Home to Paradise. Barbara Cameron

with women who happily sewed their way out of despair and financed a way to build a future for themselves and their kinner.

      Today, many of the women were sewing Thanksgiving and Christmas crafts. They were the most popular items offered at Sewn in Hope at any time of the year.

      Rose Anna stopped by the table near the window where a new resident sat staring at the quilt block handed out at the beginning of the class. The woman looked small, her chin-length brown hair falling forward over her thin face. She wore a faded T-shirt with an Army slogan and camouflage pants.

      “Hello, I’m Rose Anna.”

      The woman jerked and stared up at her with frightened green eyes. “I—hi. I’m Brooke.”

      “Would you like some help with your block?”

      “No, I think I can handle it.”

      She bent over it again, and Rose Anna couldn’t help wondering if she was intent on working on it or trying to hide the yellowing bruise around one eye.

      And Brooke kept glancing nervously at the windows at her side as her fingers plucked at the fabric block.

      “Just let me know if you need anything,” Rose Anna said quietly. “And welcome to the class. I hope you enjoy it.”

      Brooke nodded jerkily and kept her eyes focused on the block.

      Rose Anna walked a few steps away, and suddenly something bright and round whirled at her like a child’s Frisbee and chucked her on the chin. She grabbed at it and frowned at the fabric circle. “Why it’s a yo-yo.”

      “Sorry, Rose Anna.”

      She grinned at Jason, a little boy who’d come to the shelter last month with his mudder and two schweschders. “It’s okay. It didn’t hurt me.”

      “That’s not a yo-yo. Yo-yos are toys.”

      “My grandmother made these,” Edna told him. “I thought about making a quilt with them, but then I came up with something different.” She waved a hand at her table, and Rose Anna saw that she’d made various sizes of them, stacked them from largest at the bottom to the smallest at the top. Then she’d sewed a fabric ribbon at the top to hang them. They were little trees of fabric.

      “They’re darling,” Kate said as she stopped at the table and held one up. She smiled at Edna. “I think they’ll sell well at the shop.”

      “They’re easy to make and don’t take much fabric.”

      “Speaking of fabric,” Kate announced as she continued into the room. She held up a shopping bag in each hand.

      “I thought you had court this morning.”

      “I did. We finished early, and Leah’s shop was on the way here.”

      “Ha!” said Edna. “You know you find every excuse you can to stop by there.”

      “Guilty!” Kate laughed. “So I guess this means you don’t want to see it?”

      Edna jumped up. “You guessed wrong.” She turned to the other women in the room. “Kate’s got new fabric!”

      They swarmed over, eager to check out the new fabric. Kate stepped closer to Rose Anna.

      “I see we have someone new,” she said quietly, jerking her head in the direction of a woman who sat at a table near the windows.

      “Her name’s Brooke. She didn’t want to talk much,” Rose Anna told her. “So I told her to let me know if she needed any help and just let her be. Sometimes it takes a while for a person to feel comfortable.”

      Kate nodded. “I’ll put my things down and say hello.”

      A woman walked up to ask her a question, and after she left, Kate turned to Rose Anna.

      “Where’d Brooke go? I didn’t see her leave the room.”

      Rose Anna glanced around. “I don’t know.”

      “Could I have this piece, Kate?” Edna asked, her eyes bright with excitement. “It’d go great in a lap quilt I want to make.”

      “Sure. Take whatever you want.” She smiled at the women milling around the table admiring the fabric. “Malcolm said if I brought more fabric home he’d have to build an addition onto the house.”

      Rose Anna laughed. “My daed’s always saying things like that. But I noticed that he always smiles when he says it, and he keeps building more shelves in our sewing room.”

      There was a tug on her skirt. She glanced down and saw Lannie, a little girl who was three, clutching at her skirt.

      Lannie popped her thumb out of her mouth. “Lady,” she said, pointing at the table by the window. “Lady,” she repeated and pulled at Rose Anna’s skirt to indicate she should follow her.

      She let the child lead her over to the table, wondering what she could be trying to tell her. “Lady,” she said again. She pointed under the table.

      So Rose Anna obliged and looked under the table and into Brooke’s terrified gaze. The woman had her arms wrapped around herself and was shaking.

      She knelt down. “Brooke? What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?”

      “Window,” she managed. “I can’t. The window.”

      Rose Anna turned and gestured to Lannie. “Get Kate, Lannie. Get Kate.”

      ***

      “So how are things going?”

      John dumped the shovel of manure in the wheelbarrow and grimaced at his older brother.

      “Couldn’t be better. It’s the weekend, and here I am helping my brother clean out a stall. As if I don’t shovel enough of this on my job.”

      David laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. “Well, Lavina’ll make it up to you. She’s fixing us lunch, and you know she’ll give you enough leftovers to feed you for a week. I heard she made an extra pie.”

      “Apple?”

      “Ya.”

      John paused and considered. “That makes me feel a little better.”

      “Still eating a lot of ramen noodles?”

      He laughed. “My specialty.”

      “Sam must be missing them now that he’s married to Mary Elizabeth.”

      “The two of you are getting to be soft old married men,” John jeered.

      “Marriage is great,” David told him as he set his shovel aside. “You should try it.”

      “Not me. Not for a long time. It’s up to me to keep up the Stoltzfus reputation now.” He grinned. “It’s hard for one man to carry the load, but I’ll try to do the job.”

      David frowned. “Sounds like you’re enjoying your rumschpringe a little too much.”

      “No lectures, big brother.” John picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow and started out of the barn. No way was he going to admit that he didn’t have the time—or the money—to enjoy the single Englisch-guy lifestyle.

      He dumped the contents of the wheelbarrow and returned to the barn.

      “Seriously, you and Daed couldn’t get along? It would have saved you from having to get your own place.”

      “I tried.”

      “Did you?” David asked quietly.

      John felt his defenses leap up. “It’s not me!”

      “Nee?”

      “No.” John refused to use Pennsylvania Dietsch since he’d left the community. “I just seem to . . . irritate him. Nothing I do, nothing I say is right.”

      “Yeah,