Because she needed this—desperately. She needed friends and contact with the outside world. She needed gossip and commiseration and joking. Somehow it was hard to feel like a proper wife without a community around her to make her feel like she was married.
“Yah!” Levi said with a smile. “I would love a slice of pie myself.”
Jeb didn’t answer, and Leah went to the cupboard for the dessert plates.
“What kind of pie did you make?” Leah asked. “I made shoofly pie myself.”
“Blackberry,” Rosmanda said. “We have some bushes that are producing the biggest, plumpest berries. The twins have been eating every berry within reach, of course, but they don’t know enough to move the brambles. Thank goodness! But I managed to get enough for a pie yesterday, and . . .”
And as Rosmanda chatted on about her blackberry bushes, Leah felt the tension in the room start to lift. For her at least. She knew that Jeb hated this, but life couldn’t be cocooned away on a farm away from the Amish community, away from the gatherings, the friendships, and the moral support. Life couldn’t be wrapped up in this casing of solitude and caution ... Leah had to be able to breathe.
* * *
As Leah began bringing dishes to the table, Jeb got up and took them from her, carrying them the rest of the way. When the last of the food had been brought to the table, Leah brought some extra stools to the table for the little girls, and everyone got settled in their chairs. He felt Leah’s fingers brush against his knee under the table, and he looked over at her. She gave him an almost imperceptible nod.
“Let’s bow our heads,” Jeb said. Everyone did so, including the twin girls ... except for one who peeked up at him with wide, uncertain eyes. “We thank you, Lord, for this meal and for the hands that have prepared it. Amen.”
He raised his head, and for a moment there was silence.
“Uh—” Jeb cleared his throat. “Go ahead. Serve yourself.”
Rosmanda reached for a platter of chicken, and Leah picked up a bowl of potatoes. She turned to the little girl next to her. “Do you want some, sweetie?”
This was his table, his home. Yet he’d never felt quite so out of place in a very long time. He didn’t know these people. In fact, they likely knew more about him than he knew about them.
And yet, sitting at this table, he could feel their warmth and friendship for one another. Leah was laughing at something her friend had said, and she passed the potatoes on to Levi. Jeb could sense how easy they were when they laughed at something. It had been too long since he’d felt that way in a group of people, and this didn’t seem natural to him at all.
His mind wasn’t on their conversation, though. He had other, more pressing things on his mind, like Menno’s request and his guilt over not being able to do one small thing for his cousin. If he were alone, he’d be able to sort out his feelings about it, but with the chatter and laughter around him, he was just left with the misgiving rising up inside him.
Levi handed a platter of roasted chicken to Jeb, and he accepted it with a nod. He selected a piece of breast meat and dropped it onto his plate.
“Did you hear about the strawberry and ice cream social next Saturday?” Levi asked.
“What’s that?” Jeb focused back on the other man. Levi was looking at him expectantly.
“Next Saturday. There’s a strawberry and ice cream social,” Levi repeated. “Had you heard?”
“When would I have heard?” Jeb asked.
“I, uh—” Levi smiled uncomfortably. “Well, consider this an invitation, then. It’s being held at the Smucker farm. It starts at three.”
Jeb nodded silently and passed the platter on to Leah. She was looking at him hopefully.
“Will we go?” she asked with a smile that looked just a little too bright.
“We’ll see,” he said. There was an ice cream churn around here somewhere. If Leah wanted ice cream, he could make that happen.
“I think it sounds like fun,” Leah said, putting some chicken onto her own plate and setting it down on the table. “There are so many people I haven’t seen in ages—”
It wasn’t about the ice cream, and he knew his annoyance wasn’t fair, but he was feeling closed in, like the whole house was shrinking in on him.
“You should go, then,” he said.
What did Leah want from him? To start eating strawberries and ice cream with neighbors? To act like this was fun? He didn’t know these people anymore. When he was a part of this community, her friends were barely teenagers. And he’d been away from everyone for too long. He wasn’t going to chat and laugh with men ten years his junior who’d never tasted the bitterness of life, and he wasn’t going to be acceptable to the more experienced men either. He was an outsider. And this evening wasn’t going to change that.
“Maybe we’ll talk about it in private,” Leah said, and her smile slipped. She licked her lips. “Rosmanda, have you been quilting much lately? I was thinking of starting a new one.”
The conversation turned as quickly as that, and the little girls started putting their fingers in their mashed potatoes, which got Levi to give them a stern look. This was community, and this couple who’d come to visit with Leah would go back and report everything they’d seen and heard. What would they notice—the steps that needed repair? The stable that needed paint? Or would it be more focused on him and his awkwardness around them?
Jeb pushed back his chair, and no one seemed to notice. He rose to his feet, and the table silenced. Everyone turned, looking at him.
“I’m just going to step outside for a minute,” Jeb said.
Leah looked up at him uncertainly. “Are you okay, Jeb?”
“I’m fine. Keep eating.” He sounded gruffer than he’d intended. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and he didn’t mean to take this out on her. But he needed out of there—away from this table, away from the small talk, the chatter and the wide, staring eyes of those little girls.
