Plain Paradise by Beth Wiseman Read Free Book Online Page B

then hop barefoot across the cobblestone steps that crossed the yard. When she reached the porch steps, she closed the distance between her and her parents and smiled. A smile that quickly faded. She stopped on the other side of the screen, facing them. No one moved or said anything for a few seconds.
    “What’s wrong?” Linda’s brows narrowed, and she glanced back and forth between Mary Ellen and Abe.
    Mary Ellen pushed the screen door open and motioned Linda inside. “Linda, we need to talk to you.”

4
    L INDA SCOOTED PAST HER PARENTS AND INTO THE kitchen and wondered if she’d done something wrong. She was a little late to help prepare supper, but it didn’t even look like Mamm had started yet. Her time with Stephen at the old oak tree had helped to ease her worry about Jonas. It wasn’t just the few kisses they shared, although those would keep her up at night, but the deep conversation. Stephen’s faith seemed stronger than Linda’s, and he had a way of making her understand about God’s will, something that the Ordnung taught was not to be questioned. But when something bad happened, Linda tended to question the event just the same. She suspected that Stephen would follow in his grandfather’s footsteps someday and become the bishop. And hopefully, she’d be by his side as the bishop’s wife.
    “What’s wrong?” she asked again when both her parents just stood off to one side of the kitchen, her mother’s face drawn into an expression of dread. Her father’s brows furrowed as he stroked his beard.
    “Let’s go into the den.” Daed led the way, and Linda glanced at her mother as they followed him into the den, but Mamm just took a deep breath and kept her head down.
    Linda sat down on the couch, and each of her parents took a seat in the rocking chairs across the coffee table from her. That was usually where they sat when they were reprimanding her or one of her brothers. Again, she tried to recall something she might have done to upset them.
    “We have something to tell you, mei maedel , but first I want you to know how much your mamm and I love you. You are our daughter always.” Daed swallowed hard, and Linda’s chest tightened. Could something have happened to Jonas since she and Stephen left the hospital? She sat quietly and waited, but she noticed that her mother wouldn’t look at her.
    “Your mamm and I tried to have kinner for almost two years before we—before you were born,” her father began. “We went to the natural doctor who sent us to an Englisch doctor in Lancaster. But I reckon no one could figure out why we couldn’t have a child.”
    This seemed an inappropriate conversation, and Linda’s anxiety heightened as she wondered where her father was going with this. She sat up straight on the edge of the couch and folded her hands in her lap. Her mother had never talked with her about where babies came from; it just wasn’t a conversation that a mother would have with her daughter. These things were learned when a girl got married. But Linda’s Englisch girlfriends had educated her about the matter early on in her rumschpringe .
    “We wanted a child so badly,” her mother chimed in. “A little one to love.” Mamm’s eyes filled with tears, and Linda tilted her head to one side and gazed at her forlorn expression. Then it hit her, and her embarrassment reddened her cheeks as she gasped.
    “Do you think Stephen and I are—” She didn’t even know how to speak the words. “We would never. I kissed him, but that’s all.” Linda tucked her chin. “Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I know that won’t make a baby.” She looked up to see both her parents’ jaws simultaneously dropping.
    “No, no,” her mother said as her cheeks took on their own rosy shade of red. “That’s not what we were thinking.”
    “Then what is it? You’re scaring me.”
    Her mother left the rocker and joined Linda on the couch. She grasped Linda’s hand tightly within hers, then looked