Keys of Heaven Read Free

think anything I can do will help her conceive. That’s in the Lord’s hands.”
    “At least talk to her,” Amanda pleaded. “She’s such a nice little thing and she hardly gets a chance to open her mouth with that tribe rampaging all over the place.”
    “They shouldn’t be rampaging.” Corinne dropped a pot into the sink with a clang. “If those boys spent half the energy on helping Arlon in the fields that they waste on climbing trees and running wild in the woods, that farm would be a different place.”
    “They’re still in school, aren’t they?” Sarah said.
    “The two younger are, if you can pin them down long enough to go,” Amanda said. “One of the elder two just got back from a month with Arlon’s relatives in Lebanon County and the other is putting the i in Rumspringe .”
    “But why don’t they help?” she wanted to know. “It’s their place to honor God and their father by helping him now that they’re old enough. With four boys, that farm should be fixed up and producing enough to keep them by now.”
    “I don’t know what the problem is,” Corinne said. “They’re a cheerful lot, and all smiles in their dirty faces, but a firm hand should have been applied years ago, if you ask me. I don’t know what Arlon and Ella are thinking.”
    Arlon and Ella were not Sarah’s business. But Amanda seemed to think that Linda was. “If you see Linda, let her know I’m happy to talk with her,” she said at last. “I don’t know how I can help, but at least I can give her a nice big slice of pie and some fresh milk. Everything else is up to the Lord.”
    Amanda’s smile broke out, making her quiet face with its broad forehead and small chin beautiful. “I’ll tell her.”
    “Speaking of things being up to the Lord, I hope you’re coming Friday,” Corinne said. “Did you have anything else planned?”
    Sarah shook her head. “Only writing letters. My sister is expecting again, so we’re all excited as can be. She had a miscarriage this past winter, you know.”
    Corinne nodded. “I’ve been praying for her—I’m so glad! Well, that’s gut , then. Our company will be here in time for dinner—you remember my cousins Zeke and Fannie King? One of Fannie’s relatives who is farming east of there is coming, too. We hardly ever get to see Zeke and Fannie except in the winter. This is a treat.”
    “I’d love to. What can I bring?”
    “One of those funny salads with the flowers in it,” Amanda said promptly. “I love those.”
    Sarah laughed and said, “A salad it will be. Maybe I’ll put nasturtiums in it, just for you.”
    She reached up to put the dry drinking glasses in the cupboard, and missed the conspiratorial look and raised eyebrows that Amanda exchanged with her mother. When she turned back again, they had wiped it from their faces and the conversational river flowed on as if that silent exchange of secrets had never been.

Chapter 2
    H enry Byler hadn’t been around kids much after he’d left home. When he’d climbed down from that bus in Missouri after leaving his parents’ Holmes County farm in the middle of the night, he’d felt as aged as his own Daadi, and at the same time, as young and inexperienced in the ways of the Englisch world as any toddler on his mother’s lap in church.
    He’d lucked into a job in the back of a garden store that sold clay urns and decorative pottery, and met the potters who supplied them. From there, he did rather like Caleb was doing now—hanging out and absorbing as much knowledge as he could before someone noticed and chased him away.
    Busy with survival and then later, making a living, then getting his GED and going to college…there hadn’t been a lot of time for getting to know any kids.
    He was paying his dues now.
    “Slam it down harder, Caleb,” he instructed the gangly fourteen-year-old who had somehow morphed into his unofficial apprentice. “You’re not going to hurt the clay, and the bubbles have to be