Brightest and Best
Read Brightest and Best Online
Authors: Olivia Newport
Tags: #Fiction, #Christian, #Romance, #Amish & Mennonite
© 2015 by Olivia Newport
Print ISBN 978-1-62836-633-4
eBook Editions:
Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-63409-559-4
Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-63409-560-0
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.
All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Cover design: Faceout Studio,
www.faceoutstudio.com
Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370,
www.booksandsuch.com
Published by Shiloh Run Press, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683,
www.shilohrunpress.com
Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.
Printed in the United States of America.
Ella Hilty
Jed Hilty
—Ella’s father
Rachel Hilty
—Jed’s wife, Ella’s stepmother
David Kaufman
—Rachel’s son from her first marriage, Ella’s stepbrother
Seth Kaufman
—Rachel’s son from her first marriage, Ella’s stepbrother
Gideon Wittmer
Betsy (Lehman) Wittmer
—Gideon’s wife, who died five years ago
Tobias Wittmer
—Gideon’s son
Savilla Wittmer
—Gideon’s daughter
Gertrude “Gertie” Wittmer
—Gideon’s daughter
Lindy Lehman
—sister of Betsy Lehman, best friend of Rachel Hilty
James and Miriam Lehman
—uncle and aunt of Betsy and Lindy
Margaret Simpson
—first-grade teacher at Seabury Consolidated Grade School
Gray Truesdale
—Margaret Simpson’s beau
Braden Truesdale
—Gray’s brother
Percival T. Eggar
, Esquire, Attorney at Law
Ulysses R. Brownley
—superintendent of Seabury schools
Deputy Fremont
—deputy sheriff
Mr. Tarkington
—principal of Seabury Consolidated Grade School
Amish Families:
Isaiah Borntrager Family
Cristof Byler Family
Bishop Leroy Garber Family
Joshua Glick Family
John and Joanna Hershberger Family
Aaron and Alma King Family
Chester Mast Family
CHAPTER 1
Geauga County, Ohio, 1918
D
on’t take another step!”
Ella froze. Her eyes flashed between the red rug on the floor in front of her and Nora Coates at the blackboard.
The schoolteacher’s calico skirt swished softly as she came around the desk.
Ella relaxed her muscles but did not move her feet. “What’s the matter?”
“You haven’t been here in a long time, have you?” Nora stood six feet in front of Ella.
Ella Hilty was twenty-six, at least three years older than Nora. She left school after the eighth grade, half a lifetime ago, and had only occasional reason to be inside the one-room schoolhouse since then.
“The children all know how soft the floor is right there,” Nora said. “The red rug reminds them, and they walk around the other way.”
“Soft?” Ella echoed.
Nora grimaced. “
Rotted
is a more precise word.”
Ella wasn’t sure whether she felt the spongy floor yield beneath her weight or only imagined it.
“Nellie Watson put her foot through it a few months ago,” Nora said. “I never heard such shrieking from a child of school age.”
“I will step carefully if you would kindly advise me,” Ella said.
“Take a long step to your left and you should be on solid ground again.”
Ella turned her gaze to an open space under a window and lifted her skirt just enough to accommodate the movement. Safely out of the danger zone, she squatted and lifted one corner of the red rug. Beneath it, the dank wood floor had caved in, splintered edges ringing the spot where Nellie Watson’s foot must have sunk through.
“It’s been wet from underneath,” Ella said.
Nora nodded. “Three winters ago, during my first year teaching, Mr. King patched it, but it didn’t hold.”
Ella straightened the rug and stood. She understood now why Nora had asked for representatives of the parents committee to inspect the schoolhouse in the middle of July. There was time for repairs before the children returned to school in September.
“Did you attend school here?” Nora asked.
Ella nodded. She had lived in Geauga County, Ohio, all her life.
“The blackboard was new when I started,” Ella said. Twenty years ago the new chalk had flashed white under the teacher’s firm, quick strokes against the board. Ella had never seen anything like it. But she was six, had seen little of anything beyond the Amish farms, and only learned to speak English after she started school.
