Willow: Bride of Pennsylvania (American Mail-Order Brides 2) Read online

  After Amos had dumped the quilt and the rest of his family’s things back into the chest in the spare room, Willow had gone in to fold it and arrange things neatly. She undid all that work now as she took the quilt out and spread it on the bed once more. It took several trips to bring all of the toys and the paintings down to the main room, but once there, she arranged everything to create a picture that spoke of love and family.

  There were more things in the closet of the spare room—a sampler that had been stitched decades ago, a whittling knife and half-finished, carved squirrel, a bag of marbles. She took them all down to the main room, arranging them as if more than just a newlywed couple lived in the house. Maybe if the house looked as though family belonged there, a greater, larger family would fill its walls once again.

  By the time Amos returned to the house—earlier than usual because of the rain, Willow was beaming with pride in what she’d done.

  “What’s that delicious smell?” Amos asked, drawing in a long breath as he stepped through the kitchen door. He still didn’t smile, but the tension around his eyes and mouth lessened.

  “Apple cobbler,” Willow answered. “Well, that and beef stew. I made the cobbler from a recipe in the box from the pantry.”

  A strange look came over Amos’s face. “That was my mother’s recipe.”

  He hesitated for a few beats before walking over to the kitchen table where Willow had set out the dish of cobbler along with a few plates and forks. That wasn’t what caught Amos’s eye, though. Instead, he looked straight at the knitted shawl she’d draped over the back of one of the chairs.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked, voice low with warning.

  Willow sucked in a breath, then faced him, shoulders squared. “You know where I got that. And I’m sure you know where I got the rest of it.”

  “The rest of it?”

  He caught sight of something in the main room, and left the table to stride across the kitchen and the hall to investigate. Willow braced herself for what she knew was coming and followed him.

  “Willow, I told you I didn’t want to see any of these things,” he said as he turned a circle, studying the changes she’d made in the main room. “I meant what I said.”

  “And I meant what I said when I told you it was time to mend fences,” she replied. It terrified her to stand her ground when so much was at stake, but for once in her life, she needed to be firm. She knew she wouldn’t ruin this.

  Amos rubbed his face, turned and frowned at her. “It isn’t your place to interfere with these things.”

  “I disagree. It is my place. It’s my place as your wife.” Before he could contradict her, she rushed on with, “You were the one who placed an advertisement in that newspaper for a wife, Amos. You can tell me that you did it because you needed help around the farm, but I think it was more than that.”

  “Of course it was more than that,” he said, still angry. “I didn’t mean that I don’t want you to share my life. But this part of it…this part is something I don’t want anymore.”

  She shook her head. “I think you do. I think you replied to me when I wrote to you about becoming your wife because I mentioned that part of my family was Amish. I think that spoke to you.” She took a step closer to him. “I saw the way that you looked when you were talking to the other men at Mark’s house. I see the way you interact with him. You want to be a part of that again. It’s who you are.”

  He huffed in frustration. “It’s who I was. They turned their backs on me.”

  “Fifteen years ago,” she agreed. “Right now, the only one I see turning their back is you.”

  Instead of having the effect Willow had intended, sudden hurt flooded Amos’s face. So much that he swayed into motion, storming out of the room. Her heart caught in her throat, and she rushed after him.

  “Where are you going?”

  “This isn’t going to work,” he called back to her, brushing through the kitchen and out onto the back porch. “If you aren’t going to respect my privacy and the things I don’t want to dredge up, then I’m not sure that you’ll be able to respect me at all.”

  “No,” Willow gasped. “That’s not what I’m trying to say.”

  She wasn’t sure if he heard her. Before the words were out of her mouth, the back door slapped shut. She paused, staring at it, terrified that she’d made a mess of all the things she was trying to fix.

  But no, no this wasn’t a mess, it was just a storm, and storms passed. This was exactly what they needed to bring things out into the open. She pushed on, throwing open the kitchen door and marching out into the rain after him.

