Moses smiled. “I’m glad to meet you.”
Summer giggled. “I love your accent. Barbie has lost most of hers.”
“Denki, I like yours too,” Moses said in Deitsch.
Summer giggled harder. “What did he say, Barbie? Was it something mean?”
Barbara winked at Moses and snaked her arms around his elbow. “Do you mind if I take my break early? I want to show Moses around.”
“Take him on the roller coaster,” Brook said.
They ambled toward the exit and once again, Moses extracted himself from Barbara’s grasp. “Is there somewhere quiet we can go to talk?”
Barbara stopped walking and studied Moses’s face. Her smile faded, and she seemed to wilt before his eyes. “Oh. I see.” She dragged her feet all the way out of the store. The pounding of one song faded behind them, but more music blared from unseen loudspeakers somewhere above Moses’s head. The racket from the amusement park bounced down the walkway. The voices and screams and electronic beeps combined so that noise seemed thicker than the air. Moses feared that if they wanted to talk in peace, they’d have to hike back to Bonduel.
Barbara seemed to have lost all enthusiasm for their conversation. She gazed down the hall in one direction and then turned to look the other way. “The mall’s pretty noisy. I guess we could go sit in my car, but that would be super hot.” Barbara slipped her hands into her back pockets again and looked at Moses, as if challenging him to come up with a solution.
He pressed his lips into a hard line. He’d rather not break up with his ex-fiancée sitting in a food court.
Barbara nibbled on her bottom lip. “I have an idea.”
She headed back into the store without checking to see if Moses followed her. He broke a scooter speed record trying to keep up. Sheepishly, he waved at Brook and Summer as he passed. Barbara waited for him at the entrance to the fitting rooms at the back of the store. “In here. We’ve got a pretty big handicap stall.”
An invisible curtain of blessed silence met Moses’s ears as soon as he crossed the threshold. He didn’t know if it was proper being in a women’s fitting room, but the stillness beckoned to him. He would never take quietness for granted again.
Barbara opened the wide door to the compartment at the end of the hall and Moses obediently wheeled himself in. For a fitting room, there was a lot of space. He could probably stable his horse quite comfortably in here. A long bench stood against one wall and an oversized mirror covered the wall opposite. Rachel would like this room. She could sit on the bench and gaze at herself.
Thinking of Rachel steered Moses’s mind to Lia, and a thrill of emotion bubbled up inside him. As soon as he settled things with Barbara, he would rush home to her. Lord willing, she would return his affection and make him happier than he ever thought possible.
With some effort, Moses slid his casted leg from the scooter and sat down.
Frowning, Barbara closed the stall door and sat next to him. “I know why you’re here,” she said, lightly laying a hand on Moses’s arm. Her fingernails were bright orange-red—exactly the color of maple leaves in autumn. “But I’m not ready to come home, Moses. Give me a few more months.”
She thought he wanted to talk her into coming home?
“I’m done with school in December,” she said, as if this solved all their problems.
Moses cleared his throat and swallowed hard as everything he had planned to say completely left his head. He had loved Barbara once. How could he break the news to her? “Barbara,” he cleared his throat again, “I know you expect me to hang on forever, but I am not going to wait for you anymore.”
Barbara cocked her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “Is this an ultimatum?”
That sounded tricky. “What’s an ultimatum?”
“You’re saying either I come back to Bonduel now, or you’re going to dump me.”
Was that what she thought he said?
No wonder it had taken Moses two months to convince Rachel that he didn’t want to marry her. Apparently, he couldn’t explain himself in a way that girls could understand. Even Lia had misinterpreted his feelings.
Moses sighed in frustration. He was making a complete mess of things. Barbara would probably end up in tears. Either that or she would change her mind altogether and start planning their Amish wedding. The way things were going, he’d miss his bus back to Bonduel and have to spend the night huddled beneath the roller coaster with cotton stuffed in his ears.
Moses huffed out a breath and shook his head. “This is not one of those ultimatums. I don’t want to marry you.”
