Mending Hearts

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  Copper, turned out to pasture, neighed what sounded like a challenge. David turned, narrowing his eyes against the sun, and saw a buggy rolling up his driveway. The horse, a solid brown, wasn’t familiar to him.

  He whistled and started back through the long grass, emerging from beside the barn just as the buggy came to a stop. Of course, the puppies barked and whirled around the horse, who tossed his head once before ignoring them.

  He did recognize the man climbing from the buggy: Samuel Ropp, the hatmaker who had called the police. David had seen the police talking to him in the alley. In his fifties, Samuel was short and stocky, his belly getting round, his beard mixed gray and brown. The straw hat he wore covered his hair.

  “Give me a minute,” David called, and caught Dandy and Susie because he was smarter than they were. They protested being shut in the barn, but settled down to whining instead of yapping.

  Walking over to Samuel, David said, “How can I help you?”

  If Samuel were here about a horse, it wasn’t the one hitched to his buggy.

  * * *

  * * *

  Miriam didn’t argue when Luke and Daad decided to stop at David’s place Friday to invite him to dinner. How could she? They would wonder. And . . . her feelings were mixed. He’d proved the kind of man he was, while being reluctant to accept any thanks. She wanted to see him, even as a part of her would have preferred to hide from him.

  Her family liked him. She had to get used to having him around often. It would become easier with time, she told herself.

  They arrived just as he was leading a horse she didn’t recognize from the arena to the barn. It was a handsome bay with a white blaze on his nose, dancing at the end of the lead rope, flinging his head up. He tried to rear at the sight of her brother’s gelding and the buggy, but David subdued him with seeming effortlessness and led him into the barn.

  “I wonder if he’s bought another young one?” Luke speculated.

  “Young, for certain sure,” her daad said, “and no better behaved than the one he already has.”

  Who had cantered beside them until the pasture fence stopped him, but hadn’t bucked the way he might have a few weeks ago. Miriam didn’t comment, though.

  A minute later, David reappeared from the depths of the barn, the puppies gamboling around his feet. He went to Luke’s side of the buggy and greeted the family civilly. When her brother asked, David shook his head.

  “That horse belongs to Samuel Ropp. He finally stopped by yesterday and we came to an agreement.” He sounded wry. “One more to his benefit than mine, unless he spreads a good word about me once I return his horse to him.”

  Julia laughed. “Is he as wild as your Copper?”

  “Not quite as bad as Copper was when I bought him, but not ready to pull a buggy out on the road yet.” He made a face. “Getting him here made me wish I could pull a horse trailer behind Dexter.”

  Miriam ached to ask if he’d taken Copper out on the road, but kept her mouth shut. She remembered the day she gone to the hat store to tell Samuel about David, and her understanding that she was so much bolder than most Amish women, and especially unmarried ones. She’d repulsed David, and that quality might be why. Act like a maidal, she ordered herself, be shy, self-effacing.

  Pretend.

  Why bother, when David already knew her too well?

  She had missed some of the conversation, but heard him agreeing to dinner and to the suggestion that he wash up at their house.

  Miriam shifted to give him as much room as possible, nodding at David when he got in but not meeting his eyes. The first thing he did was look at her father. “You’re back at work so soon?”

  Daad scowled. “I took a bump on the head, that’s all. And it happened three days ago!”

  “Just surprised to see you,” David said mildly.

  Daad huffed. He had not been a good invalid, to no one’s surprise.

  Luke told David how relieved all the merchants in town were that two robbers had been arrested. A reporter for the newspaper had wanted to interview Miriam and take her picture besides, and Luke heard that the same man had badgered Samuel Ropp.

  Miriam agreed that she’d said a few words, but not allowed the photograph, of course. Her daad had been too grumpy even to talk about his experience—although that wasn’t how Luke described their daad’s interaction with the newspaperman. Peeking from beneath her bonnet, she saw David suppress a smile.

  He hopped out in front of the house and held out a hand to help her. She hoped her hesitation wasn’t long enough for anyone to notice. She reacted to the warmth and strength of his hand, as she always did, but didn’t let herself linger. Mamm would need help.

  Something fizzed inside Miriam, though, however stern she tried to be with herself.

  Would David ask her after dinner to walk with him?

  * * *

  * * *

  As always, Deborah filled baskets with leftovers, jars of canned fruit and vegetables, and baked goods. Mostly cookies, David noted; did that mean Miriam had spent the week baking? Luke, Julia, and Abby left first, carrying enough food to feed them for a day or two. His own basket would last longer.

  Once he’d thanked Deborah, his eyes met Miriam’s. “Would you walk with me?” he asked.

  She went very still for a moment, like a field mouse caught out in the open when the shadow of a hawk passed over it. But he wondered a moment later if he’d imagined it, because she smiled and said, “Ja, certain sure. I suppose you’re curious about all the talk in town.”

  Playing along, he grinned at Deborah. “My mamm won’t be happy if I don’t keep her up on the latest.” Which was true enough.

