by Adina Senft
Ginny gasped and buried her face in her hands.
“Honey, what is it?” This wasn’t right. There was something more going on here than his own poor judgment and humiliation. “This isn’t going to affect you or the Inn, I promise. Whatever the lawyers throw at me, it’s on me, not you. Even if we have to move the wedding out so you’re not affected financially.”
When she lifted her head, the corners of her eyes were wet. “It’s not that. Or at least, not the way you think. I just bought a nationwide advertising campaign from an innkeepers’ co-op. A Henry Byler mug with each booking. As seen on TNC.” She groaned. “I don’t even want to tell you how much it cost.”
His stomach plunged into a deep, cold well, and sweat broke out on his forehead. “Can you cancel it?”
“I’ll never get the deposit back—and it was nearly everything I had.”
“We’ll have a simpler wedding. Cut costs.”
“That won’t be enough.”
“I’ll sell the farm.”
She got up, her arms moving jerkily as she fought off hands he meant to be comforting, but that she clearly thought were a restraint. “I need to think this through. Think what I’m going to do.”
He gave her a few moments to pace across the braided rug and back, biting her lip. Running her hands through her hair. Clutching the top of her head as if she meant to keep it from coming right off.
Until he couldn’t stand watching her distress for another second. “Ginny, can you tell me why you would have done such a thing without consulting me first?” he asked quietly.
“Consulting you? I did consult you. We talked about it before, when I told you I had a balloon payment coming up.”
“You mentioned it in passing. As an option. Not that you were going to sink your savings into it.”
“And what good would it have done anyway?” She stopped pacing and leaned against the door frame as if it would help hold her up. “You’re an artist. You haven’t been running an inn for years, dealing with banks, dealing with taxes and payroll and spreadsheets and everything that goes with it.”
“Are you saying I’m not qualified to talk this over with?” Well, maybe he wasn’t—not on that level. But he did his taxes every year, just like everyone else. “The only qualification I really have is that I’m going to be your husband, and wives and husbands talk over big decisions.”
She sighed. “Right. Like you talked over the show with me before you told them once and for all you wouldn’t do it.”
She had him there. And who had he talked it over with? Really talked?
Sarah, that was who. The one name he couldn’t bring into this conversation at any cost.
“Henry,” Ginny finally said when the silence became unbearable, “this isn’t going to work, is it?”
“Of course it is.” He couldn’t let her give up hope. “I was serious about the farm. I’ll sell it, and hopefully it will bring enough to pay off that balloon payment, with a little left over for me to find a studio somewhere.”
“I don’t mean the money.” She took a deep breath. “I mean us.”
He gazed at her, feeling as though a rocket had come out of nowhere and hit him in the stomach. “What?”
“Look at the two of us. Each of us went ahead and made a life-changing decision without getting the other person’s buy-in.”
“We talked—”
“Sure, we did. But not long enough to be sure the other person was a hundred percent good with it. All in. And we did it instinctively, because…well, I don’t know why. Because we’re used to doing things on our own? Because that’s the way we are? Or is it because, deep down, we don’t really want to?”
She was losing him. “Don’t want to what?”
“Don’t want to be a couple. Don’t want to give that last little bit that would make us a couple—a unit. One being. Because there’s something in each of us that’s stopping that from happening, isn’t there?”
“I don’t—” he began. And then stopped. Because he did know, deep down. In his memory, he heard the echo of Sarah’s voice. You’ll fall into the trap of letting this come between yourself and your family as a way of putting even more distance between yourself and your upbringing. You’ll do it—and you’ll hate yourself for it.
Was that what he was doing with Ginny, too? Oh, he’d thought about it plenty. Marrying her and leaving the Amish life behind—the whole time thinking what a relief it would be to do something so irrevocable. To close that chapter of his life once and for all and finally be happy.
But from Ginny’s point of view, what kind of a reason was that? Didn’t she deserve better? Didn’t she deserve a man who was marrying her for herself, not for his own selfish reasons? A man who was trying to barge in on happiness—to force his way to contentment, no matter what it meant for her—so that finally, this ache inside would be healed?
But I love her.
Did he, really? Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it. Did he love her with that kind of love? At any time since they’d become engaged, had he given himself for her?
Henry buried his face in his hands and gave it a good scrub, as if he could make his confused thoughts settle down into some kind of order. “Maybe you’re right,” he said at last. “Maybe we should postpone, until we’ve had time to think this through a little more.”
“I don’t think we need to,” she said softly. “I think we know the truth. At least, I do.”
“You do? Then please tell me, because I can’t see my way to it to save my life.”
Her warm brown gaze held sadness, and a growing resolve. “I only know my own truth, Henry. Don’t get me wrong—the thought of being your wife made me happy, for a while. But since I went to Philly, it’s been coming on slowly that I actually like my life the way it is. I like being able to make the big decisions. Good or bad, it’s on me, and there’s something satisfying in that.”
