by Amy Clipston
Words she’d longed to hear two years ago. Words that hadn’t come. Instead he carved a hole in her heart by leaving her. By leaving his unborn child.
Forgiving was one thing. Forgetting was another. Trusting was too much to ask.
Wasn’t it?
Exhaustion weighed her down. Evie dropped her sippy cup on the swing, milk drops flying. She clapped and chortled. “Whee, whee!”
“Jah, whee, whee, but now is the time to sleep.”
If she didn’t go down soon, Hannah might drop off to sleep first.
“Mudder.”
“Mudder? Did you say mudder?” Hannah scooped up the baby and hugged her tight. “I heard you. You said mudder.”
“Mudder?” Evie’s eyes were wide. She flailed her arms. “Daadi. Mudder.”
Soon she would speak in complete sentences, go to school, then to singings, and one day, God willing, to her wedding.
Which brought Hannah back to the bone-aching emotional exchange with Thaddeus. Everything hurt. The words pierced her muscles and sinew. The memories were like boiling water splashed on her heart and soul. She gritted her teeth and settled Evie on her lap. She began to rock and sing Evie’s favorite song, “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”
Evie sighed and snuggled closer, her chubby hands clutching at Hannah’s apron.
Gott? Gott . . .
Stop thinking. Just be. Be still. Rest.
Easier said than done, Gott.
“Is she asleep?”
Hannah started at the sound of Laura’s voice. She breathed and glanced down at Evie. Her daughter’s eyes were droopy. Her body felt heavy with sleep. “Getting there.”
“Scooch over.” Speaking softly, Laura plopped onto the swing next to Hannah. She smoothed Evie’s rumpled dress with a wrinkled, arthritic hand dotted with age spots. “Zechariah is finally asleep. Poor thing. The jerking around is getting worse.”
“Can’t they increase his medicine?”
“It’s the medicine that causes the jerking.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It helps with some symptoms, like the stiffness, but it has its own side effects. Most medicines do.”
“Is it okay to pray for healing?”
“I do, but I also pray for Gott’s will to be done.”
“Will he die from Parkinson’s?”
“The doctors say no. They say he’ll die with it.” Sadness saturated the words. Laura had lost one husband. To contemplate losing another must be agony. Such strength, such willingness to suffer for love baffled Hannah. Laura had risked everything—twice. “In other words, he might fall and hit his head or die of pneumonia from choking and getting food in his lungs. That’s why . . .”
“Why what?”
“Ben wants us to move into his house. The dawdy haus here is close to Ruby and Martin’s house, but my dochder doesn’t feel it’s close enough.” What Laura thought of the idea was obvious in her tone. “They all say I need help. I don’t have enough strength anymore to care for him properly. They say he’ll fall and I won’t be able to stop him or pick him up. They say I’ll get hurt in the process.”
“You have me to help you.”
Laura plucked at her apron. “I know. But Ben worries about his groossdaadi. He shouldn’t, but he does. Between the two of us, we have what he needs. Loving care. But you’re at work during the day, some evenings too.”
“That’s not the problem.” They saw a girl who didn’t know how to behave herself, let alone take care of another. “They don’t trust me.”
“Nobody ever said that.”
“They didn’t have to. I see it in their looks. I hear it in their whispers.”
“That’s just your imagination.” Laura squeezed Hannah’s hand. Her fingers were cold. “You’ve been forgiven.”
“But it hasn’t been forgotten. They’re not like you. They don’t look at me and see the good, only the rotten, nasty parts.”
“This isn’t about you or me.” Laura’s tone was tart, but her smile softened its edges. “I don’t want to move Zechariah because he’s happy here. This little dawdy haus is the right size for him to get around. He’s home.”
“Then don’t move him.”
“It’s not up to me.”
Hannah was silent a moment. “I know it’s not about me, but if you move, will Evie and I go with you?”
“Nee. David and Elijah and Raymond all agree. You would go home to your parents.”
