The Godly Woman Who Became His Undoing

Prologue

Preston Farm, near Albany, New York

“Ow. Ow. Ow!”

Zoe, aged twelve, lifted her left thumb off the linen and glared at it. A bright red bead gathered on the pad.

The needle was still pinned through the cloth, looking smug.

“That,” she informed it, “was uncalled for.”

She glared down at the small wooden hoop in her lap.

Her mother had drawn a rosebud onto the cloth in faint pencil that morning, all soft curves and curled petals, with a single delicate leaf at the base.

Around the rosebud, six rows of green silk lay in stitches so crooked they appeared to be running for their lives.

The first robin of the season landed on the porch railing and cocked its head at her, as if to offer a critique.

“Don’t even think about it,” Zoe muttered, lowering the hoop. “I’ve heard quite enough today.”

The robin twitched its tail and flew off, which only proved her point.

She had given up on this particular rosebud six times this morning. The seventh failure now sat in her lap. She held it close to her face, then pulled it back. The view didn’t improve at any distance.

The kitchen door creaked behind her. Warm bread and yeast and woodsmoke drifted onto the porch. Zoe’s stomach growled at a volume her mother surely heard.

“Coax the cloth, Zoe Marie,” Mama said gently as she eased onto the bench beside her. “It’s shy.”

Mama settled with a small grunt and the rustle of starched cotton.

She smelled of flour, lavender water, and the faint tang of the apple butter she had been stirring all morning.

Her dark hair, the same wild curls Zoe had inherited, was pinned up in a knot, and a streak of flour ran from her temple to her jaw.

“This cloth would make better kindling than embroidery, Mama,” Zoe replied without looking at her. “I am only doing what it asks.”

“You will not burn the cloth the day before the Lord’s Day, child,” Mama said firmly.

“It’s Saturday,” Zoe muttered.

“Tomorrow is Sunday,” Mama replied with patience, holding out her hand. “The cloth knows. Hand it over.”

Zoe sighed and passed the hoop.

Mama held it close, examined the rosebud from every angle, and pressed her lips together, careful not to laugh.

“It’s a brave little stitch,” she said at last.

“Mama,” Zoe groaned.

“Brave,” Mama repeated solemnly.

“You’re too kind.”

“Honest,” Mama corrected with a small smile. “The needle has clearly seen battle. The thread, less so. The thread has surrendered.”

Zoe collapsed against her mother’s shoulder, laughing so hard the hoop slid off Mama’s lap. When she straightened, Mama had already pulled the worst of the snarl free and threaded a fresh length of green silk through her needle.

“Watch,” Mama said softly.

She lowered the linen onto her own lap and worked a single stitch, slow enough that Zoe could see how the silk slid through the holes she had already made.

“Short and steady, Zoe,” Mama instructed quietly. “The needle is a guest. You ask it in. The thread will follow.”

“It feels like an enemy,” Zoe complained.

“That’s because you have decided it is,” Mama answered gently. “Decide otherwise.”

Mama tipped her head, and Zoe leaned closer to peer at the small line of green stitches walking along the curve of the rosebud’s stem. Even, smooth, all of them lying down the same direction. They were lovely.

“Mine look as though a goat had been at the linen,” Zoe muttered. “How,” she added, frustration creeping into her voice, “do you have so much patience?”

“Borrowed,” Mama replied simply.

“From whom?”

Mama tapped the small embroidered cross hanging at her throat, and her smile softened. “From the one who made the goats.”

Zoe rolled her eyes. Mama caught her at it and pinched the back of her arm without taking her gaze from the needle.

“Ow,” Zoe yelped.

“That is for rolling your eyes at the Almighty,” Mama said calmly.

“I rolled them at you,” Zoe protested.

“He will lend you to me when I need it,” Mama replied with a small smile. “Now stitch, and recite for me what you read this morning.”

Zoe took the hoop back. She set the tip of the needle against the linen, drew a breath, and pushed it through. It wobbled. She tried again, and this stitch wobbled less. The third sat almost steady.

“Be still,” she recited softly, “and know that I am God.”

“And then?” Mama prompted.

“I will be exalted among the heathen.”

“And?”

