by Sicily Yoder
I was partly to blame. I drank the alcohol. The bitter taste and smell of alcohol was getting stronger as were the memories of the past. She was alone, cold, betrayed by two Amish men.
Elijah and Jeremiah.
“Bobby, you were right: there was no man on earth with a heart like yours,” Rachael uttered. She had to admit that she would have married Bobby one day if the racing industry hadn’t lured him in. His familye was known for integrity and a faith like no other Amish family. Martin would have been a wunderbar surname for her. Why, Gott, why didn’t it work out? Rachael felt guilty for pouting, but sadness overtook her.
Rachael’s Twin Schwester Hope came around the corner, spooking her. “Get out of here! What are you doing! You’re not supposed to be within 500 feet of any of us!”
“I want the babies. You’ve disgraced our family name like I had done, so we are now even,” Hope said rudely, and Rachael smacked the nurse’s call station. “Get out of here, now! I’m calling the nurse; she’ll get you out of my room.”
The nurse’s voice rattled over the crackling intercom, “May I help you?”
“Hope is in here, and she’s not supposed to be. Please get her out of here!”
The nurse laughed. “How rude! She’s harmless.”
Hope swayed over the bed, reached down, and felt her sister’s forehead. “I’m sorry about Grandfather. He was a good man; a man of God.”
Rachael was scared as she had always been since the day her sister had left home.
Handcuffed.
Rachael gathered the white sheet around her chest and quivered. “Just leave me alone. I don’t want to be here. I am so dizzy I could pass out. And you’ve come back—”
Rachael hung her head, under the spell of intimidation, as Hope’s six-foot-one body leaned over her, eyes cold and to-the-point as they had always been. An eerie heaviness lingered in the room, one that resembled the past. Twin schwesters. A feud. A raging fire. The police.
Betrayal.
Rachael huffed. “You’re not leaving, are you? Let’s hurry up, and we’ll go see him. He’s here in the ER, but you must leave then.”
Hope tipped her chin, her nostrils flared. “I’m not here to see him. He hated me since I started the fire in the barn.”
Rachael’s brow tightened. “And burned our whole farm down to the ground?”
“You built it back,” Hope said dryly, and Rachael rolled her eyes.
Rachael wouldn’t let her ease her way out of responsibility for such a careless act, one that weakened Grossdaedi’s heart. “That’s what we always do; barn-raisings, but whole farms? A new milich haus, a new work shed, a new two-story dwelling, and two new barns! You should have thought when you’d started drinking in the barn!”
“You didn’t think before you took the beer from Elijah in the quilt shop?” Hope’s eyes deepened. “Well, I didn’t think either! Now, I’m here to help you! You can’t take care of three little girls! I’m taking the babies.” Hope’s eyelashes flickered, seemed to annoy her. The confrontation rocked her nerves, but she was on a mission. “I will get those girls. You’re the only thing in my way!”
Rachael gagged and motioned for the basin. “Hurry!”
“Here it is. You need Zofran.” Hope said as Rachael leaned over the basin.
Nothing. Her body wouldn’t even let her throw up. Fate was cruel. Life was cold, bitter, and even scary, but looking at unstable Hope, anyone would be scared straight. Hope had violent mood swings and had hated being a Christian since she’d gotten her heart broken by the Bishop’s son.
“You’re acting like the rest of the family since I was placed in The Bann,” Hope said firmly as she opened a saltine and handed it to her sister. “Crackers will help the nausea; I deliver babies for a living.”
“You’re not a doctor!” Rachael snapped, and Hope stepped back. She seemed hurt by Rachael’s words. Rachael wasn’t going to apologize. Hope had a very dangerous mind and had been in and out of juvenile homes after being put in The Bann. It was Rachael’s place to reinforce reality. “Doctors go to schul for years.”
“More than the Amish,” Hope snickered, and Hope pointed to the door as the nurse walked in.
“Leave, Hope!”
She refused, on a mission to overcome her bad reputation. “The Amish hated me because I hated myself and couldn’t understand God.”
“We don’t hate anyone, Hope, and you know that!” Rachael’s tone lowered to try to hide her words from the nurse who was draining an IV fluid bag in the sink. “The past has been forgotten.”
Had it really? Dread entered Rachael’s chest. The past still flamed, secrets burning, but still there. It wasn’t how Christ would have done it.