Her parents who couldn’t look her in the eye. They claimed to have forgiven her, but they didn’t want her around her little sisters. It would be a hard transition. Especially for Evie. She spent more time with Laura than she did with Hannah. “Evie loves you and Zechariah. More than me, even.”
“I don’t know about that, but maybe it’s time for her to be with them. I won’t always be here for Evie. The more I have to care for Zechariah, the less time I have to watch over her.” Sadness clung to the words. “Soon she’ll be too heavy for me to pick up. Your sisters can watch her—give her the same blessing of security and love. Besides, my grandchildren need to stop being so stiff-necked with you. Maybe this is Gott’s plan.”
Or maybe it was just meddling from people who were judgmental and hard-hearted. “Men always think they know better, don’t they?”
“Which brings us to your unexpected visitor.”
Hannah wasn’t ready to change the subject. “I don’t want to move either.”
“You’ll do what you have to. Just as you always have.”
Laura’s no-nonsense approach to life could be irksome, but this time, she was right.
“What was he thinking?” Hannah gave the swing another push. If only its motion could soothe her hurting heart. “Did he really think he could come back and we’d just pick up where we left off? How could he be so thick-headed, so dense, so, so, so—”
“Such a man?”
“Exactly.” Hannah couldn’t help herself. She giggled at Laura’s wry tone and her quick wink. She didn’t have to hide her feelings with her great-grandmother. It wouldn’t matter if she did. Laura could read her face like a first-grade primer. “I know I’m supposed to forgive. I know my sin was equal—is equal—to his. We were both there. We both made this bopli. I thought I forgave him for leaving me in a lurch, but then he showed up here.”
“He showed up and had the gall to ask you to really forgive him. To show you forgive him by letting him back into your life.”
“I know forgiveness is required, but trusting is even harder. Especially when it comes to Evie.”
“You’ve spent the last two years making amends and living a godly life.” Laura removed her silver wire-rimmed glasses and polished them with the corner of her apron. Her green eyes were as sharp at seventy-five as they’d been when Hannah sat on her knee as a child. “You worked hard at making a life for yourself and Evelyn. I’m sure Thaddeus’s return feels like a step back.”
“It does. Like I stepped back in time.”
“Or does it remind you of what you saw in him in the first place?”
Of course not. She wouldn’t be taken in again by the humorous glint in his sapphire eyes or the way he smiled as if the two of them shared a joke no one else had heard. She wouldn’t be taken in by the strength of his grip or the softness of his kisses. She wouldn’t let herself be led about again by her heartstrings. “I was weak and stupid.”
“You’re a sweet, kind, gut girl with a gut head on your shoulders. You wouldn’t give your heart to just any man. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I always liked Thaddeus. More than once after your great-groossdaadi died, I went outside to find him mowing the yard or weeding the garden for me. Once he left a bunch of sunflowers in a bucket of water on the porch. You are two of a kind.”
Laura had an unerring way of getting to the meat of a situation.
“The Thaddeus I fell in love with never wanted to be a farmer like his daed. He liked gardening with his mudder. His daed didn’t appreciate it, bu
t Thaddeus always wanted to grow plants and flowers to make yards beautiful.” Her heart hurt remembering the walks they’d taken. He could name all the flowers, shrubs, and trees. He would make sketches of the gardens he dreamed up. “He has his mudder’s green thumb, but he never thought his daed would understand. Now he says he’s going ahead with his plan.”
A plan that included her marrying him.
“That he knows what he wants and has a plan to get it speaks to him growing up. I reckon there’s something else he wants.”
“Jah. Tonight he asked me to marry him.” The words came out in a whisper, as if giving them voice made the surreal real. The proposal she’d wanted two years ago had finally arrived in a sudden flurry of unexpected words delivered by an unexpected visitor. “I gave him my heart once and he broke it.”
“The question is whether he’s the only one who can mend it.”
