Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. “How do you know that? You can’t know that.”
I didn’t tell her what I had learned from the hidden part of my mother’s box, the true reason she had run away all those years ago. Perhaps someday I might share that knowledge with Rachel, but for now, she would just have to trust me. Love had been the thing that sent my mother away from Lancaster County, but love—not just for Rachel but for God and for the entirety of my Amish life—had been the thing that brought me home.
“I don’t want any other life. This is who I am. This is who I choose to be.”
“But what if someday you wish you had chosen differently?” The tears that rimmed her eyelids spilled down her cheeks.
I squeezed her hands and pulled her close to me. “I have faith. I am being sure of what I cannot see. I can’t know the future, Rachel. And neither can you. But this spring when I am baptized I will promise to serve God, to be a member of this district with all of its rights and responsibilities and blessings. I will promise those things on faith, trusting that God will empower me to keep those promises. And I know He will. God was with me when I came here at six, and He’s led me back here again at twenty-three because this is His will for my life. This is where I belong. And now I am asking you to have faith in me. I love you, Rachel. I am asking you to trust the man I have become, the man I will be for the rest of my life. Will you? Will you trust me?”
She paused for a long moment, searching my eyes for some truth she might find there. Then finally, slowly, she brought my hands to her lips and kissed them, brushing my folded fingers across her moist cheek.
“Ya,” she whispered. “I will.”
I bent to touch my forehead to hers, the brim of my hat covering the top of her winter bonnet as joy swept over me.
Our hands were still clasped together, our foreheads still touching, as I began to whisper, “Thank you, thank you,” over and over, in gratitude to God and to Rachel. She was crying softly, but her tears were sweetly happy.
“Will you marry me, Rachel?” I murmured.
She laughed through her tears. “I would love to marry you, Tyler.”
I bent down to steal a kiss from her, but she let me have it willingly.
An eager breeze, bitter cold in the darkness, spun around us, lifting the strings of Rachel’s bonnet and tickling my nose.
With a grunt, I broke off our kiss, brushed the strings away. Then I pulled her closer and kissed her again, already counting the days until I could call her my wife.
EPILOGUE
The morning of my baptism, I walked out to my mother’s pond, knowing it was still partially frozen and I wouldn’t be able to see my reflection in the murky mid-March water. But I didn’t care. It almost seemed appropriate that the man who had stared back at me all those years was hidden from my view now. There on the bank, I sank to my knees on the wet ground, Timber nosing me worriedly. I coaxed his face away and patted his head. Then I whispered a prayer of gratitude to God for protecting me from the moment I arrived in Lancaster County as a six-year-old—alone and afraid—and for surrounding me with people who loved me. I thanked Him for my family, for Rachel, and for the new life we would forge together, starting this fall. Since returning from my father’s in November and making things right with her, I had seen our relationship grow by leaps and bounds as she slowly came to see for herself that she really did have nothing to fear.
I thanked Him for faith, for grace and mercy.
For loving me when I was Englisch and loving me no more and no less now that I would be Amish.
I thanked Him for giving me the freedom to choose the life I wanted to live and for showing me His will for that life.
I thanked Him for the capacity to love other people.
I rose from the frosted ground. Timber barked joyfully.
Let’s run, the dog seemed to say.
And so we did.
I’d witnessed plenty of baptisms in my seventeen years in Lancaster County, including Rachel’s, but I had never listened as fully to the words of commitment as I did later that morning at the worship service.
I knelt with the five other young adults who were to be baptized alongside me. I renounced the devil and the world. I committed myself to Christ and Christ alone, and I promised to uphold the Ordnung of my district and to serve in ministry should the lot ever fall to me. One of the deacons then poured water through the bishop’s hands over my head. The water was cool and cleansing, and tiny rivers slid down my collar to trail down my back. I stood and the bishop leaned forward to kiss me on my cheek, a holy kiss of welcome.