Uncountable minutes later, the kitchen door opened and closed. With her face turned away from him, Rachel sat stiffly, anticipating his stammered excuse. Micah was polite and accommodating to a fault ... had probably seen Mamma’s light in the café and stopped to check on—
“Rachel! What’re ya doin’ here in the dark, honey-bug?” her mother exclaimed, bustling to light a lamp. “Thought ya left for the social long ago, with Rhoda and the Zooks!”
Rachel clenched her jaw to keep from crying. “Why would I do that when Micah was to come for me?”
Mamma studied her as the light rose in the glass globe. “Well, then, he’s run into somethin’ unexpected. Couldn’t ask for a more dependable fella. He worked all mornin’ on the new apartment without me even askin’ him.”
“Jah.”
“Nice enough to carry all those boxes of glass jars in from the wagon, too. Saved us a lot of totin’ before the cannin’ frolic, for sure.”
“Jah.”
Her mother raised an eyebrow and then sighed tiredly. “Goin’ to take my bath now and sit a spell. They say hard work’s the antidote for dwellin’ too much on our disappointments, but this gloom’s got me stewin’ over what the bishop said about our Rebecca—even if I did bake the ten pies and twelve dozen wheat rolls for the Zook’s Market order tonight.” Her brow furrowed as she held a hand in the small of her back. “Not Tiffany’s fault she didn’t get raised amongst the People, like you and Rhoda. Tried to tell him that, but he wasn’t hearin’ any of it.”
As if Tiffany would submit to the Ordnung—or any other rules, Rachel thought with a frown. As if I give two hoots about someone who dresses like the walkin’ dead.
“So what do you want for toppings? Probably an extra large, huh? I bet you farm boys really scarf it down.” Tiffany widened her eyes at him ... blue, blue eyes that looked far too familiar despite a face that seemed so foreign. So ... exotic.
Micah blinked. Rachel would be pretty peeved with him by now, waiting at home in her new dress, so he focused on the present moment—and on the Lantz sister who sat close enough that their arms brushed every now and again. Was it possible Tiffany had worn even more black stuff on her eyes tonight than before? And why would any girl wear earrings with little skulls dangling from them, when she was meeting a fellow for dinner? “Uh—what’re my choices? For toppings, that is.”
She rolled her eyes. “You want pepperoni? Sausage? Black olives, or green—”
“Don’t rightly know. What do you like?” Seemed the polite thing, to defer to the lady’s taste, since he could count on one hand the times he’d eaten pizza.
“I—whatever! ” she said with an exasperated shrug. “What I like is a guy who can make up his mind and say what he wants! It’s pizza, for crying out loud!”
“Ah. Well, maybe that comes from my bein’ a carpenter rather than a farmer. Not as smart about food choices, ya see.” Micah smiled patiently. He hadn’t expected their conversation to go smoothly, so—all things considered—he felt he was holding up his end pretty well.
“So is this how you are with Rachel? Waffling all the time?” she demanded tersely. “And she’s still hot for you?”
He swallowed hard: Rachel would be hot, all right—under the collar. Tiffany nailed him with those blue eyes, a mere foot away, and his heart lurched. Her tone and voice sounded exactly like her sister’s ... and so had her complaint. Woodworker that he was, he should be building an ark, by the looks of those storm clouds on her face.
“Never mind then! I’ll just get what I want.” She went back to stroking her fingertip across a small black screen she held, making the images flicker sideways before he caught on to what she was doing. But she’d write him off mighty fast unless he sharpened his strategy.
As Micah sneaked gazes at her, sitting just inches from him on the couch in her best friend’s apartment, he still had more questions than answers about this girl ... so much like Rachel and Rhoda, yet from another galaxy altogether.
And so distracted by worldly gadgets. But maybe that was for the best: he’d arrived looking like a drowned cat, so rather than go to a restaurant Tiffany had taken him to where she was staying. Loaned him jeans and a T-shirt that belonged to her roommate’s boyfriend, while she ran his for-good shirt and trousers through her dryer. He couldn’t count the ways he’d gone against the Ordnung in the past hour—grounds for a shunning, no doubt. His best hope was that because Tiffany seemed to think nothing of this odd, dangerous arrangement, no one back home would ever know how he’d compromised his church vows.
