Amish Snowflakes: Volume Two: Kisses from Heaven( An Amish Romance Book) Read online

  Winter Snowflakes in Amish Country: Volume Two: Kisses from Heaven by Sicily Yoder

  ***Note from Ms. Yoder: this is a continuing volume series, with most chapters being three to eight chapters. You must read them in order. The first one can be bought at: Amish Snowflakes: Volume One

  Copyright by Sicily Yoder, 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form either written or electronically without the express permission of the author or publisher.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are, therefore, used fictitiously. Any similarity or resemblance to actual persons; living or dead, places or events is purely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or publisher. Photo art by Paint Shop, Photo Bucket, chaoss@Big Stock, SNEHITDESIGN@BigStock, and Paha_L@BigStock.

  ~TABLE OF CONTENTS~

  ~SPECIAL DEDICATION~

  ~CHAPTER FIVE~

  ~CHAPTER SIX~

  ~CHAPTER SEVEN~

  ~SPECIAL DEDICATION~

  To Gott, who mends the brokenhearted and erases the sins. To a Savior, named Jesus Christ, who found each one of us worthy to die for, on a hill far away, called Calvary. This book is for those who think that they have sinned so much that they can never be fit to be forgiven. May it bring you hope to reach out and bond that special relationship with Christ.

  Having worked with pregnant, unwed women and having seen their low self-esteem and feelings of betrayal, I was inspired to create this series. Gott has not forsaken you, and He will not forsake You. Ask, and Ye will be forgiven...

  ~CHAPTER FIVE~

  “Listen, sweetheart, we could all go to jail if anyone finds out. In our eyes, because you were so young and unwed, what we did was a good thing, but in the eyes of the Englisch it was wrong and illegal.” Jeremiah’s stern words ran through her cold veins like the deep winter waters of Lake Michigan, freezing her brain. The tall, blond-haired Amish woman was Rachael Renee Zook, and she had just been shunned.

  And she’d deserved it.

  She’d given her boppli up.

  The illegal way.

  The memory of that day came back like an oversized rock thrown at her head. She was stiff and shivering, her temples hurting from the ice-cold memory, as if she had been thrown from the pier into the blistery-cold Michigan waters.

  ******

  “Get rid of the baby, please! I want to go home. I was in Rumspringa. I am a teenager myself. Please take the baby.” The smell of sterile alcohol flooded her mouth as she nestled in the hard hospital bed, waiting for another line of tightness to hit her belly. Why had she gotten pregnant? Why? Why had she drunk the alcohol? Unknown to her, alcohol had a mean side, and she was on the receiving end of it, waiting to give birth to a baby.

  She screamed in pain, “No!! Please help me, someone; please!” But there was no help, and there was no releasing this evilness that gripped her body. The bitter taste and smell of the alcohol grew stronger and her head began to spin. The nurse walked in and confidentially looked down at her, as if she knew that Rachael was paying for the ultimate sin: having intimate contact without being married.

  And then, Rachael passed out. When she awoke, her vision was blurry and a faint smell of alcohol lingered, but there were no contractions.

  And there was no baby. She could go home. It was over. The nurse had secretly taken the baby. “What a nightmare!” thought Rachael as she slid her head to view Jeremiah’s glistening eyes. “You got me in trouble. Don’t ever kiss me again until we are married. This could have turned out awful.”

  Jeremiah leaned down and kissed her forehead, causing her to scream, “No!” Rachael didn’t want to ever kiss him again, and she was having doubts about ever getting married.

  Or falling in love again, for she had seen the dark side of falling in love: the man might not be in love with you.

  Jeremiah hadn’t been in love. He’d left her to go outside to find a way to get rid of the baby. What man would do that? In the Amish community, bopplis were precious, and they were sent from Gott. Jeremiah had gotten rid of a gift from Gott. Would he be punished? One day, like most Amish men, he’d fall in love and settle down. Then, he’d have kinner of his own. She hoped that he looked down at the happy mamm to see her joy. As he studied the boppli’s face, noting the eyes, the nose, the hair color, and most of all, if the boppli looked like him, would he remember the baby that he had thrown away?