“In two years, I never imagined any sort of future with him in it.”
“Have you been imagining it with someone else?”
Laura’s roundabout way of asking about Phillip. She’d never commented on Hannah’s occasional forays in Phillip’s buggy, which had grown more frequent in recent months.
What had started with Phillip’s kindness in the midst of the darkest days of Hannah’s life had grown into a friendship with the possibility of more over the past two years. Every time he came closer, Hannah managed to edge backward. Phillip made it clear he wanted more and soon. “It’s not fair to another man. I didn’t save myself for marriage. I have a bopli. I’m not what most Plain men dream of when they think of fraas.”
“Phillip has been patient.”
That was an understatement. Any day now, he would throw his hands in the air and give up. “Phillip is a gut man.”
“Who is gut with Evelyn.”
He loved Evie. That was obvious in the way he played with her after church and fed her from his plate when invited to Sunday supper. He even left trinkets for her on his late-night visits. “He will make a gut mann.”
“But do you love him?”
Surely that sweet content feeling—however different from what she had felt for Thaddeus—was love. Every time it swelled, she backed away. “I’m afraid to love anyone.”
“I can see why. But look at me and Jennie Graber and Bess Graber and Mary Kay Miller. We were all widows. Our husbands left us. They died. Still, we learned to love a second time. Gott gave us second chances and we had the strength to take them. Even Jennie, whose first mann was not a gut person.”
Hannah had attended every one of her great-grandmother’s friends’ weddings. She’d wondered at their ability to trust love again after losing their first husbands. Death had taken them in various seasons of their lives. Unlike Thaddeus, who simply walked away from the possibility of a future with her and his daughter. “Can I tell you something?”
“You know you can.”
“I really want to smack Thaddeus over the head with a cast-iron skillet. Two or three, maybe even four times.”
Laura cackled. “There were many times when I wanted to do the same with Eli.”
“But he never did something like this to you.”
“Nee. But we married immediately because we didn’t trust ourselves to wait.”
Heat toasted Hannah’s cheeks. She’d never had a conversation like this with anyone, not even her sisters, not even her own mother. “We should’ve waited.”
“You should’ve.”
“But we didn’t and I’m not sorry I have Evie. Does that mean my confession doesn’t count for anything? I’m not truly repentant?”
“It means you know that every bopli is a gift from Gott, regardless of the circumstances.”
“I don’t know what to do. Evie needs a daed.”
“I suspect the bishop would say the man who made the bopli is the daed and always will be. That you made your bed, and now you have to lie in it.” Laura returned her glasses to her nose and leaned back in the swing with a sigh. “Gott’s will be done. That’s what the bishop would say.”
“What do you say?”
“I say a few wallops with a skillet might knock some sense into a man.” She sat up straight and peered into the darkness. “Is that a buggy coming up the road?”
Hannah followed her gaze. Indeed, it was.
Phillip.
CHAPTER 8
Time had never seemed shorter than it did now. Steeling himself against the feeling he was losing a race against the clock, Phillip jumped from his buggy in front of the dawdy haus and stomped up the steps to the porch. Laura and Hannah, the latter holding a sleeping Evie on her lap, sat on the porch swing.
Both women had guilty looks on their faces as if he’d caught them pilfering doughnuts from a bakery. He halted, not sure how to proceed. Laura should be inside, asleep or getting ready for bed. Along with Evie. It was far past their bedtimes. Instead, Laura smiled and waved as if they’d just run into each other after Sunday service. He cleared his throat.
“I was just headed inside.” Laura stood. “Now that the sun has gone down, it’s cooling off. Spring nights are still a bit chilly for this old body. Let me put Evie down for you.”
“I’ll do it.” Hannah started to rise. “You’ve had a long day.”
“It’s no problem.” Laura scooped up the sleeping baby with the ease of many years of practice. “You deserve a few minutes of free time.”
