The Harvest of Grace (28 page)

“Yeah, for the umpteenth time this summer.”

“Please finish it for me again.”

Cara set her book to the side and tapped her own cheek. Lori kissed her several times before Cara engulfed her daughter in a hug. “Love you, Lorabean.”

“Love you too, Mom.”

Lori snuggled against her. The heat didn’t matter. Cara had her daughter in her arms, and she’d never mind that, no matter how high the mid-July temperatures soared. Per her daughter’s request, they had on matching dresses. Better Days lay on the wood floor, panting.

Later in the day customers would begin arriving at Ada’s House, but for now dinner, which for the Amish was the largest meal of the day, regardless of when it was served, was done. The kitchen was clean, and all sorts of baked goods and handmade items were ready to be sold. Since Trevor wasn’t here to take her to see Sylvia, she’d studied the languages on her own that day. At the thought of how well she was learning of late, joy bubbled up inside her.

She opened the book Ada had given Lori and continued reading
Shoo-Fly Girl
aloud. At the end of the last chapter, she bent her head to kiss her daughter’s forehead and discovered that Lori had twisted the strings of their prayer Kapps together.

Cara looked up and was surprised to see Ephraim standing there, quietly watching them. Better Days stood next to him, nudging his hand for attention. Cara gently bumped Lori’s shoulder, getting her to look up.

“ ’From!” Lori tried to run to him, but their intertwined prayer Kapp strings stopped her.

“Ow!” Cara yelped and quickly unraveled them.

The moment Lori was loose, she ran to Ephraim. He picked her up and hugged her.

Cara rubbed her scalp where the head covering had been attached to strands of her hair with a straight pin. Those pins kept the Kapp on no matter the work or the weather, but
ouch
.

Lori clasped her arms tight around Ephraim’s neck and kissed his cheek before hopping down.

Ephraim embraced Cara and took in a deep breath. “My favorite part of the week.”

“Tuesdays?” Lori asked.

“No.” He touched her on the nose. “Anytime I’m with my two favorite people.”

“What are you doing here in the middle of the week?” Cara asked.

“My sister called me at the shop about an hour ago. Said she had news she wanted to tell both of us and asked if I’d come. So I dropped everything and had Robbie drive me.”

Cara slid her hand into his. “Would you like some lemonade while we wait for Deborah?”

“Anything cool in this heat would be great.”

Cara led him through the hallway.

Ephraim held Lori’s hand too. “You don’t seem very surprised that Deborah has news for us.”

Cara shrugged. “Nope.”

“Is it what I think it is?”

“You can’t ask me that.”

“Sure I can. Listen carefully. Is it what I think it is?”

She chuckled, opening the swinging door to the kitchen without answering his question.

Ada stood at an ironing board, carefully easing a flat iron over a prayer Kapp. “Hi, Ephraim. This is a nice surprise.”

“I need to show up unexpectedly more often,” he said, smiling.

“You do that.” Cara grabbed a glass for him from a cabinet. “Of course, you know that after a couple of times it won’t be unexpected anymore.” She poured a glass of lemonade and gave it to him.

“Hello?” Deborah called from the front door.

Ada put the iron facedown on the stove. “In the kitchen.”

Deborah and Jonathan entered, hand in hand and glowing. “We have news to share.” Deborah stared at Jonathan, radiating love. “Jonathan has asked me to marry him.”

“And she said yes,” Jonathan added.

Chatter filled the room as hugs were exchanged. Then Deborah paused in front of her brother.

“Ya,” Ephraim whispered. “Totally, one hundred percent.”

Deborah hugged him.

Cara would have to learn the history behind that conversation later.

“But that’s not all,” Deborah said to the room at large. “Ada, I know you wanted us to move in here, but he’s buying us a house.”

“As long as you’re happy, Deborah.”

