“That’s because she has a lead foot, driving like a bat out of—”
“Cameron…” Ariana pointed at her.
Cameron waggled her eyebrows, smiling.
“Quill, this is my sister, Cameron.”
He reached out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Same here, and I was totally kidding about her driving fast.”
Ariana heard chatter coming from the house. “Is your family here?”
“Yeah.”
Without waiting for an invitation, she headed toward the house, drawn to the little ones inside like a Mamm to her cooing infant. The sight of them reminded her of how much she missed her nieces and nephews back home.
Cameron stayed beside her, and she leaned in toward Ariana. “I never say this about someone as old as he is, but wow,” she whispered. “He’s like handsome times a hundred. Just wow.”
Ariana glanced behind her to see Quill, but she wasn’t sure why. Was it to confirm what Cameron had said or to see if he’d overhead her? “What difference does it make how he looks?”
“Oh, it matters. You know it does.” Cameron grabbed her arm and whispered, “He’s definitely in there with the best-looking GQ men, right?”
Ariana stopped just outside the doorway. “Children are, by far, more adorable than any adult.” She watched a little boy on the floor as he devoured a plate of fruit. She allowed the boy’s preciousness to wash over her. Two girls were holding hands, dancing round and round as they sang. She and Susie used to do that for what seemed like hours.
She turned her head, speaking to Quill, who was right behind them. “I miss the little ones so painfully much. Katie Ann won’t even remember me, but time will heal that…if Salome doesn’t leave.”
Quill simply nodded. She’d wanted him to assure her that Salome would stay. But he couldn’t. No one could.
She turned back and spotted the toddler again. She looked up and singled out Regina. “Is he yours?” It was a reasonable question since the little boy had been on Regina’s hip when Ariana first saw her a week ago.
Regina nodded and came toward her. “Our youngest, Gavin.”
Ariana moved into the room and crouched, careful not to get too close and scare him. “He’s entirely too cute.”
Gavin grabbed a piece of strawberry out of his mouth and offered it to her. Ariana was tempted to laugh, but she kept herself in check so she didn’t startle him. “Is that for me?” She held out her hand.
Gavin gave it to her.
“Thank you.”
Gavin pushed his hand toward her again, palm up, wanting it back.
Ariana chuckled. She’d figured he would want it back, and she gave it to him. “I’m guessing you’re somewhere between fifteen and eighteen months old.”
“Fifteen. He and Quill share a birthday.”
Ariana’s heart felt lighter than it had since leaving Summer Grove. “So you were born on your uncle’s twenty-fourth birthday. Fun stuff.” She rose. “He is so cute, Regina.”
Regina smiled broadly, looking as if she was just shy of grabbing Ariana around the neck and hugging her.
Ariana motioned to Cameron. “This is my sister, Cameron.”
The adults spoke and nodded, as did Cameron.
“Come.” Regina put her arm around Ariana’s shoulders. “Let me introduce you to everyone.”
All the children except Gavin circled in closer to Regina, wanting to be introduced. Regina appeared to begin with the youngest and worked her way to the eldest. Ariana thought of something fun to say to each one, and the children responded well. She glanced at Quill, and he seemed to be enjoying this as much as she was.
“This”—Regina put her hands on a boy’s shoulders—“is Logan. He’s nine and the oldest of Berta’s grandchildren.”
Logan glanced from Ariana to Quill. “I never knew Uncle Quill could string that many words together until I saw him talking to you.”
“Really?” Ariana raised a brow at Quill. “I knew that about him since I was your age. See, the trick is getting him started, which is easy if you make him angry.”
Quill rolled his eyes, but he was amused. She could see it in his eyes. It felt good to be doing well enough that she could interact in this way.
“You’re an adult, Ari,” Quill said, “and there’s a roomful of children. Try to be a good influence.”
“He’s right.” She nodded. “It would be completely wrong to try to anger your uncle, mostly because who wants to hear him when he’s angry?”
Logan laughed. “You should keep this one, Uncle Quill.”
“Life advice from a nine-year-old,” Regina said. “Ariana, this is Piper…”
Quill’s brothers and sisters-in-law began stepping forward, and Ariana met each one. She greeted Dan even warmer than the others, hoping to convey that the baggage between them had been hauled off.
The children started to play games as Ariana continued to meet the adults.
Finally the last brother stepped forward. “Elam.”
She shook his hand.
“So how are you adjusting?” Elam asked.
“To the news of being Englisch and my new temporary life?” Ariana asked. “Similar to a toddler during a transition—lots of tantrums and tears.” She smiled at Cameron. “But it has some unexpected perks.” She turned to watch the children play. Would life ever have that kind of joy again?
Piper poured water from a plastic jug into a cup. “You’re in a room of people who, in one way or another, had a high-magnitude earthquake hit their lives, Ariana.” Piper gave the cup to her. “Quill had it the worst, but none of us did well at the start. Quill has said precious little about you, but from what I can see, I think you’re doing great.”
“That’s nice of you.” Ariana’s eyes searched his, wanting to know. The worst? Why the worst?
