by Trisha Telep
Hannah missed Caleb. And though she saw Susie every day, she missed mothering her and fixing her hair. She wanted to teach her to stitch a sampler and bake cookies.
She needed to stop yearning for what she could not have.
More than a month had gone by, and Caleb, she imagined, had forgotten about her as she would forget him in time. It was best.
She went to the Hershbergers for dinner that night because she missed adult company. With her promised to Enos, there would be no danger of matchmaking.
As in most Amish parlors, an assortment of rockers with footstools circled the room for goot talk. In a glass-fronted china cabinet made by Abe Hershberger, Ida displayed her beautiful but useful dishes and serving pieces, likely wedding gifts purchased at local glass factories.
But the focus of Hannah’s attention was the man who rose from the far rocker. “Caleb. Good evening.” They were trying to match her with Caleb? Why? “Where is Enos?” she asked, and Caleb scowled. He was disappointed to see her paired with him, then?
“I apologize, Miss Peachy, for being a disappointment,” Caleb said, claiming her emotion. Why did he think she would be disappointed?
During dinner, she fidgeted beneath his discomfort, and her own. Abe and Ida Hershberger were the most uncomfortable.
Their silence called for an early evening. Abe offered to hitch up his buggy and take Hannah home.
“Nonsense,” Caleb said. “I am going to the same place, or as near to as makes no difference. I will take Hannah. Thank you for dinner.”
“Yes, thank you,” Hannah said. The minute they drove away, she lit into him. “You did not even ask if I wanted a ride home?”
“You would rather walk? I could let you out?”
“Do not be smart with me.”
“You would rather I be stupid?”
“Ca-leb!” She stretched out his name in exasperation.
“Han-nah!”
They looked at each other and tried not to laugh.
“Hannah, I apologize. I wanted out of there. Fast. That was awful.”
“I am sorry if having dinner with me was so difficult,” Hannah said. “I do not know why I should be surprised. Gideon used to feel the same.”
“What are you saying?” He slowed the horses. “You are wonderful company.”
“Then why were you so miserable?” she asked.
“Because you wished I was Enos.”
“I am promised to Enos. Seeing you confused me.”
“No,” Caleb said. “I saw how much you disliked being paired with me.”
“Caleb, I love having dinner with you and Susie. Though I like it better without the Hershbergers. I was relieved Enos was not there, believe me, but I was embarrassed to put you in that position.”
Caleb slowed the buggy. “You know, Hannah, it strikes me that there might be a way to stop this nonsense.”
“What particular nonsense?”
“Matchmaking and your marriage to Enos.”
She tilted her head, one kapp string curling around a breast. “How?”
“Marry me.”
Nine
“Marry you?”
Caleb forged on while Hannah’s laughter charmed and worried him.
“Stay at Dovecrest Farm and wait for spring. We can watch the jonquils bloom together – you, me and Susie. Work beside me through every season of our lives. Being apart from you for so long was torture.”
“The jonquils never come up, Caleb. And spring is always such a disappointment. I had rather not wait for it, if you do not mind.”
“I do mind. You do not give a seed pod for Enos.”
Hannah nodded her agreement. “Exactly why I can marry him. Losing him will not break me.”
“Suppose you marry Enos and, the week after that, I am killed in a buggy accident?”
Hannah slapped his arm. “Do not say such things even in passing.”
“Would you mourn my loss?”
“I would . . . die a little more inside, like I did when Anyah and Grace died.”
“What will your Enos think about you mourning another man?”
“Caleb!”
“Could you pretend you did not care?”
“No, of course not. That is foolishness, Caleb.”
“You think so? Think on this, then, Hannah Peachy. If I did die, I would want you, and no one else, to raise my Susie. I have no family, and she loves you already. It must be you. What would Enos say to that? To the expense of another mouth to feed? What would he think about you giving my daughter the love you could not give him?”
Hannah held a hand to her heart. “Susie? If something happens to you, you want me to be Susie’s mother, to teach her what all little Amish girls should know?”
