The Englisch Daughter

by Cindy Woodsmall

  “You’ve already talked to them?”

  “Ya, but I’m not presuming your answer, and neither are they. I needed to make sure the spiritual heads were okay with what I hoped to do.”

  “I understand that.”

  “I was at your uncle’s house, talking to him, when you called. And we both know that if I move here, our communities will talk as if we’re already engaged. But all I’m asking is for us to date.”

  “Your efforts mean a lot, and I’m happy your head and heart are clear on who you are and what you want.” She shook her head. “And I’m sorry, Chris. I really am—for both of us. You tempt me to follow my emotions and throw caution to the wind, but I can’t. Not even for you.”

  He’d known she wouldn’t rush to accept him, but he’d hoped for a hint of her being open to his request.

  They said nothing else. Soon he was driving into town, and he stopped in front of a hitching post. It was dark now, and most stores were closed. But the coffee shop at the end of the block had its lights on and the front door propped open, letting in fresh spring air.

  She opened her door and hopped out when he did. He put out the flame of the lantern on the buggy, and they walked down the sidewalk of the quiet town and into the café, two Amish people side by side, one with a laptop. Once inside, they went to a table and he opened the laptop and connected to the internet.

  The first message pinged with a date of February eighteenth. But it must have been sent later in the day after he’d connected to the internet at Doc Grant’s clinic. The text messages were downloading too fast for him to read any of them. He scooted the laptop to the side. “That’s going to take a while. How about a drink and pastry?”

  “Sure.”

  Once at the counter, Abigail ordered a decaf mocha latte, whatever that was, and a blueberry scone. He got a regular decaf and a cinnamon roll. They returned to the table with a number to set on it so their order could be delivered shortly. In the meantime, the laptop was making soft pings every few seconds.

  He had to push back against her answer. “When I stood there at the end of the fight, being told I could have a boxing career, I knew that life wasn’t me at all. Insight clicked, and it changed me. I saw the hows and whys of needing to think differently, not just concerning Dan. I saw the importance of not giving in to anything outside my faith no matter how good it feels. I saw the importance of not trying to fix a problem someone else created. It’s fine for you to be leery. Time will confirm the truth. But I’m all in, Abi, more so than if I’d never taken up boxing. I’d like to move to Mirth and prove it to you, even if it takes years. But my bishop won’t approve that unless your uncle agrees to it, and your uncle says I’m only welcome to become a part of the Mirth Amish if you’re okay with my moving here.”

  She lowered her eyes to the table, and the seconds slowly ticked by. “I’m sorry. I can’t. Why would you be willing to do that to yourself? Why would I agree to it? Your moving here would only make it harder on us over time. It would make us long to be together and yet we know it wouldn’t work.”

  He hadn’t expected her to put down a boundary line that kept him from living in Mirth, but maybe he should have. “If I lived in Mirth, it would give us a chance. I had wanted us to have that chance, but at the same time, I kept stepping back because of my obligation to Dan and my confusion over enjoying boxing. Give us a chance, a real one.”

  “We did have a real chance.”

  “Did we? I know I didn’t give us one.” The words rushed out, and suddenly he felt like a high-pressure salesman. “But what about you, Abigail? What’s the real reason you find something that raises a red flag about every man who is interested in you?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What are you saying, Chris?”

  His words weren’t coming out right. “I’ve said more than I should. Just do me a favor and think about what I said, okay?”

  “I don’t like what you’re implying. Just because you see the futility of boxing and I’m not falling all over you for giving it up, suddenly I’m the one with a problem?”

  “No. It’s fair and reasonable that I show myself to be stable and reliable. I’d want the same of you if the tables were turned. But maybe I have a lot of trust to earn from long before we even met.”

  “Seriously?” Anger tinged her voice. “Just who broke trust with me that you’re paying the price for?”

  He couldn’t retreat now. “Without telling me their names, think of five men you dated that you were the most attracted to. Men, for however briefly, you thought something along the lines of ‘I could build a lifelong relationship with him.’ ”

  “Okay, I have them in my mind.”

  “Think about the issue you had with each one.”

  A young man held out a large mug sitting on a plate. “A decaf mocha latte.”

  Abigail lifted it from him. “Thank you.”

  He set a regular decaf in front of Chris, and the two plates of pastry in the center. “Enjoy.” Then he disappeared.

  They sipped and ate in silence.

  Her mug was half-empty when she plinked it onto the table. “Is your plan to discount my red flags and prove you need to be given a chance?”

  Is that what he wanted to do? It took only a moment for him to know the truth. “Nee, Abi.” He brushed away crumbs from his cinnamon pastry that had fallen onto the table. “I want you to see the wall that’s formed around you. I can leave Mirth, and you can go on with your life. You should stay single forever if that’s what you want, but don’t deny love because you fear who a man is underneath or who he will become as time moves onward.”

  “I don’t have a wall. I see things in men. I feel the earth cracking under them.”

  “Some of the time. Elam likes you. He’s steady and kind. You knew his wife. Was he a good man?”

  “Ya, and he’s a great Daed.”

  “And so…”

  Anger sparked in her eyes, a “how dare you” look. “Some men are just too nice.”

