Grace: A Christmas Sisters of the Heart Novel by Shelley Shepard Gray

him!”
    Mrs. Brenneman laughed with the girls. Melody couldn’t help but smile as well.
    She was charmed by the other girls, and pleased that they shared so much with her. In Melody’s experience, people didn’t accept newcomers. And people really didn’t accept bad things that came. For most, it was far better to pretend those things didn’t exist. To push them out of their lives, so they didn’t have to see them.
    Didn’t have to deal with them.
    Anna chuckled. “I’m sorry. Did I shock you?”
    “Nee.”
Melody struggled to put into words everything she was thinking. “I just never imagined someone could make a change like that.”
    “It wasn’t easy, but I had a lot of help.”
    It took everything she had to keep her voice even and calm. To act like she was merely curious about Anna’s past, not trying to learn from it. “What happened to the man?”
    “The man who beat me?” she asked slowly.
    Melody nodded, afraid to speak.
    “Actually, he kept looking for me. For weeks. And then, when he discovered where I was, he came after me.”
    “He came here. To our house,” Katie supplied. Melody watched her hands grip her rolling pin, the only indication of how scary that visit must have been.
    Anna nodded, all traces of humor gone from her face. “It was really scary. The whole time I was petrified. I didn’twant to get hurt, but most of all, I didn’t want any of the Brennemans to get hurt.”
    Katie folded her arms over her chest. “We weren’t helpless. We were ready to defend her.”
    “I don’t know,” Anna allowed. “It was a difficult time. I was hiding out here, pretending to be something I wasn’t; falling in love with Henry, yet always worried that Rob was going to appear at the door at any minute.”
    “But your parents?”
    “I’m sorry to say I didn’t trust them enough to tell them where I was.” Her voice drifted off for a moment. Then Anna shook her head, like she was trying to shake off her past. “But everything’s okay now. Rob is in jail and he’s not coming out anytime soon. Not only did he threaten me at gunpoint, but he was also running for office and misusing the campaign funds.”
    “It was a terrible day, the day Rob Peterson came,” Katie said. “But it was a proud one for us, too, because we stopped him.”
    “My dad hit him with one of my father-in-law’s canes!” Anna exclaimed.
    Melody could hardly believe the story she was hearing; it sounded so far-fetched—like something out of a storybook or on the movie screen. “And then Henry wanted to marry you?”
    “Something like that.” Anna’s hands stilled as she continued to talk. “It’s hard to explain, but somehow, while I was hiding out, I began to feel more comfortable here than at my own home. Things here mattered more to me. I toldmy parents I wanted to become Amish and then moved here and started learning as much as I could.”
    “I must say it was a slow process,” Katie murmured as she approached Melody and took her sleeping baby from her arms. From what looked like nowhere, she pulled out a small wicker bassinet and placed Eli in it, securely wrapping the flannel blankets around him.
    Then, seemingly satisfied, Katie went back to the story. “Anna didn’t adjust all that easily.”
    “In some ways I did; in others, I didn’t. For one thing, I missed watching television.”
    “I think she missed a lot of things,” Katie added dryly. “You should have seen her try to can! She was a terrible Amish cook.”
    “Oh, stop. I wasn’t that bad.” Anna’s eyes twinkled. “I wasn’t that
gut,
though.”
    Winnie, who’d merely been smiling as Anna and Katie shared their story, chuckled. “She’s still not that good.”
    Melody laughed. She liked these women, the way they worked easily together and the way they talked to each other. Full of teasing and fun. “The way you girls work together is wonderful-gut. It reminds me of how things are at my job.”
    Mrs. Brenneman nodded.