“Never mind if something happens to me. I want you to be her mother, period. I want you as my wife. I have been smitten since— No, let me go further back than that. I believe Anyah chose me for you to marry.”
Hannah scooted back from him, whether to see him better or to get away, he could not tell. Then she tugged the lap rug off him to wrap around herself. “That Anyah brought us together is a cruel thing to say.”
He stopped the buggy in the middle of the snow-capped field they cut through. “Almost from the moment I left Pennsylvania,” he said, “a joyful young girl, filled with life, skipped in front of my buggy. She led me here, Hannah. And, when we arrived, she twirled in your driveway as if she had come home.”
Hannah covered her mouth with a hand, her eyes filling. “Our Anyah, she liked always to twirl, Caleb. Made the bishop plenty mad.” She wiped her eyes, though her tears continued.
Caleb took her in his arms and kissed her wet cheeks. “Cry, Hannah. Give in to the tears you have bottled up. Two years worth, maybe more.” He soothed her, wiped her eyes and gave her his handkerchief. “She is a treasure, your Anyah, and she loves your baby girl.”
Hannah buried her face against his chest and slipped both her arms around his waist.
Taking that as a sort of permission, he spread a hand against her bodice, beneath her breasts, claiming her, to his mind.
“Anyah wanted for us to leave Gideon,” Hannah whispered. “She wanted to make a new start in Pennsylvania. Spinster sisters, she called us. And then Gracie was coming, and we never went.”
“If Anyah had not died, would you have left Gideon?”
“I am a coward when it comes to escaping, especially for my own sake,” Hannah confessed. “But I would have done it for Anyah.”
“Then do it for me and Susie. Escape to me. Let me help you.”
Hannah sighed, fear filling her expression.
“Anyah got her escape,” Caleb whispered against her ear. “She is happy, Hannah. She would see you happy, too. She has the ways you call ‘flighty’ but I love that in you. Yes, you laugh and play, but not too much,” he said. “I have heard your laugh, and I cannot imagine a wrong time for you to be happy, unless of course if you broke into laughter while I tried to love you.”
Hannah shoved his arm, but she chuckled. “My behavior can be disgraceful. I would embarrass you.” She tried to remain serious.
“Please be disgraceful and flighty with me,” he begged. “Sing with Susie. Laugh and play with her, with both of us. Bring us back to life, Hannah. Only you can.” He nuzzled her neck, her ear. “And if you sing while we make love, I will only want you more.”
Hannah folded her hands in her lap, her cheeks pink. Caleb thought that maybe she prayed for guidance, or sanity. He decided to pray as well, for a “yes”.
“I could do this for Susie,” she whispered after a minute, “but not for myself.”
“Could you not do it for me?”
“No man has ever wanted me before.”
“Not even your father?”
“Especially not him.”
“You should know that I can already buy farms for our children, as is the Amish way, even if we have a dozen. I also have the means to pay off Gideon’s debts, and never will
it come between us,” Caleb said.
Her head came up fast. “You want more children?”
“Half a dozen?” he asked, amending his request so as not to scare her off.
“How about a baker’s dozen?” she countered.
“Thirteen it is.” He jumped from the buggy and lifted her down, took her in his arms and twirled her, shouting his joy.
“Caleb, Caleb, this is—”
“Fun?”
“Flighty.”
“Then let us be flighty together, shall we?” he asked, but as if censure could not wait, a carriage approached.
“The bishop!” Hannah whispered pushing him hard away from her.
“The same bishop who wants you to marry Enos?”
“Yes. He is stubborn. He will not approve of us.”
“Leave it to me.” Caleb stepped forward, claimed her and squeezed her waist. “Promise?”
Hannah gave a quick nod and trembled beneath his hand as they turned to face the buggy pulling up beside them, its wheels cutting through the frozen field with crushing reproach.
“Vat’s iss?” The bishop asked. Anyah, the ghost, sitting on the wagon seat beside him. Had Hannah’s twin led the bishop here?
