Double Take

by Melody Carlson

  “You were with Malachi,” Rachel said as she came in the kitchen, pausing to rub her lower back.

  “How did you know?”

  Rachel laughed. “Our bedroom window. It looks out to pond.”

  “Oh.” Madison put the last plate away, then wiped the water off the countertop. “Malachi told me something, Aunt Rachel. You must keep it a secret.” She wasn’t even sure why she was saying to keep it secret, but it seemed necessary.

  Rachel’s eyebrows arched. “What is it? Do tell.”

  Madison repeated what Malachi had said about asking to be baptized. Rachel’s hand flew up over her mouth and she began to giggle.

  “Why is it funny?” Madison asked.

  “Oh, you know why. Silly girl.”

  Madison already had a bad feeling about this, but it was growing worse by the minute. “Why?”

  “You know, Anna.” Rachel gave her a sly look. “A boy must baptize when he wants to marry.”

  Madison took in a quick breath. “But not only to get married.” Of course, she wasn’t sure about this assumption, but it seemed plausible.

  “Ja, sure. Malachi tell you this, Anna, because he wants to marry—”

  “I can’t—”

  “Oh, Anna, I know you grieve Jacob. But in time, your heart . . . it will change. You see.”

  Madison shook her head, then dashed out the door. She didn’t want to hear another word about this. Rachel would think she was acting like a drama queen, if there was such a thing in the Amish community. But it was all Madison could come up with at the moment.

  She went out to the vegetable garden, bending here and there to pull a weed that Noah must’ve missed, since weeding this garden was one of his chores. This garden amazed Madison. Everything growing in tidy rows—young plants, fresh and green, full of promise. It felt contained and controllable. She would miss it back in Manhattan.

  Madison wondered what Anna was doing right now. Had she found her beloved Jacob? If she did find him, what would that mean? Would she entice him to return with her . . . to marry? And what about Malachi? How would he handle it when “Anna” disappeared from his life? Would he regret his baptism? What if he tried to track Anna down, found where she lived, and demanded an explanation? It all made Madison’s head hurt.

  This was Anna’s world. Anna would have to deal with this Malachi development later. Maybe she could right now.

  Madison glanced over at the barn, wondering if it was too risky. Seeing no one, she decided to take a chance. She would use the phone and call Anna, demanding that they switch places immediately. But when she was almost to the barn, she heard the sound of the horse and buggy. She peeked around to the driveway and saw that Daniel was coming. She would have to call Anna later.

  Back in the house, she found Rachel spreading some light blue fabric on the kitchen table. At first she thought it was a tablecloth and was about to ask what the special occasion was since she had never seen anything like that before. Then Rachel laid what appeared to be pattern pieces on the fabric.

  “What are you making?” Madison asked.

  “You are better now?” Rachel gave her a questioning look.

  “Ja. I will be all right.”

  “It is for Elizabeth.” Rachel stood straight now, rubbing her back. “I wanted to make it before baby comes. Elizabeth is getting big, you know.”

  “Want any help?” Madison realized this was a somewhat deranged offer since her sewing skills were sketchy at best. Her old friend Lucinda had taught her to sew when they were in grade school. The goal had been to make designer clothes for their Barbie dolls. Since Lucinda’s mom was just starting her own line of clothing, it seemed feasible. Madison loved picking out the fabrics and dreaming up dresses, but she soon discovered she hadn’t cared for the sewing part. It was painstakingly slow and she usually made mistakes.

  With a relieved expression, Rachel handed Madison the scissors. “Ja, sure, Anna. You were always better at sewing than me.”

  Madison suddenly remembered her supposed brain injury. “I might mess it up.”

  “It is all right.” Rachel sat in a chair, leaning back and rubbing her tummy. “I will watch. If you make mistakes, I will tell you.”

  With Rachel coaching her along, Madison arranged the pattern pieces. Using table knives as weights to hold the pieces in place, she carefully started to cut out the skirt, sleeves, bodice back, and bodice front. One by one, she set them in a neat pile.

