The Saddle Maker's Son
Read The Saddle Maker's Son Online
Authors: Kelly Irvin
“Irvin has given her audience a continuation of
The Beekeeper's Son
with complicated young characters who must define themselves.”
â
R
OMANTIC
T
IMES
, 4-
STAR REVIEW OF
T
HE
B
ISHOP
'
S
S
ON
“
The Beekeeper's Son
is so well crafted. Each character is richly layered. I found myself deeply invested in the lives of both the King and Lantz families. I struggled as they struggled, laughed as they laughedâand even cried as they cried . . . This is one of the best novels I have read in the last six months. It's a refreshing read and worth every penny.
The Beekeeper's Son
is a keeper for your bookshelf!”
â
D
ESTINATION
A
MISH
“Kelly Irvin's
The Beekeeper's Son
is a beautiful story of faith, hope, and second chances. Her characters are so real that they feel like old friends. Once you open the book, you won't put it down until you've reached the last page.”
âA
MY
C
LIPSTON
,
BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF
A G
IFT OF
G
RACE
“
The Beekeeper's Son
is a perfect depiction of how God makes all things beautiful in His way. Rich with vivid descriptions and characters you can immediately relate to, Kelly Irvin's book is a must-read for Amish fans.”
âR
UTH
R
EID
,
BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF
A M
IRACLE OF
H
OPE
“Kelly Irvin writes a moving tale that is sure to delight all fans of Amish fiction. Highly recommended.”
âK
ATHLEEN
F
ULLER
,
AUTHOR OF THE
H
EARTS OF
M
IDDLEFIELD AND
M
IDDLEFIELD
F
AMILY NOVELS
T
HE
A
MISH OF
B
EE
C
OUNTY
N
OVELS
The Beekeeper's Son
The Bishop's Son
N
OVELLAS BY
K
ELLY
I
RVIN
A Christmas Visitor
in
An Amish Christmas Gift
Sweeter than Honey
in
An Amish Market
ZONDERVAN
The Saddle Maker's Son
Copyright © 2016 by Kelly Irvin
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan,
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
ePub Edition © May 2016: ISBN 978-0-3103-4006-5
Names: Irvin, Kelly, author.
Title: The saddle maker's son / Kelly Irvin.
Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, [2016] | Series: The Amish of Bee County; 3
Identifiers: LCCN 2015050327 | ISBN 9780310339861 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: AmishâFiction. | GSAFD: Love stories. | Christian fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3609.R82 S23 2016 | DDC 813/.6âdc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050327
Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version
®
, NIV
®
. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.⢠Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.â¢
Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherâexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Publisher's Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Interior design: James Phinney
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 / RRD / 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Tim, Nicholas and Angelica, Erin and Shawn, and the little ones, Brooklyn and Carson. You are the reason I rise in the morning each day. Love always.
FEATURED BEE COUNTY AMISH FAMILIES
A NOTE TO READERS OF THE AMISH OF BEE COUNTY SERIES
Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
M
ATTHEW
19:13â14
As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.
I
SAIAH
66:13
VOCABULARY
*
aenti:
aunt
Ausbund:
Amish hymnbook
bopli, boplin:
baby, babies
bruder:
brother
daed:
father
danki:
thank you
dawdy haus:
grandparents' house
dochder:
daughter
doplisch:
clumsy
Englischer:
English or non-Amish
fraa:
wife
Gott:
God
groossdaadi:
grandpa
groossmammi:
grandma
gut:
good
hund:
dog
jah:
yes
kaffi:
coffee
kinner:
children
lieb:
love
mann:
husband
meidung:
avoidance, shunning
mudder:
mother
nee:
no
onkel:
uncle
Ordnung:
written and unwritten rules in an Amish district
rumspringa:
period of running around
schtinkich:
stink, stinky
schweschder:
sister
suh:
son
wunderbarr:
wonderful
*
The German dialect spoken by the Amish is not a written language and varies depending on the location and origin of the settlement. These spellings are approximations. Most Amish children learn English after they start school. They also learn high German, which is used in their Sunday services.