Barbara was the second girl he’d said those words to in less than forty-eight hours. Could things get any more absurd? “Even if you came back to Bonduel tonight, I wouldn’t marry you. I don’t love you anymore.”
Eyeing him in disbelief, Barbara stood up and paced the length of the small room. “I thought you were different, Moses. The boy I fell in love with wouldn’t break a promise, no matter how hard it got. The boy I fell in love with was faithful to a fault.” She stopped moving and stared at him with anger flashing in her eyes. “What happened to that boy?”
“The girl I fell in love with asked me to give her some time. Six months, you said.”
“I said a few months. I never thought you, of all people, would give up on me. I thought I could trust you.”
Moses patted the bench. “Barbara, come sit down—”
She gazed at him intently and sank to the seat next to him. “You told me you’d wait. I finish school in four months.”
Moses leaned away from her and folded his arms in resignation. “And after that, you’re planning on coming home?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I have to pay off my car.”
Moses pinned her with a knowing look. “And after that?”
Barbara’s frown deepened, and she massaged a spot directly above her eyebrow. “I might want to start my own business.”
“How long were you planning on keeping me guessing? Four more months? Three more years?”
“I’ll know better what I want when school is over. I really like it here, but maybe by December I’ll decide I’d rather go home.”
Moses stroked her cheek with his thumb. “Barbara. You’re not coming back.”
Slowly exhaling, Barbara turned her face away. She remained silent for a few moments and mulled things over. “You could move out here with me,” she said softly.
“I won’t do that, and you know it.”
“But I still love you,” she said weakly, as if knowing it didn’t make any difference.
“You did once,” Moses said, a slight smile curling his lips, “but now you love the world more. Your job, your car. Those fingernails.”
A giggle mingled with a sigh burst from Barbara’s lips.
Moses chuckled, and their eyes met. Studying her face, he could pinpoint the moment she resigned herself to the fact that she’d lost him.
He wanted to explain, maybe to justify himself for finally letting go. He had prized loyalty above all else. “I kept telling myself that you’d be back because I couldn’t live with the alternative. But I’ve been living with persistent unhappiness. I can’t live like that anymore, and it’s unfair of you to ask me to wait, to waste the best years of my life on a false hope.”
Barbara laced her fingers through his. “I never meant for it to be hard on you. My folks wouldn’t have anything to do with me, and knowing you would always be waiting gave me the courage to come out here. You were my backup plan in case things got too hard. I guess I was being pretty selfish.”
“I’m not going to be your backup plan anymore, Barb. I have my own life to live, and I’m not going to spend it waiting.”
Tears glistened in Barbara’s eyes. “Is there somebody else?”
Moses’s heart did a flip. “Jah.”
“A good Amish girl?”
“The most wonderful Amish girl ever.”
“I hope she deserves you.”
“I hope I deserve her.”
“Then I have to let you go.” Barbara leaned over and pulled Moses into an embrace. This time he didn’t pull back. “I love you, Moses.”
“But not enough. And that’s okay.”
“Then it’s time for me to truly find my wings.”
“Time for both of us.”
The stall door flew open and a young teenage girl with an armload of clothes squeaked and turned bright red when she saw them.
They quickly pulled apart and slid away from each other on the bench.
“Sorry,” the girl said. “I didn’t know anybody was in here.”
She backed out of the stall and shut the door as softly as she could, as if Moses and Barbara would forget she had even been there. They could still see her feet under the door as they heard her yell, “Hey, there are two people making out in here!”
In surprise, Moses and Barbara locked gazes, and it took three full minutes before they stopped laughing.
Chapter Twenty
Six A.M., too early for a social call, but Moses couldn’t wait one more minute to proclaim his love. He would have come over last night, but he hadn’t returned until twelve from Minneapolis—too late for even Moses’s impatient heart. Neither Lia nor his grandparents would have taken kindly to a midnight caller. He had arisen two hours earlier to clumsily do his early-morning chores and hitch up the buggy. Everything took twice as long on crutches, but he wanted to be bright and early to Huckleberry Hill.
