He looked up at her. “Say something.”
“Oh, I’m just a bit surprised, that’s all.”
“Does it make you think any less of me?”
“Not really, but it does give me some questions.” Tulip answered as honestly as she possibly could.
“Tell me what questions you have and I’ll do my best to answer them for you.”
At that moment, all Tulip wanted to do was go home. She thought she’d found the perfect man and everything would work out perfectly and now she just wanted to be back in the safety of her house with her family. She sprang to her feet. “Can we talk about this another time? So much has happened with Dat being sick and what happened the other night with Daisy.”
He stood up as well. “It does bother you.”
“I don’t really know. I just need some time to think about things.” She took a couple of steps back.
“Don’t go, Tulip. We can talk about this. Adele wasn’t the right woman for me and I knew that.”
Adele? Maybe she was being silly, but the fact that he had nearly married a woman called Adele that she didn’t even know made Wilhem feel like a total stranger. Wilhem had been her picture of a perfect man and now she didn’t know who he was. In her mind’s eye, she saw a young woman called Adele crying over him and here he was in a different community asking another girl to be his girlfriend after he’d just broken Adele’s heart. It didn’t feel right.
Tulip looked at his pleading eyes and opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. She turned and walked to her buggy.
“Where are you going?” He followed after her.
“Home.”
“Why has this upset you so much?” he asked.
She couldn’t articulate why this felt wrong to her; there were so many reasons why it did. “I don’t know, Wilhem. I don’t think we should see each other for a while.”
His mouth fell open in shock. “Is that what you really want? Because that’s not what you said a moment ago.”
“I didn’t know that you are capable of breaking a woman’s heart a moment ago.”
He stepped closer to her. “Break ups aren’t easy on anyone. It was better to happen before we got married than for us to go ahead with the wedding and have a miserable marriage. Don’t you think so?”
“If you didn’t get along, why did you ask her to marry you?” Tulip shook her head. “Don’t answer that.”
“I’ve got nothing to hide. I want to tell you everything.”
Tulip had had too much drama over the past weeks, enough to last her for some time. As well as that, the horrible incidents that she’d had with Nathanial were still fresh in her mind. “Can we talk about this later? I need to go.” She climbed up into the buggy and took hold of the leather reins.
He stepped closer to her. “We kind of fell into things because our parents wanted us to marry. I went along with it all without thinking too much about it, and then when I spent more time with her I realized we were totally unsuitable. By that time, I didn’t have the courage to end things. That’s why I left it so long.”
Now he’d caught her attention. “What do you mean by the courage to end things?” To her, ending something seemed cowardly.
“It was a hard thing to do. I knew Adele would be upset, and all her friends and family, after they’d been planning the wedding. I had it in my mind I would just go along with it, but in the end I just couldn’t go through with it. Everyone was mad with me and I knew they would be. I knew everybody was staring at me and talking about me, so I just had to get away for a while and that’s why I came here. My parents weren’t happy with me either because I’d gone back on my word. To me, it would have been worse to go ahead when I wasn’t in love.”
Tulip looked down at her hands and saw that she had been holding onto the reins so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.
“You see, Tulip, I was caught in a trap and there was no way out where everyone would be happy. If I’d gone ahead and married her, things would’ve been bad, and if I didn’t, they would’ve been bad too. In the end, Adele deserved to be with a man who truly loved her and that man wasn’t me.” He shook his head.
She appreciated the way he was so calm and explained things to her so nicely. “Denke for telling me all that.”
“So, do you feel better about the whole thing now that I’ve told you how it was?”
“I do.”
A slight frown marred his perfect forehead. “Are you going to get down from that buggy?”
“I really should get home to my parents. Things haven’t been easy for them lately.”
“I understand, but are things between us okay?”
Tulip nodded. “They are. I’m just not good with surprises and I tend to think the worst.”
“Denke for coming here tonight. You will go out with me again, won’t you?”
“Of course I will.”
“Gut. I might see you at work tomorrow when I call in for coffee. And I’m sorry again about dinner.”
Tulip managed a little laugh. “You should try and get the smoke smell out of the house before Jonathan comes home.”
Wilhem grinned. “Jah, I’ll do that right now.” He took hold of the horse’s cheek strap and turned him toward the road. “Bye, Tulip,” he said as he stopped and let go of the horse. The horse walked past him.
“I’ll see you later.” Tulip needed to process everything. It was a huge shock to learn that he’d gone back on his word. She’d always seen herself with someone who was upstanding and true to his word. It seemed like Wilhem wasn’t the man she hoped he was. More than anything, Tulip wanted to marry a good man like her father. What she needed was to tell Rose what happened and listen to her opinion about the matter. She hoped Rose wouldn’t mind her stopping by unexpectedly at this hour of the evening.
When she stopped her horse and buggy outside Rose and Mark’s haus, Mark came outside to meet her.
“Oh, it’s you, Tulip. I couldn’t see who it was in the dark. Is your vadder okay?”