  To the Englisch?

  He had seen their baby. Had he noted if the baby looked like him or like her? Had he been so angry that he hadn’t considered the baby to be a baby? Deep down, she wanted to erase the sin, but part of her wanted the baby. Part of her wanted to hold the baby, kiss all of the little fingers, and to just cradle the baby like a normal, married mother would do.

  Surely, they would have gotten married, and they would have shared this moment totally differently.

  If they hadn’t have sinned.

  “I am glad that you could erase all this, Gott,” Rachael softly said, and Jeremiah squeezed her left hand. “Having a baby is a serious event, and I am so happy that the nightmare is all over, and we can go back and be normal.” Her selfish words on that blistery-cold January day still haunted her, making her stomach tilt.

  That was three long years ago, and she would have forgotten it if Jeremiah hadn’t been at her place a couple of hours ago, bringing up the topic of the boppli.

  Three years ago, at the hospital, Jeremiah and his parents had come through with a very good plan: to have the Englisch nurse, Brandy, take the baby. Rachael had wanted to hold the baby, but she knew that if she’d cradled her infant, she might have been inclined to keep her and take her home.

  But then she would be shunned. And she would become an outcast; the tainted woman who had fallen during a night of passion during Rumspringa.

  Supposedly, the nurse took the baby, and Rachael and Jeremiah went home. They spoke no words in the buggy on the way home. Blanks; a total lingering fog had existed between them, with only the reflection of the buggy lights bouncing off the asphalt. It was their secret.

  The sin had been forgotten and erased, as if it had been a bad dream.

  Rachael had escaped her sin and had enjoyed the normal, prosperous life of a single Amish young woman.

  ******

  Sweat poured down Rachael’s body as the mad dream finally left. What a horrible sin! And she had gotten away with it, so she had thought, until two hours ago, when she’d gotten shunned.

  “Shunned and deserted,” Rachael thought, as she sat with her legs pulled up to her blue-caped chest, rocking her body uncontrollably in the middle of the fluffy feather bed. How could she be a mamm without a husband to help her? How would she support the boppli? Most everyone she knew worked long days just to put food in their mouths. And the Farmer’s Almanac was predicting a record winter for Sugarcreek, Ohio. She couldn’t take the baby. How would she feed her? How would she cloth her? And who would watch her while she did her farm chores and knitted her shawls. Selling shawls to the Englisch for five bucks each wouldn’t support a baby.

  The meager income didn’t even support her. She lived board-free with her parents, helping out at the milich haus and feeding the livestock. Where would she work to earn enough money to buy her own farm? She would have to have a large garden. She’d have to can for the winter. She would have to have her own milich haus and herd of cows.

  But the running of a farm was the man’s job. Sure, it was her place to help, but the man was the head of the farm.


  And of the Amish household.

  There was no man in her life. Well, there had been a man several hours prior, before Jeremiah had come throwing pebbles at her bedroom window, asking to talk to her.

  He had turned her world upside down. He had deserted her.

  And he had deserted the boppli, although he had just informed her that the boppli’s daed was Elijah Yoder and not him. He had taken the blame since he had the key to the quilt shop where the partying took place.

  Rachael didn’t care if he was or wasn’t the daed. She needed a daed.

  Now.

  So there she sat, rocking back and forth, wondering how she would support a three-year-old baby girl. Pictures of the church members’ reactions to her confession flashed in her mind. They were due to have church services this Sunday. Daniel and Bertha Miller were the hosting family, and she was pretty close to Bertha.

  Until she had confessed.

  Bertha, along with her fellow church schwesters, would be judgmental and would shun her.

  But she had to take responsibility for her mistake. Renee was her dochder. She’d been raised by her grossmammi for three years. It wasn’t fair. During a hard night of partying during Rumspringa, she’d messed up and fallen prey to her own selfish desires. She had intimate contact with her former boyfriend, a tall, rather athletic man. But that wasn’t the only problem.

