Every good gift, p.1
Every Good Gift, page 1
Dedication
To Tim, love always.
Epigraph
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Psalm 139:14
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Featured Families
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Discussion Questions
Acknowledgments
Glossary of Deutsch
About the Author
Acclaim for Kelly Irvin
Also by Kelly Irvin
Copyright
Featured Families
Chapter 1
The nausea that had plagued Maisy Glick for three months pummeled her. Her hands went to her still-flat stomach as if she could calm it with a mere touch. She swallowed the bile in the back of her throat.
“Nate, say something. Please.”
Nate Taylor was already mentally a hundred miles gone, racing down Missouri’s back roads, Jamesport in his rearview mirror. They sat in his pickup, headlights blazing in the darkness, under an enormous bur oak just outside the fence. His lazy grin had disappeared when Maisy said the words “in a family way.” His hickory-brown eyes that always warmed her with the slightest glance filled with fear. He didn’t meet her gaze.
Instead he got out of the truck and hopped over the barbed-wire fence that separated the dirt road from the meadow where Maisy’s neighbors pastured their horses. A quiet place with no ears to overhear. Except the beautiful Morgans that grazed nearby. One raised its head and whinnied.
Nate stopped, but his desire to put space between Maisy and himself had been apparent in his hurried stride through the tall grass and weeds. “I don’t know what to say. We were done. I haven’t seen you in two months.”
Say it’ll be all right. Say you know what to do.
They’d both known it couldn’t last. He was English. She was Plain. He was headed to college in a few weeks. Maisy knew she would never leave her faith—not even for a man who’d stolen her heart in the most unexpected manner.
Nate with his Wrangler jeans and his straw cowboy hat covering his thick tangle of wheat-colored curls. He loved his truck—probably more than he’d ever cared for her. His family went to the Baptist church in Gallatin most Sunday mornings. He called himself a backsliding Baptist when Maisy had asked him if he believed in God.
Maisy slipped through the gate—her days of climbing fences in a dress had passed not so long ago—and followed him. Grasshoppers whizzed past her, their bodies dark against the brilliant headlights. Searching for words adequate to the occasion, she brushed away gnats and mosquitoes with sweaty hands.
Nate still didn’t meet her gaze. “This isn’t the first time this has happened to a Plain girl.”
That didn’t make it right. It made it worse. Maisy was stuck. She hadn’t been baptized. She wasn’t a member of the church so they couldn’t officially shun her.
No, but it could be far worse. At least as a member she could do a kneeling confession and be forgiven. If the father had been baptized in the church, they could marry in a quiet wedding and move on. But the Gmay held no sway over an unbaptized teenager. Only her family. Her parents. What would they do?
Her father’s fierce, stony face loomed in Maisy’s mind. If a smart retort to his instruction earned her a whipping as a child, what would the sin of fornication get her? Would he forbid her to speak to her brothers and sisters? Would she be banished from Gmay activities? Church?
Would he send her away?
Forgiveness. Surely he would obey a basic tenet of their faith and forgive her.
Missouri’s humid August air pressed on Maisy. Sweat trickled down her temples. If only there were a breeze. “My parents will forgive me. They have to forgive me. What will yours say?”
If he told them. Would he tell them? Would he feel any obligation toward his unborn child?
“What do you think they’d say?” He lifted his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. “Besides, you’re the one who called it off.”
They’d met at a kegger the previous summer in an English farmer’s pasture. Her friend Lana had dragged Maisy to it. She’d turned seventeen earlier in the week. It was a birthday celebration, according to Lana. Nate had strode across the field toward her like a cowboy from one of the western romances she loved to read with a flashlight under the covers after her parents went to bed.
From the first howdy, complete with a bow and a flourish of his black Stetson, Nate had pursued Maisy. He never left her side. He gave her and their friends rides in his pickup—Maisy up front, his high school basketball teammates and the other girls in the bed. He took her to the movies and taught her to bowl. He taught her to line dance to country music.
With each day, with each shared experience, her feelings for him had grown. Rumspringa was meant to be a time for finding a spouse. A Plain man. She always knew that, but none of the boys in her district made her feel like Nate did. So full of life.
He’d said he loved her. Even those words couldn’t make it right, as much as she told herself they mattered. She’d been deceiving herself. Ignoring the obvious because her heart and her body wanted what they wanted with no thought for the consequences.
“If I hadn’t, you would’ve.”
Nate gave her his back. Hands on his hips, he planted his dress-up cowboy boots wide and stared at something Maisy couldn’t see. His deep bass voice—the one that sent a pleasant wave of heat through her body every time she heard it—sounded hoarse, unsure. Nate was never unsure.
