Hidden Life (9781455510863)

by Senft, Adina

  She tried not to laugh and failed utterly. “I do not have lumbago. And my knees are in perfect working order, denkes.”

  “Emma.”

  “What?”

  “Please get in the buggy.” He waved a hand in the direction of the fence, where his patient horse stood in the traces, waiting.

  She had never been so happy to obey.

  Chapter 18

  This was nothing like the ride he’d given her as a teenager. Then, they’d both been tongue-tied and uncertain, Emma in an agony of self-consciousness and inexperience that had probably done more to chase him away than anything. Now, she was the woman who had fed him and his crew breakfast. Who could take a joke as well as make one. Who had managed to travel to New York City and turn down a literary agent all by herself—something the old Emma would not have been able to imagine, much less do.

  The question that plagued her now was, what did he think of the secret Tyler had blabbed? Was he going to let her down easy in the next few minutes, or…?

  Emma, there you go again, only thinking of yourself. For heaven’s sake, your mind needs a change of scenery.

  “It was a nice wedding, ja?” she said at last, when she could bear the silence not one more second. “Amelia looked so happy.”

  “Eli is a good man.” Grant’s shoulder touched hers with the rocking of the buggy as he turned onto Edgeware Road, and she thrilled at the unexpected gift. “He and I have become acquainted in our talks about what he wants for the new shop. In fact, he doesn’t want to waste any time, so he’ll start next week. The sooner he gets established, the sooner he’ll be able to provide for Amelia and the boys right at home instead of going into Whinburg every day.”

  “He’s taking over the work at the pallet shop until then?”

  Grant chuckled. “Oh, yes. The very first thing he’ll learn as a married man is how to take instruction from his wife.”

  “If she gives him a kiss for every one he gets right, they’ll have a stack of pallets up to the roof in no time.” Then she blushed. She shouldn’t have mentioned kissing. He might think that was what she had in mind when she came along on this ride. Maybe he would think she was fast. Or desperate. Or both.

  “Maybe,” he agreed, smiling at something over the horse’s shoulder. “I think there will be a lot of laughter and kissing in that shop. But that’s a wonderful gut thing. You know his story?”

  Emma nodded. If he could speak so calmly about kissing, then her jitters were all for nothing. “Amelia told me. So sad for him. I hope Elam and Matthew can fill the hole that the loss of his little boy left in Eli’s heart. Of course no one can replace his family, just as no one can replace Enoch Beiler, but I think with God’s help, he and Amelia can heal each other.”

  “That’s true. A person cannot replace one who is gone,” he said softly, and her heart sank.

  There was her answer, put as gently and considerately as a man could. She could not replace Lavina. Golden memory or not, mourning finished or not, no one could, and she needed to give up hope that he might want her to.

  Emma’s throat swelled with tears that she must not shed, and she bit the inside of her lip to keep it from trembling. This was why he had asked her to ride with him. He wanted a quiet space of time to tell her, where no one could hear and no one would talk or make guesses or assumptions.

  “Do you not think so, Emma?”

  “Ja. You can’t replace a unique person the Lord has made,” she whispered. There will never be another Lavina—at least, the one you married and love still. The fact that she became someone else—someone else’s woman, even—doesn’t change the golden memory of that girl you hold in your heart, pure and laughing and inviolate.

  “But two people can heal each other,” he persisted. Did he not realize he was breaking her heart? “You said so…you must believe it.”

  “I do believe it.” She swallowed the lump of tears down so she could speak. “If it’s God’s will.”

  “I seek His will every day,” Grant said, sounding strangely emphatic, as though she might not believe him. “Every day I ask, and every day it seems as if He is pointing me in one direction. And now I believe He has given me such a shove that I can hardly ignore it.”

  “Goodness. God shoved you? That never works with horses, but maybe it does with people.”

  Setting aside her own pain, she was trying to lighten the frown lines between his brows, but it didn’t seem to help. The horse slowed, and Grant turned him into a harvesting track that led to the gate of the Lapps’ east field.

  “Emma, Tyler West told me something as we were working yesterday.”

  If she could have flung herself out the door and run, she would have done it. But that would just put this conversation off until another day, and there was no way she was going through another night like last night. “He should not have said…what he said.”

  “He came to stay with us, as I’m sure you saw.”

  “Thank you for opening your home to him.”

  “He is very unhappy at losing your friendship. I hope you will forgive him.”

  Amelia and Eli’s happiness had soothed her humiliation and distress, and she found she could say truthfully, “I already have. I’m just not going to tell him right away.”

  “That’s good, because you see, he may have broken your confidence, but he opened a door for me.”

  She turned her gaze from the horse’s slow munching of the bishop’s grass and dared to lift it to Grant’s dear brown eyes. “A door?”

  “Ja, the kind God shoves you through. Emma, I had no idea that you cared for me in…in that way.”

  She could not look into those eyes anymore. The horse, at least, would not humiliate her silently with every stricken moment. “I had hoped to keep it to myself,” she whispered. “And not burden you with it.”

  “Burden me? Burden?” With one finger, he touched her chin and turned her face toward him. But still she couldn’t meet his eyes. “Your love is no burden, Emma Stolzfus. I am not worthy of it.”

