A Family for Gracie

by Amy Lillard

  But was it Henry’s accident that caused the change, or her moving into the upstairs bedroom?

  Then again, why would either of those events bring about such a shift in attitude? It didn’t make sense. But he had learned long ago that women had their own definition of logic.

  Yet that change still nagged at him. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Was trying still as he sat at the table and watched her move around the kitchen.

  The baby was starting to sit up a bit. But mostly Gracie propped some fancy pillow around her that allowed her to sit in the highchair and bang against the tray for what seemed like hours on end. Gracie seemed unaware of the noise as she moved around the kitchen, getting an early start on supper. It was hotter cooking in the early afternoon, but they had discovered that it was easier to eat when the temperature in the house had time to cool off before suppertime.

  “Are you enjoying your new room?” he asked.

  She half turned to face him as if she only needed a glance and turned back to slicing chicken. “Jah.”

  But the word held no hidden meaning, nothing to tell him why she had moved and why she was acting the way she had been these days.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t like it; he simply didn’t understand. He hadn’t understood Beth. Why did he suppose he would know more about Gracie?

  “Henry gets his cast off tomorrow, jah?” he asked.

  She nodded but didn’t turn from her chore.

  “I’ll take him.”

  This time she did spin around, gaping at him as if he had just declared he was becoming Englisch and running for president. “You’ll take him?”

  “Jah. Of course.” Henry was his son, after all. “I’ll take Henry, and you can stay with the baby and the twins.” Otherwise he would be home with them and he wasn’t sure he could handle another fit like the one the baby had had the other day.

  “Eunice already said she would watch them.” She dunked her hands in the dishpan full of soapy water, then rinsed them in the other. When she turned to fully face him, she was wiping her hands on her apron. The same way he had seen his mamm do, and Beth, and every one of his sisters. “I can take him.”

  Not after what she had said to him after the last appointment. He had been lax as a father. Not because he didn’t love his children. He loved them so much. He had made a mistake, foisting all their care onto Gracie’s shoulders, and she had called him on it. She was right.

  He’d been thinking about this a lot, and she was absolutely right. They never went anywhere but church together. He didn’t know if people were really talking, but women were more prone to that than men, so he would have to take her word for it. He hadn’t wanted that responsibility of caring for his children, being a husband, doing all the normal things. He had needed a break from what his reality had become.

  He wasn’t proud of it. But there it was all the same. But since she had pointed out how he had been acting, he could see the error of his ways. Now it was time to do something about it.

  “I’ll take him,” he said, shifting his tone to “no argument.”

  She must have heard it for she gave him a quick nod. And before she could turn away from him and back toward the counter again, he gave her the other news.

  “Danny Yoder is having a couples’ get-together tomorrow night. I think we should go.”

  She frowned at him, a dark look that was as ominous as it was unreadable. He knew she wasn’t happy, but that was all he could see. Then as quickly as it came, the look disappeared. “I don’t think so. But danki for thinking of me.”

  Was she serious?

  First, who else would he think about other than his wife, and secondly, why was she turning down his invitation when just a couple of weeks ago she had issued one of her own just the same? That didn’t make any sense at all.

  “I thought it would be fun. Everyone’s bringing drinks and snack foods. I thought we might take that dip you made for the wedding.” He wasn’t sure what all was in it, but it did have water chestnuts. He had discovered that afternoon that he loved them.

  He hadn’t even finished speaking when she started shaking her head. “No.” This time she didn’t even say thanks. She merely turned back to the counter and stared out the window over the worktable.

  One could see the whole of the backyard from that window. The tire swing he had hung for the boys, the line of trees that marked the creek where Beth had drowned. The garden where she and the younger children were growing vegetables. It was a happy backyard despite some of the tragedies it had seen. To the outsider, it might even look perfect. Like the family inside the house had the best life, the best love, the best of all those things that God provides. But it was all a lie.

  And that bothered him. When had it changed? When had he gone from not caring what everyone thought to not liking the lie he lived with this remarkable woman? Better still, what was he going to do about it?

  He rose to his feet and went over to stand next to her, viewing the yard he had just recreated in his thoughts. He couldn’t give her all that she wanted. Something in him wanted to, but he knew it could never be. There was simply too much at stake. No matter how much he wanted to give her everything that she desired and more, a baby was not something he could go back on. But he could give her the other things that she wanted.

  “I really want to go to Danny’s,” he said softly.

  She didn’t turn, just continued to stare out the window as if the answer she needed lay somewhere out there. “You don’t have to,” she finally said. Her voice was barely above a whisper. From behind them the baby pounded on her tray and gurgled something no one save her could understand, but Matthew was only concerned with the female in front of him.

  “What if I want to?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “How can that be?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe you got to me the other day.”

  She continued to look out the window as if she were afraid to look at him directly. “See, that’s the thing. I don’t want to get to you. I want you to want to.”

  Strangely enough he understood all that. “But you do get to me.” He reached up a hand and trailed his fingers down the edge of her prayer kapp. And he moved a little closer to her.

