The Amish Bride Read online

  HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

  EUGENE, OREGON

  Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible and from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. www.Zondervan.com.

  The authors are represented by MacGregor Literary, Inc. of Hillsboro, Oregon.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Garborg Design Works, Savage, Minnesota

  Cover photos © Chris Garborg

  THE AMISH BRIDE

  Copyright © 2012 by Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould

  Published by Harvest House Publishers

  Eugene, Oregon 97402

  www.harvesthousepublishers.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Clark, Mindy Starns.

  The Amish bride / Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould.

  p. cm. — (The women of Lancaster County ; bk. 3)

  ISBN 978-0-7369-3862-4 (pbk.)

  ISBN 978-0-7369-4282-9 (eBook)

  1. Amish—Fiction. 2. Lancaster County (Pa.)—Fiction. I. Gould, Leslie, 1962- II. Title.

  PS3603.L366A77 2012

  813'.6—dc23

  2012005745

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Mindy:

  For my aunt, Fanny Lynn Starns,

  my own personal hero of the faith and lifelong friend,

  and

  Leslie:

  For my sister Laurie Snyder,

  for showing what it means to live out

  heaven’s hope on earth.

  “I sing in the shadow of your wings.”

  PSALM 63:7

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Discussion Questions

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Mindy thanks

  My husband, John, whose input on this story was invaluable. You are my story-shaper, my love, and my best friend.

  Our daughters, Emily and Lauren, who help in ways too numerous to count.

  Vanessa Thompson, Stephanie Ciner, and Helen Styer Hannigan, the best office support team a writer could ask for.

  Leslie thanks

  My husband, Peter, who was the first reader of this story, even though he was commanding a field hospital in Afghanistan at the time. (I can’t imagine life without you, more so now than ever.)

  Our children: Kaleb, Taylor, Hana, and Thao, for their endless support.

  Laurie Snyder and Tina Bustamante, for reading the manuscript in its early stages and offering invaluable advice and support, and Libby Salter for reading later in the process.

  My writing group members: Kelly Chang, Melanie Dobson, Nicole Miller, and Dawn Shipman. Jenna Thompson for insightful ideas into this story. And Kylie Naslund for sharing her passion for all things culinary.

  Jeff Kitson, executive director of the Nappanee, Indiana, Chamber of Commerce, for his assistance and direction; the many good people of Elkhart County that I encountered while researching this story; and the staff of the Menno-Hof Amish/Mennonite Information Center in Shipshewana, Indiana for an outstanding experience.

  Mindy and Leslie thank

  Our agent, Chip MacGregor, for his vision for this series; our editor, Kim Moore, for her dedication to our stories; and the exceptional folks at Harvest House Publishers for giving such care and attention to every detail of the publishing process.

  Also, thanks to Dave Siegrist for his expertise; the Mennonite Information Center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for their invaluable resources; Erik Wesner, author of amishamerica.com, for his insightful view of the Amish; and Georgia Varozza for mouthwatering inspiration through her book The Homestyle Amish Kitchen Cookbook.

  PROLOGUE

  My grandmother was stalling like a little kid at bedtime. I bent down to kiss her a second time. “Mammi, I really need to go. Ezra’s waiting for me.” He was at the end of the lane on his motorcycle.

  “But I have something for you.” She forced her recliner down and struggled to a standing position. “It’s important.”

  Afraid she might fall, I hurried to her side. “Tell me where it is,” I said. “I’ll get it myself.”

  She plopped back down into her chair. “Let me see…it’s a book…”

  Oh, boy. This wasn’t a good time for Mammi to start on a new topic. I sent Ezra a quick text as she spoke, telling him to give me another minute, knowing it was bound to be even longer than that.

  “I think it’s in my room,” she said. “On the dresser. Or maybe the nightstand.”

  “I’m on it.” I hurried down the narrow hall, darting into her bedroom. It was tidy as a pin thanks to my Aunt Klara, who lived in the big house on the property. The dresser was bare except for Mammi’s hairbrush. On the nightstand was her Bible and another leather-bound book, one equally big and thick.

  There was nothing on the worn cover to indicate what it was, so I picked it up and looked inside, surprised to see that this was no printed tome but instead something homemade, done by hand. Cool.

  On the first page was a list of names, four in a row, one in block letters and the other three in cursive. The first one, printed in a child’s hand, said “Sarah Gingrich.” Under that, although the handwriting of the script was small and oddly slanted and difficult to decipher, I made out the name Sarah Stoll. Then, below that, Sarah Chapman, and finally Sarah Berg. If I was recalling my family history correctly, Sarah Berg was Mammi’s mother. My great-grandmother. I knew she was born as a Gingrich and ended up as a Berg, but I’d never heard of her having the last name of “Stoll” or “Chapman” in between. Weird.

