Fraying at the Edge Read online

  BOOKS BY CINDY WOODSMALL

  THE AMISH OF SUMMER GROVE SERIES

  Ties That Bind

  Fraying at the Edge

  SISTERS OF THE QUILT SERIES

  When the Heart Cries

  When the Morning Comes

  When the Soul Mends

  ADA’S HOUSE SERIES

  The Hope of Refuge

  The Bridge of Peace

  The Harvest of Grace

  AMISH VINES AND ORCHARDS SERIES

  A Season for Tending

  The Winnowing Season

  For Every Season

  Seasons of Tomorrow

  NOVELLAS

  The Sound of Sleigh Bells

  The Christmas Singing

  The Dawn of Christmas

  The Scent of Cherry Blossoms

  Amish Christmas at North Star

  NONFICTION

  Plain Wisdom: An Invitation into an Amish Home and the Hearts of Two Women

  FRAYING AT THE EDGE

  Scripture quotations or paraphrases are taken from the King James Version or the New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org).

  The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  A very special thanks to Cathy King, Erin Woodsmall, and Tyler Woodsmall.

  Trade Paperback ISBN 9781601427014

  ebook ISBN 9781601427021

  Copyright © 2016 by Cindy Woodsmall

  Cover design and photography by Kelly L. Howard

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in the United States by WaterBrook, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  WATERBROOK® and its deer colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Woodsmall, Cindy, author.

  Title: Fraying at the edge / Cindy Woodsmall.

  Description: First edition. | New York : WaterBrook, 2016. | Series: The Amish of Summer Grove ; Book two

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016018919 (print) | LCCN 2016024266 (ebook) | ISBN 9781601427014 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781601427021 (e-book) | ISBN 9781601427021 (Electronic)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Contemporary. | FICTION / Christian / Romance. | GSAFD: Christian fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3623.O678 F73 2016 (print) | LCC PS3623.O678 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016018919

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Books by Cindy Woodsmall

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Amish of Summer Grove Series

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Glossary

  Main Characters

  In memory of Iris Summer Woodsmall,

  January 15, 2016,

  and to all loved and wanted babies

  who never drew an earthly breath.

  And to the parents who suffer,

  searching for ways to survive a lifetime

  of missed hugs, laughter, achievements,

  hopes, and dreams.

  The Amish of Summer Grove series

  The story so far…

  Ties That Bind begins twenty years earlier. At an Amish birthing center, a single Englisch college student, Brandi Nash, gives birth to a daughter as a fire engulfs the building. A few minutes later in a nearby room, an Amish woman, Lovina Brenneman, gives birth to twins, a girl and a boy. The midwife and Lovina’s husband, Isaac, struggle to get the women and three babies to safety.

  Chapter 2 of Ties That Bind moves forward twenty years, and Ariana Brenneman is trying to buy an abandoned café so she can help support her large family. She and her twin brother, Abram, have been working and saving for years to purchase it. As time is running out, Ariana’s one-time friend Quill Schlabach offers to help her conduct a benefit to raise money, but Ariana wants nothing to do with him. Five years ago he broke her heart when he left Summer Grove in the middle of the night, taking with him Frieda, Ariana’s closest friend. Although Ariana has moved on and is seeing Rudy, a young man she cares for deeply, she resents how Quill and Frieda deceived and betrayed her.

  Quill tries to win Ariana’s trust, knowing that if she will act on his ideas, she will raise the money she needs. Although Quill continues to conceal why he left with Frieda, he longs for healing between Ariana and himself. But his main purpose for being in Summer Grove is to help an unhappy, disillusioned family leave the Amish—Ariana’s eldest sister, Salome, and her family.

  Ariana lets down her guard and trusts Quill’s guidance. Although Rudy has reservations, he backs her as she, Quill, and Abram hold a benefit, which raises the needed money.

  While Ariana and Abram are focused on the café, their brother Mark sees a college performance in a nearby city and is struck by how much one actor looks like Salome. When Mark tells their Mamm, she seems concerned.

  Lovina and Isaac ask Quill to investigate the background of this young woman. Quill obtains information that indicates the woman, Skylar Nash, is probably Isaac and Lovina’s biological daughter. He contacts Skylar’s parents, Brandi Nash and Nicholas Jenkins, and a DNA test confirms that she’s not related to Brandi or Nicholas. The test also reveals that Skylar has drugs in her system.