  He was forbidden.

  Elijah was an Englischer, having crossed over after getting shunned for having a laptop in his closet.

  Elijah drove a black motorcycle with orange Harley-Davidson flames. His tall, muscular frame and mean face, framed by static-like sandy blond hair, would scare even the toughest men. He’d gotten quite mean.

  The day he stopped reading his Bible.

  He’d let God down. He’d let his Old Order Amish community down. But most of all: he’d let her down. They were supposed to get married. They were supposed to have kinner after they married. They were supposed to live as a happy couple.

  Forever.

  But this handsome, stoic Amish-turned-motorcyclist-man had deserted her just like she had deserted Renee. In a way, Rachael was beginning to feel like she had deserved such a fate for letting an Englisch nurse adopt her baby girl. Sure, Jeremiah’s mamm had jumped in and took the baby before the Englisch nurse had a chance to grab her, but until the past few hours, Rachael had not known that Jeremiah’s mamm had taken the baby. For three long years, she’d thought that Baby Renee was with Brandy, the Englisch nurse. Therefore, God had punished her for tossing her own child into the mean world of the Englisch.

  “But what about the boppli’s daed?” thought Rachael as she cradled her long arms around her legs and rested her teardrop-stained face against her knees. She groaned as she rocked back and forth on the feather bed, feeling like she could cave into the middle of the oversized bed and disappear from sight. The embarrassment and pain of sinning was almost unbearable for her. Great disappointment riddled her chest like imaginary daggers. She’d grown up Old Order Amish, and her German Bible had always been open at night on her study desk. She’d learned every song in The Ausbund when she was a young child, and she’d recited all of the major sermons that were weaved into a High-German dialect during every-other-Sunday church service at member’s homes: sermons about love, dedication to one’s flock, and the desire to never let your flesh take control. “The Englisch are weak, living in the moment,” Bishop Troyer had warned, and she had believed him.

  So how did a religious girl like her seal a passionate kiss with a man that hadn’t loved her? Within a moment of passion, she’d let her guard down and crossed the line. The black line of darkness had consumed her, an evilness that existed within the mind of those who didn’t tote their Holy Bibles to church on Sundays or send up regular praises to God Almighty. Now, she was unworthy of God’s love, of his protection, so she thought. She felt dirty and wicked, no longer a child of God.

  She objected her thoughts, “But I am a child of Gott! She looked up to the plain, white ceiling and tried to picture God’s face. Hesitation drew in her lumpy throat. Am I still your child, Gott?” She uttered, feeling her hot face flush to a cold anger.

  But she was upset with Elijah. Instead of accepting responsibility for what he had done, he’d run, leaving Jeremiah to take the blame. It had all been an elaborate lie. But so had Jeremiah’s claim to love her, to dedicate his heart to her. He’d just confessed that he loved Rebecca Yoder. He’d cheated on her and led her on with his glistening saddle-brown eyes and smooth talk.

  Now, he was saying that she had spent the night with her former boyfriend, Elijah, the night that she’d gotten pregnant. How could someone that loved her let her be alone with her former boyfriend, especially when she had been drunk? Hadn’t he been jealous, or was he even telling the truth?

  But was it true? Probably not, for the boy had been caught in so many twisted lies that she was beginning to wonder if he’d ever spoken the truth. He’d lied when he’d kissed her on the green grass by the lake. He’d lied when he’d plucked yellow dandelions from the moist earth and gently stuffed them behind her ears.

  And he’s lied when he’d claimed that Elijah was the baby’s daed. He had to have fibbed, for Elijah had never been known to tell a lie. Sure, Elijah hadn’t volunteered that he had a forbidden laptop, but no one had asked until his mamm had walked in and caught him looking at the weather.

  And if Elijah hadn’t been shunned for having the secret computer laptop in his closet, he’d been her husband.

  For sure. Not doubts. They would have been happy in love.

  Forever. Elijah had loved her. Really loved her. He’d loved her enough to never take advantage of her.

