Abel threw his arms up in the air in a gesture of oh, you can’t be serious!
Even Dr. Zimmerman looked surprised by Veronica’s bluntness. “I hope not. Not on my watch, anyway.” He turned to Abel. “We’ll call you if there’s any change in her condition.”
“Better call me,” Veronica McCall said with a smug smile. “These people”—she nodded her head in Carrie’s direction— “don’t have telephones.” She followed Dr. Zimmerman down to the nurse’s station to give him her phone number, talking the entire way.
As the elevator door opened, a large man in a Barnstormers’ jacket stepped out and spotted Sol. In a rusty and deep voice, he shouted, “Riehl! Where’d you go? Coach is looking for you!”
Sol gave Carrie an awkward glance. “I’d better go.” Lowering his voice, he added, “I’ll see you soon. Think about what I’ve said. Just think about it, okay?” He squeezed her arm and hurried to reach the elevator before the doors closed.
Abel stared at her a moment, in that intent way of his. “What was that about?”
Carrie kept her eyes on the ground. “What was what about?” “What’s the story with that Sol guy?”
“It’s like Veronica said. He’s a baseball player.”
Abel crossed his arms against his chest. “So she said. What else?”
“Nothing else,” she said, lifting her head to meet his gaze. But she couldn’t hold his stare.
“Well, let’s see. For one thing, he’s clearly Amish.”
“What makes you say that?” Sol didn’t look at all Amish, she thought, not anymore. It was more than the shingled hair and blue jeans. He had never moved like an Amish man, slow and cautious. He had always moved quickly, with the confidence of an athlete.
“What makes me think he’s Amish? One: his accent. Two: his name. Three: the way he was looking at you.”
She spotted Veronica walking toward them in the hallway. “Maybe Veronica could drive us home. Emma is probably driving Andy crazy with her worry about Yonnie.”
“You go. I’m going to stay here overnight.”
She glanced at Yonnie’s door. “Will you tell her I’ll come to see her tomorrow?”
Abel nodded, distracted, and turned to go back into his grandmother’s room.
Veronica McCall drove Carrie home, talking on the black clothespin the entire time. Just before they reached Cider Mill Farm, she said, “I’ll call you back. I have another call. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Wait a minute.” She handed Carrie the clothespin. “Here, Carrie. Abel wants to talk to you.”
With one hand, she pointed to the part that Carrie should listen to.
Awkwardly, Carrie lifted it up to her ear. “Carrie?” she heard Abel ask. “Yonnie is awake now.”
Carrie hesitated before answering, unsure of where on the clothespin she should speak into. Irritated, Veronica pointed to the speaker. “How does she seem?”
“Better. She’s even talking a little. Dr. Zimmerman thinks she had a small stroke. They’re going to put her on anticoagulants to thin her blood. He thinks she’ll be fine. He said he’ll probably release her tomorrow, so I’ll stay the night and hire a driver to bring her home.”
“Tell him I’ll come and get him,” Veronica interrupted, eavesdropping. “Oh. Okay,” Abel said flatly, overhearing Veronica. There was a pause. “Carrie, are you okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” she said briskly, not wanting to discuss Sol. She handed Veronica McCall her black clothespin telephone.
When they pulled up to the house, Carrie thanked Veronica for coming to the rescue. With one hand on the door handle, Carrie shifted her body to turn to her. “I’m grateful for your help today. But I’m still not going to sell you my property.”
“Your property?” she asked, arching one thin eyebrow. “Abel is the rightful owner.”
Carrie shook her head. “Eli left the home to Daniel. To me and Andy.”
Veronica stretched in her seat like a cat. “It’s a matter of public record, Carrie. Go look it up at the county. The name on the deed of the property is Abel’s.”
“That couldn’t be right.” But even as Carrie said it, a knot of doubt started to grow.
“Ask Abel who owns the property, if you don’t believe me.”
Carrie felt the beginning of a slow burn. “So Abel knows?”