Jeb headed for the side door, feeling his limp a little more acutely with all those eyes locked on him. He let out a breath of relief when he got into the mudroom, and he plunged his feet into his boots. He pushed open the screen door and let it bang shut behind him.
The air was warm and fresh, and he immediately felt better. He could hear their conversation resume—not the words, but the tone. The voices were questioning, concerned, worried. They didn’t need to bother. He was fine—or he would be once they’d left his home and gotten out of his space again. He headed down the steps and toward the barn. It was habit, mostly. There was a calf that could use some milk, and he might get a head start on some of the work. It wasn’t like there wasn’t a constant list of things that needed doing.
Jeb looked back at the house.... They’d expect him back soon, but the thought of going back into that kitchen with the small talk, the smiles, the eruptions of laughter—he wasn’t the jerk he must seem like in their eyes. He just couldn’t do this....
He’d told Leah he was no good at this stuff, hadn’t he?
And Jeb was many things, but he wasn’t a liar.
* * *
Jeb dropped a bale of hay from his perch at the top of the pile. He needed some hay easier to reach for chores the next morning, and he’d already cleaned out two empty stalls, fed the bottle-baby calf, and fixed a broken gate on a stall. He reached for another bale, grunting with effort as his bad arm screamed in pain. But he didn’t listen to that—he never did. If he stopped when it hurt, he’d never do anything.
He dropped the bale, and it landed on the cement floor, the twine flexing but not snapping. That would be enough for a couple of days. He eased his bad leg down first, then climbed down the ladder to the ground.
“They’re gone.”
Jeb startled at the sound of Leah’s voice, and he turned to see her standing there. Her hands were on her hips and she stared up at him, dark eyes flashing fire. He wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say. There were a few beats of silence.
“They see
m nice,” he said at last.
“Do they?” She raised an eyebrow. “Because they don’t know what you think of them now. You walked out at the beginning of a meal and just didn’t come back.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said.
“Do you know what that was like for me?” she demanded. “I served them their meal, I served them dessert, and I had to smile the whole time and pretend that everything was fine—making up a hundred excuses for you!”
“Then don’t make up excuses!” he retorted. “They were your friends.”
“And you’re my husband!” Tears misted her eyes, and she looked away, blinking them back. “You embarrassed me!”
Remorse flooded through him at the sight of her tears. But while he felt badly for hurting her, he wasn’t sure he could change things. It was the kisses—crossing that line. It made them both start hoping for things that hadn’t been part of their deal. He wanted the physical connection and she wanted him to be a friendly Amish farmer. He couldn’t change who he was, and sitting with a family in his kitchen, virtual strangers, and expecting him to chat and smile and laugh—it wasn’t going to happen.
“I can’t do it, Leah,” he said, his voice low.
“Sit and eat a meal?” she said.
“I’m not the man you’re hoping I’ll become,” he said. “You think I’ll go from being a virtual hermit to a friendly man. You knew what I was when you agreed to this.”
“Are you saying that having guests over is asking too much?” she breathed.
“Right now,” he said. “My sister comes—”
“She’s your family, not mine,” Leah replied. “Rosmanda is my best friend in this world—”
“Then see her!” he said. “I’m not holding you back!”
“I’m married!” she said. “Do you understand what that means? My best friend has been married for years, and I’ve been waiting. Well, I finally have a husband and a home of my own, and while I won’t ever have kinner of my own, I do have a husband. So forgive me for wanting to join the ranks of married women!”
“They know you’re married,” he said woodenly.
“Yah . . .” She shook her head. “But they don’t know if I’m happy.”
“Leah, I can’t be that man,” he said. “I won’t become like Levi or Matthew, or—”
“I don’t need you to be Matthew,” she said. “I just need you to be friendly.”
“I told you from the start—I’m no good with making nice. You can’t change me.”
“Rosmanda says that changing together is a part of marriage.”
“Then maybe you should change a few expectations of your own,” he countered. “I don’t trust them. They’re going back to discuss us at length—you realize that, right? And she’ll whisper something to one person, and he’ll confide something to another, and our business is going to be plastered all over the community in a matter of days.”
“What will they say?” she said. “They’ll say you walked out and never returned. If you’d stayed—”
“If I’d stayed, I would have choked!”
Couldn’t she see that? He didn’t keep people away because he was some kind of jerk—he couldn’t handle them. Their gossip, their advice, their suffocating presence ... He’d already experienced being in the center of a supportive community and look where it got him. He didn’t care if they liked him—he wanted his space.
Leah stared at him, and he couldn’t help but notice just how beautiful she was when she stared him in the face, no veils between them. She licked her lips. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?” he said, his voice still rougher than he was intending.
“You can’t do it.” Her voice sounded heavy and sad. “I accept that.”
“I’m not going to some strawberry thing either,” he said. “Go alone. You’ll see your friends. You’ll have your community. They’ll understand that your husband is peculiar. It’ll be fine.”
“Understood.”
