Chapter 3
3
After Moses drove off, Lois jogged up the lane to the highway, grabbed the sandwich board that read Paradise Found: Gift and Tourist Shop, and lugged it back. She snatched up the board from beside the entrance and dragged it inside too. Next she retrieved the vacuum from the back closet and began doing the final cleaning of the shop, working as fast as she could. Back and forth. Back and forth. She rushed past Scotty’s office door. When she finished, she put the vacuum away and called out to Scotty from the hallway. “I’m done for the day. See you on Monday.”
“I’ll be in tomorrow.” His voice grew closer, and the door opened. Scotty stood in front of her with a grin on his face. “Moses is very interested in buying the store. He has all sorts of plans—good ones.”
A wave of nausea swept through her.
“I think you’ll really like him,” Scotty said. “Both of you are smart, with a keen sense of business. He grew up Amish, although he’s Mennonite now, which is perfect for the Paradise community. And he’s ambitious.”
Lois tried to smile, but she feared it came across as a grimace.
Scotty frowned. “You’re not happy about Moses being your employer?”
She sighed. “I’m sad you and Barb are selling. It’s a shock, honestly.”
His face softened. “That’s part of the reason I’m selling to Moses—he’s local. You’ll be able to relate to him, and tourists will be thrilled with his suspenders and straw hat.”
She knew she should say something positive. Instead she said, “See you tomorrow.”
Scotty smiled. “See you then.”
Lois had known Scotty and Barb Harris since she was eight, when she moved to Lancaster County from Big Valley with her parents, who leased the Harrises’ farm and farmhouse on Meadow Lane. At the time, Scotty and Barb lived in another house they owned in Gordonville. Right after Lois turned fifteen, Scotty hired her to decorate for holidays at the shop. When she turned seventeen, he hired her to clerk, Tuesdays through Saturdays.
After her father died, Scotty and Barb moved Lois and her mother into the apartment over the shop, and they moved into the farmhouse, leasing the land to another farmer.
Lois double-checked the front door, exited through the back door, and then took the steps up the outside staircase two at a time. When she reached the top, she ducked under the maple branch that hung over the landing to her apartment. She unlocked the door and stepped inside, breathing in the scent of the fresh air from the open windows, the sprigs of daphne in the vase on the tabletop, and the fresh bread on the counter from her morning baking, trying to distract herself from the emptiness. It had been five years since her mother passed—but the pain of losing her hadn’t eased one bit.
A male blue jay ate at the bird feeder, which she’d purchased in the shop and attached to her window with suction cups. She gave him a wave, but he ignored her.
She stepped into her tiny kitchen to check her hummingbird feeder. The nectar appeared to be at the same level as when she filled it two days before.
She glanced at her father’s pocket watch. 6:12. She sliced a piece of bread, buttered it, and ate it, along with a few slices of cheese and an apple, for her supper.
After she ate, she shuffled into her bedroom and sank onto the bed, which was more of a nest with its extra pillows on top of the quilt her mother made the year Lois turned fifteen. The border was the yellow-green of Lois’s childhood dresses, the same color as the dress she wore now.
Her binoculars from her father sat on her nightstand next to her journal. She picked them up and stepped to the window, directing them toward the loblolly pine, looking for a red-tailed hawk nest. But she couldn’t find one. She sank back down onto her bed, the binoculars still in her hand.
Her father used to tell her that everything she needed to know about life in their Amish community she could learn from birds. Rise early. Sing to Gott . Flock together. Work hard. Take care of yourself and others. She didn’t remember a time when her family didn’t observe birds. They had a bird feeder in their yard, out the living room window. A hummingbird feeder hung from the eaves of the back porch. Their only outings, except to visit members of their church, were to go birding.
She’d never stop learning about birds.
She had two hours of daylight left. Why not go to Paradise Park?
She grabbed her sweatshirt and her reflective vest and put her binoculars and journal in her backpack. Once down the staircase, she retrieved her red kick scooter from where she kept it at the back of the shop. It was the only mode of transportation she possessed. Although it had a basket on the front, which she used when she did any shopping, she always kept anything valuable in her backpack. She didn’t want to risk taking a spill and having her birding notebook and binoculars fly into a ditch.
