Rum Spring

Rum Spring

Sometimes love doesn't play by the rules.

Rebecca Lapp is a devout follower of her Amish faith and a firm believer in the Ordnung, the set of rules that govern her life in the tiny Pennsylvania town she calls home. When she meets Dylan Mahoney, however, the rules go out the window. During Rebecca's rumspringa—the four-year period during which Amish teenagers decide whether to join the church or leave it for the outside world—Dylan, a film buff and aspiring movie critic, shows Rebecca a world she never dreamed of. The pair make plans to spend the rest of their lives together until a rift forms between their families and forces them to part ways. After much soul-searching, Rebecca decides familial loyalty is more important than her own happiness. But when her feelings for Dylan threaten to overwhelm her, Rebecca's loyalty is put to the test.

Love or tradition? Which path will she choose?

Chapter One

Rebecca Lapp dropped sautéed onions and celery into a bowl filled with day-old bread that had been cut into cubes. She added milk, salt, and pepper, and blended the ingredients with her fingers. Then she set the warm mixture aside to cool.

“You do that so well,” Rebecca’s sister Sarah said. “Maybe you should be the one getting married instead of me.”

Rebecca smiled at the note of approval in Sarah’s voice. Sarah was great help around the farm, but she wasn’t much of a cook. With that in mind, Rebecca and their mother Mary were teaching Sarah how to prepare her fiancé’s favorite dish—roast chicken with bread stuffing. When their mother placed the raw chicken on the table, Sarah looked as if she wanted to sink through the kitchen’s wooden floor.

“You’ll be fine.” Rebecca handed Sarah a large spoon. “Joshua loves you so much you could probably burn every meal and he wouldn’t care.”

Sarah wrinkled her nose in disgust as she spread the chicken’s legs and gingerly filled the cavity with the bread stuffing Rebecca had prepared.

“Don’t be afraid,” their mother said. “Nothing in the bowl is going to bite you. And if the chicken manages the feat without a head, it will be a miracle.”

Rebecca and their mother shared a laugh, but Sarah remained stone-faced. Rebecca couldn’t remember the last time she had seen her sister laugh or even smile. Sarah had not seemed herself for quite some time. Rebecca had hoped the wedding preparations would bring as much joy to Sarah’s life as they had to hers. Instead of being energized by the plans for the nuptials, Sarah seemed to grow even more anxious with each passing day.

“I have to get this right,” Sarah said. “This is the dish I want to prepare for Joshua on the day we’re published.”

On the Sunday of fall communion, the names of all the couples who planned to marry would be announced. At the end of the service, their cousin Peterli, acting in his official capacity as the Armendiener of their Amish community, would call out the names of each girl along with the name of the man she would soon marry. Each of the girls’ fathers would then stand one by one to give the date and time of the respective wedding and invite the congregation to attend. This year, Sarah’s name would be on the list. Sarah’s announcement wouldn’t come as a surprise. Even though their courtship was supposed to be a secret, everyone knew Sarah and Joshua King had been sweet on each other all their lives.

Joshua and Sarah would not attend church on the Sunday they were published. As tradition dictated, they would spend the day with each other. Sarah would cook and she and Joshua would share a private dinner for two at her parents’ house.

“I don’t want Joshua to be doubled over in pain when you come home from church and I introduce him to you as my fiancé.”

Rebecca looked forward to the day she could join her life with someone else’s as Sarah was about to do. She didn’t feel drawn to any of the boys she knew—she felt more comfortable with Thomas Mahoney’s daughter Dylan than she did with them—but she had time to find the boy who was right for her. The decision wasn’t one she could afford to take lightly. Once she married, she could not be divorced. Such a thing was against the Ordnung, the mostly unwritten set of rules that governed all facets of Amish life.

She watched Sarah season the chicken, wincing a little when she noticed her sister was being too liberal with the salt. Sarah was going to need much more practice before she would be able to craft a decent meal on her own.

The thought of eating the salty chicken made Rebecca’s mouth dry. She poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher on the baker’s rack next to the gas stove. As she turned to resume watching the cooking lesson, she detected movement out of the corner of her eye. She pushed the curtains aside and looked out the window.