The dim light of morning cast a golden glow over Mammi and Dawdi’s tiny farm as the gravel crunched beneath the buggy wheels. Moses pulled back on the reins and set the brake. He decided to unhitch the horse. Even though it would take extra time doing it with crutches, he wanted to spend the whole day with Lia. Sammy would need to be stalled.
A slight breeze whispered through the trees overhead, and a black rooster, perched on a fence post, fluttered its wings and studied Moses indifferently. A chickadee whistled his two-note song into the air as Moses fed Sammy a handful of oats. After his experience yesterday, Moses briefly closed his eyes and savored the peace.
But there wasn’t much time to spare. His eagerness to see Lia would not let him linger.
With any luck, Rachel would still be abed, and he and Lia could slip out of the house unnoticed. He could ask her to marry him in the privacy of the barn.
Moses knitted his brows together. The barn, with dust motes floating in the air like snowflakes and unsavory odors attacking the nostrils, wasn’t a very romantic spot. They could ride horses to the east side of the hill and watch the sun make its morning trip across the sky, except that they would waste a lot of time saddling the horses when they could be kissing.
Moses shook his head a few times to bridle his galloping daydreams. One kiss would be plenty. Two at most. He thought of those soft, inviting lips. Would Lia think it improper if he kissed her three times? Three kisses. He would limit himself to three. He could control himself, even though his love for Lia threatened to explode from his chest. He wouldn’t even have to bend in half to reach her lips.
The memory of their first kiss came unbidden to his mind. Even with his mouth on fire, he could tell her lips were silky soft.
Four kisses. No more.
But what if Lia didn’t want to kiss him?
Pulling the scooter out of his buggy, he did his best to bury that thought so it would never resurface. If Lia didn’t return his love, he might just dry up and blow away. The very possibility made him ill as he slowly unhitched his horse and hopped to the barn with the lead firmly in his fist.
Once he settled Sammy, Moses retrieved his scooter, rolled to the front porch, hopped up the steps, and opened the door.
Mammi, Dawdi, and Rachel were at the table eating breakfast. Mammi sat with her back ramrod straight, sipping a cup of coffee. Rachel picked at her food as if she were trying to separate worms and crickets on the plate.
“Hello!” Moses shouted, leaning his bad leg on the scooter and throwing his arms out wide. The door banged against the wall behind it. His enthusiasm probably put a dent in the plaster.
Mammi and Rachel acted as if there were a contest to see who could stand up the fastest. They leaped to their feet and attacked Moses from either side.
Rachel smiled so wide, Moses had a good view of her twelve-year molars.
Mammi, on the other hand, clicked her tongue and looked like she was about to scold her seven-year-old grandson. “Where have you been, young man? We haven’t seen hide nor hair of you for two days.”
He took a step back so he wouldn’t lose his balance with two women hovering over him. “I went out of town.”
Mammi wagged her finger at him. “Out of town? You could at least tell your mammi these things.” She shook her head and motioned at the table. “Cum, sit and have some breakfast. I made quiche. We have important things to discuss.”
Moses glanced at the table. Some sort of soupy egg mixture floated in a pie tin. One of Mammi’s new creations, no doubt.
Rachel batted her eyelashes and flashed a fake smile. “If you stay for supper, I’ll make those rolls you like so much.”
Moses’s heart sank. Rachel’s voice dripped with sugary sweetness. Maple-syrup-mixed-with-honey sweetness. Either she had decided to forgive him for not wanting to marry her, or she was redoubling her efforts. And she didn’t seem the forgiving kind.
“Where’s Lia?”
Rachel’s smile grew wider and more fake. “She’s gone.”
“Where is she? I’ll go fetch her.”
After glancing at Dawdi, Rachel began lightly stroking Moses’s arm. “Poor, sweet girl. Dat came by two days ago to take her home.”
A puff of wind could have knocked Moses over. “Home? Why would . . .” His voice trailed off as the obvious reason caught up to him. Disbelief left him barely able to speak. “Rachel,” he whispered, “what have you done?”