“There is? What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that postponing the wedding isn’t going to help, because there are bigger issues underneath that I don’t think even time will resolve. I think we’re fundamentally too different to be happy together. We just don’t look at life the same way—and don’t you think that’s necessary for it to work in the long run?”
“But I love you,” he said, a little helplessly.
“And I love you, you dear man.” When she spoke again, her voice thickened with tears. “But it’s not the kind of love that’s going to survive these differences, is it? Not the kind of love that’s strong enough to keep us together, straining toward one another, the way a husband and wife should be.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t even know if I have that in me…I’m content and happy to be on my own. I don’t know if that’s your path, but I’d like to think that if it isn’t, I could come to your wedding and be glad that we made this choice.”
He couldn’t answer. Couldn’t think. All he could do was feel the howling emptiness inside as he saw the door to safety closing.
And that, he realized at last, was exactly what she was trying to say.
He got up and held out his arms to her, and she came into them, her curvy body fitting against his so perfectly. But it wasn’t the physical side of a relationship they were discussing, was it? That was like the tip of the iceberg, with so much more going on below.
“I’ll always care about you, Henry,” she whispered against his shirt.
“And I’ll always care about you. But you’re right. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future—but I know you’re right.”
She walked him to the door and followed him along the path to the rose arbor that draped over the gate. When he turned back for one last look, she wasn’t watching him go, but reaching up into the twining vines of the rose, tucking in an unruly shoot, plucking off a dead branch. The little moment of caretaking seemed to lift some of the tension from her face. And already her face looked calmer—the face of a woman who w
as exactly where she wanted to be, doing what she wanted to do, despite the stresses and decisions that came with it.
Henry walked blindly down the slope of the lawn to the creek, his heart a lead weight in his chest, his mind full of confusion and hurt and desolation. He found no comfort in the sere and gold of the falling poplar leaves and the purling whisper of the water. Unlike Ginny, he didn’t see what things would look like next year, when they were in bloom.
On the contrary—everything around him just looked dead.
* * *
No matter the state of his personal life, the Thanksgiving pieces for D.W. Frith still had to be finished. Dave Petersen had made it abundantly clear that if the pictorial spread hadn’t already gone out in the catalog, the company would have pulled those pieces, too, and demanded the return of the second half of the payment.
As the week passed, Henry found himself wanting to talk to Ginny, though they weren’t a couple anymore. Was it so bad to want to make sure she was all right? When four or five days went by and she didn’t return the one call he’d had the courage to make, he wondered if she was out of town. Gone home to Philly to be with her family and find comfort there, maybe. Well, outside of calling, there was one source of information close at hand.
On Saturday he’d walked across the road to the Mast place and asked Priscilla if the Inn was open this week. Joe was over there, too, and the two of them looked contented somehow—if it was possible for teenagers to look that way.
“Ja, it is,” she’d said, giving him a look that said, Why aren’t you asking Ginny?
“Is everything okay, Henry?” Joe had asked, leaning on one of the posts that held up the verandah. “Your hands all right?”
He’d forgotten his hands had been suffering—they carried small hurts compared to everything else. The cuts had healed and he kept a jar of the balm on the side of the bathroom sink now so he didn’t forget to keep the skin flexible and healthy.
“Yes, the balm of Gilead that Sarah had me use did the trick. I wish there was a balm for the rest of me,” he added under his breath.
Joe didn’t miss it, though. “We’ll pray for you, Henry. What you did was gut. About the television show.”
“Does the whole district know about it?”
“The whole township does, I think,” Priscilla told him. “Sarah told us that you sent the television people away. But they haven’t left, of course.”
Henry turned abruptly from the view of the orderly Mast fields, now turned under and ready for their winter sleep. “What?”
“We’ve been run off our feet at the Inn—they’ve been staying there, you know, while they’ve been filming Jesse and his car.”
“Staying at the Rose Arbor Inn?” he repeated incredulously. “Are they filming the Inn, too?”
“Oh, ja, and a fine time I’ve had convincing them that I didn’t need to be in the picture. Katie Schrock won’t even come to work—but then, with her wedding so close I’m not surprised. They made up some story about Jesse living in the boathouse—you know, where we found Eric Parker when he ran away to come here.”
“Good grief.”
“They paid Ginny some nice money to be in it, too—said they’d never heard of a black divorced New Order Mennonite and it was just too good to leave out.” Priscilla shook her head. “She left the church ages ago. I don’t see what it has to do with her now.”
Henry sank onto the step. “She’s doing it for the advertising. This is all my fault. And how’s Jesse handling it?”
“Don’t know,” Joe said. “We’re not really speaking much. Not a lot to say, nix?”
“He’s doing a proper job of burning his bridges,” Henry said with a sigh. “I thought he might go back to church.”