  I carefully flipped through the book as I moved back up the hall, intrigued by the quirky things I saw inside. It held a mix of drawings both large and small, recipes, an occasional journal entry, and other miscellaneous writings. Every word was in English, which surprised me. As a first-generation immigrant, it seemed as though she would have written in German, at least when she was younger.

  The whole book was offbeat, but some of the pages were especially so. They held an odd mix of numb
ers and letters—or at least I thought they were letters at first glance. Pausing in the hallway to take a closer look, I realized they weren’t letters at all but instead some sort of intricate, squiggly lines. Bizarre.

  “Mammi, this is so cool,” I said as I closed the book and entered the living room. “Did this belong to my great-grandmother?”

  “Yes, and I want you to have it.”

  “Seriously? Wow. Thanks, Mammi.” I held the book against my chest. “I can’t wait to read it. I’m glad it’s not in German.”

  She seemed surprised at the thought. “Well, my mother spoke German, of course, but she never learned to write it. She was taught to write only English in school.”

  “Oh. Duh.” I opened the front cover. “What’s the deal with the three last names here? Did your mom marry more than once?”

  “It’s a long story…”

  My phone beeped. Ezra! I’d forgotten all about him.

  “…and obviously you don’t have time for it tonight.”

  “You’re right. I have to go, but I’ll be back soon.”

  “Good. Next time you’re over, I’ll tell you more about her. My mother was quite the…oh, how would you say it?”

  I shrugged. Since her stroke I’d grown used to helping her find the words she wanted, but I had no idea what she was looking for now.

  Her faded blue eyes lit up. “Free spirit.”

  I smiled. “Thank you, Mammi.” I held the book close. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

  “You’re welcome, dear.”

  “Why me, though? Instead of Lexie or Ada, I mean. I’m honored, but I just don’t understand.”

  Mammi met my eyes and smiled. “Because of who my mother was. Not just a free spirit, but stubborn and feisty too. Sound familiar?” Her eyebrows raised, but when I chose to ignore her implication, she added, “Just like you.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

  “Oh, it is. You’re smart like her too, and oh, so pretty. You have her thick hair and lovely skin. You’re even gifted creatively the way she was. Mostly, though, you have her spunk.”

  I wasn’t used to receiving compliments from family members and felt too awkward to respond.

  Mammi didn’t seem to notice, though. Instead, her eyes moved to the book in my hands. Gazing at it, her face began to cloud over, and I could see she was troubled.

  “There’s another thing, about the book,” she said.

  I glanced toward the door, feeling bad for Ezra, though I didn’t protest lest she give me one of her disapproving looks. Neither his family, which was entirely Amish, nor mine, which was a mix of Mennonite and Amish, made any secret of the fact that they weren’t thrilled about our relationship.

  “This is just between us,” she continued, oblivious to my impatience. “There’s something unique about it that you have to understand. And there’s something important I need you to do for me.”

  Her odd tone brought my attention back to her. Curious, I lowered myself to the chair on her left and waited for her to elaborate. She gestured toward the book, so I opened it up and flipped through it, angling it so that she could see the pages.

  “All of those tiny drawings at the tops and bottoms…” Her voice trailed off.

  “These nifty little doodles?” Glancing down, I tilted the heavy tome my way. “It’s funny, but they kind of remind me of icons. You know, like for a phone app?”

  She stared at me blankly. Of course she didn’t know what a phone app was.

  “They’re symbols,” she said. “Each one represents something.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  I flipped through more pages and saw that the various icons weren’t just random—they were repeated the exact same way in different places. She was right. Symbols.

  “What are they for?”

  “I’m not sure. But there’s more.”

  She again gestured with her hand, so I tilted the book back toward her and continued to flip through it.

  “There.” She placed a pointed finger on the page to stop me.

  Glancing down, I saw that she was indicating the middle part of the book, the pages of weird squiggly lines. They reminded me of letters or numbers but were completely unreadable, like a foreign language that used a completely different alphabet.

  “What is this?”

  She sat back and clasped her hands in her lap. “It’s a code.”

  My eyes widened. “A code?”

  She nodded. “My mother didn’t want just anyone reading her journal. So she invented a code to keep parts of it private.”

  “Cool.” I was really starting to like my great-grandmother Sarah.

  I was studying the squiggles more closely when I realized Mammi was leaning toward me in her chair, her expression intense.

  “Ella, I need you to decipher that code. Figure out how to make sense of it. The symbols too. I want you to translate the code and the symbols into words. I need to know what it says.”

  My first reaction was to giggle, but her face was so serious I held it in. What was this, the CIA or something?

