by Marta Perry
He stared at her in astonishment. “Ne! Why would you think that?”
“Because you went back to Belleville. Because…I thought…” Confused, she broke off. Behind her, she heard the kitchen screen door bang. Someone had come out on the porch, but she didn’t care. “You aren’t marrying her?”
“I’m not marrying anyone. It was you I wanted, only you. And if I can’t have you, then…then, I have to leave Seven Poplars.”
More tears followed the first, and she dashed them away with the back of her hand. She had to say it, she had to. Even if nothing would ever come of it. Even if it was too late. Only she didn’t know how to tell him she loved him. “But what if I…what if I care for you, too?”
She reached for his hand and clung to it as if she were drowning and he was the only hope she had of living. “Oh, Eli, I’ve been such a fool. I thought I shouldn’t marry anyone.” Once she started, the words gushed from her mouth. “I thought it was God’s will that I stay with Mam and Susanna and then you came along and I felt differently, but then there was the gossip and then…but then…”
“Wait, go back,” he said. “You…you care for me? The way I care for you?”
She looked into his eyes, his face a blur through her tears. “So much it hurts. Only I made such a mess of things.”
“Are you saying your mother might give her permission?” Eli asked incredulously. “That she’d let you marry me? If…you wanted to?”
She held his gaze. “She only wants what’s best for me. She’d give her blessing if you joined the church. I know she would if you could put the world behind you and your past and be happy being Plain.”
“And you would marry me? In spite of all the gossip—”
“I realized I don’t care about that. I only care about you. But I’m Amish. I can’t live in the English world, and I can’t marry a man who didn’t share my faith.”
He glanced around. “Is there someplace we can sit down?”
“This way.” She led him around the house to a bench near the garden gate. Wild roses grew up the trellis behind them, and the newly mown grass was as soft as a carpet under her bare feet. Shyly, she sat on the edge of the seat and tugged him down to sit beside her. “No grape arbor here,” she teased. “We’re in plain view. We’re respectable.”
“But I’m holding your hand,” he reminded her.
She smiled at him. “Nearly respectable.” Excitement bubbled up inside her, and she trembled with joy. Were they really sitting here talking about marriage? Could her world really have tumbled upside down like this so quickly? So beautifully? “Would you consider it? Would you come to church with me? Become a part of it again?”
He raised her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Too late for that. I already joined the church. I went back to Belleville to mend the trouble with my mother, with my family, and while I was there, I talked with our bishop. I met with him many evenings, and he answered a lot of questions that troubled me. He made me look at things differently. You made me look at things differently.” He grinned. “So last Sunday, I joined the Amish Church.”
She touched one navy-blue suspender. “So that’s why no red ones?”
“Ne.” He laughed. “I sold the red ones with my motor scooter and bought the horse.”
She laughed with him. “Not with the money you got from that old motorbike, you didn’t. Or did you buy a blind horse?”
“He’s a fine horse, strong and smart. Wait until you see how fast he can trot. And this buggy was a gift from my stepfather Joseph. He said that I never had my proper portion from my dat. He’s a good man, and he is the right husband for my mother. I’ve never seen her so content.”
“I’m glad. And I’m glad you have such a wonderful bishop, that he could lead you to God.”
“He is a good shepherd,” Eli said, “but it was your mother that opened my eyes more than anyone.”
“Mam?”
“Ya. Your mother and Roman and Samuel and you and your sisters.” His eyes glowed with emotion. “For many years, I wasn’t sure that I belonged in God’s grace, or that He wanted me there. But I watched your family and community bring Irwin into your home and love him, despite his faults. It wasn’t until I got back to Belleville and had time to think that I realized what I had witnessed here. If there was a place for Irwin in the Plain world, I realized maybe there was one for me.”
“There will always be a place for you here, Eli. In our community. In our home.”
“So does that mean you’ll let me court you?”
“If you’ll forgive me for being so stupid and stubborn, for thinking that I knew best what God wanted. You warned me not to be a martyr, to listen to God, and you were right.”
“Will you accept my bride’s chest?”
“Only if you’ll ask me to marry you. Officially.” Her heart was so full of joy that she didn’t care how forward she was being—that she’d practically proposed to him, instead of the other way round.
“You’d have me, even when you don’t know the truth about Hazel and me?”
“I know you, Eli, and I know you’d never do anything dishonorable. You might make a mistake. We all do because we’re human. But you’d never desert the mother of your child.”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t.” He started to reach into his pocket. “I have a letter from her, a letter that will explain everything.”
“I don’t need to see your letter,” she protested, stilling his hand with hers. “I believe in you.”
“But I should have told you the truth as soon as I knew I had feelings for you, and I should have told my mother before I ever left Belleville the first time.” He looked away, then back at her. “Will you listen now?”
“If you want to tell me, of course I’ll listen.”
He took her hand again. “Hazel was my friend, and we went to some parties together, but she was like a sister to me. I was never her boyfriend. Not ever. I knew she liked an English fellow, and I knew she was secretly seeing him.”
