His heart sank. He tore the article out of the paper, folded it, stuffed it into his pocket and then took another sip of the coffee. It tasted bitter, and he pushed the mug away. “I have to tell her.”
“Technically you don’t have to...”
Caleb pierced him with a glare.
“But you should.”
“Of course I should. I love her, as you so astutely pointed out, and love doesn’t keep secrets.” Already he’d accepted his feelings for Rachel. After fighting them for the past three weeks, it seemed ridiculous to continue doing so. If he didn’t care about her, this news wouldn’t hurt so badly.
“Listen, Caleb...” Gabriel waited until Caleb met his gaze. “This doesn’t mean it’s the end. It only means that you’re turning a corner, beginning a new chapter, walking into a fresh start.”
It was with those apt analogies ringing in his ears that Caleb stood, tossed his uneaten muffin in the trash, set the coffee cup in the to-be-washed tray and headed out into a cold and blustery December afternoon.
* * *
Rachel was hard at work finishing Caleb’s sweater. Since she’d discovered that she could knit—in fact, had a real talent for it—she’d moved at lightning speed making mittens and a scarf for Ida and a hat for John. All that was left was to complete Caleb’s sweater. She’d fussed over which yarn to buy but settled for a variegated gray—something conservative enough that he should approve of it.
Unlike the dress she’d been wearing when he’d first found her.
That thought brought a smile to her lips.
She’d considered him to be so arrogant and stuffy—more traditional than the old men who sat in the back on Sundays and gave pointed looks to the youngies. Caleb wasn’t like that, though. It was only that he cared deeply and worried about the future of his community—she’d learned those things for certain when he’d confronted her at the schoolhouse. The memory sent a river of warmth through her. Had he actually kissed her? What did it mean, if anything? And when were they going to talk about it, or was he going to pretend it had never happened?
But it had happened, and she understood that he’d crept around her defenses and was laying claim to her heart. At least that was how it felt. But how could she ever fall in love when she didn’t even know who she was? Correction, she knew who she was now, but she didn’t know who she had been. There was a difference.
“Your needles are a blur over there.” Ida plopped down across from her at the table and pulled out her crochet work.
“Remember when I tried crocheting?”
“You worked that yarn into the biggest knot I had seen in quite some time.”
“I couldn’t get the stitches right, couldn’t figure out how to hold the needle. It all felt so...wrong.”
“Obviously you were a knitter before.”
“And still am.”
“Indeed.”
A comfortable silence fell between them. It occurred to Rachel that although she’d longed to be home by Christmas, to at least know where home was, she was grateful to have this place with people who cared about her until the Lord saw fit to restore her memory.
Thinking of the Wittmer family caused her mind to drift back again to Caleb and the way he’d looked at her the night before and the kiss. It was only a kiss. She was acting like a youngie. She was acting starstruck and moony, when in fact she was a grown woman.
She was about to bring up the subject of beaus and kisses and love—Ida seemed to have a pretty level head regarding just about any subject—when Caleb burst through the back door.
Rachel was facing him, so she saw him skid to a stop, his mouth open as if he was about to speak. But then he snapped it shut again after he’d glanced at his mamm.
Ida looked over her shoulder. “Caleb. You’re home.”
“Ya. I’m home.” He moved toward the coffeepot, which happened to be on the portion of kitchen counter directly behind Ida. Eyebrows arched, mouthing something Rachel couldn’t understand, he motioned with his arms. He looked for all the world as if he was playing some bizarre game of charades, but she had no idea what he was trying to say. She shook her head and started to laugh.
“Am I missing something?” Ida asked, not bothering to look up from her project—which, if Rachel wasn’t mistaken, was a pair of blue mittens that would match her own scarf very well.
“Only Caleb trying to tell me some secret apparently.”
Caleb shook his head from side to side and held a finger up to his lips to silence her.
“Oops.”
“Oops?” Ida was smiling now.
“I think it must be a Christmas secret.”
“Ya, that’s exactly what it is.” Caleb clomped around the table, took the knitting from Rachel’s hands and pulled her to her feet. “Maybe you could get your coat and walk with me to the barn.”
“The barn, huh? Must be a pretty big secret.”
“Mamm, we need to go on a Christmas errand. We might be gone for an hour.”
“You two have fun. I have a few Christmas surprises of my own to tend to.”
But Rachel’s smile faded as Caleb pulled her across the yard and to the still-harnessed horse.
“Get in.”
“The buggy?”
“Ya.”
“This isn’t about Christmas?”
“Nein.”
Suddenly her feet wouldn’t move. She felt as if cold fingers had gripped her neck. Caleb opened the door and put his hand on her elbow. His expression was somber, pained almost. What had happened in the last few hours? What could it be that he wouldn’t share with his own mother?
The frigid December wind seemed to whip right through her coat, but being warm wasn’t her biggest concern.
“Tell me,” she whispered as she climbed up into the buggy.
