An Amish Christmas Promise. Jo Ann Brown

tanks. Michael gasped, choking on the reek.

      When a mask was held out to him, he took it from his friend, Benjamin Kuhns, who was sitting beside him, but didn’t put it on. Like Michael, Benjamin had volunteered when a representative of Amish Helping Hands had come two days ago to Harmony Creek Hollow. Amish Helping Hands worked with other plain organizations to help after natural disasters. Benjamin announcing that he wanted to come, too, had been a surprise, because he’d been focused for the past year on working with his older brother, Menno, in getting their sawmill running. Business had been growing well, and Michael wondered if Benjamin was seeking something to help him grasp onto his future, too.

      “Watch where you step,” shouted the bus driver before he went out.

      Michael stood and grabbed his small bag off the shelf over his head, stuffing the mask into a pocket. He noticed a few people on the bus had donned theirs.

      His larger bag, where he’d packed the tools he expected he’d need, was stored under the bus. Nobody spoke as they filed out, and he knew he wasn’t the only person overwhelmed by the destruction.

      As his feet touched the muddy ground, he heard, “Look out!”

      He wasn’t sure whether to duck, jump aside or climb back on the bus. Looking around, he saw a slender blonde barreling toward him, arms outstretched.

      Squawking was the only warning he got before a small brown chicken ran into him, bounced backward, turned and kept weaving through the crowd of volunteers moving to get their luggage from beneath the bus. The chicken let out another terrified screech before vanishing through a forest of legs and duffels.

      The woman halted before she ran into him, too. Putting out her hands, she stopped two kinder from colliding with him. The force of their forward motion drove her a step closer, and he dropped his bag to the ground and caught her by the shoulders before she tumbled over the toes of his weather-beaten work boots. He was astounded that though her dress was a plain style, the fabric was a bright pink-and-green plaid.

      “Are you okay?” Michael asked.

      She nodded and looked at him with earth-brown eyes that seemed the perfect complement to her pale hair. She was so short her head hardly reached his shoulder. Her features were delicate. Thanking him, she turned to the kinder.

      He hadn’t expected the simple act of gazing into her pretty eyes to hit him like the recoil of a mishandled nail gun. Was she plain, or dressed simply because she was cleaning up the mess left by the flood?

      He glanced at the kinder who’d been chasing her and the chicken. The boy appeared to be around six or seven years old. He had light brown hair, freckles and blue-gray eyes. Along with jeans and sneakers, he wore a T-shirt stained with what looked like peanut butter and jelly. Beside him, and wearing almost identical clothing, though without the stains, the little girl had hair the same soft honey-blond as the woman’s. Like the boy, she had freckles, but her eyes were dark. When she grinned at him, she revealed she’d lost her two front teeth.

      He couldn’t keep from smiling. The kind was adorable, and he could imagine how she’d be twisting boys’ hearts around her finger in a few years.

      Just as Adah Burcky had with every guy who’d glanced her way. What a dummkopf he’d been to think he was the sole recipient of her kisses and flirtatious glances! He could hear her laugh when she’d walked away with another man. There had been a hint of triumph in it, as if she took delight in keeping track of the hearts she broke...including his.

      What had brought Adah to mind? He’d come to Evergreen Corners to decide what he wanted to do with his future, not to focus on the past. For too long, he’d been drifting, following his twin brother to their new home, a place where he wasn’t sure he belonged. Was his life among the plain folk, or was the route God had mapped for him meant to take him somewhere else? He had three months to figure that out.

      “She’s getting away,” the boy insisted in an ever-louder voice, breaking into Michael’s thoughts. “We’ve got to catch her before she gets hit by a car.”

      “There aren’t a lot of cars on the road,” the woman replied, ruffling his hair in an attempt to calm him.

      “But there are buses.” The boy flung out a hand toward the one that had brought Michael to Evergreen Corners. “See?”

      Michael wasn’t the only one trying to stifle a grin as the woman said, “We’ll pray she’ll be fine, Kevin. Place her in God’s hands and trust He knows what’s best.”

      Though he thought the boy would protest, the kind nodded. “Like you placed us in God’s hands when the brook rose.”

      She nodded, but her serene facade splintered for a second. By the time she’d turned to Michael, it was again in place, and he wondered if he’d imagined the shadows in her eyes.

      “I’m so sorry,” she said. “We’ve been chasing Henrietta for the past fifteen minutes.” She gave him a wry smile. “Not an original name for a chicken, but the kids chose our flock’s names.”

      “She went that way.” He pointed down the hill where a shallow brook rippled in the late-afternoon sunshine.

      “She’s headed toward our place, so maybe she’ll turn up in what’s left of our yard if she gets hungry enough.” She wiped her forearm against her forehead and readjusted the black kerchief she wore over her honey-blond hair that was, he noticed for the first time, pulled into a tight bun at her nape.

      “So your house is okay?” Michael asked.

      She bit her lip before standing straighter. “No. Our house is gone.”

      He was shocked that anyone who’d lost their home could smile as she had. Could he have faced the situation with such aplomb and the gut spirits she did? That was a question he hoped he’d never have to answer.

      Carolyn Wiebe knew she’d astounded the handsome dark-haired man who’d stepped off the bus. What had he expected her to do? Rage against the whims of nature? The storm that decimated everything she’d worked for during the past four years had been a mindless beast whose winds tore up the valley before sending water barreling down it. Be angry at God? How could she, when He’d spared their lives and everyone else’s in Evergreen Corners? That hadn’t been the situation in other towns, or so rumor whispered. No one could be sure of anything, but she’d heard of five deaths. People swept away as she and her children could have been. She’d made a promise to look after them forever, and she wasn’t going to let a tempest change that.

      Scanning the group from the bus, she dared to take a deep breath. She didn’t see any sign of Leland Reber. There were other brown-haired men, but not the formerly plain man who’d married her late sister and had two youngsters with her. Though she hadn’t seen his photo in over four years, she was sure she’d recognize him whether he dressed like her Englisch neighbors or in plain clothing. He had a square jaw with a cleft in his chin, which her sister Regina had found appealing...until the beatings started within weeks of their marriage.

      For four years, Carolyn had managed to push Leland out of her mind while she focused on raising the children her sister had entrusted to her, children who called her Mommy. Then a neighbor had told her about hearing how Carolyn and the kids had been shown on national television news when reporters had appeared the day after the flood. If so, Leland, who’d embraced an Englisch life, most especially television and alcohol, could have learned where they were.

      Carolyn’s first thought had been to flee as they had when she’d left her beloved plain community in Indiana. She realized doing that was impossible when the roads were open only to authorized vehicles. Her car had been swept away in the flood and hadn’t been found so she couldn’t take Kevin and Rose Anne anywhere.

      Her one consolation was Leland should have as much trouble getting to Evergreen Corners. The one way he could gain entry was to pretend