“You don’t have to tell me these things,” Ruth said, her heart already going out to Hazel, the girl she had secretly disliked because of the hold she had on Eli. The hold Ruth thought she had on Eli.
“I do need to tell you. It’s important that there be no secrets between us.”
Ruth nodded and Eli continued. “I took Hazel to a bonfire one night, at Edgar Peachy’s farm. There were English there, and she left the party with someone. I tried to stop her but, Ruth, I didn’t try hard enough. She was having trouble at home, you know, following the rules…being who her parents wanted her to be. Hazel was always different. She loved school and she wanted to be part of the bigger world. But that night, she’d argued with her father. She wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Eli sighed, but he didn’t look away from her. “I blame myself for what happened. If I had stopped her, if I’d taken her home when I should have, instead of letting her go with that Englisher, maybe it would never have happened.”
“Maybe it would have anyway,” Ruth suggested softly. “If not that night, another.”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “But she was so scared when she found out she was going to have a baby. She tried to talk to her boyfriend, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with her after that night. So she asked me to marry her so that no one would know what she had done. I liked her a lot, but I didn’t love her. I told her I would help her. I would give her child my name, but only if we told the truth first. I couldn’t lie about that to her family or mine.”
“But, Eli.” Ruth brushed her hand over his shoulder. “She told everyone you were the father. And they believed her.”
“They did. I got angry, and I let her face her trouble alone. In the end, she gave the baby to her sister, and she left.”
“Did you know where she went?”
“Not until I got the letter at Uncle Roman’s. Her English boyfriend didn’t want to take responsibility for the baby, but his family helped her with money. She’s going to go to
college to be a nurse. She was writing to me to tell me she is all right and that she was sorry for everything.”
“Why didn’t you tell your family what really happened?”
“I tried at the time, but they wouldn’t listen. You are the only one who didn’t judge me.”
“Maybe I did, in the beginning.” She smiled at him. “Because of those red suspenders and that awful motor scooter. You are a wild boy, Eli Lapp.”
“Was a wild boy.” He leaned close and brushed his lips against hers. “Marry me, Ruth Yoder, and keep me on the path of Godliness. Keep me Plain.”
Ruth closed her eyes and savored a second kiss. She was so full of love and joy that she thought she would burst. “Oh, Eli,” she began, but then she stopped when she heard Susanna squeal. She opened her eyes to see her little sister scrambling out from behind the rosebushes to run toward the house—her chubby feet bare, her bonnet strings flying.
“Mam! Mam! Roofie’s kissing Eli!” Susanna shouted. “Come quick, Mam! Roofie’s getting married!”
Chapter Seventeen
For a moment, Ruth sat beside Eli in sweet silence, gazing into his blue eyes, holding his hand tightly. She wanted him to kiss her again, but her heart was pounding so hard that she thought maybe she’d had enough kissing for the moment.
Upstairs, Anna pushed up a bedroom window. “What’s going on?” she called. “Why is Susanna—” She broke off when she saw them together, hand in hand. “I’ll be right down!”
“I suppose we’d better speak to your mother,” Eli said, “before we cause another scandal…to ask her blessing on our marriage.”
“Ya,” Ruth agreed and giggled with sheer joy. “We wouldn’t want to give Aunt Martha even more reason to gossip about us.” She was so happy at this moment that she thought she might take off like a dandelion puff and float away.
“Do you want to do it now, or should I, you know, make an appointment or something to speak with her?”
She laughed at that thought. “I don’t know. That depends on how soon you want to marry,” she teased. “If you mean years from now—”
“I’d marry you today if I could!” Eli caught her around the waist and lifted her up. “I can’t believe I’m so lucky,” he said, “to come down from the Kishacoquillas Valley and find you.” He lowered her bare feet to the ground and kissed her mouth with such tenderness and passion that tears sprang to her eyes. “Marry me today.”
“I can’t marry you today!” She laughed, breathless, playfully pushing on his broad chest. “But maybe you should speak to Mam today before there’s more kissing.”
“Speak to me about what?” Mam demanded, coming around the corner of the house with Susanna tugging on her hand. But Mam’s eyes sparkled with mischief, and Ruth knew she really wasn’t angry. “Eli, do you have an explanation for kissing my daughter in front of her mother and little sister?”
“Sisters,” cried Miriam and Anna together as they joined them.
Irwin was the last to appear, the little terrier in his arms. “All of us,” he echoed.
Eli slipped an arm around Ruth’s shoulder and pulled her close beside him. The smell of her and the softness of her skin was so sweet that it made him almost giddy. “We’re going to be married,” he declared more boldly. “Ruth and me. In the church.”
“But you have to be Amish,” Irwin said sternly. “You can’t marry our Ruth if you aren’t Plain.”
Mam dried her hands on her apron and folded her arms. “Irwin’s right. So what do you have to say to that, Eli? Can you be properly Amish? Can you accept our faith and live by it every day?”
“Eli has already joined the church in Belleville. He’s one of us now.” Ruth looked up at him with such love in her eyes that he felt ten feet tall.
“Can you be a loving husband to Ruth?” Hannah asked. “In good times and bad?”
