At Home in Pleasant Valley

by Marta Perry

  • • •

  It had been natural enough to stay for supper with Daniel and the children, Leah told herself as she dried the last dish. She glanced out the window. The boys were practicing baseball in the backyard while Elizabeth watched from the porch, seeming to enjoy her invalid status at the moment.

  Natural enough to stay, she repeated to herself, but now it was time to go home, before she gave folks even more to talk about than they had already. She was hanging the towel on the rack when Daniel came in the back door.

  “Leah, you did not need to wash the dishes. I said that I would do them later.”

  He bent to stow the pail he carried under the sink. His hair was thick, growing vigorously from the whorl on the top of his head, and the brown had lightened where the sun hit it.

  “It made no trouble,” she said. She’d best be going home, if she was noticing things like that about her neighbor. “I’m just happy that Elizabeth is all right.”

  He straightened. “You don’t think I need to have a doctor look at it?”

  “Well, I’m not a doctor, for sure. But my brothers managed to hurt themselves on a regular basis, and Anna wasn’t far behind, so I’ve seen my share of burns. I think it will be fine, as long as you keep it clean and put the burn ointment on it often.”

  “That much I can do.” His voice roughened. “Even if I did let her get hurt.”

  Her heart twisted, but she kept her voice firm, even tart. “That’s nonsense, Daniel, and you know it. Children hurt themselves.”

  “Not like that.” His face tightened with pain. “You told me that she was trying too hard to be perfect, and I didn’t listen to you. And this is the result.”

  “I certainly wasn’t imagining anything like this. I just thought that it worried her too much when she didn’t do things perfectly.”

  “She shouldn’t have tried to fix supper.” He glared at the gas stove, as if it were to blame. “I should have come in from the barn more quickly or taken her out with me and the boys.”

  “It’s natural to blame yourself when a child in your care is injured.” She knew that well enough as a teacher. “But you couldn’t have predicted that would happen. As for her attempts to be perfect—” She hesitated, but it had to be said. “Have you thought that maybe she is trying to take her mother’s place?”

  He stared at her, eyes wide and appalled. “No.” He tried to push the thought away with his hands. “No. I never wanted, never expected—” He stopped, seeming to catch his breath. “I’ve never wanted Elizabeth to do more than the chores that would be normal for a child her age.”

  “I’m sure that’s true. I didn’t mean that it was coming from you. But often a girl models herself on her mother, and she may be sensing the lack—”

  She stopped, because he was shaking his head. Because he disagreed with her? Or because he feared what she said was true?

  “Have you talked to her much about her mother?” she asked gently.

  Anger flared in his eyes at that. “No. Do you think I wanted to remind them of that time when we were apart? I want them to forget that. To forget that they ever lived in the English world.”

  “They can’t forget their mother.” Didn’t he see how wrong that would be?

  His face twisted. “How do I separate it? How do I divide what I feel about what Ruth did—” He stopped. Shook his head. “You don’t understand. She took my children away. For two years I didn’t see them. I didn’t know where they were. I didn’t even know if they were alive or dead.”

  His voice broke. Hurting for him, she put her hand on his arm, feeling the muscles so tight it seemed they’d never release.

  “I’m sorry. That’s the worst thing I can imagine.”

  To be without your children was dreadful enough. Not to even know if they were alive—the utter desolation of it swept her soul.

  “Ja.” He took a strangled breath. “I didn’t go to the law. That’s not the Amish way. But now I wonder if I did right. Ruth—” He shook his head. “When she said she’d marry me, I was the luckiest man in the world, I thought. She was so bright, so lively, so happy that she made everyone else smile, just to be near her. Half the Amish boys in the county wanted to marry her, but she picked me.”

  Did he even realize he was telling her this? Or was he just talking out of a soul-deep need to say it out loud to someone? It didn’t matter. If all she could do was listen, she’d listen.

  “Something went wrong,” she said softly.

  “Ja.” His voice was rough. “When the babies were born, she seemed so happy, but afterward—she couldn’t settle down to being a wife and mother. She always wanted more. Not more things, you understand. Just—” He shrugged, as if he couldn’t find the words for it. “She was restless, always. As if looking for something and not knowing what it was.”

  He stopped. Blaming himself for that, the way he’d blamed himself for Elizabeth’s accident?

  “She started working at a quilt shop that her cousin ran. Lots of English shopped there, some of them taking lessons in quilting. She started wanting to be like them—to wear pretty clothes, have everyone looking at her the way they did when she was a girl.” He spread his hands. “I tried to understand, tried to pay more attention to her, tried to make her happy. What did she want?” He sounded baffled.

  She hurt for him, sympathized with him. But somewhere in her heart, she had sympathy for Ruth as well. She’d known what it was like to long for more.

  Not pretty clothes, like Ruth. But more learning, more knowledge, more experiences than she could ever have in Pleasant Valley.

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “Maybe she didn’t know, either.”

  “She took my children.” The pain in his voice was as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. “Two years, and every minute of it I was asking God to keep them safe and bring them back to me.”

