by Lexi Whitlow
Deception
Lexi Whitlow
Contents
1. Sarah
2. Justin
3. Sarah
4. Justin
5. Sarah
6. Justin
7. Sarah
8. Justin
9. Sarah
10. Justin
11. Sarah
12. Justin
13. Sarah
14. Justin
15. Sarah
16. Justin
17. Sarah
18. Justin
19. Sarah
20. Justin
21. Sarah
22. Justin
23. Sarah
24. Justin
25. Sarah
26. Justin
27. Sarah
Epilogue: Five years later
Excerpt from Low Country Daddy
More By Lexi
About the Author
Deception
© 2018 Lexi Whitlow
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.
Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented are 18 or over.
Kindle Edition
Cover Design:
Mayhem Cover Creations
Photo Credit:
Wander Book Club
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1
Sarah
Twelve Years Ago
Grandmama is wrinkled, mostly broke-down with a bent back and gnarled hands. She can still shuck corn faster than a sprightly girl like me; she’s had 80 years of practice. Even as frail as she is, worn by a life of work, her mind is as sharp as the forged blade my father uses to cut burrowed ticks off his horses’ hind parts.
She winks at me.
“Rumspringa’s on ya’ now, eh?” she says, rocking in her chair as we shuck the last of the season’s sweet corn. My mother glances at me, then down at the painted boards on the porch and piles of discarded corn sleeves at her feet.
I nod, smiling awkwardly. To say I’ve been looking forward to this moment for years is a massive understatement. Leaving the Amish community for the first time has been my one desire since I turned ten. And that was even before I discovered boys.
“Make you the most of it, you,” she giggles with a toothless grin. “I did. We all did.”
“Mother, don’t be givin’ ‘er ideas,” my grandmother says. Grandmother is sixty and still has a few of her best teeth still firmly rooted in her head.
“It’s what Rumspringa is for,” Grandmama states, putting a booted foot down. She’s the matriarch here and so we must listen. “None’ll hold it against her. She’s got as much right as any to test the world and see what it’s about. And maybe if she’s smarter’n us, she’ll shuck her last ear and get far from here. Get herself a fellah who don’t expect her to break her back and break her heart making bread and babies for a husband that don’t take but a minute and not a thought what he’s doing down there.”
I want to crawl under the porch. My face flushes hot and red. I could never admit that the thought of what goes on down there has been on my mind. But it’s not the real reason I’m looking forward to Rumspringa.
“Grandma! Shush!” my mother says. “Sarah doesn’t have any idea what you’re talking about and better she doesn’t. Now just stop!”
GrandMa-Ma smiles at me, her gums shining in the sun. “She knows,” she says. “She knows, or she soon will. Sixteen-years-old and headed to Rumspringa. She’s got a lot of finding out coming. Be smart, girl. Choose wise.”
My brother Jacob comes around the corner of the house leading a dusty work horse by a bridle and rope. He’s seventeen-years-old, tall, lanky, and full of himself.
“Sarah, bring me some water! And some bread and cheese. I’m parched and hungry.”
I can’t help but bristle. This isn’t what girls in the real world have to do. It’s what good little Amish girls do. “Get your own water,” I snap. “I’m working too.”
“Sarah, get your brother something to drink and a snack,” my mother insists. “He’s been in the fields all day.”
Jacob has been fooling around in the cool air of the barn, while Grandmother, Mother, and I have been up since five this morning, working by the ovens in the bakery. I made him breakfast. I made his lunch. I washed his clothes and hung them on the line.
“Jacob, there’s a spigot right here at the porch and the bread’s in the kitchen. Help yourself, boy.” Grandmama calls out, pointing a crooked finger in his direction. “Sarah’s got fifty ears to shuck before suppertime.”
She winks at me again, watching Jacob deflate. He moves to the spigot, turning the knob, drinking straight from the stream.
If I was a man, I’d punch Jacob square in the jaw. Whoever is stupid enough to be his wife deserves to be punched too. He’s the eldest son and he thinks he owns the rest of us. He doesn’t own me, no matter how many times my mother tells me to do what he says.
It occurs to me, like a faint spark rising from a distant horizon, that no man owns me. And no man should.
“We’re going to the auction at Dinkey’s tomorrow,” Mother says, changing the subject. “I think we’ll have a big day for pies and fresh bread. The tourists love our baking, and Sarah’s pies are a favorite.”
Grandmama smiles at me. “I know those English buy your pies and sweets by the carload. I hope you’ve been saving your pennies, angel. You’re going to need every quarter you got.”
* * *
The auction is over, and the crowd has thinned out. It’s long past dark and the van waits, its big gasoline engine idling. The boys glance around anxiously, kicking the dust and rocks, impatient to get going. The girls are take a little more time with our worried parents.