Regina offered Ariana and Cameron a sandwich, and they each took one. The brothers asked general questions about her car and driving and what grade Cameron was in. It seemed they wanted to keep the conversation light.
While Piper asked Cameron about her tennis shoes, Ariana overheard Dan talking to Quill. Dan said that Quill’s sisters-in-law had turned his room in the trailer upside down and that Frieda had searched his home. Apparently a set of plans was missing, causing trouble on the job. Dan seemed to be assuring Quill it was okay that he hadn’t been able to fix the issue.
Quill nodded and shrugged as if it wasn’t important, but Ariana felt sure it was. She was bad at reading herself, so was she reading him right? She doubted it. If she didn’t know herself, how could she know him?
When Quill finished talking to Dan, he made his way toward her. “You about ready to start work?”
She could be, but first she wanted to talk more about that night at the bar. If she thought it would do any good, she would ask about the missing plans. But his response would most likely be a polite refusal to answer. Still, it was possible the topic would come up as they worked and he’d open up a bit. That was about the most she could hope for.
She put her unfinished sandwich back on the paper plate and carried it to an opening where a window would be installed. Quill followed her.
Cameron remained near the table, talking with Quill’s family. She seemed to be enjoying herself as she animatedly talked while others laughed and injected a few words here and there. Ariana hoped she wasn’t regaling them with events of her life from the last two weeks.
Ariana fidgeted with the edge of the plate. “That night at the bar, what made you suspect my drink had alcohol? I was the one consuming it, and I didn’t know.”
“That’s out of the blue.”
“Was I slurring my words without realizing it?”
“No.” He propped his palm on a stud. “My gut said something was off.”
“It bothers me that I don’t know myself better. I should’ve realized what was happening before you did. I want to change that, to know myself better, but I have no idea how.”
�
��When was the first time you thought something was amiss with Frieda and me?”
“I didn’t.”
“You did. You had to. There had to be a moment, however quick, of thinking something was a little off.”
“I trusted you and her. I never—”
“And Brice wanted you to give him the benefit of the doubt, and you gave it to him. Nicholas wanted you to accept that he has full parental rights over you, and you gave that to him. I wanted you to stay oblivious to what I was planning with Frieda, and you gave that to me. If you’re going to know and trust yourself, you can’t willingly accept what’s being fed to you. Don’t lose yourself under the mounds of what others want of you.”
“So in your eyes I’m wrong all the time.”
“Not even close to true. You have the best heart of anyone I know. You’re smart and kind and disciplined in your responses to others and in your efforts to obey and honor God. Few come close to those attributes, especially not me. But you’re too giving when it comes to what others want of you, and because of that, you give up the ability to truly know yourself because you’re so determined to make others happy. How can you do what’s best for you when you’re running in circles for others?”
“What about submission to authority, obedience to parents, sacrificing for others, and dying to self?”
“All good things in their place, but you need to decide what that place is. What about when Jesus and His disciples didn’t submit to authority? What about when Jesus said, ‘Let the dead bury their dead,’ talking about a man’s father? What about living unto God and making sure what you’re dying to is what God wants, not man?”
“You know that’s not what we’ve been taught.”
“But it’s not opposed to it. It’s simply a wider, more encompassing view of God and the Word. Now think. When was the first time you knew something was going on with Frieda and me?”
She wrestled with the offense pumping through her. No one prodded her or got under her skin like Quill. Memories of him freeing a caged bobcat that had been illegally captured came to mind. He had been fearless in finding a way to rescue it and return it to the wild. Quill seemed to see her in a similar way, as being held captive in this area of her life, and he couldn’t help but say what needed to be said to free her.
She studied the patch of woods outside the window, and after replaying dozens of memories of him and Frieda, one surfaced. “You and she were in the old shed when I came to your home one day and, by accident, realized where you were. I decided to sneak up on you and jump out, but when I did, you both seemed really worried about something.”
“Bingo. We tried to act as if our shock and fear were from you startling us, but we were trying to have a private conversation about leaving the Amish without Mamm or you overhearing us.”
Other memories started coming to her. “There were a few times that felt weird and off.”
“There were.”
“I just assumed I was reading things wrong.”
“Never discount anything your senses are telling you, not at first. Let the information sink in, and trust your ability to reason out the truth. If you’re wrong, that will become evident soon enough. Usually when one part of us is telling another part of us what’s going on, it’s a gift from God. Use it.”
“Brandi said today that if I could find my voice and use it with Nicholas, he’d likely hear me. But my voice is supposed to reflect what God wants, not what I want.”
Quill slowly shook his finger at her. “You know what you need?” His eyes reflected hope. “You need a new view of the heavens.”
“Of the heavens?”
“Ari, our God is so much bigger than we can grasp. As children we saw Him as if we were inside a snow globe and He was just outside it, on His throne, out of sight, looking down at us. For those of us raised to believe in a jealous, angry God, we see Him with a frown, scowling. And as all Amish know, being frowned on is one tiny step from being shunned.”
She imagined God watching her and others with a continual look of displeasure, but perhaps worse than that…“It does seem as if He’s just outside my snow globe world.”