Mordecai and Abigail King
Abram (and wife, Theresa)
Phineas (and wife, Deborah; children: Timothy and Melinda)
Samuel
Jacob
Rebekah (Abigail's daughter)
Caleb (Abigail's son)
Hazel (Abigail's daughter)
Susan King (Mordecai's sister)
Leroy and Naomi Glick
Adam (and wife, Esther [Mordecai's daughter])
Jesse (and wife, Leila [Abigail's daughter]; children: Grace and
Emmanuel)
Joseph
Simon
Sally
Mary
Elizabeth
Will (minister) (and wife, Isabella [Aaron Shrock's daughter])
Aaron and Jolene Shrock
Matthew
John
James
Molly
Amanda
Stephen and Ruth Anne Stetler
Joseph
Hannah
Levi Byler (widower)
Tobias
David
Martha
Milo
Rueben
Micah
Ida
Nyla
Liam
Jeremiah (bishop) and Lena Hostetler
Vesta
Elijah
Rachel
Susie
Phillip
Noah
Annie
Mary
Henry
Moses
If you wonder whatever happened to the Lantz sisters' cousin Franny, be sure to look for the novella
A Christmas Visitor
in the anthology
An Amish Christmas Gift
. Franny finds true love all her own. Those readers who are feeling a little sorry for Will Glick, who didn't get the girl not once but twice, worry no more. Read the
Sweeter than Honey
novella in the anthology
The Amish Market
. Will finds the woman he's been waiting for all along. Happy reading!
Alone at last. Rebekah Lantz tugged the creaking shed door shut and leaned against it. The folded piece of paper from her sister Leila weighed heavy as a stone in her hand. When had she managed to tuck it into the two-seater Rebekah drove with Susan to and from the school five days a week? Did she slip in while Rebekah was listening to the younger scholars read aloud? Surely not. Leila had a baby daughter to think about now and a husband. She couldn't be roaming the countryside delivering notes.
The fact that she had done just that made Rebekah's stomach rock. Guilt swirled there, mixing with a swelling ache to see her sister and a baby niece who would see her
aenti
as a stranger. A Plain woman such as herself should forgive. No matter how much Leila's decision to leave hurt. No matter how it left Rebekah with little chance of finding love herself among the young men who looked at her and knew exactly what Leila had done.
Just because Leila had given up everything to follow Jesse into the
Englisch
world didn't mean Rebekah would leave too. She longed to scream out those words at the next singing. Put them to music. Write her own song. Still, it wouldn't change the look on the faces of those boys she'd known her entire life. Deer
caught in the headlights of an Englisch truck barreling toward them on the highway.
She had to open the note, read it. Its weight seemed to increase as each second ticked by. The cracks in the weathered boards of the shed allowed afternoon sun to filter through in stripes like bars. The April sun was warm, as if reminding Rebekah Texas didn't wait around for summer like the northern states did. Her eyes adjusted to the dusky interior after a few seconds. The smells of mold, decaying wood, and dirt floated in the air. Old egg crates, a broken desk, a stack of chairs, a wooden door with white peeling paint filled the small room.
She wasn't a coward.
Swallowing against the knot of apprehension that always choked her when she did something of which her
mudder
would not approve, Rebekah unfolded the single sheet of notebook paper and peered at Leila's neat block writing.
Dear
schweschder
,Hope you are well. We must meet. I need to talk to you face-to-face. Come to where the school path meets the road Friday at lunch. I'll be driving the green VW Bug. Can you believe I drive? Give Hazel a kiss for me.
Love,
Leila
Inhaling the ripe scents that reminded her of how everything returned to the earth in the end, Rebekah reread the note a second time. Leila skipped along in life with nary a thought for how her actions affected others. Abdicating her family. Or inviting Rebekah to a meeting that would cause her great trouble if Mudder or Mordecai found out.
Rebekah's job as an aide to Susan King wasn't much, but it was all she had. She would never be allowed to get a job in town. Every day since that Christmas Eve two years ago, Mudder and Mordecai had watched Rebekah, never letting her go far from their sight, as if waiting for her to take flight too.
Mudder blamed Leila's exposure to the Englisch world while working at the day care in town for all her actions. Not love. For surely it was love that made a person do these strange, inexplicable things. Rebekah wouldn't know. How could she when the boys avoided her like poison ivy? At nineteen, Rebekah had no special friend and no chance of having one.
Pressing the note to her chest, she closed eyes that burned with tears she refused to shed. In the two years since Leila had left, Rebekah had never seen her sister or the baby Grace, now ten months old. Why now? And with such short notice? Plenty of time to forgive and forget, as she was called to do. Yet here she stood with pain and anger barricaded together behind the walls of a hardened heart.
She had to see Leila. If for no other reason than to say those words. Saying them was the first step in letting the past go. Leastways, that was what the bishop would say.
