The Amish Heiress

Chapter One - Trouble in Paradise

Chapter One

Trouble in Paradise“I won’t do it!”

“You will do what I say!”

“I’m eighteen, Papa, and my own person. You can’t make me do anything anymore!”

“Rachel, Jonathan, please stop shouting at each other.”

The cacophony of voices pushed out the open front door of the house like a symphony orchestra with every instrument out of tune. A girl stood in the doorway pointing her finger back at someone inside. She spoke again and this time her voice was low and icy.

“Mama, I hate him. Ever since he came back, my life has been...hell!”

The word crashed down like an avalanche of rocks and then there was silence.

“Dochter, you don’t mean that. Please, apologize to your papa.”

“I won’t apologize to someone that’s...that’s verrückt!”

“Rachel!”

“So, I’m crazy, am I? Well, we’ll see. Go on. You want to leave, just go. Get out of my house.”

“Your house? Your house? I’ve lived here longer than you. You come back into our lives and think you can just take over and order me around. Papa, I don’t even know you. I’ll go, I’ll go, and maybe I won’t come back!”

With that, Rachel swung around and stomped out onto the porch, slamming the screen door in the face of the man who was following her out. She ran down the steps and out onto the lane and was gone before her papa could catch her.

Jonathan Hershberger opened the door and stood, watching his daughter run through the field next to the house. His wife, Jenny, came out behind him and watched their daughter go. Jenny’s face was pale and her eyes were red.

Jonathan put his hand to his head. “My head hurts, Jenny. Help me inside.”

Jenny dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. “You know you are not supposed to get angry. The doctor warned you that you could have a stroke.”

“I know, Jenny, but I can’t seem to help myself. I don’t want to be angry with Rachel, but there is something in her that just pushes me over the edge.”

Jenny put her arm on Jonathan’s shoulder and led him back inside. “In her, Jonathan, or in you?”

*****

It was a cold and wet March day in Paradise. Spring had not yet arrived with her palette of vivid hues, and the predominant color was brown—brown stubble, brown earth, dead grass in the front yard. The small swale beyond the pasture fence was filled with runoff from the winter snowmelt, and a few solitary white ducks floated on the surface of the temporary pond, casting their reflections on the leaden surface that drearily mirrored the gray clouds gathered above the Hershberger farm.

Rachel Hershberger trudged down the path that led away from the house. Her feet sank inches into the soft mud, and the edges of her dress bore the stains of her ill-advised trail breaking. Her face was red, and a single tear had coursed its way down her cheek. She spoke out loud to no one in particular, and her outburst roused the ducks from their peaceful repose to flutter a few feet across the pond and then settle back again. “Why did he have to come back? Everything was fine without him.”

Now the tears began to flow freely down her face. She wiped them away, but others that seemed eager to mar the loveliness of her face quickly replaced them. Her dark auburn hair was held tightly in a bun beneath her kappe, and the wool jacket she wore over her plain dress kept the March chill from her skin. But it did nothing to ease the chill in her heart.

The squishing of her boots in the mud mixed with an occasional sob and the rippling sound of the little creek that ran through the cottonwoods, off to her right, played a strangely discordant concerto that jarred against the serenity all around her. Finally, she came to the gate out onto the main road. As she walked disconsolately down the asphalt, Rachel was absorbed in her sorrow and did not pay attention to the soft clop of the horse’s hooves behind her until the small buggy pulled up next to her.

“A bit chilly for a walk in the mud, isn’t it, Rachel?”

Rachel looked up into the kindly face of Daniel King, her friend from the neighboring farm. He sat on the buggy seat with a quizzical look on his face.

“Go away, Daniel. I don’t need your indefatigable good nature right now.”

“Indefatigable! Ja, now there’s a fifty-dollar word. Come on, Rachel, I’m your friend, and you look like you could use one right now. Hop in and I’ll take you wherever you’re going and keep you tidy at the same time.”

Rachel stopped and looked up at Daniel. His handsome, beardless face smiled at her from under the black hat, and he sat straight and tall on the seat. Rachel’s shoulders dropped and she gave a sigh of resignation. She really wanted to be by herself, but her hike through the mud had worn her out. She climbed up on the seat next to Daniel.

“You and your papa fighting again?”

“Yes, if it’s any of your business!”

“Look, Rachel, don’t go there. You have spoken with me many times about Jonathan, so it’s not like I’m prying into your secrets. What was it this time?”

Rachel slumped down in the seat. “I signed up for another class at the Junior College—a class in animal husbandry. I...I want to be a veterinarian, but my papa told me to drop the class.”

“Why, because Amish girls are supposed to stay home after eighth grade and learn to be obedient little servants to the men?”

Rachel looked at Daniel in surprise. “Something like that.”

She looked again. Daniel wasn’t smiling. He was staring straight ahead, and his face was set in a stern mask.

Rachel suddenly realized that she might have an ally in this handsome young man. He was usually so...so traditional. “Why, Daniel, you surprise me. I wouldn’t expect anything like that out of you.”

Daniel shook the reins over the back of the horse and relaxed. The smile returned to his face, and he looked over at Rachel. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. I’d be more than willing to share it with you if...if you’d let me court you.”

Rachel turned away abruptly and stared out at the brown fields of Paradise, Pennsylvania. “Don’t, Daniel. We’ve talked about this before. You’re my friend, but that’s all I feel for you. Besides, I don’t want to get married. I have...other plans.”