As easy as that? Except he could see that he’d let her down—embarrassed her—and he couldn’t even tell her it wouldn’t happen again. This was simply who he was and how much he could take. The community she counted on to buoy her up was the one that had ruined his life.
“Leah—” He reached out and caught her hand. “I’m sorry. I am.”
She tugged her fingers free. “I have to clean up the kitchen. They couldn’t get out fast enough. They thought they weren’t welcome here.”
He was isolating her, and that had never been his intention. But he could see it happening, and he didn’t want to be the man who drained the life out of her. He’d sucked the happiness out of one woman already for not being the right man, and he was very likely doing it again. He wasn’t Katie’s Englisher, and he wasn’t Leah’s Matthew either. Leah was his wife, and he wanted to be her answer, her rescue, but right now, he was only disappointing her.
He was just a man with scars that went soul-deep who didn’t know how to be any different.
And he didn’t know how to make it up to her either.
Chapter Fifteen
Leah stood at the top of the drive, the midmorning sunlight soaking into her shoulders. She opened the mailbox—a rickety metal box with a dent on one side—and pulled out an envelope. It was addressed to her, but the cottage and the main house shared the same address, and for as long as she had rented that cottage for herself and Simon, Peter had simply hand-delivered their mail.
Leah tore open the envelope as she headed back down the drive toward the house, the gravel crunching beneath her shoes. The handwritten letter was from the Amish school board at Rimstone, and it was an invitation to come back and teach again come September. But it was more than that—if she’d come back earlier than September, they had some kinner who needed some extra help, little Benjie being one of them. And if she was willing to come sooner, they’d pay her for tutoring before she started the school year properly.
The words flowed over her, and she reread the letter three times while she slowly walked back toward the house.
The school board had no idea she was married, she realized in a rush. If they did, she’d never be offered the position. Married women belonged at home where they were needed, and there was no doubt she was needed here at the farm. There were two gardens to tend, fruit and vegetables to jar for winter, meals to make, a house to clean, laundry to do . . . She was needed here, but there was a part of her heart that still yearned for the life she’d had in Rimstone.
Leah was needed in Rimstone in a different way. The kinner needed her guidance and her enthusiasm. She could see their little faces light up when she encouraged them to keep trying and they finally mastered something. The parents needed her advice on how to help their kinner read better or her insight into their behavior when their parents weren’t there watching. She was welcomed into homes in Rimstone, invited to events, and a few even tried to set her up with single uncles or older widowers . . . which she obviously couldn’t allow anymore. But she had friends there—women who would enjoy her company and invite her over to cook together. She had a community life in Rimstone. She hadn’t appreciated it quite so much as she should have.
Was it ridiculous of her to miss it now that it was in the past?
The sound of wheels drew her attention, and she turned to see a buggy coming into the drive behind her. Matthew held the reins, and Leah’s heart sped up in her chest. This wasn’t appropriate—unless he’d come to see her husband about some business or other.
Matthew pulled the buggy up beside her. “I’m glad I found you—”
Leah shook her head. “Is something wrong?”
“Your brother—” Matthew grimaced. “He’s going to be furious I told you, but he’s at another Englisher card game.”
“He’s—what?” Leah shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t be—”
After all he’d been through, after the beatings, the deep debt ... after her marriage to save his hintern from those Englishers—he was gamb
ling again?
“How do you know?” she demanded.
“I saw him going in—they always meet in the same place. It’s in the back room of the pool hall in town. I was running some errands. I talked to him for a couple of minutes—I tried stopping him. He told me to mind my own business.”
“The back room of the pool hall, you say?” she clarified.
“Yah.”
“Good. Thank you. I’ll take care of it,” she said.
“Do you want a ride?” Matthew asked, and his glittering blue gaze met hers. Did he know how he could still make her feel? A smile turned up his lips. “I’ll bring you back. It’s not a problem.”
For him, maybe. Except it was a problem. The last year shouldn’t evaporate like this. He shouldn’t be able to look in her eye like that and give her that tempting half-smile of his that had always been the one to draw her forward.
“That wouldn’t be right,” she said. “We’re both married.”
Matthew huffed out a breath. “These are extenuating circumstances.”
“Yah,” she agreed. “And I’d rather not have to explain them to your wife.”
Matthew blinked at her, and whatever it had been in his demeanor that seemed to be stretching toward her dropped away. They could no longer have any special friendship between them—those days were done.
“Do me a favor, though,” Leah said. “Hitch up our buggy.”
She started forward again, not waiting for his reply. Matthew had come this far, and she wasn’t asking him to do this for her exactly. She was asking him to do it to help Simon. She broke into a jog, tugging her skirt up higher to let her legs move freely.
“Where are you going?” Matthew called after her.
“To get my husband!” she shouted back.
Matthew wasn’t the solution here, and he never would be again. He should save his moral support and tempting smiles for his pregnant wife. And as Leah ran, she sent up a prayer that God would keep her brother from losing anything more.
Leah found her husband coming toward the cow barn, and she waved her arms, then stopped running, leaning forward as her breath came in gasps. Jeb turned his steps toward her.
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