Amish Secrets and Lies Read online

  Amish Secrets and Lies

  Big Valley Amish Series – Book 1

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Also By Rachel Stoltzfus

  About This Book

  Amish teen, Katie Miller wishes she could stop lying. But to do that, she’d have to share her secret. And that would destroy everything.

  After being cast out of their strict Amish community in Goshen, Indiana, Katie and her family have found a new home in Big Valley, Pennsylvania. She’s doing well. She has a boyfriend she loves, friends, and her parents are even beginning to trust her again.

  Everything will be okay as long as Katie can stop making up stories.

  But she can’t. There’s a pressure inside of her, building up from a secret from her past, and eventually, no matter how hard she tries to stop herself, the lies spill out. So she tells one little story about an Englisher. And then, everything starts to fall apart.

  Will a new community offer Katie a second chance at a life and love? Or is she too broken to save?

  Find out in the Amish Secrets & Lies by Rachel Stoltzfus. This is the first book of the Big Valley Amish series. If you love Christian Amish stories about love, healing, and the power of community, start reading Amish Secrets and Lies today!

  Chapter 1

  Katie Miller sighed, her bright green eyes dulled with boredom. Even though she was eighteen and technically on her rumspringa, her mam and dat still took her with them everywhere they went. They were scared of what she’d say and the trouble it might get them into. How can I get into trouble by myself at home? I could get things done for Mam. Maybe sweep out the carpentry shop for Dat. Anything but go along on their everlasting shopping trips! Today, they were shopping in one of the English stores in the area.

  “I find the Amish people so interesting, don’t you?”

  Katie looked over at the speaker, seeing a middle-aged English woman, wearing a brightly colored top along with jeans and toe-baring sandals. Her hair was silvery and cut short.

  “I just wonder how they live without electricity and all the conveniences we have: microwaves, computers, the internet. And no cars!”

  “Katie, come. We’re ready to go home now.” Mary, Katie’s mam, had caught her attention with a hand on her shoulder.

  Starting, Katie took her attention from the two English women. As she walked away, she turned her head to look at the pair. The second woman was tall and sturdy with dark hair and silver strands. She wore a sleeveless dress that accentuated her full figure.

  “Mam? Did you hear what those two English women said about us Amish?”

  “Nee. Just ignore it. They’re curious is all.”

  “But, Mam, I just wonder why they feel they can say such things around us. What would they do if we said the same things about them?”

  “Daughter, drop it! We separate ourselves from society. That’s why they are so curious. And you’d better not cook anything up in that head of yours. Do you understand?”

  Since she was a small child, it had always been the same. You’d better not tell. You’d better stop lying. You’d better stop...

  Katie could hardly find room to breathe between the admonitions. Had her older sister Esther felt the same? Was that why she’d run off three years ago never to be seen or heard from again?

  Had she been murdered?

  Was she living in sin?

  If only Katie had been smart enough not to ask Esther about Uncle Levi. But no, she’d run off at the mouth, and Esther was gone too. Another thing that was Katie’s fault. She knew better than to complain though. It only made things worse. Katie’s look at her mother was innocent. “Why would I?”

  Mary’s response was to shoot a dark look at her youngest child. Her own light-green eyes darkened with anger. She looked away and drew into herself. “Just carry these bags to the buggy.”

  Katie took the two brown paper bags, one in each hand, and walked briskly to the buggy. Her mam was at her heels, of course. As she walked, Katie caught the sickly sweet scent of candied apples. Her stomach clenched.

  It’s for you, my sweet niece...

  A phantom hand stroked the nape of Katie’s neck, and bile rose to the back of her throat. She stumbled.

  “Katie!” her mam grabbed Katie’s shoulder. “Watch your step.”

  Katie hated this story the most. No matter how many other lies she told, she couldn’t erase the memories...no, they weren’t memories, just more made up stories, from haunting her. The best she could do was tell herself bigger and more interesting lies. And hope she could keep them bottled up behind her lips.

  You’d better stop...

  On the way home, Katie ignored the uncomfortable jostling as the wagon rattled over the bumps and potholes. Her mind began to spin a tale about the two English women: Innocent Katie, waiting in a store for her parents or perhaps sitting in a restaurant as her dat settled the bill, overheard the spiteful words of two older, attractive English women. “Those Amish! I wish they wouldn’t make themselves so obvious around here. They have their own places to go! Shop and maybe even eat out. We shouldn’t have to suffer their presence,” the silver-haired woman spat out.

  “I agree! We need to do something so they stop coming outside their community. What do you think that would be?” The second, full-figured woman leaned forward, absently stirring her iced tea. Looking up, her mean, ice-blue eyes connected with Katie’s vivid green eyes. Without speaking, she seemed to communicate her disdain. “Just get out of here and go back home!”

  The buggy went over a large pothole, and the resulting jostle pulled Katie out of her fantasy. “Ow! That one hurt!” She rubbed her aching backside discreetly. It wouldn’t do for any of the elders to see her handling a private area of her body.

  After finishing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen, Katie was free to do as she wanted. Her parents at least gave her the run of the farm so long as long as she stayed within the fence line and told them exactly what she was doing. Hurrying outside, she let her mam know she’d be in the barn. “The horses need water, mam.”

