Threads of Grace (30 page)
“Aw, I haven’t done much. Have I, Abel?”
There was a still moment when the boy fiercely embraced the older woman, then let her go. Alice’s eyes filled with tears, and Grace allowed her own tears to fall.
“Now, no fretting. I hear my ride coming. I’ve got the strength now to go home and face a few things of my own. Thanks for the Amish romance.”
A big blue van rolled to a loud stop in front of the house and the faithful Tommy beeped the horn over the blare of rock music.
“Gotta go,” Alice said.
Grace hugged her once more, then watched as Seth helped her into the van and closed the door. The vehicle roared off with Alice waving from the window. Grace felt bereft as she stood on the porch in the sudden quiet.
Seth climbed the steps of the porch slowly. “I’ll miss her,” he said.
He went and slipped an arm around Grace and drew Abel closer by the hand. The three of them stood silently for a moment, then methodically went back to the chores of the day.
Grace walked to the mailbox, pulled out the contents, and began to page through the letters. An official-looking return address caught her eye. The county courthouse. She fumbled with the envelope, ripped out the letter, and read it quickly.
Then she took off down the road to catch up with Seth, who was headed out to the pasture.
S
eth! Look!”
He scanned past the seal of the State of Pennsylvania emblazoned at the top of the letterhead, to the words that proclaimed what he already knew to be true:
He, Seth Wyse, was now the legal father of this child he loved.
“Where’d Abel get off to?” he asked Grace.
“Not sure,” Grace replied. “Go find him, Seth. Take the letter and tell him.”
“I will.” He started toward the house. When he was almost to the door, he turned and looked back at Grace. “I love you,” he said.
For once, she didn’t duck her head or deflect his words. Instead she smiled and blew him a kiss. In that moment, with the sun shining on her face, he was struck again by his feelings for her.
Thank You, God
, he thought.
Thank You.
Abel wasn’t in the house, so Seth headed out to find him. As he walked, he read the letter again, focusing on Abel’s first name now joined to his own family name.
Abel Beiler, henceforth to be legally referred to as Abel Wyse
.
“What you got there,
sohn
?” Seth looked up to see his father standing at the edge of the yard. “The way you’re holding on to it, must be important.”
Seth grinned. “It is.” He handed his father the letter and watched as an expression of pure joy came over his
daed’s
face.
“That’s wonderful. Congratulations,
sohn
.”
“Any advice for me,
Daed
?”
“I’ve seen you with that boy. You’re good with him. Patient, and that’s what he needs. He’s a good boy, and smart, just not in the regular way sometimes.”
“Sometimes I’m not so sure how to act with him,
Daed
.”
“To tell you the truth, neither am I,” Samuel said. “Sometimes he’s real nervous around folks, and sometimes he’ll walk right up and talk to people. One thing I know, God’s got a plan for that boy. As long as we keep asking the Father for His will, we’ll be fine.” He handed the letter back. “He know about this yet?”
“No, the letter just came,” Seth said. “I was coming out to find him. You seen him?”
“Yep, just saw him walking down toward the creek not long ago. Probably headed to the swing.”
“Thanks,
Daed
.” Seth headed off toward the creek with the letter still in his hand.
The creek—and more specifically, an old tire swing that had been put up near the creek long ago—was one of Abel’s favorite places. Seth was already planning to build a swing in the yard for the boy—one that would go in all different directions.
Seth made his way through a little patch of woods down a worn path that eventually led to the creek. The sunlight filtered through the trees, and a light breeze brought the smell of pine and a hint of something sweet, almost mint-like. The creek came into view, and then Abel, making the old tire swing as fast as he could.
“Hiya,” Abel said. “Swinging.”
“I see that,” said Seth. “Want a push?”
“Nope.”
“You about ready to head home? Don’t want to miss
Mamm’s
lunch, do we?”
“Nope,” said Abel. “Let’s go.”
Abel leaped off the swing in mid-arc and tumbled head over heels into the weeds by the creek bed. But he got up quickly and seemed unharmed.
“That was quite a tumble,” Seth said. He brushed the dirt from Abel’s pants. “Before we go, I have something to tell you.” Abel remained silent, so Seth forged ahead. “You know I love your
mamm
, and I love you too.”
As Seth spoke he unconsciously reached out to Abel and put his hands on each of Abel’s shoulders, drawing in close. “This letter came in the mail today. It says that I’m your
daed
now. You’re my
sohn
, Abel, and—”
“Lemme go!” Abel cried out. He wrenched himself from Seth’s grasp and ran as fast as he could up the path toward home.
“Abel, come back, I—” Seth ran after him, calling, but he tripped over the root of a tree and fell forward, hitting his chin hard on the ground. When he regained most of his senses, he sat up and took inventory of his aches and pains. His ankle felt twisted and his chin was pulsing with pain. The pages of the letter were crumpled and caked with dirt from the impact of the fall.
“Ach,”
he muttered. “That could not have gone worse.”
Seth picked himself and the letter off the ground and limped toward home.
I
want to see the bishop,” Abel declared to Seth. They were in the barn together, doing chores and not talking, after the incident at the tire swing.
Seth wasn’t sure if he’d heard right. “What was that?”
