Where Grace Abides by BJ Hoff Page A

to reason about Samuel Beiler only seemed to make her more resistant to him.
    If there was to be any change in her daughter’s attitude toward Samuel, it would have to happen within Rachel’s own heart, not from another’s counsel.

    Later that night Susan lay abed, sleepless and unsettled. Fannie had been asleep for hours, so the house was totally quiet except for the few creaks and groans that had grown comfortably familiar after years of living there.
    She had become used to a quiet house at night. They went to bed early, she and Fannie, and with Gideon and Rachel now gone, there was little to disturb the silence. Even so, she seldom slept deeply. Most nights she tended to wake several times. She would get up and go to check on Fannie or go to the kitchen for a drink of water. Sometimes she would pull up her rocking chair by the bedroom window and sit looking out on the field between her house and Rachel’s, if there was enough moonlight to allow a view.
    Sometimes she thought she might be more suited to sleeping through the day and doing her chores at night. She smiled at the thought. No doubt such an idea would scandalize her neighbors.
    So restless she was that at last she got up and went to the window to look out. There was nothing to see except an occasional glimpse of the moon through the thick clouds scudding across the night sky. She stood there thinking of Rachel, so sad and so withdrawn again; of Gideon, her prodigal, gone away from his home and family except for the times he came back to help with the more strenuous farm chores; and of her sweet youngest daughter, Fannie, who these days seemed to be more herself than she’d been ever since that awful attack last winter, when some Englisch boys had taunted her andknocked her down into the snow. Thanks to Captain Gant, she’d been rescued in time and finally recovered not only her health but her lively spirits, though it had taken months.
    Susan couldn’t bear to think of what might have happened to the child had Jeremiah Gant not seen her lying in a snow drift and gone to fetch her, despite his own recent leg injury that made it difficult for him to walk. She would be forever grateful to the former riverboat captain who surely had saved her sweet daughter’s life.
    If only he could have helped her other daughter build a new life as well. A new life with him…
    She shook off the thought. No sense thinking such things now. The bishop had said no to Gant and Rachel, and that was that. Their love simply wasn’t meant to be. Somehow the two of them must get on without each other.
    Though Rachel would hate knowing it, Susan still couldn’t dismiss an uneasy sense of guilt when she thought of her own happiness as her wedding to David approached. It seemed so unfair that she, a middle-aged widow and mother, should be granted a new love, a new life, when her young daughter continued to live with a broken heart.
    She caught herself then, recognizing that her mind had taken a treacherous path. It was almost as if she were questioning the Lord God with these forbidden thoughts of what was fair and what wasn’t.
    She closed her eyes in a prayer for forgiveness, then turned and went back to bed before her mind could wander any farther down that troublesome path.

  7  
N IGHT S OUNDS
    The silence of the night
mocks my fainting heart…
    A NONYMOUS
    S omething jolted Susan from a fitful sleep. She sat up and listened.
    Outside something cracked. Then again.
    A strong wind had blown up in the night, and at first she thought she’d merely heard tree branches snapping. But then came the jangle of a harness and a shout.
    Footsteps pounded the ground. The sound of running.
    Another shout.
    A horse whinnied and snorted.
    She ran to the window, pulling on her night robe as she went.
    A thick, oppressive darkness hung so heavy over the meadow she could see nothing for a moment. She’d left the window cracked but now tugged