The Christmas Quilt Read online

  “I’m not from here,” he said quickly.

  Vera said, “I see the bishop’s wife. I want to ask her how her brother is doing after his heart attack.” She rose and moved away, leaving Rebecca to her own devices. The Englisch fellow said, “You’ve been deserted.”

  She heard the folding chair beside her creak and his voice moved closer as if he were leaning over the seat. Although she knew it was unwise to encourage interaction with an outsider, she wanted to figure out why he seemed familiar. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard traces of a Pennsylvania Dutch accent in his raspy speech.

  She said, “I don’t mind. I’m Rebecca Beachy.”

  There was a long hesitation, then he said, “My friends call me Booker. The quilts on display are beautiful.”

  “Are you a collector, Mr. Booker, or did your wife make you come today? That’s often the case with the men in the audience, Amish and English alike.”

  “I’m not married. What about you?”

  “Nee, I am an alt maedel.”

  “Hardly an old maid. There must be something very wrong with the men in this community.”

  Flustered, she quickly changed the subject, but he had confirmed one suspicion. He understood at least a little of her native tongue. “Have you been to one of our auctions before?”

  “No, but I know what goes into making a quilt like the ones up on stage. My mother quilts.”

  “They do take a lot of effort. I’m glad people such as yourself appreciate our Amish workmanship. How did you hear about our auction?”

  “I caught the story on WHAM.”

  Puzzled, she asked, “What is WHAM?”

  “A television station where I live.”

  “There was a story about our little auction on television?”

  “Yes, and about you.”

  She frowned. “Me? Why would they talk about me?”

  “According to the story, this auction is helping raise money for your eye surgery.” His voice was barely a whisper and fading.

  Embarrassment overtook her. The heat of a blush rose up her neck and flared across her cheeks. “Perhaps Dr. White or his nurse, Amber Bradley, told them about me. I wish they had not.”

  “I thought it odd for an Amish person to seek publicity. The Amish normally shy away from the spotlight, don’t they?”

  “We do not seek to draw attention to ourselves. We seek only to live plain, humble lives. But you know that already, don’t you? How is it that you are familiar with our language?”

  “A long time ago I lived in a community that had Amish families.” His voice cracked on the last word.

  Sympathy for him overrode her curiosity about his past. “You should rest your voice.”

  “How long have you been blind?”

  She was shocked by his abrupt personal question. Her reaction must have shown on her face because he immediately said, “I’m sorry. That was rude. It’s none of my business.”

  She rarely spoke about the time before she’d lost her sight. It was as if that life, filled with happiness, colors and the faces of the people she loved, belonged to another woman. Remembering the way she lost her sight always left her feeling depressed. It went bit by bit over the course of three years, first details and then colors, beloved faces and finally even the light. God had given her this burden. She must bear it well.

  Booker interrupted her moment of pity when he said, “I didn’t mean to pry. Please forgive me.”

  He meant no harm. It was her pride and her inability to fully accept God’s will that made remembering painful. “You are forgiven. I learned I was going blind when I was twenty. My sight left me completely seven years ago.”

  There was a long period of silence. What was he thinking? Did he feel sorry for her? Did he think she was helpless and useless? She rushed to dissuade him of such thoughts and repeated the words her bishop told her the day the last of her sight failed. “Do not think to pity me. My blindness has been a gift from God.”

  A gift meant to show her the error of her ways and lead her to repent.

  “How can you call it a gift?” His scratchy voice broke. Because of his illness, or for some other reason?

  She smiled sadly. “It is a struggle sometimes, but I know all that God gives us, whether hardship or happiness, is in some way a gift. We learn more about ourselves, and about how much we need God, during times of sorrow than we do in times of joy. I accept my life for what it is.” At least, she tried.

  “But this surgery, it can restore your sight?”

  “If God wills it.”

  “Don’t you mean if the surgeon is skilled enough?”

  “God’s miracles come in many forms. If my sight is restored by the skill of an Englisch doctor or by a flash of lightning it is all the work of God.”

  “Then I pray He will be merciful. I wish you the very best, Rebecca Beachy.”

  She heard his chair scoot back, then the sound of his footsteps until they blended into the hum of activity and voices inside the tent. A sharp sense of loss filled her but she didn’t understand why.

  A few moments later, her aunt returned and sat down. Rebecca’s hand found Vera’s sleeve. “Aenti, do you know the man that was just sitting here?”

  “What man?”

  “He was sitting in the row behind us. He’s Englisch.”

  “There are many Englisch here. I didn’t pay attention.”

  “I thought perhaps he was someone I should know, but I didn’t recognize his name. He called himself Booker.”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name. The bidding is getting ready to start. I pray your quilt does well. It’s lovely.”

  “You picked the material. I merely stitched it together.”

  Her aunt’s hands were twisted and gnarled with arthritis, making sewing and many daily tasks impossible for her. It was one reason why Rebecca chose to live with her aunt when her vision began to fade. She knew she could always be useful in her aunt’s household.

  Vera said, “I do wish you had put your Christmas Star quilt in the auction today. I’m sure it would fetch a fine price and we could use the money.”