  Rachel peered curiously at Madison as she set the scissors aside. “You are much slower than before, Anna.”

  “Sorry.” Madison pointed to the side of her head and shrugged.

  “It is all right.” Rachel smiled. “You make me feel good—I am not as slow as you.”

  Madison chuckled as she followed Rachel into the other room, where she opened up a cabinet containing what appeared to be an ancient sewing machine. Again Madison had to plead loss of memory. She watched as Rachel threaded the machine, paying close attention as she demonstrated how it worked by tapping one’s toes on the rocking foot paddle. This caused the wheel to turn, making the needle go up and down and moving the fabric along. “You remember now?”

  Madison nodded. Thankfully, this machine seemed much slower than the state-of-the-art one Lucinda’s mother had let them use. Perhaps Madison could do this.

  “All right. You sew and I will be in the kitchen with the children.”

  Madison had no idea where to start. She unfolded the piece marked “front bodice,” opened it up, and laid it out, then placed one of the sleeves alongside it. She set the skirt in place, picturing how the finished garment might look. It seemed simple enough, so she began sewing.

  For a while she thought she was doing it right. Then she discovered that she’d sewn the bodice fabric wrong. The outside of the fabric was now on the inside of the dress. Although someone like Madison might not notice the difference, she suspected the women in Rachel’s community would. Poor Rachel already had a reputation for being slovenly. It wouldn’t help matters to see young Elizabeth running around in a messed-up dress. So she began to pick out the threads where she had attached the sleeves. Talk about tedious—this was grueling.

  So much so that she was happy to hear the sound of the twins’ voices as they came bursting into the house. She could almost understand how Rachel could prefer playing with her children to things like sewing and cooking. Who could blame her?

  But it seemed that Rachel had no energy to play with her children today. She simply sat on a kitchen chair, rubbing her big tummy and looking flushed and extremely uncomfortable.

  “Is your baby coming?” Madison tried not to appear as nervous as she felt. What if Rachel did go into labor before Anna and Madison switched back? What would she do?

  “No, no.” Rachel shook her head. “It is too soon. This does not feel anything like before.”

  “What does it feel like?” Madison asked. Before Rachel could answer, Jeremiah began wailing loudly, claiming that Ezra had slammed his fingers in the door—on purpose. Naturally Ezra insisted that was not true. The volume started to go up.

  “I will take them all outside,” Madison told Rachel.

  “Denki.” She nodded with tired eyes. “You are a good girl, Anna.”

  Madison couldn’t help but question that compliment as she lured the children out into the yard with the promise of a quick game of tag. A good girl? She was actually lying to everyone here, pretending to be what she was not, and worst of all, leading on a perfectly nice young man. Really, how could she keep this up another day?

  As she and the children were running around, screaming and shrieking and acting like wild things, Malachi came over and joined in, and the game got totally crazy and boisterous. But the kids were having so much fun. As the game wound down, Malachi continued to play with the children, giving them piggyback rides, flying them like planes, or spinning them around like rag dolls. His energy seemed limitless, and his little cousins were eating up his attention.

>   Madison sat on the porch step watching. It was sweet to see this handsome young man, only two years older than her, displaying such fatherly attributes. Not many nineteen-year-old men would act this way. And yet . . . if Malachi married (like he seemed inclined to do), he might possibly be a father before he turned twenty. According to something Rachel had said, Madison was pretty sure the Amish did not believe in birth control. One family in this community had sixteen children!

  Finally it was time for the twins to do their afternoon chores. Malachi invited Jeremiah to help him with the horses, and Madison took Elizabeth back into the house. She did not miss the longing glance Malachi tossed her way as they parted. Maybe it was her imagination . . . or maybe not . . . but she strongly suspected he was falling, or possibly had already fallen, for her. Normally Madison was flattered when a guy showed this kind of interest. But this time she was seriously disturbed.