  “He answered your prayer.”

  “Ja. But Ruth—” His lips twisted. “The state police troopers came to tell me. How she’d been out with a man. Drinking, both of them, and she was driving. She ran the car into a tree. The police went to the place where she’d been living—a couple of rooms, it was. They found the children there alone. Nothing to eat, no one to watch them.”

  She made a small sound of pain and distress.

  He looked at her. “Ja. I forgive her, because God commands it. I try to forget, and that’s what I want my children to do. That’s what they must do.” He sounded desperate.

  He had trusted her with this, and she had to do the best for him she could. That meant she had to say something he wouldn’t want to hear.

  “I understand why you feel you can’t talk to the children about it,” she said carefully. “But I think Elizabeth needs to talk to someone. Some adult who can help her sort it all out, help her find out why she’s trying so hard to be grown-up before her time.” She hesitated. “There is a woman at the clinic, a psychologist. I think she could help Elizabeth—”

  “No.” It came swift and hard. “I will not turn to the English to help my daughter. She cannot help a child adjust to being Amish.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say that Lydia had once been Amish, but that would hardly recommend her to Daniel under the circumstances.

  “Elizabeth needs help,” she said. “Perhaps maybe more than you can give her. There’s no shame in seeking out a specialist when you need one.”

  His hands shot out to grasp hers in a firm, warm grip. She couldn’t turn away from the intensity in his eyes. “We are an Amish community. You are the teacher, with more knowledge and experience than most. You are our specialist. You can help her.”

  All her instincts told her to refuse. Told her that deeper involvement with Daniel and his family could only lead to difficulty later.

  But her heart was thudding to the beat of the pulse she felt in his hands
, and his need struck at her core. She couldn’t say no. She was afraid to say yes.

  She took a breath. “All right,” she said, feeling as if she took a step from which there was no going back. “I’ll try.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  She was being confronted with one thing after another that she didn’t feel capable of handling. Leah gripped the set of interview papers in her hands as her taxi driver, Ben Morgan, the elderly Englischer who enjoyed driving the Amish for a small fee, stopped in front of the clinic.

  It was the last week of school, and she should be dealing with a hundred last-minute details for the picnic and program. But Johnny had recommended she do a trial interview and bring the forms in to discuss with him before she started working on the project in earnest once school was out, so here she was.

  Thanking Ben, who had brought a book and announced his plan to park in the shade and wait for her, she headed for the door, her mind going faster than the car had.

  She was avoiding thinking about the most serious problem facing her, she knew. Elizabeth Glick. How had she let Daniel persuade her to attempt to counsel Elizabeth? A wave of panic went through her. She wasn’t equipped to do that. What if she tried and made things worse?

  Father, was I becoming too confident, too prideful in my own abilities? Have You sent me these things to show me that it is You, and You only, who is capable? Guide me, Lord, and show me the path You would have me follow. Amen.

  Taking a deep breath, she opened the door to the clinic.

  Two Amish families waited in the reception area, and she stopped to greet them. It gave her a breathing space before she realized that she was stalling, putting off the moment when she’d see Johnny again.

  With a final smile for the children, she removed her bonnet, hanging it on a peg in the hallway, and entered the door to the research side of the building. A young man with long hair tied back at the nape of his neck glanced at her, dark eyes curious, before turning back to something he was doing with vials of blood.

  He didn’t challenge her, so she walked down the hallway. Perhaps she should have asked Johnny exactly where she was to meet him. The place still felt alien to her, with its whirring noises and the equipment whose function she couldn’t even guess.

  The young woman she’d met on her first visit—Stacie, her name was—walked swiftly out of the computer room and came to a dead stop when she saw Leah. “Oh. It’s you.”

  “Yes.” There seemed no other answer to that question. Who else would she be? “I am supposed to meet John Kile this afternoon. Can you tell me where he is?”

  “He’s not here. He asked me to go over the interview form with you and make sure you know how to do it properly.”

  Her tone said that she doubted that was even possible, and her demeanor was so unwelcoming that Leah wanted to flee.

  “I can come again when John is here—” she began, but Stacie cut her off with a decisive shake of her head.

  “Dr. Brandenmyer has him assigned to a much more important project.” Stacie held out her hand. “Let me see them. I’ll have to take time from my work to catch your mistakes, I suppose.”

  Leah had been treated more rudely than that at other times, she supposed. Most Amish had. But she wasn’t sure it had ever bothered her quite so much. When a tourist stuck a camera in your face, it was rude, but it was also not aimed at you, specifically. Any Amish person would do.

  Stacie’s attitude was personal, and she had no idea how to handle it.

  Submit. The word echoed in her mind. That was the Christian response, the Amish response.

  She nodded, not speaking, and followed Stacie to a desk. Stacie flung herself into the chair behind the desk, fanning the interview sheets out in front of her. Leah perched on the edge of the chair opposite her, folded her hands in her lap, and waited.

  Frowning, Stacie stuck a pencil into her mass of dark hair and stared at the papers. Leah forced down her resentment that the woman obviously expected to find something wrong. Of course there would be something. That was why she was here—to be corrected, so that she would do it right in the future.

