An Amish Match. Jo Ann Brown

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       Chapter Three

      Rebekah straightened her son’s shirt. Even though Sammy was almost three, she continued to make his shirts with snaps at the bottom like a boppli’s gown. They kept his shirt from popping out the back of his pants and flapping behind him.

      “It’s time to go downstairs,” she said to him as she glanced at her mamm, who sat on the bed in the room that once had been Rebekah and Lloyd’s. “Grossmammi can’t wait to have you sit with her.”

      “Sit with Mamm.” His lower lip stuck out in a pout.

      “But I have cookies.” Almina Mast smiled at her grandson. She was a tiny woman, and her hair was the same white as her kapp. With a kind heart and a generous spirit, she and her husband Uriah had hoped for more kinder, but Rebekah had been their only one. The love they had heaped on her now was offered to Sammy.

      “Cookies? Ja, ja!” He danced about to his tuneless song.

      Mamm put a finger to her lips. “Quiet boys get cookies.”

      Sammy stilled, and Rebekah almost smiled at his antics. If she’d smiled, it would have been the first time since Joshua had asked her to marry three weeks ago. Since then the time had sped past like the landscape outside the window when she rode in an Englischer’s van last week while they’d gone to Lancaster to get their marriage license. Otherwise she hadn’t seen him. She understood he was busy repairing equipment damaged during last year’s harvest.

      “Blessings on you, Rebekah.” Mamm kissed her cheek. “May God bless you and bring you even more happiness with your second husband than he did with your first.”

      Rebekah stiffened. Did Mamm know the truth of how Lloyd had treated her? No, Mamm simply was wishing her a happy marriage.

      A shiver ached along her stiff shoulders. Nobody knew what had happened in the house she’d shared with Lloyd. And she had no idea what life was like in Joshua Stoltzfus’s home. His wife had always been cheerful when they’d been together, but so had Rebekah. Joshua showed affection for his wife and his kinder...as Lloyd had when he was sober.

      She’d chosen the wrong man to marry once. What if she was making the same mistake? How well did she know Joshua Stoltzfus? At least she and Lloyd had courted for a while. She was walking into this marriage blind. Actually she was entering into it with her eyes wide open. She was familiar with the dark side of what Lloyd had called love. His true love had been for beer. She would watch closely and be prepared if Joshua began to drink. She would leave and return to her farm.

      When Mamm left with Sammy, Rebekah kneaded her hands together. She was getting remarried. If tongues wagged because Lloyd hadn’t been dead for a year, she hadn’t heard it. She guessed most of the Leit here and in Paradise Springs thought she’d been smart to accept the proposal from a man willing to raise her two kinder along with his own.

      The door opened again, and Leah Beiler and Joshua’s sister Esther came in. They were serving as her attendants.

      “What a lovely bride!” Leah gushed, and Rebekah wondered if Leah was thinking about when the day would come for her marriage to Joshua’s younger brother Ezra. Leah was preparing to become a church member, and that was an important step toward marriage. Even though nothing had been announced and wouldn’t be until the engagement was published two weeks before the marriage, it was generally suspected that the couple, who’d been separated for ten years, planned to wed in the fall.

      Esther brushed invisible dust off the royal blue sleeve of Rebekah’s dress. For this one day, Rebekah would be forgiven for not wearing black as she should for a year of mourning.

      “Ja,” Esther said as she moved to stand behind Rebekah. “It makes your eyes look an even prettier blue. Let us help you with your apron.”

      Every bride wore a white apron to match her kapp on her wedding day. She shouldn’t have worn it again until she was buried with it, but Rebekah was putting it on for a second time today. Pulling it over her head, she slipped her arms through and let the sheer fabric settle on her dress.

      “Oh.” Esther chuckled. “There may be a problem.”

      Rebekah looked down and realized her wedding apron was stretched tightly across her belly. Looking over her shoulder at the other two women who were focused on the tabs that closed it with straight pins at the back, she asked, “Are they long enough?”

      “I think so.” Leah muttered something under her breath, then said, “There. They’re pinned.”

      “Will it hold? It will be humiliating if one of the pins popped when I kneel.”

      “We’ll pray they will stay in place.” Esther chuckled. “If one goes flying, it’ll make for a memorable wedding service.”

      Leah laughed, too. “I’m going to make my apron tabs extra long on my aprons from now on.”

      Rebekah couldn’t manage more than a weak smile. “That’s a gut idea.”

      The door opened and Joshua’s daughter, Deborah, peeked in. “The ministers and the bishop have come in. Are you ready to go down?”

      “Ja,” Rebekah replied, though she wanted to climb out the window and run as far away as she could. What had she been thinking when she’d told Joshua yes? She was marrying a man whom she didn’t love, a man who needed someone to watch his kinder and keep his house. She should have stopped this before it started. Now it was too late for second thoughts, but she was having second thoughts and third and fourth ones.

      As she followed the others down the stairs to the room where the service was to be held, she tried not to think of the girl she’d been the last time she’d made this journey. It was impossible. She’d been optimistic and naive and in love as she’d walked on air to marry Lloyd Burkholder.

      A longing to pray filled her, but she hadn’t reached out to God in more than a year. She didn’t know how to start now.

      As she entered the room where more than two hundred guests stood, her gaze riveted on Joshua who waited among the men on the far side of the room. The sight of him dressed in his very best clothing and flanked by his two sons made the whole of this irrevocably real.

      It has to be better than being married to Lloyd, she reminded herself. She and Sammy and her boppli wouldn’t have to hide in an outbuilding as they had on nights when Lloyd had gone on a drunken rampage. She’d seen Joshua with his late wife, and he’d been an attentive husband. When Lloyd had teased him about doing a woman’s work after Joshua brought extra lemonade out to the porch for them to enjoy, Joshua had laughed away his words.

      But he doesn’t love you. This is little more than a business arrangement.

      She hoped none of her thoughts were visible as she affixed a smile in place and went with Leah and Esther to the bench facing the men’s. As they sat so the service could begin, Sammy waved to her from where he perched next to Mamm. She smiled at him, a sincere smile this time. She was doing this for him. There was no price too high to give him a safe home.

      Squaring her shoulders, she prepared herself to speak the words that would tie her life to Joshua Stoltzfus’s for the rest СКАЧАТЬ