Lifted Up by Angels (2 page)

Leah scrambled from the car and embraced her friend, a lump of emotion clogging her throat. “You look wonderful!”

Charity stepped an arm’s length away. “And you look beautiful. Too thin, I think.”

“Left over from the chemo treatments. But I didn’t lose much hair.” Leah spun, and her dark hair, now shoulder length, fluffed in the breeze.

“You must tell me everything. But first, we must go out to the garden, where someone is waiting to see you.”

Charity led Leah around to the back of the house, where two women and two girls were tending a large vegetable garden. Leah recognized Charity’s mother, Tillie, at once. Upon seeing Leah, the child beside Tillie dropped her hoe and ran, arms outstretched to meet her.

“Rebekah!” Leah cried, catching the girl in her arms. “You’ve grown so big.” She hadn’t seen Rebekah since she’d left the hospital room they’d shared.

The six-year-old beamed a smile at her. One of her front teeth was missing, making her look even cuter than Leah remembered. “I thought you’d never get here. I’ve been waiting all day,” Rebekah said.

“I’m here now,” Leah answered with a smile.

Charity introduced her sister, twelve-year-old Elizabeth, and her grandmother, whom they called Oma. The baby, Nathan, now eight months old, lay asleep on a nearby blanket. “We shall all rest and take some lemonade,” Tillie Longacre announced. “And you must join us for dinner tonight, Leah.”

Holding Rebekah’s hand, Leah followed the group to a wooden picnic table, where chunks of ice sparkled in a pitcher of lemonade. “Thank you. I’d like that,” Leah said, feeling oddly out of place in her modern clothes. She was what the Amish called English. She was not one of the “plain people.” She felt her differences keenly.

“I want you to come see my chickens,” Rebekah said.

“I can’t wait to see them. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a live chicken up close and personal.”

Everybody laughed.

Before her mother had married Neil and moved to his farm, Leah had lived in Dallas and attended a huge metropolitan high school. After the move, she’d experienced culture shock.

“Leah can visit your chickens later,” Charity said. “Right now, I want her to walk with me to the barn.”

“That’s where Ethan is,” Rebekah declared. “He’s been looking for you all day too.”

Leah saw a sidelong glance pass between Tillie and Oma. She wondered if they approved of her visiting Ethan. But she couldn’t help the tingle of excitement that skittered up her spine at the thought of seeing him again. She recalled their bittersweet goodbye the previous December in the hospital lobby.

“Come with me,” Charity said, setting down her glass of lemonade.

Leah abandonded her lemonade and followed Charity across a wide field toward a large gray barn. The closer they got, the more nervous Leah grew. What had Ethan been thinking? What if he didn’t think she was pretty anymore? What if he’d decided his girlfriend, Martha Dewberry, was more to his liking because she was Amish? Ethan had written to Leah, but his wording had been stilted and
awkward, just as he’d been toward her in the hospital before they’d become friends. Before they’d kissed.

At the door of the barn, she smoothed her hair. “I look a mess.”

“You look lovely,” Charity said, stepping aside.

In the barn’s dim interior, Leah saw Ethan pitching hay down from a loft. His plain white shirt was damp with perspiration, his dark trousers speckled with straw. He was hatless and his thick blond hair looked ruffled. She gazed up at him, her heart pounding crazily. He looked down suddenly. She couldn’t move, could scarcely breathe.

In that instant, Leah realized that Ethan was the
real
reason she had come to Nappanee for the summer. Ethan, the Amish boy who lived in a world more different than any she had ever known. Ethan, the Amish boy she had fallen for months ago.

“L
eah!” Ethan called. “I’ll be right down.” He descended the ladder.

Nervous, Leah looked back toward Charity for moral support, but Charity had slipped away.

“Hi,” Leah said when Ethan stood in front of her.

His brow knitted. His startling blue eyes stared directly into hers. “My eyes have been hungry for the sight of you.”

His quaint way of phrasing sentences had put her off when they’d first met. Now his words were like music to her. “And my eyes for you. How have you been?”

“I am fine. But it is not me we should be talking about. How have
you
been?”

“I made it through chemo and all. It really wasn’t so bad.”

“So the cancer in your bones is gone for good?”

Leah wasn’t sure how to answer. More than anything, she wanted to believe it was gone. “I have to go for checkups every three months for two years. If there’s no relapse, the doctors might pronounce me cured.” She gave him the answer her doctor had given her mother when she had asked the same question.

“That is good. Have you seen Gabriella again?”

“No. And I don’t think I will, either.”

“If she was an angel from the Lord sent to heal you, it does not seem likely that she will appear to you again. There is nothing left for her to do for you.”

“Everybody else thinks she was a nutcase who somehow slipped through hospital security. All I know is that before she came to see me that last time, I was facing having my leg amputated. After she touched me, my X rays started changing.” Leah shrugged. “Maybe it was just a
coincidence. I guess I’ll never know for sure who she was.”

“I am glad you will be working in Nappanee for the summer, because I will be able to see much of you,” Ethan told her. “Charity told me where you will be working.”

His assurance made Leah feel better. “I like the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Stoltz,” she said. “There’ll be another girl working with me, but I haven’t met her yet. You and Charity will have to come visit me in town. I have a cute little apartment, not too far from the inn, and a car to get me there. No excuses for ever being late.” Leah felt as if she was babbling, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

“You will live by yourself?” He made it sound slightly scandalous.

