"I didn't."

"Do you come often?"

The length of his silence confounded her.

"I feel you close when I come here," he said. "This is where I first knew I loved you."

Ruth's pent-up lungs deflated. "Elijah, I'm sorry I answered your letters. I was thinking of myself and not what is good for you."

"My feelings are the same, Ruth. You are what is good for me."

"We can't keep going around this circle, Elijah. We can't be together."

"You made your choice. I could make mine."

"No! Not because of me. You've been baptized. They would shun you. I would always know what I took from you."

"I hope," he said, his voice low as he turned his face toward hers, "that you would always know what I gave willingly."

They were not more than twelve inches apart. A familiar tremble began when she felt his breath, warm against the cold, mingling with her halting respiration. He raised a hand and grazed her cheek and neck then settled on her shoulder. Ruth could barely feel his touch through her layers of clothing, but memories roused, and she closed her eyes and breathed in his smell.

Ruth heard Elijah shift his weight, putting himself up on one elbow and turning his whole body toward her. He shielded her now from the chilled breeze, casting a stillness between them. When She opened her eyes, his face was right where she thought it would be, so close to hers that she could barely focus on his features. He was going to kiss her. It would be sweet and ardent and complete. She moistened her lips and swallowed in anticipation.

A star glimmered through the fog above them. Ruth rolled away from Elijah and sat up out of his reach.

Sixteen.

June 1776 General Washington has fallen back time and again." Joseph moved mashed potatoes around on his plate. "If he doesn't have a victory soon, we're going to lose Philadelphia."

John reached toward the basket in the center of the table and helped himself to a thick wedge of bread. "Washington has had his share of victories."

Joseph let his fork clatter against his plate. "Not lately. I don't think you appreciate how precarious our position is."

Jacob observed that while one brother's analysis of military realities caused him to leave food on his plate meal after a meal, the other's unflagging enthusiasm for the cause fed his appetite. He glanced at his mother and winced. At least their wives had already taken most of the dishes to the kitchen to wash up.

"I think I'll go help the girls." The Byler matriarch rose from her chair. "I never know where I'll find things when someone else cleans up."

Jacob waited until the broad door closed between the main room and the kitchen. "You know Mamm does not like when you talk about the war at the dinner table."

"I cannot help it," Joseph said. "I must do more."

"Your crops help feed the militia. You play an important role."

"You and John could look after my land."

"We have our own fields, and the tannery and the powder mill."

"I know. But all the powder in the world will not matter if Washington does not have enough soldiers."

"Washington is a better general than you give him credit for," John said.

"We are all trying to do our part, Joseph." Jacob tapped his fingers on the tabletop. "You cannot take the weight of winning the war on your own shoulders."

They heard the wagon and sat alert.

"That will be David," Jacob said. He crossed the room to open the front door in time to see David sling down from the wagon seat and hitch the horses to a post. He raised his eyebrows in question as his youngest brother stomped the dust off his boots before entering.

David shook his head. "I delivered the load just as we planned, but I did not find much to haul back."

"How much?"

"More coal and brimstone than saltpeter."

Jacob tilted his head and sighed. "I have some saltpeter left from May. Perhaps we will be better off than we think."

David reached inside his shirt. "I have this as well."

"From Sarah?" Jacob took the envelope.

"I did not get to see her, but she left the letter with her maid."

Jacob laughed. "She's using her maid for subterfuge. There is no telling what Sarah would do right under the nose of a British officer if she had the chance." He opened the envelope and scanned the note. "Thomas Jefferson, eh? She says he is the best man for the job."

"Apparently he has a knack for wordsmithing," David said. "I'm sure the rest of the Congress will hack his effort to pieces, but somebody has to get something on paper."

Jacob could not help but wonder if Sarah had made any inquiries that might lead to Maria. If she had, she did not mention them.

"Is there any food?" David asked.

"There's bread on the table. I'll see what else is left."

As David sank into a chair, Jacob pushed through the door to the kitchen and scanned the room. "Where's Katie?"

"I sent her to lie down on my bed," his mother answered. "The poor thing is worn out. The new boppli will be here soon. I sent all the children upstairs."

"David is home."

"And hungry, I suppose." Elizabeth held out a hand, and John's wife put a plate in it.

"Of course." David always wanted food.

Elizabeth moved to the pie cabinet, where the leftover food sat, and began to fill the plate.

"I think I'll go check on Katie," Jacob said.

On his mother's bed, Jacob found his wife turned on one side with a hand on her swollen belly. She smiled when he appeared in the door frame.

"I noticed you did not eat much." Jacob sat and massaged Katie's arm from elbow to wrist.

"Indigestion."

"That's what you said before Catherine, and before the twins. It went on for days."

"I know. It won't be much longer."

"Catherine needs a sister."

