Wounded Heart (9781455505654) Read online

  “Eli gave you a ride home yesterday?” Carrie asked breathlessly, tugging her knitted scarf tighter around her throat. “And we’re only hearing about this now?”

  “It wouldn’t even be now if Amelia had her way,” Emma told her. “She was going to make us wait until quilting day.”

  “What kind of a friend would do that?” Carrie’s sparkling eyes belied the severity of her tone. To look at her, you’d think they were all sixteen and exchanging secrets about who had come with a flashlight and shone it in whose window in the middle of the night. But that was back before they’d joined church and gotten serious about life. Things were different now.

  “The kind of friend who doesn’t think it’s worth sharing,” she said. “Yes, he gave me a ride home. And no, it didn’t mean anything.”

  Carrie’s eyes narrowed with speculation. “I bet it meant something to him.”

  Drat the blush that insisted on rising in her face. “Maybe it did. He offered to give me a hand around the place, too.”

  Emma gasped. “What did you say?”

  “I said I had all the help I needed from Daed and my brothers, and he went away.”

  “Amelia!” Carrie’s gloved fingers went to her mouth. “How could you?”

  “What was I supposed to say? You know as well as I do that if he came around to help, Mamm would start planting celery for a wedding and everyone else in Whinburg would talk up a storm.”

  “It’s not the talk you’re afraid of,” Emma said flatly. “It’s Eli.”

  “No, that’s not true at all.” She wasn’t going to think about whatever Emma was hinting at. “I like him, as much as I like Melvin or any of our men. I want good things for him. That’s why I had to turn him down.”

  “I don’t understand you.” Emma lifted her hands and let them fall, empty. “I’d give anything if—” She cut herself off and closed her mouth, its usual generous lines narrow and grim.

  “I’d give anything, too, not to have this disease.” Amelia’s voice roughened with emotion. “How can I lead him on, allow him to court me, if all I have to offer him is a future with another Lila Esch? He doesn’t want a wife strapped into a wheelchair, Emma. Or one he’s going to have to wash in her bed and clean up after. I wouldn’t inflict that on any man.”

  “You don’t know that’s going to happen.” Carrie’s lips trembled, and she drew a deep breath. “People can go for years without being as bad as poor Lila. Why, look at Janelle Baum at the post office. You’d never know there was anything wrong.”

  “And what about this Mexico treatment?” Emma said. “If you do that, maybe it will stop the disease.”

  Amelia told them what Daniel Lapp and Moses Yoder had said.

  “Oh, my.” Carrie’s shoulders drooped. “Well, if the church won’t fund it and you still believe in it, we’ll just have to think of another way.”

  “We could sell the quilt we’re working on,” Emma suggested. “If we go through the auctions in the spring, we could get maybe a thousand dollars for it.”

  Any other time a thousand dollars would have seemed a fortune. “I’m afraid we’d have to sell sixty of them to get enough to go to Mexico. I’ll be an old lady by then, and it wouldn’t be worth it.”

  “There must be something,” Carrie said.

  “I’ll write a novel and sell sixty thousand copies,” Emma said.

  Where did the girl get her outlandish ideas? “Then you’d be put under the Bann, too.” Amelia’s tone was glum.

  “‘Too’? What?” Carrie gripped her arm. “What are you talking about, under the Bann?”

  “If I go to Mexico, Daniel Lapp said I risked die Meinding.”

  “What on earth for?” Carrie’s voice rose, and Emma shushed her when one of the boys looked up over his shoulder. “People go to other countries for these new cancer treatments,” she said more quietly. “Old Joe was never shunned when he went, was he?”

  “I don’t know. That was years ago. All I know is that because these injections come from cow myelin, they’re bad. At least Daniel seems to think so. Like putting a pig’s heart inside you.”

  “It’s not the same thing at all,” Emma said hotly. “If we were all put under the Bann for putting cow parts inside us, the whole community would have to shun itself. What do they think their Sunday roast is made of ?”