“The reasons it wouldn’t work haven’t changed,” he said. “I’m only eighteen. I haven’t even started college. I’m gonna study agribusiness so I can take over my dad’s dairy farm someday. I’m too young to be a daddy. I can’t let one mistake derail my whole life.”
The breath swooshed from Maisy’s lungs. Blood pounded in her ears. Her head floated, disconnected from her body. She was a mistake. Their baby, a mistake. He’d said he loved her when he oh-so-gently laid her down on a plaid fleece blanket in the bed of his truck under a full moon’s streaming light and stars so bright they hurt Maisy’s eyes.
It was wrong. Terribly wrong. She’d held out for months. A kiss led to a hug to more kissing and more hugging that led them to the cliff’s edge. Before she knew it, the cliff crumbled under their feet and they were in a free fall.
She’d promised herself it would never happen again. Then Nate would whisper in her ear how much he loved her, and didn’t she love him? She did. She was sure she did. How could something so wonderful be so awful at the same time?
“A baby isn’t a mistake. Babies are gifts from God.”
Nate paced to the fence and back, his heavy tread leaving a path of smashed weeds bending to his frustration and uncertainty. His dimpled face with its high cheekbones and full lips twisted in sorrow. “I’m sorry. I can’t marry you.”
He acted as if there were a choice. Maisy certainly didn’t have one. “What would you have me do?”
“You think this happened the last time we . . .”
“I think it’s at least three months since I, you know . . .” Heat scalded her face. She stepped away from the headlights, mortified, thankful for the darkness. She’d never talked to anyone about such personal things, not even her own mother. “It’s likely three months.”
Her body had been telling Maisy for a while what she didn’t want to believe. She ignored it, sure she was wrong, hoping she was wrong, praying she was wrong. Would she be condemned to hell for praying to God that there be no child growing inside her when the baby was conceived in her sin? God was gracious and merciful. He would forgive Maisy. Her family would be hard-pressed to do it, but they would.
Wouldn’t they?
With a groan, Nate climbed back over the fence, then into the truck. No holding her hand, no hug, no expression of awe that they’d made a new life together—however the circumstances. “I guess it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“Too late, you know, to . . . terminate it.”
Horror struck Maisy full force, running into walls and stumbling over its own feet. T
“I would never do that.” Her voice didn’t tremble. No tears. “Babies are special gifts from God.”
“I get that you feel that way, but it’s different for guys like me. You can keep the baby, but you’ll be raising it on your own.” He twisted the key in the ignition. The truck’s engine rumbled to life. “What did you think would happen? I’d marry you and you’d come with me to Columbia? We’d live happily ever after in married student housing?”
She hadn’t imagined such a thing. Every road led to a dead end. They had no options that worked. Her stomach lurched. Vomit rose in her throat. She shoved the door open, hopped from the truck, and fought her way through the tall grass to a spot where she could vomit in private.
After a few minutes, hands grasped her shoulders. They rubbed her back. “I’m sorry, little Amish girl. I’m truly sorry,” Nate whispered. An orange-and-black butterfly danced across her periphery until it landed, wings flapping on her sleeve. “You would never be happy away from your mom and dad and the rest of your family. Imagine what it would be like to meet your mom on the street in Jamesport and have her cross to the other side to avoid talking to you. Or leaving Jamesport and never coming back so you don’t have to see your brothers and sisters and know you can’t ever talk to them.”
Nate had grown up around Plain folks. He understood the consequences. At least she should be thankful for that. Leave behind the smell of her mother’s peanut-butter-chocolate-chip cookies, the aroma of coffee and bacon early in the morning, the sound of her sisters laughing over the chug-a-chug-chug of the wringer washing machine as they did laundry. The women giggling and chatting while they worked on another quilt for the quilt consignment store. The sun shining on Maisy’s face while she planted tomatoes, radishes, peas, green beans, cucumbers, and a host of other vegetables in the garden behind the house.
Then there was her father. He followed the Ordnung down to the letter. His children never doubted his love, shown in the way he worked hard on a construction crew to feed and clothe them. He wasn’t one to crack a joke or offer a hug, but he taught them how to be the Plain people they were born to be.
To tell him how horribly she’d failed seemed unimaginable. He would be so disappointed in her. So ashamed. So angry.
Her father would be even more devastated if she married an English man. Not being baptized in the church led to eternal damnation. Despite the heat, Maisy shivered. “I can’t marry you. You can’t marry me. So I guess that’s that.”
They drove back to the intersection with the dirt road that led to her family’s farm without talking. Nate didn’t even turn on the radio to that twangy country music he loved so much. He stopped the truck and put it in Park. Still he didn’t speak.