  “Too nice.”

  “I know where you’re going with this, but being too nice indicates that he’s a people pleaser. Do you know what it does to a spouse to be married to someone who wants to please the world?”

  “Did his wife have that problem with him?”

  “I didn’t see it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist between them. People pleasers will put their lives in danger for some stranger, not thinking what it could do to their spouses and their children if they die on the altar of nice.”

  “There were a lot of answers you could’ve given about Elam. That you feel nothing toward him. That the age difference feels like too much. That you aren’t comfortable being a stepmom to his special-needs son. Those answers are about you and what you want. Instead you say he’s too nice, which makes him lacking. Do even the best of men come with a multitude of red flags?”

  Her beautiful face became stiff as she raised an eyebrow. “You know, I would’ve expected you of all people to understand following one’s gut instinct and trusting the red flags.”

  “Should your uncle’s wife have seen the red flags? He’s an addict who’s turned their lives upside down to minister to other addicts. Is what they have not worth the work to get there? Is the relationship between Jemima and Roy not worth the hard work and pain they’ve been through?”

  Her lips were pursed, and her stony expression conveyed her anger. “You think I’ve become spooked. Do you believe the red flags for each man were all made up in my mind?”

  “Not all, no. But too many. If you’ve never cared enough about any man for it to break your heart that you’re not with him”—he shrugged—“maybe there is a high and thick boundary wall around your heart.”

  “We can’t say the same of you? It’s been seven years since the relationship ended with your fiancée.”

  “Maybe
. But only you truly caught me from the first second I saw you, and when an issue came between us, we got past it within one night of working side by side.”

  “You yourself said there were things that could derail us. You knew it, but now our going separate ways is because I have a thick wall around my heart.”

  Maybe he was off track, or maybe she wasn’t ready to see it. “Okay, Abi. I hear you.”

  She scoffed and pointed at the computer. “The laptop has stopped pinging.”

  Chris took his cue and shifted the laptop. He ran a search for various words, skimming text messages and emails, but it was hard to concentrate. He could feel that Abigail’s eyes were glued to him.

  She tossed a wadded-up napkin onto the table. “If you were right about this and I realized it for the first time, maybe you just opened the door to my going back to one of the five other men and trying to make it work.”

  Chris steadied his racing heart. She was a boxer throwing punches to knock him off balance. “You could. That’s true. But it’s a very unkind thing to say to me. Ya?”

  Her face flushed, and she seemed to be struggling with a myriad of emotions. He’d hit a nerve.

  A bit of humor was needed. “But I won’t call you out on being unkind or say anything about the fact that you can be a hard woman at times, Abigail Graber. Nope. I won’t say those things to you.”

  She smiled, but her hands were trembling, and unshed tears brimmed. “Denki.”

  It rattled him to see her beginning to realize something she hadn’t known about herself, and he wanted to wrap her in his arms. But now wasn’t the time.

  She clutched her hands together, probably to stop the trembling. “I remember”—she cleared her throat—“the first time I said to myself that I’d never let a man hurt me the way those women at the recovery center were hurt. I was twelve, and I’ve renewed that vow at least once weekly since then. As I talked to the women or listened to the men tell their stories of the stupid and mean things they had done while drunk, my heart was cut out time and again, and I determined never to go down that same path. How did I not see it until now?”

  “I—”

  “Of course you don’t know.” She pointed at the computer. “Get back to work.”

  Despite wanting to reach across the table and take her hand, he was unsure what to do with all she was feeling, so he returned his attention to the computer.

  He soon uncovered texts from Tiffany about money, Heidi, and adoption with four different people. He leaned back in the chair, scrolling. The texts to the potential adoptive parents sounded sincere and stable, but the ones between her and her friends about those prospective parents told the real story. Tiffany intended to sell the baby to the highest-paying family.

  Nausea rolled. “Abi, you’ll want to see this for yourself.”

  Abi moved next to him on the bench seat and read what was on the screen. “I hurt for Roy. He was trying his best to do right by Tiffany while juggling work and family, and she spent her days calculating how best to manipulate him. Where is her conscience and humanity, not just toward herself but for her baby?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she’s so wounded and twisted she’ll never get it.”

  “I’m beginning to understand how wounds shape people.”

  “I know they can change us and knock us completely off course. From what Roy’s said, in Tiffany’s case maybe because the wounds were more intentional to her as a child, they run deeper. I fear that one day when it’s too late to fix what she’s done, she’ll see it for what it is.”

  Abigail moved back to her seat. “I’ll text Roy and let him know that what we were looking for did download.”

  The swoosh of the text being sent was followed a moment later by her phone ringing. She answered and talked to her brother. When she ended the call, she asked, “Do we have what we need?”

  “Not yet. We have to get to an office store before they close. We need a place that sells external hard drives so we can back up everything on this computer and put it away for safekeeping, and we need to print copies of some of this.”

  “There’s a Staples less than two miles from here.” Abigail stood.

  Chris picked up the laptop, and they left the coffeehouse and walked toward the rig. They went to the store and spent more than an hour sorting through items and making copies. Outwardly they stayed focused on what they needed, but Abigail was eerily quiet. Her fingers trembled as they worked, and Chris knew she was deep in thought. They gathered the papers, paid for the items, and left the store.