“Jah, he’s fine. I wanted to steal your new fraa away for a couple of moments if that’s okay. I need some older schweschder advice.”
“Sure. She’s in the kitchen. We’ve just finished dinner. You head inside and I’ll secure your horse and give him some water.”
“Denke, Mark.”
“Hello,” Tulip called out as she stepped through the doorway into Rose’s house.
Rose came to the doorway of the kitchen and then went to hug her. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
“Dat’s fine if that’s what you mean.”
“What’s going on? Why are you here so late? Not that I’m complaining. It’s nice to have you here at whatever time of the day, or night.”
“Can we sit down? I need to ask your advice about something.”
“Come into the kitchen.”
When they were both seated, Tulip began, “Wilhem invited me to dinner at his haus that he shares with Jonathon. He made a mess of things because the dinner got burned because he can’t cook, and anyway, we ended up sitting out on the porch and then he told me something that shocked me. And if I hadn’t brought it up, I might never have known.”
“How could you have brought it up if you didn’t know about it?”
“Nathanial hinted at something not been right with Wilhem and the reason he was here.” She leaned in and whispered, “He hinted it was something like the reason that Jacob had come here.”
“What did you find out?” Rose asked, leaning forward slightly.
“I don’t know if I’m overreacting, and I need your advice. It wasn’t as bad as the Jacob situation. I shouldn’t have brought that up.” Tulip took a deep breath. “Wilhem was supposed to be marrying someone and he ended the relationship just weeks before the wedding. He said their parents expected them to get married and he was just going along with it. Then he decided that they didn’t really get along enough to be married.”
“What’s wrong with t
hat?” Rose asked. “Is the girl—”
“Nee, nothing like that. I just keep picturing the poor girl being so upset that he ended things. He said she deserved to be married to someone who loved her.”
“I can’t see what the problem is. It’s not as though he got married.”
“I know, but I just wanted someone fresh, with no past. It was a shock for me to find that out. I wouldn’t mind someone to have had a girlfriend or even two or three, but to have actually arranged a whole wedding and everything—”
“If he told you so soon, it doesn’t sound like he was deliberately keeping it from you.”
Tulip sighed. “Before he told me, he said he wanted me to be his girlfriend.”
“That’s wunderbaar. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“That’s what I wanted. It’s just that with all the drama you went through with Jacob and then all the fuss with Nathanial, I just want someone with no bad things in their past.”
“He didn’t want to marry the girl and he was honest. You can’t blame him for that.”
“I know that, but it sounded like he wasn’t honest about it for a long time and he should’ve ended things sooner if that was the case.” Tulip rubbed her forehead, hoping she was explaining her feelings properly to Rose.
“People learn from their mistakes. He was young at the time and probably thought he was doing the right thing going along with what his parents wanted, until he thought about the rest of his life with the woman he didn’t love.”
“I know, but did he love her and then change his mind? That’s what I’m really worried about. I don’t want to be with someone changeable like that.”
“You have to ask him that.”
Tulip slowly nodded. “Denke for talking to me. I feel a little better about things now.”
“How’s everyone at home?”
“Good. It feels a bit strange there without you.”
“Come over here any time. You can even stay for a few days if you want to.”
Tulip giggled. “You’re newlyweds. I wouldn’t want to get in the way.”
“Do you want some hot tea or something to eat, perhaps?”
Right on cue, Tulip’s stomach growled, possibly objecting to the whoopie pies that she’d eaten instead of a proper dinner. Tulip laughed. “Did you hear that?”
“Was that your stomach?”
“Jah. I wouldn’t mind something to eat, denke.”
“I can make you a sandwich with the leftover meat from dinner.”
“Sounds delicious.”
“We only had meatloaf.”
“I love meatloaf.”
Rose giggled and pulled out the leftovers from the gas-powered fridge. “You can give me a hand by slicing the bread.”
Tulip stood up and opened the bread bin and pulled out the nearly full loaf. As she sawed through the bread with the serrated knife, her thoughts turned back to what Wilhem had told her. “Tell me honestly, Rose, do you think I’m worrying too much about nothing?”
“It sounds like you might be.” She put a hand out for the bread and when Tulip handed her the two slices, she asked, “Butter?”
“Nee denke. It’s fine like that.”
“There you are.” Rose handed her the sandwich on a plate and they both sat back down.
“I’m really hungry and this looks so good.” She bit into the sandwich.
“I think you just worry because we’ve both had troubling things happen to us. Me with Jacob and you with Nathanial, and then there was what happened to Daisy with Nathanial. Wilhem’s nothing like them from what I know of him and from what you’ve told me about him.”
Tulip finished chewing. “I believe what he said, but it just doesn’t feel perfect anymore.”
“But maybe it is perfect and you should appreciate that rather than worrying about how you thought things should be or would be. He obviously really likes you a lot, so don’t let what happened in the past come between the two of you. Besides, it wasn’t his fault that his parents wanted him to marry that girl—the wrong girl. None of it was really his doing from what you told me.”