“The blackboard is still serviceable,” Nora said, “but I wish one of the men would be sure it is properly secured. Sometimes the children lean on the chalk ledge when I ask them to come to the board to show their work. The creaks I hear are unnerving.”
Gertie would do that. Gideon’s daughter was newly six and due to begin school in a few weeks.
“I loved school.” Ella moved cautiously toward the front of the room. She examined the strained wooden slats of the chalk ledge.
“Did you ever think of staying in school?” Nora’s eyes brightened with curiosity.
Ella shook her head. Her parents never kept her from her books. She borrowed whatever she wanted to read from the small library in town. Besides, her eighth-grade year was also the year of her mother’s death, and Ella took on housekeeping for her father. The youngest of eight children, she was the only one unmarried and living at home.
That was twelve years ago, and Ella was still the only sibling unmarried and living at home. Now, though, there was Rachel. Jed Hilty had a new wife.
Gertie Wittmer jumped unassisted out of her father’s wagon. Gideon’s impulse was to reach out and catch her, but she wouldn’t want him to. She never did. Of his three children, the youngest was the most independent. Tobias was obedient, Savilla was sensible, and Gertie was independent. Perhaps this was because Gertie didn’t remember what it was like to have a mother and the others did.
Gertie’s small form hit the ground in a solid leap, and she grinned at him before running toward the schoolhouse. Perhaps he ought to warn Miss Coates to exercise extra firmness in helping Gertie adjust to the decorum of a classroom.
“Ella’s here!” Gertie disappeared into the building.
His daughter’s exuberance at the prospect of seeing Ella pleased Gideon. His own exceeded Gertie’s, and for a moment he envied her freedom to express herself unconstrained. For obvious reasons, Ella was not part of the parents committee, which consisted of two Amish fathers and two
English
fathers. Both groups of children shared the schoolhouse, as they had for decades. Gideon had asked Ella to come, believing that a woman might see flaws in the schoolhouse that men would not.
Gideon looped the reins over a low branch of a flowering dogwood tree and followed his daughter into the school.
In the doorway, he held his pose. It was a long time after Betsy’s death, when Gertie was a baby, before he saw Ella’s loveliness. With an arm around his daughter, Ella raised her dark eyes toward Gideon, testing the softness at his core. Surely it was God’s will that they should be together. Why else would a woman like Ella not have married years ago?
“Oh good, you’re here,” Miss Coates said.
Gideon’s head turned toward the rattle of wagons behind him, bringing Aaron King and the two
English
fathers. They had six weeks to ready the building. Aaron’s eyes would see the small flaws that could be remedied easily, but Miss Coates had already impressed on Gideon that the building needed more than fresh paint and polished desks.
The three fathers thumped in, their boots seeming heavy against the floor.
Walter Hicks rapped his knuckles against a vertical beam. “My boy warned me that things might be worse than we thought.”
“Theodore is an astute young man,” Miss Coates said.
Gertie ran a finger down the chalkboard and studied the resulting smudge.
Gideon glanced around. “Since we’re all here, Miss Coates, perhaps you can point out to us particular matters of concern.”
The teacher pointed up, above Walter’s head. “I keep an extra bucket under my desk because every time it rains, that spot leaks. It got a lot worse in the spring.”
“I’ve got a few spare shingles,” Aaron King said.
Gideon watched as Gertie ducked under the teacher’s desk and rattled the metal bucket.
“Gertie,” he said, and the girl emerged and moved to one of the two-seater desks in ragged rows. She looked small sitting there, and the thought that his youngest child was beginning school knotted him.
Ella pointed at the red rug. “Did you know there’s a gaping hole in the floor?”
Gideon was not surprised about the roof, but he had not heard about the floor.
“The windows need sealing,” Miss Coates said.
Gideon crossed to a window and ran a finger along its edges. “They need a lot more than sealing.” Even his slight touch broke off bits of the crumbling frame. It was likely the other five windows were just as dilapidated.