  “That’s what I thought. Maybe you should write a letter to the elders and explain that to them.”

  “I certainly will, if you think it would help.”

  “Emma, I was joking,” Amelia said quickly, putting out a hand as if to stop her from marching into the house and finding a pen that very minute. “You know we can’t do any such thing. If the elders say I can’t go to Mexico and have this treatment, then I will not go.”

  “They don’t know everything,” Emma muttered, but Amelia let the words drift off into the air, harmless as smoke. There was nothing more to say. The only solution pleasing to God was obedience, and the only solace was sharing it with them, for the relief of it, the way either of them would grab the other handle of a wash basket or a tub of vegetables and help her carry it in. She could do it on her own, but it went better with someone on the other side.

  Usually obedience brought her more peace, though.

  At four in the morning, when she got up to do the Monday washing, peace was as elusive as when she’d hugged her friends and called the boys up the slope, wet around the edges and ready to go home.

  No peace about the treatment.

  No peace about Eli Fischer.

  In the cold dim of early morning, lit by the lantern hanging on the laundry-room wall, she watched the shirts and aprons agitate in the machine, tucked her hands into her armpits, and gave herself up to prayer.

  It calmed her, even if she was too jangled inside for true peace—the kind that came with acceptance of God’s will. But she would settle for calm, particularly when she opened the shop a couple of hours later and found that one of the pipes serving both her part of the building and that of the Steiners next door had broken and there was an inch of dirty water all over the workshop floor.

  With a cry of dismay, she hurried back into her boots, and when Melvin came in, he found her frantically sweeping water out into the yard.

  “Get a mop out of the cabinet!” she said, forgetting even to say Guder Mariye. “We have to get this out before it damages the wood any more!”

  David came in right after that and borrowed a space heater from next door to dry the wood once they got the floor clean. The orders scheduled for that morning were half a day late, and the truck idling out in the yard for an hour did nothing to soothe her nerves. If she had been at home, she’d have gone to the fridge for something to eat. As it was, even after she ate the lunch she’d packed, she still felt twitchy. She reached into her desk drawer to see if there was anything to snack on.

  Hmm. One hard candy. That was no good. She wanted something crunchy. Hadn’t she tossed a bag of nuts in here sometime? Away at the back, she found it—a partial bag of mixed nuts that had probably been in there since Enoch was alive. Whether they were stale or not, she didn’t care. She crunched into a nice fat Brazil nut and felt something snap, and pain lanced up into her head.

  Owww. Shell. She’d bitten into a shell. These were supposed to be shelled already. She felt around with her tongue and spat the hard object into her hand.

  It wasn’t a dark brown bit of shell. It was silver. She’d broken a filling, maybe even a bit of tooth.

  With a groan Amelia sagged against the back of the chair and berated herself for letting her mouth get the better of her. If only she’d gotten absorbed in her work instead—that would have taken her mind off her troubles and done something profitable at the same time. She tossed the twisted little piece of metal into the trash can.

  I don’t have time to deal with this.

  You have to deal with it. What if it gets infected?

  She got up and went into the toilet, where there was a mirror ov
er the sink. “Ahhhh.” The molar second from the back on the right side gaped at her, naked and vulnerable.

  She trudged back to the phone and dialed the dentist her family always went to. His mother had been a cousin of Daed’s, and while he’d never joined church, he had settled near Whinburg and ran a pretty brisk practice.

  “You lost a filling?” the receptionist, who doubled as dental assistant, said sympathetically. “It happens. How soon can you come in?”

  Not today—it was nearly closing time and the boys would be home. And she wouldn’t give up quilting tomorrow, tooth or no tooth. Wednesday was David’s day off, and she didn’t feel right leaving Melvin on his own yet. Thursday and Friday were booked with orders, and the dentist wasn’t open on the weekend. “I’m not sure. Next week?”

