Plain Paradise Read online

  “Let us pray,” Abe said. They all bowed their heads in silent prayer.

  When they were done, Luke picked up the bowl of mashed potatoes and asked, “Is Jonas gonna die?”

  “Don’t say that!” Linda blasted. “He’s just sick, and he’s in the hospital until he feels better.” She snatched the potatoes from her brother’s outstretched hand and cut her eyes at him, mumbling something under her breath.

  “Watch your tone, Linda,” Abe warned.

  Mary Ellen knew Abe didn’t like much conversation during the supper hour, and he certainly didn’t like any upset. Or visitors for that matter. But he loved Lillian, and Mary Ellen knew that he was glad she stopped by.

  Mary Ellen also knew that she would need to prepare her children about Jonas at some point. Jonas was like everyone’s grandpa, and Lillian shared him with the community, but it was evident to Mary Ellen that Jonas was on a steady decline.

  Luke had taken his first ride on a scooter as a young boy, with Jonas coaching from the sidelines, and Jonas had given Matthew lessons driving the buggy when Abe was busy in the fields. But it was Linda who had spent the most time with Jonas, particularly over the past couple of years. Jonas had taught her to play chess, and Linda took every opportunity to sneak off to challenge him to a game. It was only a matter of time for Jonas, and all the adults knew it. The cancer had been getting worse and worse.

  “Jonas could get better.” Linda swirled her fork amidst the string beans. “They have chemo—chemo something—that cures cancer.”

  “It isn’t a cure, Linda,” Abe said. “It’s a treatment. I reckon sometimes it works, but . . .” Her husband’s voice trailed off when he saw his daughter’s eyes tear up. “We will say extra prayers for Jonas during our devotions each day.”

  Mary Ellen spooned potatoes onto her plate. She wasn’t sure what to pray for. To pray for an extension of Jonas’s life could cause much pain and suffering for him.

  “Tomorrow, I have some sewing to do, Mamm, but not too much else. I was planning to spend the day with Stephen after that.” She paused with her fork full of beans. “Maybe Barbie will take Stephen and me to see Jonas.”

  Barbie was their Englisch friend who ran Beiler’s Bed and Breakfast off of Lincoln Highway. She was wonderful about providing rides for people in their district. Barbie’s husband grew up Amish, and even though he was no longer Amish, they had strong ties to the community.

  “That would be nice,” Mary Ellen said. “But doesn’t Stephen have to work at the furniture store tomorrow?”

  “No, Abner gave him the day off because he worked all last week, and then on Saturday too.”

  “I reckon it would be all right, if you finish your chores around here in the morning.”

  After they finished supper, Abe retired to the den, and the boys headed outside to tend to the two horses. Linda was helping Mary Ellen clear the table when they heard a car coming up the driveway.

  “Are you expecting someone?” Mary Ellen tried to keep the edge from her voice. Linda’s Englisch friends showed up too often these days. Mary Ellen knew this was normal for someone Linda’s age, but it bothered her just the same. When she faced up to the reason why, it was because she had less time with Linda, and she was forced to accept the fact that Linda wasn’t the same little girl who had glued herself to Mary Ellen’s side since she was young. They’d always been close, and Mary Ellen wanted to selfishly savor the time she had left with Linda before her daughter would go and make a home with Stephen.

  “No. I’m not expecting anyone.” Linda put two dirty dishes in the sink, then strained to see out the window, past the begonias blooming on the windowsill. “It’s a blue car, the kind that’s like a truck and a car all in one.”

  Mary Ellen walked to the kitchen door and watched the blue SUV pull to a stop. Linda walked to her side.

  “She’s pretty,” Linda said as the woman exited her automobile and stepped gingerly onto cobblestone steps that led to the porch, wearing high-heeled silver shoes.

  Mary Ellen agreed. The tall Englisch woman was thin, yet shapely, dressed in denim pants and a white blouse. Her hair was the color of honey and rested slightly above her shoulders. Her dark sunglasses covered a large portion of her face, but her painted features were most attractive. Mary Ellen didn’t recognize her to be any of their non-Amish friends.

