The bishop and the deacon murmured together for a few moments. Then Elmo leaned back in his chair, a satisfied look covering his face. “What’s important is that Tobe and Naomi are going to remain in the Amish church. Naomi has already been baptized. Tobe will need to go through instruction classes to become baptized. We can speed up the classes for him. And then they can be married. Truly married in the eyes of God.” His eyes rested on Galen. “And that will be that.”
Vera clasped her hands together in delight. “Well, I’ve always said things have a way of working out.”
Galen’s face remained stony. “That’s your final word?”
Elmo nodded. “It is.”
Abraham agreed that it should be done as speedily as possible.
“The important thing,” Elmo said, leaning forward, wagging a finger at Galen, “is that they will remain in . . . the . . . church!”
Rose would always remember the way that Elmo’s thick round glasses seemed to sparkle as he was telling Galen that. She didn’t know if there were tears behind them, or if it was only a trick of the light.
Elmo looked around the room, at each person, then pinned Galen with a stare. “We’re all in agreement?”
Rose watched Galen’s profile. It was hard and unsmiling. “Yes. Yes, of course.” His voice sounded false and Rose knew it.
15
While Elmo and Abraham spoke to Tobe and Naomi inside the house, Galen was pacing the front porch like an animal in a cage. As soon as Rose closed the door, he turned around, his lips hardened in a straight line. “The bishop and deacon are only concerned about having Tobe and Naomi remain Amish. You know as well as I do that they’ll bend over backwards to keep people in the church.”
“God has an interest in this situation too, Galen. We want them to make a meaningful decision for their future. Isn’t that what you want for Naomi?”
“Yes. Of course I do. Yes. But not like this.”
“Like what, Galen? They fell in love. They wanted to be able to see each other while he was away. They found a solution to that problem. Maybe if . . .” Her voice drizzled off as she wondered if she should say more.
“Maybe if what?”
“Maybe if you hadn’t made it so clear that you were against Tobe, that you didn’t want him around Naomi . . . maybe they wouldn’t have felt the need to keep it a secret.”
Galen was still in a temper. “Oh, sure. It’s all my doing. It has nothing to do with Tobe’s lifelong habit of avoiding difficult things.”
“But don’t you see? He’s not avoiding anything now. Just the opposite. Galen,” she said, “a man’s past is his past. It’s what he contributes to the present that matters. And didn’t you hear? He said they were going to be married in the church.”
He looked at her as if he couldn’t believe she was so naive. “Tobe never said he was going to stay in the Amish church. Yes, he said they were planning to have a wedding in the church. He never said an Amish church wedding. There’s a very big difference. He’s already made his decision to leave.” He strode forward a few steps, then spun around. “He’s doing the same thing he’s always done! He married Naomi secretly, out of nowhere a woman appeared, bore his child, disappeared, and he wants life to carry on, business as usual.” He crossed his arms, annoyed. “No consequences.”
She felt a raw disappointment in Galen and hoped it didn’t show in her face. She tried to keep her voice calm and conciliatory. “Whenever I watch you with your new horses, it seems as if you have a vision of what that horse will be like, once it’s trained. Why can’t you have that kind of vision with people?”
“Because,” he said, searching for the right words, “people are far more complicated than horses.”
“But it shouldn’t be that way! David Stoltzfus says the word ‘worldly’ means that you only see what’s right before you. We can be worldly when we don’t see eternal significance in others.”
A confused look swept Galen’s face. “David Stoltzfus? The new minister?”
“Yes. He said that very thing.”
“That it’s worldly to be realistic and objective? To face facts?”
She frowned. “That’s not what I meant!” She clenched her fists, a sign she was running out of patience. “Why can’t you try and understand Tobe’s perspective? Why must you always judge him?”
“Why can’t you try to see Tobe clearly?”
“Because . . . with Dean gone, I’m all Tobe has.”
“That’s not true. He has an entire family to lean on. He has a church, if he wants it.” He backed off, rubbing his hands on his thighs self-consciously. After a long pause, he took his hat off and walked closer to her. “Rose, this is starting to divide us.”
“This?” Rose said, her anger rising. “You mean, the welfare of my son?”
“We have differing views on this subject. Why can’t we just set it aside? Agree to disagree.”
“Tobe’s situation is serious, but there will be other situations with Bethany, Mim, and the boys—we can’t always be on opposite sides of the fence about the children.”
“That’s the problem, right there. Tobe isn’t a child anymore. He’s a man. By now, he should be. You’re going to hobble Tobe from manhood by raising this baby for him.” In an uncharacteristic burst of emotion, he nearly shouted, “He will never have to grow up!”
“What do you know about raising children?” Rose flared back.
Galen swallowed. His shoulders stiffened and the wary look returned to his face. His voice came reluctantly, but firmly. “I know enough to see that you try to fix problems that belong to your children, especially Tobe and Luke. Problems that they should find solutions to. Just like you’ve tried to do with Schrock Investments.” He jammed his hat back on his head. “Rose, you keep tethering yourself to the past.” He spun on his heels and went down the porch steps.