  “I don’t wish to sell that one, Aenti. It will be a gift when it is done.”

  There was something special about the quilt she had been working on for the past several weeks. Something in the feel of the fabrics, the way the seams lay straight and true with so little effort. Her Christmas quilt would not be for sale. It would be a gift for a wedding or for someone’s birthday. She didn’t know who would receive it. God would show her in His own time.

  Vera patted Rebecca’s hand. “Anyone that receives such a gift will be blessed. I pray it is God’s will to heal you, child. I pray that one day you may see with your own eyes the beauty you have crafted.”

  Chapter Two

  Rebecca was still the loveliest woman Gideon had ever laid eyes on, and she had lied to him.

  Seeing her in person, it was as if a single day had passed—not ten years. Feelings he thought long dead and buried rushed to life, leaving him shaken. Coming here had been a bad idea.

  He stood near the back of the tent where he could keep an eye on Rebecca and the auction proceedings as he pondered the stunning information she’d revealed. The noise of the crowd, the chanting voice of the auctioneer, the shouts of his helpers as they spotted raised hands in the audience, all faded into a rumbling background for Gideon’s whirling mind.

  She obviously had no idea who he was, and he needed to keep it that way. His missing voice was a blessing in disguise. If she knew who he was, she wouldn’t have spoken to him at all.

  Because he had been baptized prior to leaving the faith he had been placed under the Meidung, the ban, making contact with his Amish family and friends impossible unless he publicly repented and asked for the church’s forgiveness. Bidding for Rebecca’s quilt at this auction would be his roundabout way of giving aid she could accept.

  By leaving the faith after making his vows he had cut himself off com
pletely from everything he’d known. There were no visits from his family. No letters or phone calls telling him how they missed him. There had been many lonely nights during his first years in the non-Amish world when he’d almost gone back.

  Only having the eighth-grade education the Amish allowed made it tough finding a job. It had been tougher still getting a driver’s license and a social security card, worldly things the Amish rejected. If it hadn’t been for his dream of learning to fly, he might have gone back.

  If Rebecca had been waiting for him, he would have gone back.

  He hadn’t planned to speak to her today. His only intention had been to come, buy her quilt to help her raise money for her surgery and then leave town. He had the best of intentions—right up to the moment she sat down in front of him.

  So close he could have reached out and touched her. So close and yet so far.

  His hands ached with the need to feel her fingers entwined with his, the way they used to be when they had walked barefoot down a shady summer lane after the youth singings or a softball game. Life had been so simple then. It was so much more complicated now.

  Why, after all this time, did she still have such a profound effect on him? Even from this distance he felt the pull of her presence the same way he felt the pull of the earth when he was flying above it.

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. This was ridiculous. He wasn’t some green farm boy enchanted by a pretty face. He was a sensible, grown man long past teenage infatuations. It had to be a combination of the flu and nostalgia brought on by being surrounded by people who shared the heritage he’d grown up with.

  Everywhere he looked he saw Amish men with their beards and black felt hats. The women, wearing long dresses in muted solid colors with their white bonnets reminded him of his mother and his sisters.

  Shy, solemn and subdued when among the English, the Amish were gentle, loving people, happy to quietly raise their families and continue in a life that seemed centuries out of touch with the modern world.

  Would he even recognize his little brothers and sisters if they were here? Joseph, his baby brother, had been six when Gideon left. He’d be a teenager now and ready to begin his rumspringa. He would be free to explore worldly ways in order to understand what he was giving up before he took the vows of the faithful.

  Did Joseph long for the outside world that had taken his older brother? If so, Gideon prayed he would go before his baptism. That way he could be free to visit his parents and see his old friends without being shunned. Gideon wondered about them often, thought of driving out to see them, but having left under such a cloud, he believed a clean break was the best way. Was it? How could he ever be sure?

  Gideon adjusted his aviator sunglasses and glanced around. He doubted anyone he knew would recognize him. He wore a knit cap pulled low on his forehead. His hair was shaggy and a bit unkempt, unlike the uniformly neat haircuts of the Amish men around him.

  His eyes were sunken and red from his illness and the long road trip. Two days’ worth of beard stubble shadowed his cheeks. Glances in his rearview mirror on the way down showed a man who looked like death warmed over. No, no one was likely to recognize him. That was a good thing.

  He was an English stranger, not the Amish youth who once asked Rebecca Beachy for her hand in marriage. Confusion swirled through his mind when he thought again of how she had deceived him.

  He’d known her since their school days. They’d grown up on neighboring farms. They had courted for two full years and he proposed to her a week before her twenty-first birthday. Yet she’d just told him she learned she was going blind when she was twenty. Why hadn’t she told him back then?

  She broke his heart when she said she’d been mistaken about her feelings for him. Was that the truth or had it been a lie? Her sudden change of heart hadn’t made sense back then any more than it did now.

  Did she think he couldn’t handle the truth? Or had she known he would eventually leave the Amish and tried to protect herself from that heartache? Maybe she’d wanted to spare him a lifetime spent with a blind wife.

  Shouldn’t that have been his choice to make?