“No need to go inside on my account.” Please go inside. “I just stopped to say howdy. Is Zechariah still up? The purple martin count is starting to rise.”
“He was already snoring when I came outside earlier.” Laura pulled the screen door open and looked back. “Don’t stay up too late, Hannah. You’re tired and dawn comes early.”
“Gut natch.” Phillip lingered by the steps. When she closed the door, he edged closer to the swing. “If you’re too tired I can go.”
“I’m not that kind of tired.” Her expression more wary than usual, Hannah chewed on her lower lip. Finally, she patted the empty space next to her. “You might as well sit down.”
“That doesn’t really sound like an invitation.” He studied her face. Her fair skin was almost translucent in the dusk. Her nose was red as if she’d been crying. He’d never seen her cry. Not even the day of her confession. “Let me take you for a ride. It’ll soothe what ails you.”
“I don’t think so. Not tonight. It’s been a very long day.”
He took her hand and tugged. “Come. I promise not to talk about what happened this morning.”
As she freed her hand her frown disappeared, replaced by that smile that always crashed through the defenses he tried to maintain. The defenses needed to keep his poor heart from shattering when she said no. Which she surely would. She’d made that clear in the way she leaned away from his intended caresses. The way she sat two feet from him on the buggy seat when they went for a ride, her hands clasped in her lap, knuckles white. She never seemed to relax.
He kept postponing the inevitable by not asking the question, but sooner or later—sooner now that Thaddeus had decided to return—he would have to ask.
They walked to the buggy where he helped her climb in. A few minutes later they were on the road that cut through the Kauffman property to his parents’ farm.
Ease into it. Gently. Very gently.
“So what did you do today?” What a stupid question. He held the reins loosely, letting Caramel meander along the gravel road. Not the question he intended—needed—to ask. “Anything interesting happen?”
She sighed. “You promised not to talk about this morning.”
So he had. But they needed to clear the air before he could see his way through this morass of emotions. “I was giving you the opportunity to say your piece.”
“What piece?”
“That piece where you tell me you can’t keep taking rides with me because Evie’s daed is here and he’s her daed and I’m not.”
Please don’t say that. Please.
“Is that what you think I should say?”
If he were in her shoes, he would want what was best for Evie. Was a man who deserted the girl he was courting while she was in the family way good enough to be Evie’s father?
The fact remained. He was her father. What about walking in Thaddeus’s shoes? Did God expect Phillip to try to understand him? He tugged on the reins and pulled Caramel to the shoulder of the road, next to his father’s alfalfa field, and stopped.
“I may not be Evie’s daed, but I’ve been here for her since the day she was born. Before, if you count the crib I made.”
“I know that.”
“I love her.” While this was an important piece of his argument, it wasn’t the most important one. He took a long breath then let it out. His heart smacked against his ribcage. Blood pulsed in his ears. The world receded. Only her beautiful face remained.
He reached for her hand. “I love you.”
The buzzing in Hannah’s ears made it hard to hear. She shook her head. “What did you say?”
“I said, I love you.” Phillip’s hand tightened on hers. He leaned closer. “I’m hoping you’ll say it back.”
Every Plain woman longed to hear those words. Every woman longed to hear them. How many heard them twice in one night—from two different men? Love led to marriage. Surely Phillip meant to ask her to marry him.
Bittersweet pain welled and spread from her head to her toes. For a woman with no choices, she suddenly had too many. Married, she would no longer be the subject of the local gossips. Her past would fade into a yellowed, forgotten page from a book no one read anymore.
Phillip was offering her a way forward, a new, fresh start.
Is that a good reason to marry him?
The voice sounded like Zechariah’s. Startled, Hannah glanced around.
Did God sound like an elderly man with a hoarse, slurred voice?
Do you love him?
“I care for you.”
“You care for me?” Phillip’s tone was a mix of hurt and bewilderment. “So you care for me, but you love Thaddeus?”