“Of course he knows,” she crooned, with a triumphant little smirk. “He’s known all along. He paid the taxes on it just last week.” At Carrie’s bewildered expression, Veronica smiled the smile of one who knew something that another did not. “Why do you think he’s staying here? Why do you think he’s here at all?”
Samuel Zook, Mattie’s brother, was passing Cider Mill Farm in his buggy as the ambulance pulled away. He stopped for a moment as Emma filled him in on Yonnie’s emergency. When he arrived home and told Mattie the news, he offered to take her to the hospital. “But you’ll have to catch the bus to get home or Dad will skin me alive for missing the afternoon milking,” he told her.
Mattie grabbed her bonnet and cape and hopped in his buggy before he could finish the offer.
As soon as Mattie walked through the hospital door, she looked for someone to help her find Yonnie. A hospital volunteer led her to Yonnie’s floor and pointed down the hallway to the room. Mattie gently knocked on the door, not knowing what to expect, but was surprised to see Yonnie sitting up in bed, talking with Abel. His face lit up and he sprang to his feet when he saw her. “Mattie! How did you hear? What are you doing here? Is Carrie with you?” A crestfallen look passed over his face as he realized she was alone.
For a split second, Mattie found she couldn’t answer. Why, he’s falling for Carrie! Dear Lord, anyone can see that a mile away. When Abel asked her again why she was at the hospital, she said, “To check on our Yonnie.”
“The doctor thinks that Yonnie can be discharged tomorrow,” Abel said, looking affectionately at his grandmother.
Mattie took hold of Yonnie’s wrinkled hands. “That’s wonderful news, Yonnie!” She turned to Abel. “My dad has a hired driver scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. He has a doctor’s appointment across the street. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind bringing you both home, if that would help.”
Abel sighed with relief. “That would mean Veronica won’t have to pick us up.” He winced. “She’s been calling the nurse’s station every fifteen minutes. They’re about ready to pull the phone cord out.”
Sol stood outside the hospital, stunned from the news his pitching coach had given him after the event in the pediatric ward. His contract for the upcoming season wasn’t going to be renewed.
“I’m sorry, Sol,” the coach told him. “We found another pitcher who can match the speed on your fastball, but he’s got a few more parlor tricks up his sleeve.” The coach patted him on the back, as if that made it all right. “I like you a lot. You’ve got a great work ethic. This is nothing personal. Baseball is a business, a tough business. It was a good run while it lasted.” He then said that he would look around and see if there might be a AA team that needed a pitcher, but he knew there was no interest in the Atlantic League. “And the thing is, Sol, you’re going to keep running into the same problem. I even thought about having you help coach the Junior Barnstormers team, cuz I think you’d be good with kids, but what could you offer? You haven’t been taught the mechanics of pitching, or hitting, or catching. You’re just now catching on to keeping stats. You’ve had a lucky streak with one fast pitch.”
Sol sat on a bench, head in his hands. A lucky streak. A good run while it lasted. Now what? He had such plans. He was going to skim the surface of the world, and here he was, stuck in Stoney Ridge.
He had no idea what he was going to do next. His baseball dream had just died. Carrie was still mad at him; she was staying mad. His folks had told him not to come around anymore. He knew it wasn’t his mother’s idea; she looked as if it was killing her to hear his father say those words, but they decided it was high time Sol came back to the fold. He figured a church eld
er, or maybe Esther Weaver, might have paid them a visit.
The thing was, he wasn’t really Amish anymore. But he wasn’t really English, either. He felt small and very, very alone.
Absentmindedly, he watched a young woman, dressed Plain, walking to the bus stop. Sol jackknifed to his feet and jogged over to her. “Mattie?”
Startled, Mattie spun around to see who was calling her name. Then she smiled.
Sol was grateful to see a friendly face, any friendly face would do. “What are you doing here? Would you have time for a visit? A cup of coffee, maybe?”
“I heard the news about Yonnie so I came to see if I could help. And to answer your other questions, yes and yes.”
