Best Friend's Ex Box Set

The tears threatened to rise again as I thought about all the ways in which Mamm and Dat raised us to be good, Amish girls who also felt free to make our own choices. I took a deep breath and looked over to see Verity sitting on the steps holding a bowl of shelled peas in her lap.

I could see that her eyes were puffy and red, and as soon as she was close enough, she threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly.

"I'm so glad you're home, Grace," she said choking back a sob. "Danny doesn't know about Mamm and Dat yet. How are we going to tell him, Grace?"

"Shhh, shhh," I said patting her kapp-covered head. "We'll figure it all out and everything will be okay. I promise."

"Oh Grace!" she sobbed into my shoulder. "They're gone! How will we survive without them?"

I let her cry knowing that she had most likely been keeping all of this in since she'd learned the awful news this morning. I wrapped my arms tightly around my sister and rubbed her back through the rough, cotton dress she wore as she released her grief and anguish while fighting back my own. I was the oldest Miller daughter, and even though I'd chosen a life outside of the Amish community I'd grown up in, I still felt the weight of responsibility for my family. I would have to be strong for all of them as we found a way to make peace with this devastating loss.

"Verity," I said after her sobs had turned to sniffles. "Where are Faith, Hope, and Honor?"

"Faith and Hope are with their families at their own homes, but they said they'd be here tonight after supper," she said as her voice threatened to crack. "I don't know where Honor is. No one has seen her since this morning. I'm worried about her, Grace. When Jacob came to tell us what had happened, she didn't say a word. She just walked out the door and disappeared."

"She can't have gone far," I said feeling certain I knew where Honor was probably hiding out. "We'll find her. Now, what about Danny?"

"I've kept him busy all day, but he's been asking for Mamm since after dinner," she said. "I didn't know what to tell him, Grace. He's not going to understand this!"

"We'll help him, Verity," I said as I patted her cheek reassuringly. "He might not understand, but he'll be okay and he'll know he's safe and loved. We're all going to be okay."

"How do you know that?" she asked as her eyes filled with tears. "We don't have parents any longer. We're alone. We're orphans!"

"Verity, we still have each other," I said as I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and led her to the front steps. "And if we have that, we're all going to be fine. Why don't you get supper started, I'll come help you."

She nodded as she picked up the shelled peas and headed into the house. I stepped onto the porch and looked out over the yard taking it all in when I caught a glimpse of something moving in the loft over the barn. I set my case down and walked toward the barn. I quickly climbed the ladder to the loft and called out, "Honor, are you up here?"

I got no reply, but I heard movement on the other side of a large hay bale, so I walked around and found my youngest sister, barefoot and without a kapp, sitting on the floor with her knees pulled up to her chest. She didn't look up when I called her name, so I knelt next to her and put an arm around her shoulder. She shrugged it off without looking at me.

"Honor, it's okay to be mad," I said softly. "I'm mad, too. And sad."

She stared straight ahead as I shifted so that I was sitting cross-legged off to one side. My youngest sister was the most stubborn of the Miller clan, though Dat would have claimed that title belonged to me. She was a smaller, more compact version of all the sisters with the same wheat-blonde hair and pale blue eyes that we had all inherited from Mamm's side of the family. Only Daniel had inherited Dat's dark hair, but he had the same, pale-blue eyes as the rest of us, and when we were all together, it was easy to see the family resemblance.

"Are you okay?" I asked. I was certain I knew the answer to that question, but I wanted to give Honor a way start to talk about what she was feeling if she wanted to. She was the child who had always asked why, and had never accepted a simple answer for anything. She hated sitting still and as a result the frowning Bishop often sent her out of Sunday services.

It wasn't that Honor was opposed to the Amish way of life, she just didn't accept the simple answer of, "It's God's will," when it came to understanding why things happened. Now that she was seventeen, the answers she wanted were much more complex and while Mamm and Dat had tried their best to provide her with them, it became more apparent that Honor didn't quite fit into the Amish community. During my Christmas visit, Mamm had asked me if I would let Honor live with me during her rumspringa, and I'd agreed.

I rubbed my sister's arm as I watched her jaw clench and release, and I knew she was wrestling with whatever emotions were threatening to overwhelm her. I also knew better than to push her before she was ready.

"I'm going to go help Verity with dinner," I said softly. "We're going to break the news to Danny tonight, and I would like it if you could be there."

Her response was an almost imperceptible nod, and once I'd gotten that, I got up and climbed down the ladder and headed back toward the house. Halfway across the drive I turned and looked out over the fields that ringed our property and marveled at the precision with which Dat had planted the wheat. The amber stems rose out of the ground in a unified manner that made it look like the field was covered in a soft carpet. I pictured Dat behind the horses earlier this spring as he'd sown the seeds and knew that he always looked forward to this time of year when the breezes blew across the crops, causing them to bend and sway in nature's dance.

I wiped a lone tear from my cheek before grabbing my suitcase and heading into the house. The next few hours were going to be difficult, but once we'd broken the news to Daniel, we'd start to move forward.

#

"Gracie!" my brother signed as I entered the kitchen. "You're home, Gracie! Does Mamm know you were coming?"

"Well hello, Daniel," I said as I mustered a smile to match his as he wrapped his arms around me and rocked me back and forth. "I'm so happy to see you, little brother!"

My brother Daniel was the last child born in our family. I had just turned thirteen when Mamm announced she was pregnant again. She was quite a bit older than most Amish mothers at that point because she and Dat had married late and started their family when they were in their mid-twenties. With five girls, the community had teased Dat about his lack of an heir. He'd taken it in good stride, claiming that girls were all he'd ever need since they'd eventually get married and bring their husbands into the fold, but I knew they'd both longed for a son.

Everything went according to plan as Mamm's pregnancy progressed, and she occasionally visited the doctor in town just to make sure that nothing was wrong. The Amish believe in staying outside of the reach of English technology and prefer to rely on instinct and a deep faith in God for all things, so Mamm never had any tests done or thought about the possibility that something might go wrong. If anything was going to go wrong, then it was God's will.

When Mamm's time came, the midwife arrived and helped her deliver the newest addition to our family. There were shouts of joy as the midwife brought Daniel down to Dat.

It soon became obvious that there was something different about our new brother, but when we asked Mamm, she would only smile and say, "He is a special gift from God, and we will treat him just like we treat every one of you." We fo