Leah felt a pang of remorse that her mother would be living alone, yet she knew Mama would devote herself to making even more of the uniquely beautiful quilts that provided her an income. While Jude loaded her thirteen cows and calves into his livestock trailer, Leah felt at a loss for words—she was saying good-bye as much to a way of life as to her sole remaining parent.
“Mama, if you need anything—”
“By the sound of it, Jude has already arranged for a crew of carpenters to put a roof on the barn tomorrow and paint it on Monday,” Mama interrupted before Leah could get teary-eyed. “I won’t have the slightest chance of getting lonely anytime soon—and I have three quilts to complete in time for Christmas. Don’t you go feeling sorry for me, Leah.”
Leah immersed herself in the warmth of her mother’s hug.
“And by the same token, if you need anything—be it advice or recipes or help with keeping those kids in clothes, I’ll feel mighty bad if you don’t let me know about it.” Mama let out a sigh that ruffled the hair near Leah’s ear. “If it’s any consolation, my first year as a new wife was terrifying because your dat’s family was mostly men and boys who tended toward the gruff side while the women were like meek little mice.”
Leah’s eyes widened. She’d never heard a hint that her mother’s early years with Dat had been frightening. “But you made a life for yourself,” she pointed out. “You made it work out.”
“I made a lot of adjustments to my expectations,” Mama clarified. “And I prayed. A lot. A marriage is a work in progress, like a crazy quilt top you keep adding to and embellishing with embroidery to cover the flaws in its fabric.”
“I had no idea you and Dat weren’t . . . perfectly happy and meshed together,” Leah whispered.
Mama chuckled softly and eased away to gaze at Leah. “Perfection is in the eye of the beholder, dear. What you see and believe is what you’ll get—so believe the best about Jude and his intentions,” she added quickly. “Together the two of you will deal with the trials and tribulations of an ongoing relationship. Even couples that start out fresh, without children and memories from a previous marriage, go through phases when they wonder if their initial burst of love blinded them to the realities of everyday life—or to their spouses’ personality quirks.”
Leah nodded, still confident she and Jude could deal with any conflicts Alice, Adeline, and Stevie created.
After Jude helped her up onto the wagon seat later that afternoon, Leah waved quickly at Mama and then turned to face the road. She would not cry; nor would she worry about how small and alone her mother looked as she waved from the front porch.
“Are you all right?” Jude asked after they reached the road.
“Jah, I’ll make it.”
Her husband draped an arm around her. “Can’t be easy leaving home,” he said gently. “I don’t know what that must feel like, as we’re living in the original farm home my grandparents built—which my dat took over when his folks moved into the dawdi haus. Jeremiah bought other land to build his home when he married Priscilla.”
“I’ll have to learn all the nooks and crannies where you’ve stored things, along with getting familiar with the noises the house makes when it settles in cold weather—or when rain’s pounding against the roof,” Leah said with a sigh.
Jude smiled boyishly. “After we get your bull settled in his new pasture later today, we’ll have to make a few noises of our own,” he hinted. “It’s been a blessing to welcome you to my bed, Leah.”
As she felt warmth creeping up under her collar, tinting her cheeks pink, Leah smiled and looked away. That part of becoming a wife was so wonderful, she decided to concentrate on making Jude happy—because surely everything else would fall into place now that they were blissfully, ecstatically one. No one and nothing could come between them....
Chapter 4
Three months later, Thursday, March 2nd
Leah moaned, pressing her hands against her temples. For the third morning in a row she had a throbbing headache, and she’d awakened in the wee hours from a recurring nightmare in which Alice and Adeline had locked her out of the house, taunting her through the door with all manner of hateful names. The pounding of rain on the roof depressed her. Despite the approach of spring, March stretched before her like an endless rainstorm, cold and bleak and dreary, stripping her of the energy to fight her lethargy and depression.
But she didn’t want to waken Jude with her tears. Didn’t want to admit that marrying into the Shetler family had been a huge mistake.
I would rather stand barefoot in a box of shattered glass than face this day.
Despite Leah’s best efforts, a sob escaped her. Her fairy-tale married life had been nothing more than a figment of her romantic imagination, and because the Amish didn’t allow divorce, she saw no way out of her vow to live as Jude’s wife and his children’s stepmother. Mama—and even Margaret—had been right: she’d been a fool to believe that Alice, Adeline, and Stevie would come to love her and that they could all live as a happy, harmonious family.
But where can I go? If I run home to Mama, I’ll eventually have to return here.
Not for the first time, Leah realized that she had no female friends to confide in. She’d spent most of her life in the world of men and sale barns and livestock, and as each day in the Shetler household wore her down, she felt