  Linda let out a small gasp as the woman neared the door, then whispered, “I saw her at market today.”

  The woman came up the porch steps. “Hello,” Mary Ellen said. “Can we help you?” She pushed the screen door open.

  “Mary Ellen?”

  “Ya.”

  The woman pulled the dark shades from her face, and Mary Ellen tried to recall where she’d seen the woman before. She was now most familiar looking, but Mary Ellen couldn’t place her.

  “I—I was hoping to talk to you.” The stranger’s bottom lip trembled, and she sucked in a deep breath. She glanced at Linda, then back at Mary Ellen. “Alone, if that’s okay.”

  “Is something wrong?” Mary Ellen pushed the screen door wide. “Would you like to come in?”

  The woman didn’t move, but bit her trembling lip for a moment and pushed back her wavy locks with her hand. “You probably don’t recognize me. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, and—” She took another deep breath, and Mary Ellen struggled to recall where she knew the woman from. “My name is Josie. Josephine Dronberger. I mean—well, it’s Dronberger now. It used to be Josephine Wallace.”

  Mary Ellen’s chest grew tight as she remembered where she’d seen the woman before—no longer a scared seventeen-year-old girl, but a mature woman, beautiful and fancy. Mary Ellen fought a wave of apprehension that coursed through her. Instinctively, she pushed Linda backward and stepped in front of her.

  “Mamm,” Linda whispered with irritation, stumbling slightly. “What are you doing?”

  Mary Ellen ignored her daughter as her heart thumped at an unhealthy rate. She gazed intently into the woman’s eyes, which were now filling with tears.

  “I’m sorry to just show up like this, but I—”

  “Now is not a good time,” Mary Ellen interrupted. She held her head high, fighting her own tears as well. She stepped backward, pushing Linda along with her, until the screen door closed between her and Josephine. “Perhaps another time.” She managed a tremulous smile, but she knew Linda would question her about who the woman was the minute Josephine was gone.

  Josephine’s lip began to tremble even more, and a tear spilled over thick lashes, which she quickly wiped away. “Please. I’ll just leave you my number. Maybe you can call me when it’s a better time. Please . . .” She reached into the back pocket of her blue jeans and pulled out a card.

  Mary Ellen watched, with fearful fascination at how Josephine’s brows cinched inward, how she slowly closed her eyes, and the way her trembling mouth thinned as she pressed her lips together. The same expression Linda had always had when she was hurting a great deal about something.

  “Mamm?” Linda edged around her mother, gave Mary Ellen a questioning look, and then stared at the woman. The resemblance was eerie, and Mary Ellen wondered what might be going through Linda’s mind.

  “Ya,” she said to Josephine. “I—I will call you when it’s a better time.”

  Josephine pushed the card in Mary Ellen’s direction. “Call me any time. My home phone number and my cell number are both on the card.” She sniffed. “I’m sorry.”

  Mary Ellen took the card, and Josephine smiled slightly, then fixed her eyes on Linda.

  “I will call you.” Mary Ellen hastily pulled Linda into the kitchen enough where she could push the wooden door between them and Josephine. It closed with a thud, and Mary Ellen’s stomach churned with anxiety. Linda was going to have questions, but she needed to talk to Abe first. She needed Abe to tell her that everything would be all right.

  Linda ran to the window and watched Josephine get in her car. “Mamm, who is that woman? And w
hy was she crying? Why were you acting so strange? Do you know her, or . . .”

  Mary Ellen pressed her hands against her chest, still standing and staring at the door, only half hearing Linda’s queries, and wondering how the years had gotten away from her without them ever telling Linda that she was adopted.

  2

  JOSIE SAT ACROSS FROM HER HUSBAND, PICKING AT HER stuffed pork chop and pushing her peas around her plate. Mary Ellen’s fearful expression kept flashing through her mind. The last thing she wanted to do was cause Linda and her family any pain, but there just had to be some way for her to share in at least a small part of Linda’s life.

  “Honey, you’re barely touching your food.” Robert gazed at her speculatively from his chair on the other side of the dining room table. “Are you feeling all right?”

