Free The Amish Bride by Mindy Starns Clark, Leslie Gould Page A

course.”
    “So the farm where you grew up was real big, Mammi ?” Christy asked.She’d been part of the group who went to Switzerland with Ada, and I’d noticed that she also had taken a genuine interest in our family’s history ever since.
    “One hundred and ten acres with a woods behind the house,” Mammi replied proudly. “We were a few miles northeast of Nappanee, not too far from the road to Goshen, so in the summer we would sell produce from a little shed just off the highway—and sometimes baked goods and flowers too. We’d drive our pony cart with all of our things in it and set up shop.”
    I glanced at Mammi , still worried she might say the wrong thing but gratified to see such a spark in her eyes. She didn’t glow like this when she talked about her life there as a wife and mother—not surprising, considering she’d had an unhappy marriage to a mean husband—but the memories of her childhood were clearly happy ones.
    “Did you have many brothers and sisters?” Izzy asked shyly before popping a forkful of chicken into her mouth.
    “No sisters,” Mammi replied. “I had one half brother and two full brothers, and I was the youngest.”
    One half brother. Just like me. I was tempted to poke Zed under the table, but the topic was still a little too raw.
    “I did everything I could to keep up with the older kids,” Mammi continued, shaking her head with a smile. “Not just my brothers, but also tons of cousins. My mother had eight siblings, so you can imagine how many cousins I had by the time I was born.”
    Izzy nodded, genuine interest on her face. “And they lived close by?”
    Mammi nodded. “The nearby Mennonite district was made up almost entirely of my aunts and uncles and cousins.”
    “Mennonite?” I glanced across the table at Ezra. “I thought they were Amish.”
    “No, my mother was the only one on her side of the family to change over to Amish. My grandparents and aunts and uncles all stayed Mennonite, as far as I know.”
    “Oh.” My mind raced. That meant Sarah had been raised Mennonite but had ended up joining the Amish church instead. My exact situation.
    “Why did she become Amish?” Zed asked, the first words he’d spoken since the meal began.
    Mammi tilted her head to the side. “That’s a good question.” She was quiet for a long moment, and then she said, “My father was Amish, so I suppose she did it because of him.”
    My heart began to race. “Wait a minute.” I put down my knife and fork and let my hands fall to my lap. “Your mother joined the Amish church so she could marry the man she loved?” I looked toward Mammi as I said it, but my eyes met those of my mother instead, who gazed back at me with dismay. For a moment I realized the face she was giving me was the same one I had given Christy earlier, when she’d been talking about Ruth’s crush on Ezra under the guise of feigned innocence, as if she didn’t know such news would upset me. Christy hadn’t been fooling anyone then, and neither was I now.
    Even as I felt my cheeks flush with shame, I couldn’t help but persist. “That’s really amazing, Mammi . Imagine that. A Mennonite woman falls in love with an Amish man, and their families don’t try to stop them from becoming the same religion and joining together in marriage.”
    I shifted my gaze across the table to look straight at Ezra, but his face was tilted downward, eyes glued to the table, cheeks and forehead a vivid red. My first thought was, Shame on him for being too chicken to support me in this moment.
    My second thought was, Shame on me for ruining a lovely gathering because I don’t know how to keep my mouth shut.
    Clearing my throat, afraid I might suddenly start to cry, I pulled the napkin from my lap and excused myself, tossing it onto my chair and heading for the bathroom. Once there, I locked the door and just stared at myself in the mirror for a long while. I wasn’t wrong to want to marry Ezra and embrace his