An Amish Christmas Promise. Jo Brown Ann

off-kilter, one two-story house so tilted the eaves on one side were low enough he could have touched them without rising to his toes. Yellow police tape surrounded the house, a warning that it might collapse.

      The odor of mildew strengthened as he continued along the street. Raw earth scents rose from where trees had been ripped from the ground, leaving gaping holes and thick fingers of roots torn apart. Broken flowerpots lay shattered by front steps, but he guessed they’d once been much farther upstream.

      The nearer he got to the brook the worse the damage was. He slowed to stare at the remnants of one house where the first floor had vanished. The upper story sat on the ground about ten feet from the foundation. Another house was tipped over, every window and door intact, as if a gigantic hand had reached down and lifted it off its foundation before setting it on the ground. Not far away, a clock perched over a shop’s door. Its hands marked the time the flood had struck the building.

      6:47.

      As Carolyn had said, if the waters had arrived a few hours later, people would have been in bed and might not have had time to escape.

      Michael sent up a prayer of thanks for the lives saved through God’s providence. Many villagers had lost everything, but they had their most precious possessions—their lives and their families’ lives.

      What stopped him in his tracks, however, was the sight of the covered bridge on the north side of the village. One half hung precariously over the water. The rest of it had vanished except for a pair of boards. The top of each arch was more than twelve feet off the ground, and he tried to imagine water reaching high enough to tear the bridge apart.

      Destruction spread to the horizon on both sides of a brook he could have waded across in a half-dozen steps. Trees were lying on their sides, on the ground or propped on top of broken roofs. Water pooled everywhere. He’d been wandering through this disaster for three days and still hadn’t seen the full extent of the destruction.

      “Can’t believe your eyes, can you?” asked James as he came to stand beside him. His stained pants were stuffed into the tops of his boots. He held out a cup of kaffi to Michael.

      Taking the cup with a nod of gratitude, he answered, “I can’t get accustomed to the randomness of it all.” He pointed along the brook toward where a garden shed sat on an island, separated from its house by ten feet of water. “Both buildings look fine, but Washboard Brook now runs between them instead of behind the shed as I assume it used to.”

      “I’ve heard there are plans to put the brook back into its original banks.”

      “I’ve heard that, too, but I’m not sure if the state will go to the expense of reconnecting a house and its shed.”

      “Then it may be left to the homeowner to reroute the water.”

      Michael arched his brows, knowing such a task would require excavating equipment and permits. Maybe some rules would be relaxed for the rebuilding, but he guessed most would be kept in place to protect the village and its inhabitants from a repeat of the disaster.

      For the first time he wondered how long it would take Evergreen Corners to return to normal.

      Or if it ever would.

      At breakfast, Michael had had a chance to greet Carolyn and receive one of her pretty smiles, but he didn’t have time to say anything more before he had to move on to let others get their food. It was long enough for him to notice the dark circles under her eyes, and he wondered what had kept her awake. The kinder? The house? Something else?

      Pondering the questions kept him silent through breakfast. He was quiet as he walked with James and Benjamin and the other volunteers toward where they’d be clearing debris from the site of Carolyn’s house. At least, he told himself, they could reassure her the project was moving forward.

      Jose shared apples from his orchard. The man was one of the hardest workers at the site, and Michael wasn’t surprised to learn Jose had volunteered at other disasters throughout New England. Each day, he came with a treat to share. Though Jose said the apples had been harvested a few weeks ago, they had a crispness that put any apple Michael had ever had in Pennsylvania to shame.

      “Our weather in Vermont is perfect for apples,” Jose said. “Warm summer days with cooler nights. When we get plenty of rain—” He scowled as if he’d found a worm in the core of the apple he was eating. “I mean regular rain, not flooding rain like they had along these valleys. When we get lots of nice, steady rain, the apples are juicy. After drier summers like this one, the apples aren’t as juicy, but they’re sweeter. Either way, they’re great for eating, cooking and making cider.”

      Trisha, who’d worked with him in the past, laughed. “You sound like an ad for the Vermont apple growers’ association.”

      “Hey, a guy’s got to be proud of what he does.” He turned to the other men. “Right?”

      Michael hastened to agree rather than explain pride—hochmut—was seen as a negative among the Amish. He doubted the Englischers would be interested in hearing about plain life, and he didn’t want to cause any sort of gulf between the plain volunteers and the Englisch ones. He glanced at his friends and gave the slightest shrug. He got grins in return.

      Noise met them before they reached the remains of Carolyn’s home. Generators rumbled, waiting for electric tools to be connected to them. The sound of circular saws battled the whir of gas-powered chainsaws cutting through the debris blocking the brook, creating pools where there shouldn’t be any. Small clouds of blue-gray smoke marked each spot where someone was slicing through wood that might once have been a house or a fence.

      As they emerged from the trees separating her property from her neighbor’s, large land-moving equipment was being maneuvered toward Carolyn’s cellar hole. The tons of gravel deposited by the swollen brook onto her yard crunched under large tires and caterpillar tracks. Two skid steers, which looked like a kind’s toys compared to the massive vehicles, were shoving fallen trees into a pile near the brook. He knew they would be burned later but were being shifted out of the way so the massive equipment could do its work.

      Glen Landis stood near stone steps that had led to the house. From there, he could supervise workers removing the debris, filling in the old cellar hole and laying out the new foundation. Michael and James were put to work marking the location of the new house with sticks and bright orange string while the others focused on finishing the cleanup.

      When the evaluation had come back on Carolyn’s house the day before yesterday, the decision had been clear. The old house, as Michael had suspected, had been built too close to the brook. Though it’d been almost twenty yards away, the building hadn’t been spared during what people were calling a thousand-year flood. He didn’t have much confidence in their timetable. The flood caused by Hurricane Kevin had been the fifth in the past hundred years.

      Michael wondered if Carolyn had been consulted about the new location, which would set the front porch a few yards from the road. She had around six acres on either side of the brook, but most was wooded, so putting the house near its original location seemed the best idea.

      Though he was focused on his task of trying to make a perfect rectangle with James’s help, Michael knew the instant Carolyn arrived in the clearing. Some sense he couldn’t name told him she was nearby. He couldn’t keep from smiling. She had a white crocheted shawl over the shoulders of the pink dress that looked to be far too big for her. It had, he guessed, come from the bins of donated clothing. She’d cinched it with a black apron, accenting her slender waist. Her gold locket twinkled around her neck.

      She scanned the work site and smiled. That expression softened when her gaze caressed his, pausing for a single heartbeat before moving on. Was it his imagination that her smile had grown a shade warmer when their eyes connected?

      “Is this the spot for the next stake?” James asked in an impatient tone that suggested he’d already posed