  She scooped some peas onto her fork and forced the bite into her mouth. “I’m eating,” she said and began to chew. Maybe her response would convince Robert that her condition hadn’t worsened— at least not today. She swallowed, then glanced around the kitchen in their new house, at all the boxes still left to unpack.

  “I’m going to hire someone to come unpack these boxes. I don’t want you to have to do that.” He paused. “Or I can unpack some of them tonight.”

  “No. I want to do it.” She smiled at her husband of twelve years. “But tonight, I just want to cuddle with you on the couch, watch television, and relax. I have all day to unpack these boxes, and I know you’re tired from work.”

  Josie recalled her first trip to Paradise nearly six months earlier, just to verify that Linda still lived with her parents in the Amish community. A woman at the Bird-In-Hand market confirmed that she did. Then when Robert agreed to relocate to Paradise, Pennsylvania, so that Josie could be near Linda, he’d attained husband-of-the-year status in Josie’s eyes. Robert uprooted his law practice, after ten years working to establish a healthy clientele at the firm he founded. They didn’t know anyone in the small town of Paradise, and while geography wasn’t an issue for some of his clients, he still lost more than half. Robert had insisted that he was ready to downsize and not work as much, but Josie also knew that he wanted to spend more time with her. Especially now.

  “I’m not that tired. Amanda and I finished setting up a filing system today.” Robert ate the last of his pork chop, then placed his fork across his plate. “She’s a sweet kid. I think she’ll work out just fine.”

  Amanda had answered an ad Robert ran in the local paper for a secretary. He had hired her on the spot, and he was paying her big city wages as opposed to what would be the norm here in Paradise. And Josie knew why. She suspected that Amanda probably had a hard time finding a job, and Robert was always out to help those in need. He took more pro bono cases than he did paying ones.

  Robert’s new secretary was a petite nineteen-year-old girl who lived nearby in the city of Lancaster, about twenty miles from Paradise. Josie met her on her first day of work over a month ago. Robert had prepared Josie in advance, so she wouldn’t be shocked when she saw the girl. Amanda’s lips were unnaturally enlarged, almost exuding a duck-like appearance. She’d been born with a cleft palate, which she’d had surgically corrected when she was a young child. However, according to Amanda, it left her lips unusually thin with a scar in the middle of her top lip, and impaired her speech. When she turned eighteen, she used the money she’d saved working summer jobs to have her lips enlarged with injections, a new procedure the plastic surgeon promised would enhance her physical appearance and possibly improve her speech.

  It didn’t work, perhaps because Amanda also had scar tissue on her lip from a childhood bicycle accident. The swelling in Amanda’s lips hadn’t gone down for the past year, and she didn’t have the money to sue the plastic surgeon or get any help for herself. Robert filed suit against the plastic surgeon almost immediately, in an effort to compensate Amanda for her past year of suffering, and offered his services to her for free. There was no guarantee that the plastic surgeon would be held accountable, but Robert met with a local doctor, Dr. Noah Stoltzfus, who was helping him arrange for Amanda to have corrective surgery, regardless of the legal outcome.

  When Robert met Noah, who ran a clinic in the heart of Amish Country, he liked the doctor right away. The two had been developing a friendship ever since. Josie wasn’t surprised. Everyone loved Robert. No one more so than his wife though.

  “Well, I’m a little tired.” Josie settled back against her chair and yawned. “But I’m thankful not to have a headache today. That last one I had stayed with me for almost four days.”

  Josie watched him clear their plates from the table. He was eight years older than her, having just celebrated his forty-second birthday. Josie thought he’d only gotten more handsome with each passing year. He was thirty when they’d married and had a full head of dark hair. Now, his thick mane was a salt-and-pepper mixture that lent him an air of sophistication. His eyes were shades of amber and green that changed in different lighting, but they always brimmed with tenderness and passion. Robert wasn’t nearly as polished as his two partners had been in Chicago, but it was her husband’s ruggedness mixed with a sense of humble power that attracted her to him in the first place.

  She stood up, followed him into the kitchen, then joined him at the sink. He rinsed, and she loaded the dishwasher.

  “Do you think she’ll call you?” Robert handed her two spoons.

