Chapter Nine
Rebekah wanted to die. She lay with her cheek pressed against the cold tile of the bathroom floor. Floods of noxious alcohol and stomach acid had hurtled out of her, replaced by wracking dry heaves that were far worse than actually having something in her stomach to expel. The morning sunlight coming in the window was bright, too bright. Her head felt like it had already detonated, leaving her gray matter in splatters on the bathroom walls. The light made her eyes throb. She closed her eyes and the room began to spin. Oh no, this is worse. She opened her eyes again. A stray ant crawled within inches of her face, stopping every few seconds to test the air with his antennae. Oh God, I am never drinking again. Never.
Staci appeared with a glass and a couple of pills. Despite Rebekah’s protests she sat her up, wiped the vomit off her face with a damp cloth and handed her the pills. “Take these. It will help your headache.” The idea of putting anything into her mouth, let alone her stomach was repulsive; however, she stuck the tablets into her mouth and sipped some water.
“Mama.”
Rebekah looked in the doorway to see Rachel standing there, clutching her favorite doll which had been a Christmas present from Santa.
Staci said, “Mama’s sick. Go in the living room and watch Dora.” She referred to a popular children’s television show.
Rebekah offered a feeble smile to her daughter. “I love you, Honey.”
“Love you, Mama!” she shouted exuberantly as she hopped back in the direction of the living room to watch cartoons. Her voice hurt Rebekah’s head.
Rebekah fumbled with her crutches, attempting to stand. Between the pain in her head and leg, it was proving almost impossible.
“Wait a minute, where do you think you’re going?” said Staci.
“I’ve got to get up and feed her—”
“Already done.”
“And bathe her.”
“She took a bath this morning with Mr. Rubber Ducky.”
Rebekah looked lost. “You,” said Staci, while leading Rebekah’s shaky body to the bedroom, “you are going back to bed and sleep off this hangover.”
“Yeah, I feel terrible.”
“You look it. You don’t drink much, do you?”
“Never.”
“No shit. Well, you wouldn’t have known it last night.”
Rebekah was completely content at this moment to let Staci take charge. She let Staci tuck her in and fell almost instantly asleep. She was soon dreaming of Nick calling out for her with desperation in his voice in the oily black night and not being able to find him because it was too dark. Fearsome impotence mounted in her as his shouts turned into bloodcurdling screams—
She awoke with a jerk. She was lying on her side of the bed, facing Nick’s pillow. His head would never be there again because yesterday she put him in the ground. Tears filled her eyes and she swept them away. She snuggled over to smell the pillow, inhaling the wonderful Nick-scent that still lingered there. It was a comforting smell, one that she would never forget. Finally withdrawing, she spotted a single dark curly hair on the edge of the pillow. With the tip of her finger she touched it, barely feeling its silkiness. She picked it up and placed it within the front cover of her scriptures which were in the drawer of her bedside table.
She turned to see Staci watching her, tray in her hands. Rebekah hadn’t heard her come in. Staci handed her a cup of hot coffee. Rebekah took it gratefully and allowed the tray with chicken broth and crackers to be put in her lap.
“How are you feeling?”
Rebekah took inventory. Her head no longer hurt, her stomach felt settled—well enough to eat, in fact. “I’m fine.” She slurped some broth. It tasted surprisingly wonderful. She looked up. Staci was staring at her intently.
“I think you and Rachel should come live with me in Los Angeles.” That was it, no preamble.
Flashes of the night before filled her mind: Staci kissing her, Staci’s fingers and tongue pleasuring her, Staci putting the cock inside her and moving it in and out. Staci was looking at her expectantly.
“You want an answer right now?”
“If you’ve got one.”
Rebekah hesitated. While the response Staci had been able to coax out of her body last night had been undeniably real, it did not compose a romantic relationship. She looked at this extraordinary woman—beautiful, loving, strong, so like Nick—and felt a bond with her but it did not take the place of what she had with Nick. Above all, it wasn’t what she wanted.
“I don’t think it would be a good idea.”
“How are you going to support yourself?”
Rebekah hadn’t thought of those matters. The small amount of savings that she and Nick had had been virtually used up in paying for his funeral. Only a small sum remained. She didn’t have a job. She had no training. She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Who owns the house?”
“It’s in Nick’s name because I had no credit.”
“Did he leave a will? Or any life insurance?”
Again Rebekah shook her head.
“Shit,” Staci said.
Rebekah nodded, suddenly having it dawn that she was going to lose the house.
“So, how are you going to take care of Rachel and support the two of you?”
“Right now I have no idea.”
It was all Staci needed. “Let me take care of you. I’ve got a good job in L.A.—”
“Staci—”
“And you’ll be able to stay home with Rachel—”
“I don’t think—”
“And we can be together.”
As grateful as Rebekah was to Staci for arriving and taking charge of the funeral and helping care for Rachel, she now eyed her warily. This wasn’t just about Staci wanting to help family.
“Why are you doing this?”
Staci looked hurt. “I told you last night. I love you. I want to be with you.”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
Staci was piqued. “You did it just fine last night.”
“That was different. I was drunk.”
“Don’t give me that shit! A person only does drunk what they want to do sober. Alcohol only lowers your inhibitions.”
“So?”
“You want me. You’re in love with me. I saw it in the bar before you even took one drink.”
Not knowing why, Rebekah was irked. “No, I was thinking you were a lot like Nick,” she said testily. Instantly she regretted it. A wounded expression came into Staci’s beautiful brown eyes.
“Was that all it was?” Tears were forming in Staci’s eyes.
Rebekah was torn. She had not meant to hurt Staci, but she could not let her think she was in love with her. She reached past the tray to touch Staci’s hand. “I’m sorry.”
Staci jerked her hand away, chafed, but then she forced a smile. “Like I said before, I can see why he loved you so much. I—” her voice broke. “I usually just fuck. I just don’t fall for anyone.”
“That’s what I thought—”
“You thought it was just a mercy fuck?” Her face twisted. “No. You’ve gotten under my skin.”
Rebekah didn’t see how it was possible. The past week she had been in her own world fighting the strain of her own grief and trying to plan Nick’s funeral. She had been at her absolute worst and didn’t see how anyone could have fallen in love with her at a time like that.
“So, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Get a job, I guess. Move out of here.”
“Come out to California with me,” Staci suggested, as if it were a new idea. “I’d support you and we wouldn’t have to have a relationship.”
But we would have to have one, Rebekah thought. She knew that Staci would be like Nick, doggedly pursuing what she wanted, and the issue of a relationship would never be dropped. In the situation with Nick, it was different: she had been in love with him. She and Staci would constantly be at each other’s throats.
�
��Staci, it wouldn’t work.”
She leaned forward. “You haven’t even tried it—”
Rebekah shook her head. Already Staci was hounding her. “No.”
“How do you know?”
“Staci. No.”
Staci contemplated her for a moment, and then leaned forward to kiss Rebekah’s lips. Rebekah did not kiss back. Staci backed off slowly. “Well, if you ever change your mind . . .”
Rebekah did not answer.
She expected Staci to leave soon after that, but she stayed on for months, taking charge of things, helping her find a suitable apartment in Bethany, packing and organizing the move. While Rebekah was not helpless, she was severely hampered by the cast on her leg and would not have been able to manage on her own. Staci seemed to pretend that the night of Nick’s funeral had never happened and they settled into an easy companionship. Rebekah never brought the matter up again. Staci mentioned it one last time when, a week after her cast was removed, Rebekah came home and announced she had gotten a job housekeeping at a local motel.
“You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“I do have to do it.” Rebekah expected an argument, but Staci fell silent.
A few days after that Staci packed her suitcase and left. Before leaving, she had insisted on purchasing a used car for Rebekah to drive, saying over Rebekah’s protests that it wasn’t for Rebekah’s sake at all, but it was to make sure that Rachel would easily have everything she needed: groceries, trips to the park, rides to the doctor. Public transportation was non-existent in Bethany and so Rebekah gratefully accepted.
After Staci had left, a great emptiness filled the apartment. Staci’s good-natured chatter had been a constant in Rebekah’s life since Nick’s death and now the silence was deafening. In the few days that she had before she started her new job, she poured herself into Rachel: reading to her, cooking for her, going to the park when the weather permitted to feed the ducks, but Rebekah had grown listless. Nothing existed to distract her from the fact that Nick was not there. She had given all of Nick’s clothes away before the move, knowing it was morbid to hold onto them, but kept pictures of Nick around the apartment. She told herself it was for Rachel to remember her Daddy by.
She would open her scriptures, not to read, but to lightly touch the stray curly hair she had found on Nick’s pillow and the brittle petals, now brown with age, of the first rose he had ever given her over three years ago on the day of their first kiss. She remembered that sweet kiss with painful vividness and a beautiful sadness lay heavily upon her. She also kept in the Bible a picture of the two of them together and she would often kiss his face. She tried to tell herself she was being overly-maudlin, but couldn’t help it. Somehow, if she did not constantly remind herself of the times they had touched, she might forget him.
As the weeks wore on, she found herself regretting every moment that she had ever been cross or self-absorbedly inattentive to his needs. Times she could have said, ‘I love you’ and hadn’t done so loomed remorsefully within her. How could she have thought that she would have forever? How could she have taken him so for granted?
After she began working, she became aware of how blessed she had been before, being able to spend all day every day with her daughter. She became jealous of the time Rachel spent with her sitter, even though Rebekah felt safe leaving her there. She quickly found her small paycheck scantly covered their needs and none of their wants. She resisted getting a second job as this would mean even less time with Rachel, but resented not being able to get Rachel things that she would like. She found herself feeling abandoned by Nick and it made her sad, bitter, and guilty.
The massiveness of her heartache overwhelmed her. She was only twenty one years old and had only two years with her man. She was already a widow. She ached for home and there was no home to go back to. It all had been destroyed along with Nick.
Chapter Ten
It was the day after Christmas. Rebekah had worked the day before so she and Rachel were having their quiet holiday today. It is all for Rachel, she thought as she watched her child gleefully unwrap the few presents that Santa had brought her. Rebekah didn’t feel much like celebrating. A hole had been left in her heart that she had tried unsuccessfully to fill with mothering Rachel. She knew what had created the hole, but had no idea what could be done to fix it.