  As she went into the house, she reminded herself that it was not actually Madison Van Buren he was falling for. He didn’t even know the girl from Manhattan. Malachi was falling for who he thought she was—Anna Fisher, a nice Amish girl. Oh, what a mess she had made!

  15

  Anna felt somewhat relieved that Lucinda knew her true identity, and she was fairly sure she could trust her with this secret. Lucinda seemed like a nice, sensible girl. On Wednesday morning, as Anna rode the elevator down to the seventh floor, she looked forward to seeing Lucinda again.

  “Come in, Madison.” Lucinda winked at Anna as if to send a message. “My mom’s here this morning too.”

  Anna nodded. Lucinda was hinting that she had not revealed Anna’s secret to her mother. Which probably meant that Anna needed to continue with her Madison act as Lucinda’s mom greeted her.

  “I’m so glad you decided to model for us this year, Madison. It will make the show so much better. Maybe you could get Vivian Richards to come on board too.”

  “Maybe.” Anna forced a smile. “The dress was pretty. Very bright.”

  “Too bright?”

  Anna shrugged.

  “Well, I don’t have time to chat now. I need to run over to Mood to check on some new fabrics and run a bunch of errands.” She waved. “Later, girls!”

  After she was gone, Lucinda told Anna how pleased her mom was to have Madison in the fashion show. “She’s certain this will get the media attention she’s been wanting.”

  Anna frowned. “What is media?”

  Lucinda explained the basics of publicity to Anna. “Newspapers and tabloids always get more interested when rich or famous people are involved. Madison Van Buren falls into that category.”

  “So if you are rich, you are famous?”

  Lucinda’s mouth twisted to one side. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Anna looked eagerly toward the sewing machine. “It’s really all right for me to sew on that?”

  “Absolutely.” Lucinda went over and began to explain how it worked. She secured a long strip of fabric under the pressure foot, then showed how to push a pedal with one foot—and just like that, the machine stitched, and not just a straight stitch either. It had a little blue box, similar to a phone, where one could select all kinds of stitches and just push a button, and like magic the machine would stitch it. Anna was amazed.

  “Would you use a machine like this at home?” Lucinda asked.

  Anna laughed. “Only in my dreams. In real life it would not work.”

  “You mean because of no electricity?”

  “For sure, that would be a problem.” Anna tried to explain why her people chose to live simply for many reasons. “We are made to be equal,” she said. “No one is better than another. Both in God’s eyes and in one another’s. If I had a fancy sewing machine like this, I might think I was better. Or someone might be jealous. It would bring trouble into our community.” She looked at the stitch pattern that resembled a row of butterflies and flowers. “All these fancy stitches . . .” She shook her head. “They would not do at all for our style of sewing. Our clothing must be simple. Straight seams, no fancy stitches. Some districts do not even allow buttons.”

  “Seriously? No buttons?”

  “Because we oppose war.”

  “So do I.” Lucinda looked confused. “But I don’t oppose buttons.”

  “In old days, buttons resembled a soldier’s uniform—it was unacceptable to dress like a soldier.”

  Lucinda held up a big pink button. “No soldier’s uniform would have buttons like this.”

  Anna looked at what Lucinda was working on, and to her amazement, Lucinda was sewing those pink buttons to a garment, using the machine. “Oh my! The machine can sew on buttons too?”

  Lucinda laughed. “You can do anything on a machine. But my mother still hires people to hand-sew some things.” She groaned. “Like hems. In fact, that’s what I’ll be working on most of the day.”

  “I can help.”

  Lucinda blinked. “Really?”

  Anna nodded. “I want to.”

  “My mom will pay you.”

  Anna shrugged. The truth was she was happy to do it for free. The thought of spending the day in here, just sewing . . . well, it was lovely.

  As they worked together, Lucinda’s story unfolded. She told about how her friendship with Madison had gone awry a couple of years ago. “We became best friends in the summer before third grade, right after my parents moved into this building,” Lucinda explained. “We weren’t wealthy like the Van Burens, but our families hit it off anyway. Our dads both worked on the stock market. Although, as my dad used to say, he actually worked. Mr. Van Buren just managed the family fortune.”

