Wounded Heart (9781455505654) Page 22

  Daed? Emma?

  Some trouble from the road? Maybe an Englisch driver had gone into the ditch and had walked down here looking for help. And here she was, a woman alone except for two little boys and a cat, with not so much as a rolling pin to hand for protection.

  The person thumped on the door with a fist and made a sound, but whether it was a cry for help or not, she couldn’t tell.

  Lord, protect me.

  If anyone was in trouble on a cold, snowy night like tonight, she had to help.

  She grasped the door handle and pulled it open, and Aaron King fell onto the mat in a whirl of snow.

  Luckily, there was still some coffee left in the pot from this afternoon. Amelia heated it, poured in some cream, and handed it to the lanky boy in the chair in front of the stove, along with a big slice of pumpkin cake. He reached out of the blanket she’d bundled him in and took cake and mug cautiously, his feet as close to the stove as he could get them. The legs of his worldly jeans began to steam as he wolfed down the cake.

  “Don’t sit so close—when the fabric gets too hot, it will burn your legs.”

  “That would feel gut,” he mumbled, his teeth clinking against the china mug. “I never was so cold in my life.”

  He’d had on a fancy denim jacket lined with fleece that now hung over the back of a chair, facing the stove. “That’s because you’re not wearing a proper coat. What were you thinking?” And why are you here?

  “Honest?” He glanced up at her. “When I walk, I get too warm, so I didn’t bother with the coat.”

  “I’m thinking you won’t do that again.” He shook his head. “You could have gotten disoriented and frozen without a soul knowing about it until your father missed you in the morning.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” he muttered, but he hitched his chair a little closer to the warmth.

  “What are you doing out this way?” She already knew, of course. But she wanted to see if he would tell her on his own.

  His glance was sharp and wary, his answer not so. “It’s a whiteout out there. I got all verhuddelt and turned in at the wrong lane. Sorry to bust in on you like this.”

  “I’m glad you did bust in. From the shape of you, you might not have made it over to the Stolzfus Daadi Haus.”

  Silence.

  “I know why you go there, Aaron. Emma told me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said into his mug. She could see he was trying to recover from the shock. “Lots of men date girls older than they are.”

  Oh, so brave, to risk his reputation like this in order to protect his secret. She got him another piece of cake. “Nothing wrong with it at all,” she agreed quietly. “If that’s what you were really doing. The wrong is in deceiving your parents.”

  “I’m not deceiving them. Nobody tells their folks who they’re seeing.”

  She waited for him to listen to himself. After a moment she said, “I’m sure they’ve heard. But that’s not the real reason, is it?”

  More silence. He was probably stewing under that blanket, wondering what she was getting at and not daring to tell her. But she wasn’t a mother for nothing, with a little experience at encouraging boys to tell the truth.

  “I know about the writing, Aaron.”

  He sucked in a breath through his nose, and some cake crumbs went down the wrong pipe. “Who told you?” he said when he could speak.

  “Emma herself. You and she and Alvin Esch, apparently, all in a club together.”

  “It’s not like that. It’s a safe place. My dad would never—”

  “That’s just the point. He would never allow it. You mustn’t deceive him—it’s not fitting, and it would grieve him.”

  “Amelia, he wouldn’t grieve for one second. All he cares about is having another hand around the place. It never even occurs to him one of us might have a brain and want to use it.”

  “Maybe you should talk with him about it. He might surprise you.” Martin King let Aaron drive around the countryside in that outrageous buggy, after all. How much worse could a silly letter to the editor be?

  Aaron only shook his head. “Nothing I do makes him happy, so what difference does it make?”

  “It’s our place to obey our parents while we’re under their roof,” she said gently. “When you have your own place, then you can write as many letters to the editor as you want.”

  “Did you read it?” The slouch disappeared. The only time the boy came alive was when he talked about writing. The rest of the time, he behaved as if he didn’t have a spine and depended on the chair to hold him up. “What did you think?”

