“We left?” Rue asked plaintively.
“We did,” Thomas replied, reaching over and giving her leg a pat. “We had to get back.”
“Why?”
“Because—” Thomas glanced over at Patience. Because if he’d stayed longer with Patience, it would have made everything harder. He’d have kept feeling this draw toward her, and she’d likely have felt it, too. Leaving had been the right choice—getting back to the bustling distraction of other people.
“Because grown-ups get tired, too,” Patience said.
It was a good answer, and he cast her a grateful smile. Thomas reined in the horses, and the side door to the house opened and Amos came outside. He looked almost gray, and he strode up to the buggy, his expression grim. Had something happened? Thomas’s first thought was of Mammi.
“Thomas, I’ll unhitch the horses,” Amos said in German. “You’re needed inside.”
“What’s going on?” Thomas asked.
“Your mamm is in there.”
Thomas’s heart hammered to a stop, and he tightened his grip on the reins, looking toward the house. His mamm? She wasn’t due for another visit—and when she came, she didn’t usually come to the house.
“Did you talk to her?” Thomas asked.
Amos shrugged. “Not much. I mean...pleasantries.”
Thomas looked over at Patience, unsure of what to say. Here it was—their family embarrassment.
“You need privacy,” Patience said.
He did. He couldn’t ask Patience to come help him deal with his mother—this was on him. Rue seemed to sense the tension, even if she didn’t understand the language, because her eyes were wide and her little lips were pressed together in a tight line.
“It’s okay, Rue,” Thomas said. “Come with me. There is someone you’ll want to meet.”
“Who?” she whispered. “Are they taking me away?”
“No, no,” Thomas replied. “No one’s taking you anywhere. It’s your grandmother.”
“Mammi?” Rue sounded confused.
“You have another grandmother.” A biological grandmother. A real one.
Rue brightened at that, and Thomas got out of the buggy and lifted Rue down beside him. Then he held a hand up to help Patience from the buggy. When she hopped down next to him, he didn’t release her fingers right away.
“What do I do?” he whispered.
“You pray,” she whispered back.
Thomas licked his lips. He was already praying—a wordless sort of uplifting toward Gott, asking for... He wasn’t even sure what. Just wanting to feel Gott there with him—even more of a comfort than this woman beside him. He realized then that he was still holding her hand, and he released her.
“I’ll go on back to the Kauffmans’, and you’ll know where to find me if you need me more today,” she said. She made it all sound so rational and simple.
“Yah,” he said, his voice thick. “I suppose I’d better go see what she wants.”
Patience headed back up the drive, walking briskly, and Thomas looked toward the house. There was no cheery clatter of dishes or the din of laughter. It was ominously silent.
“Come on, Rue,” Thomas said, forcing himself to sound cheerier than he felt. “Let’s go in.”
When Thomas opened the door, Rue went inside ahead of him. She stood in the doorway of the mudroom staring.
“Is that my granddaughter?” Mamm’s voice said in perfect, accent-free English. “Hi there, Rue. I’m your grandma.”
Thomas followed his daughter into the kitchen, and his mamm sat at the kitchen table with a glass of water in front of her, nothing else. She wore her Amish clothes—they looked worn and a little snug. She needed new Amish clothing for her visits, it seemed, but she was still the mother he loved so well—the same laugh lines around her eyes, and her dyed hair had started to grow out a little bit. The last he’d seen his mamm, she’d been wearing Englisher jeans and a T-shirt. The memory was strikingly different from the Amish-clad woman before him. Mammi was nowhere to be seen, and Noah sat at the table across from their mother glowering at an empty space on the table.
“Hi, Mamm...” Thomas said.
“Son—” Rachel stood up and circled the table to give him a hug.
“We normally get a coffee in town,” he said. “And I thought we were getting together at the end of the month.”
“I know,” she said. “I just—” She smiled hesitantly. “I want to come back.”
Noah’s gaze jerked up as she said the words, and Thomas could only assume that his brother was just as surprised as he was.
“What?” Thomas breathed.
“I want to confess and come back to the community,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “I want to come home.”
After a decade away, after leaving her sons behind and forging ahead, building a new Englisher life with her sister in the city. After all the things she’d told him—how the Amish life was too controlling, too restrictive, too hard to live... After she’d shown him how the Mennonites could live a life to honor Gott while using all the modern conveniences, too... She’d been so certain. She’d said that their daet was the one who wanted to live an Amish life, and she’d been willing to do it with him, but when he died she just couldn’t face another canning season.
Thomas shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why?”
“And why now?” Noah interjected. “You left us when we needed you most, Mamm. And now that we’re grown men, you want to come back?”
Noah’s eyes misted, and he looked away again, his jaw set. Rachel sucked in a wavering breath and she looked pleadingly toward Thomas.
“You have Rue now,” she said. “You might need my help with her. I can understand where she came from, and the kind of life you want for her. I understand little girls. I could help you in ways that you aren’t even considering yet!”
“I want my daughter to stay Amish,” Thomas said, shaking his head. “I don’t want