  Chapter Eight

  Dear Gillian, Emma, and Rose,

  Have you heard the expression ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire?’ Well, today I lived that expression….

  A loud rumble of thunder greeted Amos as he burst through the kitchen door. He took the steps from the porch to the yard, two at a time. Every muscle in his body burned with the need to do something, fight something, but he had no idea what. He didn’t even know where to go once he was outside, the cool rain beating down on his hot face. He wiped his quickly dampened hair off his forehead as he came to a stop in the middle of the yard, between the house and the barn. Where did you go to dodge the pain of the past?

  “Amos. Amos, please don’t walk away from me,” Willow called after him.

  His chest tightened all over again as he turned to see Willow—his wife, his meddlesome, persistent, good-hearted wife—dash out the kitchen door and into the rain with him.

  “You shouldn’t be out here, Willow. It’s raining. There’s a storm blowing in.” Even now, assaulted by emotions he’d tried to bury for so long, he needed to protect her. Another rumble of thunder emphasized his point.

  “This is exactly where I should be,” she said, marching across the wet lawn to him, getting soaked in the process.

  Amos fought the urge to run. Deep though his pain and confusion was, he owed it to Willow to keep her from harm if the storm got worse. She kept coming until she stood toe-to-toe with him, a determined frown creasing her delicate brow.

  “This is where I should be, and this is where you should be too. I want this marriage to work, and I know it can work, not in spite of the fact that I invaded your privacy, but because of it. I think you’ve waited fifteen long years for someone to reach out to you through the wall you’ve built up.”

  All at once, the tension of the hurt in his soul cracked, leaving his limbs weak and heavy. “What’s done is done. I can’t change what happened to my family, and neither can you.”

  “You’re right,” she insisted. “But just because things went wrong in the past, it doesn’t mean you have to live your future in fear that everything will go wrong again.”

  He was about to contradict her, to say once someone showed their true colors, those colors wouldn’t change, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, Willow gasped and snapped straight. A light came to her eyes that was so out of place with the argument they were having that it wiped every bit of frustration out of Amos’s mind. And still Willow’s face continued to glow, her whole countenance to fill with joy.

  Amos narrowed his eyes. “Willow, is everything all right?”

  Her gaze remained unfocused for a moment before she met his eyes with a relieved sigh. “I can’t spend my whole life living in fear that I’ll cause another disaster, Amos. Maybe the fire at the factory was my fault, maybe it wasn’t. But even if it was, I can’t spend the rest of my life afraid that something like that will happen again.”

  He frowned, crossing his arms and watching her. “The fire at the factory?”

  She nodded, smiling. “All this time, I’ve believed it was my fault, that I was somehow careless or stupid.”

  “I doubt that’s the case.” Had she really been blaming herself for the factory fire all this time? “You’ve been nothing but careful and contentious since you arrived here.”

  “I’ve tried.”
She nodded, reaching for his hand. He let his arms drop from a closed off posture so that she could take one. “And that’s all that matters. Amos, don’t you see?”

  He didn’t, but he squeezed her hand nonetheless.

  “I’ve been so afraid that I’ll make the same mistakes over again that it’s kept me from enjoying myself and trying new things. But I think you’ve been afraid yourself—afraid that if you try to be a part of the community that was once your own, they’d reject you again.”

  He let go of her hand and took a step back. “They’re hardly the same thing.”

  “But they are,” Willow insisted. She reached for him again. He remained stiff and resisted her attempts to retake his hand, so she laid a hand on his arm. “I am certain—beyond certain—that your friends wouldn’t push you out the same way your parents were pushed out. You said yourself that the issue that led to their leaving was a personal vendetta, that the men who are in charge now don’t feel the same way. I saw with my own eyes how much they want to welcome you back. Amos, let go of your fear. Please.”

