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Lloyd had called love. His true love had been for beer. She would watch closely and be prepared if Joshua began to drink. She would leave and return to her farm.
    When Mamm left with Sammy, Rebekah kneaded her hands together. She was getting remarried. If tongues wagged because Lloyd hadn’t been dead for a year, she hadn’t heard it. She guessed most of the Leit here and in Paradise Springs thought she’d been smart to accept the proposal from a man willing to raise her two kinder along with his own.
    The door opened again, and Leah Beiler and Joshua’s sister Esther came in. They were serving as her attendants.
    â€œWhat a lovely bride!” Leah gushed, and Rebekah wondered if Leah was thinking about when the day would come for her marriage to Joshua’s younger brother Ezra. Leah was preparing to become a church member, and that was an important step toward marriage. Even though nothing had been announced and wouldn’t be until the engagement was published two weeks before the marriage, it was generally suspected that the couple, who’d been separated for ten years, planned to wed in the fall.
    Esther brushed invisible dust off the royal blue sleeve of Rebekah’s dress. For this one day, Rebekah would be forgiven for not wearing black as she should for a year of mourning.
    â€œJa,” Esther said as she moved to stand behind Rebekah. “It makes your eyes look an even prettier blue. Let us help you with your apron.”
    Every bride wore a white apron to match her kapp on her wedding day. She shouldn’t have worn it again until she was buried with it, but Rebekah was putting it on for a second time today. Pulling it over her head, she slipped her arms through and let the sheer fabric settle on her dress.
    â€œOh.” Esther chuckled. “There may be a problem.”
    Rebekah looked down and realized her wedding apron was stretched tightly across her belly. Looking over her shoulder at the other two women who were focused on the tabs that closed it with straight pins at the back, she asked, “Are they long enough?”
    â€œI think so.” Leah muttered something under her breath, then said, “There. They’re pinned.”
    â€œWill it hold? It will be humiliating if one of the pins popped when I kneel.”
    â€œWe’ll pray they will stay in place.” Esther chuckled. “If one goes flying, it’ll make for a memorable wedding service.”
    Leah laughed, too. “I’m going to make my apron tabs extra long on my aprons from now on.”
    Rebekah couldn’t manage more than a weak smile. “That’s a gut idea.”
    The door opened and Joshua’s daughter, Deborah, peeked in. “The ministers and the bishop have come in. Are you ready to go down?”
    â€œJa,” Rebekah replied, though she wanted to climb out the window and run as far away as she could. What had she been thinking when she’d told Joshua yes? She was marrying a man whom she didn’t love, a man who needed someone to watch his kinder and keep his house. She should have stopped this before it started. Now it was too late for second thoughts, but she was having second thoughts and third and fourth ones.
    As she followed the others down the stairs to the room where the service was to be held, she tried not to think of the girl she’d been the last time she’d made this journey. It was impossible. She’d been optimistic and naive and in love as she’d walked on air to marry Lloyd Burkholder.
    A longing to pray filled her, but she hadn’t reached out to God in more than a year. She didn’t know how to start now.
    As she entered the room where more than two hundred guests stood, her gaze riveted on Joshua who waited among the men on the far side of the room. The sight of him dressed in his very best clothing and flanked by his two sons made the whole of this irrevocably real.
    It has to be better than being married