  “Well, don’t be too long,” her mam, Mary, responded.

  “I won’t. Moving around helps me think through new patterns for quilting. So we can get new customers.”

  “Ya. Ya. Don’t be laying about in the loft too long! I’ll need your help preparing supper, and then there are chores.”

  There were always chores. “Ja, mam,” Katie agreed. “Ja, I’ll be in early!”

  Maybe that was a little bit of a lie. With Esther gone. Run off. Dead. Or maybe living in a penthouse with an English lawyer having chocolates with every meal, a thought which sometimes filled Katie with hope and other times with hot, furious jealousy that she knew in and of itself was a sin, Katie had no one she could really talk to anymore.

  Even Esther had been closed off to an extent. But she had let Katie chatter and warned Katie when she was stumbling into trouble. Maybe if Katie hadn’t driven Esther off, the Esther would have warned Katie not to tell that big lie. The one which had destroyed all of their lives.

  Katie quickly watered the hoses and then scrambled up the ladder into the hayloft. Quickly finding her favorite thinking and dreaming spot, she fluffed the loose hay and spread the old blanket over it so she wouldn’t have hay stuck on her backside. There, her thoughts returned to the two English women she’d noticed earlier that
day. “What would happen if...if they actually did try to force us out of Big Valley?”

  Katie liked it here, in spite of everything. The Ordnung wasn’t as strict, and the Bishop and Deacons acted kindly, focusing more on the scriptures of love and forgiveness rather than those of hellfire and sin. Katie wished she could trust them. But the pressure to make up stories only grew stronger and stronger, and when she finally succumbed, they’d throw her away too. And it wouldn’t even be their fault.

  Katie brought it on herself.

  Why had she been born so full of sin?

  What if she was different? Innocent?

  Katie laid back into the mounds of straw and let her mind wander. In her vivid dream, Katie saw herself happening upon several hateful English people who just wanted “their kind” to leave their area and go back to where they came from.

  Maybe if I just told a little tale...

  It wasn’t that much different from the truth of how those two women had whispered about Katie and her family.

  When Esther had been twelve and Katie ten, Esther showed Katie the scars.

  “I know why you tell stories,” Esther had said. “Sometimes you just have to do something to ease the pressure.”

  They went to the bathroom. Esther lowered the toilet seat lid and lifted her dress. Faint, razor-thin cuts crisscrossed her inner thighs and arms. Some were old and faded. Others were newer, angry red scabs.

  Katie had been scared, but also interested. “You cut yourself?”

  “Want to see how I do it?”

  Katie didn’t, but she nodded anyway. Esther ran her fingertips along the side of the vanity and after a few seconds, pulled a razor blade from the gap. She grabbed the bottle of rubbing alcohol from under the sink and taking a cotton ball, carefully cleaned the edge.

  Then she cut. The blood welled up in a thin, red line.

  Katie felt sick. She closed her eyes.

  When the wound was cleaned and dabbed with a triple antibiotic, Esther put a hand on Katie’s shoulder. “It’s easier this way,” she said. “This way you only hurt yourself.”

  Katie wanted to be noble like her sister. She’d even taken the blade out once and stared at it until her mam pounded on the bathroom door demanding to know what was wrong. But Katie was too weak to make herself bleed. She was too weak to take the burden entirely on herself. When she couldn’t hold the pressure in anymore, it rushed out in stories.

  Disastrous stories.

  What if the English did hate us? What a story that would be!

  This lie was just a small cut, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone. Not really. The Amish wouldn’t fight back, figuratively or literally. And the English didn’t really care about them anyway.

  It wouldn’t be anything like Indiana when she’d told a lie that was too close to the truth about Big Mike. Not that it had been Big Mike. Or anyone. Just her own stupid imagination. Her own brokenness.

  If Big Mike hadn’t been able to show proof he’d been nowhere near Katie when she’d said he attacked her, then it would have been bad for him. That lie had been a bad one. Too deep a cut, a torrent of blood and pain. They’d been kicked out of their community in Goshen, Indiana, which at least meant Uncle Levi hadn’t been able to visit. Not that he’d visited after Katie turned twelve anyway. No more candied apples or special buggy rides.

  Getting restless, Katie shifted a little on her bed of hay.

  “Katie!” Her mam shouted from below. “I told you I needed your help in the house! It’s been over an hour!”

  “I’m sorry,” Katie shouted back. “I’m coming.”

  “Now! By Gott, idleness is the devil’s playground!”

  That night, after dinner, chores, and reading from the Bible, Katie sat down in her bed and stared out the window. It was now fully dark. Allowing the plain curtain to fall shut, she put on her nightgown and placed her head covering on the hook screwed into the wall. Untangling her hair, she combed out the long, light-brown tresses and wound the entire mass into a big braid.