  The weight of everything she said pressed down on him like the darkness in the sky above. The small voice in his soul that knew she was right—that had always known what was right—grew louder by the moment. “I was made to feel like a fool,” he told her. “A fool that nobody wanted.”

  “But we both know that’s not who you are,” she persisted. “A fool doesn’t forgive. A strong man with an open heart does. I know that you’re that man, Amos. In less than a month, a handful of days, I know that’s who you are. Forgiveness is hard, but it’s necessary.”

  “It is hard,” he agreed with the first half of her statement in a resigned sigh, rubbing the rain out of his face. It was picking up now, coming down in fat drops that drummed in the canopy of trees around them, against the roof of the house and the barn.

  “From what I’ve seen, your old life is reaching out to you,” Willow went on. “All you have to do is reach back.”

  Amos swallowed, her words sinking in, slowly but deeply. She was right. How was it possible that she could come to know him so well when they had been together for such a short amount of time? And how could he ever have lived a full life without her by his side?

  “I need to think on it,” he said at last. In the midst of his turmoil, he managed a weak smile, then took her hand and squeezed it. “It’s hard to change fifteen years of thinking, even if it’s necessary.”

  The smile that came to Willow’s eyes was full of enough joy to close up Amos’s throat. “That’s all I ask. It’s not too much, is it?”

  “No.” Amos’s smile grew and relaxed. “It’s not too much. Even if it is a lot.” He squeezed her hand one more time, then let it go. “Now go back into the house and change into some dry clothes. Neither of us should be standing out here, and it only looks like it’s going to get worse.”

  She blinked to uncertainty. “Aren’t you going to come in too?”

  He shook his head. “I have some work to do in the barn.”

  “Oh.” Her smile returned. “Just be sure not to work too hard.”

  She hesitated, then leaned toward him, lifting on her toes to kiss his cheek. It was a simple gesture, but it filled Amos with tenderness and confidence all the same. He stayed where he was, watching as she scurried back to the house, making certain she made it safely inside. Then he let out a breath and headed to the barn.

  He hadn’t lied to her. He did have work to do. But it wasn’t the kind that a man did with two strong arms. His chest constricted with uncertainty. Fifteen years, he’d been certain that his family had been treated so unfairly that nothing could heal the wounds. It was true, one man’s selfishness had spread and multiplied until it caused a great injustice. But as he crossed into the shelter of the barn—reaching for a clean towel that was usually used to rub down his horses, and wiping the rain off his face and hair—he knew that if he continued to hold onto the bitterness of the past, one man’s selfishness would continue to live. Evil should never be allowed to thrive, he could see that now. Thanks to Willow.

  When he was as dry as he was going to get, Amos hung the towel back on its peg and crossed to the far end of the barn. He had a small workstation set up there where he kept his accounting books and papers. There was blank stationery there too, pens and envelopes. It was where he had written his replies to Willow last month when she had responded to his advertisement. Last month? Had it been so little time?

  With a sigh, he sank into the seat behind his desk and took out a piece of paper. This time, it wasn’t Willow he would write to. He had family, brothers and sisters, who had gone their own ways. They too had been hurt by everything that had happened. For years, he had resisted sending more than surface letters, reporting the condition of the farm, to them. Now it was time for something more.

  “Dear Micah,” he addressed the first letter to the brother who was closest to him in age, only four years younger. “I hope all is well with you in New York. Normally I would write to tell you how the harvest is going, but I have something different in my heart this time, and it’s time that it came out. It is time that I go home, that we all go home to join our brethren. Let me tell you about an amazing woman who has come into my life and changed everything….”

  Willow reached for the first towel that came to hand as she entered the kitchen. Her heart was lighter than it’d been all week. For the first time, she felt as though she might have gotten through to Amos. It hurt to see him struggle and to know that he had struggled for so long, but now she saw the light of hope in his eyes.