  “I thought it was nonsense.” He flinched, as if she’d hit him. “Oh, not that you published a letter—that was very brave. But, Aaron, the basketball courts? If you’re going to do something that will anger your father, at least you could write to urge a stop sign down at the corner where Victor was killed, or some other useful thing. Not about opening the basketball courts.”

  “I thought it would be fun for us to be able to play volleyball inside in the winter.”

  “You are the only one who thinks so, then. Who’s going to go into town to play when there are warm barns all over the settlement?”

  “I suppose you’ve never done something that everyone else thinks is nonsense.” He slumped again, sulking.

  She reached over and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry I called your work nonsense. It was the subject I meant, not the act of it. And you’re wrong. People have been telling me I’m doing something nonsensical for days.”

  “What—the Mexico trip? For your MS?”

  If even oblivious Aaron had heard about it, it must be the subject of some pretty spirited discussion at Martin King’s table. “Yes.”

  “Don’t let what everybody else thinks stop you.”

  “But I’m not seventeen. I’m a widow with two youngsters who has to put them first. And I’m a member of the church, unlike some people I could mention. I have to obey Bishop Daniel if I want to be right.”

  “Emma thinks you should go.”

  She saw that his mug was empty, so she took it from him and put it in the sink. “Emma shouldn’t talk about me with you.”

  “Oh, she wasn’t. But from some things she said, I got the message.”

  “Well, what either of you thinks isn’t important. It’s what God thinks that matters.” Even as she said the words, she felt a sinking in her soul. Lord, I hope You will give me the strength to go through with it. Because right now I don’t have any.

  “How do you know that what Bishop Daniel says is what God thinks? He could be speaking through Emma instead.”

  “I know because of a message to my heart, Aaron.” She felt a bit strange saying such a thing to him. In the whole time she’d known him, they’d never discussed anything deeper than the length of a pallet nail.

  “And I write because of a message to my heart. Because I have to. How come nobody says that’s God’s will for me?”

  “Because nobody knows what you’re doing, you rascal,” she said crisply. “You can’t take what you want to do and call it God’s will. You have to pray about it.”

  He got up and shook out his wet pant legs. “Oh, I have. A lot. And the answer is always the same.” He handed her the blanket. “Can I borrow a coat? It’s too late to go to Emma’s, so I’ll just head home.”

  She shook her head. “You’re wet, and that wind would whistle through you like you were a chain-link fence. I’ll get some more blankets, and you can bunk on the couch.”

  “Lucky thing there’s no church in the morning.”

  “You’d have to go like that.” Which would be impossible. Jeans and a worldly shirt in the holy place where God was? His mother would never recover. “Or borrow some of Enoch’s clothes.”

  But, fortunately, they didn’t have to deal with that. She got some blankets out of the linen cupboard, and when she returned to the front room, she found him gazing at her curiously. “What is it?”

&nbs
p; “I always thought you didn’t like me.”

  She straightened in surprise. “Whatever gave you that idea? I hope I didn’t treat you badly.” She tried to remember, but nothing came to mind other than perpetual exasperation at his slouching. “If I did, I’m sorry for it.”

  “No, nothing like that. It was more how you looked at me. Like you were mad at me for something, and I could never figure out what.”

  “Oh, Aaron.” She put the blankets down next to him and a pillow on top of the pile. “I ask your forgiveness. It wasn’t you. Maybe I’m just…” She took a breath. “Just mad at my own situation. Mad at the way things are.”

  There. She’d admitted it—that this lump of anger lay inside her like a rock under a smooth-running stream. She was angry and afraid and hated the fact that she couldn’t do what she felt was right for her boys. That she wasn’t even allowed to try. That the good of the church was more important than the good of Amelia Beiler.

  Ach, there it was. She was as much a rebel as Emma and Aaron, wasn’t she? Only she hid her selfishness and unwillingness better—from the church and from herself.