It was the longest speech that Galen had ever made and it only made her furious. She watched him cross the yard and head to his farm, as if she was watching a stranger.
After the bishop and deacon left, Naomi held and fed the baby so Rose could get some chores taken care of. It took time to get to know a baby—to interpret her cries and figure out how she liked best to be held or cuddled. She had the time to give to Sarah.
“I haven’t seen Tobe in the last hour,” Rose said as she came into the kitchen, a basket of fresh dry sheets in her arms. “Mim and the boys will be home from school soon. They’ll be looking for him.”
“He had some thinking to do,” Naomi said, “so he took a walk over to Blue Lake Pond.”
Rose set the basket on the kitchen table. “Naomi, do you think Tobe will agree to the bishop’s plan to join the church?”
Naomi kept her eyes down. “It sounds as if you don’t think he will.”
“Galen seems to think he won’t. I’m not so sure.”
Sarah had fallen asleep, so Naomi gently laid her in the Moses basket and covered her with the pink quilt. “Leave Tobe to me.”
“And Galen? Think he’ll come around?”
“Leave him to me too.” But Naomi fingered her pocket to make sure she hadn’t forgotten her Tums.
An hour later, Naomi found Tobe at their favorite place—their log at Blue Lake Pond—with his head in his hands. She could see he was troubled. He looked up, startled, when he saw her approach but made room on the big tree log for her to sit down.
“We need to leave Stoney Ridge, Naomi. I’d hoped, I’d thought . . . we were on the same page about this.” There was agony and misery mixing in his eyes. “I just wish that your brother—that you—that I—” He gathered her fiercely into a tight embrace, and when he released her, he drew back, holding up a hand to stop her as she was about to say something. “I hope you realize that, by leaving, I’m trying to do the right thing for us.”
She was trying to do the right thing too. After all, there was a baby to think of. “And you think that means we need to leave the Amish?”
“I do. You see
that too, don’t you? You must realize that a lot of your attitudes come from the Amish. You’ve said yourself that everyone lives in the shadow of the church.”
It was true that she had said that, but she meant it in an enveloping, comforting way. Not in the dark, smothering way Tobe interpreted it.
They shifted to sit on the ground, resting their backs against the log, with Tobe’s arms wrapped around Naomi, watching the still lake. She listened to everything he had to say, every argument about why they should leave the church. “There’s no choices, Naomi. No freedom. You get up in the morning and put on the clothes of your grandparents, you listen to preaching and sing the hymns they once sang, and their faith is your faith and will be the faith of your children’s children. Nothing ever changes.”
That was exactly what Naomi loved about the Plain life. The slow and steady sureness of time passing, life measured by meaningful customs.
“And where did these old traditions come from? They go so far back no one can even remember why they were important in the first place.” He pointed to her blue dress, the one he liked best. “Things like a dress held together by pins and celery at weddings and no screens on the windows. Ridiculous things that make no sense. And people hold on to them as if they were pulled straight out of the Bible.”
But this was her life. The sameness, the familiar. Sundays full of old hymns that echoed off the barn rafters, uplifting messages from the preachers, the sharing of the fellowship meal afterward. With weekday mornings full of tossing hay to Galen’s horses, afternoons of quilting by the soft light of her favorite window, with keeping house for her brother, with baking bread and gardening vegetables. All the days and nights full of work and prayer and being together. This was the backbone of her life. It was the Plain way and in it she felt safe. She felt loved. In my heart I am Plain.
“God gave us a brain and expects us to use it. Instead, everyone just follows the Ordnung like a flock of sheep.”
She didn’t interrupt Tobe. She let him talk it all out—how few choices they would have, how narrow a life, the way he bristled against conformity, how questions could never be asked, and mostly, the feeling that he would never get free from the clinging disaster of Schrock Investments. She didn’t object. She didn’t plead. She had always been quick to recognize when something seemed impossible. And a look at Tobe’s face told her that this was now the case.
When he was spent of words, she turned to face him. “Tell me again what that year was like for you, after you left home.”
“I’ve told you about it.”
“I want to hear more. Where did you work? What friends did you have?”
“I had trouble finding work—I could get some day jobs here and there, working construction or landscaping, but nothing that lasted.” He stopped, raising an eyebrow. “I see where you’re going. I’ve thought this out—I’ll need to take some classes at a junior college so I can find better work. A real career.”
“What about friends?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t have many. None, I guess. When Schrock Investments went under, it caused bitter feelings among those I had thought were friends.” Then he was silent. “We’ll make friends. Eventually. We’ll find a church where no one has heard of Schrock Investments.”
“And what was missing in that year?”
He looked confused. “I’m not following you.”
“After all you’ve been through, haven’t you learned about the most important things?”
He threw up his hands. “How can you say that? I met God in the prison.”
“And hasn’t that taught you about the most important things?”
He watched her, his expression drawn with concern. “Next to God, you’re the most important thing to me, Naomi.”
She could see how much he loved her, could see it in the deep softness of his gaze as he looked at her. “Tobe, you must know how important family is to me. Frankly, how important it is to you too. Think of what that year was like without your family.”