“This is it, then.” Maisy swallowed back sobs. She gritted her teeth. He could simply turn away. She would be left to walk this road alone, the proof of her sin on display for all to see. “Have a good life.”
“You too.” He bit out the words through stiff lips. “You’re a better person than me. Always remember that.”
“You’ll never wonder if our baby has your eyes? Whether it’s a boy or a girl?”
He studied the tops of his hands on the wheel. “I suppose I will, but I’ll get over it.”
Alone, she started the long trek on the dark dirt road that led to an uncertain future. The hot wind whistled through the sycamore and oak trees that lined the simple thoroughfare. Leaves rustled, keeping her company. A dog howled, a lonesome sound in tune with her heart so heavy she fought to carry it forward.
To be so alone, so bereft, was unbearable.
You’re not alone.
The wind whipped the words into a frenzy until they settled in a soft cloak around her shoulders. She raised her face to the moon’s light filtered through passing clouds. “It’s you and me, Bopli, you and me.”
Chapter 2
Something cold and wet poked at Maisy’s fingers. A soft woof forced her to open her eyes. Skeeter’s tail beat a steady whap, whap, whap in the air. His breath stank—as usual. She pulled up the Log Cabin quilt that covered the bed she shared with her sister Sarah until it touched her chin. The light flooding the bedroom window announced that dawn was long gone. The day had begun without her. Another woof. “I know, I know. I need to get up.”
Woof.
“Give me a minute.”
The roly-poly mutt, covered in semiwhite fur that obscured his eyes and usually dripped with slobber around his mouth, sat.
“Gut hund.”
Maisy stared at the ceiling. People liked to say everything would seem better in the morning. A good night’s sleep could fix what ailed a person. Not so. Nothing had changed overnight. Yesterday’s meeting with Nate had left Maisy to forge ahead alone in her dilemma. How to tell Mother and Father? She had to do it soon—before she started to show. But first she had to get up, help make breakfast, and take the buggy to her job cleaning an English family’s house.
She threw her legs over the side of the bed and picked up her tattered composition notebook. She kept it within easy reach so she could choose her word of the day to memorize. The list of words she learned in books she’d read was what her mother had called her odd little hobby. Other people collected pretty rocks, thimbles, bird feeders, or coffee mugs. Maisy collected words.
Skeeter spread out on the rag-tie rug at her feet, his head propped on his paws. He knew this would take a while.
Tenacious: tending to keep a firm hold of something; clinging or adhering closely; not readily relinquishing a position, principle, or course of action; determined.
Tenacious. Ach, Gott. This word? Maisy had not held closely to her principles, to the Ordnung. She’d relinquished them before she drowned in Nate’s gaze, his feel, his everything.
Her family laughed at her propensity—another good word—to use big words. But she liked reading, and reading meant understanding words, small and big. She needed to understand something. Even if it changed nothing.
Woof. This time Skeeter’s bark held a worried note. Woof.
“I know, I know.”
She battled nausea as she dressed and went to help with breakfast. Skeeter followed at her heels like a dog herding sheep. Maybe that was what he was supposed to be doing instead of herding the Glick children. It was hard to say. He’d shown up one day, muddy, flea-infested, and skinny. Mother took one gander at him and sent Maisy to wash him down in the laundry room. That had been that. Now he followed her everywhere.
Her mother, who was bent over the pine table that seated twelve, wiping up food with quick, efficient movements, looked back to see Maisy standing in the kitchen doorway. “I thought maybe you were sick.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Breakfast is over. The girls are gathering up the laundry. Jake and Ian went to work. Your daed had to pick up a part in town for his boss. Martin is mowing the yard.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You seemed like you didn’t feel good at supper last night. Then Sarah said you tossed and turned and moaned in your sleep all night. She said it was like sleeping next to a hot baked potato tied to a jumping bean. She begged me not to wake you.”
Maisy went to clear the table. Skeeter, satisfied she was where she should be, threw himself onto the faded welcome rug in front of the back door. His favorite spot to monitor his children’s comings and goings. “What did Daed say?”
“Nothing. He doesn’t have a heart of stone.”
Humming “I Surrender All,” Mother bustled over to the sink with the dirty washcloth. “The boys have such big mouths when it comes to talking in church. I don’t understand how they can miss their mouths so often when it comes to food.” She dropped cold scrambled eggs and toast crumbs into the sink. “You still look peaked. Maybe you need to go into town to see Doc Nelson. You shouldn’t go to work sick.”
Mother had a way of running thoughts and words together pell-mell that made it hard to get a word in edgewise. “I’m fine. They’re expecting me.” Maisy moved to the table and picked up a stack of dirty plates. The mingled smells of maple syrup, fried potatoes, coffee, and eggs gagged her. “Ach, nee, nee.”
