Free Harvest of Blessings by Charlotte Hubbard

she’d at least hinted to Millie that something huge was about to happen.
    So where should she go? What should she do until she could figure out how to handle this life-changing information?
    Millie walked slowly along the road that circled Willow Ridge. She passed a few neatly kept places that belonged to various Schrock families, including the three women who ran the quilt shop next door to Miriam’s café. In her present state of mind, a stroll along the river sounded like the best way to deal with her churning emotions. As she got closer to the mill, maybe she would confide in Ira, who’d so gallantly held her hand and taken her side—and maybe she wouldn’t. In his way, he’d betrayed her, too, by ogling his new neighbor . . . who is my mother.
    It was all so confusing.

Chapter Eight
    Nora dropped onto her couch, feeling as wrung out as an old dishrag. Could her encounters this morning have gone any worse? As she sat in the big living room that was still strewn with half-unpacked boxes, she felt the overpowering urge to stuff her belongings back into them—to call the Realtor and stick a For Sale sign in the yard and get out of Willow Ridge in a hurry.
    But that couldn’t happen. She had nowhere else to go, and no savings left to take her there. And now that she’d opened the Pandora’s box Hiram had talked about, there was no turning back. No coaxing the secrets into hiding again, and no erasing the way she’d disrupted everyone’s lives, thinking her need for reconciliation was noble enough to warrant the pain and upheaval she would cause.
    Millie, I’m so sorry I’ve hurt you.
    If she sent out that mental message, would her daughter receive it? And if she did, what would stop Millie from turning away again? If she lived to be a hundred, Nora knew she’d never forget the anguish that had puckered Millie’s sweet, innocent face this morning. And she hadn’t anticipated the depth of the torment she’d opened herself to, either, when Millie and Dat had refused to accept her.
    “Nora? You in there?”
    Nora grimaced. Luke Hooley was the last person she wanted to see, but she didn’t have the energy to send him away. He was standing at the screen door, gawking this way and that to find her in the shadows of the house. It occurred to her that she hadn’t hooked the screen door—that she was already slipping back into the Willow Ridge level of home security. “Yeah. Come on in.”
    He entered cautiously, sensing she was in an iffy mood. He was holding a handful of Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed Susans she’d seen growing along the riverbank. Even clad in broadfall trousers with suspenders and an unironed yellow shirt, Luke possessed a confidence—a trace of class—that set him apart from the Amish guys she’d known as a kid. He lowered himself to sit on the floor in front of her. “How’d it go with Millie?”
    “Badly.”
    Luke sighed. “For what it’s worth, I was ready to clobber Gabe when he called you Satan and then shoved you aside,” he said in a rising voice. “That whole shunning thing is exactly why I can’t join the Old Order. It’s the most unforgiving attitude in the world, yet the Amish supposedly base their faith on forgiveness and living Christlike lives. Go figure.”
    Nora smiled weakly. She really did appreciate his supportive attitude even if she wasn’t in the mood to discuss Amish theology. “Technically, I wasn’t shunned, because I hadn’t yet joined the church. I was only sixteen when my parents sent me away to an aunt’s house to have my baby.”
    “But for your father to claim he never had a daughter—and with Millie standing right there,” Luke protested. “That was just wrong , Nora.”
    She shrugged. “Old Order men stand by their right to be right —to dictate the script their families will follow,” she replied with a sigh. “And while I anticipated my father’s reaction, I didn’t realize how crushed I would feel, even after all these