The Prodigal Son Returns. Jan Drexler

laugh broke through Ellie’s thoughts, and her stomach flipped when she recognized the Englischer’s voice behind her. There he was again! That man was as persistent as a dandelion and much more dangerous.

      He squatted next to the children at the edge of the garden, smiling as Danny held up a grubby fist full of wilted weeds and babbled at him. Susan, usually the one to hold back, had her hand on his knee, ready to add her part of the story.

      Ellie gripped her hoe. She needed to stop this now, before he wormed his way into their lives, but how?

      Bram turned to Susan, laying his hand on hers as he said something that made the girl giggle. Ellie’s breath caught at the rapt expression on Susan’s face. Somehow the man had broken through her shyness. She smiled as Susan laughed again and gave Bram the dandelion she held in her hand.

      Ellie gave herself a mental shake. Ach, what was she doing? What nerve that man had, going behind her back to push his Englisch ways on her children!

      Ellie dropped the hoe and hurried to the edge of the garden. She scooped Danny up from the ground and took Susan’s hand.

      “Come, children, it’s time to go into the house.”

      “You don’t need to take them in. Susan was just telling me about her pet chicken.” He smiled at her daughter, his hand resting on the girl’s shoulder. “She likes animals, doesn’t she?”

      “As long as they aren’t horses.”

      Bram’s dimple flashed, and Ellie started to return his grin before she caught herself. His face was so open and friendly, his blue eyes deep and inviting, his smile intimate as he watched her.

      As lovely as a dandelion blossom in spring, she reminded herself. Lovely and insidious, with the ability to turn the whole garden to weeds. With an effort she held her shoulders a little straighter.

      “I must take the children in now.” She kept her voice controlled and polite, then turned and walked away from him. Her face was burning. She hated to seem so rude, but an Englischer was an Englischer, and her job was to protect her children, wasn’t it?

      The back door of the little house was safely closed before she let herself look through the small porch window. The man—Bram—stood where she’d left him, watching. Why did she feel as if she had taken the hoe to one of her squash plants instead of a dandelion?

      “I like that man,” Susan said. “Can he come back again?”

      “We’ll see. Let’s wash our hands, and then you can play with Danny while I make a pie for supper.”

      Susan climbed onto her stool and pulled at the small hand pump that brought water to the kitchen sink.

      “He’s a nice man.” She wiggled her fingers under the running stream.

      “Ja, I guess.”

      “He isn’t afraid of horses.” Susan’s eyes grew large as she said this. “He told me Dawdi’s horse isn’t scary, and he’ll let me pet it.”

      “When will this be?”

      “Next week. He said he’ll come back and I can pet Dawdi’s horse.”

      Ellie dried Danny’s hands and set him on the floor.

      “Susan, take Danny in the front room and help him find the cows.”

      Ellie rubbed at the spot between her eyes where a headache was threatening. How had he convinced Susan to look forward to petting a horse?

      Movement out by the garden drew her eyes to the window over the sink. He was leaving. She watched until the buggy left the drive and turned into the road. How dangerous was he? Ellie tucked a loose strand of hair under her kapp. Well, he was Englisch, wasn’t he?

      Wasn’t he?

      She got out a mixing bowl to make piecrust, then dug into the flour canister with more force than she meant to. Flour spilled onto the counter and floor, wasting it. Ellie bit her lip as tears threatened to come.

      Why was a simple thing like making a piecrust so hard? Nothing had been right since Daniel died.

      Ellie wiped up the spilled flour. She had to keep everything balanced, normal.

      What was normal, anyway?

      Just do what needs to be done; keep to the routine. That was something she could do. It was when something unusual happened that her life tilted.

      That Englischer. He upset everything.

      Ne, that was unfair. He was just the little nudge that sent her stack of balanced plates teetering. It wasn’t him; it was her own fault.

      Ellie crumbled lard into the flour with her fingers and then added an egg and a teaspoon of vinegar.

      Her thoughts found their familiar rut and followed it stubbornly. Her pride had urged Daniel to buy the extra land. The extra land that needed more work and new, green-broke horses.

      Her pride, her hochmut, had caused her to plead with Daniel, to force him to see things her way. She had wanted the larger farm, and she had urged him to buy the new team so he could work more land. If she had just kept to her place, listened to him...but no, she had to keep after him until he agreed to her ideas. If it hadn’t been for her nagging, he never would have bought that half-trained team.

      The half-trained team that spooked easily. Too easily. A loose piece of harness, a horsefly bite, a playful barn cat... She’d never know what had set them off that day. All she knew was by the time she’d reached the barnyard with Susan, Daniel was already under their hooves, his body broken and bloody.

      Her stubbornness had cost her the only man she had ever loved.

      She worked the stiff dough with her hands until it was ready to roll. The rolling pin spun as she spread out the crust.

      Ach, ja, the punishment for her disobedience had been bitter.

      But now, wasn’t she sorry? Hadn’t she prayed for forgiveness? Gott had to be pleased. What more could she do? She went to church, wore her kapp, followed the Ordnung...

      The piecrust was a pale full moon. Ellie eased it off the wooden breadboard and laid it on the pie plate.

      She must try harder. The Ordnung, the church rules, was there to keep her close to Gott. She just had to obey them perfectly, and everything would be all right.

      No matter how handsome that Englischer Bram Lapp happened to be.

      She knew what was most important.

      The crust eased into the pan. She trimmed the edge with a knife and then crimped the edges with her fingers. Neat. Perfect. And empty.

      * * *

      Bram swayed with the buggy, letting the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves set the pace of his thoughts. He’d known moving back to Indiana wouldn’t be easy, but he’d never expected to plunge into a pool with no bottom. Nothing was the way he remembered it. The life he knew as a boy on his father’s farm held none of the peaceful order he had found here.

      From the simple white house nestled behind a riotous hedge of lilacs to the looming white barn, the Stoltzfus farm was the image of his grossdatti’s home, a place he thought he had forgotten since the old man’s death when he was a young boy. A whisper of memory rattled the long-closed door in his mind, willing it to open, but Bram waved it off. Memories were deceptive, even ones more than twenty years old. They covered the truth, and this truth was that he had a job to do. Grossdatti and his young grandson remained behind their door.

      But a question snaked its way up Bram’s spine. What would Grossdatti say if he could see his grandson now? Bram cast a glance down at the dust caked in the perfect break where his gabardine trousers met his matching two-toned wing-tip shoes. Fancy. Englisch. Twelve years as one of Kavanaugh’s boys had left their mark.

      Was it those long-forgotten memories that kept bringing him back to the Stoltzfus farm? He liked the family. John seemed to