“The bishop—you know, the old man who makes the rules. I want to talk to him.”
“Okaaaay.” Seth wondered how in the world a conversation between the unpredictable old man and the child would go.
“Can you take me now, in the buggy?”
Seth glanced at the barn door. “Should we tell your mother first?”
Abel shook his head. “No. Maybe it won’t take long.”
So Seth harnessed up and set off with Abel in the middle of the workday. He waved to Jacob, who stopped to stare at them going by, then refocused on the road and the brief trip to the Loftus house.
“Okay.” Abel hopped out. “You stay here. I’ll be back.”
Seth set the brake and waited, watching Abel bravely march up to the front door.
Fraa
Loftus answered, let Abel in, and waved to Seth. In a few minutes, Abel popped back out of the house and clambered into the buggy.
“Okay. We can go home now.”
“Well, what did you do or say?”
“Nothing.” Abel shrugged. “Just something I was supposed to.”
T
wo days later Jacob and Lilly were hosting Meeting. Seth had gone over to help set up the benches the day before, and Grace had come to help with the food preparation.
It was a normal Meeting until the end. Then the bishop stood up to speak to the community. As soon as the bishop got up, Seth felt a premonition, a gripping in his stomach. His fears were realized when the bishop began to speak.
“It has come to my attention, through a young but very wise member of our community, that we need to have a discussion about arts and crafts.” He cleared his throat. “You all know that there is no beauty without purpose. Now, some among our community make quilts that are representative of our lives; some weave baskets to show our togetherness. And some, I have come to learn”—he cleared his throat—“paint.”
There was a faint rustling from the congregation and Seth held his breath. Then the bishop started to unroll a large paper. For one wild moment Seth thought he had gotten hold of one of
his paintings. But what the old man held up to the crowd was an ancient cracked parchment.
“Do you recognize it?” the bishop asked. “It’s a marriage certificate from the early 1900s. I want you all to pay particular attention to the detailed art that frames the words. We call it
fraktur
. It was done primarily with pen and colored ink, but some fine-lined painting was also involved. It is an old art, one that has faded away. One from the time when we as
Amisch
were one group, not divided into Old Order and New Order and such doings. But it is
art
.” He rolled the parchment back up and set it aside.
“Seth Wyse, will you come forward,
sei so gut
?”
Seth’s feet propelled him to the front as if by automation. He looked out at the crowd and caught Grace’s worried eyes and Abel’s calm expression.
“The only thing that requires confessing here is the secret,
sohn
,” the bishop murmured to him. And then Seth realized what he meant. He straightened his spine.
“I have to tell you all that I paint. I’ve done it for some time—in secret, hiding it from all but my family. I don’t paint for vanity, or simply for aesthetic reasons. I paint because
Gott
put it in my heart, and I guess the bishop is making the point that my secretiveness is what is graven about the art. In truth, I have always felt it a gift from the Lord that might be used to benefit the community, to draw us closer as one, to represent our ways and doings so that we have a pictorial legacy to pass on to our children.” He looked straight at Abel.
Bishop Loftus reached up and clapped him on the shoulder. “Is it the will of the community that Seth Wyse be forgiven for his secretiveness, and that he may paint with joy before the Lord?”
There was a rousing affirmation. Seth felt his eyes fill with tears.
Afterward, he stood at the front with the bishop and received greetings and blessings from the community. When Abel got to him, he reached down and swung the boy up in his arms. “So you told the bishop?”
“Yeah,” he said, being still for only a moment, then squirming. Seth put him down and the boy looked up at him soberly. “I love . . .
Fater
.”
Seth swallowed hard and felt there could be no more joy in his heart. “I love . . .
sohn
.”
T
he honeybee quilt was finished. Grace spread its ample folds over the master bed with calm purpose. It was a beautiful moonlit night, and the mellow evening poured in through the open window. Lightning bugs flickered outside the screen, and the crickets chirruped in sweet chorus.
Seth came in damp, disheveled, and shirtless, obviously fresh from a bath in the creek. He took one end of the towel around his neck and rubbed at his wet hair.
“So it’s finished?” He ran an appreciative hand over one of the squares.
“
Jah
, and truly, Seth, it’s for you. I made it with you in mind the whole time—since, well, the bee-stinging day and all.”
“Why the bee-stinging day, Grace?”
She sighed. Here was the sticky part, but she’d determined it must be said.
“That was the day I think I fell in love with you.”
She closed her eyes and took a breath, trying to still the trembling inside. She had never said those words to anyone, and it felt like an enormous risk. In saying them, she made herself vulnerable to him—and she knew all too well how much damage could be done when you were vulnerable to another human being.
For a moment or two, silence stretched between them. Then she opened her eyes to find him gazing at her. “Grace—ah, Grace, I have waited so long to hear you say those words. I never thought you would. I thought you would always think of me as some immature kid who took advantage of the situation and stole your life while I was able.”
She shook her head. “No, I’ve never thought that. I’ve learned so much about God from you, and so much about myself. But that day, with the bees, you drew out the poison stingers with your mouth. I’ve begun to realize that you’ve always been willing to do that—take the poison of the past from me and turn it into something renewed and beautiful.”