  Lovina struggles with the knowledge that her biological daughter seems so lost, and Nicholas, an atheist, is appalled that his daughter has been raised in an insulated, religious society. When he discovers that the midwife knew the two girls might have been accidentally switched at birth and did nothing about it, he threatens to sue her unless Ariana spends a year with him and Brandi, cut off from the Amish community. And Nicholas gives Skylar a choice—time in rehab or time with her biological family. Otherwise he will cut off all financial support.

  When Ariana learns that she’s not a Brenneman and that Quill helped uncover the truth, she once again feels betrayed by him and asks him never to contact her again.

  Ties That Bind ends with Ariana leaving Summer Grove with Brandi and Nicholas to spend a year with them. An
d Quill picks up Skylar, confiscates the drugs she tries to hide, and drives her toward the Brennemans’ home.

  For a list of main characters in the Amish of Summer Grove series, see the Main Characters list at the end of the book.

  Summer Grove, Pennsylvania

  The dark shadows lying across the living room floor were eerie, seemingly coming out of hiding as Lovina remained kneeling in front of the couch, her Bible open. The pale moonlight only intensified the darkness that surrounded her, as if the blackness were a picture of what was happening to her family. To her daughters.

  She tightened her interlaced fingers. Her knees ached from the hours she had quietly sought God for the kind of help only He could give.

  The daughter she’d thought she had given birth to two decades ago was gone, spending her first night with strangers in an Englisch home that by all accounts was worldly and in disarray. From what little she knew, that home was dysfunctional at best. She was terrified for the daughter she’d raised, the one who had none of her DNA.

  Until recently Lovina hadn’t realized that even God’s faithful ones endured the kind of terror that had now entrenched itself in her heart. But maybe the truth was Lovina hadn’t been faithful, not truly.

  “God, please don’t let Ariana or Skylar pay the price for my sin.”

  How would Ariana—Lovina’s sweet, wide-eyed girl—survive for a year outside the Amish community she loved with her whole heart?

  The daughter Lovina had actually given birth to was upstairs, sharing a bedroom with her sisters for the first time in her twenty-year life. The image of meeting Skylar yesterday for the first time made Lovina break into fresh sobs. Her daughter had black nails that matched the dyed-black streak in her blond hair. And she wore jewelry, makeup, and revealing clothes. But none of that had twisted Lovina’s heart in a knot like the hardness she saw in Skylar, as if bitterness had already destroyed her belief in life and humanity. The young woman wasn’t hopeless. She had dreams but no apparent understanding that life and people were valuable. Even with all that, the most painful part of yesterday was when Skylar’s driver, Quill Schlabach, handed Lovina the luggage and suggested she thoroughly inspect it to verify Skylar hadn’t brought any drugs with her.

  Lovina had set the luggage aside for a while and tried to connect with Skylar about little things—her hobbies, schooling, and such. Later, when the two of them were alone, Lovina went through the suitcase as Skylar sat on the bed, calmly and apathetically assuring her that she’d only popped a few pills on occasion and that a random drug test happened to catch her right after one such rare event. Lovina found no drugs, but Skylar’s calm, detached behavior toward meeting her family, having a twin, and the drug search was disconcerting.

  “Father in heaven, please strengthen Skylar to overcome all desire for pills—occasional or otherwise.”

  It was her fault Skylar was in this predicament. Just as it was her fault Ariana had been forced to leave here and go to a dysfunctional home. Would Lovina spend the rest of her life carrying this unbearable sense of blame?

  When the floor creaked, Lovina lifted her forehead from her folded hands. Her husband stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, bathed in shadows and dressed in yesterday’s pants with suspenders pulled over a white T-shirt.

  He eased toward her, knelt, and put an arm around her shoulders. “God, help my Lovina,” he whispered, and then he kissed her temple. “It’ll be okay. It will.”

  Lovina didn’t need or want false words of hope, but maybe God had spoken to Isaac. Maybe He hadn’t. She wouldn’t ask.

  Skylar had spent a lifetime being indoctrinated in ways Lovina had little knowledge of. In fact, she would be in rehab right now were it not for these crazy circumstances.

  Lovina’s need to confess her sin to her husband weighed heavily. “The unbearable part is I did this.”

  “Shh.” He held her tight, probably trying to ease her trembling. “No, my love. This isn’t—”

  “But it is. Please, I have to say it aloud to someone…at least once.”

  He nodded. “Then say it a thousand times if it will help.”

  Lovina wiped her tears. “When I doubted that we had the right newborn, I didn’t push hard enough to get answers.”

  “But Rachel dismissed your fears.”