“I will be exalted in the earth.”

“There. Better already,” Mama said warmly, leaning over to tap Zoe’s stitch line. “Be still, Zoe Marie. The needle answers to a still hand.”

Footsteps thundered on the porch boards and the screen door slammed open hard enough to make a robin shriek from the apple tree at the end of the yard.

“Zo!” Brody called.

Her stitch was, finally, going somewhere respectable. She would not be put off course by her brother.

“Zo!” he repeated, louder.

“Brody, can you not see I am communing with the saints,” she said dryly, eyes on her work.

“You’re communing with a piece of cloth,” he replied.

“Same thing, today.”

He clattered into view with their father’s pale eyes, nothing like Zoe’s own green ones, and a streak of sawdust across his forehead. Brody squinted at her hoop, leaned closer, and made a small choking noise that meant a face had been pulled.

“What’s it meant to be?” he asked.

“A rose,” Zoe answered, daring him to disagree.

“It looks like Pa’s beard after he gets caught in the wind,” Brody said with a grin.

“Brody,” Zoe warned.

“I’m only telling the truth, as a brother ought,” he replied sweetly.

Mama’s hand came up between them. Brody, who had learned at age six that her hand meant business, took two steps back.

“Did Pa send you for something, son?” Mama asked patiently. “Or are you here to bring suffering on your sister?”

“Pa sent me for the big bucket,” Brody answered. “And he says to tell Eleanor he wants two of whatever is on the stove for supper, on account of how he is wasting away out there in the field.”

Mama lifted one eyebrow. “Does he?”

“His exact words, Mama. I am only the messenger.”

“Tell your father his messenger is going to be wasting away in the woodshed if he doesn’t collect that bucket and remove himself from this porch.”

“Yes, Mama,” Brody replied, with the grin of a boy who had delivered exactly the sentence he had been sent to deliver and was now free of the consequences. “The suffering is a gift.”

“Out,” Mama ordered.

“Yes, Mama,” Brody replied dutifully.

He retreated with a wink at Zoe, who flicked her needle at him and missed his cheek by the grace of God and his fast reflexes.

“Brody has a point about the rose,” Mama said gently when the screen door had banged shut. “But only a small one.”

“I know,” Zoe murmured.

“You’re learning,” Mama reassured her. “The first row is always the worst row. After that, your hands remember.”

Zoe pulled the silk through. The next stitch sat down beside its neighbor and behaved itself.

“There,” Mama said softly. “Look at that. A little still hand, a little patience borrowed from above, and the rose begins to bloom.”

Zoe felt it, then. A small warm thing settling in her chest near her breastbone. She had no name for it. She bent closer to her work and tried not to grin.

Mama held up the hoop in the spring light. Five whole stitches now, walking in line down the stem of the rose, neat and tidy, almost as though a person had made them on purpose.

“Stitch by stitch, Zoe Marie,” Mama said quietly. “That is how everything in life is made. Bread. A house. A marriage. A rose. You don’t throw the whole thing down because the first stitch wobbles. You set the needle, and you go again.”

Zoe rested her cheek against her mother’s shoulder. The lavender water. The flour. The apple butter. The warm bread smell of her. Every good thing in one place.

“What if the cloth itself is bad, Mama?” Zoe asked softly.

“Then you ask the Lord for a new bolt,” Mama answered without hesitation.

“And if He is busy?”

“Then you wait, my brave little stitch,” Mama said tenderly. “You wait, and you keep your needle in your hand.”

Far at the end of the yard, the apple tree sighed in the spring wind, and a pair of robins, one after the other, lifted off into the bright blue sky.

“Mama,” Zoe said after a moment.

“Yes, my brave little stitch?”

“When I am grown... Do you think I will have a kitchen of my own? And a husband who laughs at my jokes? And a porch with a railing for a robin to sit on?”

Mama was quiet for a moment, then she set her hand on top of Zoe’s head, light and warm.

“I think the Lord has been making the cloth for that life since before you were born, Zoe Marie,” she said softly. “Your job is to keep stitching, even when you cannot yet see the rose. Promise me.”

“I promise, Mama.”

Zoe set the needle against the linen.

She went again.