Us kids are going to a gathering in Indianapolis of all the Rumspringa kids in Indiana. The church fathers have put together a program on the dangers of mixing with the modern world, and what we need to caution against while we’re running around.
Father hugs me, telling me to be good. My little sister Hannah throws her arms around my shoulders, tears in her eyes. She knows. The rest of my siblings wish me a fun time. When it’s Mama’s turn, she doesn’t want to let go; she holds me so tight it hurts. She leans close, pressing her lips to my bonnet.
“Always be the best person you can be. God is in your heart and He won’t ever leave you. Be kind to those you meet and be good to yourself. Always respect yourself and others will respect you in turn.”
I haven’t told Mama, but I know—just by the way she’s looking at me—she knows too.
I’m not coming back.
“Easy Mother, she’ll be back on Tuesday,” Father says, his eyes smiling.
He’s going to be so disappointed in me. He’ll never forgive me. That’s the hardest thing to think about. I may never see any of my family again. I’ll be shunned, excommunicated from the church and the community. Everyone I know will be forbidden to speak to me again.
That’s a horrible thing to consider, but I never want to see the inside of a henhouse again, or knead a roll of
sticky bread dough, or wake up before light so a house full of men can eat everything on the table before I get their scraps, leaving me to wash their filthy clothes. If I never wash a dirty diaper again, it’ll be too soon.
There is no way, as long as I have this opportunity, that I’m going to get married at eighteen-years-old and start having babies, spending my entire life working my fingers to the bone for a church full of old men who will tell me what to do, when to do it, and what to think about it.
I may be Amish, but I’m not stupid. There’s got to be more to life than this.
I’ve left three letters: one for my parents, one for my siblings, and one mailed this morning to Mrs. Daniels at the public library in Odon. Mrs. Daniels will understand; she was Amish too when she was a girl. She met an English boy when she was on her Rumspringa and decided to try the outside world for a while. She went to the public school in Odon with the boy and his friends, and then she went to college too. They got married and have a family; all her children are almost grown up now. Mrs. Daniels became the town librarian, and she became my friend. As soon as I find a place to live in New York, I’ll write Mrs. Daniels and let her know I’m settled, so she can come to the bakery and tell my mother.
As our van pulls off, dust rises thick in the gravel parking lot of Dinky’s Auction House. Everyone’s waving goodbye, and me too. In a minute we’re on the paved road headed north, passing buggies, catching up with slow-moving cars, their tail lights flaring red through the grimy windshield.
“What’s the first thing you’re going to do when we get to Indianapolis?” Ruby, a girl my own age from another church in a nearby town, asks me. In the dim light I can’t see her well, but I can see she’s fidgeting nervously with her apron strings.
I smile shyly into the darkness. “I’m going to buy some English clothes and buy a bus ticket to New York City.”
Ruby gasps. “No, you’re not!” she exclaims.
“Yes, I really am,” I reply, feeling the weight of my words.
I reach up and pull off my bonnet, shaking out my long hair, letting it fall freely across my shoulders and down my back. A couple of boys seated behind me snicker loudly, whispering something between them. They’ve never seen my hair, or probably any girl’s hair before. Not even their sister’s.
We’re supposed to be ashamed of our hair, but I don’t understand why. If there’s a God, He gave me long blond hair. He doesn’t ask the trees to hide their leaves, or the mare to cover her mane. I’m never covering my hair again. I’m proud of who I am, and proud of who I’m going to become. If that’s a sin, then I’m a sinner. No one is ever going to shame me again, not for just being me when it hurts no one at all.
With every mile of narrow, Indiana farm lane passing away behind us, I’m a little bit closer to the life I’m determined to live. No one else is ever going to make a plan for my life again. From now on, the decisions are mine. I’ve got almost six thousand dollars saved and a list of people in New York from my teacher, Mrs. Daniels. She said they’d help me; I can only believe her.
I’m going to start high school in a few weeks. After that, I’m going to college. One day, when I’m grown-up, I’ll start my own business, support myself, travel, do what I like when I like.
And I am never, ever, getting married.
2
Justin
You should have another drink and relax,” Nathan says, smiling easily at our bar mate.
Nathan has a way of putting people at their ease. Me, not so much. The guy sitting across from me is the Executive Vice President of Sales for KeyStone Digital Systems. They used to be the biggest supplier in the world of inventory control systems for retail, but the last few years they’ve been struggling with declining sales and very little new product development. Still, they do have a huge existing customer base and legacy systems in the field that won’t be replaced for decades.
The guy is sweating like a boxer in the ring, looking around the place nervously—and he should be nervous. I own half this town, and I plan to buy the rest.