  She blew out her lamp and slid under the cool sheet. The story took hold of her. Vivid images played through her mind. Katie (or one of the other Amish residents of Big Valley) became the target of hatred verbalized by the English. Or, maybe someone in the community would spot a crudely hand-painted sign that ordered the Amish to leave. Katie rolled onto her back, wondering if she really could do it. She needed to do something, and nobody in Big Valley knew of her history from Goshen. Maybe I could. But I have to make sure that it’ll be totally realistic. So that nobody realizes it was me that started the whole thing.

  Chapter 2

  For the next few days, Katie did what she was supposed to do. She was obedient and quiet. She finished a quilting order and delivered it, with her mam, to her English customer.

  On their way home, Katie dared to ask for a little additional freedom. “Mam, do you think that when you need to get something at the store or when I deliver a quilt to a customer, I could go by myself? I’m old enough to hitch the horses to the buggy and get around Big Valley.”

  Mary gave Katie a look of anger. “Nee! And you know well why.” Leaving the reason unspoken, she turned back to the road, guiding the two horses, who just wanted to get back into their cool, dim barn.

  Katie was stunned. “But Mam! It’s been two years. Haven’t I learned my lesson?”

  “Katie, you just aren’t to be trusted. You know that! There’s something about your imagination and your personality that create trouble.”

  “When you were six, I remember, it started,” Mam began running down her list of Katie’s sins as if Katie didn’t know each of them and a few more besides. “You told me you turned the range off but you didn’t, and when the eggs began smoking, by Gott, you could have burned the house down! But you just stood and watched, giggling. Then you said a dog had attacked the goats, but the goats were fine.

  “When you were nine, you told that lie about your father’s brother burying a body on his farm! Of course, there was no body! And Levi had ever been anything but kind to us! When your father lost his job at the plant, he’s the one who paid for our food and saw to it your father found work in his carpentry.

  “You’re the reason we had to leave Goshen and our families because you decided to lie about Big Mike Hofstetter. Never mind that he loves his wife and their kinder to absolute distraction. You nearly tore their family apart with your lies about him assaulting you. And that’s why we watch you so closely. It’s hard enough for me to allow you to go out with your friends for rumspringa activities. If I could, I would keep you at home, under my watchful eyes, every day of the year. But if I did that, the community would look more harshly at us, and we are better off without their censure.”

  “Maybe I should go then, like Esther did.”

  “Don’t say that!” Mary’s face lost all color. “You’ll get yourself killed. I love you, Katie. You are my daughter, and I want you to be safe. We just have to get through this problem you have.”

  “What if I wasn’t lying? About Uncle Levi?”

  “That he buried a body in his cornfield?”

  “Nee! But—before, when he would take me and Esther to the—.”

  “Stop.” Mary’s hands were clenched, and Katie felt a sudden sharp fear that her mam might hit her. “If you say one more word, I will take you to the Bishop, tell him what you did in Goshen, and have you shunned. Out there, they only care about themselves. The English don’t help outsiders, especially stupid girls who can’t tell the truth from a lie. Esther was a good girl. She had her issues, but she was good.” Mary took a step towards Katie and let out a long sigh. “I know I sound harsh, and I don’t mean to be. I know there is goodness in you too. You just have to learn to tell the truth. In all things. Do you understand me?”

  Katie understood. She wished she had the confidence to run away, but her mam was right. She had no way to earn a living on her own. If Esther was alive, Katie had no way to find her. Esther had never written her in Indiana.
It meant either Esther was dead, or she had wanted Katie gone too.

  Katie didn’t blame her sister. Sometimes Katie wished she could just make herself very small and disappear into the image of what she was supposed to be. Quiet. Sweet. Innocent.

  But she couldn’t. Not forever.

  “Do you understand me?” Her mam asked again.

  Slowly, Katie nodded. “I can still see Amos, right?”

  “I shouldn’t—.”

  “But I have to get married and take my Kneeling Vows.”

  “You don’t need to be married to take your Kneeling Vows.”

  The pressure inside Katie was building and building. She couldn’t run, and she couldn’t stay. “Mam, please.”

  Finally, her mam sighed. “Ja. You can keep seeing him. You have been good here in Big Valley. I know you’ve been working hard, and I want to trust you. I promise to try, just as long as you keep trying. Keep your focus on following our Ordnung and Gott’s plan, and it will all turn out right.”

  “Ja, mam.”

  “We have a lot of work to do when we get home.” Mary gave a forced smile. “We’ll make some beautiful quilts and have lots of new customers, ja?”

  Katie looked down at her lap. “Ja.”

  “Gut. Gut.”

  Katie was silent over the next two days. Anger burned in her chest and choked the words in her throat. Her mind wandered to the two English women. In her imagination, their curiosity grew into disdain and then outright malice.

  Katie saw Amos Smits, her boyfriend, once, at a youth volleyball game.

  Though she tried her best to be attentive, sweet, and good, he noticed something was wrong.

  On the buggy ride back, he asked, “Katie, what’s troubling you?”

  “It’s just busy with the quilting. And I miss Esther.”

  “I know your parents are worried about you because of what happened to your sister, but they shouldn’t be so overprotective.”

  Katie wanted to be good and explain it was all her fault, but she couldn’t push the truth past the lump of anger in her throat. Amos was the only person in her life who hadn’t judged her and find her lacking. The less he knew, the better.