  “You could always write a letter.” His voice was filled with kindness and sympathy, and in the lines of his face in the lamplight she got a glimpse of the man he might be someday.

  She smiled, because he was trying to cheer her up. “Maybe I will,” she said.

  But the only place she’d want to send such a letter would be to Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and she’d made that impossible all by herself.

  Next Sunday would be the Christmas service, and early in the week Amelia’s family began to roll in. Her aunt and uncle and several cousins in the New Hope connection were expected tomorrow and the next day. Christopher and Esther lived just over the hill, where Esther’s kitchen was no doubt as busy as Ruth’s while they prepared food days in advance. Their brother Saul and his wife, Connie, would come from Intercourse on Christmas Eve, as they always did, and at some point during the week Mark and his family would arrive in Lancaster on the big Amtrak train from Greensburg, the nearest station to their home outside Smicksburg.

  She couldn’t wait to see Mark and Adah and the children, including Emily and her new husband, but if she were to share her thoughts about Mark’s taking over her mortgage, she would have to make up her mind once and for all before everyone got there.

  Ruth kept a sharp eye on her at dinner. She didn’t say anything, but when Amelia passed a dish of pickles to her cousin on her left with both hands—in case one of them failed and they had a repeat of the infamous beet-pickle-flinging incident—Ruth’s lips folded together in a way that meant she was bottling her words, saving them up for later.

  Sure enough, as Amelia and her sister Lavinia and the latter’s thirteen-year-old twins helped clean off the huge table after dinner and got the desserts and coffee ready, Ruth pounced.

  “How are your hands? Do you see any improvement?”

  “How can I, Mamm? I’m not on any medication yet.”

  “Well, when are you going to start? And please don’t tell me ‘After I come back from Mexico.’ You’re not still planning to do that, are you?”

  And here it was, days before she was ready to say the words. “I…I’m not sure.”

  “How can you not be sure? I heard that Daniel Lapp was forced to speak to you on Friday night.”

  “I don’t know if he was forced to—”

  “You’ve shamed us, Amelia. Your unwillingness to listen to the ones in authority forced him. Honestly, what does it say about you that you disobeyed your parents to the point that the bishop finally had to step in?”

  Amelia’s good dinner rolled uneasily in her stomach. She hated fighting with Mamm, and yet with a woman so outspoken it happened nearly every time they were together. “I’m trying the spirits. Trying to decide what’s best for the boys and for myself.”

  “Folks older and wiser than you have already done so and given you their thoughts. You would do well to listen.”

  She would do well to go out to the woodshed and scream. But she merely said, “Ja, Mamm. And when do we expect Mark and Adah?”

  She didn’t have much of a hope that this would distract her mother, but for once Ruth allowed the conversation to veer from the course she’d charted for it. “They’ll be here Thursday. How are you set for beds? I’m thinking their boys should stay with you.”

  “We’d love that. I’ll find a mattress for young Ryan, since he’s twelve and probably won’t want to share a bed with the smaller ones. Or he and Matthew can bunk together in the second bedroom, since they’re closer in age and Matthew worships him.”

  Lavinia chimed in, and they spent the rest of the evening visiting and making arrangements for everyone. Amelia sometimes wondered if her father thought these things just happened by magic. The men seemed so unaware of what went on behind the scenes, the careful logistics and planning that had to be in place before people came, so that everyone could focus on the joy of being together.

  Christmas, after all, was the season for children, first and foremost for the Child whose birth they celebrated. But it was the women who made it happen with a thousand daily details, creating the atmosphere of happiness and homeliness that made such gatherings so special. Even Mary, so long ago, had probably done her best to make her little family comfortable in that faraway stable under the guiding star.

  How many more Christmases did Amelia have before she could no longer manage mixing bowls and serving spoons? And now her left leg seemed to be acting up. Since Friday night the tingling in it had not gone away, and a chill of fear had lodged itself in her stomach. It hadn’t even been two months since the first of the symptoms had appeared. Was the disease progressing fast? Was this normal? How was she to know?