  “I—I get to you.”

  “Uh-hmm.” Just like now. What had gotten into him? One minute he had been sitting at the table talking about things like doctors’ appointments and couples’ game nights. How had it gotten to him standing so close to her, breathing in her scent and wanting a bit more? Like a kiss.

  The word zinged through his mind like a crazed arrow. That was what he wanted and, surprisingly enough, he had wanted that for a long time. Ever since they had found Pepper on the road, the horse had played games with her as they walked, and they had ridden back home with a funny old man named Eugene Dover. And that had been so long ago. A month. An eternity.

  Just a taste, nothing more. Something to satisfy his curiosity. Were her lips as sweet as her disposition? He had to know.

  He took her by the shoulders and turned her around. Then before she could even protest, he pressed his lips to hers.

  At first the kiss was chaste, sweet and innocent. Not much different than a kiss between friends. If kissing friends sent fire running through one’s veins. But after that first taste he wanted more.

  He pulled her a little closer still. Just one more kiss, a deeper kiss to satisfy the new questions springing into his mind. Would she kiss him back? Would she push him away?

  She braced her hands on his chest, but she didn’t apply any pressure. She simply laid them there as if she needed to feel the warmth of him.

  He took that as a good sign and wrapped his arms around her, dragging her close enough that their kiss flared a little more.

  What was happening? He knew. It was unmistakable. He had been down this road once before, but not like this. Never like this.

  How easy it would be to just keep kissing her and kissing her until—


  “Ew, Dat is kissing Mamm.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Henry!

  Gracie pulled herself away from Matthew and hoped she didn’t look as dazed as she felt. She knew she was colored pink with embarrassment. She didn’t remember ever being this mortified. Not even when her cousins were teasing her, pretending to pick blackberries while she and Jamie Stoltzfus sat on the back porch, almost courting.

  “Ew,” the twins echoed.

  Stephen pushed his glasses a little further up on the bridge of his nose and studied them. “Mamms and dats are supposed to kiss,” he said importantly. “Everybody knows that.”

  Baby Grace pounded on her tray as if in league with her eldest brother. One hand was fisted around a plastic rattle shaped like an Englisch telephone. Who made such things? And why was she even worried about it?

  Because it’s easier by far to think of those things rather than Matthew’s kiss.

  And the boys walking in on them. At least they were back to calling her Mamm, though she wasn’t in the proper mood to enjoy it.

  “Ew,” Henry said again, his nose wrinkled as if he had smelled something bad. “And double ew, Baby Grace has a dirty diaper.”

  As if reminded of the state of her underpants, the baby started to fuss. Gracie considered it a lifeline from heaven to move away from Matthew and scoop up the baby. Gracie blew a raspberry in that little crook of her neck that she loved so much and got a good whiff of the offending diaper.

  “Whew,” she said, breathing out her nose. “Let’s get you changed.”

  She breezed them up the stairs as if nothing was amiss, yet so aware of the five sets of male eyes that followed their progress. She breathed a little sigh of relief that she almost regretted and ducked into their room where she had everything stored.

  She needed to make a little changing station downstairs next to the couch, but she had been so bent on moving up into the room, lock, stock, and barrel, she hadn’t left anything that belonged to either of them downstairs. Having other people’s things in their room, like the cedar chest and the rocking chair, was a different matter altogether. She—they—had to be in there wholly even if they shared the space with the possessions of others.

  She heard him on the stairs before he peeked into her room. The third stair from the top creaked when anyone stepped on it. She wasn’t sure anyone else had noticed but her.

  “Can we talk?” he asked, hesitantly. His head was in the room, but his feet were on the other side of the threshold, as if he were afraid to enter for some reason. Maybe because this was her space, a room that she had carved out for herself without any say-so from him.

  She folded the diaper under Baby Grace’s bottom and reached for the wet wipes. “That’s not necessary.”

  “I think it is.”

  Instead of looking at him, she made herself busy changing the diaper. It was something she probably could have done in her sleep, but she focused on it like it was her first time without supervision. “Really, Matthew.” She gave a forced laugh. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  It was just a kiss. Say that. It was just a kiss.

  She opened her mouth to say the words, but they stuck in her throat. It wasn’t just a kiss. It was the best kiss of her entire life. True, she hadn’t had many to compare it to, but that kiss was like one of the kisses she had read about in those paperback romances she had devoured during her rumspringa. Her parents wouldn’t have approved. It was the one thing she hid from them. The books weren’t the sweet kind, where people went to church and shared a chaste kiss or two. Of course they weren’t too risqué. But risqué enough for a young Amish girl. She slipped the books under her mattress and never told a soul. They might not have been something her family would have approved of, but she did learn a lot about kissing. And Matthew’s toe-curling kiss was just like one of those in the Englisch books.

  “You don’t have to explain,” she said instead.

  “There’s nothing to explain. I kissed you,” he said simply.

