Free The Amish Groom ~ Men of Lancaster County Book 1 by Susan Meissner, Mindy Starns Clark Page A

thin layer of ice so that I could see my reflection, so I could search for the me on the other side. I didn’t, though. Somehow it didn’t seem right to disturb what the finger of God had done overnight.
    As Timber made his usual sniffing tour of the shoreline, I knelt there at the bank, closed my eyes, and prayed with renewed vigor.
    Lord, You know all things. You know what has been keeping me awake at night and dropping me to my knees in the morning. I don’t want to feel restless and unsettled anymore. I humbly ask that You would reveal to me whether You are testing me or tugging me. Show me what to do. Show me…
    I stayed there until after the sun rose, long after Timber had trotted back to the house. My limbs were stiff and cold when I finally stood and left the pond, but my vision was no clearer than it had been when I had arrived. Back at the stables, after I fed a hungry dog and tended to the horses, the morning passed slowly. I shared a quiet breakfast with my grandparents but otherwise kept to myself. No answer came the rest of that day, or the next few days after that.
    It wasn’t until the following Thursday, in fact, that my answer seemed to come. I was in the buggy shop finishing up a brake job when the phone rang. My cousin Harley answered it.
    “It’s for you, Ty,” he said after a moment, turning toward me.
    I put down my tools and took the receiver from him, a bit puzzled. The phone was primarily for staying in contact with our suppliers on the outside. I hardly ever used it and wasn’t expecting a call from anyone.
    “Hello?”
    “Hey, Tyler.”
    The voice on the other end of the line was my father’s.

S EVEN
    I t took me a few moments to grasp the notion that my dad had called me on an ordinary Thursday in October. We usually only talked to each other on special occasions, never just to chat. In fact, the last time we’d spoken had been when he’d called me on my birthday, seven months earlier.
    My first thought was that something terrible had happened, but his voice didn’t sound upset.
    “Dad, how are you?” I asked, the only question I could think of as I moved away from the noise of the shop’s interior and closer to the outside door.
    “I’m doing well. And you?”
    “Um…I’m good. Is something wrong? Is everybody okay?”
    “Everything’s fine. I’m calling because I need to ask a favor.”
    A favor? For a second, I was speechless. I couldn’t imagine one thing I could do for him from almost three thousand miles away. “Oh?”
    “It’s kind of a big one. But I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
    “What is it?”
    “What are you doing for the next month? Say, through the end of November?”
    I blinked, not sure I understood the question. For the next month I would be working here in the buggy shop, as always. He should know that.
    He didn’t wait for an answer before he continued. “The thing is, I need you to come out here to California. I need you to come and stay with Brady.”
    “Stay with Brady?”
    He cleared his throat. “Yeah. It’s kind of complicated. We’ve never had this happen before, but it turns out that Liz and I are both going to be out of the country at the same time.”
    “Out of the country?” I asked, starting to feel like a parrot.
    “She’s about to leave for Central America for a humanitarian project, which wasn’t going to be an issue. I was all set to handle things here on the home front. But now I’ve had something come up too, important contract work in the Middle East, and I don’t know what else to do.”
    “I see,” was all I could manage.
    “I’ll be gone for three or four weeks—and Liz for five. Ordinarily, Brady could just stay with a friend, or we could have Liz’s aunt come to the house for a visit, but this is too long a time for either solution. We couldn’t impose like that on a friend, and Liz’s aunt can’t be away from her job for more than a few days.”
    I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge