More Than a Promise

by Amy Lillard

  “But this is Reuben’s first relationship,” Tess pointed out. She made her tiny little stitches, looking up only so often to join in the conversation. Of the younger girls in the quilting circle, Tess was perhaps the shyest. Though today, to Mariana, she seemed almost withdrawn and a little pale. Or maybe Mariana just needed to get out a little more. She might be reading things into situations that weren’t there. Like what Reuben was doing at Shelley Glick’s house two days ago.

  Like it mattered to her. It didn’t matter what Reuben did. He was her husband’s best friend and his business partner. Right now, he was perhaps her best friend as well, but that was all. Nothing more.

  “I have a feeling y’all wouldn’t be gossiping so much if Helen and Emily were here.”

  Clara Rose giggled. “Ouch.” She stuck her finger in her mouth. “I poked myself.”

  “Maybe we wouldn’t,” Eileen said. “Or maybe we would.”

  The women laughed, and Mariana chuckled along, though she still couldn’t help but wonder if Reuben had decided to finally get married.

  Chapter Four

  “Are you sure nothing’s bothering you?” Reuben asked the following afternoon.

  “I’m good,” Mariana said.

  He tilted his head to one side and studied her. “You just seem sort of . . . Well, not yourself.”

  They had started a game of Uno just after they ate, intending to play just one hand. But since Reuben didn’t have a job until later, one hand had turned into four.

  “Everything’s great,” Mariana repeated.

  Reuben threw a green seven on top of her red five. “That sounded convincing.”

  “You can’t play that.”

  He picked up the card and studied the pile before tossing a red Draw Two down. “Quit avoiding my question and get two cards.”

  Mariana picked two and frowned. The last thing she wanted to do was tell Reuben what was on her mind.

  “Discard,” he nudged.

  She tossed down a card and studied her hand. “This game is no fun with two people.”

  He studied the top card, then pulled one from his hand. “Skip you,” he said, placing a red Skip card on the pile. Then he pulled four more in succession. “Reverse, skip you again, skip you again, and draw four.” He looked up and grinned. “It’s fun for me.”

  “You can’t play a green Draw Four on top of all those red cards. What’s wrong with you?”

  He grinned. “You promise you won’t tell?”

  “Tell what?”

  “I’m color-blind.”

  Mariana stopped. “Really? I didn’t know that about you.” They had been friends so long and she didn’t know something so basic about him?

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t come up much.”

  Mariana pulled a card from her hand and tossed it onto the discard pile. “I guess.”

  “See? Why did you do that?”

  “What are you talking about?” Though her heart pumped hard in her chest as if he had discovered some big secret she held. A secret she didn’t even know herself.

  “For a little while you seemed like yourself, now you’re back to being all . . . grumpy.”

  “I am most certainly not grumpy.”

  “Again, convincing.”

  “Are you seeing Shelley Glick?” Nothing like blurting out personal questions without a second thought.

  Reuben stopped. She could almost see the wheels turning in his mind. Then he burst out laughing. “Quilting circle, right?”

  “What?” she asked.

  “The quilting circle. That’s where you heard such a thing.”

  “Maybe.” Though Mariana couldn’t meet his gaze. Instead she picked at a loose thread on the quilt covering her bed.

  “Those girls will talk about anything.”

  “You still didn’t answer my question.”

  He turned back toward her, his eyes sparkling yet somehow serious. “Neither did you answer mine.”

  “It’s hard. Being in bed here all day. Everything’s going on out there, and I’m stuck in here.”

  His face softened and his expression took on an almost dreamy look. “But you’re growing babies.” Even as he said the words, his color deepened to a dark rose. She found the involuntary reaction charming.

  “It’s not real to me yet.”

  He frowned. “Not at all?” His hand twitched as if he wanted to reach out and touch her belly, but thought differently of it. Amish couples were reserved when showing affection. Such a move would surely be odd coming from him, her husband’s best friend.

  “It’s strange. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s almost like I’ve wanted this for so long that I’m afraid to let it be real because—” She couldn’t finish that thought.

  “Because you’re afraid it will end?”

  “Jah,” she whispered.

  He dragged his gaze from hers and stared out the window. Outside the wind blew, rustling the leaves in the trees. The only sound between them was the click of the clock as the seconds ticked by. “I’m not courting Shelley Glick. I went over to repair a spot in her flooring. It turned out to be a bigger job than I anticipated. I ended up having to be there for a day or so. Funny how people jump to conclusions.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  Her heart suddenly felt so light. “Jah,” she said. “Funny.”

  * * *

  “I brought you something.”

  Mariana tried hard not to allow her grin free rein as Reuben stepped into the room the next day. But she was just so glad to see him. It was nice having the girls from the quilting circle come by, and they had promised to try to hold the meeting at her house again the following week. But between now and then, there were a lot of hours in the day to be filled with nothing more than her own company.

  “A present?” She sat up a little straighter and clapped her hands.

  Reuben stepped close to the bed, extending a small, flat package toward her. It was wrapped in newspaper and tied with a piece of ribbon that looked as if it had been a part of an Englisch hair decoration at some point in its life.