  “I hope so.” Josie sighed. “Mary Ellen was having a routine night with her family until I showed up.” She tucked her chin as her eyes filled with water. “I should have sent a letter first, giving them all some sort of warning that I was coming. I just thought that if I spoke to Mary Ellen and Abe in person, it would be harder for them to say no about me seeing Linda.”

  Robert turned off the faucet, wiped his hands on a towel, and turned to her. He clutched her forearms in his strong but gentle hands. “Josie, I know you don’t want to hurt anyone. But I also know how much you’ve been looking forward to meeting your daughter. And I’m afraid you can’t have it both ways. I mean, this will be hard for everyone concerned.” He sighed, then gently lifted her chin. “It’s going to take some time for this to soak in for Mary Ellen and Abe. They’ll need time to talk to Linda, and I’m not sure I’d be expecting a call from them right away. Josie, you’re a good person. I’ve never known you to intentionally hurt anyone. Over the years, when we’ve talked about your daughter, you always said that someday you wanted to meet her.” He shrugged. “Maybe someday came before you were ready.”

  “I gave birth to her, Robert. Does that really make her my daughter? She has a family. A family that I am about to disrupt.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “I feel obsessed with knowing her, but I worry about the price of my happiness. Is it really fair to Linda that just because my circumstances have changed, now it’s okay to seek her out? Plus, Mary Ellen’s expression is etched in my mind, Robert.” She looked up at him. “She’s so scared. I’m sure she’s afraid of losing her daughter and thinks I will try to be a mother to Linda. You and I know that won’t happen, but I just need . . .” Robert wiped a tear from her cheek. “I need to know her.”

  Robert tilted his head slightly and gazed lovingly into her eyes. “Honey, we talked about all this before we made this move. I love you with all my heart, and I know how important this is to you, but you can change your mind at any time.”

  She ran her finger under her eyes and cleared runny mascara. “I love you so much. And I’m so sorry, Robert. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you children. I’m sorry that I’m so obsessed about meeting Linda. You moved your practice for me to be near her. I’m just so—”

  Robert gently put a finger to her lip. “Josie, you’re my world. I want you to have a peaceful feeling in your heart, and I’ve loved you since the day I met you. But there’s always been something amiss for you. Maybe meeting Linda will fill that void.” He smiled. “You certainly can’t go on following her around town.”

  “I k
now.” She shook her head, twisted her mouth to one side. “I’ve been a stalker.”

  Robert handed her a bowl. “Okay, my little stalker, let’s finish these dishes, and then you can go take a hot bath.”

  Josie turned toward him again. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”

  “Yeah, you’re a lucky gal,” he teased.

  She poked him in the ribs, and he chuckled.

  But he was right. She was incredibly lucky to have him in her life. Especially now.

  Mary Ellen clutched the sides of her white nightgown and paced the wooden floors in her bedroom, dimly lit by one lantern on her nightstand. Help me, Dear Lord in heaven, to handle this situation the right way. I need your guidance. Please help me to do Your will without letting my own fears hinder me.

  Abe walked barefoot into their bedroom, his dark hair still wet from his shower and wearing only his black pants. He stroked his beard, which reached the top of a muscular chest covered with wavy brown hair.

  “We’ve made a terrible mistake.” His eyes drew together in an agonized expression as he faced Mary Ellen. “We should have known this might happen someday, that the girl’s mother—”

  “Abe, I’m her mother! She’s my daughter.” She walked over to him and fell into his arms. “What does she want after all this time? Why is she doing this to our family?”

  “Now, Mary Ellen . . .” He ran his hand the length of her hair. “We must be faithful and trust God to see us through this. Linda is a strong girl, and she—”

  “What if she doesn’t forgive us for not telling her?” She leaned her head upward and searched his eyes. “Abe, what if she leaves us?”

  Abe pushed her gently away and kissed her on the cheek. “She is going to leave us soon, Mary Ellen. She’s almost eighteen. I reckon she’ll marry Stephen and start her own life within the next year or two.”

  “You know what I mean. What if that Josephine woman has come to claim her, after all these years?”