LITMIR.BIZ

      For those who nurture the children—woman or man.

       Chapter One

       Celery Fields, Florida, Autumn 1932

      Pleasant Obermeier dropped small dollops of batter into the oil sizzling over the wood-fired stove and expertly rolled each doughnut around in the oil until it was golden-brown before rescuing each and laying it on a towel to drain. Over the years that she had been the baker in her father’s bakery in the tiny Amish community of Celery Fields, she must have made thousands of these small sweet confections. Like the loaves of egg and rye bread that she had already baked that morning, her apple cider doughnuts had remained a staple of the business in spite of the hard times that had spread across the country.

      It occurred to her that little had changed about her daily routine in spite of the major changes that had taken place in her life these past three years. She still rose every morning at four and was at her work by five. Even so, her father, Gunther, still arrived before she did and had the fires stoked and ready to receive the morning’s wares. The two of them had followed a similar routine since Pleasant was no more than a girl of fifteen. Now a woman of thirty-two—middle-aged by some standards—she had already been married and widowed and had taken on responsibilities she could never have imagined a few years earlier.

      Three years earlier she had married Merle Obermeier, a man ten years her senior. Then after Merle had died in a tragic accident two summers ago she had taken on responsibility for raising four children from his first marriage as well as responsibility for the large house and farm that he had left behind. But in spite of all of that, she had refused to give up her role as the local baker. There was something very comforting in the routine of the bakery. It was the one place where she could be alone with her thoughts. Even the few customers she was called upon to serve when her father was off making a delivery, or otherwise engaged as he was this morning, did not interrupt her revelry for long.

      The bell over the shop door jangled and Pleasant hurried to dip up the last of the doughnuts and drop them onto the towel. “Coming,” she called out in the Dutch-German dialect common to the community as she quickly rolled the still-warm doughnuts in sugar and set them on a cake plate. Before carrying the plate with her to the front of the shop, she automatically reached up to straighten the traditional starched white prayer kapp that covered her hair and smooth the front of her black bibbed apron.

      But when she reached the swinging half door that separated the kitchen from the shop, she stopped. Her customer was a man—Amish by his dress—but someone she had not seen before. Celery Fields did not see many strangers. Their customers were mostly the local village residents and the farmers who raised celery in the fields that stretched out beyond the community. Occasionally, someone from the outside world—the Englisch world as the Amish called it—would stop as they passed through on their way to nearby Sarasota. But this was no outsider. This man was Amish. She pasted on a smile. “Guten morgen.” He turned and she found herself looking straight up and into a pair of deep-set hazel eyes accented at the corners by the creases of a thousand smiles. Her earlier feeling of contentment was gone in an instant. Pleasant was wary of strangers—especially handsome male strangers. She had fought a lifelong battle against a streak of romanticism that for a woman like her was sheer folly. Tall, good-looking men like this one were not for her, regardless of how engaging their smile might be. She had long ago faced the fact that she was not only a member of a plain society—the Amish—but also that the face that looked back at her in her brief encounters with her reflection in a storefront glass was plain as well.

      The cake plate teetered dangerously as the pyramid of doughnuts shifted and a few of the confections tumbled from the plate to the top of the counter. To make matters worse, both she and the stranger reached to rescue them at the exact same moment. His smile turned to laughter as their fingers brushed. But then their eyes met and his smile faded. He withdrew his hand as if it had been scalded. Certain that it was her expression of horror that had sobered him, Pleasant hurried to restore order. He was, after all, a customer.

      “Clumsy,” she murmured as she rescued two doughnuts that had made it to the floor and discarded them. When she stood up again, he had picked up the single doughnut still on the counter and seemed unsure of what to do with it. She held out a trash bin and after a moment’s consideration he popped it into his mouth. Then he closed his eyes and savored the warm sweetness of it. “So you are the baker,” he said.

      Unnerved, she set the plate on top of the counter and covered it with a glass cake cover. “How may I help you, Herr … .”

      “Troyer,” he said. “Jeremiah Troyer. I am Bishop Troyer’s great-nephew.” He smiled at her as if he expected this to be welcome news. He did have a most engaging smile.

      “Are you and Frau Troyer visiting the bishop then?” she asked politely, refusing to permit his charming smile to disarm her while she gathered background information and was clear about what he wanted.

      “I’ve just moved here,” he replied. “And I am not married, Fraulein Goodloe.”

      “I am Frau Obermeier,” she corrected.

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