Katie nodded. "I want to name her Elizabeth. Do you think your mother would mind if we called her Lisbet?"

He leaned over and kissed her forehead. "She would be honored to share her name, and pleased that you want to remember my sister." He stroked the back side of her hand. "Would you like to go home to your own bed?"

"After I have a nap. Do you mind waiting?" Katie snuggled her face into a pillow.

In the end, his mother insisted on putting the children to bed upstairs so Jacob would not have to disturb Katie to take her home. She would need her rest before hard labor began.

John and Joseph collected their families and rumbled off the homestead, which had become a productive farm in the last thirty years. Jacob's mother occupied a widow's seat-the house and a few acres around it, where she kept chickens and sometimes a pig, and had a couple of cherry trees. Though he built his own house near the tannery after his father died and Jacob owned the rest of the land that had once been his father's, he would provide for his mother as long as she lived. David still resided in the big house, hesitant to buy his own land because he dreamed of North Carolina.

"After independence," David said often, "America will open wide." It would not be long now, Jacob hoped.

Mother and son sat on the front porch together admiring the stars.

"I'm sorry the boys are not more careful about their war talk," Jacob said.

Elizabeth let a long moment lapse. "Until the day your father died, Christian hoped he would return to the Amish church and peaceful ways."

"Daed was a peaceful man, but he would do whatever was necessary to protect his family."

"I am not Amish," Elizabeth said, "but that does not mean I love war."

"I know. I hope you do not think any of us loves war."

"I am a mother of four able-bodied sons. Of course the thought of war distresses me. And do not think I cannot guess what is really in those wagons you send David out with. You could not possibly be tanning that many hides."

Jacob chuckled. "No, Mamm."

"Just remember that the British soldiers are sons and husbands and fathers as well."

"What does this mean?" Magdalena wanted to know. "Are we citizens of this new nation whether we want to be or not?"

"It does not change our lives," her father answered. Gently he took the newspaper from her hands and folded it. "Why are you reading this? We have nothing to do with any of that. You know this, Magdalena." Where did she even get this newspaper? News of the Declaration of Independence had reached the countryside outside Philadelphia within a day. He could not shield her from that, but she had no business reading an English newspaper. Calmly, Christian sat on the top step leading up to the broad front porch of his home.

"How can you say it has nothing to do with us, Daed? These people took Nathanael from me. And now they want to force me to be a part of their new nation?" Magdalena paced in the dirt at the bottom of the steps. Her youngest siblings tumbled in the grass beyond her.

"We live separate, Magdalena," Christian said. "Apart. Peacefully. We give our allegiance to God. Force is not a part of our lives."

"Tell that to Nathan."

"Magdalena!"

She stopped pacing, crossed her arms, and turned to face him. "I'm sorry, Daed. I mean no disrespect. They attacked Nathanael and he has never been the same. I know the men who did it."

"One of them was shot in the battle at Lexington. The ways of force did not help him."

"You know Nathanael was not the only one they bullied," Magdalena said.

"The Patriots bully anyone who is not a Patriot." It was simple fact, Christian thought.

"But they especially bully the Amish."

"They understand an enemy," Christian said. "The British are an enemy, and they believe they must fight an enemy. But they do not understand neutrality. They do not understand loving their enemies."

"The British are not much better. Look what they did to your corn."

"They harmed only a small fraction of the crop."

"Were you really there when your father swore allegiance to King George?"

Magdalena seemed to be calming, he was glad to see. "I was not supposed to be. I was a disobedient little boy who snuck off a ship and into a strange city. I put myself and my family at risk because I wanted to see my daed take the oath. But yes, I was there."

"He promised allegiance to the Crown. Did that duty die with him? Or are we bound by it as well?"

"Magdalena, you are full of questions tonight." Christian was not surprised. Of all his children, Magdalena was the most spirited. She had grown into the image of her missing aunti Maria in more ways than one.

"If I have to choose a side, I choose the British," Magdalena said.

"But we will not choose a side. You understand this, ya?"

She did not answer.

"Take the little ones inside to clean up for bed, please," Christian said.

Magdalena called the children, and they rambled up the steps, pausing to kiss their daed on their way into the house.

In a month or so Babsi would bear their second child. After two miscarriages following Antje's birth, Babsi was particularly anxious to hold this child in her arms. When he was a boy, Christian's parents left Europe because of the proliferation of wars. They did not want their only son to grow up and be forced to serve in an army. That was why his father swore allegiance to the king of England. Pennsylvania was a free land. But could it now remain free and be peaceful while his own children grew up?

A few days later, Jacob held his own declaration of independence. Lisbet lived up to her name and even looked like his mother. This squalling bundle was the first of his children-the first of his family-to be born in the United States of America, rather than a British colony.

Jacob kissed his new daughter's cheek, grateful she would grow up in a free nation.