Chapter One
Paradise Springs
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
“I can’t believe my eyes. Is that who I think it is?”
Ezra Stoltzfus looked up from the new buggy he’d been admiring. His older brother Joshua had done an excellent job with the courting buggy he was building for his son. It was low and sleek, exactly what Ezra’s nephew Timothy would want when he was ready to ask a special girl to let him take her home from a singing.
He was about to ask Joshua what he was talking about, but then he looked through the large glass window at the front of his brother’s buggy shop in the small village of Paradise Springs. Every word fled from his mind.
It couldn’t be. Not after all this time. It had been ten years.
Getting out of a family buggy in the parking lot of the line of shops connected to the Stoltzfus Market was a slender woman dressed plain in dark purple. From beneath her black bonnet, her white kapp peeked out along with her golden hair that glistened in the spring sunshine. A small, black dog jumped from the buggy and stayed close to the woman as she spoke to someone inside. She smiled, and he knew.
It was Leah Beiler!
He couldn’t have forgotten Leah’s heart-shaped face with the single dimple in her left cheek. Not if he tried, and the gut Lord knew how much he’d tried for the past ten years, since she and her twin brother, Johnny, left Paradise Springs. They’d gone without telling anyone where they intended to go. They hadn’t come back.
Until today.
Did her family know she was back? They must, because she was driving Abram Beiler’s family buggy. He recognized it by the dent where his neighbor had scraped a tree on an icy morning a few months ago and hadn’t gotten around to bringing it in to Joshua to get it repaired. Why hadn’t Leah’s daed mentioned that his kinder were home? They’d spoken three days ago when Abram came over during milking to talk about the selection of a new minister for the district at the service on the next church Sunday. Abram had mentioned he was going to be away at a horse and stock auction west of Harrisburg for over a week and that he hoped he’d be home in time for calving, because several of his cows were due to deliver soon. How could Abram have talked of those commonplace things and never mentioned his twins had come back after so many years away?
Ezra couldn’t forget the conversation he and Abram had the very day Leah and Johnny had disappeared. They’d spoken about Abram’s youngest daughter, who was torn between her love for her way of life and faith in Paradise Springs and her twin brother’s increasing rebellion against both, as well as his family.
Ezra had reminded Abram of Leah’s strong faith and her love for her family, but he understood her daed’s concern. She was always determined to rescue any creature needing help. It didn’t matter if it was a baby bird fallen from its nest or her wayward brother who kept extending his rumspringa rather than committing to his community and God. She would throw everything aside—even gut sense—if she thought she could help someone. It had been her most annoying quality, as well as her most endearing. He knew of her generous heart firsthand because Leah had been there for him during the months when he grieved after his beloved grossmammi died...and many other times for as long as he could remember.
That day, as they talked on the Beilers’ porch, Abram had been at his wit’s end with worry about his youngest kinder. Otherwise, he never would have admitted to his concerns. Abram Beiler was a man who kept his thoughts and feelings to himself.
Was that why Abram hadn’t said anything the other day? Ezra didn’t know how a man could keep such glad tidings to himself...unless the tidings weren’t gut. Could it be Leah and Johnny hadn’t really come home to stay?
Ezra looked around the parking lot in front of the Stoltzfus Market. He saw a few cars and a couple of buggies, but no sign of Johnny. Was he in the store, or was he still in the buggy? When Leah smiled again as she spoke to someone in the buggy, he wondered with whom she was chatting. Her brother? A husband? A kind?
His gut crunched as the last two questions shot through his mind. The whole time Leah had been gone, she’d remained, in his mind, that seventeen-year-old girl who was always laughing and who always had time to listen to his dreams of running his family’s farm and starting his own cheese-making business. Oddly enough, she was the only one who hadn’t laughed at his hopes for the future.
Now she was back in Paradise Springs and at the shops run by his brothers. Where had she been and why had she come back now?
Joshua set down his hammer as he turned to Ezra, his mouth straight above his dark brown beard. “I guess I don’t have to ask. The expression on your face says that it’s got to be Leah Beiler.”
“The woman does look like her, but she’s turned away so I can’t be completely sure.” He kept his voice indifferent as he walked from the window toward the table where Joshua kept paperwork for new buggies and repairs on used ones, but his older brother knew him too well to be fooled.
“Even so, you think that’s Leah Beiler out there.”
He nodded reluctantly. The last time he had been false with Joshua was when they both were in school and Ezra had switched their lunch pails so he could have the bigger piece of their grossmammi’s peach pie. His reward had been a stomachache and an angry brother and a grossmammi who was disappointed in him. At that point, he had decided honesty truly was the best way to live his life.
So why was he lying to himself now as he tried to convince himself the woman could not possibly be Leah?
“Are you going to talk to her?” Joshua asked as he glanced up at Ezra, who was four inches taller than he was. Joshua was the shortest of the Stoltzfus brothers, but stood almost six feet tall. A widower for the past four years, he had the responsibility for three kinder as well as the buggy shop.
“I wasn’t planning on it.” He stared at the neat arrangement of tools on the wall so he didn’t have to look at his brother...or give in to the temptation to glance out the window again.
“You’re not curious why they went away?”
He wanted to say he wasn’t any longer. Not after ten years. But that would be a lie. At first, after she and Johnny vanished, he had thought about Leah all the time. She’d been such an important part of his life, around every day because they’d grown up on farms next door to each other.
Then, as time went on, he found himself thinking of her less because he was busy taking over the farm from his daed. Chasing his dreams to become a cheese-maker consumed him, allowing him to push other thoughts aside. Yet, he’d never forgotten her. At night, when the only sounds were his brothers’ snoring and the crackle of wood falling apart in the stove, memories of her emerged like timid rabbits from under a bush. They scampered through his mind before vanishing again.
And always he was left with the questions of why she had left and where she had gone and why she’d never returned.
“Of course, I’m curious,” Ezra said before his brother noticed how he hesitated on his answer.
“Then go out and see if she’s really Leah Beiler.” Joshua gave him a sympathetic smile. “You’ll kick yourself if you don’t.”
His brother was right, and Ezra