A mean gaze washed over Hope’s face. “Let’s see if you say that when you see what Brandy’s will says,” Hope turned and said ruefully, “I was with her when she signed the will; I know what it says.”
Appearing to have been eavesdropping, the nurse turned and stared at Hope. “Dr. Zook, you were Brandy’s best-friend, weren’t you?”
Hope turned and grinned at Rachael, “Jah, I made it my point to befriend her when I found out my other half was just like me—”
“Full of secrets.”
Rachael set up in the bed in shock as Hope turned and left the room. Was this really real? Had she just woke up from a bad, blurry dream? Stars flickered before her eyes and her stomach tilted. “Nurse, I need some medicine for my stomach.”
“I’ll get you some Zofran,” the nurse said, and Rachael lay down, hoping she’d had a nightmare.
“That was my evil twin. I can’t believe she was here,” Rachael uttered as she massaged her throbbing head. “May I have something for pain, too?”
The nurse was quiet for a moment as she hung the IV piggyback bag. “I’ll have to ask Dr. Zook. She’s the doctor working tonight.”
“What?” Rachael was confused. The last time she’d seen her twin sister was the day she’d been escorted off the property by two Indiana State Troopers. Had she really had time to go to medical school? It couldn’t be so. Rachael’s head spun. “Is she really a doctor?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t normally work here unless we have a huge emergency,” The nurse said as she marked the IV bag. “It’s been a hard day.”
“Yes, my grandfather is gone; he is dead,” Rachael opened her eyes and looked up at the nurse, “I hope she wasn’t the one that was working when my grandfather was brought in.”
The nurse’s brow wrinkled. “You mean ‘our grandfather?”
Rachael couldn’t believe that the nurse was including Hope. How could she? She didn’t know the havoc that the girl had wrecked on her family; nonetheless, she had to be nice. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Yes, our grandfather, my and Hope’s grandfather.”
“My grandfather,” the nurse uttered as she handed Rachael a twin pack of crackers. “I’m the one that bailed Hope out of jail after she sat the fire.”
Rachael sat straight up in bed, a horrified look on her face. “You’re Margaret Zook? You don’t work here either; you are a traveling nurse in Indianapolis. Why are you here?”
“I married an Indiana State Police Detective from Middlebury a year ago.” Margaret smiled warmly. “Come to the former Amish family reunions, and you’ll learn a thing or two.”
Rachael bit her bottom lip and debated on making a run out of the hospital. How on earth could Hope and Margaret be at the same place at the same time during such a horrible moment? It just couldn’t happen.
But it had.
“I am okay now. Can you please take my IV out? I want to go home.”
“You haven’t seen our grandfather yet.”
Rachael’s brow wrinkled. “But you have, and you know who—”
Rachael started sobbing. How could she even think to leave before identifying Grossdaedi’s body? Was family drama that important?
It wasn’t.
“I am sorry, Margaret. Let me take some of that nausea medicine and maybe a pa
in pill and I’ll be ready to see him.”
Margaret smiled sweetly. “Sure. Now, get some rest. We may be outsiders now, but we still care about you.”
Rachael closed her eyes, her body shivering. Maybe she’d go to sleep and wake up and see that this was just a delusion. She hoped so as she closed her eyes and ran her left hand over her aching stomach.
******
Elijah entered the drug store in search of some ginger gum and ginger ale. Before long, he’d be shopping for cloth to make diapers and baby wipes. Of course, Rachael’s mamm would be the ones to make them. None of the menner in the community sewed. It was a woman’s job, one that she loved.
He grabbed the ginger gum and found a cold bottle of ginger ale in the stand alone cooler near the check-out. “I only need a ginger ale,” he’d heard that phrase a hundred times during his career as a biker. Beer always created a nauseous feeling and a throbbing headache the next day. Beer is bad.
Elijah was glad he’d never drink another.
Ever.
He’d been held at gun-point, interrogated, and accused of kidnapping his own precious twins. My own kids. I’d never hurt them. How crazy! And to think that they had been set up by a serial baby snatcher made it even worse. Just the thought of that quilt shop made his stomach knot up.
When it was his turn to pay, he handed the cashier a twenty-dollar bill and said, “Keep the change.”
