Thursday's Bride

by Patricia Johns

  He’d said that standing in the drive as they waited on the van to come and pick her up. And when it did at last arrive, her own dear daet with his cautious movements and heavy breathing from his heart condition picked up her bags one at a time and loaded them into the back of the vehicle.

  When Daet read her letter this time, he may very well tell her that this was the kind of consequence he’d foreseen coming. Maybe in her naivety, she’d missed out on the possibility of Jonathan coming to Abundance to break open her secret, but if anyone could put a stop to Jonathan Yoder, it would be her father, the Morinville Amish bishop. If anyone could talk some sense into that man and give his marriage a second chance it was Daet. If he was feeling well enough these days to do the rushing this would require.

  A lump of worry settled into her stomach, and Rosmanda smoothed her hand over the sheet of paper and began to write in her careful, tight handwriting:

  Dear Daet,

  I need your help. I got a letter from Jonathan Yoder the other day. I burned it. Now that I think of it, I shouldn’t have—I should have kept it so I could send it to you and you’d see exactly what he said. But I didn’t. I panicked. I didn’t want to take a chance of anyone finding it.

  Jonathan claims to be unhappy in his marriage. He says he’s coming here, to Abundance, to find me and ask me if there is any hope of a future between us. I don’t know how he expects that to be a possibility, seeing as he’s married with kinner of his own, but he seems to think that I still have feelings for him.

  You have to believe me, Daet, that I don’t know where he got that idea from. He wrote to me when Wayne died, and we corresponded for a handful of letters, but I was in no way flirting with him. I’ve lived my life here with dignity and purity. I don’t understand why he’d think I was the solution to his marital unhappiness, but if he comes to Abundance, he’ll ruin everything I’ve worked for! Everything.

  No one knows about him, or the scandal that made me unmarriageable there. This was a fresh start, a truly clean sheet. And if he tells them what I did, I’ll be equally unmarriageable here. I have my daughters to worry about, and a future of my own. And I’m not that same stupid girl—not that it will matter.

  So please, Daet, go talk to him right away—stop him from leaving his wife! I can’t think of anything else I can do but to ask for your help.

  The girls are doing well—they’re healthy and happy. Everyone here is fine, except for me. I’m a wreck, and I can’t tell anyone why.

  Help me, Daet.

  Your daughter,

  Rosmanda

  She read it over once more, and when she was satisfied that she’d given all the information that she could, she folded it twice and slid it into an envelope she had waiting. She wrote her parents’ address on the front, her own in the corner, and she licked the glue and firmly sealed it shut.

  Lord, speed this letter to my daet, she prayed. And let him catch Jonathan before he leaves . . .

  Consequences might come, regardless of the state of one’s soul, but if God could hold it back this once, she would never step out of line again. She’d find a good, solemn husband, and she’d serve him diligently for the rest of her days. She’d never raise her voice. She’d never question him or disobey his orders. She’d be a compliant and sweet wife no matter what came her way . . . if only she could avoid Jonathan’s threatened arrival.

  The top stair creaked, and Rosmanda startled out of her own thoughts and looked up to see Levi coming down the staircase. She sucked in a deep breath, hoping she looked normal and relaxed as if she spent many an evening staying up too late. His feet were bare, and while he wore a pair of work pants, his shirt was unbuttoned. He glanced in her direction but didn’t move to close his shirt. Instead he headed straight to the kitchen and opened a cupboard.

  “You’re up?” he said.

  “Yah,” she replied. “I was writing that letter to my daet.”

  “It’s done then?” He pulled a platter of cinnamon buns down from the cupboard and took down a plate.

  “It’s done.” She nodded quickly. “If you’ll mail it—”

  “Do you have a stamp?”

  “Not yet.”

  He pulled open a drawer. “We used to keep them here—Yah. Right here.” He pulled out a sheet of stamps and tore one off.

  Rosmanda stood up and crossed the kitchen. She took the stamp from his fingers, his warm fingertips brushing against hers, and she froze.