Daniel didn’t let the barbed remark ruffle his calm demeanor. “So what are you going to do, Rachel? Run away to the big city and become an animal doctor? Wouldn’t you find more work around here?”

Rachel turned back to Daniel, and now there was excitement in her voice.

“Don’t you see? It’s not the 1800s anymore, even for the Amish. It’s 1990. There’s so much out there, so much more to life than a little farm in Paradise, Pennsylvania. There’s music and art and museums—the whole country and even the whole world to see. I want to float down the Nile and see the pyramids. I want to go to the Louvre and stay there for weeks. I want to torment the guards at Buckingham Palace and see if I can make them smile. Daniel, don’t you ever want to go, to see, to do?”

Daniel looked down at the reins in his strong hands. “All I want is to stay here and work with my papa, and then when it’s my time, take over the farm and raise the finest saddlebred horses in Pennsylvania.”

Rachel gave an exasperated sigh. “And that’s why we could never be together. I want to be part of a much bigger world, and in order to do that I...I...”

“Can’t stay Amish?” asked Daniel softly.

Rachel looked at him without speaking. The answer lay heavy between them in a silence broken only by the soft clopping of the horse’s hooves on the road.

*****

When Rachel banged back through the door, Jenny was sitting on the sofa in the front room. Her face was soft and sad. She lifted her finger to her lips.

Rachel pulled off her coat and hung it on the hook by the door. “Where’s Papa?”

“He’s sleeping, Rachel. He got a bad headache when he got so angry. You know that it hurts him physically when you fight with him.”

Rachel looked down. She felt bad, but she wasn’t going to back down. “Mama, is he the only one who lives here? Why do we have to tiptoe around and make everything easy for him all the time?”

Jenny motioned for Rachel to come sit beside her. Rachel hesitated and then plopped down stiffly beside her mama. Jenny’s arm circled Rachel’s waist. She pushed through the stiffness and pulled her daughter up close. It took a minute, but Rachel finally relaxed and put her head on Jenny’s shoulder. Soft sobs began to shake Rachel’s body. Jenny reached over and stroked her daughter’s forehead as Rachel began to calm down.

“I know it’s difficult...to have Jonathan home. He still struggles with the disaster on the boat and the injuries he sustained. He watched his parents die and it hurt him so.”

“I know, Mama, and I feel sorry for him, but he’s so hard to live with.”

Jenny turned Rachel’s face toward her. “Rachel, your papa was a different man for eight years. He completely lost any memory of being Jonathan Hershberger, of being an Amish man, of you and me and our home here in Paradise.”

“I know, Mama, but—”

Jenny put her fingers softly on Rachel’s lips. “Let me finish. When your papa converted to the Amish faith before we were married, he came from a background that was very worldly. He was an atheist, or at least an agnostic. He had tried drugs and different religions. He thought he was going to be a famous musician, and if he hadn’t met me, he probably would have been. When he lost his memory, he went back to what he intuitively knew—playing music. He became famous out there in the world and made a lot of money.”

Rachel stirred. “I know the story, Mama, but it still doesn’t explain why he’s so strict with me.”

Jenny sighed and put her hand to her face. An errant tear had attempted to run down her cheek and she brushed it away. Rachel saw the involuntary movement and her heart softened.

This really hurts my mama. She also wishes things were not this way.

Rachel’s arms crept around her mama. “Oh, Mama, I’m sorry. I know all this makes you sad.”

“Yes, dochter, I am sad. I am sad for the years we missed, you and I, with your papa. I am sorry for the pain that your papa went through, and I am sorry that you and he are not close like you once were. But I am also very grateful. I thank du lieber Gott every day that Jonathan came back to me...to us. I thank Him for the amazing miracle He performed when my heart was broken beyond hope. You must know that your papa and I were made for each other. We are two lives and one heart. It is a very special thing that Gott does for people. That is His plan for marriage, and someday I hope you will find the same joy. Jonathan and I had ten wonderful years together. It was especially joyful after you were born. When he disappeared and I thought he was dead...”

Jenny paused and dabbed her eyes. “Rachel, when your papa came home, he did not really know who he was. He still goes back to being Richard Sandbridge from time to time, and I think that is what confuses you. One minute he is a strict Amish man and the next he is a very easy-going musician. I know it’s been hard. The only thing that has saved your papa is the Ordnung. He clings to them like a life preserver, because some days that is the only way he knows who he is. And he is so dependent on them that he forgets the Ordnung don’t save us. And so he tries to live by them as best he can to stay grounded in our world. That’s why he is so strict. My papa went through the same thing when he came back from World War II. He was so devastated by his experience in the Pacific that he swore he would come back to the church and keep the rules with all his heart. He believed that keeping the Ordnung would make him all right with Gott. It took a terrible tragedy to make him see differently.”

Rachel took her mama’s hand and put it to her cheek. She kissed it. “I’m sorry, Mama. I don’t understand this sometimes, but I do love Papa. I’ll try to do better.”

“And I love you and will try also, dochter.”

The women looked up to see Jonathan standing in the doorway. He held out his arms and Rachel rose and went to him. His strong arms enfolded her and she saw the love in his eyes. She held onto him and hid her face against his chest.

I hope so, Papa. I truly hope so.