“Yeah, gimme a large meat-pleaser special, extra cheese ... you got it, Hayden. You know where I’m staying, baby.”
Micah gawked. By all appearances she was talking to herself, yet he had the idea she’d somehow ordered their pizza. “So ... how’d ya do that?”
Tiffany blinked, closing the curtains of her black eyelashes for a moment to keep from laughing. “Bluetooth technology,” she explained, tapping a pointy little gadget hooked to her opposite ear. “Don’t guess you Amish are into wireless, hands-free communications, eh?”
Oh, but he wanted to communicate with his hands! Mostly wanted to ruffle the top of her spiked hair to see if it felt as bristly and stiff as it looked. Instead, he humored her with a patient smile. “Don’t laugh, but I’ve never had a pizza delivered to my house, either.”
“That’s against your rules, too?” She shifted to sit cross-legged then looked up from the screen resting against her ankles. Her expression suggested he might have sprouted a second head—or horns.
And maybe he had, at that, flirting with the Devil the way he was. “Don’t s’pose food delivery is so wrong ... your mamm gets food delivered from Zook’s Market several times a week, for her bakery. But she—and all the other women—cook at home. Fresh stuff from the garden in summer, and what they’ve pressure canned or frozen durin’ the winter. Get our meat at Zook’s locker, or from another fellow who butchers the local cows and hogs and sheep.”
“So, like, you don’t even shop for groceries?”
Micah shrugged. “Not much need, except to buy flour and other such stuff to make our bread and desserts. Your mamm and sisters, now those gals make pies like nobody’s business!”
“No microwavable meals, I bet. Man, I couldn’t live without a microwave or my computer.”
“No electricity at home, remember? It’s only on account of the health department and their Mennonite partners that they’ve got electricity at the Sweet Seasons.”
Tiffany nodded absently. She’d already gone back to staring at the pictures that flickered across her handheld screen, which gave him yet another chance to feel guilty about standing Rachel up. He could be eating her butterscotch bars with a big bowl of homemade ice cream now, basking in the adoration of her sky-blue eyes, as they chatted with their friends ... planning a long ride home along the quiet country roads, now that the rain had stopped.
“So what’s that you’re lookin’ at? Mighty tiny to be a computer, ain’t so?”
Tiffany’s grin crinkled her nose, as though she thought his accented speech was too quaint for words. Probably thought he was really stupid, too. “It’s an iPad. Sorta like a computer, ’cause you can check e-mail and go online to ... not that you have any clue about those things, probably.”
“Jah, not so much. You’re right about that.” Micah paused for but a moment before saying what had been on his mind all along. What could it hurt to have another girl mad at him when he’d surely broken the only heart that really mattered to him? “But I’ve got a clue or two about you, Tiffany. I think you’re hurtin’ worse than you can say—maybe worse than you even know. And I bet ya feel like those folks who raised ya really dropped a pile of it, and ya stepped in it before ya knew how ... stinky it would get.”
For just a moment her mask slipped. Tiffany looked as ferhoodled as her sisters when they’d learned about her—except this poor girl had lost her mother and felt like her father had betrayed her, a
nd then found out that’s not who the Oliveris were at all. Who could she believe? What did she have to hold on to as she slipped in that pile of emotional horse hooey?
“You can’t tell me you came here to play shrink, Micah. Why did you meet me tonight?”
Now there was a question! Just like her sisters, Tiffany had a sharp mind and a quick tongue. Micah shifted, feeling the unfamiliar tug of the tight jeans around his thighs and the way this girl watched the T-shirt hug his shoulders. “I’m curious about ya, for sure and for certain. But I ... I just have this feelin’ there’s more to ya than makeup and skulls and such. And when I dig deep enough—find our girl Rebecca underneath all that—I bet I’d like to be her friend.”