It’s early, and the bar isn’t crowded. We’re all the way over on the other side of town from where he works. There’s almost no chance he’s going to see anyone he knows.
“I’ve told you everything,” he says. “When the quarterly report comes out in a few weeks, it’s going to look bad. I’ve got sales guys who’ve been with us for twenty years freshening their resumes. The word is the board is already making plans for major lay-offs. Everybody’s walking around on eggshells and the CEO hasn’t come out of his office in weeks.”
That’s great news. For me, anyway.
I buy broken companies. I buy them cheap, when they’re at their most vulnerable, but before all the value has been sucked out of them. Usually I take them apart and recycle the good pieces—like that valuable customer base—into other companies I own, or I sell them to the highest bidder. The garbage—the bulk of the sales, marketing, and management teams—goes straight to the dump. There’s no profit in retaining people who failed.
“I’ve gotta go,” he says. “If anyone sees me talking to you two, I’m toast.”
I nod. I have everything I need. He’s given us plenty of intelligence over the last several months. I’m preparing an offer to the shareholders they’ll be unable to refuse, especially if I make sure the company’s stock falls into the pits when the quarterly report comes out. I’ve been buying up blocks of shares for months, waiting for the day to dump them all at once. That day is almost here. I’ll buy them back at fire sale prices, then pitch my takeover offer to the board while they’re still reeling from the collapse in value.
I slide an envelope containing fifty-thousand dollars across the table.
“Thanks for the intel,” I say. “Dust off your resume. You’ll be needing it soon.”
He nods anxiously, taking the envelope, slipping it into his brief case. A second later he’s beating a hasty retreat out of the bar with an expression on his face like he’s just been caught shoplifting.
Nathan gives me that look he always gives me when we’ve wrapped up one of these ethically-challenged strategies. He swirls the ice around in his glass, contemplating it briefly. Then he downs the contents and lifts the empty for the bartender’s attention.
“Another one bites the dust,” he says, smirking. “I wish you’d find a company to buy that we could turn around. I think you get a little too much personal satisfaction from destroying companies.”
I shrug.
Nathan may be right. He usually is. I’m not about to let him know that though.
“Why reward failure?” I ask instead, lifting my glass, enjoying the last remnants of peaty brown Scotch lingering in it. “People who run perfectly good companies into the ground deserve to be deprived of their livelihood. Most people rise to the level of their incompetence. Take that guy back there. Scared of his own shadow and he’s in charge of their entire sales division. The guy’s probably never had an original thought in his life. That, and he’s a cheaply purchased traitor. I wouldn’t hire him or ninety-nine percent of the people walking around this city to scrub my floors, much less run a business.”
“You also need to get laid,” Nathan laughs at me. “I think it would improve your general outlook on humanity.”
I shake my head. That’s a sore subject.
“Seriously, Justin. How long has it been?”
One eyebrow is raised so high as he asks this, I know it’s got to hurt a little bit.
“Long time,” I admit. Since Anna left. But Nathan already knows that. Or at least he can guess.
The bartender brings another round of drinks, and I’m grateful for the interruption. Unfortunately, Nathan doesn’t take my silence on the matter as a hint to let the subject drop.
“You need to get back on that horse and ride,” he says. “I know you’ve had a bad string of luck with women the last few years, but you need a life other than this vulture capitalism grind. It’s depressing.”
�
��It’s not that easy, man.”
All women see when they look at me are dollar signs. The money is all they care about. It’s taken awhile to come to grips with that fact, but I’m okay with it now. I’m better off alone than being used by women who all wind up being gold diggers.
“Whoa,” Nathan croons with a low, rumble in his tone, his eyes fixing on an object near the entrance of the bar, behind me. “Speaking of getting laid. Damn.”
I turn to see what he’s looking it.
Damn is right. Smoking damn hot with a cherry on top. She’s tall, naturally blond, with a gorgeous figure and a decidedly business-savvy sense of personal style. Her hair, which is long and straight with thick bangs, is tipped at the ends in hot pink. She’s wearing a masculine style suit, but perfectly tailored to her figure. Her make-up is minimal. Her skin is flawless, with a natural peaches and cream beauty that’s rarely seen in this city of over made women, most trying way too hard to appear chic. Her bright, sky-blue eyes almost glow in the golden light of the bar.
She’s glancing around the bar as if she’s looking for someone. She fiddles with the pink ends of her hair, and then brushes the locks back over her shoulders.
Her gaze sweeps in my direction. Her eyes lock on mine and in an instant, I see the smallest hint of a smile start to form on those rosy pink lips.
I bet those lips taste like cherries. I’d like to try them out.
