A Plain and Simple Heart (The Amish of Apple Grove) Read online

  HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

  EUGENE, OREGON

  Scripture verses are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com; from the King James Version of the Bible; and from Die Bibel, Die heilige Schrift, nach der Übersetzung Martin Luthers, in der revidierten Fassung von 1912 (The Bible: The Holy Scriptures, as translated by Martin Luther in the revised edition of 1912.)

  Cover by Left Coast Design, Portland, Oregon

  Cover photos © Chris Garborg; Jim Feliciano/Shutterstock

  Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370, www.booksandsuch.biz

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  A PLAIN AND SIMPLE HEART

  Copyright © 2012 by Copeland, Inc. and Virginia Smith

  Published by Harvest House Publishers

  Eugene, Oregon 97402

  www.harvesthousepublishers.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Copeland, Lori.

  A plain and simple heart / Lori Copeland and Virginia Smith.

  p. cm. – (The Amish of Apple Grove ; bk. 2)

  ISBN 978-0-7369-4755-8 (pbk.)

  ISBN 978-0-7369-4756-5 (eBook)

  1. Young women–Fiction 2. Sheriffs–Fiction 3. Amish–Kansas–Fiction. I. Smith, Virginia, 1960- II. Title.

  PS3553.O6336P56 2012

  813'.54–dc23

  2012002227

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

  1 CORINTHIANS 13:11-12

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Discussion Questions

  Authors’ Note

  Excerpt from Chapter One of A Cowboy at Heart

  ONE

  Apple Grove, Kansas

  May 1885

  Rebecca! The laundry will not hang itself. ‘An idle brain is the devil’s workshop.’ ”

  Rebecca jerked upright, pulled from her daydream by her grandmother’s sharp voice. She cast a guilty glance toward the house, where Maummi stood in the open doorway, black skirts billowing around her ankles, her arms folded across her crisp white apron. Her stern expression was visible all the way across the yard.

  “Sorry, Maummi.” The automatic apology came with halfhearted sincerity. It seemed as though she was always apologizing for something lately.

  Wet clothing swayed on the half-empty clothesline that stretched between the barn and the well house. Rebecca stooped and selected a black dress from the basket at her feet. She shook the garment with a snap before hanging it on the line beside Papa’s trousers, aware that her grandmother had not returned to her chores in the kitchen but stood watching from the doorway. A breeze rustled the leaves of a nearby apple tree and blew the sweet scent of blossoms Rebecca’s way. The strings of her kapp lifted in the wind and danced around her shoulders as the full wet skirt blew into her face. Quickly, she clipped the dress onto the line before it could blow away. If a clean garment touched the ground, Maummi would make her wash it again.

  “When you are finished there, come and help me in the kitchen,” her grandmother called. “I want you to make snitz pie for Emma’s table. A treat for the little one.”

  The reminder of their plans to visit her sister and brother-in-law’s farm for the midday meal brightened Rebecca’s mood considerably. The day was warm enough that she could romp outdoors with her nephew after the meal. At nearly three years old, little Lucas was a precocious bundle of energy, and Emma, who was expecting another child in a few months, was only too happy to turn him over to Aunt Rebecca for a spell.

  One day I’ll have children of my own.

  Her daydream returned with the thought. She lifted Papa’s shirt from the basket, but in her mind it belonged to a tall, handsome man whose dark eyes lit up when he came in from the fields at the end of the day. She could see him there, just rounding the barn, his gaze searching for hers. He would catch sight of her, and his stride would lengthen as he hurried across grass that waved gently in the Kansas breeze. When he reached her, he would thrust aside the laundry, gather her in his arms, and—

  “Rebecca!”

  With a jerk, she tossed the shirt across the line. “I’m hurrying, Maummi.”

  She brushed a crease out of the shirt, her hand lingering on the damp fabric. If only her one true love were more than a memory. She could see him so clearly in her mind’s eye, sitting tall atop his horse, the brim of his oblong, Englisch hat shading his eyes from the glaring sun. Four years had passed since she last saw Jesse, and yet she remembered every detail. Not a single day had gone by that she hadn’t thought of him.

  A clean apron followed the shirt on the line. Of course, the Jesse in her mind was a little different from the real one. Hers was dressed in Amish trousers, suspenders, and a proper round-brimmed straw hat. Jesse becoming Amish was a matter of expediency because she could only marry an Amish man. Papa had already lost one daughter to the Englisch, and he wouldn’t stand for the second one to leave the church as well. Once Jesse understood that, he wouldn’t mind becoming Amish.

  The sweet-smelling breeze whisked away a wistful sigh as Rebecca clipped a pair of Maummi’s bloomers on the line. Sometimes she worried her dreams were nothing but fancy. What if Jesse had forgotten all about her in the four years since their adventure on the cattle trail, the one where Emma had met her husband, Luke? After all, Rebecca had been little more than a child then, and Jesse a handsome cowboy, a man.

