Plain Paradise Read Online Free PDF

countertops, lightly-dusted yellow paint on the walls, and a large window that looked out onto freshly tilled soil where Robert had recently planted a garden. Josie had tried to discourage him from the large undertaking, but Robert had always lived in the city, and he wanted to have homegrown vegetables. There was certainly enough room on the five acres that surrounded their new home.
    Josie grew up picking peas in her grandparents’ garden when she was young. By the time she was ten, she’d made up her mind never to have a garden. Nana and Papa’s farm had been right in the middle of Amish Dutch Country in the town of Paradise, where they’d raised their daughters, Josie’s mother and her older sister Laura. Every summer, Mom and Dad would drag Josie and her brother, Kenny, to help with Nana and Papa’s garden. It was about an hour’s drive from where Josie and her family lived in Harrisburg.
    Josie loved visiting her grandparents and especially enjoyed playing with the neighboring Amish children. She just didn’t care for gardening and always seemed to be the one to stumble into something poisonous or somehow annoy a stinging insect.
    Her grandparents had died within a year of each other during Josie’s first year of college. Kenny accepted a job in Florida after graduating from college, and he married Stephanie about two years later. When the first grandchild came a few years ago, Mom and Dad sold the family home in Harrisburg and moved to Florida. Josie hadn’t seen her parents in three years.
    She recalled her phone conversation with her mother on the night she’d called to tell her that she and Robert would be moving to Lancaster County, to Paradise, to be near Linda.
    “You are making a mistake. Why do you want to travel back in time, Josephine?” her mother had asked. “You will only open old wounds. Let the past be the past. Besides, you have far more to worry about than establishing a relationship with that girl.”
    But for Josie, it was hard to find any peace without facing her past, and she was running out of time. Now, back in Paradise, the past was everywhere.
    Josie recalled her trip to the doctor, when he confirmed that she was indeed pregnant at seventeen-years-old.
    “Your grandparents are not to know about this,” her mother had said on the way home from the appointment, echoed by her father later that evening. “You will go and stay with your Aunt Laura in Chicago until we figure out the best way to handle this.”
    Mom and Dad told Nana and Papa that Josie was going to Aunt Laura’s to finish her last year of high school and then attend college there. But she never saw another day of high school and got her GED instead. College in Chicago did follow, but only after Josie was summoned to Paradise to hand her newborn to Mary Ellen and Abraham Huyard just two weeks after she’d given birth. Two glorious weeks during which Josie had called the baby Helen, the name she’d chosen for her daughter.
    Josie had begged her aunt and uncle to let her stay with them. She could raise the baby and work. Aunt Laura had said she couldn’t go against Mom and Dad’s wishes, which were for Josie to return to Lancaster County and sign adoption papers that had already been drawn up. She remembered the pain of handing over her baby to Mary Ellen on the front porch steps of the farm, where she’d just visited yesterday. Her parents had stood tall behind her. Josie felt like they were forcing a punishment on her by making her give away her baby. Her little Helen.
    But it wasn’t my fault. I trusted Mr. Kenton .
    Larry Kenton was a math teacher at the high school in Harrisburg, and all the girls had a crush on him. But it was Josie he befriended and invited to his house on a cold, December evening, enticing Josie with an offer to help her study for her final exam in trigonometry. She was flattered when he kissed her and told her she was the prettiest girl in the school, but when his hands began to roam,