  She laughed. Miriam didn’t. Eli, he thought, didn’t even hear the byplay, lines deeply creased on his forehead. He wouldn’t admit he’d gone back to work too soon, and would have rebuffed any attempt to persuade him to go lie down until David was gone.

  Going out the back door, he reflected that he needed to return several baskets. He’d gotten behind. Better to think of something so trivial rather than what he intended to tell Miriam.

  His shoulders tightened.

  “I’m glad Samuel brought the horse to you,” she said after a minute, when the silence had stretched uncomfortably.

  “Thanks to you and your daad.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t thank us if he isn’t paying you enough to make it worth your time.”

  David jerked a shrug. “We’ll see.” His turn to make an effort. “You went to work Wednesday, not even taking a day off?”

  “Of course I did,” she said sharply. “Ruth counts on me. We were especially busy, with so many people coming in because they wanted to hear exactly what happened.”

  Ja, he could imagine that. “Did any of them buy anything?”

  “Oh—spools of thread or a yard of fabric.” Miriam suddenly sounded tired. “Enough to give them an excuse.”

  “Eli doesn’t look good.”

  She shook her head. “It was all we could do to make him stay home for two days. This morning, even Mamm threw up her hands. I didn’t get a chance to ask Luke how much work Daad actually did, but you can tell his head aches.”

  “Enough to make him stay home tomorrow, maybe.”

  “Daad?” she scoffed. “Not him.”

  No, Eli Bowman had his share of pride, although he wouldn’t call it that.

  David looked around to see that they were almost out of sight of the house now. He drew in a deep breath that failed to steady him, as he’d hoped.

  “You know I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

  Because she quit walking, he did the same. She looked . . . wary, probably guessing that whatever he had to say wasn’t good news. He set the basket down by his feet.

  “After I kissed you, I don’t know what you thought—”

  Some pow
erful emotion darkened her eyes. She backed up a step.

  He swallowed. Looked away from her, focusing on a bluebird with an orange throat perched on the branch of a bladdernut, a shrubby small tree. He felt his fingernails biting into his palms.

  “This is something I’ve never told anyone. It has to do with why I ran away.”

  She was watching him, he knew that much. He kept his gaze on the bird as it sidestepped along the branch, its head tipping one way and then the other.

  “I was . . . jealous of Levi,” he said hoarsely. “Because of you.”

  “Me?” Miriam whispered.

  “Ja. I . . . liked you. You were always kind, never sly or small-minded like some girls. Not a gossip, either. Your smile warmed anyone you spoke to.” He paused. “I knew I was too old for you, but I would have courted you, except”—he grimaced—“you saw only Levi.”

  After a pause, she murmured, “I had no idea.”

  Nobody else noticed how he felt, either. He’d been grateful for that. He was like Eli, not wanting to appear less in anyone’s eyes. Taking too much pride in accomplishments, that was a sin most Amish successfully avoided. The kind of pride that made a man want to hold his head high, that was something else.

  “I know. I never would have said anything.”

  “But . . . he’s been gone a long time.”

  David stole a glance to see crinkles on her forehead. “Because of me,” he said heavily.

  “You? What are you talking about?”

  “I was mad at him. He was grumbling—” No, this part he couldn’t tell her. Or . . . only tiptoe around it. “Esther had talked to him—”

  Now he couldn’t look away from her widening eyes.

  “About me.”

  “He was wondering. Asking me what I thought. Telling me you’d argued.”

  He couldn’t forget how anger had welled up in him, knotting in his belly, tightening his chest. How could Levi doubt Miriam because his mamm judged harshly and had a sharp tongue? Miriam deserved better from the man she loved.

  She squeezed her upper arms, each with the opposite hand. Hugging herself. Her shock showed. “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Tell him what you thought?”

  “No.” Not him. He’d bitten his tongue when he should have set down his ax.

  He’d been making the undercut in a huge old maple with the ax he kept razor sharp. The deep V not only helped determine which direction the tree would fall, it exposed the heart of the trunk. Let him see any flaws in the grain or decay. Depending on what he saw, he was always the one to make the judgment.

  Not noticing his silence, Levi stood to one side, continuing to jabber when he should have been counting his blessings. Swinging with his usual precision, David had sent chips flying furiously, but he never looked at the core of the tree.

  Except—even now, he knew what he’d seen. What he had to have seen. Grain that twisted as if two small trees had wound together and become one, although, if so, that wasn’t obvious from the outside. Worse yet, he’d been blind to the rot that was especially common as maple trees aged. He and Levi had been taking this one out in hopes of good wood, not because it was a danger to a house or barn, but it didn’t matter. He had let himself be distracted when his partner depended on him for his safety.

  That would be bad enough, him too confident he could stay focused when it was important, but his greatest fear was that he had seen the flaws and made the same calculations he always would before he stomped around to the other side and picked up one end of the crosscut saw.

  He’d snapped at Levi to shut his trap and get to work instead.

  Levi had scowled. “This is important!”

  David didn’t know what his friend saw on his face, but after a moment he’d stepped forward and grabbed his end of the saw.