Cara knew Ada’s words were true, but she also had to be disappointed. Cara would move to Dry Lake once she and Ephraim married, and now Deborah was moving. But Ada adapted to the changes as a mother would, even though neither Cara nor Deborah was her daughter. Whatever aches Ada felt didn’t match the joy of seeing her “children” happy.

“Do you want to see it?” Deborah asked.

Ada moved the iron to the cooling shelf on the back of the stove. “Absolutely. Is there time to get there and back before we open for business tonight?”

Jonathan rubbed his chin. “Hmm. I’m not sure. I say we give it a try and see.”

Ada moved directly in front of her nephew. “What’s this smirk on your face?”

“We’re buying the house next door.”

Ada’s eyes grew large. “What?”

He leaned against the countertop. “You two are in business together here, so it made sense. But if you prefer, I suppose I could buy a place in Dry Lake.”

Ada pushed his shoulder. “Don’t you dare.” She hugged him. “Which one is it?”

Deborah took Ada by the hand and headed for the front door with the rest of the group following.

Cara couldn’t help but think about what God had given Ada through the love between her and Deborah. Ada had lost her husband more than a decade ago, and her only child had left last year, cutting her off from him. When Deborah and Jonathan had children, Ada would be able to live out her days as if she were their grandmother.

The beauty of it awed her. Heartache stomped its way into everyone’s life, but it seemed that love never stopped planting seeds or harvesting crops.

And forgiveness
. The thought came to her as if it wasn’t her own. But it made sense that forgiveness had to be planted in the midst of hurt. Since Trevor had given her
The Hiding Place
, she’d been praying almost constantly about forgiving him. If Corrie ten Boom could forgive the Nazi soldiers and prison guards who had so severely mistreated her and her sister during the Holocaust, surely Cara could manage to forgive Trevor.

“Look!” Deborah pointed to the house across the empty lot to the right.

Ada’s eyes grew large. “You wouldn’t tease an old woman.”

“I just might,” Jonathan said, “if I saw one.”

“It gets better.” Deborah tugged at Ada’s hand, and they all headed down the sidewalk toward the house. “It seems my husband-to-be has bought half of the land we’ve been renting for the corn maze, picnic tables, and hayrides.”

“I had no idea you were rich,” Ada teased.

Jonathan laughed. “Far from it. But I’ve been pinching pennies ever since I finished school and started working full time. With the money I had, I made a down payment and signed a contract for a small mortgage. And it was all worth it when I saw the look on Deborah’s face.”

Deborah held open the door, motioning for everyone to walk through. The conversations echoing through the house felt warm and rich to Cara’s mind and soul. She held Ephraim’s hand as they made the tour, soaking in being part of a family. Lori ran up and down the steps half a dozen times.

The property even had an outbuilding that Jonathan could convert into a smithy shop. A day or two a week he’d still put all his blacksmith equipment in his work wagon and travel to Amish farms to shoe horses, but he’d work out of this shop the rest of the time.

After walking through the house, talking about possibilities, hopes of babies, and an extension of space to Ada’s House, they started the trek back.

While going up the front walk at Ada’s, Cara spotted Trevor sitting on the porch steps. A small box sat beside him. The sight of him didn’t bring up hurtful images and stored resentment nearly as much as it had a few weeks earlier.

“Lori,” Cara whispered, “go tell Trevor about Deborah’s good news.”

Lori stared up at her mom before looking to Ephraim.

“I think that’s a good idea,” he said.

Lori shrugged. “If you say so.” She ran ahead. “Hey, Trevor, guess what?”

A rare but warm smile crossed his face. “Hmm … It’s cold in Antarctica?”

“No, silly. Deborah’s gonna marry Jonathan and live right there.” She pointed.

The smile on Trevor’s face broadened. Lori had talked to him the way she did to everyone else. He looked at the newly engaged couple. “Congratulations.”

Ada, Deborah, and Jonathan chatted with him briefly before going inside. Lori went in with Deborah, prattling the whole time about having a sleepover at Deborah’s house one day.