  “I’m not exactly good at this sort of thing. I mean, Zed’s way smarter than I am. Why don’t you ask him?”

  Mammi placed a hand on my arm and gave it a firm squeeze. “Never mind him. I’m asking you, Ella. You can do this. You have to do this.”

  “But why?” I looked into her eyes and was surprised to see pain there. Deep pain. “What is it, Mammi? Why is this so important to you?”

  Without responding, she broke our gaze, released my arm, and let herself fall back against the chair. Then she gave an elaborate shrug and spoke in an odd, singsongy voice. “Oh, I’ve just wondered over the years what she wrote, that’s all.”

  I stared at her. An actress she was not.

  “I’m not that dumb, Mammi. I can tell there’s way more to it than mere curiosity.”

  My grandmother’s eyes brimmed with sadness. She turned her face away and spoke in a soft voice. “Just let me know when you figure it out, will you? It’s important to me.” Clearly, she wasn’t going to elaborate.

  I sat there for a long moment, trying to decide whether to insist she explain or just let it go for now. It was no big surprise that she wouldn’t tell me, nor that she’d asked me not to tell anyone else. Our family was known for its secrets. I hadn’t imagined there were any left, but it looked as though I was wrong.

  “I…I’ll give it a shot, Mammi, but I’m not making any promises.”

  She nodded. “If it would help, maybe you could even go visit the Home Place. It’s still in the family. One of your distant cousins lives there now, and I’m sure she’d be happy for you to come out.”

  Visit the Home Place? In Indiana? It was a neat idea, but there was no way I could take a trip like that any time soon. There were other things in my life that were much more pressing.

  “My mother grew up there, you know,” she said dreamily, not catching the reluctance in my expression. “Lived there on and off as an adult. Ended up raising a family there. Died there.”

  The Home Place was legendary in our family, built by Sarah’s parents in the late 1800s when they emigrated from Switzerland to Indiana. Mammi had grown up there, and though she moved out when she married, she and her husband had lived on a farm nearby. Once he died, Mammi and her three daughters moved away from Indiana entirely to start life anew here in Lancaster County, but it wasn’t hard to see she’d left a piece of her heart behind. I’d heard her stories of home. I even had a very special wooden box with an image of the Home Place carved onto the lid.

  “You’ll see she drew it in the book a lot. Sometimes the whole farm, sometimes just a particular tree or piece of furniture or view from a certain window. I don’t know the significance of those drawings, but they are obviously tied in with the symbols and the code somehow. Maybe if you went there yourself, it would be easier to figure it all out.”

  I looked down at the book in my hands, feeling the weight
of my grandmother’s request—and her memories—pressing down on me.

  “Let’s take this one step at a time, okay? I’ll see what I can do here first. You never know. I might just crack this baby wide open without having to go anywhere at all.”

  Mammi’s eyes met mine. “Thank you, Ella” she whispered.

  “No problem.”

  My cell phone buzzed in my pocket with a text. Poor Ezra had to be going stir-crazy by now. I closed the book—which was taller and slightly wider than even my biggest school textbook—and wiggled it into my backpack for safekeeping. Then I stood and gave Mammi a quick kiss on the cheek. As I turned to go, she wrapped a hand around my wrist, her fingers cold, her grip surprisingly strong. I paused and looked down at her.

  “Do whatever it takes, Ella,” she said, her voice tinged with desperation. “I’m an old woman, and the Lord has numbered my days, but before it’s too late, I simply must know what my mother wrote in that book.”

  ONE

  Once I was out of sight of the house, I rolled down the cuffs of my jeans—which I already had on under my clothes—and removed my skirt. Folding it quickly, I shoved it into my backpack and zipped it shut. I tucked my shirt into my jeans.

  At the end of the long driveway, waiting for me, sat Ezra on his motorcycle. I gave him a small wave, and just the sight of his smile in return made my heart flutter.

  “There you are.” He handed me a jacket and an extra helmet.

  With a quick “Thanks” I pulled off my kapp, stuffed it in my pocket, and strapped on the helmet instead. Then I climbed on behind him and wrapped my arms around his broad chest, ready to zoom through Lancaster County on his motorcycle.

  Holding on tightly, I leaned with Ezra as he steered his bike around a sharp curve toward the covered bridge, and then I braced myself against the jolt as we jumped onto the wooden slats. A moment later he brought the bike to a stop next to the railing. We both climbed off, removing our helmets and holding them in our hands.

  It was unusually warm for January—no snow or ice, which was why Ezra wanted to be out on his motorcycle. However, it was still crisp and cold, and even more so on the bridge, with the creek rushing below us. He grasped the railing with his free hand and leaned over, dangling his helmet above the water.