  Heart lifted, Willow shook out her skirt, then marched through the house and upstairs to seek out dry clothes. She found Dusty curled up on the quilt she’d laid out on the chest at the top of the stairs. The cat opened her eyes and lifted her head at the sight of Willow—sopping wet, hair stuck to her forehead, bright smile lighting her eyes.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” she asked the cat. “I think Amos might really be ready to put his past behind him and reach forward now.”

  Dusty responded with a wide yawn, standing and licking her paw. Even that lazy gesture made Willow laugh.

  She turned to the right, heading for the bedroom she shared with Amos. After only two steps, she stopped and twisted to face the spare bedroom. A new idea took hold of her. Amos was so close to opening his heart and returning to the community that she knew with everything in her he longed for. She longed for something to belong to just as much. Maybe all they needed was one more little push. She changed direction, heading into the spare room and making straight for the bureau.

  The Amish clothes that she’d found before were exactly where she’d left them. With an excited giggle catching in her throat, Willow peeled off her wet apron and dress, bent to untie and tug off her shoes, then doffed the rest of her clothes before selecting everything she needed from Amos’s sister’s old clothes. They felt soft and warm as she put them on, underthings and stockings, simple green dress and black apron. Whether it was the contrast of dressing in dry things after a soaking or the love that she could feel these clothes represented, wearing these new, old clothes filled her with happiness.

  It took longer to dry out her hair, to brush it and pull it back in a bun, but when everything was where it should be, she finished the outfit by reverently pinning the stiff, white prayer kapp to her hair. It felt so right that she burst into a smile, lowered her head, and said a prayer of thanks to the Lord right there. But that was only the beginning. Now she had work to do.

  “Come along, Dusty,” she said as she gathered up her old, wet clothes and carried them downstairs to dry by the fire. “We have so much to do. I want to try new recipes and search through the pantry to see what we have stored and…and rearrange the furniture.” She laughed at herself and new newfound boldness, but anything was possible.

  Maybe there would be another disaster. It might even be her fault. But if there was, she would rise to the challenge instead of letting it fill her with fear
. She was more than the mistakes that she sometimes made, and a little clumsiness was nothing to stop her from living her life.

  Her heart sang as she sorted through the pantry, bringing out the ingredients she would need to make a shoo-fly pie from the recipe card tucked away in the box with the others. She’d never had shoo-fly pie before, but for a change, she felt up to the challenge of something new.

  After she mixed the ingredients, rolled out the crust, and set the pie in the oven to bake, she moved to the kitchen table where her stationery was laid out from the day before. She’d been too distracted with everything that was happening between her and Amos to write to her friends, but now a letter was long overdue. She had far too many things to say.

  “Dear Gillian, Emma, and Rose,” she began. “What an exciting day it’s been.”

  Before she had written three more words on the next line, her eyes caught sight of a small envelope that she hadn’t noticed before under the three that she’d received from her friends yesterday. She set down her pen and picked up the pile. Sure enough, the envelope had stuck to the back of Emma’s letter. She hadn’t noticed it yesterday in her excitement of seeing what her friend had to say.

  “Oh. It’s from Lottie,” she told Dusty, who had taken up her post near the stove, hopeful that if Willow was cooking, she might get a bite to eat.

  She had no idea why a woman as important and respected as Lottie would be writing to her. Then again, Lottie had always cared about her, like a sister. Perhaps she was checking up.

  “Dear Willow,” the letter began. “I was so happy to hear that you were able to find a husband so quickly after the fire. You have my heartiest congratulations, and I hope you’ll be happy. But that’s not why I’m writing to you.”

  Willow frowned, chewing her lip, and read on.

  “Your friends shared with me that you are worried that the fire was caused by some sort of negligence on your part, but I want to assure you that that’s not true. We are zeroing in on the true culprit as I write this. One thing is for certain, the fire was a deliberate act of arson and not something that was caused by negligence. So you see, it was not your fault at all. I’m just sorry you have been worried about this.”