As Lois picked up speed along the highway, one foot planted on the scooter and the other pushing alongside and propelling her forward, she tipped her face upward toward the blue sky and the lingering warmth of the sun. A flock of Canada geese flew north. One honked. Then another. They’d be stopping soon for the night. She increased her speed. Scootering was the closest she would ever come to flying.
She held on to the handle with one hand and stretched out her other arm as if it were a wing, leaning into a curve. A pickup sped by, honking as it did. Lois pulled closer to the ditch and raised her hand in a wave. Sometimes drivers yelled as they drove by, but she still tried to expect the best of people. Behind her, horse hooves clopped along. She inched over as far as she could.
A bird, one she couldn’t identify, flew up into the brush on the other side of the ditch. She laughed as it flapped its wings and the horse and buggy sped by.
She slowed as she reached the village of Paradise. The park was in the middle of town, but she decided to stop at Denlinger Pond, just before the train station, and follow the waterway to the park, which meant leaving her scooter. She walked the scooter off the highway and down to the pond, hiding it behind a row of bushes. Then she slipped off her vest, rolled it, and stuffed it into her pack as the Strasburg train rolled into the Paradise station, whistle blowing.
She walked to the pond, where several goldeneyes were floating on the water. She took out her journal and a pencil and recorded what she saw and then kept going along the bank of the run. High on a branch of a hemlock tree was a platform nest. She took out her binoculars and focused in on it. A hawk swooped down and landed in the nest. She squinted, making out a rusty breast. Dark red eyes.
A Cooper’s hawk. The hawks lived in the area year-round. They were monomorphic—the female and male looked the same. But she guessed this one was female because of its size. Most likely there were eggs—two to four—in the nest.
She jotted down the sighting in her notebook and continued on her way until the run reached the park to her right. To her left were the baseball diamonds. The Harris farm, which her Dat had leased, sat a little to the northwest. She could make out the barn, silo, and farmhouse through the trees.
Who would Scotty sell her childhood home to?
A wave of sadness swept over her. Long shadows fell. The daylight dimmed. Sometimes being close to the farm made her feel better—but sometimes worse. Today was the latter. Probably because, with Moses taking over, she would need to find a new job and a new place to live soon. Neither would be easy. She missed having a permanent home.
She turned back toward the pond. As she neared it, a heron swooped down. Lois took several quick steps to the water, lost her footing, and slipped on a rock.
She gasped as her right foot fell into the water, and then she scampered back up the bank, sloshing a muddy mess up the grassy slope.
Feeling defeated, she took her vest from her backpack, slipped it on, and wrestled her scooter out from behind the bushes.
She should have stayed home.
When she reached the pavement, she stamped her feet, trying to force the water out of her right shoe. Then she put her left foot on the scooter and started east on the highway. Ahead was Paradise Café, a new restaurant that had opened a few weeks before.
As she approached, a black SUV turned into the parking lot. Moses’s SUV. Her pulse quickened. He hadn’t seen Lois. Or perhaps he didn’t realize it was her. Or, most likely, he’d chosen to ignore her.
Moses jumped down from the driver’s side and stepped around to open the passenger door. He held his hand up. Someone took it, and then Sara Fisher climbed down.
Immediately she locked eyes on Lois, who quickly glanced away. “Lois! Is that you?”
Lois grimaced and then directed her attention toward Sara. “Hello!” She held on to the scooter with one hand and waved with the other. “Hi, Moses.” Hopefully they didn’t expect her to stop.
Moses mouthed “Hallo” as Lois hit a patch of gravel. Her free hand flew to the handle and she braked too hard, and the scooter slid out from under her. She stumbled but caught herself, for a second. But the scooter kept sliding toward the parking lot, and before she could let go it pulled her down too, on top of the gravel. As she slid, her dress pushed up on her thigh.
She came to a stop, her skin covered with road rash, her dress twisted around her left leg, and her wet shoe a foot away. She tried to stand but fell back down. Sara, who towered over her, said, “Let me help.”
