“I don’t know who would have said anything, besides your sister,” she said. “Because I haven’t breathed a word, and I know you wouldn’t have. But Matthew knew about it—I saw him at my brother’s place ... It isn’t a secret anymore.”
“So, people are discussing our sleeping arrangements?” he asked hollowly. “The elders are discussing it?”
“Yah.” She felt the pain of that fact, too. “It would seem.”
“I’ll be speaking to Lynita, trust me,” he muttered. Because he couldn’t see who else might have leaked that information either. But Lynita? She, of all people, knew how private that was. To use it as idle gossip ...
“That’s not the worst of it, Jeb. . . .”
“There’s more?” His stomach sank. It was hard to think of anything worse than their privacy being a topic of common gossip.
Leah folded her hands in front of her in a white-knuckled grip. “Methuselah was concerned that I didn’t know about Katie, and that perhaps there was some mean tendency in you that they’d missed in your first marriage.” Her voice trembled. “And I know how insulting that is, even repeating it. And I was angry on your behalf. I didn’t want them speaking about you like that. And I told them they were wrong, that you weren’t some monster who’d terrorized his young wife. She was the one—” She sucked in a breath, and her words faltered. “—who was leaving you.”
Jeb stared at her, his heart hammering in his ears. She’d told them his personal business? She’d told them the secret he’d been keeping all these years and entrusted to her as the only person living he could trust with it ... She’d told them?
“They won’t believe you,” he said woodenly.
“They didn’t,” she agreed. “So, I . . . Jeb, you have to know that I only wanted to protect you! It wasn’t fair! Fifteen years of rumors and assumptions, and no one knowing what was really going on!”
“What did you do?” he asked hesitantly. It was better to know it all.
“I told them about the letter,” she said weakly.
His heart thudded to a stop and he stared at her. She’d revealed his letter? It was no longer in the drawer; it was now upstairs in his bedroom. So, she wouldn’t have shown it to them, would she?
“That won’t fix things,” he said. “They won’t believe I found it too late. It will only fuel their suspicions.”
“Then why dive into that fire after her?” Leah demanded. “Jeb, I believe you! And if I do, others will, too!”
Jeb shook his head bitterly. “You have great faith in these people. I know them a little better.”
“They’re taking the information I gave them to the bishop.”
“Yah, that’s no surprise,” he muttered. “Is that all? Or is there more?”
“That’s all.”
Silence stretched between them, welling up like rising water, sucking the air from the room. So, people knew ... everything. He felt like the very walls were closing in on him, and he shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He’d told her how important his privacy was, and he’d trusted her more than he’d trusted anyone else ...
“Why would you do that?” he asked at last. “You knew how I felt about keeping my life private—”
“Because I can see what they did to you!” Leah sank back into her chair and looked up into his face pleadingly. “They were in the wrong, not you! And Katie wasn’t the innocent dove they all assumed she was. They messed up, and afterward they let everyone blame you!”
“Yah. I’m clear on what they did,” he breathed. But they’d never own up to it, and there was nothing more dangerous than people protecting a popular lie.
“They pushed you out,” she said. “They made it impossible for you to come back. And what is life without your community? You did what your community told you was right in marrying her, and then they abandoned you! I told them because—” she dashed a tear from her cheek—“you can’t come back and be part of the community until they fix it. It’s not on you.”
And then it all fell together in his mind, tumbling into place. He could see it now, clear as day—why she’d talked to them, why she’d spilled his secrets.
“And that’s your goal,” he said quietly. “That’s what you’re trying to make happen—to get me back into the community.”
Leah paused, then nodded. “Of course! I understand exactly why you’re angry. I know why you don’t trust them. But if they could see what they’ve done . . .”
She went on, but he’d stopped listening. It was her goal to get him back into the bosom of their Amish community. But he wasn’t coming back. What part of this didn’t she understand? He wasn’t some lost lamb waiting for rescue. He’d been through hell and back again, and he’d never be a well-meaning Amish fellow who believed the best of his brethren again. Those days were gone, and he was now a hardened, wiser version of himself.
“I’m not some broken man waiting to be fixed,” he said, cutting her off. “I know who I am! Why can’t you respect that?”
Leah put her hands on her hips, meeting his gaze with glittering intensity of her own. “I do respect it, and I see that they’re the ones who are wrong. This is bigger than one man’s experience, Jeb. This effects everyone!”
“And do you see that I will never open myself up to them again?” he barked. “Do you see that?”
Leah blinked up at him, and he felt a wave of remorse. She’d just been told what a monster he was by the people she respected, and here he was bellowing at her.
“I’m sorry if I scared you—” he started, lowering his voice.
“You don’t scare me!” she retorted, her own voice rising. “Maybe you did before, but not now. Did it ever occur to you that God might have brought us together for a reason?”
Did God do this? Did he bring people together, just to hold them apart? Did he use money to chase people into marriages of convenience?
“God didn’t do this, Leah,” he said quietly.