  She had no one to ask unless she called Dr. Hunter and told him she was ready to begin his standard course of medicine.

  Lord, You’ve shown me a course to take. Could You please give me the strength to take it?

  Chapter 19

  Before the sun came up on Monday morning, while it was still just a gray promise in the east over the frozen fields, Amelia fed the little cat—who to Elam’s delight had somehow moved into the house when nobody was looking—closed her eyes to the laundry waiting to be done, and loaded the boys into the buggy.

  “They’ll be fine here for the day,” her sister Lavinia assured her when she got to the home farm. “You’ll be feeling poorly after getting that tooth out, so maybe we’ll just keep them for the night as well. After chores are done, there’s fresh snow on our hill for sledding, and the twins have a new board game that they’re dying to play.”

  Amelia hugged her in gratitude. Truth be told, she was feeling pretty sorry for herself right now, and she wasn’t even in the dentist’s chair yet. The trip into Whinburg went far too quickly, despite the fact that the roads were snowy because the plows hadn’t made it out this far. Fortunately, the heavy trucks of the Englisch had packed it down as they came and went, and Daisy had careful feet.

  She tied the horse to the hitching rail in front of the little complex housing Dr. Brucker’s offices and threw a heavy blanket over her back to cut the wind. “You’ll be all right here, girl. I shouldn’t be more than an hour, and then you’ll have to put up with me whining and crying all the way home.”

  Daisy snorted, as if to say she’d believe it when she saw it, and Amelia found herself smiling despite the butterflies in her stomach. She climbed the steps, picking her way carefully though someone had shoveled them off not very long ago. Maybe she was the first patient of the day, though at eight forty-five it already felt as if the day were half over.

  She had no sooner opened the door with the brass plate on it and taken a step inside when her left leg went numb to the hip. It crumpled under her, and she fell through the doorway, still hanging on to the door handle for dear life. If she hadn’t been, she’d have measured her length on the damp carpet before anyone could make a move to catch her.

  “Ma
’am, are you all right?” A young man, wearing what looked like a silver fastening bolt through his eyebrow and a couple of rings in his lip, grabbed her by the elbow. “Let me help you up.”

  He might be strange enough to willingly disfigure himself, but she couldn’t fault his kindness or the strength in his arms as he set her on her feet the way Enoch used to stand up the bags of feed in the barn.

  “Th-thank you.” She brushed the snow off her skirts and tentatively put her weight on her right leg. Was this to be the way of it? The leg tingling in warning, then giving out completely whenever it felt like it? Just as her hands did. Was the wheelchair much closer than she’d feared even in the blackest hours of the night?

  “You sure you’re okay?” The young man peered into her face, then all at once seemed to realize he still had hold of her arm. “Excuse me.”

  “You’re very kind, and I’m very clumsy. Thank you.”

  “Hey, no problem. It’s kinda slippery out there, isn’t it?”

  Slippery was the least of her difficulties. But someone had raised him to care about other people, and the pierced lips had a nice smile. His teeth, certainly, were perfect. She smiled back, touched her Kapp to make sure it hadn’t come unmoored in all the excitement, and turned to the receptionist, who was half out of her seat behind the counter, looking alarmed.

  “I told them to shovel and sweep out there. Is that why you fell? Do you think we need to salt it, too?”

  “No, no. It was my own clumsiness. I have a bad leg.”

  The receptionist—Darcy, that was her name—sank back in relief. “I’m sorry about that. Both the steps and your leg. Old football injury, huh?”

  Amelia stared at her, lost. What on earth did she mean? The girl colored. “Never mind. Cultural reference. Dr. Brucker is snowed in this morning, so Dr. Sweeney is going to get you prepped for surgery, and by the time he’s done, Dr. B should be here. Is that okay with you?”

  “Dr. Sweeney is new?”

  “He’s been here awhile, but you haven’t been coming in all that regularly for your checkups.”