  “We usually treat these like emergencies, Amelia. Dr. Brucker will probably put a temporary cap on it. I’m looking at your chart, and it was pretty old anyway. You’re probably going to need a crown.”

  Crowns were vanity. Having a gold crown in your mouth drew attention to you every time you laughed or yawned. The plain people didn’t even wear gold wedding rings, never mind carry around that amount of gold in their mouths.

  “I…I would probably just have it pulled.”

  “Pulled?” The assistant paused. “Oh. Right. I forgot. Well, that means oral surgery, maybe two or three weeks out. I don’t know if you’d want to hang on that long. Bacteria will start working.”

  She couldn’t face it. The pain, the swelling, the sheer aggravation of it. She could not. “Can I think about it a little while?”

  “Sure. I just wouldn’t think too long. Call us back tomorrow, okay, and make the appointment?”

  “Yes,” she said, because the woman was waiting for her to say so. “Denk— I mean, thank you.”

  Amelia set the receiver back in its cradle. Looked at the abandoned package of nuts.

  And then she put her head down on her arms and cried.

  Sometime later—it could have been five minutes or half an hour—she heard a soft sound and realized that the door to the shop had closed. Next to her elbow stood a plastic bottle of water that had clearly come from a gas station or a convenience store, because she kept no such thing on the premises. She stared at it stupidly for a moment, then scrubbed her eyes on her sleeve, held the bottle next to her stomach with her arm, and twisted off the cap with her good hand.

  Water. So simple and so comforting. And as cold and refreshing to her rough throat as a dip in the creek in August.

  “For whosoever shall give you a cup of cold water”—or the modern equivalent— “to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward.”

  She pulled her hankie out of her sleeve and blew her nose, then went into the back. Melvin squatted next to the air compressor, turning the nailer over in both hands.

  Her stomach rolled in sudden alarm. “Don’t point it at your face!” she called. “You could trigger it by accident and—”

  “It’s all right, Amelia.” He waved the nailer as casually as if it didn’t weigh nearly ten pounds. “It’s empty. At least I think it is. No nails are coming out, so I—”

  The thing made a sound like a shot, and a nail thunked into a nearby stack of lumber not three feet from her. “Melvin!” She ducked behind the door and peered through the glass.

  “Sorry! Sorry.” Cautiously, he laid it on the concrete next to the air compressor. “Are you all right? I thought it was empty.”

  “Once in a while, a nail will get stuck.” Years of practice at self-control prevented her from screaming at him as if he were Matthew teasing the cows at Mamm and Daed’s, practically under their hooves. “If it’s not feeding properly, just take off the little door and look at what’s left in the cartridge.”

  But when she stooped to show him, he didn’t look at the nailer. “Sorry if I scared you.”

  “It’s nothing we all haven’t done.” Her breathing was still shaky. “Get David to tell you about the time he shot a coffin next door.”

  Melvin chuckled. “I bet that’s a good story. Are you feeling better?”

  That was as close as he would come to asking if there was anything wrong. “You left that water for me.” When he didn’t answer, only turned off the air compressor, she knew she’d guessed correctly. “It was kind of you.” And the couple of dollars he’d spent were more than he could afford for such a silly thing. She had a thermos of coffee and one of juice in her desk drawer at this very moment if she was thirsty—but they hadn’t refreshed her like that water.

  Kindness didn’t know everything. It only acted. Maybe Carrie had known what she was doing when she’d chosen Melvin Miller over any of the boys from home.

  Neither of them said another word about the scene in the front office or what might have caused it. She showed him how to clear the jam in the nailer and how to load it so it would be less likely to seize up the next time. When David came back from his errand, they both behaved as if nothing had happened.

  But something had—and it had nothing to do with flying nails or bottled water.

  Melvin glanced up at her through his fringe of hair. “I forgot to tell you. While I was at the horse auction on Saturday, I got to talking with these Englisch from Harrisburg.”

