Amish Silence Read online

  Amish Silence - Amish Romance

  Amish Brides Book 5

  Samantha Price

  Copyright © 2015 by Samantha Price

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Scripture quotations from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.

  This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  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

  Other books by Samantha Price:

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

  Deuteronomy 31:6

  * * *

  The year is 1820.

  Dawn broke earlier than Esther would have liked. She snuggled down in her soft mattress, covered by her feather-stuffed quilt. The night air was no doubt still chilly around the house though the sun would soon warm the walls. Another five minutes went by, and Esther was back to sleep, enjoying a dream that felt like love and hope.

  Unable to hear very well, Esther woke up most mornings by her mother, Moira, poking her head through the bedroom doorway telling her to wake, and this morning was no different.

  “Do you hear me? We’re leaving soon.”

  Even being hard of hearing, she heard her mother’s voice loud and clear. Esther opened her eyes, saw her mother, and mumbled something before rolling out of bed, resigned to the fact that the day had started, whether she liked it or not.

  “I’m up; I’m awake.” Esther’s morning routine had begun. She changed out of her cotton nightgown, pulled on a dress, and then dragged a brush through her long blond hair. Once the brush ran freely through her hair without being stopped by knots, she tossed the brush on her bed. She wound her hair onto her head, secured it, and then tied on her white prayer kapp. Lastly, she pulled a white apron around her waist before she padded barefoot down the wooden stairs. She joined her mother in the kitchen and warmed herself by the large fireplace in the corner of the room that doubled as their stove.

  Her mother walked over, and said, “There you are finally. I just didn’t want to miss saying goodbye to you. William will be here any minute to collect us.”

  “I don’t want you to go,” Esther said, after she read her mother’s lips and heard her faint voice.

  “It’s what’s best now that your vadder has hurt his back.”

  Esther was at least grateful that they were letting her stay on in the house. Rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, Esther said, “It will be so lonely here without you.”

  “I know, I know, but you’ll be fine. You’ve got your dog, Max, the other animals, and your garden to keep you busy. Your vadder has left a horse and buggy for your use, and you can come to William’s place to visit us any time you like. You can come every day.”

  Esther crinkled her nose. Her mother was speaking too quickly for her to follow.

  Her mother stepped closer. “I said, visit every day if you would like.”

  “Ah.” Esther nodded to show her mother she’d heard.

  Esther looked down at the floor, studying her bare toes sticking out from under her dress. At twenty-five years of age, she was more than capable of staying home alone. As her brother and sister were a good twelve and fourteen years older, she was also accustomed to a fair amount of alone time. Since her hearing had been damaged years ago, she’d grown more used to being in her own company.

  There was something peaceful about spending time in her own head, observing nature in solitude, and not having to worry about keeping up with the tediousness of polite conversation. Esther was close to her mother and was sure that the rest of the family thought that she was favored, or at the very least, ‘babied,’ by her mother.

  Esther had never been alone in the house. She sat gazing at her cold feet and wondering what it would be like sleeping tonight in the dark and waking of her own accord in the morning.

  “Good morning, bumble bee.” The booming voice of Esther’s father, Tom, stopped Esther from staring at her toes and brought a smile to her face.

  “Are you all packed and ready to go, Dat?”

  He closed the lid on the last of their trunks and walked over and hugged her tenderly. “We are going to miss you, bumble bee,” he said into her ear. “Jah, we are all ready.”

  “I’ll miss you too,” she said quietly and barely heard her own voice. Her father smelled of hay, and the gentle warmth of his strong arms around her felt like home.

  Beyond being caring and nurturing parents, they were simply wonderful people and Esther hoped that she could be as good as them one day. She also wanted a relationship like the two of them shared. Her mother and father were in love after all their years of marriage. Esther saw the tenderness in her parents’ eyes when they looked at each other, and she knew their love was something special.

  The bark of Max, her feisty terrier with coarse fur and an energetic tail, drew Esther out of her father’s embrace. The dog rushed toward Esther, and she felt a cool breeze, leading her to assume that someone had come into the house. Max mostly stayed outside the house and slept in the barn at night.

  “That must be William,” she heard her mother say.

  William and his wife, Blythe, lived a few miles up the road closer towards town but farther from the river. It had been decided at a family meeting that Esther’s parents should go and live with William and Blythe. Even Esther’s older sister, Millie, had agreed that it was the best thing now that Tom had been injured and was growing frail.

  Esther stood up as William came into the kitchen. He tipped his hat in Esther’s direction as he stooped to fit through the doorway.