  And oh, what a man!

  A familiar tickle fluttered in her belly. She had given her heart to that drover, and time had not diminished the strength of her affections. If only he would return to Apple Grove and see that she was now a full-grown woman of seventeen. One look at her, and he would realize God had made them for each other, of that she was certain. He would join the church and they would marry, and he would help Papa on the farm until the day Papa decided to hand the reins over to him.

  That’s
what true love did.

  Rebecca turned and gazed at the house, the place where she had been born and lived her entire life. One day it would be hers and Jesse’s, and they would fill it with children. They would build a dawdi haus for Papa right next door so she could care for him in his old age.

  She hung the last apron on the line and picked up the empty basket. The hem of her black dress brushed the grass as she crossed the yard toward the house. Her plans had been laid in painstaking detail over four years of wishing and hoping and straining her eyes toward every Englisch stranger on horseback who passed by on the road.

  But Jesse did not come. Fact was, no one had heard from him since he returned to Texas a few weeks after Emma’s wedding. Even Luke, who had been his best friend, hadn’t heard from him in years.

  A wave of desolation threatened, but Rebecca brushed it aside. From the first time she laid eyes on him, she had known Jesse was hers. God would not give her a love this strong if He didn’t mean for them to be life mates. One day Jesse would come to her. But how much longer would he make her wait?

  With the empty basket balanced on her hip, she skipped up the stairs and into the house.

  “What about Daniel Burkholder?” asked Emma. She handed a basket of warm biscuits to Rebecca and nodded toward the laden table, where fragrant ribbons of steam wisped from bowls heaped with food. “Katie Miller told me he fancies you.”

  Rebecca stood at Emma’s kitchen window, admiring the sunlight-drenched green grass in the well-kept yard surrounding her sister’s house. Poppy mallows dotted the untended field between the house and the road, their purple blooms swaying in the ever-present breeze. She located the men in the opposite direction, standing near the back fence, their heads turned toward a herd of cattle that grazed in the field beyond. Luke was saying something to Papa, whose round-brimmed straw hat bobbed as he listened. At their feet, Lucas squatted in close inspection of something on the ground.

  Wishing she could be outside with the men instead of inside the hot kitchen, she turned her back to the window and arranged her features in a scowl. “He smells constantly of onions. I can’t bear him.”

  “You like onions,” Maummi said. Her sharp knife sliced through a plump red tomato on the cutting board.

  “To eat, yes, but not to smell. When he brought me home in that tiny buggy of his after church one Sunday, I nearly choked.” She set the biscuits on the table and stood back to examine the spread, her hands on her hips. “Emma, you have enough food for a barn raising.”

  Turning from the high work counter, Maummi paused a moment to run a hand lovingly over the giant hutch that dominated the room, and then she focused on the table. “ ‘The path to a man’s heart winds through his stomach,’ ” she quoted with an approving nod. She fixed her gaze on Rebecca and gave a little sniff. “You would do well to take this to heart, granddaughter.”

  Rebecca turned away before her grandmother could see her eyes rise to the ceiling. She’d never enjoyed kitchen work the way Emma did. The pie resting on the corner of the second work counter bore evidence of her lack of cooking skill. The top crust bubbled unevenly because she hadn’t properly slit the crust to vent the steam, and the rim around the crust had browned nearly black because she forgot to watch it in the oven. However, Maummi had stood at her elbow to direct the mixing of every ingredient, so she hoped the taste would make up for its appearance.

  “Emma already has Luke’s heart. They are married, aren’t they?”

  “Catching a man’s heart is only the beginning.” Maummi slid thick tomato slices onto a plate with the edge of her knife. “Keeping him happy is where a dull wife fails.”

  Rebecca chose to ignore the veiled reference to her as dull and instead dropped her gaze toward her sister’s bulging belly. “Luke appears to be happy.”

  A blush colored Emma’s cheeks as her hand cupped her stomach in a gesture common to every pregnant woman Rebecca had ever seen. Her time was at least three months off, but already she looked nearly as big as she was when Lucas was born. Even so, she was beautiful as always in her loose-fitting blue gown and with her braided hair wrapped around her head.

  Rebecca ran a hand down her own black skirt and battled a surge of envy. When Emma left the church to marry Luke, she had left behind the prescribed Amish black dresses and kapps. Though Rebecca tried not to begrudge her sister the ability to wear beautiful colors, she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to don a pretty dress and maybe a matching bonnet like those she saw ladies wear on the infrequent times when Papa allowed her to accompany him into Hays City for supplies.