  “Rachel meant well, but as a midwife she didn’t have a mother’s heart. I should’ve pushed harder for answers then.” She sobbed. “And twenty years later when I discovered the truth about the girls being swapped, I pushed too hard, too fast. Quill tried to warn me, telling me I needed to slow down. But I forged ahead, thinking Skylar needed the faith we could offer her. But we’re in over our heads with that one. I see that now. I’ve upended both girls’ lives. Ariana is there, and…” She broke into fresh tears. “I’m a horrible person, Isaac.”

  He wrapped her in his arms and held her tight. “God will forgive us.”

  Even he couldn’t muster another denial of their guilt. This nightmare was Lovina’s fault, and no matter how it played out, her daughters—yes, she considered both of them her daughters—would pay the price. Who knew how high a price? All the regret of her past failures and all the fear of her daughters’ futures weighed on her mother’s heart, squeezing and pressing until she didn’t think she could take any more.

  As much as she believed in forgiveness and redemption, she wasn’t sure any existed for her. God could forgive her, and He could redeem her from eternal damnation. But that wouldn’t undo or erase two decades of planting and harvesting in Skylar’s life.

  Clarity came to her like dawn dispelling night, and she knew why the burden of her sin was so very heavy tonight. Darkness was stretching toward Ariana, and Lovina needed to pray fervently, because her sweet girl would soon be in a fight for her sanity.

  Bellflower Creek, Pennsylvania

  Ariana stood in her biological father’s kitchen, listening as he and her birth mother screamed at each other. Her heart raced in a way it never had before, and she felt she needed to make a conscious effort to remain connected to her body, but that didn’t even make sense. Was it her lack of sleep for weeks? her inability to eat? stress?

  Whatever was happening and why, she seemed to leave her body and hover above the room, looking down. She appeared as out of place as she felt—an Amish girl fresh off the farm and in full Plain attire while in the home of strangers who, as God would have it, were her parents. Despite being twenty, she felt like a five- or six-year-old child as her parents kept screaming at each other.

  Emotions suffocated her, just as they had when she’d arrived thirty-six hours ago, and there was no one to talk to about any of it. The only tie to her past that she was permitted to contact was Quill—former Amish man, current con man. Was he skilled at deceiving everyone or just her? She didn’t care, not anymore. Truth be told, she’d rather keel over dead than call him.

  What she desperately needed was to talk to Mamm and Daed. She missed them so badly it hurt, but they weren’t her parents. The DNA testing had revealed she belonged to these people.

  She wasn’t angry with Quill because he’d investigated her birth and had uncovered the truth that landed her in this nightmare. She was angry because he did it behind her back, along with a thousand other sneaky things, after once again having won her trust. She was the poster child for the saying “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” And she felt ashamed. But she would not give him a third chance to deceive her.

  “Do the words culture shock mean anything to you?” Brandi hissed at the man Ariana would never call Dad, but apparently he was her father.

  The tension rose as her parents shouted at each other even louder. Surely there had been a mistake. How could she go from being a beloved third daughter in a caring and gentle Amish family to…this? But missing home was easier than missing herself, and she did miss who she’d once been or at least who she’d thought she was. Would she ever again be that innocent young woman full of hope a
nd love? Or would confusion become her shadow, tracking her every move?

  “I will not agree to this, Nicholas!” Brandi shook her finger at him.

  He laughed, but his face was scarlet. “You think I expected you to? Here’s the deal. You don’t have to. She’s as much my daughter as yours, and I have just as many rights as you do.”

  Brandi’s arm bangles clinked and jingled as she stabbed a finger toward him. “You were never like this about Skylar.”

  Skylar. The poor girl who should have been raised Amish. How was she faring in an Amish home?

  “And just whose fault was that?” Nicholas asked. “You need me to admit that twenty years ago I wasn’t invested in having a child with you and that not living in the same house made things tough to navigate? Okay, I’ll admit both. But you pushed me away at every turn. You know you did, and I let you. Not this time, Brandi. Not this time.”

  Her biological parents hadn’t wanted her, and they weren’t living in the same home when she was born?

  Floating to the ceiling wasn’t far enough away. She wanted to go home. The air continued to crackle with unfamiliar tension, and the angry voices bounced off the four walls. The room seemed to shift, changing shape and color as it tilted on its side.

  Both parents stood mere steps from their current spouses. They had been introduced to Ariana as stepparents, which wasn’t a completely new concept. Sometimes one Amish parent died and the other remarried, but she’d never thought about the possibility of one child having two parents and two stepparents simultaneously.