Get out of that sweater.”
The stranger, her face as pale as skim milk, set down her things and stripped off a torn gray sweater. In the lamplight, Hannah could see that she wasn’t as young as she had first thought. Mid-to-late twenties probably. Her cheeks were hollow and dark shadows smudged the area beneath her tired blue eyes. She was small and thin, the crown of her head barely coming to Johanna’s shoulder. But her face in no way prepared them for the very odd way she was dressed.
The woman wore a navy blue polyester skirt that came down to the tops of her muddy sneakers, a white, long-sleeve blouse, a flowered blue-and-red apron and a man’s white handkerchief tied like a head scarf over her thin red braids. The buttons had been cut off her shirt, and the garment was pinned together with what appeared to be safety pins, fastened on the inside.
No wonder Irwin and Hannah’s girls were gaping at the Englisher. For an instant, Hannah wondered if this was some sort of joke, but ne, she decided, this poor woman wasn’t trying to poke fun at the Amish. Maybe she was what the English called a hippie. Whatever she was, Hannah felt sorry for her. The expression in her eyes was both frightened and confused, but more than that, she appeared to expect Hannah to be angry with her—perhaps even throw the two of them back out into the storm.
“I’m Hannah Yoder,” she said in her best schoolteacher voice. “Did your car break down?”
The Englisher shook her head and lifted the child into her arms. “I...I hitched a ride with a milk truck driver. But he let me off at the corner. We walked from there.”
“Where were you going?” Johanna asked. “The two of you rode in a milk truck? With someone you didn’t know?”
The Englisher nodded. “You can pretty much tell if somebody is scary or not by looking at their eyes.”
Johanna met Hannah’s questioning gaze. It was clear to Hannah that for once, even wise, sensible Johanna was dumbstruck.
“I’m Hannah,” she repeated. “And these are my daughters Johanna—” she indicated each one in turn “—Susanna and Rebecca. This is Irwin.” She turned back toward the rocker by the window. “And Aunt Jezzy.”
The stranger nodded. “I’m Grace...and this is my boy, Dakota.”
“Da-kota?” Susanna wrinkled her nose. “That’s a funny name.”
The young woman shrugged, holding tightly to the child’s hand. “I thought it was pretty. He was a pretty baby. I wanted him to have a pretty name.”
She had an unfamiliar accent, not one Hannah was familiar with. She spoke English well enough. Hannah didn’t think the stranger was born in another country, just another part of America, maybe Kansas or farther west.
“Oh, you must be as cold as the child,” Hannah said. “Rebecca, fetch a blanket for our guest.”
Grace held out a hand to the warmth of the woodstove. Hannah noticed that her nails were bitten to the quick and none too clean.
“Are you Plain?” Hannah asked in an attempt to solve the mystery of the unusual clothes.
The woman blinked in confusion.
“You’re not Amish,” Hannah said.
“Maybe she’s Mennonite,” Aunt Jezzy suggested. “She might be one of those Ohio Old Order Mennonites or Shakers. Are you a Shaker?”
“I’m sorry...about the apron.” Grace brushed at it. “It was the only one I could find. I looked in Goodwill and Salvation Army. You don’t find many aprons and the only other one I saw had something...something not nice written on it.”
Hannah struggled to hide her amusement. The apron was awful. It had seen better days and was as soaked as the rest of her clothes, but the red roosters and the watermelons printed on it were definitely not like any Mennonite clothing Hannah had ever seen.
“Would you like some clothes for your little boy?” Johanna offered. “We could dry his trousers and shirt over the stove.”
Grace pressed her lips together and nodded. “That’s nice of you.”
“And something hot to drink for you?” Johanna suggested. “Tea or coffee?”
“Coffee, please, if you don’t mind,” Grace answered. “I like it with sugar and milk, if you have milk.”
“We have milk.” Susanna smiled broadly.
“Maybe Dakota would like some hot milk or cocoa,” Hannah said, noticing the way the boy was staring at a plate of oatmeal cookies on the counter. “He’s welcome to have a cookie with it, if you don’t mind.”
“He’d like that,” Grace stammered, shifting him from one slender hip to the other. “The cocoa and a cookie. We missed dinner...being on the road and all.”
Hannah thought to herself that Grace had missed more than one dinner. The girl was practically a bag of bones. “Let us find you both some dry things,” Hannah offered. “I’ve got a big pot of chicken vegetable soup on the back of the stove. That might help both of you warm up.” She smiled. “But I’m afraid you’re stuck here until morning. We don’t have a phone, and it’s too nasty a night to hitch the horses to the buggy. In the morning, we’ll help you continue on your way.”
“You’d do that? For me?” Grace asked. She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Her eyes were welling up with tears. “You don’t know me. That’s so good of you. I didn’t think... People told me the Amish didn’t like outsiders.”
“Ya,” Hannah agreed. “People say a lot about us. Most of it’s not true.” Then she looked at the stranger more closely. What was there about this skinny girl that looked vaguely familiar? Something... Something... “What did you say your last name was?” she asked.
Grace shook her head. “I didn’t.”
Hannah had the oddest feeling that she knew what the stranger was going to say before she said it.
“It’s Yoder.” The young woman looked up at her with familiar blue eyes. “Same as you. I’m Grace Yoder.”
Chapter Two
“I’m Grace Yoder,” Grace repeated, gazing around the room expectantly. “And I’ve come a long way...from Nebraska.” Standing here in this fairytale kitchen, her clothes dripping on the beautiful wood floor, all these strangers staring at her, Grace was so nervous that she could hardly get the words out. “We went to Pennsylvania where he grew up, but people said he moved here. I hope this is the right house. We’re looking for Jonas Yoder.” She paused for a long moment. “Please tell him his daughter and grandson are here to see him.”
“Was in der welt?” the older woman in the rocking chair, Aunt Jezebel, exclaimed. “Lecherich!”
“Ne,” the oldest sister said to Grace. Her expression hardened. “You’ve made a mistake. Jonas Yoder isn’t your father. He’s ours.”
The younger girl, Rebecca, looked at her mother. She was holding a blanket she’d just fetched. “Tell her, Mam! Tell her that she’s