Rachel stroked Moses’s arm double-time until he pulled away from her. “My dear dat wanted her home, and that dear, sweet girl wanted to go.” Rachel caught Dawdi’s eye and nodded.
A ghost of a smirk crossed Dawdi’s lips before he looked away and took another bite of whatever that was on his plate.
“Of all the nonsense,” Mammi said as she sat down at the table and picked up her coffee cup.
The anger boiled so hot inside Moses that he could almost feel the steam rise from his body. He had underestimated Rachel Shetler. She wasn’t bright enough to recognize when a man didn’t want her, but she knew when to call her daddy.
This blasted leg wouldn’t let him go anywhere with ease, or he would have shot out that door and run to the barn where he could yell at Rachel without being heard by anybody.
It took all the strength he had not to lash out at her. Whosoever is angry with his brother is in danger of hellfire. Moses did not trust himself to reply just yet. He took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling. Another deep breath.
“That is the most selfish thing I’ve seen anyone ever do,” he finally said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Rachel’s face turned various shades of pink before blooming bright red, but her voice still oozed that syrupy sweetness. “Moses, you must understand how concerned I am for Lia’s feelings. She is such a dear girl, and if you pay her attention, you’ll just get her hopes up. I won’t let her be hurt like that. My dat and I both thought it would be for her own good to be at home. And don’t you worry about the cooking. I consider it a privilege to take care of all of you.” Rachel turned to his grandparents and spread her arms wide, as if inviting the whole world to join in her benevolence.
Heavenly Father, he prayed silently, please calm my fiery anger and give me patience.
Now.
Moses’s heartbeat gradually slowed from a gallop to a trot. He gazed down at short, little Rachel and suddenly felt sorry for her. How could he not pity a girl who had no love in her heart for anyone but herself?
He looked to his grandparents to
see how they bore this kerfuffle. Dawdi sat placidly, eating his runny eggs and pretending not to hear the conversation, a wisp of a smile playing at his lips.
Mammi spoke with an edge of scold in her voice, but her eyes twinkled as if she knew a secret. “Oh, Rachel, you are such a tease. Besides, Moses, Wautoma is only an hour away by car.”
Moses perked up considerably. Of course. The distance to Wautoma was nothing. He often got so caught up in his own little world that he forgot how close things were by car. He could go back to the cheese factory, call a driver, and be engaged to Lia by nine o’clock.
Lia’s dat wouldn’t like it, but at this point, it might be impossible to gain his approval. Moses could bring Lia back to Huckleberry Hill until they were married in the winter. It was a perfect plan.
His heart soared to the sky and a smile wider than a country mile bloomed on his face.
Not wanting to waste any time, he backed out the door instead of trying to turn his scooter around.
“Where are you going?” Rachel asked, a hint of desperation in her silky voice.
“To Wautoma to bring Lia back where she belongs.”
Rachel narrowed her eyes and lost all pretense of sweetness. Balling her hands into fists and stomping her delicate little foot, she said, “I told you—”
“Do you want to come with me? You can pack your things, and I’ll drop you off while I’m there.”
Moses had to hold his breath to keep from laughing out loud at her expression. She held her mouth open like a trout out of water and blinked her eyes as if she were attempting to fan up a breeze.
He had accomplished something he’d never been able to do before. He’d rendered Rachel speechless.
Moses took her silence as a refusal. “Mammi and Dawdi, if I succeed in bringing Lia back, can she stay with you for a few more months?”
If Mammi’s smile would have been hooked up to a generator, she could have powered the lights in three counties. “What a gute boy you are. You’ve always been one of my favorite grandsons.” She rose from the table again and reached for her secret hiding place. The blue porcelain canister said “sugar” on it, but Mammi used it to hide things from the grandchildren, like after-supper treats or Christmas surprises. Mammi lifted the lid and retrieved an envelope from inside. “Lia wrote you this note right before she left. I reckon you can read it on your way out of town.”
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