A Promise for Miriam by Vannetta Chapman

like it, that fewer choices made life simpler. The folks in this group tended to reminisce about the era their parents had lived in, a time they thought was truer to what the founders of their church had envisioned Amish life should be. They reminisced while using their gas stoves and gas refrigerators. Their opinion might change if they had to chop a block of ice out of the river.
    All Gabe knew was that the distance from Indiana to Pebble Creek had seemed right and the price of the farm had been something he could afford. Staring at the structure that was literally collapsing around him, he now understood why the price had been so low.
    Beyond that, though, past the roof that had fallen and the walls in need of repair, were fields more fertile than any he had worked in Indiana. He could tell this even in the midst of winter.
    He’d pored over brochures before they had moved. He knew the Englischers called Cashton and most of southwestern Wisconsin the Driftless region. They claimed the terrain had been bypassed by the last continental glacier. Instead, the area contained the largest concentration of cold water streams in the world.
    Gabe couldn’t testify to glaciers that might or might not have been. Perhaps he’d ask God about that when his day came to depart this world, or maybe they would be busy discussing other things. What he did know was that the rivers and streams—like Pebble Creek—meandered through a rich soil that could and would grow good crops.
    If he could survive the winter. If he could protect his animals until spring. If he could be both father and mother to Grace and still tend to all that needed to be done.
    The bull let out a long, low call as he knocked up against the pen Gabe had fastened together. It wouldn’t hold unless the beast settled down. Striding toward it, Gabe dumped more feed into the trough and then moved on to tend to the other animals. By the time he’d finished more than an hour had passed, and he glanced up to see Grace trudging through the snow, making her way outside to the outhouse.
    Outhouse!
    His grandparents had an old outhouse at their place, but both his parents’ home and the home he’d shared with Hope had indoor bathrooms. That his daughter had to go outside, in this weather, tore at his heart.
    Had moving here been the right thing to do?
    The bishop’s rules were harsh. Gabe didn’t understand why the buggies were open, why the bathrooms were outside, or why the ornament on the roof of his barn had to be changed within a year of his buying it. He liked the bishop well enough as a man, and he would follow the Ordnung. He understood this was more than the will of Jacob Beiler. The bishop seemed like a fair man, though stern and hard to read.
    Fine with him. He wasn’t one for talk himself.
    The Ordnung , and even the bishop himself, voiced the will of the church. Both represented the district, the community Gabe had chosen to live in and to raise Grace in until she was old enough to marry and choose her own path.
    Grace began the walk back to the house, and as Gabe made his way toward his daughter to scoop her up and carry her high on his shoulder, he vowed to himself that he would find a way to make their new home work.
    Everything appeared harder in the winter. He knew this from experience.
    Hadn’t it been winter when illness had forced Hope to bed?
    He pushed the memory away in the same way he locked the hurt out of his heart each night. As he walked through the mudroom, Grace scrambled out of his arms and knelt down beside the box she’d made for Stanley. He’d finally drawn the line on the rodent and told her firmly that he couldn’t sleep in her bedroom any longer. The mudroom had been a compromise.
    “Breakfast in ten minutes,” he said as he pushed past her into the kitchen, trailing snow and some dirt and hay as well across the floor. With no woman around to fuss, he’d become lax about cleaning his boots before entering the house.
    “One of the