  Still, she’d rather have met with John. Only because he’d have done this in a friendly manner, she assured herself. Not because she wanted to see him again.

  But it was better this way. The Ordnung—the rules by which the congregation lived, discussed and prayerfully accepted by the people—would find her meeting with an English woman on a matter of business perfectly acceptable. Meeting with a person who was under the bann was considerably trickier.

  That could be done, of course. She knew families who lived that way, setting a separate table for those under the meidung, so that they didn’t actually break bread together. Would the Kile family come to that, eventually? She couldn’t guess.

  Stacie came to the end of the form and tapped it with her pencil. “Not bad,” she said, her tone grudging. “Going back several generations is helpful, but only if it’s accurate. How can you be sure some of these are facts, not just family stories?”

  Family stories were facts, but it was hardly worth arguing the point.

  “The information came from the genealogical records in the family Bible,” she said. “Amish families usually keep very complete records. However, if you don’t wish me to provide that—”

  Stacie shook her head quickly. “No, don’t stop. It’s great as long as you make accurate notes. I don’t suppose you could get a photocopy of the Bible page and bring it in, so we wouldn’t have to rely on your accuracy.”

  Leah tried counting to ten. Supposedly that helped one control an unruly temper. “I don’t believe the families would like to have the Bibles taken out of the house to be copied.”

  “This will have to do, then.” Stacie shuffled the papers together and put a paper clip on them. “If you could type instead of print them, it’d be easier to read, but I guess you Amish don’t use newfangled inventions like typewriters, do you?”

  Leah wanted to ask the woman why, if she looked down on the Amish so much, she was involved in research here. She didn’t. She kept her voice colorless. “We do use typewriters in business, but I don’t have access to one, and I’m sure I can print them more quickly.”

  “And Leah always had the neatest printing in the whole class,” said a voice behind her.

  “Johnny.” She couldn’t stem her pleasure at the sight of his warm smile as he came in, dropping a case of some sort on the nearest desk. It was a joy to see any friendly face after Stacie’s open antagonism. “I thought you weren’t here today.”

  “Just got back.” He moved toward her with such enthusiasm she thought for a moment that he intended to hug her, but then he seemed to recall himself and touched her shoulder lightly instead.

  “You brought back all the information?” Stacie interrupted.

  “The files are on my computer,” Johnny said, turning his attention to her, and then embarked upon a discussion that was so technical that, to Leah, they might as well have been speaking in Russian.

  Today he wore what she supposed was a business shirt, with a collar that buttoned down and a tie. How long, she wondered, had it taken him to learn how to tie one of those? How long to feel comfortable with a belt instead of suspenders?

  Johnny swung back to her so quickly that perhaps he’d felt her looking at him. “If you’re finished, let’s go have a cup of coffee or a sandwich. We have a lot of catching up to do.”

  He smiled at her, and she was transported into the past, becoming again the young girl whose pulse had fluttered when he’d held out his hand to her at a danze with just that smile.

  And that was why it was so dangerous. She wasn’t that girl now, and Johnny wasn’t that boy.

  “I don’t think—”

  His mood changed, lightning fast as always. “You’re not going to let some ridiculous rules stand in the way of talking to an
old friend, are you?”

  He should know her well enough to know that he was making her uncomfortable.

  “I can’t.”

  “Leah promised to have tea with me today.” Lydia Weaver emerged from behind one of the shoulder-high partitions in the room. She smiled at Leah. “If you’re ready, I have the water hot.”

  “That is kind of you,” Leah said quickly. She walked away from Johnny without looking back.

  • • •

  “You have rescued me again,” Leah said as soon as the door of Lydia’s office closed behind them. “But it is not necessary to give me tea.”

  “It is a pleasure to give you tea,” Lydia replied, nodding toward the rocking chair Leah had taken the last time and busying herself with the tea things. “And I don’t think you needed rescuing. It was obvious from your face that you would say no to John’s invitation, not because of the Ordnung but because that was what your conscience told you to do.”

  Leah sat, the rocker giving instant comfort. “I don’t want to be unkind to him, but as much as I like seeing him again, I’m not sure it’s wise to spend time alone with him.”

  “John Kile is a gifted researcher, but he doesn’t understand people well, including himself. He wants two contradictory things at the same time.” Lydia set the cup of tea on the table next to Leah.

  Leah appreciated the gesture. Lydia was, without making an issue of it, allowing Leah not to have to take the cup from her hand, which was the letter of the law in most communities in regard to eating and drinking with those under the meidung.

  Johnny, on the other hand, had been only too ready to make an issue of it.

  Lydia sat down opposite her, holding her own cup. She seemed very willing to let the silence stretch out comfortably between them.

  Leah sipped the hot, fragrant brew. Her thoughts drifted to the past, measuring the Johnny she knew against Lydia’s words.

  “You’re right,” she said finally. “When he was a child, if he had to choose between a jumble cookie and a snickerdoodle, he’d end up with none if he couldn’t have both.”