In the cafeteria, Mattie sat across from Sol as he poured out the story of getting cut from the team. He didn’t mean to tell her so much, but Mattie had a way of listening and talking at just the right places. When he told her the coach wanted him to come back for “Salute to Whoopie Pie Day” because it would boost attendance among the Pennsylvania Dutch fans, she laughed so hard it made him start to laugh too. Put that way, it did sound ridiculous.
After he finished, he asked, “Any idea what I should do now?” He peered at her as if she could provide him with answers to all that plagued him.
Mattie stood, walked to the window that overlooked the parking lot, and then turned back to him. She spoke the truth that was in her heart, because that was the only way she knew how to be. “When you get to your wit’s end, Sol, you’ll find God lives there.”
“Why didn’t you tell me Eli left you these orchards, Abel?” Carrie asked, then waited, hands on her hips, letting her silence demand an explanation from him.
They had just settled Yonnie up in her bed after returning from the hospital. Emma hovered over Yonnie like a bee over blooming lavender and Andy was at school, so Carrie followed Abel out to his workshop in the barn. Since Veronica McCall’s revelation about the property deed, she had been waiting for this moment to come.
Abel spun around, confused. He looked exhausted from spending the night upright in a hospital chair. “Who told you that?”
She told him everything Veronica had told her.
His eyes went wide, but Carrie knew she had the truth. “That’s not how things went . . . I didn’t . . . I would never . . .”
She glared at him, standing her ground.
“Can you stop looking at me like that? You’re sort of scaring me.”
She kept glaring at him.
He raked a hand through his hair, searching for the way to say what he had to say. “The house and orchards were left to me after Daniel died, Carrie. I received a letter from Eli’s attorney before I was released from jail. He’s the one who told me about Daniel’s death.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “Eli didn’t put you in his will.”
She felt anger boil up like a kettle on a hot stove. “Or Andy?”
“Or Andy.”
“And you knew about this, the entire time.”
He nodded slowly, looking miserable.
She was so upset she was shaking. “I have been working to pay the next tax bill on this property all winter. We are paying our feed and gas bills one at a time. Why, even Yonnie has been parting with her quilts! It’s been that way ever since Daniel passed.” She took a few steps to the open door of the workshop and swept an arm out toward the apple trees. “Do you have any idea what this land means to me? These orchards are meant for Andy to have one day. You arrive out of the blue and think you’re going to walk away with it? To sell it and walk off?”
Abel was stunned. “But I never knew . . . why didn’t you tell me you needed money? I could have been helping. I want to help. That shouldn’t be your responsibility.”
“It should be my responsibility! All along, I’ve thought they belonged to me! To me and my brother!” She spun around to leave.
With his good hand, he grabbed her arm to make her face him. “I admit, I came here thinking I would sell the place. I figured you would want to live with your folks, and Yonnie would come back to Ohio with me. Steelhead and I had plans to start a business. But then, I met you, and I saw how you love this place. I see how your face lights up and how hard you work at it. I never signed those papers, Carrie. I could never do that to you.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Why shouldn’t you?”
“For a man who keeps spouting off that the truth will set us free, I don’t see you doing much truth telling. You had plenty of chances, Abel Miller.”
Stung, he dropped his hand to his side. In a quiet voice, he said, “I know. I kept looking for the right time to tell you, but it never seemed to come. And then it got harder to tell you. When the property tax bill came in the mail last week, with my name on it, and you put it in my workshop, I just went ahead and paid it. I thought I was helping, but the truth is, well, I just didn’t know how to tell you the truth. Not after all this time.” He rubbed his jaw. “Eli left this property to me because he was trying to set things right. For me. He wasn’t trying to hurt you. Neither was I.”
Just then, Andy came running to the workshop to show Abel a hummingbird’s nest he had found on the way home from school. Abel bent down to examine it.
“Wow, Andy, what a find!” he said with such fondness in his voice that it made Carrie’s heart hurt.
Carrie watched the two heads bent over the nest for a long moment, then as her eyelashes spiked with tears, she turned quickly to go to the house.
