unhitch the horses, and Miriam looked up and met his gaze. She didn’t smile, or wave, but the eye contact made him catch his breath.

  “What are you doing?” he called.

  “Mammi wanted to come out and enjoy the beautiful weather,” Miriam said, angling her steps in his direction. “So I’m making it comfortable for her.”

  The sun was already warm enough that the dew had burned off. A butterfly flitted over the tiny, growing plants in the garden, and Amos pulled off his hat and wiped his brow. It would be the kind of spring day that gave them a taste of summer.

  Miriam put her hands on her hips, looking up at him as he got down from the buggy.

  “Did you know that your grandfather used to take your mammi out on picnics every summer, just the two of them?” Miriam asked.

  “Uh—” He stopped, eyed her for a moment. “I seem to remember that...”

  Mammi had been telling stories that morning, it seemed.

  “She said he proposed marriage on a picnic by the creek,” Miriam s
aid, and her expression was thoughtful. “On the Service Sunday their intentions were announced, she made him a picnic, and they ate it in the backyard on an old blanket. She said it was the most delicious meal she ever made.”

  “She has good memories,” Amos said.

  “I’m almost envious,” Miriam said.

  He smiled faintly. “I don’t think my proposal to you was as good as my dawdie’s. I asked you to marry me on a Service Sunday, on bench at the back of the barn after everyone had left to go eat.”

  Miriam had been visiting some friends—an older couple, who had since passed away. It was a veiled attempt to meet a single man, truthfully. He’d known it.

  Miriam’s cheeks pinked. “Yah.”

  “I could have done better,” he said.

  “You were very serious. I still remember what you said,” she replied.

  “I don’t,” he admitted. “I was so nervous I blurted out something...that you agreed to.”

  “You said we were very much alike, both of us strong and deeply committed to the faith,” Miriam said quietly. “And you thought we could be very happy together if we decided to be, and you wanted to know if I would be willing to marry you.”

  Amos looked over at her, feeling foolish at the memory. It hadn’t been terribly romantic, but then, they’d hardly known each other, either. He’d been envisioning a life that never materialized—one where they had babies and raised them to be well-behaved boys and girls. He imagined dinners as a family, worship time before the kinner were sent up to bed...

  “I’m truly sorry,” he said.

  “For what?” Miriam asked.

  “I was obviously wrong about us being happy together if we wanted to be,” he said.

  Because he had wanted it...so badly.

  “Oh, Amos.” Miriam put a gentle hand on his arm. “We were both wrong. And we both tried. But I still have the memory of a very sweet proposal and a lovely October wedding. No one can take that from me.”

  But what was it worth, when they couldn’t manage to live under the same roof? Mammi had her memories of Dawdie’s proposal, of their little farm wedding and of the babies they’d had who hadn’t survived and the one and only son who had, and even through that heartbreak, they’d weathered it side by side. She had memories of growing old with her husband... And then Mammi had the bitterly sad memory of burying him in the same graveyard as the babies who had passed away so early. They’d had a true and complete life together—the good and the bad. What could Amos and Miriam say? Their lives had been lived separately.