He looked away.
“I want you to listen to me and not dismiss what I have to say or act like I’m setting out snares to trap you.” He opened his mouth to object and she cut him off. “I see it in your eyes, so don’t think I don’t know what’s running through your head. You’re underestimating what it would be like for us to live without family. Without our church family too.”
She looked down at their hands, twined together. “We would have more to lose than we would have to gain. Being cut off from our family, from our church. We would be sheep without a fold. Look at what the church has done for Rose—they’ve provided donations to pay back the investors who lost money in Schrock Investments. They’ve paid off your grandmother’s medical bills. They’ve embraced Sarah without questions or judgments.”
“We can find that outside the Amish church too.”
She shook her head. “Not easily, Tobe. Our experience would be much like yours—out of work and lonely, cut off from those we love.”
He didn’t speak for a long while. “Do you think your brother would shun you?”
“Yes.” She looked up at him. “And it would break his heart to do it.”
A shadow of indecision passed over Tobe’s face. “What you’re really saying is that you love the Plain life, don’t you?”
What I’m trying to say is, in my heart I am Plain. “I love my Plain family, and you love yours—maybe more than you know.”
“And that’s reason enough for you to stay?”
Absolute certainty and conviction welled up inside her and spilled out in one word: “Yes.”
Taut silence traveled between them. She could sense him hovering on the edge of decision. In an oddly detached way, she empathized with him. She had hovered on the edge of decision herself after she had learned about Paisley—to remain with Tobe or let him go. It had been a turning-point moment for her, just as this was for him.
He walked toward the edge of the pond, bent down, picked up a rock, and skipped it along the surface of the glassy lake.
She waited, on edge.
Finally, he looked upward, sighed deeply, and turned his full attention to her. “What kind of a husband would I be if I asked you to give up the life you love?”
She walked down the pond’s edge toward him. “Are you sure? Absolutely, positively sure? You won’t wake up one day and regret this choice?”
“I’d regret hurting you far more.”
He leaned forward, holding his hands out to her, and said, “Whatever it would take—I just can’t live another moment without you by my side.”
She reached out for him and let him pull her toward him, kissing him directly on the lips. She felt his arms tighten around her and they stood locked like this for a time. She pulled back, forehead to forehead, and they looked at each other for a long moment before she spoke. “Tobe, I want you to want it too.”
“You’ve given me everything I’ve ever wanted.”
“I haven’t begun to give you anything.”
“But you have, believe me. Without you I’d be nothing. You’ve given me encouragement, and faith, and hope that things will work out, in the end. You’ve given me the courage to return to Stoney Ridge. And now . . . to stay.” He took her hands in his and held them close to his heart. “Now you must give me one more thing . . . you must believe in me. You must believe I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“About what?”
“About . . . other things that are still . . . unfinished.”
She didn’t believe him. Not entirely. It wasn’t that she didn’t fully trust him, because she did. There was something he wasn’t telling her, something he didn’t want her to know. And even if he was telling her everything, there was still Sarah to consider. Still, her instinct told her to wait for him—that he would tell her everything when he was ready.
She reached up on her tiptoes to kiss him her answer, feeling a bone-deep happiness she didn’t know was possible to feel, this side of heaven,
as his arms wrapped around her waist to pull her against his chest. It was a perfect moment.
Soon . . . she would have to face her brother. She reached one hand down to her pocket and patted it. Good. Tums were still there.
By the time Naomi and Tobe arrived back at Eagle Hill, the sun had almost disappeared and the air had thickened with hazy twilight. She said goodbye to him at the hole in the privet, slipped through it, and slowed her walk to a crawl. She was dreading this moment, had been dreading it for months now. She took two Tums and chewed them fast and hard.
In the house, she took her cape and bonnet off, hung them on the wall peg by the back door, and walked into the living room to talk to Galen. He was writing bills at his desk. Naomi noticed his tense jaw and how he was clenching his pen. The guilt she felt about keeping something so important from her brother brought her an instant headache. Where had all her bravery gone?
She tested a please-don’t-be-mad-at-me smile that usually worked on Galen, but he didn’t look up, didn’t acknowledge her presence in any way. “I . . . I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”
He radiated a stony silence. This was worse than she thought it would be. Maybe she should just wait until he was ready to talk. As she turned to go to the kitchen, she heard him say, “The worst thing is how deceitful you’ve been.”
She stopped and turned around. “I never lied to you.”
“You never told me the truth, either.”
Her heart fell. Gone was the warmth and affection that usually flowed between them. She hated that she had done this—brought this kind of hurt to her brother. He had never been anything but kind and caring toward her; she couldn’t even remember a time when he’d been angry with her. Glancing down, she noticed that her hands had curled themselves into fists. Finger by finger, she relaxed. “Please, let me explain,” she began, hoping he would hear her out.
“There’s no need. Tobe Schrock has a strong influence on you.”
A protective anger over Tobe buoyed her strength. “What about my influence on him, Galen?” Her chin went up a notch. “Have you considered that?”
Revealing, The (The Inn at Eagle Hill Book #3): A Novel Page 17