  “Why? I mean, you don’t have to explain why.”

  “Because I wanted to.”

  The heat in his gaze was so intense she had to look away. That was just Matthew. Everything was intense, larger than life, just like he himself was.

  She wrapped the diaper in a plastic shopping bag. She needed something to do. She’d pulled her gaze from his, but she hadn’t wanted him to think she was weak. Weak in the knees maybe, but she wasn’t weak. She was smart. And she was terribly close to losing her heart to Matthew Byler. It was one thing to be trapped in a loveless marriage and quite another to be trapped in a marriage where only one held love for their partner.

  “Can I come in?”

  She wanted to tell him no, that he couldn’t. Because if he came in then he would really want to talk, and she wasn’t ready for all that. She needed a little time to get her mushy brain back together, to sort through all the details of his kiss and find the pieces that told her he wasn’t serious about her. She might be his wife, but that was it. He’d all but told her that they wouldn’t have any sort of intimate relationship.

  So why is he going around kissing you?

  She didn’t have an answer for that. And she sort of wanted one. No. She really wanted one. And the only person who could give it to her was hovering just outside her door.

  With an exasperated sigh, she motioned him into the room.

  He came in hesitantly, looking around as if he hadn’t seen every inch from where he was standing two seconds ago.

  “I can take that out for you, if you want.” He gestured toward the cedar chest sitting at the end of the bed.

  She shook her head. “It’s fine right there. No sense in moving it.” In fact she kind of liked the chest. Maybe later she would try to get one of her own. Perhaps see if Abner could make her one. She had never seen anyone who could take a piece of wood and turn it into a masterpiece like Abner Gingerich. She supposed other master woodworkers were out there, but she had never met any of them.

  “If you change your mind . . .” He trailed off, leaving the rest understood but unsaid.

  He ventured a little farther into the room, stopping only when he got to the rocking chair. He eased down into it, and she wondered if it was a gesture to make her more comfortable. He couldn’t very well grab her up and kiss her silly if he was sitting down while she stood.

  But to be on the safe side, she thrust the baby at him. “Here,” she said without ceremony. “Hold Baby Grace.”

  Given no other choice, he took the infant from her. “Baby Grace?”

  She gave a small shrug. “That’s what we’ve taken to calling her—me and the boys. It can get confusing having two Graces in the house, even if one is a Gracie.”

  “That’s cute,” he said.

  “I figured it was easier that way.” She wouldn’t tell him that she had started dropping the Grace and just calling her Baby. With those turquoise eyes and blond hair, she should have called her Angel, but Baby was just fine for now.

  “Of course.” He gave a nod. Of approval? Maybe, but if he didn’t agree, it wouldn’t change anything about what she called the precious little bundle. She was Baby Grace, or Baby for short.

  Then the strangest thought occurred to her. “I’ve never heard you say her name.”

  “I have.” But his tone was slightly defensive.

  “I’ve never heard you.” She took the challenge right back to him.

  “Of course, I have. She’s my daughter.” He kissed the top of her head as if to prove his words to be true.

  “Then say it now,” Gracie dared him.

  He shook his head. “I will not. This is ridiculous.”

  “Because you don’t want to say it. Or because you can’t say it?”

  “I’m not even going to answer that,” he said. “It’s beyond ridiculous. It’s . . . batty.”

  “If it’s no big deal, then why won’t you say it?”

  He stuttered for a moment, as if tr
ying to get a handle on it all. Then he exhaled like air leaking from a holey balloon. “She hates me,” he finally said.

  “She doesn’t hate you.” The very thought was the saddest thing Gracie had ever heard. How could he believe that a child as young as Baby would have any ill feelings for anyone?

  “She cries every time I hold her.”

  “You’re holding her now.”

  “She hasn’t figured out yet that it’s me back here. Once she does, she’ll start crying again.”

  Gracie shook her head. That just wasn’t possible.

  “And it’s only me.”

  Now that she refused to believe. “She cries when other people hold her.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Even when Aaron was over here. She stopped crying when he held her.”

  Gracie thought about it a moment. She could see in his eyes that he was telling the truth, at least his version of it. “You did okay with her when I took Henry in for his leg.”

  “She cried herself to sleep. I did everything I knew to do. I held her and sang to her. I even apologized to her, but still.” He stopped with a sad shake of his head.

  “You apologized to her? For what?”

  “Nothing.” He was holding something back and she wasn’t sure if she should press him or let it drop. He took the choice from her by continuing. “She hates me.”

  “Stop saying that. Why would she hate you?”

  “Because she knows the truth about me.”

  “The truth?”

  “Never mind.” He turned away.

  “No.” Gracie shook her head. “That’s not how this works. You can’t say something like that and just expect me not to ask a couple of questions.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Two questions.”

  “Why would she hate you?”

  “Next question.”

  “You didn’t answer that one,” she pointed out.

  “I said you could ask. I didn’t say I was going to answer.”

  He was trying to make her laugh, get her off task. Charm her in that way he was so good at.