  Mariana didn’t care where it came from. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She took the present from him and set it in her lap, staring at it in wonderment.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” Reuben asked as he settled on the end of the bed.

  “Jah. Of course.” She picked up the box and started to tear the paper, her excitement growing. Inside was a hardbound book. The cover showed a pair of tiny baby feet, muted and softened to give it a dreamlike feel. The verse on the front read, “Children are a gift from the Lord; They are a reward from Him. Psalms 127:3.”

  Tears sprang into her eyes as she opened the book. But she didn’t need perfect vision as she flipped through the pages, noting only for a second that they were blank. Just lined, like notebook paper.

  “It’s a journal.” Reuben smiled, obviously so very happy with his gift. “You can write each day to the baby, and then later when he’s bigger, you can give it to him. That way he can know what you are feeling now.”

  “Her,” she whispered. “Them,” she corrected herself. “Reuben, it’s beautiful. Thank you so much.”

  His smile widened. “It’ll give you something to do when I can’t stay.”

  Mariana did her best to hide her disappointment. She knew eventually this would start to happen. Everybody had been coming by and she’d had quite a bit of company to keep her days from being completely and utterly boring. But she knew that after a while, the novelty of visiting with her would wear off and people would start to have other chores and things to do that would prevent them from coming by as often. She just wished it would have lasted longer than a couple of weeks. “I understand.”

  “But you still have your lunch, right?”

  She nodded, pointing to the paper sack sitting on her nightstand.

  “Okay,” he said. “Sorry I can’t stay.” His smile was so swe
et she couldn’t be too angry with him. Like she had any right to be upset. She was just being selfish, and she promised herself that after Reuben left she would say a little prayer to keep her thoughts in order. “Will you come back tomorrow?”

  “Of course.” He started for the door and then turned just this side of leaving. “Did you think I wasn’t coming back?”

  “Well, I know how it is. People get busy and . . .” She shrugged. “I know that. It’s not feasible for somebody to come and stay with me every day. As much as I would like it, it’s getting to be summertime and people are busier and busier.” Which brought up another problem. She would spend most of the summer, if not all of it, confined to her bed. How could she put up any food for the winter?

  “I can’t get too busy for you,” Reuben said with a smile.

  He left not much longer after that, though his sweet words carried Mariana straight through until evening. She spent most of the day writing in her journal, thinking of Reuben and all the things she wanted to tell the babies. She wanted to tell them about their dad. Make sure they knew what a special man he was. How much he would’ve loved to have known them and how much she missed him.

  But she had been missing him for months instead of just the weeks since his death. His illness had changed him, turned him into a different person, until he was nothing more than a shell of the man that she had once loved, nowhere near the man he had once been. Sometimes it was hard for her to remember those before times, and she wanted to get it down on paper before she forgot them completely. They were his children and deserved that much, that memory of their father.

  * * *

  “I’m going to head out now,” Eileen said, coming into the room and surveying it with a critical eye. Of all her friends, Eileen was perhaps the most persnickety. She was constantly looking for something to dust, something to clean, to air out, sweep, or smooth the wrinkles from. But Mariana had known Eileen practically their entire lives. She might be a clean freak, but Mariana knew the actions hid the restlessness of a nervous soul.

  Mariana patted the bed next to her. “Want to come sit down for a minute?” she asked. “Just visit for a while.”

  For a moment Mariana thought that Eileen might protest, but instead she moved to the bed and perched on the spot next to Mariana.

  “I have a feeling that something’s wrong.” Nothing like getting right to the point.

  Eileen shook her head. “What could be wrong? I have two beautiful girls and a wonderful husband. God is good, jah?”

  “Of course. But something can be wrong, and God can still be good.”

  Tears welled in Eileen’s eyes but she shook her head, pressed her lips together, and looked away. “It’s just an adjustment. We’ve been without children for so long it’s hard now.”

  Mariana could totally agree. She was going to have a hard enough time adjusting to having one baby, much less two. She could only imagine what it was like to get children who had already been influenced by the outside world. And then not to know if she was going to get to keep them at all . . . “Any word on the adoption?”

  Eileen shook her head. “There’s just so much to it. They have to get the grandparents involved and see where the mom might be when she finally gets out of jail.” She looked out the window, then back to Mariana. “I’m not even sure it’s such a good idea anymore.”

  Mariana reached out and squeezed her friend’s hand. “Don’t say that. Trust in God and everything will come out the way He intended.”

  Eileen nodded and sniffed, her tears disappearing into a watery smile. “You’re right, of course. Has being confined to your room made you wise beyond your years, Mariana Miller?”

  Mariana smiled and shrugged. “I guess so.” But she needed to remember those words herself and apply them to her own life as often as possible.

  * * *

  The screen door slammed just before lunch the following day. Mariana pushed herself up a little straighter in the bed and smoothed down the sides of her handkerchief. Maybe she should have put on her prayer kapp. She didn’t have time to worry about that now. She pressed her fingers down the front of her dress and the quilt that covered her legs, then folded her hands and waited for him to enter.