“Sure I will. I can come out and pick you up if you want. Can you ride in my car with me?” She knew the Amish would use modern transportation when necessary. She wasn’t sure if a visit to her apartment counted as necessary.

“I can ride with you.”

“Of course, I’d like to ride in that buggy of yours sometime.” Leah gave a nervous laugh. An Amish boy only asked a girl to ride in his buggy when he was interested in her romantically.
It was Leah’s way of asking if he still cared about her or if, since December, Martha had won him back.

He raised his hand as if to touch her cheek but drew back at the last second. “There is much I would like to do with you, Leah.”

Her knees went weak. “I—I won’t be in the way this summer, will I?”

“In the way?”

“You know. A bother, a pain.”

“How could you be in my way? I want you near me.”

The sound of running feet interrupted them. “There you are!” Rebekah exclaimed. “Ethan, can Leah come back to the garden now? She’s staying for supper, so you can see her later.”

“You are staying?”

“Your mother invited me.” He looked solemn, making her ask, “Is it all right to have dinner with your family?”

“Oh yes. Please. It is good to think about seeing you at our dinner table tonight.”

“Even though I’m English?”

He grinned. “I have eaten with you before. You are very civilized.”

She returned his smile. “I promise not to throw my food.”

Rebekah tugged on her hand. “Come. I’ll show you the chickens on the way back.”

Leah tossed Ethan one last glance and followed the little girl outside. The bright sunlight made her squint. She gazed around the beautiful stretch of farmland. Far back on the property, she saw another house. “Who lives over there?” she asked, pointing.

“My sister Sarah and her husband, Israel,” Rebekah said.

“I remember.” During their hospital stay, Rebekah had told Leah about her sister’s Amish-style wedding: very different from most weddings.

“Yes, and guess what?” Rebekah lowered her voice, although there was no one around to overhear. “Sarah’s going to have a baby.” The little girl giggled. “Her stomach is fat. I saw my cat have kittens, so I know these things.”

Leah suppressed a smile. “That’ll make you an aunt. And your mother a grandmother. And your oma a great-grandmother.”

Rebekah’s eyes grew large. “I’ll be an aunt?”

Leah stroked the child’s head, which was covered by a black prayer cap, and remembered how she used to long for a sister when she was growing up. “Yes, you will.”

After looking over the chickens in Rebekah’s charge, Leah accompanied the girl to the house. They entered a spacious kitchen filled with the smells of baking bread, roasting meat, and simmering vegetables and gravies. A table, filled with mixing bowls and resembling a command center, stood in the center of the room. Cupboards reached to the ceiling along two walls, and a sink with a hand pump stood under a window. Leah saw Elizabeth toss wood into a large black cast-iron stove. The room was overly warm. Then she realized that the house had no electricity, so that meant, along with a woodstove for cooking, no air-conditioning or fans.

“Rebekah, set the table, please,” Mrs. Longacre said.

“What should I do?” Leah asked when Rebekah had scurried away.

“Help me peel carrots,” Charity answered.

Leah started scraping vegetables into the sink. “Ethan looks great,” she told Charity quietly. “Thanks for letting us be alone together.”

“He’s been eager to see you.”

Pleased, Leah said, “I wasn’t sure. I mean, I know I’m not the ideal girl for him to bring home to Mom and Dad.”

“Our family has had English here before.”

“Really? Who?”

But Charity clamped her lips together, and bright spots of color appeared on her cheeks. “Forgive me. I should not have spoken of the past.”

Leah knew they couldn’t talk freely with Charity’s mother and oma so close by, but she was puzzled. What did she mean? And why act so secretive about past dinner guests?

In an hour the meal was ready, and Mrs. Longacre stepped out on the porch and clanged a large bell. “Calling the men in from the fields,” Charity explained.

When the men arrived, Charity introduced her family. “You remember Papa and Ethan. And this is my grandfather, Opa, and my brother Simeon.”

Leah smiled at the Amish men without meeting Ethan’s eyes. Mr. Longacre welcomed her, but his greeting seemed stiff and formal.

In the dining room a long table with straight-backed chairs took up most of the floor space. No pictures hung on the walls, no rug covered the hardwood floor. A pull-down shade was the only decoration on the window. Serving dishes, heaped with food, garnished the bare tabletop.
Mrs. Longacre hung an oil lamp from a low ceiling hook over the table and lit it with a long match.

Mr. Longacre took his seat at the head of the table, and the other men sat to his right in descending order of age. Mrs. Longacre took a chair on his left, and then the girls sat, with Leah between Charity and Elizabeth. Baby Nathan’s high chair was wedged between the parents. Leah tried not to fidget.

“We shall thank God,” Mr. Longacre said.

The blessing was brief and spoken in both German and English. The men passed the bowls among themselves first, then to the women.
No “ladies first” rules here,
Leah thought. The meal was quiet, the only sounds being those of bowls scraping against wood and utensils striking plates. When a bowl was emptied, Charity or Elizabeth, taking turns, went to the kitchen and refilled it. Leah thought the food was good, but she was too nervous to really enjoy the meal. She sensed tension in the room and wondered if her presence was the cause of it.

“Bud threw a shoe this afternoon,” Opa said at one point.

“He’ll have to be taken to the blacksmith,” Mr. Longacre said.

“I can take him tomorrow,” Ethan said.

“You have other tasks,” his father replied.

“I will take the horse,” Ethan said, surprising Leah. His tone almost sounded defiant—not at all Amish.