Ties That Bind (10 page)

“He didn't let you read it?”

“I was afraid to give it to him, afraid it said things that could make the situation worse for your Mamm…and you and Frieda. So I ripped it up while hurrying to the sink, and then I held the pieces under a running faucet.”

Quill couldn't respond, could hardly breathe. Even the day she thought he'd run off with Frieda, she continued to treat him and Frieda as true friends. If the church ministers had read the letter, it would've made a lot of things harder on his mother, Frieda, and him.

Ariana's face was chiseled with anger again. “I wish you'd never given me the letter. It only made me look like I was a part of your betrayal.” She nibbled her bottom lip. “But that's not important, not anymore. The only thing that matters is you are not taking my sister with you.”

“Nothing would make me happier.”

“Who could possibly know if you mean it? Certainly not me.”

“Yeah, I understand.” He motioned to the stack of barrels. “I'll unstack them before I leave. It'll fill up the floor, but you'll be able to safely get whatever you need for years to come.”

She looked from the barrels to him, and her guard seemed to lower for a moment. “How do you manage to sound so sincere? You comforted me five years ago as if you actually cared. You stand here saying you hope my sister chooses not to go with you, but it's all just words for you, isn't it?”

“What can I say, Ariana? You're not going to believe anything that sounds contrary to what you already believe.” And even if she did believe what he said, there were many aspects of what had taken place that he wasn't free to tell her. Some of the information would do her more harm than good, so he would keep that to himself. The parts that could be helpful were private info. Confidentiality was a harsh overseer.

She went to the barrel and pushed open the tattered screen door with her foot. “I can't trust you for good reason, Quill, and you know it.” She struggled to scoot the barrel inch by inch through the door.

He set the bag on the bench and grabbed an old hand truck from the wall, hoping the wheels were still good. “Wait.” He pushed the dolly to the barrel, and with a bit of effort, he slid the flat ledge under the base. He tilted it back, making her task easier.

“Denki.” Her tone was cold with only a hint of politeness. She balanced the dolly, straining a bit to do so. Before pushing it forward, her eyes met his. “Is there something I can do to prevent us from meeting again?”

Her calm, collected words were like a knife sliding into his gut. He wanted to say that he was leaving for home soon, and when he did return for visits, he would do as he had been doing for years—all he could to avoid an encounter.

But when he opened his mouth, his heart overrode his will. “We should talk for a while first. You know, hash out a few things. I think it would help both of us.” There were a few bits of information he could share that might defuse her anger, weren't there?

She blinked, staring at him in disbelief. Since all she wanted to do was get away from him, he was asking a lot, but from the moment he'd looked into her eyes last week, the longing to establish a little peace between them had been building inside him.

They could never be close again. He accepted that. He would never get the chance to date her or marry her or raise children with her inside this community as he'd once dreamed. In many ways they were both children when he had wanted that. Now they were adults, seeing the world in the harsh light of reality. But couldn't he at least remove a bit of tarnish from her good memories of them?

She shook her head. “No thanks.” But then she stopped abruptly as if an idea had come to her. “But…would you answer one question?”

“If I can't, I'll tell you so straight up.”

“How long do I have to change my sister's mind?”

“Three, maybe four weeks. What's your plan?”

“Seriously?” Her eyes widened. “Why would I give you a chance to undermine it?”

“I can't break confidences, but if I knew what you were thinking, I might be able to guide you in which plans could help with your goal.”

“Didn't we just agree that whatever you said, I wouldn't be able to believe you anyway?”

“Yeah, but then you trusted me enough to ask about your sister.” He shifted.

“I asked out of desperation, hoping your eyes and body language would tell me more than any words you spoke. That isn't trust.”

People's points of view were tricky in any relationship. That was especially true in their case. He had a helicopter view of the events in broad daylight. Her view was from a small plot of ground in the dead of night. She wasn't to blame for seeing him from the only vantage point available to her.

“Look, I know I've not told you everything in the past. But I couldn't, not without asking you to keep secrets for me. What I did tell you was truthful.”

“I need to go.” She pushed the dolly with her foot to get the wheels moving.

