Redeeming Grace

“But he’s strong. He was always a good baby, and he’s hardly ever sick. His father wasn’t a big man.” Grace looked into Hannah’s eyes and tried to keep from trembling. “Could you tell Jonas I’m here? Please. I’ve come a long way to find him.”

“How did you get all the way from Nebraska to Pennsylvania? Do you have a car?” Hannah asked.

Grace sighed. Her father’s wife was stalling, but she didn’t want to be rude. After all, Hannah had let her into the house and hadn’t kicked her out when Grace told her who she was. “We had a car, but the transmission went out on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It wasn’t worth fixing, so we left it.” She looked down at the floor. No use in telling them that the insurance had run out two weeks ago and that she had barely enough money for food and gas to get them to Belleville, let alone repair a 1996 Plymouth with a leaking radiator and 191,000 miles on it.

“So you went on to Belleville and then came here looking for Jonas?” Hannah looked thoughtful.

“I’m not asking for money. I don’t want anything from him or from any of you. I just want to meet him.” Grace chewed on her lower lip. “Since Trudie died, I haven’t had any family.” She hung her head. “Not really.” She looked up again. “So, I thought that if I found my father...maybe...” Her throat tightened and she could feel a prickling sensation behind her eyelids. Grace took a deep breath. She didn’t need to tell her father’s wife the whole story. She’d save it for him. She looked right at Hannah. “I need to talk to my father. Please,” she added firmly.

Hannah clasped a hand over her mouth and made a small sound of distress. “Oh, child.” She closed her eyes for a second and hugged Dakota. “Oh, my poor Grace. It pains me to tell you that your father...Jonas...he died four years ago of a heart attack.”

Grace stared at her in disbelief. Thank goodness she was sitting down; her legs felt a little weak. Dead? After she’d come so far to find him? How was that possible? Bad things come in threes, and if you don’t expect much out of life, you won’t be disappointed. Her mother always said that. But the awful words Hannah had just spoken were almost more than she could bear.

Her father was dead, too?

Dear God, Grace thought, how could You let this happen? First my mother, then Joe and now my father. Now she was glad they hadn’t eaten since her breakfast of Tastykakes. If she had anything in her stomach, it would be coming up.

“I’m so sorry,” Hannah said. “It must be a terrible shock to you. We’ve all had time to get used to Jonas’s passing. We miss him terribly. He was a good man, your father, the best husband in the world.”

“Not so good as we thought, that nephew of mine,” Aunt Jezzy observed, more to herself than the others. “Not if he fathered a child and didn’t take responsibility for her.”

“Hush, now, Aunt Jezzy,” Hannah softly chided. “We shouldn’t judge him. Jonas was a good man, but he was human, as we all are.” She kept her gaze fixed on Dakota’s sweet face. “He told me that he and Trudie Schrock had made a mistake, and that he’d repented of what he’d done. She left, suddenly, without telling him. No one knew where she went. She just left a note, telling her father that she didn’t want to be Plain anymore. Jonas never knew about you,” she told Grace, lifting her gaze. “You have my word on it.”

Grace nodded, trying to get her bearings again. Trying hard not to cry. What was she going to do now? Her whole plan had been based on getting to her father. She was going to come to him, tell him the mistakes she’d made and beg him to let her into his life. She was going to promise to make only good choices from now on, to find a good man who wouldn’t lie to her and deceive her. She was going to tell him she wanted to become—

“So.” Hannah smiled at her with tears in her eyes. “What do we do now, you and me? Where do we start, Grace Yoder?”

Grace felt shaky, her mind racing. What did she want the Yoders to do with her? What was her plan B?

Joe always said you had to have a plan B. “Maybe I could have that cup of coffee?”

Hannah chuckled. “You have your father’s good sense, Grace. Of course you shall have your coffee, and the soup I promised. Then we’ll all take ourselves off to bed. You’ll stay here tonight, and I won’t hear any arguments. I’ll put you and Dakota in the guest bedroom.”

“You’ll just let me stay?” Grace asked, truly surprised by Hannah’s kindness. Especially after the news Grace had just dumped in her lap about her husband. “You don’t know me. I could be a thief or an ax murderer.”

Hannah smiled at her. “I doubt that, not if you’re

Jonas’s girl. A straighter, more God-fearing man never lived. He might have stumbled once, but he never faltered. I’m sure you’re as trustworthy as any of your sisters.”