Her hand slipped into his. For a moment she looked vulnerable ... almost fragile. “So then ... why aren’t you kissing me? Touching me like you’re interested?” she pleaded. “I know you’ve been checking me out! Don’t tell me you big, stud-puppy Amish boys don’t do it! I mean, my God—look at you!”
Was that how she was used to being treated? Pawed at and played with like one of the girls’ faceless dolls, and then dropped when the game grew tiresome? Micah wished his clothes weren’t in her dryer, for he was being sucked into this quicksand of his own making ... drawn deeper by those wounded blue eyes that watched him so closely. Eyes that widened and apparently liked what they saw.
“That’s not how a decent man treats a woman. Especially one he barely knows,” Micah replied in a tight voice. “Jah, I’ve thought about it some—doin’ it, as ya say. And I decided, long time ago, that Rachel was the girl for me.”
“So you’re saving it for her? Yet you came here?” Tiffany crossed her arms, challenging him with her incredulous gaze. “No way am I falling for that one.”
Micah shrugged. “Got a lotta fences to mend, for leavin’ Rachel on the sly tonight. I hope she’ll forgive me, on account of how I’d be a sad, sorry man without her.” He paused to gather his courage: it wasn’t the easiest thing, to talk about deeply personal matters with someone dressed like Tiffany, showing so much skin and shape. But if he didn’t try to reach her, he’d made the trip through the rain and upset his Rachel yet again for no good reason.
“I wanted ya to know, Rebecca, that your Amish mamma and sisters love ya and nothin’ can change that,” he murmured. It felt like praying out loud, and he sure hoped God was listening even though he’d gotten himself into a sticky situation. “That love’s yours, if ya care to accept it. But once again, I’m tellin’ ya: if ya go meddlin’ and messin’ with their lives for the fun of it, because ya think we Amish are simple-minded instead of just simple ... you’ll be real sorry. And so’ll we.”
Tiffany’s eyes widened until he once again couldn’t miss the resemblance to Rachel. And one more time he kicked himself for betraying her trust. This look-alike seemed ready to say something—
“Pizza man!” somebody cried as the door flew open. In walked a guy carrying a flat black bag, grinning at Tiffany—until he saw Micah. “Hey, dude. Love the shirt and jeans.”
“Uh, Micah, this is Hayden, my best friend’s guy ... our other roommate,” she explained as they stood up. “He sorta loaned you those clothes.”
“And I thank ya for that,” Micah said as he extended his hand. Easy enough to see this fellow wanted to laugh at his longish, hat-flattened hair, just as he knew Hayden was jumping to the wrong conclusions about why he wasn’t wearing his own clothes. But that didn’t really matter, did it?
He excused himself to wash up, leaving Tiffany and her housemate to talk in low voices. When Micah caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he laughed sadly. Who did he think he was, trying to convince this young woman she had another family ... more love in her life than she knew? And why did he think she’d listen to a fellow like him? He was a fish out of water here, flopping around awkwardly when it came to saying and doing what he should.
When he returned to the main room, Tiffany was sitting on the couch with the pizza box open on the coffee table. She held a cheese-draped wedge in one hand while she kept looking at that iPad gadget ... sure was more interested in that than she was in him, or his message.
Time to get your clothes on and leave, he thought, realizing how suggestive this whole situation had become, even though he’d not so much as held Tiffany’s hand. Was she worth the risk of shattering Rachel’s trust in him? It didn’t appear that he’d made any progress at all.
Micah cleared his throat. “I’d best be gettin’ my shirt and pants—”
“But you’ve gotta help me eat this huge—Here! I ... guess I’ve been kinda rude, haven’t I?” Tiffany looked up, holding out a huge slice of pizza on a napkin. Was she offering him an olive branch, as well?
He sat on the edge of the sofa, farther away from her, taking the pizza without touching her hand. “Well, it does smell wonderful-gut—”
“And you’re a carpenter, Micah? There’s this cool YouTube piece—” Once again she was flicking her fingertips across her iPad screen and then tapping it. “It’s true what they say about so much junk being on the Internet, but this guy in Hong Kong—here, look what he’s designed!”
