A Hope for Hannah Read Online Free PDF Page A

have dumped the ashes without much thought, but this morning everything seemed to need extra care. With the tip of the pan, she spread the pile thin because she knew that thinly spread ashes would cool faster.
    When she returned to the kitchen, she found the fire burning much better. She added extra wood to keep it hot just in case.
    She heard the whistle of the cooker none too soon, sounding only moments after she had packed the second batch of corn into the jars. After she checked the strength of the fire again, Hannah set the control knob on the cooker. The pressure was steady, and so she left the kitchen to check the garden and plan the rest of her day.
    There were still a few tomatoes left on the vines. She walked the row to be sure of the number, counting enough to easily make another batch of canned tomatoes. That would come in handy this winter since both she and Jake enjoyed tomato soup.
    She had delightful visions of the two of them—soon to be three, she reminded herself—sitting in the cabin, sipping tomato soup, and eating popcorn in the evenings while the snow piled up thick outside. When, then, should she tackle the job? Today yet? Hannah decided the task would be a little too much. She glanced up to find the clearness of the sky reassuring. With no rain in sight, the tomatoes could wait until tomorrow.
    She returned to the kitchen to check on the cooker. One look at the gauge assured her all was well. Five more degrees and she could slide it off the hot part of the stove. She added another piece of wood to keep the flame steady.
    Because she didn’t want to go far and didn’t want to wait in the kitchen, Hannah stepped into the living room where two of Jake’s shirts needed mending. She had draped them over the couch yesterday. From her mother’s instruction, she knew this was not a good practice and she should keep such things in the sewing room. But here she had no sewing room and little space to keep mending projects.
    With her mother coming to visit, perhaps she should think of someplace else to put the mending. But her mother was sensitive, she reminded herself, and would understand how little space they had. For that Hannah was thankful.
    Just as she was considering all this, the unimaginable happened. From the kitchen Hannah heard the unmistakable sound of the pressure cooker blowing. The awful sound shook through her body. Soon after she was filled with horror and shame for allowing such a thing to happen. Hannah Byler, the just lately minted Hannah Byler, had blown up her pressure cooker.
    Her first thought, as she turned toward the kitchen, was, This is not something I can hide under the proverbial rug. Everyone is going to find out about this! The emotion of what had just happened swept over her. Few Amish women blew up their cookers, and those who did were not forgotten quickly.
    Some would, no doubt, tell her to just be thankful she wasn’t in the kitchen at the time, but at the moment, she wished—at least partly—she had been. The thought that a few small burns would help stir up some sympathy flashed through her mind. But no, she had come out unscathed.
    Her first look into the kitchen quickly caused her to forget her lack of injury. The lid to the cooker lay mangled on the floor, and the ceiling now had a deep gash in it. Even worse, corn and pieces of glass were splattered on every wall except the one in the living room furthest from the stove. Great clouds of steam rose from the stove top where much of the spilled water had landed. If she had been in the room, she was certain the result would have been more than a few burns.
    Hannah’s next thought was of Jake and how he would come home that night to a wife who had blown her kitchen to pieces. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have enough to do already. She felt an urge to rush in and clean up—to sweep up the pieces of glass, to pull the corn off the rough logs, to wipe away the water, and to make it look as if this had never