“God works in mysterious ways,” she said, but he saw the tears mist her eyes. He’d hurt her with those words, and he hadn’t meant it like that ... But he highly doubted that God had put her in his arms to erase the last fifteen years. God had taken him through mountains and valleys, journeyed with him for years . . . just to flick him back to the beginning? What was the purpose of it all, if it just got erased?
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said hesitantly.
“And how did you mean it?” she asked, her chin trembling.
“I meant ... this is more complicated than that.”
“You need our community.”
“I don’t need people I can’t trust!”
“You need people, period! Before Peter died, you had him, didn’t you?”
“And now I have you!” Jeb said, and as the words came out, he felt a flood of those confusing, overwhelming emotions he was starting to associate with her. “I thought I’d be alone. I didn’t even think I’d have this farm at the end of the day.... I was okay with being by myself—because at least I knew who I could count on . . . but then you came along and we came up with this crazy plan to get me some land and your brother his money, and—” Jeb sucked in a breath. He wasn’t even sure he should say everything he felt. “Leah, I have you.”
Didn’t she understand the depth of that? Did she feel what he felt? He didn’t need a community full of do-gooders if he had a wife he could count on. She was the one he needed.
“I’m not enough,” she breathed.
“You are.” He caught her hand and tugged her closer. “You have no idea what you’ve brought to my life, Leah. I thought a marriage could be distant, but the vows change things between a man and a woman. And I find myself thinking about you when I’m not here. I find myself wondering what you think about things. I look forward to coming home to you, and not just because of your cooking. It’s you. It’s sharing a home with you, a life with you . . . I was lonelier than I knew before you, and having you here is like opening up shutters
that have long been closed, and having sunlight come flooding in.”
“I’m like sunlight?” she whispered.
“Exactly like sunlight . . .” Jeb touched her cheek and ran his thumb over her bottom lip. She didn’t pull away, and when her gaze met his, he bent down and kissed her tenderly. When he pulled back, her eyes stayed closed for a beat longer, then they fluttered open.
“God knows how I tried to stick to our agreement, Leah,” he murmured, meeting her gaze in agony. “And I can keep trying, if that’s what you want, but ... I love you.”
Chapter Nineteen
Leah’s breath caught in her throat, and she stared at Jeb in silence. She was still stuck on her worry about how angry he’d be ... but he loved her? She opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again.
Her feelings for him had been growing, too. It was why she’d defended him so passionately. It was why she wanted him to rejoin the community so badly....
“I think ... I love you, too,” she whispered. There really was no other way to explain how she felt for her husband. Her longing for his touch, her longing to help him . . . And somehow these tender feelings had been building.
“Yah?” He reached out and took her hand, tugging her off her chair as he rose to meet her. “Is that even possible?”
“It’s why I tried to defend you, Jeb. . . . We weren’t supposed to love each other, were we?”
Jeb bent down and lowered his lips over hers. His kiss was slow, tender, and she could feel his frustrated longing. She wanted to stay there . . . melt there . . . But then he pulled back again and rested his forehead against hers.
“I need to be enough,” he breathed.
Leah pulled back, forcing him to meet her gaze. She knew what he wanted from her—to join him in this lonely life cut off from everyone else.
“A community and a husband are two different things,” she whispered, begging him to understand.
“The thing is, I’m not going to change,” Jeb said. “This is me. I’m stubborn and tough, I work hard, and I love deeply. But I can’t go back to being the man I was before Katie. I can’t. It doesn’t work that way.”
“I’m lonely,” she whispered. “Jeb, I can’t just live like you have. I need people. I need worship services, game nights, strawberry parties, and visitors! I need to attend weddings, and celebrate other women’s babies, even if it hurts. I want to make quilts around a circle, help neighbors in need, play with kinner, and—” She cast about, looking for the words. “Happiness for me is shared.”
“They know too much,” Jeb said woodenly. “They’ll only dig deeper, trying to figure out what’s happening over here. That’s the thing with a tight community. All is fine if you appear exactly like everyone else. They can accept that. But if you’re different in any way, you won’t be a part of things. No matter how much you want it. And there won’t be any pregnancies to put their minds at ease. They’ll talk about us behind our backs. They already are, and the elders have started coming. Do you think that will stop? Leah, I know what you want out of this community, but you won’t get it.”
“And I can’t be happy without it.” Her chin trembled, and she looked away. “Jeb, I’m not as tough as you. I’m Amish—and what are we without our community?”
“It won’t happen here!” he said, his voice hardening. “I’m sorry! I wish I could tell you otherwise, that if you just attend enough weddings and quilting circles, they’ll stop worrying about me. But that isn’t going to happen!”
He stepped away from her and tossed his hat onto the table. Then he rubbed his hands over his face.
“Then you come to the weddings and the parties!” she pleaded. “This isn’t impossible! If they can see you, get to know you again . . .”
“I’m doing my best with Simon,” he said, his voice low. “I’m going against my instincts to keep to myself, and I’m taking him with me to work. I’m trying to be something to him. I’m trying, Leah. I thought that would mean something to you.”