  David still wondered if he’d made sure Levi’s cut bit deeper on his side, or if he’d only let it happen because he was mad about what Levi was saying, or because he’d stood around and let David do all the work.

  “You know the tree fell the wrong way,” he heard himself say now.

  Her expression taut with apprehension, Miriam barely nodded.

  He had to force the rest out through a throat so rough it seemed to have splinters. “Or maybe I was so angry, it fell the way I wanted it to.”

  Her expression changed slowly. He was painfully aware of each incremental change: the skin tightening over her cheekbones, her mouth forming an O, her eyes . . .

  Ach, he couldn’t look into her eyes.

  “You”—her voice hitched—“wanted him to die?”

  David shuddered. Had his anger truly been so destructive? He prayed that it wasn’t so—but at the very least, he had become careless because of temper and jealousy. He was the expert on felling trees, the one who’d always had an uncanny eye for when they’d groan and start in slow motion, precisely where their monstrous weight would land.

  That day, he had been cataclysmically wrong.

  He said honestly, “No, not that. But . . .”

  Miriam took a slow step backward. Then another, and another. At last she said, each word rimed with ice, “He really is gone because of you.”

  “I thought I’d put it behind me. I wanted to court you.” David gave his head a hard shake. “But I couldn’t. Not . . . without you knowing it was my fault.”

  Her eyes brimmed with shock and grief, or even something more caustic. Her lips parted. He braced himself . . . but it was a sob that ripped through her.

  She turned and ran.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Miriam was almost to the house when she knew she couldn’t go there. Not yet. Mamm and Daad would demand to know what was wrong.

  Even blinded by tears, she veered and ran away from the house, through the orchard to the woods that ran behind the big barn. They wouldn’t look for her there.

  Hidden by its bulk, surrounded by trees in full leaf, she stumbled to a stop at last. The only time she’d ever cried so hard was when Amos and Daad came to tell her about Levi. She’d known something terrible had happened the instant she saw their faces. Luke dead, something going wrong with Rose’s pregnancy, Elam in a buggy hit by a car. So many possibilities had flashed in front of her eyes. The very last that crossed her mind was Levi. It was his name she’d whispered.

  “Ja,” her daadi said, his voice raw, his eyes kind but so sad for her. He’d pulled her into an embrace, and she had cried her heart out against his shoulder.

  Now . . . she had no one. Sobbing, she fell to her knees, then to her hands, finally curling on her side in the soft loamy soil beneath the trees. It was as if Levi had just died, all over again. Only now she knew. Not a tragic accident. Not God’s will, demanding her acceptance. Not even, as she’d imagined, because he’d been upset by his last quarrel with her.

  Levi died at David Miller’s hands.

  She cried until she was as limp as a wrung-out dish towel. Worse: the kind of dish towel her mother consigned to the rag bag to use for especially dirty cleaning.

  Ja, dirty cleaning was about right.

  Her eyes were so swollen, she saw only through slits when she tried to open them. She had to be red and blotchy. She wasn’t at all sure she could stand up. And she had no idea how much time had passed.

  Would Mamm be growing worried? Or did she think her daughter and David were smooching, making plans for Miriam to give up her spinster ways?

  It took her another several minutes to gather herself enough to crawl to the nearest tree with a broad enough bole and sit up, leaning against it. She’d use the faucet outside the barn to splash her face with cold water, hope to erase the evidence of her crying.

  Driven by a jagged piece of glass piercing the wall of her chest, she thought, Why should I? Why not tell everyone? He should be banned, driven away.
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br />   She whimpered. How often had she heard the passage from Romans? Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.

  Drained, she tried to remind herself that the Lord was always near to those who had a broken heart.

  Twice broken, because she’d loved Levi . . . and she had come to love David, too. One with the heart of a girl, one with the heart of a woman.

  She could let the wrath go more easily than she’d expected. As for vengeance? God would not need to demand it from David. The torment she’d seen on his face told her he was already suffering as much as anyone could wish. And that was why she didn’t want to tell anyone at all what he’d said. Outward measures weren’t needed. Until he could determine what measure of blame was really his, confess to his Lord and forgive himself, the burden must stay on his shoulders.

  She wouldn’t make it heavier.

  If her need to avoid drawing yet more pity was selfish . . . surely God would forgive her that much.

  * * *

  * * *

  David tripped over the broken fence rail and fell hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs. He’d landed in some briars, too, that dug tiny thorns into his clothes and the skin of his lower arms, bared by shirtsleeves folded almost to his elbows.

  Slowly he rolled, lifted his arm to see droplets of blood, and let his arm fall back to his side. Staring up at the sky, still bright, he tried to think of any reason at all to get up.

  That last expression he’d seen on Miriam’s face would haunt him for the rest of his life. He’d known what she would think, and still not prepared himself. Her eventual forgiveness wouldn’t wipe that image from his mind or heart. He’d still be one of the brethren in her eyes, but her life would go on separately from his—except that each time he saw her, every torturous feeling would be reawakened.

  Not just for him, he realized. Facing a bleak future, he wondered if, for her sake more than his, he should sell his farm and move to another settlement.