Amish Christmas Twins. Patricia Davids

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      “He was always worried that they would find us. We moved three times the first year we were married. Then the girls were born.”

      Shame burned in Willa’s throat, but she forced herself to continue. “Trying to take care of fussy twins wore us down. I’m not making excuses, but it was hard. We didn’t have any help. Glen had to work and I was home alone with the babies. I never got enough sleep. I became...sick.”

      Her grandfather wouldn’t understand the terrible things she had done. How could he when she didn’t understand them herself. She should have been stronger. The doctors at the hospital had called it postpartum psychosis. The voices telling her to hide her babies from Glen hadn’t been real. They had been delusions, but she had done all they told her to do, even wading into the cold, rain-swollen river with the babies in her arms. They all would have died that night if not for the quick-thinking intervention of a stranger.

      Willa realized she had been staring into the past, trying to remember all that had happened, but so much of her memory was blank. “I spent four weeks in a hospital. Glen couldn’t manage alone. He contacted his parents, believing they would help for the sake of their grandchildren. They came, but they only wanted to take the girls away from us. They said we were unfit parents and that the law was on their side.”

      Tears slipped down Willa’s cheeks and she brushed them away. Tears wouldn’t help anything. She had to be strong. It was up to her now. “Glen managed to get away with the babies before the police came. He picked me up at the hospital and we left town with only the clothes on our backs. We tried to start over, but we had to move so many times I lost count. After Glen died, I didn’t know what to do except to come here. If his parents find me, they will take the girls away and I’ll never see them again.”

      “Will the Englisch police come here?”

      “Maybe, I can’t be sure. I was careful not to tell anyone where I was going. I purchased a ticket for the next town down the road, but I got off the bus before then. People on the bus may remember us. An Amish fellow gave us a lift here, but he wasn’t from this area. I do know Glen’s parents won’t stop looking for the girls, but it will be hard to find us among the Amish.”

      He stared into his coffee cup for a long time. Finally, he glanced at her. “Up in the attic you will find a black trunk. There are clothes that you and the girls can wear in it. They will be warmer than what they have on now. They are goot Amish clothes. If you mean to rejoin the faith, you must dress plain.”

      “Does this mean we can stay?” She was afraid to hope.

      “With me, nee. Go to my sister, Ada Kaufman. She was also shunned by our church, but I hear she has kept to the Amish ways in a new church group in Hope Springs.”

      Willa had fond memories of her great-aunt Ada, a kindly and spry woman with a son and daughter a few years older than Willa. A flicker of hope came alive inside her chest. She still had family she could go to.

      The thought of spending Christmas with her aunt and cousins Miriam and Mark made Willa smile. They’d had some fine times together in the old days. Her cousins might be married with children of their own by now. Her daughters could have cousins to celebrate the holidays with the way she once did.

      “Do you think Ada will help me?”

      “That, I cannot say. I have an old buggy and a horse you can use to travel there.”

      “How far is it?” Willa had never heard of Hope Springs.

      “Three days’ travel to the east, more or less.”

      Three days by buggy with the girls. It would be next to impossible. Where would they stay at night? What would they eat? She had no money. And yet, what choice did she have except to go on faith? There was no going back now. “Danki, Daddi. What made you change your mind?”

      “Your children deserve the chance to know our ways. I pray Gott opens your heart and that you seek true repentance. When you do so, you will be welcomed here.”

      “I’ll send you money for the horse and buggy when I can,” she promised.

      “I want no money from you. They are a gift to your children. You may all sleep upstairs in your old room, but you must leave at first light on Monday.”

      It wasn’t what she had hoped for, but she wasn’t beaten yet. Perhaps her great-aunt’s family would be like the kind Amish man she had met that afternoon. The memory of his solid presence and quiet kindness filled her heart with renewed hope. She wished she had been bold enough to ask his name. She would remember him in her prayers.

      * * *

      Three days after delivering his restored sleigh, John was home and hard at work on his new project. The coals in his forge glowed red-hot with each injection of air from his bellows. Sweat poured down his face. He tasted salt and ashes on his lips, but he didn’t move back. The fire was almost hot enough. Using long tongs, he held a flat piece of iron bar stock in the glowing coals, waiting until it reached the right temperature to be shaped by his hammer. A black heat would be too cold. A white heat would be too hot. A good working heat was the red-orange glow he was waiting on. The smell of smoke and hot metal filled the cold air around him.

      Movement out on the road that fronted his property caught his attention. He let go of the tongs and shaded his eyes with one hand to see against the glare of the late-afternoon sun. Was his mother coming home from the quilting bee already? He didn’t expect her for another hour.

      A buggy approached the top of the hill, but it wasn’t one he knew. He didn’t recognize the skinny horse between the shafts, either. He’d put shoes on nearly every horse in the area. He knew them and their owners on sight. This was someone new, and he or she was driving erratically.

      The horse trotted up the road veering from side to side in a tired, rambling gait. Its black hide was flecked with white foam, but it kept going. The road led uphill to where his lane turned off at the crest. Just beyond that, the road sloped downward for a few hundred yards before it ended in a T where it intersected the blacktop highway that skirted the edge of the river just beyond. The tired horse crested the hill and stumbled but didn’t turn in John’s lane. As it went past, John realized there wasn’t anyone in the driver’s seat.

      It was a runaway. Without someone to stop it, the horse was likely to trot straight across the highway into traffic and perhaps even into the river.

      John let go of the bellows, sprinted up his lane and out into the road after the buggy. Had the horse been fresh, he wouldn’t stand a chance of catching it, but it was tiring. The steep climb had slowed it.

      “Whoa there, whoa,” he shouted, praying the horse was well trained and would respond to the command. It kept going. Sprinting harder, he raced after the vehicle, his lungs burning like his forge. There was traffic below on the highway. A horse-drawn wagon loaded with hay slowed several cars, but one after the other, they pulled out and sped around him. The buggy was unlikely to make it across without being hit.

      Running up behind the vehicle, John realized it was a Swartzentruber buggy. The most conservative group among the Amish, the Swartzentruber didn’t fit their buggies with the slow-moving-vehicle sign, windshields, mirrors or electric lighting. One rear wheel wobbled heavily. He finally drew close enough to grab the rear door handle. Yanking it open, he gave one final burst of effort and threw himself inside, no easy task for a man of his size.

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