Tomorrow's Dream by Janette Oke, Davis Bunn Read Free Book Online Page B

faraway places. Now he loved being able to sit back and watch from inside as the world whipped away beyond the window.
    He felt Ruthie squeeze his hand and looked into his beloved wife’s face. She had returned to her traditional Mennonite dress for their visit home to the farm, putting aside the denim skirt and simple blouses she wore around the mission. Joel had repeatedly told her that she was welcome to wear her Mennonite bonnet and attire, but she explained it could alienate some of the young people who drifted into their mission hall. He had finally stopped bringing up the subject, recognizing the truth in her observation.
    But he was very glad to see Ruthie now back in the dress of her heritage. He loved her for who she was, and he loved the family and the tradition which had shaped her. Now that she did not wear Mennonite clothing all the time, seeing her in it brought back many wonderful memories.
    Joel’s own childhood with Martha and Harry had not been happy. His father had been critically injured in the war and given up for dead. His mother, faced with raising a child alone and without support, had chosen to give up her newborn girl for adoption. Then when his father had finally come home, the joy of their reunion had been darkened by the loss of their daughter. The wounds left on their spirits refused to heal. Joel had been born and raised in a house filled with silent shadows of a past he did not understand. It was the Miller family’s arrival in the neighborhood that had begun the transformation, introducing Joel to both a happy family and, eventually, helping to unite his own family in faith.
    â€œYou look so happy,” Ruthie said, sharing a smile. Her dress now included the starched little cap of a married matron instead of the maiden’s scarf.
    â€œI am.” He hesitated, not wanting to taint the day but needing to share it all with her. “But I’m also feeling guilty.”
    â€œIt’s only natural.” She reached over and laced her other hand into his. “Still, it is not wrong for us to be happy, even when Kyle and Kenneth are suffering.”
    Joel glanced back out the window, feeling all the conflicting emotions fading with the distance. Not even the very difficult telephone conversation he had with his sister before leaving for the station could keep up with him and the quietly rattling train. “I don’t know how we’re going to tell them our own news.”
    She did not ask what he was speaking about. Instead, she lifted his hand with both of hers and held it firmly to her middle. “We will just let God show us the way, my Joel.”
    A couple passing down the train’s central aisle stared at Ruthie in her homespun black dress and long-sleeved blouse and sturdy shoes and little white cap. Joel pulled Ruth’s hands back to the central armrest and wished he had his wife’s ability to ignore the stares of strangers. “You’re losing your accent. You don’t say Choel anymore,” he commented with a teasing smile.
    She laughed. “Give me three minutes with my family, and you will have all the accent you ever want to hear.”

    Upon their arrival at Lansdale, Pennsylvania, Joel was glad Simon was there to greet them. He was feeling very weary and weak. He tried to hide it from everyone, but he knew Ruthie had noticed what he himself had seen in the train station’s mirror—his tightened features, the furrows across his forehead, the sunken eyes. He knew too that his lips were compressing with the effort of holding back the pain in his chest.
    Simon embraced his brother-in-law, gave him one long look, and declared, “To home a taxi we must take.”
    â€œSimon, no, it is too much.” Ruthie looked genuinely alarmed. Farm income had steadily declined over the previous few years, and finances around the Miller household were extremely tight. They were being forced to draw from savings just to put