In all the sappy movies she had seen—and bawled through while clutching a Kleenex box—the heroine’s loss was only remedied by getting a new love. Rebekah didn’t want a new love. She wanted Nick or no one. Yet the movies made Rebekah question what such a love might be like. She knew it would happen sooner or later, she was only twenty one and couldn’t spend the rest of her life alone . . . could she? Would it even be good for Rachel to be raised without a father figure? Rebekah balked, however, at trying to imagine the man she might eventually fall in love with. He wouldn’t be like Nick. Nobody could measure up to him.
She was concluding, as she had done time and again since Nick’s death, that having anyone in her life would be grossly unfair to the new suitor because she could never love him as she had loved Nick when a knock at the door disturbed her reverie. She hadn’t been expecting anyone but suspected it might be a neighbor man who had been annoyingly hanging around lately, asking her out. Coldly, time after time she had put him off. It was easy to justify. He had no job and she saw him outside the apartment late at night when she would return from work, drinking beer and smoking something that smelled sickeningly sweet with his friends. While she didn’t think him a bad person, she didn’t consider him good daddy material for Rachel. She was ready to turn him down once more upon opening the door. Instead joy made her heart leap.
Standing at the door was her mother. Constance Bontrager hadn’t changed a bit. Rebekah was overwhelmed. Despite the fact Rebekah had been shunned by the Amish Community, her mother was here. Crying happy tears, Rebekah threw her arms around her and half dragged her into the apartment. She couldn’t stop hugging her.
“How are you?” They both asked at the same time and laughed. Rachel looked up from her toy doll pots and pan set.
“I’m fine Mother, I’m good. Rachel is good.” She suppressed a sob. “I’ve missed you terribly.”
“I’ve missed you, too.” Constance Bontrager squeezed her daughter happily then became solemn. “We heard he died.”
She can’t bear to say Nick’s name , Rebekah thought.
“Yes, last July.”
“I’m sorry you are grieving.”
Rebekah could not believe her mother said it. In fact, she couldn’t believe her mother was there at all. Being shunned by the Amish Community meant not even her own family was allowed to speak to her, or even eat with her. That her mother would express sympathy over her losing her English lover was almost unthinkable. “Thank you.”
After a moment of silence, Rebekah said, “Well come in and sit down! It is so good to see you! How is Father?”
Constance sat at the kitchen table with her daughter. “He’s gud.”
Rebekah asked after her sisters, her nephew Eli whom Constance was raising, and all relations far away. All, her mother assured her, were well.
Then her mother said, “Rebekah, come back. Your family needs and wants you.”
“But I am shunned.”
“If you come back and are repentant, it would not be so.”
Rebekah’s eyes flickered over to Rachel. As if to answer her unspoken question, Constance said, “Only Ezekiel and I know that the child is not his.” Rebekah did not know what to think. It was very unusual that the entire Amish Community would not know of her adultery.
“Why do people think I left?”
She only said one word, but it made perfect sense: “Jakob.”
In truth, Rebekah was thunderstruck. She had never for a moment considered returning to the Amish Community. She looked at her mother and homesickness inundated her. Yet, did she really want to return to the Community after having been English for over two ye
ars? Or was it simply that she felt beaten down? Once there, would she feel any different? Maybe she needed to make her own way in the world. Only, she didn’t know what the value in being isolated could be. But could she really return to an Amish life?
She tried to consider what English life had to offer her. Technology. Aside from the wonders of refrigeration, showers and central air, she couldn’t think what else was so fascinating about it. She worked just as hard, if not harder as an English than she had as an Amish, and her only reward was the small amount of time she got to spend with Rachel. In spite of all the love she had for her daughter, she had to admit, it wasn’t enough. She would have more time to spend with Rachel living in the Community.
She tried to envision her life back in her father’s house. Surely that would cause a stir in the Community. Rumors would fly then. “But, how would it work?”
Her mother smiled and pressed her hands on Rebekah’s. “So you want to come back?”
As she looked at it now, English life felt empty and lonely. She realized that she had never felt that way, in her father’s home. Life had a purpose. She had actually been happy. She remembered the way she used to hum and sing. She hadn’t done that in a long time. But was it because she was in mourning for Nick?
“What if I’m not happy there?”
“Are you happy here?”
“Without Nick? No.”
Her mother flinched slightly at Nick’s name. I wonder if it will always be a tender spot between us, Rebekah thought.
“You need family now,” Constance said quietly.
Tears clouded Rebekah’s eyes. Her mother was right. She did need family now. She had found happiness in Amish life; she could find it again. She nodded, wetness splashing onto her cheeks.
“Gud!” Constance got up. She went over, opened the door and motioned someone inside. Mystified Rebekah wondered who would be out there. Not her father. Maybe Hannah, her sister . . . then he walked through the open door. Rebekah glared, aghast.
There stood Ezekiel Yoder, her husband.
Amish Redemption (Erotic Romance) (Amish Heart Trilogy) Page 6