She knew something was wrong by the way Mr. Mahoney’s truck kicked up dust as it barreled down the dirt road. Mr. Mahoney was a careful driver. It wasn’t like him to be in a hurry without reason.

The glass of water slipped from Rebecca’s hands and shattered on the floor.

“Butterfingers,” Sarah said.

“Don’t tease your sister,” their mother said. “Accidents happen.”

“Mama?” Rebecca tried to keep her sense of dread at bay so she wouldn’t alarm her mother and sister, but she could feel her voice quaver. She was fourteen, two years shy of the official beginning of her search for a mate. She didn’t feel like the woman she would soon become. She felt like a little girl who needed her mother to tend to a scraped knee or comfort her after a bad dream.

Her mother’s cheerful expression quickly changed to one of concern when she saw Rebecca’s face. “What is it?” She wiped her hands on a towel and joined Rebecca at the window. She drew back immediately. Her hands were shaking, but her voice was even. “Go fetch your father from the pasture.”

Rebecca left the shards of broken glass on the floor and rushed out the front door. Holding up the hem of her calf-length dress, she took the steps two at a time and dashed across the yard just as Mr. Mahoney turned into her driveway.

Dylan stuck her head out of the passenger’s side window and called Rebecca’s name, but Rebecca kept running.

In school, Rebecca had been the fastest runner on the softball team. When she tried to steal a base, no one could throw her out. She missed running. Feeling the wind in her face and the ground flying beneath her feet. But those days were over. Her formal schooling had ended when she completed eighth grade. Now her father was in charge of her education, a task he scheduled in between the chores they each had to perform on the farm.

When she finished school the year before, everyone in her close-knit community expected her to act like an adult even though she wouldn’t be considered one until she had gone through rumspringa and been baptized in the church. That was still years away. Her rumspringa years wouldn’t start until she turned sixteen and wouldn’t end until she was twenty or twenty-one, when she decided she was ready to join the church or leave her family and friends behind to live among the English.

She rounded the barn and skidded to a stop. Her father Samuel and her uncle Amos were tending to the crop of sweet corn that covered nearly five acres of their jointly owned land.

With the clomping of the horses’ hooves, the squealing of the metal wheels, and the whir of the steel blades, Rebecca knew her father couldn’t hear her over the sound of the thresher. She waved her arms over her head to get his attention. Her uncle Amos saw her first.

Uncle Amos jumped on the thresher’s running board with a sprightliness that belied his sixty years. He tapped on her father’s shoulder until he drew his gaze away from the horses.

When Uncle Amos pointed at Rebecca, her father signaled the horses to stop. He handed the reins to Uncle Amos and climbed down. Then he gripped Rebecca’s shoulders in his calloused hands. “What’s wrong, child?”

Rebecca gasped for breath. She didn’t think she had ever run so far so fast. “Mr. Mahoney,” she said, fighting to draw air into her lungs.

“What about him?” A rare note of impatience found its way into his voice.

“Mr. Mahoney is up at the house. Something’s wrong and he needs to talk to you right away.”

Rebecca’s father and uncle looked at each other but didn’t speak. Her father was the head of the local congregation. Uncle Amos was one of his assistants, a Diener zum Buch. In addition to providing spiritual leadership, her father preached and performed baptisms, marriages, and ordinations. He also excommunicated congregants who broke the Ordnung. Uncle Amos and his fellow minister Micah King did not dole out discipline. They concentrated on preaching and teaching instead. The role suited Uncle Amos’s personality. He seemed to enjoy being a mentor, a counselor. He had never aspired to be anything else. Nor had he expressed a desire to be a leader of men. He was a better follower than a leader.

Her father rested a soothing hand against Rebecca’s cheek. “Stay here,” he said as Rebecca reached up to secure the prayer covering that held her long brown hair—uncut since childhood—in place. “Amos, come with me.”

Rebecca watched them walk away. She was torn between following them and delaying the inevitable. Ignorance, she had learned in school, is bliss. Standing among the ripe cornstalks that towered over her head, she enjoyed her last few moments of bliss. On such a beautiful day, she thought, staring up at the bright blue sky, what could possibly go wrong?

She waited. Dylan would come soon.

She had known Dylan for six years. They had watched each other grow up and, when Rebecca was twelve, Dylan had saved her life. Not literally, but to Rebecca, it had certainly felt like it at the time.