  They were halfway to his carriage when Abigail stopped. He followed suit.

  She raised a brow. “There isn’t another man I’d go back to.”

  Warmth ran through him. “Gut, Abi. The first time I saw you, I was awestruck, heard music, couldn’t believe my eyes, and certainly couldn’t speak.” He smiled. “It’s so cliché and corny that it’s embarrassing to admit it.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever rendered a man speechless before, although I’ve been known to annoy a few so much they couldn’t shut up.”

  “I can understand that,” he teased.

  She laughed and pushed his shoulder. A moment later she shrugged. “You’re right about the wall inside me. I think I’ve known for years it was there, but I didn’t realize I walled out all men, just the suspicious ones, which apparently is all men. And I don’t think it’s anywhere close to coming down.”

  “Ya. It might take some time.”

  “Maybe a lot of time.”

  “That’s fine too.”

  She nodded and started walking again. She slid her hand into his. In that moment, all of life seemed to make sense. His mistakes and regrets. And hers.

  She squeezed his hand. “You should live in Mirth.”

  He tugged on her hand, stopping her from walking.

  She smiled and pulled him close. “You should,” she whispered. Their lips met, and he knew this was where he was meant to be: beside Abigail Graber for the rest of his days.

  Thirty-Two

  With Roy and four of their five blessings out the door, Jemima picked up the stack of printouts. She knew enough without actually reading the messages since Abigail had given them an overview last night. Wasn’t that plenty? Jemima had resisted the urge to read the documents last night and today.

  She and Roy had gone to see their bishop last night to tell him the necessary information about what was going on. Much of the situation was private, meant to be kept between Roy, Jemima, Abigail, Chris, and Roy’s parents. It was too easy for a personal story to be shared when it shouldn’t be and get twisted and become idle gossip and speculation.

  Heidi’s cooing shifted into fussing, and Jemima peeked at the clock. Right on schedule. It was time for her to nurse and take a nap. Jemima set the stack of papers on the kitchen table and moved to the portable crib. “Hey, sweet girl.” Heidi thrust her legs, and her little arms jerked about with excitement as she tried to make her voice work on demand. Her little lips formed a perfect O and she cooed.

  “Ya.” Jemima grinned. “Tell me all about it. I’m listening.”

  Heidi studied her and then smiled. Jemima picked her up. “Kumm on, little one.” She cradled her in the crook of her arm and unfastened the nursing fold in the bodice of her dress. Before sitting, she grabbed the stack of documents.

  Should she read them? Abigail said they were unnerving on multiple levels for more reasons than she could comprehend. She got Heidi attached and nursing, still wavering on whether to read them.

  Jemima closed her eyes, praying, and in that moment, she knew she needed to read as many of the documents as she could before Tiffany arrived, which would be within the hour. She began reading, and her heart seemed to stop and to pound at the same time. Tiffany’s manipulation of Roy was deliberate. Her actions cut Jemima’s heart like a butcher’s k
nife. The strangest part was that Tiffany had some deep-running feelings for Roy, but when he didn’t return them, she turned mean and devious. This woman played him for a fool, using him for gain while he did his best to honor God.

  But what tore at Jemima’s emotions even more was what she—as his wife—had put him through. The angry words. The mistrust. The resentment over trivial things that happened at the start of their marriage, as if he didn’t have any reason to have his own list of grievances. Shame pressed in on her as tears fell.

  The back door opened. “Hey, the older four are settled in at Uncle Mervin’s. Mamm and Daed were already there to help out, and they’re praying for us.”

  Jemima nodded and pulled tissues from the hidden pocket of her apron.

  “Jem?” Roy crouched beside her rocker.

  “I have so much to make up to you.”

  He looked at the documents. “We have much to make up to each other, and I thank God we’ll get the chance.”

  They had a second chance. Gratefulness flooded her as she thought about how Roy could have died the night Tiffany and her friends put a drug in his drink. “No matter how today goes, I don’t want to hold on to anger with Tiffany. I want to forgive and be forgiven. Seems to me each one of us has fallen short in this mess, and I’m not interested in throwing stones or holding on to anger.”

  “I agree.”

  She caressed his cheek. “I love you, Roy Graber.”

  “I know.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Your love was a huge part of what fueled your anger with me when you learned the truth, so I take solace in that.”

  “But it was so much more than that.”

  “Jem, it’s okay. You’d sacrificed every dream for my dream, and for a season you thought it had turned out to be a nightmare.” He smiled. “But we’re going to work on fulfilling your dreams and Abigail’s dreams too.”

  As much as she wanted that, and she really did, she also knew that it would require a sacrifice of juggling family needs around her work schedule. “It won’t be easy.”

  “One of the things I’ve learned this past year is that whatever we choose to do sacrifices something else. Being dishonest to spare hurting you in the moment sacrificed trust later on. If we’re going to give up something this next year, and we will, let’s give up some of my work time with the horse farm so you can have one or maybe two days each week to run the food truck. When we’re ready, we’ll add days and be flexible and make it work.”