“An hour at your favorite spot by the creek. That's all I ask. Then I'll disappear, never to bother you again.”

“I don't meet married men for private conversations.”

He knew she believed that he and Frieda were married. He had wanted her to think that for several reasons. He and Frieda needed the community to believe they were going to marry. Plenty of people would try to find a single teenage girl so they could talk her into returning to the fold, but few would spend much time trying to track down a married woman. To the Amish a married woman belonged with her husband. Period. “I'm not married.”

She released the dolly, and the bottom of the barrel thudded against the ground as she stared at him as if he'd grown a second head. “You ran off with my friend, and then you didn't even marry her?”

“For her sake, so no one makes an effort to find her and talk her into returning here, it would be best if you keep what I'm about to tell you between us. See, it wasn't like that, not for her or me.”

She stared at him in disbelief, unmoving for several moments. “And yet you dare say you've never lied to me?” Shock at his marital status faded, and something dull filled her eyes—maybe resignation. Or disgust.

“I did mislead you on that. I know I did, and it's part of what I've apologized for. We had no choice.” He could see on her face that he was making things worse between them.

“Whatever.” She shrugged. “I also avoid any relationship with single Amish men who dabble in the Englisch world, so there's no possibility I'll have another conversation with you.”

Did she realize what a snob she'd become? She needed someone to challenge her closed-minded thinking. “You think you're so much better than Englisch people? I guess that thinking helps you gladly accept the segregation the Amish are so comfortable with.”

“We separate from the world—in it but not of it, as the Word says. But I'm not surprised you find fault with that.”

“Isn't that the same world Christ died to save and sent all people into in order to make disciples?”

“Is that what you do, Quill? Make disciples?”

“Well…no, but—”

“But you know how to talk the talk, to convince hurting families and teenage girls to come into the world with you, right?”

“That's not what I do.”

“You've also said you've never lied to me, which just begs the question—what constitutes a lie in your mind? Seems to me, you're the kind of man that your wife would have to ask you specifically, did you cheat on me this month? Otherwise, if you cheated and she never directly asked about it, you're not a liar.”

He considered himself slow to anger, but she'd pushed him about as far as he could take. Still, his guilt over the past curbed his tongue.

An old car horn, like those often used on Amish rigs by younger folk, sounded.
Ahooga.

“Rudy's here, and I need to go.” She tried to get the barrel tilted back on the dolly again.

Rudy. Clearly a man who'd never crossed into the Englisch world to experience it beyond what was necessary for survival or business. “See me however you like, Ari, but open your eyes and see yourself. For hundreds of years, sweet, obedient Amish girls such as yourself have been used by family and church leaders as Amish nectar, giving men the energy and drive to stay under the Ordnung.”

Her face flushed red, and he stiffened as the palm of her hand swung toward him. But she stopped before slapping him. Trembling, she lowered her hand, tears glistening.

His jaded attitude had managed to insult and hurt her simultaneously.

She drew several ragged breaths, gaining control once again. Soon the tears in her eyes disappeared, and she touched the back of her prayer Kapp, making sure her hair and cap were still in place. “Without end you are a disappointment.”

A physical slap would have been less painful. He was clear on the main reasons he'd never reached out to her after leaving, but maybe hidden somewhere deep inside him, he'd known she would be unable to accept any of the truths he saw, the ones that highlighted the less-than-noble aspects of the Old Ways. Even knowing all he did, he still believed this way of life was one of the better ones available. But some serious changes needed to be made, the kind that would have spared his Daed's life and made ways to protect its innocent people from the bad apples.

He slid the barrel in place and tilted it back for her. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.” He considered it true, but it was rude and maybe spiteful to voice it.

She clasped the handles.

He knew they were done.

Completely finished.

He'd been naive to hope they could clear the air and sustain a friendship, frail as it might be.

“Bye, Ariana. I pray you'll have a good and fulfilling life.”

L
ovina watched at the doorway of the barn, making sure none of her children came near as she tried to talk to her husband once again about a topic he didn't wish to discuss. He continued to pick the horse's hoofs as if that animal's comfort was more important than hers.