A sound, like a muffled sneeze, broke the silence. Rebekah jumped and dropped the note.
The one place she'd thought to be alone.
“Hello?”
Nothing. Apprehension filled her lungs, making it hard to breathe. Her heart pounded. Rebekah scooped up the note and took two steps back. She put her shaking hand on a broken desk that leaned against the wall. “Who's there?”
Something or someone scuttled along the far wall behind the
stack of egg crates. Rebekah took a step toward the door. “I know you're there. I'll go outside and you can come out. I won't hurt you.”
Such bravado.
What if a prisoner had escaped from the prison near Beeville again? Memories of her brother-in-law Phineas's bruised face and bloodied arm spun through her mind's eye. Phineas and Deborah had escaped and the prisoner from the McConnell Unit had been captured, but not before damage had been done.
She whirled, jerked open the door, and stumbled into the fresh air and light.
A young girl shot past her, dragging a little boy by the hand. The boy, dressed in faded blue jeans and a gray T-shirt that might have been white at one time, stumbled and fell to his knees. A filthy, bedraggled Mickey Mouse backpack weighed him down. The girl, who looked eleven or twelve, paused and jerked him to his feet. They were both all bones and no flesh, all angles and points. Their faces were dirty, their dark hair matted to their heads. Tears streaked the boy's face.
“Wait, wait, who are you?” Rebekah hurled herself after them. The girl sped up, headed for the stand of live oaks, hackberries, and junipers at the edge of the school yard. “Stop! We have food.
Comida
.”
The girl halted. She swiveled and stared back at Rebekah, the expression on her brown face a mixture of hope and suspicion. Her arm went around the boy, who looked about Rebekah's little sister Hazel's age, maybe five or six. His almond-shaped eyes were huge in his thin face.
“¿Comida?”
Rebekah had studied Spanish in an old textbook she'd found in a secondhand bookstore for almost three years now, in hopes of one day being allowed to cross into Mexico when the older
folks made their trips to Progreso to the dentist or to buy medicines. She knew what the words were but had no idea if she was pronouncing them correctly. “Food. Co . . . mi . . . da. Are you hungry?”
The girl nodded hard.
“Mi hermano tiene hambre.”
They were brother and sister. Who they were and why they were in the district's schoolhouse shed didn't matter as much to Rebekah as the idea that children were going without food. She pointed to them, then the schoolhouse, and put her hand on her chest. “You come inside with me.”
The boy began to back away, dragging his backpack with him. He shook his head, fear etched across his elfin features.
“You want me to bring the food to you?”
The girl tugged at her brother.
“SÃ.”
“No one will hurt you, I promise. What's your name?
Nombre
?”
The girl cocked her head toward the boy, who pressed his face against her shirt. “Him Diego.” She thumped her chest. “Lupe.”
“I'm Rebekah.” She tapped her chest with her index finger. “Wait here. I'll be back. Don't go anywhere. No one will bother you out here.”
She dashed across the yard, hopped over the two steps that led to the small porch, and tugged open the door. Inside, she skidded to a stop. The first graders stood at the front of the room, reading aloud to Susan. The middle grades wrote essays while the older boys and girls graded the younger children's arithmetic tests.
She sidled over to where Susan stood, arms crossed, a patient smile plastered on her plump face. “There you are. You said you were going to get your lunch box from the buggy. I thought maybe you decided teaching wasn't for you and went home.”
Susan chuckled and patted Mary on the shoulder. “Good job. Molly, you're next.”
“I need to tell you something.” Rebekah leaned in and whispered, not wanting to get the entire school riled up. “Over by the stove.”
Susan's eyebrows arched. “Caleb, come listen to Molly read for me.”
Grinning, Caleb popped up from his seat. Knowing her younger brother as she did, Rebekah assumed he was thrilled to get out of writing his essay, even if only for a few moments.
Susan followed her to the long cabinets that lined one wall, providing storage space for lunch boxes and school supplies. “Something wrong?”
“
Nee
. Well, maybe. I don't know.” Rebekah drummed her fingers on the countertop. She had a peanut butter and wild-grape jam sandwich in her cooler. Two oatmeal cookies. Some cold fried potatoes. Not enough for two hungry children. “I found two
kinner
hiding in the shed.”
Susan swung around toward the rows of desks. Her hand went up, her chubby finger pointing, and she began to count in a whisper.
“Nee, not ours. I'm not sure where they came from, butâ”
“Did you ask them where they came from?” Susan's schoolteacher voice commanded an answer. “What were they doing in the shed?”