“A great place to start changing your view of God is where you can see the great expanse of who He is through the concrete images of His creations—a planetarium.” He glanced at his watch. “I have a favorite one that is open today and giving a program designed for families. It’s open until five, and it’s less than forty minutes from here. Are you game?”
“You said you had a lot of work to do today.”
“I still have a few tricks up my sleeve for finishing the work when we get back. Besides, if going there helps you one tiny fraction as much as it helped me, that’s far more important.”
He would do that for her? She should give him an award for being the most confusing person in her life. “This much I know about myself: you regularly offend me and honor me within the same few minutes.”
“Good thing for me some of your strengths are humility, resilience, and a desire to make peace. Will you go? We can take Cameron too.”
“Resilience?” she scoffed, positive that a resilient person wouldn’t have been an emotional train wreck the last few weeks.
But he seemed so sure it would help her, and God knew she needed her thinking realigned before she drove herself up the wall and before she was crushed under the weight of feeling isolated and the weight of judging people—both the strangers she needed to reach out to in love and those who cared about her.
“I came here to be on the job site, working in whatever way I can so I could earn a day with Rudy.”
“We can still get your time in. You only have to do a few hours, and we set up some lighting days ago, so we can accomplish whatever is needed after it’s dark. We can’t go to the planetarium after hours.”
If she was correctly using the cues Quill had been talking about—trusting her senses, noticing body language and tone—he thought she needed to see the planetarium. “Okay, but what got my mind on this whole ‘understanding myself and others’ topic is that I overheard a little of what Dan said to you, and your reaction to him didn’t seem to match how you really felt.”
He ran his hand through his dark-blond, Englisch-cut hair. He nodded as if agreeing with himself that he could tell her. “You nailed it.”
“Since you know absolutely everything about my life, you could tell me about it.”
His expression indicated she had a point. “Okay.” He glanced at his watch. “But let’s talk in the car.”
“In front of Cameron?”
“I’ll deal with it. We need to go.”
They said quick good-byes, and the three of them got in Quill’s car. His was an older, more worn model than hers, and she assumed it had come with a lot of sacrifice and a large payment. She’d paid nothing for hers, and it dawned on her that, despite the emotional toll of the last few weeks, shifting lifestyles from being poor to being upper middle class had been unexpectedly easy.
The three chitchatted about minor things until Ariana asked Quill what he and Dan had been talking about.
Quill turned on his blinker and merged onto a highway. “I installed the wrong electrical panels and wiring in a lot of houses. A lot. And it’s costing Schlabach Home Builders money out of pocket, long hours to make things right, and a promotion.”
“Whether building barrels in your Daed’s cooperage or helping someone leave the Amish, you plan well, triple-check everything, and carry out the goal with caution. That much I know about you without any reservation. So what was going on that you weren’t being you?”
He shrugged. “Everyone makes mistakes, regardless of their natural tendencies.”
“Children laugh. Birds fly. You focus.”
He tapped the steering wheel with his thumbs, looking as if he was deciding what to divulge. His hesitancy to speak up and the timing of his rewiring the homes began to add up.
“So while you were in the thick of helping me get the café and d
iscovering the truth about Skylar and me, you made a mistake.”
“It’s not your fault, if that’s what you’re driving at.” He exited the highway and turned left at the end of the ramp. “Yeah, that’s the timing, but the situation is more complicated than just a mistake. Updated plans are always put in flat files and permit boxes, and I think the project manager didn’t get them in those places when he should have. He initialed—signed off on—my set of older plans, and now he’s denying he did. Maybe he’s forgotten. Whatever is going on, since I’ve misplaced my set, I have no proof.”
“Isn’t there always proof of some kind, a trail of e-mails or texts?”
“Normally there would be, but I was working odd hours and not asking questions via text or e-mail. I had one conversation with Sanders, the project manager, right before heading out to Summer Grove.”
“The busyness and stress of that time for you is just more proof to me that we were on that Thunderhawk roller coaster together.” Ariana sighed.
“It was worth it, Ari.” Quill shifted.
“I appreciate that’s how you feel, but what’s hard for me to get my head around is that your cool, calm demeanor has convinced me more than once that my turmoil didn’t rattle you at all.”
“Anyway”—he held one palm up as if losing his patience—“changing the subject to something more useful than feelings—”
“You don’t mind us talking about feelings. But I’m starting to realize you don’t like it when we talk about your feelings.”
“If you don’t stop”—Quill pointed a finger at her—“I’m going to turn this buggy around and take you back home.”
Ariana burst into laughter. His Mamm had said that to them once when Quill, her brother, and Ariana were cutting up and out of control while she was taking them to town. It had caused the two boys to become rowdier, and Ariana had laughed harder, unintentionally egging them on.
“What buggy?” Ariana ran her hands across the dash.
Quill grinned, looking as if he was truly glad to be away from the job site.
“You know,” Cameron piped up, “this is more entertaining than TMZ.”
Quill gave a quizzical look to Ariana.
Fraying at the Edge Page 20
