Anna listened, relieved. “I hope it helped.”

“I believe it did,” Sadie replied. “She said she was surprised at how much grace and mercy there seems to be here.”

Anna smiled. “I noticed it right away with you and Glen.”

“Turn again,” Sadie said, double-checking the hem. “I also happened to put in a few words about what an exceptionally fine man Gabe is.” She glanced up at Anna’s face and gave her a wink.

“He certainly is,” Anna agreed.

“Your Mamm indicated that you have the right to choose who you want to date.”

Anna was stunned. Yet even if Mamm and Dat won’t stand in my way, I still have to decide for myself, Anna thought, stepping down from the stool.

She headed to her room and carefully removed her dress, ready to stitch up the hem, and went to get her pincushion and needle and thread. She felt an invisible yet very real burden lift from her shoulders.

All the same, Anna struggled with the idea of living a traditionally Plain life, if it should come to that. For now, it was enough that thoughtful and caring Sadie had paved the way for her to be courted by Gabe.

Chapter 49

Anna spent the following Saturday thinking about Mammi Eliza and all that she had meant to her and to their family. The afternoon was clear and mild, a good day for walking and praying.

She drove back over to the stone wall where she’d gone after Mammi’s funeral last weekend, and after a time, found herself searching, yet again, for a large discolored stone.

Scanning the stones in the wall once more, Anna shook her head, realizing it was a long shot. How could she ever find the spot where Mammi Eliza and her beloved had met?

Even so, she sat in the grass and leaned back, resting her hands on the ground, surprised she’d come here again.

What is compelling me?

Below her palms, she felt a smooth surface, and she turned to see a large smoothed-off tree stump, sunken into the ground so far that it was nearly concealed.

Anna recalled Mammi’s writing about a lone, tall pin oak tree near the stone wall. “Could this be the place?” she whispered with a shiver of excitement. If this was the tree.

Surely not. And yet, there was something about it, something she could only describe as a feeling, as if she had been led there.

She looked toward the stone wall a few yards away and wondered where Mammi’s Amish beau might have hidden his letters to her—if this was, indeed, the spot. She remembered the description in Mammi’s diary.

Search for the crevice under the large stone. . . .