Her desire to remain respectful grew thin as she fidgeted with the flier from the play. “Isaac, please.” Her whisper echoed in her ears, but he didn't flinch. “We may have raised a child who is planning to leave. And this thing with the flier and Ariana has me terrified. I can't deal with these things in silence. I need you to talk to me.”

“Don't borrow trouble, Lovina.” Isaac spoke without pausing or looking up. “Other than a cryptic message from Quill, we have no hint that one of our own is planning to leave. Ariana needs to work through her fears her way, and I understand that, but I will not believe a report that the sky is falling.”

Lovina's anxiety eased concerning the possibility that one of her children might leave the Order. “That's a good answer, Husband. Denki.” But a much harder topic for them to discuss was the events surrounding Ariana's birth. They hadn't broached the subject often. “But what about the flier and Ariana?”

After wrestling with her fears on her own, she'd shared them with him late last night as they crawled into bed. First she reminded him of the pink blanket without the embroidered feet, but he dismissed that just as he had years ago, saying that in the panicked shuffle to get everyone outside during the fire, the blankets had fallen off the girls, but the babies' identities were handled carefully. When she explained what Mark had seen and the name Brandi being in the flier, he froze. But then he told her it was nothing to consider, just her imagination running wild. He blew out the candle and rolled over to face the wall, unwilling to discuss the possibility.

She wiped sweat from her brow. “Could you please stop for one minute and look at me?”

Without raising his head, he moved to a different leg of the horse. “This is nonsense. Ariana is ours. God gave her to us, and I won't question it.”

“Won't question it? Isaac, you have to talk to me. I feel as if I'm going crazy. My heart has beaten so fast since Mark brought home that flier that I can hardly breathe, and I've never been so nauseated in all my life.”

He stood upright and slipped the hoof pick into his pocket. “You won't like what I think.”

“I've got to know.” As desperate as her voice sounded, it didn't begin to express how she felt.

He blew out a long, steady breath. “I've not forgotten the chaos that took place the night the twins were born. The incident with the blankets has bothered me over the years, and I know your fear about the two girls being swapped is certainly feasible. But…”

Her heart seemed to pause, unable to beat until he finished his thoughts. “Go on.”

He pursed his lips, a frown creasing his face. “If God deemed this incident to happen, seems to me that we would be wrong to intervene.”

“What?” she whispered, chills covering her as if she were standing naked in the barn in midwinter.

He said nothing else.

“Isaac.” Was it her ingrained beliefs of how to speak to a husband or the pounding at her temples that kept her voice so soft? “You can't mean that.”

“I do. Leave it be,
Frau.
”

He only called her
wife
when he needed her to remember that her place was not to be the leader. “Just drop it?” She grabbed his arm. “You can't have thought this through.”

“Since she was little, sometimes I look at her and see a girl who is unlike our other daughters. Not so much physically, but…something is different about her. So for years I've thought about what you're saying. It doesn't change my stance.”

Did he need a mother's heart to understand how she felt? “Is it that simple for you?”

“Is that what you think of your husband, that because a decision is hard, he must be a hard man?” His voice shook, the first hint of emotion he'd shown. “It's eating me up inside! I can't sleep. I can hardly speak our girl's name without fear and anxiety choking me.” He looked through the barn door and toward their run-down farmhouse. “I don't even understand what I'm so terrified of. But it's in my gut like nothing I've ever experienced before, and I know we must leave this alone. That's what my gut tells me.”

“Which gut feeling? The mankind one that longs to avoid every scary situation? Or the gut feeling that is between you and the Creator?” She stepped closer. “Isn't it possible that God has opened our eyes to this possibility because He needs us to act?”

He froze, staring at her for what seemed like forever. He then walked the horse to its stall and put her away. “Until just then I was holding on to the thought that He doesn't need our help.” He closed the gate behind the horse and remained there. His hands trembled as he removed his straw hat. “But He uses people every day to help others, to keep others safe from harm. When He gave us children, He made it our responsibility to watch after them. But…”

How self-centered was she, doubting that her husband cared. His emotional upheaval equaled hers. It simply revealed itself differently. He wanted to deny their responsibility, hoping it was God's will to leave the situation alone. “Husband, what if we have a daughter out there who needs us? Will we stay so focused on the blessings God's given us that we won't inconvenience our lives to seek truth?”

He rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist. “What will it do to Ariana?”

“Our love for her cannot be dampened by this any more than it would if we welcomed another baby into the fold.”

“This is different, Lovina. You're not seeing it for what it is. If she's not ours,”—he gestured at their home—“she's not related to anyone of this household.” Tears sprang from his eyes. “What would that do to a girl like our Ariana?”

Shame dripped its hot wax onto her aching heart. She hadn't thought of it in those terms. All she knew for sure is her heart screamed out for the child she may have given birth to—the one raised in an Englisch world by a stranger. “Ariana's faith is strong. Her character is strong. Whatever the truth is, she will not be undone by it. I know she won't.”

“Ya, she has a lot of inner strength.” Isaac went to the doorway and stared at their home. “A thought came to me earlier today. Perhaps it is from God.”

Lovina moved to his side. “What is it?”

“If parents could give their children all they needed, if we could prevent all pain, lack, or confusion, none would need God.”

Lovina mulled over his words, struck by the powerful truth, but its meaning and timing terrified her.

His shoulders slumped. “I guess I need to trust that regardless of what the truth is, it will only draw Ariana closer to God.”

Lovina placed her arm on Isaac's, and he took his cue, engulfing her in a reassuring hug. How many times in their years of marriage had his broad shoulders and strong arms felt like all she needed to get through any storm?

“Daed?” Their youngest called out, and Isaac turned toward his voice. “Water is going everywhere again!”

Isaac released her and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Turn it off at the main, and I'll be inside in five.”

John waved and nodded.

“Where do we begin?” Lovina didn't like pushing Isaac to talk, but she had to know the truth.

“With the midwife.” He rested his hands on her shoulders.

That did make sense. “Rachel may remember something so specific it will put our minds at ease.”

“Ya.”

“Today, then?”

“Nee.” Her husband's hands slowly moved to her neck and he held her face with his thumbs. “If we take off tonight, it'll raise questions, and we'd have to come up with excuses. We can't let our actions alert anyone.” He pulled her closer and kissed her forehead. “Besides, there are pipes to fix and children to feed.”

“Isaac, I need to talk to Rachel soon.”

“I know, but let's be cautious.” He put his forehead on hers. “Maybe when we do talk to Rachel, we'll find out that our fears are nothing.”

“Ya. Maybe so.”

But he didn't believe that. She could see it in his eyes and feel it in the trembling of his hands, and it made her insides churn with a sickening nervousness.

Standing on the sidewalk, holding on to the brass key, Ariana peered through the streaked window of the abandoned café. After Abram's weeks of overtime, she needed only $6,270 more.

Only?

Reality tried to grab her ankle and pull her under the choppy waters of discouragement, but she broke free. She wasn't giving up, even though they had just thirty-six days left to get it. Maybe the real-estate agent could give her an extension for the closing. Her breathing tightened with thoughts of how much more money she would need to make a go of this diner, funds that she didn't know how to obtain. This place no longer felt like a dream. It was a necessity. Hearts were at stake, and she could spare her loved ones so much pain if she could keep Susie from leaving.

“Ariana?” Standing next to her, Rudy tapped on the grimy window. “Hello?” Confusion shone in his dark-brown eyes. “What's going on? You haven't been yourself at all since I picked you up at Berta's house.”

She ran her fingernail along the jagged edges of the key. Sliding a key into a lock could open anyone's life to new experiences—even if one was going home to family after a day at work. She longed for Susie to let this door be unlocked for her, not the door to living in the Englisch world.

Rudy placed his warm hands over hers. “Talk to me. Please.”

She noted how well his hands covered hers, so strong and protective. Her ability to carefully choose what she shared with him evaporated. “How much do you want to know?”

“From ninety-something percent of the people in my life, as little as possible. From you, I want to know anything you're willing to share.”