Lois took her hand and let Sara pull her to her feet, hopping on her one shoe and tugging at her dress as she stood.
Sara, who had to be almost six feet tall, wore a Mennonite Kapp over her blond hair. She had hazel, doe-like eyes and wore a pink print dress and a pair of sandals with a little bit of a heel. Sara had always been gorgeous—something Lois was aware of from the first day she met her at the Paradise school. And tall. Those were the two things that impressed Lois the most.
Obviously, Sara had become Mennonite too. She and Moses made a perfect couple.
Moses grabbed Lois’s shoe and handed it to her, interrupting her hopping and her staring at Sara.
Lois managed to get it back on her foot.
“Moses.” Sara’s voice dripped with sweetness. “We need to give Lois a ride home.”
“No.” Lois’s gaze fell. Blood was trickling down her leg.
Moses reached for the scooter. “I’ll put this in the back.”
“No,” Lois pleaded. “I’m fine. It’s not very far.” She shifted her backpack into place and reached for the scooter. “Thank you, though. I appreciate your thoughtfulness.”
Moses glanced at Sara, who shrugged. Then he asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Through gritted teeth, Lois repeated, “I’m fine.”
A half hour later, her leg cleaned and bandaged, Lois sat on the top step of the staircase to her apartment and watched the sunset. Had she been ungracious in refusing a ride home from Moses and Sara?
She was used to being lonely, but she felt extra so tonight. Was it from seeing Moses and Sara together? The sun disappeared below the horizon, taking the light and warmth of the day with it. Amy was home with her husband of five years and their four children, the youngest just four months old. Lois’s only blood relatives were her brother, who was nineteen years older than she was, and his family.
Was John Miller her only hope of having any kind of stable life in Lancaster County?
Moving to Paradise with her parents from the Yoder farm in Big Valley had changed Lois’s family, and looking back Lois realized moving had to have been hard on Mamm and Dat. They’d left the only home they’d known and their firstborn, their only son. That must have been hard no matter how many disagreements stood between them. And it wasn’t as if, like in most Amish families, there were other children to depend on.
For years, her parents believed Randy would be their only child. But when he was nineteen, Lois came along. Eight years later, she and their parents moved to Lancaster County. The next ten years had been a blissful time—her parents deeply loved each other and Lois, as well as Randy even though he was far away. They delighted in the natural world, and not just birds. Flowers, trees, stars, the sun and moon, the weather, wild animals, domesticated animals. Everything. Until her father died in a farming accident. Two years later, her mother, who never recovered her strength after Dat died, suffered a stroke and passed away too.
Randy swept in and moved Lois back to the family farm in Big Valley. After three years, Lois managed to escape and return to Paradise.
But now that was coming to an end too.
Dusk faded into darkness, and Lois stepped into the apartment and took Amy’s letter from her apron pocket. What would it hurt? She needed a distraction, especially while she was looking for a job and a new place to live.
Perhaps John Miller would love her—and perhaps she could come to love him too, Gott willing. He seemed to be her best plan. But a relationship wouldn’t happen overnight. She’d still need a new job. And a new place to live. A distraction, which the circle letter would be, might help pass the time.
Although she wouldn’t want anyone—except Amy—to know she’d joined a birding circle letter. She could envision someone showing up at the store, perhaps when John had stopped to see her, and bringing up the circle letter.
Her brother thought Mamm and Dat wasted too much time on birding and flower identification and looking at the clouds and nature in general. He’d cautioned Lois against showing that side of herself to a man who might want to court her. She thought Randy was ridiculous with his concerns, but John’s comment about birding made Lois wonder now if perhaps her brother had a point.
Lois sat down at her small kitchen table. She’d write Teresa Schrock and ask to join the circle letter. Then she’d go to the post office the next day and pay for a mailbox. She didn’t want Moses snooping through her mail—not about a future job or a new home. And not even about a circle letter.
What pseudonym should she use for the letter? After putting some thought into it, she decided on her middle name, Jane, along with her mother’s maiden name, Weaver.
As she started the letter, an owl hooted in the distance. She took it as a good sign.