It was a stretch, she knew.
But hope, she did.
With her wound and her dignity now exposed, Ray looked upon her with more love in his eyes than she’d ever seen in them. He tucked her close to him and kissed the side of her face near her ear.
“I still love you, Miriam. And I still want to marry you. Having a line down your face does not change things in my heart. If nothing else, it puts us more on an even playing field.”
She lifted her head from his chest. “What do you mean by that?”
“I still think you’re just as beautiful, but now you have been humbled by God, and you aren’t so full of yourself. You used to intimidate me because you acted as if you were too good for me because of your physical beauty. You’re still just as beautiful in my eyes, but actually more beautiful, because God has removed the pride in you that always stood between us.”
Did he just say I was more beautiful?
“Ach, you’re confusing me.”
“You don’t need to hide behind the Amish community for someone to love you. If you want to live in an old farmhouse with no mirrors, then that is how we will live, if it means you will accept that my love for you has nothing to do with how you look on the outside. I’ve seen what is in your heart. You’ve shown that part of you to me—the part you keep hidden from everyone else. You can stay in the Amish community and hide your face, but you could never hide what is in your heart—not from me.”
It was as if he was looking into her very soul and plucking out her pride and tossing it aside. He was right. She had been very prideful, using her outer beauty to get what she wanted. But with Ray, she’d let her guard down and shown her heart—her true beauty—according to Ray. It was something she would never be able to hide from him. She had to ask herself why she would even want to.
It was a question she just couldn’t answer right now.
CHAPTER 12
Miriam bandaged up her face with the gauze and tape the nurse had sent her home from the hospital with. She had survived Ray seeing the wound, and had even taken a peek at it herself when he’d left the room to greet the family that Claudia had invited to see Ray, and to meet Miriam for the first time. She was surprised at the amount of healing that had taken place in just ten short days since the accident. It had given her hope that perhaps with a small amount of makeup, she could easily hide the line down her face to where no one would see it. She would have to wait until it was completely healed though. Even so, she still wasn’t ready to expose her imperfection to the world just yet.
It filled her with shame that Ray knew her so well as to call her out for her feelings of vanity over the scar on her face. He knew her well—she’d give him that much. But it wasn’t enough to make her choose him over being able to hide away her imperfections in the Amish community.
Miriam adjusted her simple blue dress and checked the pins beneath her kapp. Soon, she would have to do away with her fancier dresses. She would miss them. But she couldn’t wear them if she was a married woman in the community. Being single and in her rumspringa years, she could get away with a certain amount of things, but that would be all over as soon as she and Adam were wed.
She wished with all her heart that she could marry Ray. She loved Ray. It would be easy to be his fraa. But with Adam, it would be a lot of work to get through a lifetime in a loveless marriage.
From the other room, Miriam could hear happy chatter from a room full of women. Occasionally, a male voice would give a quick answer, but for the most part, the conversation seemed to be dominated by the women-folk.
Though Miriam was used to attending work bees and quilting bees where sometimes one hundred or more women would gather, it was within a close-knit family community. Here, the women were all strangers. She would have to learn their names, and she wasn’t good in crowds of Englischers. But with the scar on her face, she would have a new reason to keep her eyes cast downward.
These women will be related to mei boppli, she reminded herself inwardly. I suppose I owe it to the wee one to at least learn to know them.
That way, when her child talked of their aenti or onkel later in life, Miriam would at least have recollection of who was being referred to.
It is what is fair to the kinner.
She stiffened her upper lip, took in a deep breath and pretended she was about to sit down to dinner with her adopted father. He was almost more of a stranger to her than the women that waited for her on the other side of the door. At least with the women that were eager to meet her, she had some sort of connection with them through Ray. Her connection to her father was lost the moment the cord of life between her and her mamm was severed when they put her in the ground.
Miriam opened the door slowly, and was surprised to see Ray propped against the wall outside the door.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t be too much longer,” he greeted her with a smile and a kiss to her cheek. “I wanted to take you in there myself so you wouldn’t feel so intimidated by my aunts and cousins. They can be a bit overwhelming until you get to know them.”
Miriam’s feet stopped working. Maybe she wasn’t ready to go in there just yet. Maybe she could be excused since she just got out of the hospital.
“I’m feeling a little tired,” she said softly. “Perhaps we can do this when I’ve had a little more time to recover.”
Ray took her gently into his arms. “You’ll have to forgive my mother and my aunts, but they know you intend to marry Adam next week, and they don’t think they have enough time to talk you out of it.”
“Talk me out of it? So that is what this dinner is all about? To bully me into changing my mind?”
Miriam was furious.
Ray held her closer. “No! I told them to back off. I told them not to say anything to you. But they think that if they are welcoming enough and shower you with love that it will make you change your mind.”