  “What were they doing all the way out here?”

  “Looking for cheaper prices, I suspect. They work at a manufacturing plant, and they’ll be needing pallets to ship their parts. For boat engines or something. I told them about you.”

  “We can always use the business.” Despite how the morning had gone. “And they were at the horse auction?”

  He shrugged. “They weren’t bidding or anything. I think they were there with someone who was.”

  “Well, thanks for letting them know about us anyway.”

  “I’m better at talking about pallets than making them.” He regarded the nailer sadly.

  “There’s nothing wrong with your work. That stack is as good as anything David has made.” She waved a hand at the pallets waiting for pickup.

  “That’s because it was mostly he who made them. I just handed him lumber.”

  “That’s how you learn. Give yourself a chance, Melvin. You’ve only been here a week.”

  Listen to her—the woman who had to be pushed by her best friend into giving him a job. But he was right. The man was better at talking than building. What a shame there weren’t jobs just for people who talked.

  When she left the shop on Tuesday at noon, she felt marginally more confident about leaving him and David alone. But even if she hadn’t been, nothing would keep her from the quilting frolic. If Melvin had shot one more nail into a defenseless board, she would have given him the afternoon off and gone anyway.

  The frolic was at her house today, which meant she could use her sewing machine. Hooked up to a battery, it would run all afternoon. And the advantage to its being at home was that when the boys came in from school, there would be a warm kitchen, snacks, and a hug waiting for them.

  Carrie was full of sympathy about the lost filling as she unpacked her squares and triangles and organized them on the worktable. “That happened to me last year. I had to chew on one side for a couple of days until I could get in to get it pulled.” She opened her mouth wide. “See?”

  One of her molars was missing. Amelia grimaced. “I can’t bear the thought of having it done, not on top of everything else.”

  “At least you have no worries about paying for it,” Emma said. She had loaded her sewing machine into the buggy and brought it over. Luckily, it was one of the lighter models—if it had been an old one with its own cabinet, the three of them would have had a hard time moving it across a room, never mind into a buggy.

  “It just makes me mad,” Amelia confessed. “One more thing to deal with when my plate is already running over the sides.”

  “The Lord has His reasons for these things, even if we can’t see them,” Carrie said, layin
g a comforting hand on Amelia’s shoulder as she rounded the table. “And His cup of mercy is running over the sides, too.”

  “But why now? I’ve been praying for peace, but it doesn’t come.”

  “Peace about the medical things? The Mexico plan?” Emma didn’t say “about the multiple sclerosis.” Amelia didn’t like to say those words either—as if the more she said them, the more real the fact of the disease would become—entrenching itself deeper into her body.

  “That. And…” She took a deep breath and plunged in. “And Eli Fischer.” Carrie and Emma exchanged a glance—one that told her they’d already discussed this interesting subject between them, even though she’d insisted to Emma that nothing was going on. “Both of them have been dangled in front of me like lures in front of a trout, leading me on with the wonderful possibilities, only to be taken away.”

  “Eli hasn’t been taken away,” Emma pointed out. “Not if he’s giving you rides and offering to help you around the place.” She gestured out the window, where a man’s world was.

  “Maybe not, but you know why it’s impossible.” Miserably, Amelia dragged the subject back to where it had been. “Why would God show me a way of escape and then slam the window shut on my fingers? No matter how much I pray, I can’t figure out if He wants me to try again to go to Mexico, to prove how much I want to get well, or look at it like a test of obedience, meant to bring me low because I’m getting too proud and independent.”

  “I don’t think it’s that.” Carrie’s blue eyes were full of sympathy.

  “But how can I know?”

  “Have you really decided against the Mexico plan?” Emma asked. “Maybe you’ve shut that window on your own fingers.”

  “I don’t see that I have a choice. The elders have as much as said they’d put me under the Bann if I went.”