  His fingers curled into fists. Had he known the truth he would have stood by her.

  Wouldn’t he? Gideon bit the corner of his lip. Would knowing her condition have changed him from a dissatisfied youth itching to leave the restrictive Amish life into one who welcomed the challenge God placed before him?

  He knew Rebecca wouldn’t leave the faith. They’d had plenty of discussions about it in the months they were together. She knew of his discontent. When she broke off their courtship, he left home in a fit of sullen temper and cut himself off from everything and everyone he’d known. Because of her.

  No, that wasn’t fair. He left because he wanted something only the outside world could offer. He wanted to fly. He’d wanted her more, but without her his choice had been clear.

  Would he have married Rebecca knowing she wouldn’t be able to see his face or the faces of their children? He wanted to believe he would have, but he was far from sure.

  He watched as several Amish women stopped to speak to her and the woman she sat with. One of them held a baby in her arms while a fussy toddler clung to her skirt. They were the same women he’d seen with her on television. The young mother handed her baby to Rebecca and picked up her older child, a little girl with dark hair and eyes.

  Seeing a babe in Rebecca’s arms reminded him of all she had missed in her life. Was it her choice never to marry? How strong she must be to face her hardship alone.

  What was the cause of her blindness? Was it some inherited disease she didn’t want to pass on to her children?

  The Amish accepted handicapped children as special blessings from God. If she chose not to marry for that reason, then she wasn’t being true to her faith any more than he had been.

  Gideon pulled his knit cap lower over his brow. Nothing about the past could be changed. It was pointless to wonder what would have happened if he’d stayed in their Amish community. He’d left that life long, long ago. It was closed to him now.

  The past couldn’t be changed but he could help shape a better future for Rebecca. He was here to raise money for her, not to reminisce about unrequited love. As the bidding began on her quilt, he raised his hand knowing it didn’t matter what the quilt cost. He wasn’t going home without it.

  Rebecca couldn’t believe her ears when a bidding war erupted over her quilt. With each jump in price shouted by the auctioneer she thought it couldn’t possibly go higher, but it did. Higher and higher still.

  Who could possibly want to pay so much for a quilt stitched by a blind woman? She grasped her aunt’s arm. “Can you see the bidders?”

  “Ja. It is between an Englisch fellow and Daniel Hershberger.”

  “Daniel is bidding on my quilt?”

  Her aunt chuckled. “I told you the man was sweet on you.”

  The owner of a local mill that employed more than fifty people, Daniel was a well-respected Amish businessman. Although he was several years older than she was, he often stopped by to visit with her and her aunt. Rebecca shook her head at her aunt’s assumption. “I think you’re the one who caught his fancy.”

  “He doesn’t make sheep eyes at me when he’s sitting on the porch swing.”

  “I have only your word for that. I’m blind. What is the Englisch fellow like?”

  “It’s hard to tell. He’s standing at the back. He’s wearing a knit cap and a short leather jacket. He has dark glasses on.”

  “Is he young or old?” Rebecca wished her aunt had paid attention to the stranger sitting behind them earlier. Was he the one offering a ridiculously high price for her handiwork?

  “Not too young. He has a scruffy short beard that so many Englisch boys seem to like. He looks pasty, like he’s been ill.”

  It must be Booker. Rebecca smiled in satisfaction but her delight quickly faded. Was he bidding because of the quality of her work or because he
felt sorry for her? It shouldn’t matter but it did. She didn’t want his pity.

  But if he wasn’t doing it out of pity, then why?

  A strange excitement settled in her midsection when she thought about his low, gravelly voice speaking quietly in her ear. There was something about him that made her want to know him better.

  The auctioneer shouted, “Sold!”

  As the room erupted in chatter and applause, Rebecca asked, “Who got it?”

  “The Englisch.”

  Rebecca stood up. “I must go and thank him. Can you take me to him?”

  “Let the crowd thin out a little. Everyone is hurrying to get gone because the weather is getting worse. Ester Zook said it was already starting to sleet when she came in.”

  Once Booker left the event Rebecca knew she’d never have the chance to speak with him again. “I don’t want to miss him. Please, it’s important to me.”

  “Very well. I see him heading toward the front where people are paying for their purchases.”

  Rebecca walked beside her aunt against the flow of people leaving the tent and wished Vera would move faster. What if he paid for her quilt and left before she had the chance to thank him? It was foolish, really, this pressing need to speak to him. She didn’t understand it, nor did she examine her feelings too closely. He was an outsider and thus forbidden to her.

  Before they had gone more than a few feet, she heard Daniel Hershberger’s voice at her side. “I’m right sorry I couldn’t buy your quilt, Rebecca. It was uncommonly pretty.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?” Vera replied, pausing to speak with him, to Rebecca’s dismay.

  “I didn’t get the quilt, but rest assured I have donated what money I can to your cause. I’ve already given a check to Bishop Zook.”

  Tamping down her impatience, Rebecca recognized Dan’s exceptional act of charity for the gift it was. “Danki, my friend. God will bless your generosity. If you will excuse us, I wish also to thank the man who outbid you for the quilt. Do you see him?”