Though Mountains Fall by Dale Cramer

Author:Dale Cramer
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Christian Fiction, FIC042030, Amish—Fiction, FIC042040, FIC042000
ISBN: 9781441260994
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-26T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

The Benders hosted their annual Thanksgiving feast in late November of 1925, their fourth since coming to Paradise Valley, and it was bigger and brighter than ever. More than a hundred Amish came to break bread together, to celebrate the fruits of their labors as only very hardworking people can.

Emma found joy in it too, and most of all, sitting at the women’s table, she saw her mother had almost returned to her old self. Mamm was eating again and putting on weight. Her smile was back.

But when the meal was done, the turkey and ham and sweet potatoes and pies all ravaged, as Emma was helping clean up she saw her father standing apart from the others. Staring out over his fields he had that distant look in his eye, picking at his teeth with a wood splinter, and she could tell from the tilt of his head and the slump of his shoulders that he was troubled. A darkness had settled upon him.

There were plenty of women to help with cleaning up, so Emma left a stack of plates on a table and went to him.

“Are you all right, Dat?” she asked, touching his shoulder.

He stared blankly for a moment, shrugged and looked away.

“What’s bothering you?”

His chest swelled with a long sigh. “Your sister,” he said quietly.

He meant Miriam. Otherwise he would have named her, or at least said My daughter.

“I miss them too,” Emma said, the plural intentional. It was their first Thanksgiving without Miriam and Domingo, and she knew her dat missed Domingo almost as much as he missed his daughter.

“There’s a hole in the family,” he said. “We gather at a time like this to give thanks, and we have a lot to be thankful for, but I keep catching myself looking for Aaron and Miriam. And Domingo. It’s not the same. There’s a hole in my heart, too.”

Emma knew his heart, and she watched his eyes. Looking out over the tables of food and beards and bonnets in his yard she knew that here, finally, was what he wanted, what he had set out to accomplish in the beginning. This thriving community was the very reason the whole family had worked so hard these last four years. In many ways the sight of all these transplanted Amish, living and laughing and celebrating a fruitful harvest in the wilds of Mexico, vindicated her father’s heartfelt belief that people who honored Gott, worked hard and cooperated with one another, could thrive anywhere. But for her father, the achievement had come at a terrible price.

“It’s not your fault,” she said gently, rubbing his shoulder. “You only did what was right.”

He gave a little snort, shook his head. “What I thought was right. My stubbornness cost me a son, and now it has cost me a daughter as well.”

“What one man calls stubbornness, another might call courage and conviction,” she said. “Only Gott knows what the future will bring. It was not your fault Aaron died, or that Miriam fell in love with Domingo.

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