  The thought flooded her with guilt. Bishop Miller would accuse her of vanity.

  And he would be right.

  “We were talking about you, not me,” Emma chided. “So Daniel smells of onions. What of Samuel Schrock?”

  “He’s too young. He’s barely past his sixteenth birthday.” Rebecca avoided her sister’s gaze by adjusting the placement of a plate at the long table. “Besides, he’s taken with Amy Bender. I saw them walking together after church last Sunday.”

  “There’s always Amos Beiler,” Maummi said as she set the plate of tomatoes on the table.

  Rebecca didn’t bother to hide her eye-roll this time, nor did she suppress a loud groan, which made Maummi cackle.

  Emma’s brow creased with compassion. “Poor Amos, raising those children on his own. They need a mother, and he needs a wife.”

  “He isn’t raising them on his own. Mrs. Keim tends them while he works the farm, and his sister-in-law is teaching the girls to cook and keep house.” Truth be told, the oldest Beiler girl at nine years old was a better cook than Rebecca, but she saw no reason to say so.

  “I know, but that’s not the same as having a mother.” Emma’s gaze slid toward Maummi. “Or a grandmother.”

  Their mother had died when Rebecca was a baby. Maummi was already living with them, having moved to Apple Grove with Papa and Mama and young Emma to help establish the farm in a new Amish district. Rebecca tried for a moment to imagine what her life would have been like without Maummi. The idea wasn’t worth considering. With a rush of emotion, she crossed the room to stand beside the older woman, and she smiled as she touched her grandmother’s sleeve with a gentle gesture.

  “You’re right. It’s not the same.”

  Maummi’s lips turned up slightly in acknowledgement of the rare display of affection. As a rule, the Amish showed their care for one another through hard work and service, not through physical gestures, but Maummi prolonged the contact by lingering a moment before moving away to pick up a bowl of sauerkraut salad from the counter.

  “Well, perhaps Amos will find a wife soon.” Emma cast an anxious eye over the table. “Everything is ready. I hope Papa will favor my beef-and-noodle casserole.”

  Emma tried so hard to please Papa, as though food could overcome the pain of having his older daughter leave the Amish way of life. Not that he ever said a word, but Rebecca had seen the hurt in his eyes when he watched his grandson at play, and she knew he deeply regretted the fact that Lucas was being raised in a different faith.

  “At least they are Christian,” Maummi had said more than once.

  And they are happy. Anyone can see that in Emma’s face when she looks at Luke.

  “I’m sure he will love it,” Rebecca assured her. “Do you want me to call them in?”

  Emma nodded as she bent over the table to lift the cover from the butter dish. “Oh, Maummi, I am supposed to pass along a greeting. Mr. McCann stopped by last week.”

  Rebecca stopped halfway to the door. McCann was the cook on the cattle drive where Emma had met Luke and she had met Jesse.

  “Him. He didn’t know a spice from a weed until I taught him.” Maummi waved a hand in feigned dismissal, though Rebecca saw a spark of interest in her hooded eyes. “Happened to be nearby, did he?”

  “He was on his way south to join a cattle drive. He’d been cooking for a restaurant over in Abilene, but he said
he missed the trail. And the way things are going, with ranchers fencing the open ranges, he said he didn’t think there would be too many more cattle drives for a cowboy to take advantage of.” Emma removed another lid, this one covering a dish of apple butter. “He stayed for supper and entertained us with tales of life in town and news of some of the old team. Remember Charlie? He married and bought a place in Arizona territory last year. Griff moved down there to help him get set up.”

  Excitement raced along Rebecca’s spine. These men were all friends of Jesse’s.

  She adopted a casual expression. “Did he mention anyone else? Like…” She swallowed, and schooled her voice. “Like Jesse Montgomery, maybe?”

  Emma glanced up. “Yes, he did. Luke asked, of course, and Mr. McCann said he’d heard that Jesse had settled over near Lawrence. He wasn’t sure what he was doing there.” She shook her head. “Luke could hardly believe it. He thought Jesse would never leave the trail as long as there was a trail to drive a herd across.”

  Lawrence! Rebecca’s pulse kicked into a gallop and her head went light. Jesse, her one true love, was in Kansas. On the other side of the state from Apple Grove, true, but Lawrence was a far sight closer than Texas.

  A nagging thought tugged at her soaring heart. If he lived in the same state as she, then why hadn’t he come to her? He knew where she lived. She set her jaw and tilted her chin. Perhaps he needed a reminder.

  “Rebecca?”

  Emma’s voice drew her from her ruminations. She realized her sister and grandmother were both watching her with curious expressions.

  “Are you going to call the men in?”

  “Yes. I will.”

  Rebecca turned toward the door, a plan—devious to be sure—already forming in her mind.