Free The Shunning by Beverly Lewis

overheard her grandmother talking with some of the other womenfolk at a quilting frolic not long after. “Rebecca gives the girl a little too much leeway, if you ask me. But then little Katie’s the only girl child—and the last ’un at that, it appears.”
    Leaning down, Katie placed her sewing basket on the floor beside the rocker. Silently, she crossed the room to inspect a deep purple and magenta afghan on the back of the davenport. She lifted the crocheted afghan and held it, feeling the rough texture in her hands.
    “Mammi Essie knew I was different,” Katie said aloud. “And she knew it had nothing to do with Mam’s doting on me—nothing like that. Mammi knew there was something inside me . . . something longing for a way to let the music out.”
    There were no tears as Katie refolded Essie’s afghan. Her Mammi had died suspecting the truth—that the music had been a divine gift within Katie. God, the Creator of all things, had created her to make music. It wasn’t Katie’s doing at all.
    Still, no other living person truly understood. Not even Mary Stoltzfus. Only one had fully understood and had loved her anyway, and he was dead. Maybe it was because Daniel Fisher had shared the same secret struggle, the same eagerness to express the music within. While everyone around them seemed to be losing themselves—blending together like the hidden stitches of a quilt—Katie and Daniel had been trying to find themselves.
    Looking back, Katie wondered why she hadn’t been stronger in her stand, hadn’t at least tried to follow the church rules. But, no, she’d gone right along with Dan’s suggestion that they write out their songs. He’d shown her how to use the treble clef to sketch in the melody lines, notating the guitar chords with letter symbols.
    Why hadn’t she spoken up? Had she been too weak in spirit at seventeen to remind him of what the church required of them? Too much in love with the boy with blueberry eyes?
    Trembling with cold, she heard a faint sound of voices through the wall. The men were back inside, no doubt warming themselves by the stove. They’d been out all morning—removing loose stones from the fields—and would most likely welcome some black coffee before taking the cab wagon down the road to a farm sale.
    Katie hoped her father had not already summoned the preacher for a private confession. Reluctantly, she picked up her wedding dress and the basket with her needle, thread, and scissors, and opened the door leading from Mammi Essie’s former home. Then she trudged into the front room, toward the toasty kitchen awaiting her on the other side of the stone house.
    ————
    “Ach, what a beautiful quilt this’ll be,” Rebecca said, hurrying to find her place at the large frame in the Stoltzfus house. She pulled out the only vacant chair remaining and sat down with a sigh. She waited a moment to catch her breath, then picked up the needle.
    “A warm quilt’ll come in mighty handy on such cold nights, jah?” Ella Mae asked in a near whisper.
    Rebecca glanced over at her petite aunt. Lately, the old woman’s bouts with laryngitis seemed to linger longer and longer. But at her age, it was a wonder she continued to carry on as she did—attending quiltings and rug braidings, tending her herb garden, having the women in for pie occasionally, and even assisting her middle-aged daughter, Mattie Beiler, with her midwifery duties. Not all the young wives went to outspoken Mattie to have her “catch” their babies, but a good majority did.
    “Ain’t it lovely . . . our Katie getting married to Bishop Beiler?” Mary Stoltzfus remarked, speaking as only a best friend could. She tied off an intricate row of stitches and snipped the thread free.
    “It’s such a long time for the bishop to be without a wife—too long—raising all them little ones by himself,” Mary’s mother commented.
    Rebecca agreed, thinking it would soon be time for her to entertain the quilters with