Sold on Love

By Rachel J. Good

Overwhelmed by caring for her accident-prone younger brother and keeping up with constant housework and chaos he creates, Lavina Fisher is convinced she'll never make a good wife and mother. Her longterm boyfriend, Amish EMT Aaron Yoder, is heartbroken over their breakup, but he offers to keep an eye on her brother during a Lancaster County mud sale. He's a calming influence on young Stephen, until the boy's exuberance soon leads him into major trouble, Can this major catastrophe bring them back together, or will it drive them further apart?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rachel J. Good
• Release date: Apr 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781732050464

Book preview

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2020, 2017 by Rachel J. Good

Originally printed in Springs of Love (Celebrate Lit Publishing); copyright © 2017 by Rachel J. Good

We support the right to free expression and the value of the copyright. The purpose of the copyright is to encourage writers, artists, and other creatives to produce new works to enrich our culture.

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ISBN: 978-1-7320504-7-1 (paperback); 978-1-7320504-6-4 (ebook)

Author’s Note

Sold on Love takes place at a mud sale in Lancaster County, PA. If you aren’t familiar with mud sales—no, they don’t sell mud there—the Lancaster area holds many of these events each spring to support local volunteer fire and ambulance companies. Amish-made goods such as quilts, crafts, wooden furniture, buggies, and livestock are auctioned under various tents. The parking lot and fields surrounding the firehouse are dotted with tents housing the various auctions as well as stands selling hot foods, baked goods, and candy.

To get to a mud sale with limited parking, most visitors take shuttle buses (often repurposed school buses) from nearby businesses, schools, malls, and even hotels. At the sale, young Amish boys called runners will load the goods you buy onto their wagons and cart them to your shuttle bus.

One of the highlights of mud sales is the chicken barbecue, which Aaron helps to man in the story. And Lavina, as many firefighters’ and EMTs’ wives and girlfriends do, helps to prepare and sell meals in the firehouse kitchen.

So where did the name mud sale come from? These sales are usually held from early March to early April, and the ground that time of year can be mushy and spongy from melting snow, so you never know when you’ll be squishing through mud. Although if you go on a freezing cold day, you might be crunching through ice and snow. In either case, wearing boots to a mud sale is a wise idea.

Chapter One

Acard fluttered to the floor at Lavina Fisher’s feet. Tipping the pile of mending from her lap onto the bed, she stooped to pick it up. Inside, the message in her friend Ada’s precise handwriting jumped out at her. I’m praying for you. I know how hard this must be. You and Aaron. . . Tears welled in Lavina’s eyes, blurring the rest of the words as she brushed aside dead petals and propped the card next to the vase of drooping flowers Ruth had brought last Saturday.

Lavina’s eight-year-old brother, Stephen, pounded up the stairs to her room, banged open the door, and skidded to a stop. The door crashed against the dresser as he tossed a handful of mail onto her patchwork quilt beside the mending. More letters for you, Vina.

"Ach, Stephen." Lavina pointed to the clods of mud he’d tracked through the polished wood hallway and into her room.

The brightness of his smile faded, and he hung his head. I’ll clean it up.

Wait, she called as he raced from the room. Why don’t you take off your shoes first?

He halted outside her doorway. Good idea.

Lavina sighed as he plopped down on the floor, right on a chunk of mud. Stephen, did you look before you sat there?

No, why? He raised himself with one hand and glanced at the floor under him. His face reddened. I should have checked. He stood and brushed at the mud, but only succeeded in smearing it down his pants leg and all over his hands.

The headache she’d had earlier increased. Another pair of trousers for the laundry. Stephen’s third pair ruined for the day. Before breakfast, he’d tipped the milk pail in the barn and tried to catch it before it overturned, soaking his pants and shirt when he’d landed facedown in the milk puddle. Then he’d torn his second clean pair wriggling under wire fencing in the neighbor’s yard chasing one of the chickens he’d let loose. The chicken had fluttered over the fence, but Stephen had tried to go under it. Lavina loved her younger brother, but he was a handful—a serious mess, Mamm always said. Lavina couldn’t wait until Mamm and her younger sister, Sadie, returned from helping Aenti Esther. Only two more weeks to go.

Stephen rushed toward the stairs.

Your shoes, Lavina reminded him.

He stopped, took off his shoes, dropped them where he stood, and bounced down the steps. She should call him back, but Lavina picked up his filthy shoes and carried them downstairs to the shelves Daed had built near the back door. As she passed through the kitchen, Stephen was waving the broom around like a sword. He’d tipped the dust pan up like a shield, sending showers of dirt over the baskets of clean laundry she had brought in from the line but hadn’t managed to fold yet. The only job she’d completed yesterday she’d now have to redo.

Stephen! Her voice cracked like a buggy