Free When Grace Sings by Kim Vogel Sawyer

parents’ home or workplace or somewhere else. Sixteen is probably elsewhere’s twenty.”
    “I’ll be twenty in December.” Alexa sighed. “Do you think if I’d been raised in Arborville instead of Indiana, I’d be ready for marriage?”
    “I don’t suppose there’s any way to know that for sure, but I also don’t think there’s any expiration date, so to speak, for finding the one you want to spend your life with. Don’t feel as though you need to rush it just because Shelley and I were settled by the time we were your age.”
    An uncomfortable feeling wrapped itself around Alexa. For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted to be part of an extended family, to belong with them. She’d finally met her mother’s family and had been accepted in theirranks, but her upbringing outside of the Old Order sect set her apart. Or maybe it was deeper than that. Maybe her birthright set her apart. Mom was born and raised Old Order. Alexa was neither. What was her birthright?
    Sandra stood and turned to lay Isabella on the bed. She tucked a soft cloth beneath the baby’s cheek and covered her with a little blanket. Her movements were tender, the expression on her face sweetly affectionate. Alexa could imagine Mom tucking her in the same way when she was tiny. Yet, watching, not even one tiny ember of desire for a child of her own stirred in Alexa’s heart. She lacked so many of the motherly traits Mom and Sandra seemed to possess. Was she like her biological mother, who had abandoned her in a box behind a garage?
    Sandra picked up her plate and fork and gestured for Alexa to follow her. In the hallway, she offered a repentant grimace. “Alexa, I’m sorry if my comment about the guest from Chicago made you uncomfortable. I was teasing you, and I shouldn’t have. Mother says he is a real flirt and she’s worried about you. She doesn’t want to see you … well …”—pink stained her cheeks—“be pulled in by a flatterer. She’s not sure having him there for weeks on end is a good idea. But she doesn’t want to tell you how to run your business.”
    “I can handle Briley Forrester.”
    Sandra gave Alexa’s elbow a gentle squeeze. “I’m sure you can. You’re a sensible, mature girl, and your head is on straight. But if he makes himself too much at home and gives you trouble, then you tell Clete, and he’ll step in. Okay?”
    Her young aunt’s concern warmed Alexa. She smiled. “Okay. Thanks.”
    Still holding her arm, she ushered Alexa up the hallway. “Don’t worry. You just keep praying for God to bring the right man into your life, and when He does, you’ll know it. And you’ll be ready.”
    Alexa hoped so.

Briley
    Briley had thought Saturday dragged long, but it passed in a flash compared to Sunday. Next week he’d definitely go to service to use up an hour or two of the day. Even after he’d driven to Wichita and killed an hour at a discount store, where he bought the cheapest flat-screen television and DVD player on the shelves as well as a handful of action flicks, and grabbed lunch at a steak house, the late afternoon and evening still stretched in front of him.
    To fill some time he drove slowly up and down the streets of Arborville—all fourteen of them—and shot photographs out his open car window. Of businesses, houses, two cats curled together under a bush, kids playing stickball, an elderly couple sitting on a porch swing with a colorful knitted blanket draped over their laps … Nothing spectacular, but images that would help him paint a picture of the community as a whole. Arborville didn’t look anything like Chicago.
    He’d already driven the county roads outside of town yesterday, taking pictures of farmsteads, cows, windmills, more cows, old-fashioned farm implements waiting at the edges of pastures, and—by compliments of his telephoto lens—even a half-dozen pretty good images of Alexa standing on the porch of a sorry-looking house with the younger Brungardt.