  Esther smiled and waved at him, and then he walked up to her.

  “Blythe made me be sure to tell you to come to our house whenever you’d like. Your place is our place.”

  “Denke, William.”

  Esther had always liked the good-natured Blythe very much. Blythe and William now had seven children. It would be a much busier household now that her parents were going to be there too, but William’s house was large and William had plans of extending it even further.

  Then there was a hustle and bustle as trunks were loaded into William’s wagon. Last minute instructions and reminders were given, and hugs were shared. Before she knew it, Esther was standing on the porch alone waving goodbye as her parents crested the hill in William’s wagon. They looked more like tiny ants than people and then they passed out of view. She hugged her arms around herself and wondered how she would survive without her parents for companionship.

  “I’ll just stay busy,” she said to herself. “And so will you, Max,” she added, leaning down to give Max a scratch behind his ears. What would I do without Max and the animals? At least I’ll have their company. She looked around for he
r cat, Shadow, who always disappeared when Max came near her. The pair of them had never gotten along.

  “Let’s put some kaffe on and wash up, and then it’s off to the barn for both of us. Ol’ Bess is going to need milking, and I know those chickens will have some eggs for us. We’ve got our work cut out for us today, boy. It’s butter day, and we need to get to churning that butter, or we’ll never get done by dusk. Wouldn’t hurt if we could do a bit of washing in the stream, too, but maybe that’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

  Max wagged his tail. With a last look in the direction of her parents, Esther returned to the house to start her day. There’s no point in being blue, she lectured herself. We’re going to stay busy, make the best of the situation, and enjoy the peace and quiet as best we can. Max and I will be just fine.

  Despite the newfound loneliness in her heart and the quietness around her, the days passed quietly, and Esther found she didn’t mind the time alone. It was nice to be able to move about and run her day along her own timeline.

  She and Max fed the chickens and the livestock and milked the cow twice every day. When the night came, she would go inside the house, and Max would go to the barn, where he slept. Max had to sleep in the barn because Shadow, the cat, considered the house to be her domain.

  Chapter 2

  By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand,

  and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

  Romans 5:2-5

  * * *

  Esther’s days continued much the same until one evening, she noticed that a storm was brewing. Darkness fell all around Esther like sheets of molasses, dense and thick. Esther pulled her wool cloak tightly around her and hurried away from the barn, trying to get back to the house. She knew it was late, but the sudden downpour of rain had made the sky darker than it would’ve been normally.

  She balanced a full pail of fresh milk in one hand, sloshing some on the dirt path in her haste. Esther didn’t like nighttime at all; with her hearing loss, she’d grown to rely heavily on her sight. Now she tried to tune into the darkness around her, but her foot caught on a tree root and fell hard onto the ground. As her skirts flew up around her waist, milk spilled everywhere.

  With her tummy flat to the ground, Esther pounded her fist on the dirt. She picked herself up and grabbed her bucket to see if there was any milk left in the pail – there wasn’t. Standing in the rain, she shook as much milk off her skirts as she could before she realized she was getting soaked through to the skin. She hurried under the cover of the porch, and before she opened the door, she looked up at the dark clouds that were hiding the moon and the stars.

  The stars were Esther’s favorite things in the world to look at, but tonight she’d have to go without gazing at them. Before she looked away, though, a sparkle caught her eye. She gazed back at the sky and saw a cloud move, allowing her to see a welcome glimpse of a bright star. She studied the star and wondered what everything would look like from the sky above if she were up there looking down. Then a sudden gust of cold wind interrupted Esther’s thoughts and made her hurry inside.

  Safe in the house, Esther bolted the door. She couldn’t hear it lock into place, so she did what she usually did after sliding the heavy iron bolt through the lock. She leaned over and looked at eye level to make sure the lock had completely engaged. William had insisted that she keep the door locked, and that was something that the family had never done. They’d all felt safe in the midst of the Amish farming lands. Satisfied that she was safe, she turned to survey the room around her, struck as usual by the sheer emptiness of the space.

  A main room in the center of the home doubled as both sitting room and living room. The kitchen led off from the living room, and including the utility room, which was the largest room in the house. The wooden stairs led up to five bedrooms. A wood burning stove with a copper cooking plate on top kept her warm.

  Even though the house was empty, there were plenty of memories. Her brother and sister had left the home so long ago to get married that Esther only held vague recollections of them living there, but she had plenty of memories of them visiting with their young families. It seemed like only yesterday that the house her father Tom had lovingly built for her mother Moira had bustled with life.

