Amish Christmas Joy by Patricia Davids Read Free Book Online

the bloodred sky. His mother’s laundry hung freeze-drying in the winter air from the clothesline at the side of the house. White sheets, blue dresses, blue work shirts, black aprons and dark denim pants. The color palette was the same as it had been throughout his childhood.
    He’d thought he was prepared to come back, but he wasn’t. A rush of emotions and memories hit him like a truck and then parked on his chest, making it hard to breathe. Scenes from the wonderful years of his youth and the heartbreaking months before he left flickered through his mind like old movie clips.
    Working in the fields with his father, driving a team of mules for the first time. Hot summertime days spent shucking corn, followed by a dip in the cool river with his brother. His mother, calling everyone in to eat the most wonderful meals. His father, bowing his head in prayer. They were good memories.
    Then there were the not-so-good memories. The wreck that scarred Rhonda. The bitter arguments with his parents during his rumspringa, his teenage years, when he tried to sample all that wasn’t Amish. He was introduced to Valerie during that time at a friend’s house in Cleveland. She was quite simply the most exciting woman he’d ever met. To remain Amish or to go out into the English world became a real question in his mind for the first time.
    Then Rhonda Belier’s accusation that he was the father of her unborn babe changed everything. No matter how he denied it, his family expected him to do the right thing and marry her. Nothing he said made any difference until the night he flatly refused to marry her in front of both their families. Leah had been there, but he’d barely noticed her in the room. How did she remember that night? He kept begging Rhonda to admit the truth, but her silence had condemned him. It was the worst night of his life.
    What followed was an unofficial shunning by his father. For days, Ike Mast acted as if Caleb wasn’t present. He was waiting for a confession that his son couldn’t make. Caleb wouldn’t take the blame. Not this time. As painful as his father’s shunning had been, it was Wayne’s refusal to believe Caleb that had finally driven him away.
    He shook off the disturbing images from his past and looked around. This stretch of farmland amid the gentle rolling hills of Ohio was, and always would be, home. Too bad it wasn’t where he belonged.
    What would his life have been like if he had stayed? He couldn’t imagine bending far enough to fit into the mold he had been expected to fill.
    If he had married Rhonda, Leah would be married to Wayne and not teaching school. She might have children of her own by now. She would make a good mother. She certainly had a way with Joy.
    Why hadn’t she married? Was her love for Wayne so strong that she couldn’t care for another? He hoped that wasn’t the case. Watching the man she loved marry her sister couldn’t have been easy. What was their relationship like now? Did Wayne love his wife and the child that wasn’t his? What must that be like?
    Caleb rubbed a hand over the stubble on his cheeks. His actions had affected far more people than he knew. Leaving had seemed like his only option, but had it been a mistake?
    Joy, on the front seat beside him, stretched to see over the dashboard. Was he making another mistake bringing her here? He could turn around now and find a job somewhere, working on an oil rig that wasn’t a hundred miles out in the Gulf. He could be home every night. There had to be someplace they could belong and make a go of it.
    Even as the thought came to him, he realized Joy hadn’t been happy since she had come to him. This was his last hope.
    She pointed off to the side. “I see tepees. Lots of them.”
    The field on the left-hand side of the lane had shocks of cornstalks stacked to provide winter feed for the animals. The long lines of bundles stretched in straight rows across the twenty-acre field. It was hot, itchy work in the