  He was so close, and with that shirt open at the neck, his bronzed skin almost glowing in that low kerosene light, she found her breath caught in her throat. Levi didn’t touch her, but when she looked up, she found those dark eyes locked on hers, holding her there. He smelled warm and musky, and she sucked in a wavering breath.

  Levi raised his hand and touched her chin, his work-roughened thumb moving over her skin and stopping at her bottom lip. That was a gesture from years past—something that felt uncomfortably natural between them even after all these years. She took a step back, and he dropped his hand.

  “What’s the emergency?” he asked, his voice low. “At home, I mean. What happened? Is your daet okay?”

  “Daet is fine,” she said, and her voice sounded foreign in her own ears. She was trying to sound normal, unfazed by his touch, but it wasn’t working.

  He nodded slowly. “Then what has you on tenterhooks like this? Or do I just make you that uncomfortable?”

  Her gaze moved over his chest—strong and well-muscled. She shrugged weakly. “Your buttons, Levi . . .”

  “Oh.” He smiled ruefully and did up a few of the buttons, slowly and without looking at them. His gaze moved over her face as if he were trying to figure her out.

  “The letter—the bigger issue—it’s not you, Levi,” she said.

  “Good . . .” He turned to the cinnamon buns, cut out a pastry, and dropped it onto the plate. “That’s something. Ketura said you’re worried about another marriage.”

  “Every woman worries,” she hedged. “I can’t stay here forever. I’ll have to find another husband. I told you that already.”

  “You won’t be chased out, you know. I’m here to help my daet now, and I know it’s been hard, but—”

  “It isn’t that. It’s my problem. You don’t need to bother with it. I just need to send this letter.” The last thing she needed was her brother-in-law to try to help her . . . this brother-in-law who made her body respond to him in the most dangerous of ways. She needed privacy over this—utter secrecy. And she needed Jonathan to stay with his wife where he belonged. That was all. Rosmanda met his gaze. “Please.”

  “All right.” Levi tore off a piece of the cinnamon bun and popped it into his mouth.

  “How come you’re up?” she asked.

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  He pushed the plate toward her, and Rosmanda hesitated for a moment, then she tore off a piece of her own. It was sticky and sweet, and she licked her fingers. Outside, the wind whistled as it swept around the house, and it felt secure and safe inside.

  “Do you have worries of your own?” she asked.

  “You could say that. There was a time when I would have drowned that in alcohol, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not doing that now. So instead of getting some booze—” He held up another strip of cinnamon bun.

  “You’re eating your worries away?” She smiled faintly.

  “I don’t know. I heard you down here. I . . . came down for the company.” He took another bite and regarded her thoughtfully. “I know we agreed to pretend to be friends, but there was a time when I honestly considered you one.”

  Back when she was new to Abundance and rather lonely spending all of her time with her elderly aunt . . . Rosmanda remembered him too well from those days. He’d been funny and warm, and he’d woken her up inside in a way that turned off her brain. And looking at him with his half-done-up shirt, and those warm brown eyes moving over her face . . . She licked her lips and dropped he
r gaze.

  “Then why the four years of distance?” she asked.

  “Because we were more than friends, and you know it,” he said. “That didn’t just go away for me like it did for you.”

  Rosmanda swallowed. “You didn’t even try.”

  “I tried.” His voice was low and husky, and he took another bite of the cinnamon bun.

  “We couldn’t stay that way,” she countered. “We couldn’t stay close—even in friendship. How would that have worked?”

  “No, I agree, it couldn’t keep going,” Levi said. “But I had good reason to keep my distance. Besides, Wayne wouldn’t let me near you. There was something between you and me that Wayne couldn’t compete with.”

  “Like what?” she breathed.

  He met her gaze and a small smile quirked up one side of his mouth. “Whatever it was that sparked between us. You either have it, or you don’t.”

  Did he know more than she thought about her marriage? Wayne wouldn’t have told his brother anything that intimate, would he?