It was a day much like the present one. Bright and beautiful with not a cloud in the sky. A Saturday. Rebecca and Sarah had ridden with their father to town. He had dropped them off at the shoe repair shop before continuing on to the hardware store. Rebecca and Sarah had pooled their money to buy their father a new pair of work boots for his birthday, but he had deemed the footwear too fancy and had refused to wear them. So the girls had taken a pair of his old shoes to the cobbler to be resoled. They had picked up the refurbished shoes and were waiting for their father to return when a group of boys had surrounded them.

Clutching her brown paper–wrapped package under one arm, Sarah had protectively draped the other arm across Rebecca’s shoulders. “It’s okay,” she had told Rebecca in Pennsylvania Dutch. “Just ignore them and they’ll go away.”

Cowering in fear at her sister’s side, Rebecca had tried to do as Sarah asked.

The boys had bullied them for several minutes—blocking their path, calling them names, pulling at the strings on their bonnets. Eyes downcast, the girls hadn’t attempted to defend themselves. They had simply waited for the torment to end. Rebecca had prayed for someone to come to their rescue. Dylan, who had been hanging out with her brother Matthew in front of a sandwich shop, had been that person.

Dylan had waded into the middle of the circle of teenage boys and given the ringleader a two-handed shove in the chest. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

Rebecca had been more afraid for Dylan than for herself. She had tried to move forward, but Sarah had held her back.

“Who’s going to stop me?” the boy had scoffed. “You?”

“Not me. I might hurt you.” Standing her ground, Dylan had folded her arms in front of her chest and stood with her feet apart like she was prepared to take on all comers. “But why don’t you try my brother on for size?”

“Ooh, I’m shaking,” the boy had said. “Who’s your brother?”

With a smile, Dylan had pointed to the spot where Matthew Mahoney was continuing to hold court. “My brother’s the one in the red shirt.”

The boy’s smile had vanished in the blink of an eye. “Maniac Mahoney’s your brother?”

Dylan had nodded.

The boy had stared at Dylan for a long moment before apparently deciding it was better to lose face than to have it rearranged. “Come on, guys. They’re not worth it, anyway.”

Rebecca had stared at Dylan in disbelief. No one had ever done anything that brave—or that crazy—on her behalf. No one except for Dylan Mahoney.

Dylan crashed through the cornfield. She swiped at the drooping stalks as if she were a machete-wielding explorer trying to clear a path through dense jungle. She felt trapped in the figurative maze of her emotions and the literal one formed by the overgrown plants that surrounded her. Rebecca was at the center of both.

A few days a week, Rebecca assisted the teacher at West Nickel Mines School with her classes. The same school that had been the site of a shooting earlier that morning. When Dylan’s father had come to her school to tell her about the incident in Nickel Mines before she could hear it from someone else, she had been hysterical, certain Rebecca had been seriously hurt or worse. She had insisted on accompanying him to the Lapps’ house. To be there when he delivered the tragic news. If she could be there for the hurt, she could be there for the healing.

“Rebecca!” Dylan shouted her name with unexpected force as her tenuous hold on her self-control began to give way. Again.

“Over here.”

Feeling like a character in a Stephen King novel, Dylan turned left and headed deeper into the rows. Finally coming face-to-face with Rebecca, she let out a deep breath. “You’re all right.” The overwhelming sense of relief that washed over her nearly caused her knees to buckle. “You’re all right,” she said once more as she launched herself into Rebecca’s arms.

Rebecca staggered from the force of Dylan’s hug. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Dylan pulled away. Not completely. Just far enough so she could see Rebecca’s face. So she could look into her eyes. She ran her fingers over Rebecca’s face—the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. “I thought you were helping at the school today.”

“With Sarah about to be married, there is too much to do at home for me to be able to work at the school.”

Dylan finally let go. “You don’t know, do you?” Shaking her head, she answered her own question. She kept forgetting how out of touch the Lapps were. Like most Old Order Amish families, the Lapps didn’t have a phone. Some of their neighbors had installed phones in their barns or outlying structures in their yards in case of emergency, but the Lapps had not been willing to make even that small concession to the modern world. They preferred to do everything the old-fashioned way. The way it was done hundreds of years ago. “Of course you don’t.”