“Trevor,”—Cara motioned toward the house—“care for some lemonade?”

“Not right now. I brought you something.”

“You don’t need to keep doing that. Besides, I haven’t finished the book you already brought me. It’s really good, though.”

He picked up the open corrugated box and held it out to her.

Ephraim leaned in. “Looks interesting.”

Cara took the box from Trevor, walked inside, and set it on a side table. Familiar frames filled with family photos startled her. “Where did you get these?”

“I went to your old apartment building and talked to the manager. He looked up which place had been yours, and he knew who’d rummaged through your stuff before he threw it out.”

She studied the images, glad to have them again in her hands, but at what cost? “You shouldn’t have.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Trevor assured her. “New York’s less than five hours from here.”

She couldn’t believe he’d done this for her, but fear threatened to seep out from under locked doors. She looked at more of the pictures. “Who had these?”

“A woman named Agatha Brown. She said she used to baby-sit Lori sometimes.”

“Yes, she did.” Cara pulled out the last frame, which held a picture of Johnny, Cara, and Lori as a toddler. She showed it to Ephraim, and when his eyes met hers, she wished he could see through them and into her mind to understand the concern building inside her.

He took the picture. “Trevor, did anyone ask you about where Cara is living now?”

“Mrs. Brown did. She wanted to hear all about Cara and Lori.”

“She’s the only one?” Ephraim asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“A man from Cara’s days in foster care used to stalk and threaten her. That’s why she left New York with nothing and lived in my barn for a while.”

“I … I’m sorry.” Deep hurt mirrored in Trevor’s face. “But, Cara, honey, it’s one of the largest cities in the world, and I was in your building for only a couple of hours. No one but the manager and Mrs. Brown knew I was there. Besides, surely that fella has lost track of you by now and probably lost interest.”

Trevor made sense, and her fear retreated. “You’re right.” She looked at the back of a frame. “I need a screwdriver or butter knife.”

Trevor pulled a knife out of his pocket and popped open the blade before she could blink. “I can use the blunt side of this to push those clasps out of the way. But why do you want to?”

“I never had enough frames, so I stashed older pictures behind newer ones. I put duplicates there too.”

He took the back off the frame and pulled out two hidden photos.

Cara held up two pictures with Johnny in them—one when Lori was a newborn and one when she was almost two.

“You’re pleased?” Trevor studied her.

“I am. Look.” She moved closer to Ephraim, pointing out a stuffed puppy in Lori’s hand that looked very similar to Better Days.

Her stalker, Mike, had done so much damage that it was natural to feel overwhelmed at just the thought of him, but Trevor was right. She had nothing to fear, and he’d done something for her no one else could—driven to New York on his own, found her old apartment building, and brought Lori pictures of her father.

She should hug him and really thank him, but she couldn’t make herself go that far.

“Come on.” She motioned to Trevor. “Let’s show these to Lori.”

Twenty-
S
ix

Aaron closed the pliers over the loose strand of barbed wire and twisted the metal around and around, tightening it. More than a thousand feet of fence ran behind and ahead of him. It had taken him two days, but he’d almost finished repairing the half mile of fence line. A horse stood nearby, hitched to a work wagon loaded with topsoil. Sweat trickled down his face and neck as he used all his strength to tighten the eight feet of thick wire from one fence post to the next. His arms shook with weariness, and his legs felt weak.

He jerked the post back and forth to test it. It held tight, so it didn’t need fresh dirt packed around it. He withdrew a pad of paper and a stubby pencil from his pants pocket and jotted a note.

Farming wasn’t as miserable when he knew other people were on the property, helping him keep up. He stood straight, working the kinks out of his back.

Seeing Sylvi cross the field toward him caused his insides to do a little jig. It was a beautiful sight to behold—a dark-haired woman in a purple dress walking across green pastures. She held two half-gallon thermoses in her hands, but as thirsty as he was physically, he was thirstier for a conversation with her.