The Revealing by Suzanne Woods Fisher Page B

Maybe for a while. I want a newspaper for the entire time I’m here, rain or shine. I’ll pay you for your trouble.” She pushed the dollars into Mim’s hand.
    “Sure.” Mim pushed her glasses back up the bridge of hernose. “Sure,” she repeated, nodding vigorously. In fact, it was an ideal opportunity to read her Mrs. Miracle column. Usually, she only saw a copy of the paper if she was at the Sisters’ House because her grandmother refused to subscribe. “Rubbish!” her grandmother called the newspaper. Mim spotted the black hats of her brothers as they disappeared over the hill and realized she’d better hurry or she’d be late for school. “Today. I’ll bring you a paper later today.”
    As Mim ran up the hill, she tried to figure out why the guest would bother reading a newspaper like the Stoney Ridge Times . It was filled with stories about local people, stories like the one about the mayor who had just been reelected for the sixth time, which might sound impressive until you learned that no one ever ran against him. Then there was the police report, which mostly consisted of parking tickets. Once or twice a month, there were some scandals. Bennie Adams had been fired at the bank because he’d come to work drunk. Junior Jackson’s wife had run off with the high school track coach. Those kinds of stories were why Mammi Vera called the Stoney Ridge Times the gossip buzz line. The sisters at the Sisters’ House had a different point of view. They liked knowing what was going on in town. She wished for the hundredth time that Mammi Vera were more like the sisters—any sister, even Fannie, who was often prickly and her least favorite.
    It wasn’t that Mim didn’t like Mammi Vera. After all, she was her grandmother. She had to like her, or maybe she just had to love her. Maybe it was the liking part she had a choice about. It wasn’t Mammi Vera’s fault that she wasn’t like the old sisters.
    That afternoon on her way home from school, Mim stoppedat the Bent N’ Dent and bought the last copy of the Stoney Ridge Times . She spoke to the clerk Katrina, the sister of the incorrigible Jesse Stoltzfus, and asked her to save a copy each afternoon. The sister, she noted, was nice to her despite being irritatingly pretty. Katrina seemed to glide around the store, not walk like a normal person. Of course, she didn’t wear glasses. She would never be called Four Eyes or Owl Eyes by the sixth grade boys.
    The Mrs. Miracle column was running twice a week now, and the receptionist had confided in Bethany that there were even rumblings about expanding it to three times a week. Such an opportunity only filled Mim with panic: Someone, somewhere, was going to find out! Bethany was the only one who knew the true identity of Mrs. Miracle. No, that wasn’t exactly accurate (and Mim prided herself on accuracy). Ella of the Sisters’ House had guessed once, but she had memory woes and had already forgotten. No one else in all of Stoney Ridge suspected that Mrs. Miracle was actually a fourteen-year-old Amish girl.
    Mim loved her role as Mrs. Miracle and took it very seriously. When she didn’t know the answer to something, she would research it or carefully, cautiously, question the right people. She liked helping others and, not to brag, but she gave excellent advice. Excellent. Mostly, though, she was just reminding people to use common sense. It seemed to be in short supply.
    But the Mrs. Miracle column was supposed to be a tiny little side job for her. It brought in only five dollars a week, and it gave her something interesting and challenging to do. No big deal. Just a once-a-week column.
    She hadn’t expected the readership to explode. She hadn’texpected the editor to expand it to twice a week. And now . . . three times a week? Each time she thought of it, she couldn’t even swallow. What if she was found out? What if the bishop learned of her secret job? What would her mother say?
    She walked as slowly as