“He shouldn’t have let himself get dragged into it.” Tulip looked down at the second-hand wooden kitchen table, scratched and marked from years of wear. Rose and Mark didn’t have much to start their married lives, but they were happy. All they needed was each other. Mark was an honest man and she wanted someone like that. He’d only ever loved Rose. There had never been another woman in his life.
“I told you before, these things come with maturity and he was probably trying to please his parents and that’s got to be a good thing.” Rose leaned in closer, and whispered, “I always thought I would marry a man a lot taller than me and who looked different from Mark. There was this picture in my mind, and that picture became Jacob when I saw him.”
“That was a total disaster.”
“It was, and my perfect man was there all along right in front of me and I didn’t know it. Maybe if Jacob hadn’t jolted me out of my silliness, or whatever it was, my eyes would never have opened to see Mark.” Rose tapped on the side of her head with her finger. “It’s the ideas we’ve stored in our head about how our husbands should be that ruin things for us.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“It is and just like I always thought my husband would look a certain way, it sounds to me that you wanted someone who had never had an upheaval with a woman in his past. I just don’t think that’s realistic if you want someone older than yourself. Most boys start going out with girls at sixteen or seventeen. If you find someone special, you have to hold onto them, overlook the small things, and be grateful that they have the qualities that are important.”
Tulip exhaled deeply. “I know you’re right, but it’s not knowing all the details of when he was about to get married that worries me. Just think, if he and I get married, he would’ve gone through all the pre-wedding stuff before. It’s kind of ruined.”
“You should be pleased that he didn’t get married. If he had, you would never have met him.”
“I know, I know. I thought about that.”
“Do you think he’s lying to you about something or not telling you the whole truth?”
“Nee.”
“Then what are you worried about? Just ask him anything you want to know.”
Tulip finished off the last portion of her sandwich while thinking about all that her older sister had just said.
Rose continued, “You’re probably just upset about what happened to Dat with his heart problem. That’s upset everybody.”
“It gave me a real scare. I thought he was dead there for a moment. You’re right. I don’t think I’ve gotten over that shock.” Tulip dusted the crumbs from her hands. “Denke again for the sandwich. I should go now. I’m glad we talked.”
“Me too.”
The sisters hugged before Tulip walked with her sister to the front door. “Bye, Mark,” she said when she saw him reading the paper on the couch. “Denke for taking care of the horse and letting me have ten minutes with Rose.”
He chuckled. “Any time. Bye, Tulip. It was good to see you again.”
“Bye.” Tulip stepped out into the cold night air.
During the short ride back to her house, she decided to put Wilhem out of her mind for a day or two. Then she might be able to see things a little clearer. She was certain Rose was right, and she had to wait until she got used to the idea that things weren’t as she thought they were. What probably annoyed her most was that Nathanial had hinted that Wilhem was there to get away from a problem and it turned out that he was right.
When Tulip walked into the house, instead of her mother and father on the couch, there were Daisy and Lily. “Have Mamm and Dat gone to bed already?”
“Jah. How was your big date night?” Lily asked.
Tulip put on a bright smile, not wanting the twins to know that she was upset. “It was a lot of fun.” She sat down on the couch with them.
“What did you do?” asked Daisy.
“Just this and that. He cooked dinner for me but then burned it. What did you two do tonight?”
Daisy nodded her head at some sewing on a table nearby. “We finished off some of our sewing that we started the other day.”
“Jah, and then we got tired of doing that.”
“And we were just about to go to bed when we heard the buggy outside, so we thought we’d wait up to hear about your night.”
“Can you give us a few details about what happened on your date?” Daisy asked.
“Did you kiss him?” Lily asked, which made Daisy giggle.
“I can’t tell you about things like that. Nee, I didn’t, if you must know. Anyway, what about the two of you? I saw you both talking to men at Rose’s wedding. Do either of you like anyone?”
“Why would we tell you if we did?” Lily asked.
“Because I just told you an answer to the question you asked me. That’s why.”
“Jah, Lily, tell her who you’re interested in,” Daisy said.
“Me? Why don’t you tell her who you’re interested in?”
Tulip giggled. As annoying as the twins were, she was glad to be home among everything that was familiar. When she was at home, she didn’t have to worry about stepping out of her comfort zone. Maybe she wasn’t ready for a real boyfriend just yet, even though many of the people her age in the community were now married. Perhaps she was just a late bloomer.
“What’s funny?” Daisy asked, staring into Tulip’s face.
“Life’s funny in many ways.”
Lily rolled her eyes. “You won’t get any sense out of her because she’s in love.”
“Then why didn’t you kiss him?” Daisy asked.
“I don’t know him well enough.”
When Tulip saw Daisy and Lily exchange glances, she explained, “I’m not going to kiss anyone until I know them really well, until I’m in love.”
“See, Lily, she’s not in love yet.”
“I think she is because she keeps smiling. Unless she’s not telling us the truth. Are you lying to us, Tulip?”
Amish Tulip Page 13
