A Simple Hope: A Lancaster Crossroads Novel by Rosalind Lauer Page B

dry wood beside it. The small fire she’d built chased away the damp cold inside the hut, and the kerosene lantern gave her enough light to do a quick cleanup of cobwebs and dust with the broom she’d found leaning against one wall. Once she brushed off the two stackable plastic chairs and the wooden bench, the place actually took on a warm personality.
    Now that the cabin was relatively clean and warming up, she unzipped the sleeping bag from her backpack and spread it out on the wooden bench across from the fireplace. Good thing she’d brought that! She had thought she might need it to sleep on the floor at Gary’s sister’s house. She rooted around inside her packuntil she found the plastic bag that had remained stashed away during most of the trip. Her fingers framed the book inside. Many times she had longed to take the book out and lose herself in the familiar pages, but she didn’t dare let Gary see. She knew he’d mock her, either with laughter or with a speech about how she was eighteen years old and should be done with children’s books.
    Shandell couldn’t count the nights when she’d been soothed by this little blue book. Sometimes just the colorful illustrations and encouraging captions gave her comfort. Nestled inside the sleeping bag, she opened the book, inhaling the sweet scent of the pages.
    The book fell open to a chapter about the parting of the Red Sea. A wicked king was being mean to God’s people, so God told Moses to lead the people away. But the king and his soldiers chased them. She thought of her escape from Gary that day. It seemed like long ago, but the snap of fear was still vivid in her mind. She understood the fear the Israelites must have felt at being chased from their homeland. Turning the page, she saw the happy little cricket holding a banner with the word of the lesson:
Safe
. “God’s love keeps us safe,” she read aloud.
    With a deep breath, she let the open book fall on her chest as she took in the raw wood beams of the shack and the uneven wooden boards that made up the ceiling. Even in a deserted shack in the middle of nowhere, God knew where she was, and He had the power to keep her safe.
    She snuggled into the puffy ridge of her sleeping bag and closed her eyes. Maybe she wasn’t ready for the real world. If growing up meant giving away the book that soothed her troubled mind, well, then she would never grow up.

E aster Sunday brought sunshine that warmed the earth and thawed the chill in James’s heart. This morning, as he had wheeled through the orchard, memories of Doddy’s Easter traditions had sparked a smile. His grandfather had loved hiding eggs in the orchard. When Mammi had worried that it might be a waste of good eggs, he had said it was a good exercise for the children to hunt down Easter eggs. Practice for sorting out rotten apples.
    Now, looking over at the pear trees, he imagined a blue egg in a crook of the branches, and a green one nestled by the roots of a tree. The thick grass would be dotted with purple and orange and pink.
    “And all these years,” Doddy used to tell the Amish women, “my children and grandchildren never missed an egg yet. I hide two dozen, they find twenty-four. Children can be good finders when you make it a game.”
    How James missed his grandfather! Elmo Lapp would haveknown how to handle the doctors and balance the Englisher visits with the ways of living Plain. Doddy wouldn’t have given up on the hope of James walking again. That twinkle in Doddy’s eyes had always been full of hope, brimming over with Gott’s love.
    But Doddy was gone, and there would be no eggs to find this morning. The younger ones had dyed eggs, but with Hannah, the baby of the family, ten now, the egg hunt tradition was dwindling. Doddy wouldn’t have liked that. James decided to ask Peter and Luke to hide some eggs when they got home from church in the afternoon.
    With a sigh, James turned his chair back toward the house. There was no time to