“A celebration,” Caleb said.
“Bishop,” Hannah said, “this is Caleb Skylar, a new member of our community.”
“I have just asked Hannah to marry me,” Caleb confessed.
“Is this true, daughter?” the bishop thundered.
Caleb wished he knew about their family connection. Strong measures would be called for to make a father go back on his choice of son-in-law.
“Yes, it is true.” Hannah shrank deeper into herself, and Caleb wanted to tell her to stand straight, but then he would be no better than every man who’d bruised her with such orders.
The bishop grumped. “She is promised to Enos Miller.”
Caleb cleared his throat. “I think Enos will not like his bride to give birth to my child eight months after his wedding.”
Anyah clapped in delight. Hannah squeaked and gave a whole body shudder.
Caleb slipped off his broadfall jacket and put it over Hannah’s caped shoulders. She was not the kind of girl would stand in a frosty field lying.
At the intimacy, the bishop stood, towering over them from his buggy. “Hannah?” The single word held a threat. “Is this true?”
Anyah stood beside her father, somewhat aglow of a sudden, and Hannah gasped. She could see the spirit of her twin now, Caleb thought, because Anyah signaled with several enthusiastic nods that Hannah should say yes.
Hannah squeezed his hand. “Yes,” she whispered and raised her chin. “Yes, Father. I carry his child.”
“We must be wed this church Sunday,” Caleb said.
The bishop grunted and urged his horses forward. “Tomorrow is church Sunday. Be ready.”
Ready? Ready for what? Caleb wondered. It had been his experience that a lie never had the desired effect.
Hannah wilted against him as her father’s buggy disappeared, and he could feel her trembling. “I lied to my father.” Her guilt changed to joy. “I saw Anyah, Caleb, and she does look happy.”
“Only because you will be when you marry me.”
“You will not blame yourself, please, when I get sad. I do not know how to be happy.”
“Oh, you do, it is in you. Be yourself. Susie and I want the real you.”
When she opened her mouth to argue, he opened his over it with a hungry kiss. That fast, passion rose between them, cocooned in the dark of night, the stars winking down in approval. He learned her with his hands and, more important, she dared to learn him. A happy surprise, her eagerness.
“I want to take you to my bed, now, tonight,” he whispered against her lips. “Does that frighten you, liebchen?”
Hannah toyed with the broadfall flap of his pants, at his waist, bold girl. “What frightens me,” she said, “is that I want to let you.”
Ten
Were they really going to do this? As Caleb helped her into the buggy the next morning, Hannah marveled at the possibility of a union inspired by a lie. Where her anticipation came from, she did not know. She settled falsely prim between Caleb and Susie and smoothed her skirts. She should worry about a marriage begun in such a way.
Along the way, Hannah dared clutch Caleb’s arm. She liked his wink, the light in his big brown eyes. “A wedding, Caleb. Ida will think she worked a miracle last night.”
“She will tell the world how she did it.”
“May I teach Susie to bake and stitch? I so missed having a little girl of my own.” She took Susie onto her lap so she could sleep more comfortably in her arms.
“Soon, she will belong to both of us,” Caleb said. “You may claim her any time you want, especially when she screams.”
When the three of them walked into Andy Byler’s barn for service that morning, everybody stopped talking, and soon enough Zeb Shotz, the new preacher came in, the signal for everyone to sit.
As was the custom, the men sat on one side, facing the women on the opposite, with babes in arms and children at their feet. On the rough-hewn barn wall, men’s hats hung on nails in a crazy quilt pattern.
For the first time, Hannah did not feel her lack of children as a failure. Susie had come in with a hand in Caleb’s and one in hers, to everyone’s interest. Then the shy child looked from the men to the women, and reached for her skirt. That small gesture brought such a rush of joy.
Hannah felt . . . prideful, for perhaps the first time in her life, but sin reaped its own harvest. Her father’s arrival put period to pride.