He leaned forward and kissed her once—briefly, softly, and then he shut the door, jogged around the buggy and hopped in. His eyes met hers and Rachel felt as if she was falling, as if Caleb was all that stood between her and some giant wave about to sweep over them.
He pulled a page torn from The Budget out of his pocket. It had been folded several times, and he set it gently in her lap, pointing to an article midway down the page. As she picked up the paper, he fidgeted with the small heater in the buggy, cranking it all the way up.
“I don’t understand.” She stared down at the paper, trying to focus on a single line of print.
“It’s your family—your real family. I think I found them.”
She read the article once and then again. By the time she’d finished it the second time, tears stung her eyes and her throat felt as if it had closed up completely. She shook her head, noticed that Caleb had directed the horse away from the barn and they were moving down the lane.
“How did you find this?”
“I’ve been looking.”
She closed her eyes and tried to settle her emotions. Caleb’s hand on hers brought her back into the moment.
“At first I studied The Budget every night.”
“You were that eager to be rid of me?”
“I thought it was what you wanted—to go home.”
“It was what I wanted, and I’ve been watching, too...” She glanced back down at the article, noted the date at the top of the page. “This is today’s paper—I haven’t seen it yet.”
“Then later, I suppose I continued looking in spite of how I felt.”
“How you felt?”
“I was convinced that you couldn’t be happy here, and that the single thing that would bring you happiness was to know where you came from, to find your old life. And who could blame you? Of course you want to be reunited with your family.”
She nodded, trying to find words to express the conflicting emotions weighing on her heart—trying and failing.
He pull
ed into the small parking area next to the phone shack, but instead of getting out, he turned toward her and covered both of her hands with his.
“You’re shaking.”
“Am I?”
“Rachel, whether this is your family or not, you know you have a place here.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. He offered to wait in the buggy. “Nein. Come with me, please. I’d like you...to be with me.”
It was a typical phone shack, three feet by three feet, with a counter running along one wall. On top of that counter was a push-button phone, a recording machine, a pad of paper, a pen and, of course, a jar to put your money in. A hand-printed sign read Calls Now Fifty Cents.
Caleb fetched the coins from his pocket and deposited them in the jar.
Rachel’s hands were shaking too badly to punch in the number listed in the article, so Caleb did it for her. He again offered to step outside, to give her some privacy, but she pulled him back next to her and clutched his hand as the line on the other end began to ring.
A man answered on the fifth ring, and Rachel began to cry, tears running down her face like raindrops against a windowpane. “Ethan? Ethan, is that you?”
“Rachel?”
“Ya. Ya, it’s me.”
And then she collapsed onto the stool, the phone slipping to the counter as she covered her face with her hands and began to weep.
She was aware of Caleb picking up the phone, speaking to her brother, and then he said, “Ya. We’ll call back in ten minutes. Go and get them. Nein. We’ll wait. We’ll wait right here.”
It was perhaps the longest ten minutes of her life.
Caleb put his arms around her, held her until her shivering stopped, then thumbed the tears from her cheeks.
“It’s really them?” His voice was grave, and Rachel realized for the first time the effect this turn of events must be having on him.
“Ya. It is. That was—that was Ethan.”
“Your bruder who was bit by the snake.”
She nodded. “He’s my older bruder. Always acted as if he had to look out for me.”
“So you’re remembering?”
“Some. Not everything.” But suddenly she did remember... Ethan as well as her sisters—Clara and Becca and Miriam. She remembered, and she missed them so much that it felt as if her heart would burst.
“It’s been ten minutes. Are you ready?”
“Ya. As ready as I can be.”
She clutched Caleb’s left hand as he punched the number in with his right, and then she was hearing her mother and father on the line and all of the fear and loss and grief melted into nothing, like snow disappearing on a sunny day.
She’d found her family.
She was going home.
* * *
Caleb felt drained as they walked out of the phone shack and toward the buggy. The day had been saturated in emotion—disbelief, realization, love and now gratefulness and joy, and beneath all of that a little fear. Only hours before, he had realized that he loved Rachel, but he couldn’t ask her to stay. He understood then that he’d made up a story in his head—something along the lines of Rachel not wanting to go home, of her amnesia being the result of an unhappy home life there.
But what he’d just witnessed was the opposite of that.
He knew, without a doubt, that Rachel loved her family and that they loved her.
He knew that she was going home.
“They wanted to come and get me, to hire a driver to bring them down here and then carry us all back.”
“Nearly five hours, if I remember correctly. I’ve only been through Goshen a time or two.”
“I couldn’t let them do that.” She hugged her arms around herself, pulling her coat more tightly. “And tomorrow is Sunday. We don’t travel on Sunday unless it’s an emergency.”
“Rachel—”
“It’s okay. Really. Just knowing that they’re there, waiting for me, that’s what matters. I can take a bus on Monday.”
