A Deputy in Amish Country--A Clean Romance by Patricia Johns

Author:Patricia Johns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-12-06T13:19:49+00:00

* * *

THAT EVENING, Annabelle went with Conrad and Wilder to the farmhouse next door. She wore a pair of jeans and a tee. It was all she’d brought. But she did use some tranquility spray she’d been gifted by the women at the sheriff’s department that smelled of lavender and vanilla. It was nice to feel pretty for an evening, and she did notice that Conrad stepped a little closer to her as they headed toward the neighbors’ house.

Wollie and Linda had set up a table and the kitchen chairs underneath the shade of a spreading oak tree beside the garden. Jane was obviously freshly bathed, and she wore a little dress with a white apron tied in front in an exact replica of her grandmother’s. Her hair was still wet from her bath, and tendrils were drying in the warm summer air around her face.

“How are you doing, Jane?” Annabelle asked.

“I’m good!” Jane said. “My daet says I can stay up late tonight because you’re here to visit. Otherwise, I’d have to go to bed at seven thirty.”

“That’s a treat,” Annabelle said with a smile.

“And my daet says I have to stay home and not go wandering around because sometimes Englishers are up to no good,” she said.

“I, uh, I meant that there are some Englishers around these parts that are up to no good lately,” Wollie interjected.

“It’s okay,” Conrad said with a chuckle. “We understand.”

“My aunt is English now,” Jane said. “She left before she got baptized, so she didn’t get shunned. If she got baptized first, she’d be shunned. That’s very bad. And very lonely. And you don’t want to get shunned.”

“No, that does sound bad,” Annabelle said, and she glanced toward Linda, whose face was growing pink. She said something curt in Pennsylvania Dutch, and Jane clamped her mouth shut.

“Your sister jumped the fence?” Wilder said.

“That’s what they call leaving the community,” Conrad murmured in Annabelle’s ear. “‘Jumping the fence.’”

“My sister made bad choices for a long time,” Wollie said. “She wouldn’t live like a good Amish woman, and she left. She’s missed out on...everything.”

“Where did she go?” Annabelle asked.

Wollie shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Why did she go?” Conrad asked quietly.

“Why does any young person jump the fence?” he asked. “She wanted freedom. She didn’t want to be held to our rules.”

“I hope she’s okay,” Annabelle said. Maybe she’d disappeared and was living a quiet, contented life somewhere. Maybe running away and starting over was an actual, realistic possibility...

“She’s cut off from her family, her friends, her roots—” Wollie shook his head again. “Our life here is about family. We don’t forget our parents when they age. We get together often—cousins play together, and siblings stay connected and in each other’s lives. My sister left all of that for a life away from us. Leaving doesn’t change who she is or the family she came from. She’s not okay, even if she thinks she is. She’s making do.”

“Can I get you some lemonade?” Linda asked with a little too much cheeriness in her tone.

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