An hour into the service, her father excused Preacher Shotz and stood before them. A confession he called for – from her and Caleb, of course. All bishop, no father.
Everyone hushed.
“Hannah Barkman,” he said, with no claim for her as his daughter. “Will you confess your sin before these your brothers and sisters?”
Caleb shot to his feet to argue, but he caught her warning glance. His look said he was there for her, that he cared for her.
Imagine, being brought to her knees before the district, and feeling cherished, which she did not deserve. Utter foolishness, and yet, she could do this.
She knelt before her father, her stern bishop, praying Susie would sleep throughout.
Their high holy leader rocked on his heels, until shame rolled off her in waves. “Do you, Hannah Barkman, confess to sinning with the newcomer, Caleb Skylar, and to conceiving his child?” Had her father’s voice ever been louder?
The newcomer, who had been there three months, already.
“I do confess it,” she said, voice soft, a lie to save Susie, in the event something happened to Caleb. And yes, a lie to save herself, as well. And what did that make her?
She glanced at Caleb and his answer came to mind. Human, it made her. A forgivable sin, humanity.
While the crowd murmured in whispers, her father combed his beard with his fingers. Disgust she saw in his eyes, and something else. Speculation? Suppose, as her punishment, he did not make her marry Caleb?
Now she prayed, she prayed hard. For her punishment, she asked for Caleb, a man she did not really know – except that she did, she believed.
Did she? Some men changed the minute you married them. She knew.
“For your punishment, you will go from among us and . . .” His words hung in the air. Shunned? Was she shunned? No, oh no! “Sin no more,” her cruel father added, finally finishing his sentence. Maybe. Not shunned then?
“And . . .” her father intoned, so loud, the birds in the rafters took to fast and noisy flight. And this bishop, with no compassion for his daughter, let the threat sit so long, spots danced before her eyes.
“No marriage celebration. No corner table for you,” he said.
Torture, he doled out, and torture she took, though this was the worst. “Your sin will not be spoken of again,” the bishop said. “Go back to your seat.”
> Hannah did not know – was her punishment not to marry Caleb? To bear her child – hah, what child? – in shame?
She rose and went back to her bench, saw understanding on some faces, condemnation in others.
“Caleb Skylar, kneel before me.”
He obeyed but humility did not suit him. His tight fists and stiff shoulders came hard. But he echoed her.
“Are you sorry for this sin?” her father asked him.
“Not sorry to love Hannah,” Caleb said.
Ach, another lie, Hannah thought.
“Not sorry to have another babe,” Caleb added. “Sorry if I displeased the Lord in this.”
“You did. Your punishment Caleb Skylar will bring His forgiveness. Stand please. Hannah Barkman, you will stand beside him. Abe and Ida Hershberger, you will stand witness.”
Hannah’s head came up, the blood drained from her face. A wedding after all? Was she to be rewarded for her lie, then? She obeyed, breathed deeply when she stood beside Caleb, let her heart slow to steady. Then she nearly smiled when Anyah appeared beside her, the witness she would have chosen, pushing Ida back a step, though Ida seemed confused as to how she stumbled.
A gift for punishment – little did her bishop know. She did not need pretty glass dishes and a day of singing. She did not need to sit at the Eck, the corner table, where all brides and bridegrooms sat for a day of celebration.
She wanted only Caleb and Susie and their life on Dovecrest Farm to erase the memories of her previous life there. And after her lie of a confession, she wanted more than ever for the jonquils of forgiveness to bloom next spring.
After the bishop pronounced them man and wife, Caleb wanted out.
He went to collect Susie, still sleeping on the bench in the women’s section. Then, he took his bride’s arm, and they left service early.
Hannah liked to feed the gossips, Caleb remembered, and he found he enjoyed it as well.
He wanted to tell Hannah to raise her head as they left, but all he had to do was look at her, and she did raise it, her eyes sparkling.
Her father followed them. Caleb did not speak to the high holy man until he put Hannah and Susie in the buggy and hitched the horses. Then he let the bishop draw him aside.