“Christmas Eve.”
“Ya.”
The snow had begun to fall again, leaving a fine layer on the top of her shoulders, on the borrowed coat. Night was coming, and in the remaining light he could just make out her expression—relief and joy and wistfulness.
He wanted to remember her this way, standing in the light snow, standing as if she was inside an Englisch snow globe. The snow falling, her cheeks rosy, her eyes studying him. It would have been a beautiful December evening, except for the breaking of his heart in two.
“Do you think I can get a bus ride on Christmas Eve? I told them I would, but do you think that will be possible? Tomorrow is the beginning of the holiday for most businesses. Do you think they’ll be running?”
“Sure and certain.” He attempted a confident smile as he helped her into the buggy. Once he joined her, he picked up the conversation where they’d left it. “Lots of folks going home for Christmas. The bus will leave at six o’clock Monday morning, like it always does. We should be able to—”
“We?” Her eyes widened and her mouth gaped open.
“You don’t think I’m just going to put you on a bus, send you on your way and leave you in the hands of a bunch of strangers.”
“I’m a grown woman, Caleb Wittmer.”
“That you are,” he mumbled. Forcing a smile, he said, “Rachel—”
“Yoder. My name is Rachel Yoder.” It was as if she’d discovered the cure for the common cold. She clasped her hands over her mouth in what seemed like disbelief. “No wonder the bishop couldn’t find who I was. Must be hundreds of Yoders in Indiana.”
“Thousands.”
“Tens of thousands.” They both smiled at the exaggeration, but it helped to ease the tension between them.
“What I meant to say was, Rachel Yoder, if you would allow me, I’d be happy to accompany you to Goshen.”
She was shaking her head before he finished. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Let me?”
“If you went with me on Monday, you wouldn’t get back home until Christmas Day or possibly the day after. I can’t let you leave your family. You’re—you’re all they have.”
“You know my mamm and dat pretty well by now. Do you really think they’d want me to send you off on the bus all alone? You don’t even have all of your memories back yet.”
“My memories are returning, though. Slowly they are returning.”
Caleb almost told her then—how he felt, how they should be together, that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. But the smile on her lips as she said those words—slowly they are returning—told him what he needed to know. Rachel wanted to be with her family. It would be wrong for him to stand in the way of that.
He was happy before he met Rachel, surely he could find that contentment again. Couldn’t he?
Caleb plastered on a smile, called out to Stormy and set them trotting toward home. He’d do the right thing. He’d see her home, and then he’d bury any feelings that he had for her.
He was a little concerned about how he would break the news to his mamm and dat, but he needn’t have worried. Rachel walked in the front door and practically flew into Ida’s arms, tears running down her face as she told her about the news article and the phone call and her family. Ida assured her that everything would be fine, and John patted her on the shoulder.
For a moment everyone was talking and saying things like “Gotte is gut” and “we knew they’d find you” and “just in time for Christmas.”
They all sat, and Caleb explained how he’d seen the article while he was with Gabriel, how he didn’t want to raise anyone’s hopes, so he’d made up the story about a Christmas errand.
“It was a Christmas errand of sorts,” his dat pointed out.
Ida pul
led Rachel into the kitchen, set her at the table and put on a kettle to boil.
“Your mamm, she thinks a mug of hot tea can solve just about everything.” His father had been sitting by the giant potbelly stove that warmed the sitting room and kitchen. Now he stood, fed the fire another log and turned to study his son.
“Answered prayers can be difficult things.”
“I suppose.”
“Have you told her?”
“Told her what?”
“That you care for her.”
“Why does it seem that everyone knew how I felt before I did?”
“It was pretty plain to those of us who love you.” John sat down and picked up the object he’d been whittling on.
“Is that an alpaca?”
“It is.”
“We have the real thing just outside the door.”
“Ah, but Rachel doesn’t, and she seems to have taken a liking to them.”
“So you were preparing for her to leave, before we even saw the news article.”
“She was never ours to have.” His dat peered over the reading glasses he wore whenever he worked on his small wood projects.
Caleb sank onto the couch, his eyes focused on the blazing fire, his heart somewhere else entirely. “I have no idea what to do.”
“If you want good advice, consult an old man.”
“Things were different for you, when you were courting Mamm. It was a simpler time.”
“You think so?”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Your mother, her people are over in Ohio...”
“I’m aware.”
“I’d gone to work on a mission project in the area, after a tornado had passed through.”
Caleb sat up straighter. “You never told me that.”
“You never asked.”
“How could I have when I didn’t know—”
“Your mamm, she was, she is the baby of the family. Everyone else had moved off. I didn’t think she’d want to leave her parents. She felt...responsible for them, I guess.”
“But you asked her.”
“I did. I was afraid to, like you’re afraid now. I told myself it would be better if she didn’t know how I felt, but your mamm already knew. She only needed to hear it from me.”
Amish Christmas Memories Page 14
