Chapter Three

      Willa heard voices she didn’t recognize. Were they real, or was she hallucinating? The psychosis wouldn’t start before her baby was born, would it? Her hands went to her stomach. Reassured by the feel of her unborn child nestled there, she opened her eyes. She was in a room she’d never seen before. Where were her girls? She tried to sit up. Pain lanced through her head, sending a burst of nausea to her empty stomach. She closed her eyes, hoping it would recede. She needed to find her children.

      “Take it easy,” a man’s voice said close beside her.

      She turned her head to see someone looming above her. She blinked hard, and he swam into focus. He was a mountain of a man with broad shoulders and a black beard that covered his jawline and chin. He knelt beside her and slipped an arm under her shoulders to ease her upright. His dark brown hair was cut in a bowl style she remembered from her youth. He was Amish or perhaps Old Order Mennonite. The beard meant he was a married man. His eyes were a rich coffee brown with crow’s feet at the corners. She thought she read sympathy in their depths. The longer she looked at him, the more convinced she was that they had met before, but her mind was so fuzzy she couldn’t remember where.

      She clutched his arm as she struggled to get up. “Where are my daughters?”

      His muscles were rock hard beneath her fingers. The feel of his steely arms was reassuring. It triggered her memory. She did know him. This was the man who had kindly given her a ride to her grandfather’s farm.

      “Relax. Your children are with my mudder. She is getting them something to eat.” He patted her hand, and she let go of him. He sat back on a chair at the end of the sofa.

      Willa had to see them for herself. “Lucy, Megan, come here!” A deep, harsh cough sent burning pain through her chest. Her cold was getting worse.

      The pair hurried through the open doorway. “Mama, you awake?” Megan asked.

      Her little worrier. Older than her sister by five minutes and a hundred years. Willa pulled both girls to her in a fierce hug. “Yes, I’m awake.”

      Megan scowled and took Willa’s face between her hands. “Don’t fall down!”

      “I’m sorry I frightened you.” She kissed Megan’s hair and noticed her Amish kapp was missing. Willa had had trouble keeping the unfamiliar head covering on the girls. They didn’t like them.

      “I got peanut butter and jelly.” Lucy offered her half-eaten sandwich to her mother. “Want some?”

      Willa shook her head, ignoring the pain the movement caused. “I’m fine. You finish it.”

      “Okeydokey.” Lucy didn’t need further urging. She bit into her food with relish and was soon licking her fingers. The girls hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning when they’d finished the last of the bread her grandfather had grudgingly given them. Willa hadn’t had anything for two days, not since leaving her grandfather’s farm. Her stomach growled loudly.

      An elderly woman in Amish garb came to the doorway. “Kinder, kumma to the dish and let your mamm rest.”

      Megan leaned in to whisper in Willa’s ear. “She talks funny.”

      The man seated beside Willa cleared his throat. She had almost forgotten that he was there. “My mudder doesn’t speak Englisch often, so it is goot for her to practice.”

      Lucy hurried after the woman. “I want another sandwich, please.”

      Megan followed her. “Me, too.”

      Lucy frowned at her sister. “My sandwich, not yours!”

      “I want one!” Megan fisted her hands on her hips.

      “Lucy, Megan, you can each have your own sandwich,” Willa said to end the mutiny she saw brewing. Their normal bickering relieved her mind. They didn’t seem traumatized by what had happened.

      Now that she knew her girls were safe, she turned her attention to the man at the end of the sofa. “How did we get here, and where is here?”

      He scowled at her. “I have many questions for you, too. I happened to notice your buggy going past my lane with no one driving. I assumed it was a runaway and ran to catch it. Your girls were in the back seat and you were unconscious on the floorboard up front. What happened to you?”

      She raised a hand to her aching head. She found a bandage above her temple. “I must have fainted and hit my head. I haven’t been feeling well.” She didn’t tell him she hadn’t eaten. Another deep cough followed her words and left her head spinning.

      “You don’t remember what happened?”

      They’d slept in the buggy again last night. Rather, the girls had slept. Willa’s nagging cough had kept her awake. She had a vague memory of hitching up the horse at dawn. After that, only bits and pieces of traveling along the winding roadways came to mind. Nothing about how she had hurt her head.

      “I don’t remember much after starting out on the road this morning.”

      He eyed her intently. “You are not Amish and yet you and your children are dressed in our way and traveling by buggy. Why? What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

      She scowled at his rapid-fire questions. “I wasn’t looking for you.”

      “You told me you were visiting your grandfather, Ezekiel Lapp.”

      “I did see Grandfather. He gave me the horse and buggy so that I could visit other family members.” Even with this kind man, she couldn’t bring herself to share information about her destination. She’d spent too many years hiding where she was from and where she was going.

      She knew the Amish bonnets would fool the casual observers, but not the real deal. Willa Chase and her children had to disappear. Someone looking for them wouldn’t look twice at an Amish woman traveling with two children in a buggy. This man already knew she wasn’t Amish, so she decided to tell him the truth, just not the whole truth.

      “My parents left the church when I was young. I have decided to return to the faith and raise my children to be Amish, but I wanted to get reacquainted with my other relatives and spend Christmas with them before I decide where to settle.”

      “You are not shunned?”

      She looked at him in surprise. “No. I wasn’t baptized when my parents made the decision to leave. They were shunned by our congregation, but my parents are both gone now.”

      He studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “Our ways are goot ways to raise kinder. This is also the wish of your husband?”

      Willa stared at her hands clenched together in her lap. “He died last May.”

      Her life had been a constant struggle since the horrible moment she received the news that Glen had been killed. Now that her grandfather had turned her away, she had one slim hope left—that her Amish great-aunt Ada or perhaps her cousin Mark or her cousin Miriam would take them in.

      “I am sorry you lost your husband. I know it must have been difficult for you,” the man said softly.

      The compassion in his voice touched her deeply. “Danki.”

      She put aside her grief and focused on the present. “And thank you for stopping my runaway carriage. You have come to my rescue twice now and I don’t even know your name.”

      “John