“Hiding, I guessâ”
“Why?”
“I don't know. They don't speak much English.”
“They're from Mexico?”
“I don't think so. They sounded . . . different.”
“Why did you leave them out there?”
“They were afraid to come in.”
“Why?”
“I don't know.”
“What
do
you know?”
“Just that they're scared and dirty and it doesn't look like they have anybody to take care of them and they're hungry.”
She closed her mouth and waited. Susan rubbed her upturned nose with one finger, her full lips puckered and forehead wrinkled under a tendril of brown hair that had escaped her
kapp
. “We might need to get Mordecai.”
Susan's brotherâRebekah's stepfatherâwould know what to do. And he was the deacon. Still, it would take thirty minutes round trip in the buggy to get to the farm and back. And then most likely Mordecai would be in the fields tending his beehives. “Can't we feed them first? They look starved.”
Susan chewed on her lip for a second. “I can't abide seeing a child go hungry.”
“Me neither.” Rebekah grabbed her lunch box. “I have one PB&J sandwich.”
Susan scooped up the red cooler that had her name written in black marker on both sides. “I have venison sausage on a biscuit.”
The reading had stopped sometime during their conversation. Rebekah looked over her shoulder. Their scholars numbered fifteen and every one of them stared at Susan and her.
“Teacher, what's going on?” Of course Caleb, as one of the cheekiest, had the nerve to voice the question written across all their faces. “Is someone out there?”
“We have visitors.” Susan made it sound like the typical parent visit. They did come by occasionally, sometimes with a
hot meal or dessert, but runaway children who spoke another language, that never happened. “Mind your p's and q's and keep working.”
Rebekah scurried to the door, the lunch boxes in her hands. Susan followed. “You're sure they're alone? There's no one waiting in the trees out there?”
“No one I saw. They seem completely alone.”
She waited while Susan opened the door for her. Her aunt looked back at the classroom, her expression stern. “Sally, you're in charge. Everyone continues doing exactly what they're doing now.”
“Yes, Teacher,” the scholars responded in unison.
Rebekah had no doubt they would do as they were told. She couldn't fathom how Susan did it, but her scholars not only obeyed her, they loved her and wanted to please her. Rebekah scurried across the small porch, her gaze on the steps. “Lupe! Diego!”
“Nee, I'm Tobias Byler. Who are you?”
Rebekah craned her head. A man sat in a wagon, his face hidden in the shadow of a straw hat haloed by the midday sun. An older man, cookie cutter in size and lean build, sat ramrod straight next to him, mammoth hands resting on bended knees. Behind them, five children of varying ages filled the back of the wagon.
Rebekah settled the lunch boxes on the ground and raised her hand to her forehead to shield her eyes. “There was a boy and a girl out here. Did you see where they went?”
“The little boy and girl ran away when Tobias yelled at them.” A little girl with a lisp, who held two dolls clutched to her chest, volunteered this startling information in a tone that said she didn't approve. She stood and pointed. “They ran into those trees.”
“You yelled at them?” Rebekah knew better than to scold
a man, any man, but especially one she didn't know. Still, she couldn't help herself. “They're hungry. They're children.”
Tobias lifted his hat, revealing brown hair over green eyes in a tanned face that held a bemused expression. He found her outburst funny somehow. He slapped the hat back on his head as if he had all the time in the world to consider her comment. “I just missed running over the boy when he ran out in front of the wagon. I thought a shout was in order.”
“Tobias.” The other man had the same deep voice and accent that spoke of somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon Line. “We're newcomers. Let's not get off on the wrong foot.”
“But,
Daed
â”
“We brought the kinner by to see where they'll start school tomorrow. I know there's only a couple of weeks left, but they're chomping at the bit to meet some of the other kinner around here.” Tobias's daed smiled at Susan, who stood next to Rebekah with her hands on her hips. “I reckon they're not so excited about school itself, sorry to say. I'm Levi Byler, your new neighbor. You must be the teacher.”
Why didn't he think Rebekah was the teacher? She opened her mouth. Susan's hand touched her arm. She shut her mouth.
“Pleased to meet you. I'm Susan King and this is Rebekah Lantz.” Susan seemed to have lost her schoolteacher voice. The words were soft, almost hesitant. She tilted her head as if looking around Levi. “Five of you? That's a nice addition to our numbers. Y'all are welcome to come in and meet the other scholars.”