  Esther made sure there was plenty of wood on the fire to keep it going while she went upstairs to change for bed.

  She exchanged her dress for a long cotton nightgown and then wrapped herself in a thick dressing gown. After pulling on some woolen socks, she headed back down the stairs. Esther settled into a chair while she waited for her soup and bread to heat over the fire.

  Without the distraction of talking to her parents, her gaze wandered the room and then settled on a worn blanket draped over the chair across the way from her. Brown, with stripes of blue, the woolen blanket had been in their home for as long as she could remember. It was the blanket she’d laid under on the floor of the house, next to the fireplace, when she was eight. Her mother had spooned broth through her cracked lips and encouraged her to take small sips of water while for days too numerous to count, as she had grappled with a fever. Yellow Fever, the town doctor had called it. She had never heard of it before, but she was soon to learn that it had robbed her of the majority of her hearing. The doctor had told her parents it was a disease that had spread on the ships coming into America, carried to the farmlands by insects, possibly mosquitoes.

  After days of fever, and after giving her family quite the scare, she’d turned a corner. After a night of sweating, chills, and heat waves, her fever had broken, and healing had begun. Only she never healed completely. The last clear words she had recalled before Yellow Fever took her hearing were those of her mother, urging her to drink more water. ‘Try, sweetheart, try. Take a sip, my baby,’ her mother had said, and then the world had gone quiet. She wasn’t completely deaf but the noises she heard were faint and muffled, at best.

  Being almost stone deaf had been something she had needed to get used to, but Esther and her family had been optimistic. She’d waited several weeks, they all had, hoping her hearing would return. And when it hadn’t, the family simply accepted that Esther was going to be without hearing the rest of her life, and they had all been correct. Her family came up with signs for common words and phrases that they could exchange so they could still communicate with her. Her mother had been a teacher, and she’d used those skills on Esther, teaching her patiently to read and to do math.

  Esther stretched out her legs, warming her sock-covered toes by the fire, enjoying some relaxation after a long day. As usual, Shadow was asleep by the fire. Esther always had to pull Shadow back away as her fur was always hot to touch, and Esther was scared the cat might get too hot.

  Shadow never liked to be moved. Esther touched her fur and then pulled her back a few inches away from the fire. Shadow turned her head and glared at Esther, before she moved a little and went back to sleep.

  As Esther stroked Shadow, she wondered whether this was all life had to offer a deaf girl such as her—days alone with no one to communicate with.

  Now that everyone had moved out of the house, she wouldn’t have to go into town very often. If she had to go to the town store, she would make sure it was on a Tuesday, when she knew Mrs. Mitts would be the clerk. Mrs. Mitts always smiled so brightly at her and never had trouble understanding the things Esther asked for.

  Life would be good on the farm by herself. There was the smell of spring grass down by the creek where she drew water and washed her clothing. The one thing missing in her life was a family of her own. If she had a husband, she would be able to go to sleep on the cold nights with her husband’s warm arms wrapped around her. She gave a little laugh, which must have come out louder than she’d thought because the sleeping Shadow raised her head to give Esther a glare. “I’m sorry, Shadow, go back to sleep.”

  Esther would have loved to be a wife, a mother, somebody’s treasure, but alas, she had given up on this long ago. After al
l, what man could love a girl who couldn’t hear his voice, who needed a special set of signs and gestures to be understood by her? It was too hopeless to even think of, so she tried not to. Instead, she spent her days taking care of her duties, enjoying the beauty of nature around her, and being a doting auntie to her nephews and nieces.

  During the days, Esther kept as busy as she could. But nights were the worst for being alone. When those stars twinkled at her, she often caught her breath as her heart pounded, and she felt the need to call out for love, acceptance, and understanding from the world around her. Esther’s only comfort at night was Shadow. When the fire died down, Shadow would make her way to the next warmest spot in the house, which was Esther’s bed. Esther was grateful for the company of her animals.

  Chapter 3

  Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.

  Jeremiah 17:7

  * * *

  After Esther had cleaned her dishes, she got ready for bed by checking the door lock one more time. Even though she lived within the Amish community mostly surrounded by kinfolk, her brother’s words rang through her ears, ‘Anybody could come here with ill intent.’

  Satisfied that the house was locked up tight for the night, she added another log to the fire and carried the kerosene lamp up the stairs to her bedroom. She poured some water from the jug next to her bed into a shallow bowl and dampened a dainty cloth to wash her face and hands. She sat on her bed and asked God for protection for each of her family members by name, and then for herself. She slid down between layers of quilts and shuddered at the chill that greeted her toes.