Beside Still Waters by Tricia Goyer Page B

seized her, chilled her. The secret like ice expanding from within.
    "You received a letter from the Junes." Her mother set a small stack of letters on the table, then rose and checked the cook stove, readying it for the rolls.
    Marianna turned to Josiah. "Can you finish these up?" He nodded, his dark bangs swishing against his forehead.
    "Me too!" Ellie chimed in.
    Marianna hurried to the stack of mail. She needed something to distract her. Something to get her mind off her heavy heart.
    Levi and Naomi wouldn't be the first couple to leave. Though it wasn't common, Marianna had seen this type of thing through her growing up years. First one would leave, then the other would follow. Sometimes they came back after years of hardship. Life in the Englisch world wasn't easy. Some Amish didn't have birth certificates or Social Security cards. Even harder was their lack of education, and work was hard to find. Some got jobs and were paid under the table, a fraction of what other workers received. In the Englisch world they had to find new clothes and learn to talk different. Sometimes they were taken advantage of, and many times they had no choice but to take advantage of others, living with them, eating food and wearing clothes that they couldn't afford.
    There were those couples who came back and lived within the community. Often just one would return, choosing God's way over the world.
    "King me," David called from the checker game. He looked most like Marianna, with light brown hair and hazel eyes. In a couple more years, he'd no doubt be her height.
    Marianna didn't need to look at the address label to know which envelope was hers. She pulled the large yellow envelope from the bottom of the stack and carefully opened the flap, turning it upside down. A stack of ten letters slid out along with a dirty penny, a pressed violet, and eight other small trinkets. Marianna didn't know who came up with the idea of sending small things with their letters, but she was glad they did. It added extra fun, even though the letters were entertaining in their own right.
    "Read one letter, and then I need you to get those rolls in the oven."
    "Yes, Mem." Marianna glanced to her siblings, who were making more of a mess than anything, then she focused on the loopy writing on the page.
    Their circle letter started as a school project, writing to other girls who shared two things: the same birthday and the fact that they lived in an Amish Community in Indiana. They'd started with seventeen participants, but over time ten, including her, remained faithful—all of them born on June 7.
    Marianna began reading the first page, which was always a letter from Beverly. Somehow in the midst of their chain letter writing, someone had decided to stack them in alphabetical order. Over time this became as closely observed as the trinkets in the envelope and the manner that the letters were sent around—each girl receiving the package, reading the letters from the others, pulling out her old letter, and adding in a new one before sending it off again.

    Dear June-Sevenies, May 4 (1 month, 3 days)
    I love that spring has come to Indiana. The flowers and grass popping up. Not the tourist popping up. I will never get used to them. Yesterday I was in the store and the clerk was telling me about her husband's experience. He is a police officer and he received a call about problems with an Amish man.
    You know that our area (yours too) is often advertised as the place to see Amish. Well, this lady was quite upset because she wanted to take a photo of an Amish man while he was plowing. She wanted him to stand next to her husband with his horses, but he refused, stating he had work to do. Not to mention the problem of taking a photograph. The clerk said this woman went to the police station to report it! She wanted the police to fire him or to have him arrested. She thought the Amish man was working for the state of Indiana and that his job included entertaining the