  “Why, it had been so mean to lie on Elijah Yoder like that,” thought Rachael, as she lifted up and felt cold patches of puffiness under her eyes. Her heart wanted to cry again, but the tears had all flooded out from the sides of her pale-blue eyes. A knot stayed firmly rooted in the middle of her belly, and she coughed, her throat swollen from weeping too much.

  “Why me, Lord, why me?” Rachael asked as her eyelids slowly closed, her mind shutting down. But she thought about a parable that mamm used to read her when she was a little girl. Her mamm used to illustrate that there were deeply-rooted people and not-so-deeply-rooted people, and the weeds easily choked out the later.

  She had been in the weeds. And she’d gotten choked out.

  But not for good. She bit her bottom lip and vowed to raise her kinner.

  And to make Elijah Yoder fall in love with her.

  Even if he wasn’t the baby’s daddy.

  ~CHAPTER SIX~

  Brandy was dropping the twins off at Noah’s Ark Daycare Center early, and they were tickled, for they loved going to daycare. Eventually, Rhonda and Rachael wanted to learn chapter books. Story hour was their favorite time, and they got to sit on the large, hand-knitted rug to listen to Ms. Robinson tell them about a dog named Spot. And sometimes, Ms. Robinson would have guests come in. Today, there would be a clown to read a story about clowns at a circus. Rhonda and Rachael couldn’t wait, for they moved going to the circus.

  Rhonda was more excited that Rachael, for she couldn’t keep her eyes on the pink baby doll that she usually played with on the way to daycare. Rachael seemed to be entertaining herself as usual. Finally, the bright rainbow and large, sea-fearing ark made their views, and the girls were bouncing to get out of the silver BMW. “Mommy, we are getting here first!” yelled Rhonda as she only saw Ms. Robinson’s brown Honda in the parking lot. Her helpers, Ms. Tonya, and Ms. April always hitched a ride to work.

  “Mommy has an early appointment, so you get to be the first here today!” Brandy announced as she rolled her lavender-colored lips together. Today was the day that she they took a biopsy from one of her breasts. She feared cancer because her sister and mother had both lost the fight. Would it claim her life? She hoped not, for she was a single mother of two bouncing twins.

  Brandy parked
the BMW, got out, and opened the left passenger door. Rhonda’s little white-leotard-covered legs wiggled with excitement. She loved clowns, and she loved daycare. Rachael was still sleepy and just sat and watched her wiggly sister get out of the car seat. She yawned and then hugged her navy-skirted doll. It had no face. It had been given to her by a nurse at the hospital, but she hadn’t given Rhonda one. She had said that they had to share because Rachael had only sent one doll, but there were two children. How could someone else have her name? It didn’t seem fair. Nonetheless, Rhonda had said that her sister could have the doll since the gift-giver had her name. Now, Rhonda was waiting for a Rhonda to give the same nurse a doll for her, but that hadn’t happened yet.

  As Brandy entered the daycare, Ms. April came to the door, leaned down, and kissed both girls on the forehead. She took their jackets and smiled. Brandy gave a nod, turned and walked out the door. She’d made this trip every week day for three years, but for some reason, she dreaded today. Would they find cancer? How would she protect her girls? The plan, before her husband had died in a car wreck, was for her to homeschool them after daycare. She couldn’t put them in public school.

  Because she could get caught with two children that weren’t her own. Well, they were now, and they had been since the Amish mother, Rachael Zook, had given birth to them. But in the legal system’s eyes, they had committed a crime. There would be no way of convincing the judicial system that what they had done was for the best of the children’s sake.

  Brandy made a left out of the daycare parking lot and headed to Doctor’s Plaza. A sharp, stabbing pain slit through her pink-covered chest, causing her teeth to clench and her hands to jerk away from the steering wheel of the two-year-old silver BMW. “Luckily I was at a light,” thought thirty-year-old Brandy Thompson. It wouldn’t have been good to have lost control of the car two blocks up, at the busy intersection near the Doctor’s Plaza.