13
Sol drove to Central Market right about the time he thought Mattie would be done working for the day. Just this week, her family had opened up their stand to sell the first fruits of the year: asparagus and spring onions. He smiled at the pleased look on her face when she spotted him. He flashed her his most dashing grin, the one he used only when girls were around. “Hello there, Mathilda Zook.”
Mattie gave him a measured look in that way she had. “Sol, please wipe that dipped-in-honey grin off your face. I know you well enough to know when you’re trying to charm someone. Why don’t you stop playing games and just tell me what you need.”
Sol’s grin faded. “I could sure use a friend, Mattie.”
Mattie closed up the stand and locked it, put the money in her pocket, and turned to Sol. “Let’s go for a ride.”
Sol drove down to Blue Lake Pond. In the late afternoon sun, it was so cold they decided to stay in the car. With their eyes facing the silver shimmer of the pond, Sol found himself spilling out everything about the turmoil he felt over the last year. Mattie was easy for him to talk to, easier than Carrie, he realized. There was a little part of him that wasn’t entirely surprised Carrie wouldn’t forgive him. As if he always felt he might disappoint her, after she really got to know him. Maybe that was why he went ahead and disappointed her. He couldn’t deny a part of him felt relieved about trying to play baseball without worrying about a wife. But in the back of his mind he figured he and Carrie would eventually work things out, that they were meant to be together. He underestimated her stubborn streak.
He looked over at Mattie in the car. Her face was turned to the sky, like a flower, and she smiled softly as the sun washed over her. Things felt so comfortable with Mattie. In a way he didn’t understand, she knew him better than he knew himself.
“The thing is, I could always have any girl I ever wanted.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. Amish or English. Carrie knows that.”
Mattie nodded, shifting in the seat to look straight at him. “Until now.”
Sol frowned. He knew what she was probably thinking, just like his mother and sisters, that he was being punished for leaving the flock. “I don’t know how you can handle all of the rules, Mattie. I got so tired of bumping into rules every time I turned around.”
“I guess I don’t see the rules as taking something from me. I see them as giving to me.”
He glanced at her, surprised. How could he describe freedom to someone who was raised in a cage? “Do y
ou mean to tell me that you honestly think God would label you a hopeless sinner if . . . ,” he tugged on a string of her prayer cap, “if you had one less pleat in your cap? Or one more? Will the wrong number of pleats in your cap send you to the devil?” He felt a twinge of guilt to say such things aloud, to cause doubt in Mattie the way it used to when he said such things to Carrie.
But Mattie didn’t look to be filled with doubts. In fact, she looked as if she was trying to suppress a smile. “Sol, you’re missing the point. My clothes and prayer cap, the way I look, they aren’t making me suitable to God. They’re reminding me, every day, that I belong to God.”
Sol looked at her, amazed, as if seeing her for the first time. Before him was a girl with steady gray eyes, wide cheekbones that narrowed to a dainty chin, giving her face a sweetheart shape. Her skin was like freshly skimmed cream, her hair the pale yellow of a winter sun. Mattie had a shy innocence common to Amish girls, yet he found that nothing he said shocked her. All those years he’d known her, yet he had hardly ever noticed her. He had to admit, the reason he was spending time with Mattie now was because she was Carrie’s best friend, and this was the closest he could come to Carrie.
He shook his head. “It’s amazing you and Carrie are such good friends. She’s always been tempted by worldly things. She wants more choices.” He stopped himself. Or was that me? He thought Carrie wanted more, but suddenly he realized he might have blurred her wants with his. He gave a quick shake of his head. “Wanted. She wanted more choices. I guess I don’t really know what she wants anymore.” He cast Mattie a sliding glance, hoping she might expand on Carrie.
Mattie’s eyes were fixed on the pond. “I do have one rule, Sol. I’m not going to talk to you about Carrie.”
There was no mincing words with that girl, he pondered after he dropped Mattie off at the end of her lane, far enough away from her house that her folks wouldn’t see his car. Mattie surprised him with her forthrightness. His sisters had catered to him the same way his mother catered to his father. Wasn’t that the way things worked in the Amish world? He wasn’t sure he liked the change.
The Choice (Lancaster County Secrets 1) Page 20