He walked outside just in time to see the Miller boys, who were in Rumspringa, make a left at a red light and sideswipe an eighteen wheeler. What were they thinking!
Elijah ran over and saw that the side of the Millers’ car was smashed, but the boys looked okay. Praise God! Elijah leaned into the driver’s window. “You all know not to make a turn on red?”
The driver said, “We had the music cranked up too loud!”
Elijah frowned and shook his head as sirens could be heard from a distance. “What does music have to do with a red light?”
“We were jamming!”
“Jamming can get you killed.” Elijah smelled gas, and he knew that couldn’t be good. He stayed with the boys. Help was on the way. Elijah craned his neck over the traffic to see red lights flashing over the hill.
“No, our hero won’t be coming to save us,” the passenger uttered to his older brother.
“You’re talking about Ben Zook?”Elijah knew they were.
“Jah, we miss him,” the driver said, and Elijah turned his head back to the flashing lights, tears in his eyes. Ben Zook had been his whole world, his closest male friend, and it seemed that he’d left a mark on the whole Amish community.
“You all were close, weren’t you?” the driver said, and Elijah nodded.
“I heard Bobby and Ben were close, too,” said the passenger.
“No, I was the only one close to him,” Elijah said bluntly.
“He drove a race car with Bobby at Indy,” the passenger said.
Elijah laughed. “You’re so funny. Did you hit your head on the window?” Elijah looked and saw the cracked window right when the passenger passed out, beer bottle in his lap. A familiar smell rose up from the car.
Alcohol.
The smell that ruined lives, completely changed them, and this would be the case today as the medics jumped out and Elijah stepped back, second guessing his desire to be a First Responder. Could he face the horror of alcohol every day?
Ben Zook had.
Could he follow in his footsteps?
CHAPTER FOUR
The three women, hands extended around each other’s waists, stood before one of the most humble men that Shipshewana had ever known. Just the three of them, in the ice-cold ER, two taller than the middle one, reminisced about the extraordinary life the man lived.
For God.
The middle one donned a dark cape dress and white prayer kapp, the others with short, styled hair and designer make-up.
Although they had chosen very different paths in life, they shared one common thing.
They loved him.
His lifeless body was going nowhere, according to one, who had become an atheist. His body did not matter to the other two, for his reward was in heaven. Despite the different beliefs, different career paths, and even their different personalities, for this one moment, they were sisters.
Again.
United under an ice-cold moment of death.
“I’ll miss him so much,” Rachael said, and Dr. Zook turned and drew her close to her chest. Rachael wept in her arms as Margaret reached over from the left and straightened Rachael’s prayer kapp. “Thanks, Margaret. You still remember how to stick the straight pins in,” Rachael giggled. She was glad her two schwesters were there.
“You never forget how to do that, do you,” Margaret looked at Dr. Zook. “I bet Hope remembers getting stuck by a couple of straight pins.”
“Yes, once you’ve pinned those on—” Dr. Zook turned her head. She seemed to be crying.
Hope may have been a doctor, but Rachael wasn’t calling her “evil twin,” a doctor. She’d known her as Hope all her life. “Hope, it’s okay. He loved you; he just wanted to see you come back home.”
“And be a Christian?” Dr. Zook turned, tears streaming down her face. The happy sisterly reunion was over. The drama was back. “I wasn’t good enough because I was not a Christian. But look at what you, Jeremiah, and Elijah done!” Dr. Zook scanned Rachael’s trembling body. “What you did was illegal, and you didn’t have to pay like I did for setting the fire.”
Rachael refused to continue the drama at her late grandfather’s bedside. “I will go now. I have nothing else to say.” Rachael turned and walked out of the ER, sadness in her heart. How horrible to have a family feud, carried on by those who left the Order and continued at Grossdaedi’s bedside. And to have Hope say she could take her triplets was beyond terrifying.
They were her babies, and she’d raise them with Elijah’s help.
If he was willing.
If he loved her.
THE END of Volume Four. Volume Five is coming soon. Please check out White Christmas Fudge: Volume One: Sweet Amish Grace and Whoopie Pie Bakers: An Amish Romance Novel, also best-sellers by Ms. Yoder. Please follow her on social media @SicilyYoder for book trivia, free giveaways, and Amish recipes and culture posts.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Sicily Yoder’s Books
DEDICATION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