  But instead of Reuben, a tiny ball of fur scampered through her doorway. The minute the dog stopped, looked at her, and barked, his little legs raising off the floor with the effort.

  “Hey there,” Mariana said. “Where’d you come from?”

  “Don’t mind her,” Reuben said, scooping up the tiny puppy and depositing her on the bed. “She’s with me.”

  Mariana couldn’t stop the laugh from escaping her. “Are you sure you can handle her? I mean, she looks pretty vicious.”

  Reuben scratched the puppy behind one ear and shot Mariana an indignant look. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She doesn’t look to be . . . well, like a guy dog.”

  Reuben scoffed. “That’s because it’s a girl dog. I told you that. You need to listen.”

  Mariana shook her head. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the fact that most men don’t have a dog that . . .” She struggled to find the words. “Sissy,” she finally said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with this baby.” Reuben moved his efforts to the dog’s chin. “But she’s not really my dog.”

  “She’s not?”

  “No. She’s yours.”

  As if in agreement, the tiny dog barked.

  Mariana stared at the dog as if it might morph into something unrecognizable. “Mine? My dog? Reuben, I can’t have a dog.”

  “Why not? She’s little. A Yorkie terrier, I think the woman said. She won’t take up much room.”

  “I’m confined to the bed indefinitely. And whenever I am allowed up, I’ll have two newborn babies to take care of.”

  His joyous expression disappeared in an instant. “I didn’t want you to be alone. I thought that if you had a dog, you would always have company.”

  It was perhaps the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for her. “She’s adorable,” Mariana finally said, “but I’m not going to be able to take care of her.”

  “What if I take care of her?”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I’m over here every day. I’ll feed her when I come and take her outside for a bit. Then the rest of the day, she can stay here with you and keep you company.”

  When he said it, it sounded like the perfect plan. But she knew it was riddled with holes. “She’s going to have to get up in the middle of the night and go outside. They will barely let me go to the bathroom on my own. I can’t let her out at night.”

  “I’ll put in a doggie door.”

  “And teach her to use it?”

  “Jah.”

  “And clean up any accidents she has until she learns to use it?”

  “Jah.” He smiled, and she knew he thought he had broken her down.

  The puppy climbed across her legs and up, settling herself on the slight mound of Mariana’s stomach. Mariana looked at that tiny black face, into those sweet brown eyes. Then the puppy rested her chin on her paws and closed her eyes for a nap. This tiny ball of black and tan fur no bigger than one of her shoes.

  How could she say no?

  Chapter Five

  For the remainder of the afternoon, the puppy stayed right by her side. Mariana wasn’t sure if it was because the little dog knew she was her new owner or because she was afraid of all the noise Reuben was making. He pounded and sawed and otherwise created a huge ruckus as he installed the doggie escape hatch in the door off the kitchen.

  Once the noise stopped, Mariana eased from the bed and made her way into the other room. “Are you sure this is going to work?” she asked with a pointed nod toward the new installment.

  Reuben was on his feet in a heartbeat. “What are you doing out of bed?”

  “I needed to use the bathroom.” That wasn’t entirely true. She wanted to see the dog door and thought
she could do that under the guise of taking care of her necessities.

  “Then why are you in here?”

  “I just wanted to see it.”

  “You’ve seen it. Now get back in bed.” He smiled, taking the sting from his words. Then he stood and herded her back toward her room. “Besides, you shouldn’t leave the puppy unattended. What if she falls off the bed?”

  Mariana rushed back into her bedroom and scooped the pooch into her arms.

  “She’s okay.” The puppy licked Mariana’s face, showering her with sweet doggie kisses.

  Reuben chuckled. “What are you going to name her?”

  Mariana tilted her head and studied the tiny face before her. “I don’t know.”

  “What about Candy? Because she’s so sweet,” he suggested.

  She smiled. “Candy. I like that.”

  Reuben grinned in return. “Then Candy it is.”

  * * *

  Candy proved to be more company than Mariana could have ever imagined. She proved to be easy to train as well, and by the time Tuesday rolled back around, Candy would stand at the edge of the bed and whine when she needed to go out, then race back to Mariana’s side when her business was taken care of.

  Mariana wasn’t sure who she was the proudest of: Candy, herself, or Reuben.

  He gave the tiny dog a pat on the head and a scratch behind the ears. “I guess I should be going,” he said. They had just finished their lunch and a hand of Uno. She had tried her best to distract him enough to make him put the wrong cards down, but he never had. He did tell her that since the cards were always the same shade of red and green, he could see a difference in the shades of gray that they looked like to him. But she had also discovered that once he was distracted, he didn’t pay close enough attention and often played the wrong card. For some reason, she found this entirely too entertaining.

  “You’re leaving so soon?” She loved spending time with him, loved when he came to have lunch and play cards. She hated when he had to go. But she understood.

  “Jah. I have an estimate I need to do in Taylor Creek. A man there wants a brand-new sun porch.”

  Mariana nodded. “Oh, that would be a good job, jah?”