“It does!” she said. “But Jeb, is sitting on this farm alone good for him? He needs community now more than ever, too. It’s the community that’s going to help him get over this gambling problem. Not me. I’m not enough! And I’m not too proud to admit that. We all need people. We need leadership and friendship . . . we need this community, Jeb, even when we don’t want to admit it!”
“Even when I don’t want to admit it, you mean,” he said.
Leah sighed. “I can’t live alone, Jeb.”
He dropped his gaze, and they stood there in silence, the only sound that of their breathing. How had this happened? They were supposed to avoid this. She’d known his ways when she agreed to this marriage, and he’d known what she needed, too. So how had they gotten to this point?
“We shouldn’t have given in to those feelings,” Jeb said quietly, and she realized he must have been thinking the same thing she was. “We knew this all along, and it wouldn’t have been a problem if we’d just kept things—” He shrugged his broad shoulders, not finishing.
“Practical?” she supplied.
He met her gaze sadly. “I thought if I didn’t take you to bed, I wouldn’t fall in love with you.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. But it was the same for her. “We need to get our balance back.”
“Yah.” He nodded.
Leah reached into her apron pocket, and her fingers brushed against the letter from Rimstone. They couldn’t make each other happy here, and they’d known that all along. Jeb had been right. They’d want more, they’d long for more ... and they wouldn’t be able to give it.
“I got a letter from the school board in Rimstone,” she said, her voice choked. “They want me to come back ... as early as possible.”
“But you’re married,” he said.
“They don’t know that,” she said with a weak shrug. “And if they find out, all you need to do is give your permission for me to teach.”
“You want to go?” he asked. “You want to leave?”
“I want to see those kinner again,” she said, tears rising in her eyes. “And I want to be a respected part of a community. If I stay here, I’ll be the wife who does it all wrong—I’ll be a morality tale for the younger women, and I’ll be talked about constantly. But if I go teach—”
She left the thought hanging. It was a lot to ask. There wouldn’t be anyone to do the women’s work around the house anymore. There would be no meal waiting for him on the table, and that thought nearly broke her heart.
“It wouldn’t have to be for forever,” he said, his voice tight. “We could do it for a year. Get our balance back.”
Leah nodded. “And I’d send the extra money home to you. You could buy some preserves, maybe even hire out the laundry and some of the other work.”
“I could get Simon to move in here,” he replied. “We’d work together, and I’m sure we could do our own cooking and cleaning between the two of us. Might let me keep a better eye on him.”
“Would you do that?” she whispered.
“For you, yah.”
A tear slipped down her cheek and she brushed it away. “I thought my own bedroom would guard against this, Jeb.”
“Yah. I thought so, too.” He nodded, then swallowed hard. “When do they want you to start?”
“As soon as I can,” she said. “There are kinner who need extra help with their studies, and they’ve said they’ll pay me for tutoring before the school year starts if I come now.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “When do you want to leave?”
“Tomorrow,” she whispered.
“As soon as that?” He stared at her, his dark gaze pleading. “Are you sure?”
“If I don’t go tomorrow, I won’t go!” she said, her voice shaking.
Jeb licked his lips and turned away, staring out a window. She couldn’t see his face, and she wondered if he’d refuse. Maybe she wanted him to. If her husband said no, she wouldn’t have to say goodbye, and she could stay here, and th
ey’d . . . They’d make each other miserable, because their needs weren’t going to change, but their feelings might. And after a love like this, feelings got mangled and bloody. They turned to resentment and anger, oh so easily ...
“Tomorrow, then,” Jeb said, his voice thick with emotion. “I’ll take you to the bus station.”
“Maybe it’s better if my brother does,” she said. Saying goodbye in public would only make it harder.
He nodded. “Okay. Yah. I could see that.”
They were being practical now, just as they should have been from the start. They shouldn’t have been playing with something so volatile as attraction. Wasn’t that what they warned the young, single people against? Don’t toy with it! It’s fire.
It was fire inside a marriage, too ... to warm or to devour.
She couldn’t say she hadn’t been warned. At least Rosmanda had tried to warn her ... Marriage was never quite so simple, was it? There was something about saying those vows before God and community that changed things.
“A friendship lasts longer than passion anyway,” she said, and the words sounded feeble and hollow in the agony of the moment. “It’s what they say . . .”
And sometimes all a woman had was the wisdom the community had told and retold the young people ... That a marriage should be entered into with practicality in mind, that a friendship needed to be developed, because it was the part of the relationship that lasted the longest.
So, she and Jeb would have to focus on a friendship—something they could both manage that would be longer lasting than whatever this passion was that kept trying to boil up between them.
Maybe then they’d stop longing for more. It was the longing that hurt the most.
* * *
That night Jeb listened to the sound of his wife’s sobs from behind her bedroom door. She was trying to muffle them, he could tell, but the unmistakeable shuddering breaths gave her away.
He lay on his bed, his throat thick with unshed tears and his chest aching. He’d done it again ... made another woman miserable in her marriage to him. What was wrong with him that he kept hoping for someone to love the broken man he was? He didn’t have what an Amish woman wanted—he never had.
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