He kissed her forehead. “Just go along with it for me. They really want to welcome you into our family, and it would be a shame if my family couldn’t spoil you just a little. You deserve it after everything you’ve been through.”
Miriam didn’t think she deserved anything from Ray or his family. She’d rejected them all, but yet they were about to welcome her into their family. How would she ever be able to face them knowing she had no intention of becoming a member of their family?
“I don’t know if I can deceive them like that.”
“You won’t be deceiving them. You don’t have to become family with them to be their friend. I know you could use a few friends. Let them get to know you, so that later down the road they can tell our child they know you, and they will have good things to say about you.”
Funny, Miriam didn’t have anything good to say about herself right now.
“I will meet them. But I won’t let them spoil me. It would make me feel too guilty.”
Ray kissed her quickly on her lips, catching her off guard. “You won’t regret this, I promise. Thank you for doing this for me. It means more than you know.”
It meant a lot to her too.
She just didn’t know it yet.
CHAPTER 13
Miriam looked around the room at the sea of gifts Ray’s family had brought for her and the baby.
Guilt welled up in her throat, choking her.
How would she ever repay these people? They hadn’t even let her help clear the table after dinner. Her debt seemed to be spiraling out of control just as her life was. If not for Ray sitting closely beside her, doting on her, she would have fainted for sure and for certain.
Embarrassed by the attention everyone was showering her with, she was grateful Ray hadn’t left her side since he’d brought her out of her room. She wasn’t used to this much attention, nor was she used to sitting around and letting others do the work that needed to be done. But they refused every offer of help she shot their way. She had not been raised to be pampered. She was raised to work hard and do whatever needed to be done until the wor
k was finished. Unfortunately, in the Amish community, there was always work to be done.
Perhaps in time they will let me do my fair share of the work around here.
Between her and Ray, they had opened countless gifts that included cloth diapers, little t-shirts, bibs, toys and rattles, a silver cup, and several baby blankets and sheet sets for a crib. There were even a few envelopes boasting hefty sums of money.
The final gift, a rather large box, contained an elaborate wooden crib. It was beautiful, but it was way too fancy to use in an Amish household. It brought to Miriam’s mind her own baby crib and the blankets her mamm had sewn for her when they’d adopted her as a newborn. It saddened her to think of the quilts her mamm must have spent hours sewing for her. But by marrying Adam, her daed would most likely let her use those things for her child. The crib had been in the family for three generations, and normally, Benjamin would have first rights to such a family heirloom, but he was as yet unattached. It was the only hope she had of getting her father to let her to use the crib.
By the time everyone went home, Miriam felt so overwhelmed, she was ready to go to bed. It wasn’t that she didn’t like each and every one of his family members, she was just feeling ready for some quiet-time alone to think.
Ray had other plans for her.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said, taking her hands. “I was going to wait until tomorrow to show you, but I don’t think I can wait that long. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to see it before the sun goes down completely.”
Miriam fastened her seatbelt in Ray’s truck, feeling the bile making its way up her throat. She swallowed hard against the acid that threatened to spill from her mouth. She’d ridden in Ray’s truck plenty of times, so why was she so nervous? Perhaps it was the surprise he claimed he had for her. She couldn’t take any more surprises right now. She needed calm and normal routines—not upheaval and surprises.
But what if it’s a gut surprise?
That was likely not possible, and she knew it. Ray was too excited about this surprise for it to be anything but more pressure for her to choose him and reject Adam.
Miriam watched the flicker of the quickly-setting sun filtering through the trees as they drove down a long dirt drive toward Willow Creek. At the end of the road sat an old abandoned farm house and a barn with a collapsed roof on one side. Split-rail fencing corralled an overgrown area of land in front of the creek.
Ray parked the truck and turned to her. “We’re here. What do you think?”
“The sunset over the creek is beautiful,” she said warily.
“No. I mean, about the house and the barn. Isn’t it great?”
She was afraid he was talking about that.
She shrugged. “For what?”
She was almost afraid to know the answer.
“For you and me to live in, that’s what!”
He was way too excited about this, and Miriam couldn’t think straight at all. She couldn’t even respond.
“This morning, while you were sleeping, I got on the internet and started looking at property for sale. I found this piece here and it’s practically free, it’s so cheap. My dad said he would loan us the money to pay for it, and he’s going to set me up with my own construction business here. I won’t have to go back there and work for him anymore. I can fix up the house and the barn myself. The best part about this, is that you can remain close to the Amish community, and we can raise our child on a farm like you were raised.”
Ray looked at Miriam, who, by this time, had tears in her eyes. But they were not happy tears. They were tears of remorse. Tears of regret.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” he asked softly.
“I wish it was that simple,” she said, hiccupping.