  “I thought Madison’s father lived somewhere else.”

  “Yeah. Madison’s parents divorced in our freshman year. It was an amicable split. Or so Madison claimed. I wouldn’t know.”

  Anna couldn’t quite grasp all this, but she pretended she was reading one of her English novels—they didn’t always make sense either.

  “Anyway, back then our moms got along too. Throughout grade school and middle school, our families vacationed together and stuff. The Van Burens have this really cool house in the Hamptons and a home in the Adirondacks and several other places too.”

  “They have more than one home?”

  “Sure. Like I said, they are really rich.”

  “Yes.” Anna slipped the needle through the silky fabric, pulling it through, making sure the stitch was perfect. “I know that.”

  “Anyway, we were tight.”

  “Tight?”

  “Really close. Madison and I were, like, inseparable.” Lucinda frowned as she turned around the garment she was working on. “Until a boy came between us.”

  “A boy came between you?”

  Lucinda nodded. “Actually, it was a boy and a girl.” She told Anna about becoming good friends with a boy named Alistair one summer. “Alistair’s family was from London. They moved into our building shortly after Madison went to Europe with her grandmother. I guess I was lonely, and so was Alistair. As a result we got really close. So close I think I had a serious crush on him. I even wrote Madison about it, although she claimed she never got my letters.” Lucinda sighed. “Alistair was so cool.”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened is that Madison came home and the next thing I knew she and Alistair were together.”

  “Oh.” Anna remembered the time Leah Riehl had tried to steal Jacob from her. Fortunately for Anna, Jacob had remained true.

  “Anyway, I was so mad. I mean what kind of best friend steals your boyfriend?”

  “That is hard.”

  “Yeah. Madison and I weren’t talking when school started. She and Alistair were still together, and this new girl—Vivian Richards—started going to our school. She glommed onto Madison.” Lucinda let out a shriek.

  “What?”

  She held up a bleeding finger. “I stabbed myself with the needle.”

  “Oh.” Anna gave her a sympathetic look.

  L
ucinda stuck her finger in her mouth.

  “So you lost your best friend and your boyfriend?” Anna asked.

  With her finger still in her mouth, Lucinda nodded.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Now, if Madison told you that story, she would probably make me out to be the villain. She would say that I later stole Alistair from her.”

  “Did you?”

  “Not really. Madison was starting to get interested in Garret by then. I just picked up where Alistair and I left off.”

  “So Alistair is . . . he is your boyfriend now?”

  Lucinda shook her head. “No. He moved back to London last summer.”

  “You and Madison never restored your friendship?”

  “We don’t even speak.”

  “But you spoke to me in the elevator,” Anna reminded her.

  “Because you were acting like a doofus.”

  “A doofus?”

  “Remember, you didn’t even know how to operate an elevator.”

  Anna chuckled. “I remember.”

  “I should’ve known then you were an imposter. I thought maybe you had a hangover.”

  “A hangover?”

  “From drinking too much alcohol the night before.” Lucinda held her head between her hands and made a face. “You know?”

  “Ja, ja.” Anna laughed. “We have a neighbor who sometimes drinks too much dandelion wine. Next day he is kranker.”

  “Yeah. I thought maybe you—or Madison—were kranker. Then you smiled at me and I was caught off guard. That’s why I was nice to you.”

  “Just because I smiled?”

  Lucinda shrugged. “Hey, it doesn’t take much. Then you said you were meeting Garret and I figured you hadn’t really changed.”

  “You don’t like Garret?”

  “More like he doesn’t like me. Both Garret and Vivian treat me like dirt.”

  “Why?”

  Lucinda laughed, but she did not sound happy. “Why? Because I, unlike them, am not filthy rich. My parents both work for a living.”

  “Oh.” Anna nodded. “So do mine.”

  “Yes. But that is different.”