  It’s not you, it’s me.

  “I do not have much to offer you,” he said softly. “This heart is broken and dry, like soil that has not been tended. But if you are willing, maybe we can tend each other. And maybe God will make fruit grow there.”

  For a moment, all she heard was “broken and dry.” Then the rest of his words caught up to her, and astonishment gave her the courage to look him full in the face. “What?” she said inanely. “What do you mean?”

  His mouth formed a rueful bow. “What I am trying to say, not very well, is…I would like to court you. And it seems you would like that, too.”

  He couldn’t be saying those words to her. He had brought her out here to let her down easy, hadn’t he? Had she misheard? Was this even happening?

  When her jaw just hung there with no words coming out of her open mouth, he went on. “You know this is not the first time I’ve courted a woman, but it’s been a long time. I’m more eloquent with my hands than I am with words. Just the opposite of you. But all the same, you are one of God’s gifts that I was talking about earlier, and I would treat you with respect and tenderness.”

  “You…would?” She needed to get something perfectly clear, so there would be no more mistakes, no more wrong information. “Me?”

  “Yes, you, Emma Stolzfus. Maybe someday you can tell me just why this is so hard to believe.”

  “Because I thought you still loved Lavina. And there was no room for me.”

  “I told you last night that it was all in the past, and that my mourning for her was finished. Didn’t you believe me?”

  She had believed that little voice she had listened to all her life. The one that said not good enough, not pretty enough, not…enough. Maybe it was time to take a page from Grant’s book and grow up, at the advanced age of thirty.

  “Yes,” she said. “I believe you. Now.”

  And when he took her in his arms at last, she was so overwhelmed by the scent and warm
th of the skin where her nose was pressed against his neck, and so deafened by the singing of the angels that she didn’t even realize he hadn’t kissed her.

  Not until much later, in the middle of another sleepless night.

  Since Eli and Amelia were not going on their wedding rounds right away, Amelia insisted that their quilting frolic go ahead as usual the next Tuesday. This meant Emma was forced to keep her news to herself for an entire week. She didn’t even tell Lena—though sometimes it threatened to burst out of her without warning, and she’d be hard pressed to keep her mouth closed on the building pressure.

  Why not tell? she asked herself a dozen times a day. Mamm needs to make plans. You need to give her and Karen time to decide whether she’ll go to live with Katherine as she had suggested, or whether one of our unmarried cousins will come to stay at the Daadi Haus.

  But somehow, the words stayed bottled up inside until she felt like a can of soda that had been shaken by a giant hand. One move and everything would explode.

  The wedding cleanup began at 4:00 a.m. and took all of Wednesday, and Emma and Carrie pitched in to help. The women wiped down all the benches, which the men loaded into the bench wagon so that they would be ready for the next church Sunday.

  When will they come to Karen’s for my wedding? But that was a question she would have to save until Grant someday asked her to be his wife.

  The rest of the week saw her busy catching up with everything she’d neglected in favor of Amelia’s wedding—laundry, sewing, baking. A letter came on Saturday, with a New York return address.

  Dear Emma,

  I’m very sorry I didn’t get to see you before I left on Wednesday. I’m also sorry about what happened the night before the wedding. Grant says that everything is okay, but he didn’t give me any more details and you didn’t seem to be around on Wednesday morning when I drove by.

  Other than what I caused by my own stupidity, I had a great time in Whinburg, mostly because of you and Grant. I feel privileged to have been part of Amelia and Eli’s wedding. I feel I really know the world in your book. I think that’s why I came to visit…so I could live what I read in a different way. And can I say, the movie is just as good as the book, ha ha. Englisch joke.

  Take care of yourself. I hope I hear from you again someday.

  Your friend,

  Tyler

  Emma folded up the letter and slipped it back in its envelope. He would hear from her. Soon. Forgiveness wasn’t worth much if you kept it to yourself and did nothing to help the hurt in the other person. Maybe, if she had the joy of planning a wedding, she would even invite him.

  The next day, being their off Sunday, Emma and Lena were having a quiet morning while Emma read the story of Ruth aloud. It had always been one of Emma’s favorites; Ruth had been so brave. It couldn’t have been easy giving up home and family and nation for a man and traveling so far.

  Thank goodness it wasn’t likely she would ever have to do that. If it were God’s will that she and Grant should marry, she would have a new home and a new family right here in her own district. What a marvel. It would be something else to be thankful for.

  The sound of a buggy in the lane brought both their heads up, and Emma looked out the window to see Grant in his buggy, the little white Kapps of his daughters just visible through the windows. “Mamm, it’s Grant. He’s brought his children to visit.”

  “Has he, now. That seems…very friendly of him.” Lena eyed her. “Is there something I should know?”

  Emma couldn’t keep a straight face. The smile just busted out on one side the more she tried to keep the other solemn. “Soon, Mamm.”

  “Ah.” Lena sat back in her chair with the satisfied air of someone who has figured everything out at last. “I’ll look forward to that.”

  “We’ve come to ask you to take a ride with us,” Grant said when she went outside. He climbed down from the buggy and his eyes crinkled in a smile. “Could you leave Lena for an hour or so?”