Miriam’s chin firmed. “He’d better be.”
“Or we’ll know the reason why,” Anna added.
“I will,” Eli said. “I give you my word.” He held out his hand to Irwin. “I would like your blessing, too, since you’re the man of the house.”
Irwin’s ears turned fire red beneath his straw hat, but he took the offered hand and shook it. “I’ll hold you to it,” he said.
“I want to be part of this family,” Eli announced to them all, still holding Ruth in his arm. “I want to be the kind of man Jonas was and a son to you, Hannah, as well as a true brother to the rest of you.”
“And I promise you that God will always come first in our home,” Ruth said, clinging to him for all she was worth.
“Then you have our blessing,” Hannah said.
“Ya,” Susanna jumped up and down, clapping her hands. “And now I will have a big brother for sure!”
“And I will have a husband,” Ruth said.
“The happiest husband in the world,” Eli answered.
Ruth smiled up at him, her eyes shining. “Ya, and the happiest wife.”
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CHAPTER ONE
LAINEY COLTON JOLTED AWAKE, her heart pounding in her ears. She stared into darkness so intense she couldn’t make out anything beyond the outlines of the strange bed. She sat upright, turning. A pale rectangle marked the window, and her panic waned.
How stupid. She was in Great-aunt Rebecca’s house, in tiny Deer Run, Pennsylvania. She’d fallen asleep, exhausted after the flight and drive and the stress of the past few weeks, in the bed that had been hers the summer she was ten.
That had been twenty years ago, but the room felt intimately familiar now that she was awake. She rubbed the gooseflesh on her bare arms. The dream that woke her must have been something out of a horror movie. Odd, that she couldn’t remember anything about it.
But maybe just as well, since she had no desire to slip back into nightmares. Lainey plumped the pillows, straightened the hand-stitched quilt, and settled herself to sleep.
Sleep seemed to have fled. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she made out the shapes of the chest of drawers, the rocking chair, and the bookshelf that still held the complete set of Laura Ingalls Wilder books she’d devoured as a ten-year-old. Her Amish great-aunt probably wouldn’t have approved of most of Lainey’s reading choices, but she’d been happy to see her Englisch great-niece reading the Little House books.
Twenty years. Lainey moved restlessly on the pillow. She hadn’t been back in all that time, at first because of her mother’s habit of jumping from husband to husband, and later because of her own gypsy tendencies.
Guilt flickered. Aunt Rebecca had been kind to her during one of the most difficult parts of a troubled childhood. Lainey should have managed to come back, instead of being content with the weekly letters they exchanged. Being Amish, Aunt Rebecca didn’t have a phone. Or electricity, a fact brought home to Lainey earlier when she’d fumbled for nonexistent light switches in the dark kitchen.
But now she was here, summoned by an abrupt phone call from her great-aunt’s lawyer. Rebecca had had a fall and suffered a stroke. She’d asked for Lainey. The attorney, one Jacob Evans, hadn’t sounded particularly approving. Well, Lainey would deal with him in the morning.
She’d planned to get a motel near the airport in Pittsburgh and drive up tomorrow morning, but once she’d picked up a rental car, worry and tension had impelled her onto the road to Deer Run. What difference did it make if she arrived after midnight? She knew where the house key was kept, though if she’d thought about the absence of electricity, she might have opted for a motel.
Aunt Reb
ecca would laugh at Lainey, coming to visit an Amish home equipped with her smartphone, her computer, her hair dryer, and all the other devices she thought she couldn’t do without.
But the laughter would be gentle. Aunt Rebecca never judged, never made a person feel stupid or guilty or unwanted. Her love had been a balm to a lost child whose familiar world had slipped from her grasp one too many times. Even when the details of that summer visit had slipped away, Lainey had still been aware of that solid sense of being loved without condition.
Now it was Lainey’s chance to repay that kindness. In the morning she’d touch base with the attorney and then head for the hospital to find out how bad Aunt Rebecca’s condition was and what needed to be done. Lainey’s mind ran up against a blank wall of ignorance when it came to helping someone who’d had a stroke, but she’d figure it out. She owed Aunt Rebecca far more than that.
If this trip had happened to coincide with an excellent time for her to leave St. Louis—well, no one here need ever know that, although if the task of helping her great-aunt was as difficult as the attorney’s tone had suggested, she might have jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.
In any event, she was clearly not going to drift back to sleep. Lainey swung her legs out from under the covers. She’d go downstairs and brew a cup of Aunt Rebecca’s herbal tea. But first she’d pull on some sweats. The house had grown cold, and she hadn’t the faintest idea how the furnace worked.
Thanks to her aunt’s habit of leaving a flashlight on the nightstand, Lainey was able to light her way to the stairs. She started down, her heavy socks making no sound on the treads. The beam of the flashlight picked up the hooked rug in the living room, the rocker that had always been her aunt’s favorite chair, the—
She stopped, gripping the banister. A noise, faint and indefinable, came from the kitchen. Maybe the gas refrigerator made noises.
Another step, and Lainey froze again. This time there had been a soft but definite thud. Someone … or something … was in the kitchen.