“Not now, I don’t suppose.” And Joe and Pris had looked at each other and by some mutual telepathy decided it was time for Joe to go. “Church is at our place tomorrow,” he said, and pointed. “There comes the bench wagon. Dat’ll be looking for me and Jake to help set up.”
Henry had walked home, deep in thought, and by Sunday morning, like the secondary wave of an earthquake, the shock really began to set in.
He couldn’t sit at his wheel—after two mugs had spun off center because he couldn’t concentrate, and he’d stretched a bowl nearly into a rectangle trying to control the tension in his hands, he gave up. He needed a walk to clear his head. Needed some time in the cold October morning down in the creek to try and make sense of his life.
Ginny. In despair, he walked the path next to the creek, heading not in the direction of town, lest—Heaven forbid—the film crew was still there, but in the opposite direction. Aw, Ginny.
The maples were nearly bare now, their bright, flashy fall colors gone, leaving the branches and the true shape of the trees exposed to view. Was it reasonable of him to even be disturbed? After all, she’d laid out a substantial sum of money because of him when she had debts to pay, and this was a way to ensure her hard-earned cash wasn’t wasted. But at what cost? It was hard to imagine there wouldn’t be some repercussions for her from the film. He hoped it would all be good. She deserved nothing but the best, laughing Ginny with her crazy earrings and brightly colored pants and her zest for life’s smallest gifts, from flowers to sticky buns.
She had a huge capacity for happiness—and for seeing what was right. She and Sarah shared that capacity. But what about him? Where was he to find his happiness now? If not in another person, if not in his work for D.W. Frith, then where?
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
Unbidden, the words sounded in his mind in his father’s voice. Dat had loved the Psalms—the poetry and rhythm of them. The sheer love of the Psalmist for his God that came through in the lines. His favorite of all had been Psalm 139.
Though I take the wings of the morning, and fly into the uttermost parts of the sea, Thou art with me.
That’s what he himself had done—flown to the uttermost parts of, well, the United States. But God and Aendi Sadie had conspired to bring him back here. And all for what? To be left on the shore, humiliated and hurting, with nothing to show for his life? To never know happiness or a real home? Was that what God meant for him because he’d turned his back on the Amish life so many years ago?
Was it too late to ask God what He had in mind now that He’d brought him to the end of himself, down here in the creek bottom?
In the distance, carrying in the crisp air, came a sound. Long and slow, the way the wind had sounded in the pines and rocks around Boulder.
Music.
The sound of the congregation singing.
He must be just below his cousin Paul Byler’s place. Henry climbed the bank and emerged in what had been a soybean field. In the distance was Paul’s machinery shed, overlooking the county road.
By the time Henry had crossed the field, his feet moving almost without conscious thought, the congregation had begun the “Lob Lied,” the hymn sung second in every Amish service everywhere. Probably even in Colorado.
He came up behind the building, hoping everyone was inside and no one would know he was there. One shoulder leaning on the siding, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, he bowed his head and listened to the melody that was as familiar as the sound of his own name.
Let Thy word in us be confessed
Let us love it with devotion
And live in holy righteousness
Hearkening to Thy Word daily
So we remain undeceived.
I need to be undeceived. Help me, Lord. I’ve got nothing left. What do You want with me? How can I make my life right—make it worth living again? You’ve brought me here for a reason. Do You want me to come back to the Amish church? Is that what You want? Because even I can see that I’m not doing very well running the show on my own.
Henry stood there, listening, as the “Lob Lied” ended and the next hymn began. And he recognized this one, too, though he hadn’t heard it nearly so often. Only twice
a year, on the Sundays in October and April when the baptisms were performed.
They were having the baptism today. How many lives would be committed to God this morning? How many heads were at this moment bowed, up there at the front, hands over faces in humility, waiting for the moment when they would feel the trickle of cold water and the bishop would declare them members of the Body together, and welcome them into fellowship?
Despite how I felt when I first moved here, I can’t imagine picking up and moving away, either. I feel as though I belong…and yet…there’s more You require of me, isn’t there? You brought me here on the day of baptism for a reason, didn’t You?
I believe it now.
Oh Lord, help Thou mine unbelief.
A tear, hot and bitter, welled up and trickled down his cheek as he closed his eyes and covered his face with one hand. He no longer heard the sounds of passing cars on the road, or the crows in the plowed fields, or felt the brush of the breeze. He merely bowed his head and listened to the slow sound of the Gmee singing.
Because of this, the burden of sin
From man may now be lifted
And he may see a ready physician
Christ the healer of all wounds
Could it really be as simple as that—to see Jesus standing at the ready, with oil and wine to bind up his wounds, and to ask Him to come and do what He did better than anyone?
Henry gazed back down the long stretch of memory, trying to see that nineteen-year-old he had been and to understand his reasons for leaving. They had seemed urgent, then. Urgent enough to leave behind home and family and try to learn how to live in an Englisch world for which he’d been completely unprepared.