Micah closed his eyes over a mouthful of chewy crust, seasoned meat, and warm, gooey cheese. He must ask Miriam or Rachel to make pizza sometime. Music burst from the iPad and then a voice, telling about a young Asian fellow who’d converted a tiny old apartment into a sleek modern home for himself.
He sat glued to the quick-moving images of walls that rolled on wheels and ceiling tracks, converting one main room into a sitting area, a bedroom, a kitchen, a small office. All by shifting these walls—with built-in shelves and nooks for appliances—to the other side of the small apartment. His bed folded up into the wall. His huge TV screen came down from the ceiling. He had created this compact space for himself by taking what he already had and organizing it so only the things he was using at the time were out. Then he tucked them away—everything into its place—and moved another wall when he needed the function of a different room.
Form and function. Wasn’t his life work centered on those interwoven concepts?
The little movie ended too soon. Micah chewed, thinking. “Can I see that again?” he asked breathlessly. “Maybe a couple more times?”
His mind was spinning with ideas. Amish farmhouses were huge and sometimes unshapely from numerous additions: three generations of a family often lived under one roof. The downstairs rooms of the larger ones were often fitted with removable wall partitions to accommodate benches for a couple hundred people on preaching Sundays, so the compact form and function he’d just witnessed were impractical. Yet if a builder approached an Amish home from a nontraditional angle ...
As Tiffany touched the screen to show the piece again, Micah sensed the rightness of this moment—sights and ideas that could change his work forever, brought to him from a most unlikely source while he was where he wasn’t supposed to be. And wasn’t that how the biggest things had happened in the Bible, to God’s movers and shakers throughout humanity? They might’ve been liars and cheaters—or even murderers, like King David—yet the lessons they learned prepared them to accept greater responsibilities and a higher purpose from their Creator, when next He sought them out.
Let it be this way for me, God. Show me what You’d have me do with this fascinatin’ idea. It was too providential to ignore, this five-minute peek at such innovative thinking.
Spellbound, Micah paid closer attention to the nuts and bolts of how this Asian architect had designed his system of wooden walls that rolled silently, effortlessly ... oh, this was gonna be so good when he measured that loft again and convinced Aaron to custom-weld him some hardware ...
“Micah? You want your clothes now?”
Micah blinked. He could’ve kissed Tiffany, he was so excited, but he would go back to Willow Ridge instead. The ride would be a good time to let his thoughts jell while he also figured out how to win Rachel back. He had no doubt she was fuming right now, and s
he had every right to give him a talking-to. Micah hoped the inspiration he’d gotten these past few minutes would give him ways to impress his girl, too—not to mention how it would prove he loved Rachel even more than before.
He dressed quickly, unconcerned about the wrinkles in his white shirt and dark trousers. After he put on his hat, he offered Tiffany both hands. She rose to grip them, her expression wary yet hopeful. “Denki—thank you—ever so much for puttin’ up with me and showin’ me that movie,” he said in a husky voice.
“Well, I’m glad one of us had a good time.”
Micah’s lips curved. Better to leave that line alone and not fall for the wanting he saw all over her so-familiar face. “I wish ya my best as ya come to grips with your mamm’s passin’ and figure out what comes next.”
And before those beautiful blue eyes could lead him any closer to perdition, any farther from where he needed to be, Micah headed home to whatever Rachel would dish up.
Chapter 13
Tired of stewing at home, Rachel watched Mamma drift off on the couch and then slipped quietly out into the night. The rain had stopped, but her personal storm still rumbled within her. The later it got, the more she believed Micah might not stop by: If he’d gone to see that witchy sister with the black hair and mascara, why would he bother with her tonight? He’d no doubt sneak in his own back door and avoid her altogether.
She wouldn’t give him that chance! As she strode down their lane, Rachel didn’t care that her shoes got wet and muddy ... far worse if Micah Brenneman’s soul got soiled from his association with that freewheeling girl her mamm had claimed as one of their own. What was the attraction there? She’d known Micah most of their lives, yet now she wondered if she hadn’t paid close enough attention to the man behind those serene green eyes.
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