  “That was a long time ago,” she said. “I don’t feel that way anymore.” It was a lie told while staring at his broad, muscled chest, still visible above those two buttons.

  “I’m just saying that my issues with my brother are my own. If I’m still angry with him, then that’s my business.”

  She held her breath, waiting for him to say more, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned his attention to the cinnamon bun on his plate, tearing off another soft segment and rolling it up between his fingers.

  While Wayne had been the better man in almost every way—more pious, more respected in the community, a harder worker—he hadn’t awoken that part of her, and she’d often felt guilty about it. He’d been her husband! He’d been the man with every right to her, body and soul. But while she’d imagined having a passionate and exciting nighttime relationship with her husband after a hard day of work, they’d never quite ignited that spark. Obviously, they were man and wife in every sense, and their connection had been tender, but she’d stupidly assumed that those passionate feelings would come easily with him. They hadn’t.

  And she would have lived without the spontaneous draw toward each other. She’d been doing so for long enough, hadn’t she? He was kind. He was funny, too, with his dry humor. And it wasn’t like they hadn’t loved each other, because they had. But it had been different . . . and Rosmanda had come to a realization during her marriage that had never dawned on her before:

  Good husbands didn’t necessarily awaken anything so passionate in their wives. But their honesty and faithfulness were worth more. A good husband and father could be counted on to be there when things got hard, when his wife needed him. The scoundrels of the world—the Jonathans and the Levis—could awaken her body without much effort at all, but they couldn’t be trusted, and what use was that? A marriage was for a lifetime, and whatever attraction she felt for an unworthy man would be snuffed out when he let her down in the more practical ways. Besides, her marriage wasn’t only about her now. Her next marriage would be both an example and place of safety for Hannah and Susanna, too.

  So yes, she could have done without that sensual spark and passion and been grateful for her good, honest husband. And she’d do so again, if God was kind enough to bring her another man as good as Wayne had been. Because in her experience, the spark lay with the unreliable, dangerous, interesting men . . . and they made terrible husbands. Just ask Mary Yoder.

  “Have the rest—” Levi held the last coil of cinnamon bun out to her—the softest part in the center that had been drenched in butter, cinnamon, and sugar. She shook her head.

  “Oh, come on.” That same tempting smile turned up the corners of his lips. “It’s the best part. You know you want it.”

  And she did. She wanted it so much that she could already taste it, but she wouldn’t give in to temptation again. Wanting something wasn’t enough.

  “No, thank you,” she said, and she held out the letter toward him. “Would you take this now? That way I won’t have to find you later to give it to you. It might make things easier.”

  “Yah.” He took the letter from her fingers and gave a quick nod. “Sure.”

  “And let me know when you mail it—so I stop worrying—would you?” she said.

  “Yah. You can count on me for that.”

  The beguiling look had left his gaze and he eyed her with a slightly perplexed expression. Rosmanda didn’t have it in her to try to explain. It wasn’t his fault that she had such terrible attraction to the wrong kind of men. And she’d never let him know it. She moved toward the staircase.

  “I’d better get some sleep,” she said. “The morning won’t come any later.”

  And she’d better get some space between herself and Levi Lapp. He’d always had a way of tempting her into more than was good for her, and he still seemed to have that ability.

  “Good night, Rosie.” His voice was low and warm, and she looked back at him over her shoulder. Rosie. He shouldn’t call her that. But they were feigning some sort of friendship, weren’t they? He popped the last of the cinnamon bun into his mouth, and she turned away.

  “Good night,” she said, and moved up the stairs toward her bedroom where her babies were sleeping. Her children—the ones who would have to pay for her indiscretions for the rest of their lives. Her good reputation was the shield that would protect her daughters, and she’d best not toy with something as powerful as attraction.

  She knew how that went. Rosmanda wasn’t the naïve, lonely girl anymore.

  * * *

  The next morning, Levi held the bottle of milk as the calf hungrily drank. Rosmanda had been feeding this calf when he saw her for the first time when he came back to his parents’ farm, and the little calf had already grown. She’d been right—the calf was downing more milk at each feeding now, and was almost ready to be fed from a bucket.