Susanna giggled. “A sister.”

“Thank you,” Grace managed. “Thank you all.” She looked at the women and the boy, all looking at her.

Exactly what she was going to do now?

* * *

Grace hadn’t thought she’d be able to sleep a wink, but she’d drifted off to the sound of rain falling against the windowpanes and the soft hum of Dakota’s breathing. And when she’d opened her eyes, it was full morning, the rain had stopped and the sun was shining.

My father is dead, she thought. She’d come all this way, only to find out that he was as lost to her as Trudie. She felt numb. What was plan B? Where did she go now? What did she do?

“I’m hungry,” Dakota said, interrupting her thoughts.

“Can I have more cookies?” He popped his thumb in his mouth.

“No cookies this morning,” she said.

No one had said a thing about Dakota’s dark skin the night before, but she’d be ready for their questions. When Hannah and her sisters asked, and Grace was sure they would, she’d tell the truth—that Dakota’s father had been Native American. Marg had said that the Amish were backward, old-fashioned and set in their ways. Grace hoped that didn’t include judging people by the color of their skin, because if they couldn’t accept Dakota, then she wanted no part of them.

But they hadn’t seemed to care.

Grace looked down at Dakota’s little face as her mind raced. Plan B. She had to have a plan B. But maybe...maybe plan B should be the same as plan A. Or close. Why couldn’t it be? Hannah had been so nice to her. So welcoming.

“Cookies aren’t for breakfast,” she told her son as she got out of bed and put her arms out to him. “But I’m sure Miss Hannah will be able to find something for you in her kitchen.”

Just thinking of that kitchen made a lump rise in Grace’s throat. It was exactly the kind of kitchen she’d expected to find in her father’s house, only better. It was big and warm and homey, all the things that the kitchens she’d known in her life weren’t. And the Amish she’d met last night, even suspicious Aunt Jezzy and tough Johanna, were right for Hannah’s kitchen.

What would it have been like to grow up here? she wondered. To belong to a world as safe as this one? To be part of a family who could welcome total strangers into their home and feed them and give them a place to sleep without asking for anything in return?

It all seemed too much. She’d just do what she’d always done when things got scary or uncertain. She’d do what was most important first and worry about the rest later. And now, finding something to feed her hungry child was what mattered. Plan B could wait.

She tidied the two of them up in the bathroom, took Dakota by the hand and, heart in her throat, led him back to the spacious kitchen.

Grace could smell coffee, bacon and other delicious odors coming from the kitchen as she walked down the hall. “Now, you be a good boy,” she whispered to

Dakota as she led him by the hand. Nervously, she slicked his cowlick back and tried to pat it down. “Show all these nice people just how sweet you are.”

Hannah, two of the sisters that she’d met the night before and Aunt Jezzy were gathered at the kitchen table.

“Miriam’s taking my place at the school this morning,” Hannah explained. “You’ll meet her, Ruth and Anna later. And this...” She waved toward a thirtyish brown-haired man in a blue chambray shirt and jeans sitting at the head of the table. “This is our friend John Hartman. John, this is Grace.”

Grace nodded. He didn’t look Amish to her. His hair was cropped short, almost in a military cut, and he had no beard. Definitely not a cowboy type; he was nice-looking in an old-fashioned, country way.

John rose to his feet, nodded and smiled at her. “Pleased to meet you, Grace.”

“He’s having breakfast,” Susanna explained as John sat down again. “He eats breakfast here a lot. He likes our breakfast.” She picked up Dakota and sat him next to her on an old wooden booster seat in a chair.

“I stopped by to check on one of Johanna’s ewes that got caught in a fence and Susanna caught me and...forced me to the table.”

Grace wanted to ask if he was a farmer; it sounded as if he knew something about animals. She liked animals, especially dogs, and she’d always felt more at ease around them than people. The best job she’d ever had was working at a kennel where she cleaned cages and took care of dogs boarded there while their families were on vacation. Trying not to say the wrong thing in front of her new family, though, she decided that the less she said to a strange man, the better.

Susanna laughed. “You’re silly, John. You said you were sooo hungry and Mam’s biscuits smelled sooo good.”

“I did and they do,” he agreed.

“He wanted to get married with Miriam,” Susanna happily explained, offering Dakota a cup of milk. “But she got married with Charley.”

John’s face flushed, but he shrugged, and looked right at Grace. “What can I say?” He grinned. “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.”