Ray hopped out of the truck and jogged around to her side and opened the door.
He held his hand out to her and she took it reluctantly. “Let me show you,” he said with a smile.
She could not resist that smile.
They walked up onto the front porch of the white-washed, clapboard house that boasted a rickety porch swing.
Ray pointed to the swing. “I can fix that. Imagine how many summer nights we would enjoy out here sipping lemonade and rocking the baby to sleep.”
Tears ran down Miriam’s face.
She could see it.
They walked in the through the broken front door and into the front room with dirty wooden floors and a brick fireplace on the far wall between two broken windows.
“I’ll fix the door so it closes—and locks, so you’ll feel safe. I can put in new windows, of course. You could make pretty curtains and make braided rugs for the hardwood floors. The upstairs has four bedrooms. And the kitchen—the kitchen has a huge pantry for all the canning jars I know you’ll fill it with. Can you see us living here, Darlin’?”
Miriam could see it.
And that’s what scared her the most.
CHAPTER 14
Miriam found a note from Claudia addressed to her sitting on the kitchen counter next to a large paper sack with handles. The letter stated she would be home early from the store, and that the bag contained all the items she would need to get her started on her new venture. The letter also boasted that Claudia had another idea to help her out, and that it was a surprise.
Miriam didn’t think she could stomach anymore surprises. But her curiosity got the better of her. She peeked inside the large shopping bag to find all the materials she needed to make at least one hundred Amish dolls.
Finally, something I can do to start paying my way around here.
Miriam took the bag and her cup of coffee back to her room and laid it out on the bed to begin. As she started to cut the pattern she’d memorized when she was only a child, she realized she had no wedding dress in which to marry Adam. She didn’t dare ask Claudia or Ray for such a thing, but perhaps she could ask her brother to get her some material to make one when he arrived for his visit on Friday. That wouldn’t leave her much time to do the sewing, but perhaps she could wear her navy blue dress and make only a new pinafore for the wedding.
Her own wedding dress had been left at the B&B, and even if recovered, was swathed in chicken guts. The blood would not come out of the garment after this much time had passed. The dress she’d taken from Levinia was not recovered from the remains of the accident. And so she was left with no other choice than to wear the plain, navy blue dress, unless she could talk her brother into providing her with enough money to get the material for a new pinafore.
For now, Miriam was content to make as many Amish dolls as Claudia’s store could carry. Miriam was desperate for the money to pay back Bethany. It could mean the difference between her acceptance back into the community once she and Adam had the Bishop publish their wedding. A full confession would be required of her. She was, indeed, prepared to give the confession she should have given the day of the accident. She would do that on Sunday when she attended services with Adam and Benjamin.
Miriam began to sew the pieces together to make her first doll. She pondered the events of the past two weeks, wondering if things might have been different if she’d have just given the confession that was expected of her that day. What had she been thinking? She supposed she was thinking the same thing she believed now, but only then, she acted in haste.
Was she still acting in haste? Was she making the best decision she could for her and her child? Her own feelings couldn’t be an issue anymore. She had to grow up and put her child first. But would that child understand having a stepfather in his or her life instead of a real father. She had not had her real father or mother in her life, and it was something she’d always craved, despite the love her mamm had showered her with.
It wasn’t the same as the situation with her birth parents. At least her child would know his or her real father, unlike Miriam had. No, Miriam would make certain her child knew its real father no matter how hard it would be for her to never be able to live her life with Ray. She hop
ed that in time it would be easier for her to be around him. But now, in her current state, the pregnancy made her feel vulnerable and needy.
Truth be told, she wished there was another way, but she just wasn’t brave enough to stand alone away from the only family she’d ever known. Perhaps with grandkinner, her daed would come around a little more, and she and Adam would have the support of his Amish community to help set up their life together as a married couple.
It was the perfect plan.
So why did everything about it seem so wrong?
Perhaps it was the love she still carried for Ray that was clouding her judgment. She knew she needed to ignore those feelings in order to stay on course. It would be difficult to ignore with him in the same house for the next few days until her wedding, but she would have to find a way to steer clear of him as best she could. And though he expected a final answer about the house, she’d tried her best to let him down easy and he hadn’t taken the hint.
Unfortunate for her, there was no more time for subtlety. She would have to break Ray’s heart all over again, and that nearly broke her spirit to even think about it. He needed to know she intended to go through with marrying Adam, no matter what.
She prayed he would understand, and that the hurt would be minimal—to both of them.
Lord, take away the love Ray has for me. Give him understanding and wisdom to accept my decision about marrying Adam. Take away the love I have for Ray and please stop my heart from breaking.
Miriam stifled a sob, but she couldn’t prevent the tears from pouring down her cheeks.
If it be Your Wille, Gott, she added.
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