  “I think I could. Go in and say Guder Mariye while I say hello to everyone.”

  Grant pulled his straw hat off as he went, and Emma peeked in to see the girls on the back bench, with Katie, the elder, holding a squirming Zachary. “Hullo, girls. Your Daed says we might go for a ride. Is it okay if I come along?”

  “I’m hungry,” Sarah moaned. “I want to go home.”

  “I’m hungry, too,” Emma confided, though she’d had lunch not an hour past. “How about I put together a picnic basket and we ask Daed to take us somewhere nice to eat it?”

  “Like the river?” Katie moved the baby to a more comfortable angle. Small as she was, he filled her whole lap and then some.

  The river was the last place Emma would have chosen, considering it was strewn with reminders of that last disastrous conversation with Calvin. But maybe it would be gut to go with Grant and his family. They would overlay good memories on bad ones, and make the river their place instead.

  “That sounds good,” she said. “I’ll be back in just a minute.”

  In the kitchen, she grabbed her carry basket and stuffed it full of everything she could lay her hands on. What a lucky thing she’d got the baking done. Half a dozen doughnuts, a couple of jars of lemonade, some fat slices of cake, and several pieces of fried chicken went into the basket, along with a bunch of apples. Then she tucked a cloth over the top and went to find Grant.

  “I can’t believe you’ve kept this from me all week.” Lena shook a knitting needle at Emma while Grant smiled quietly, kneeling beside her chair. “Grant just told me we’d be seeing a little more of him—and not for building projects, either.”

  Emma’s shoulders slumped with relief as she knelt on Lena’s other side. If he’d told Mamm, then he really meant it. “I didn’t want to say anything until—” I knew it was real. She risked a glance at him while her soul sang. She should have had more faith. Then she could have told Carrie and Amelia on cleanup day, and they could be celebrating with each other even now.

  He stood, and squeezed Lena’s hand. “I will have her back in an hour.”

  “Take your time,” Mamm said. “It will take me all of that and more to savor this. And then you’ll have to go over to the big house and tell your sister. You don’t want her to hear about yet another man over the grapevine.”

  “She’s joking,” Emma reassured him as she hurried out ahead of him with the basket. “There aren’t any other men, as you know very well.”

  Down at the river, Emma found a flat spot that wasn’t too damp, and not so close to the rush of water that Zachary might stagger over and fall in. It didn’t keep the girls away, though. After they’d descended on the food like a plague of locusts, they danced away to play at the river’s edge, leaving Emma and Grant alone.

  “I feel as though I should be with them, to get acquainted.”

  Under his father’s watchful gaze, Zachary investigated the area immediately around them, particularly fascinated by the gnarled roots of a tree and what he could find in the crevices. “Plenty of time for that.” Grant followed her gaze. “If we only have an hour, we should talk while those two are busy getting wet.”

  “Talk? What about?”

  “Before we go much further, I want you to know everything. And then if you feel you must change your mind about us, I would not hold it against you.”

  The cake rolled uneasily in her stomach. “I won’t change my mind.” He would be more likely to change his before she would ever give him up.

  He was silent a moment, as if arranging his thoughts. “You’ve been in our home for church, so you know that it isn’t as nice as some.”

  “It needs a woman to care for it.” She had hoped this might lighten his expression, but it didn’t.

  “That is true. But there has been some financial difficulty.” He looked up. “The economy has not been kind to many of us. The house is worth less than my mortgage, and while I have enough work, sometimes I live from check to check. The money must go to the bank befo
re other expenses.” After another pause, he went on. “And there are…bills from Springfield as well.”

  Emma had not thought of this. Even though Lavina had not survived, the effort to save her still had to be paid for. “I’m used to economizing. Mamm and I get by on very little.” If that happy day ever came, she would rather live with him in a chicken coop than go back to the way things had been, but she wasn’t about to say so.

  “I must try to get as much work as I can over the summer so I can get ahead a little bit, so we may not see each other as much as I’d like.”

  Emma took courage. “You will still have lunch hours. I can bring your lunch and we can eat together, at the very least. And supper, too, if you must work into the evening.”

  “I would like that.”

  Now he would kiss her.

  Surely.

  But he did not. Instead, he encouraged little Zachary to come back to the blanket and have a piece of apple. “I think we should prepare ourselves for some talk,” he said. “Me because I’m not observing three months of mourning, and you because of all the men you’ve been running around with.” He twinkled at her. “A pair of rebels, we are.”

  “But people will understand, won’t they, about you having done your mourning long ago?”

  “Some will. But some will not.”

  “Are you thinking of the Yoders?”

  “Ja. They have had the same amount of time to mourn, but I’m sure they will look at it differently.” His gaze moved beyond her, checking that the girls were still in view. “I want a home again—a real home. And if the price I must pay is a little disapproval, then I’ll pay it.”

  His eyes met hers again, and she thrilled with the certainty that he was speaking of their future. “I would like a home of my own someday, too,” she whispered.

  “Already we agree,” he said, leaning back on his hands. His smile was even warmer than the sunshine that fell like a blessing on her shoulders.