  Stephen worked in the stall next to him, shoveling soiled hay into a wheelbarrow. His shovel scraped against the cement floor, then clanged as he knocked it against the wheelbarrow in a steady rhythm.

  Levi’s mind wasn’t on the calf, or on his father working next to him . . . he’d been kicking himself all morning for having gone downstairs the night before. He shouldn’t have done it. He’d known she was down there. He’d been laying in his bed, unable to sleep, when he heard her footsteps creaking down the hallway. He’d stayed in his room, waiting to hear her come back up, but she hadn’t, and after a while, he pulled on his pants and a shirt, and headed on down to see what she was up to.

  He’d pretended he was hungry, but that was a stupid stunt. He’d been going down to see the woman who resented him and had to pretend to even be his friend. And looking at her with those pale cheeks and liquid brown eyes, he’d been thinking about doing things that he had no right to. Those lips weren’t his to kiss. And she wasn’t exactly going to fall into his arms . . .

  And yet he hadn’t just been thinking about how tempted he was by living under the same roof as Rosmanda, even though he was. He’d been thinking about what Ketura had said, how worried Rosmanda was about her future. It had felt like Rosmanda wielded all the power—two brothers vying for her attention—but she wasn’t the one with the power anymore. She was now a widowed mother of infant twins, and she was scared. He’d seen it in her eyes. And the thought of Rosmanda afraid made him want to go stomping in to fix things. It was a testosterone-fueled reaction, and he knew it. Every instinct he had with her seemed to be fueled from the same source. There was something about her—her femininity, her spunkiness, the way she pursed her lips just slightly when she met his gaze—that made him want to prove just how much of a man he was to her. Stupid as that might be.

  The calf ’s drinking had slowed, but there was a little bit of milk left in the bottle, and Levi gave it a jiggle to encourage the animal to finish it off. Stephen straightened his back and stretched, then leaned his shovel against the side of the stall.

  “Daet, there’
s something I needed to talk to you about,” Levi said, letting himself out of the calf ’s stall.

  “Yah?” Stephen bent down and lifted the wheelbarrow, rolling it out of the freshly emptied stall. “What’s that?”

  “Ketura.”

  “Oh?” Stephen put the wheelbarrow down again and straightened. “What about my sister?”

  “She . . . and a certain man . . . have asked that I bring up the subject of her remarrying,” Levi said.

  “A third marriage? Well, I don’t see why not. She’s not fifty yet. There’s lots of life left in her. Who is the man?”

  Levi hesitated, then sighed. “Aaron King.”

  His father eyed him for a moment, then a smile turned up his lips. “Yah. I’m sure. You had me going there for a minute—”

  “No, it’s not a joke.” Levi shrugged helplessly. “It’s true. Aaron came to see me about it the other day. He said he loved her and he wanted to marry her. I wasn’t sure if Ketura even knew of his intentions. So I went there yesterday, and I talked to her myself. And . . . it’s true. They’re in love with each other, she says.”

  “And she wants to marry that boy?” Daet breathed.

  “Technically a man,” Levi added feebly. “He’s a widower.”

  “Right. A widower no older than you!”

  “I know.” Levi watched his daet, waiting while all of this settled into his mind. Stephen nodded several times, then shot Levi an incredulous look.

  “She’s old enough to be his mamm!”

  “I said the same thing. She says that since she has no children of her own, that it doesn’t feel that way to her,” Levi said.

  “So you’re in support of this?” Stephen asked.

  “Now, support is a strong word,” Levi said, shaking his head. “I love my aunt and I want her to be happy. That’s where I stand. I don’t know what’s right here. I said I’d mention it to you. That’s it.”

  Stephen bent and picked up the wheelbarrow again, wheeling it away toward the side door. It banged shut after him, and Levi picked up the shovel and opened the next stall. The door opened again, and Stephen came back in with the wheelbarrow.