“I needed air.”
She smiled wryly. “You should need worship more.”
“Maybe.” But that was the problem, wasn’t it? He wasn’t an Amish ideal of anything—including what should comfort him. Right now, the very community he’d longed for when he was in Chicago made him feel suffocated.
Sadie dipped the handkerchief into the bucket and Elijah wrung it out for her again before she placed it back over Samuel’s head.
“I’m not used to it anymore,” he confessed. “The long services, I mean.”
“You went to church, though—with them.”
“Yah. It’s shorter, though. And the men and women sit together. In families. All in a row.”
She nodded slowly. “I heard that.”
The Englishers had their own way of doing things. There were youth group activities which he’d been invited to join in on, but no formal dating. Not like the Amish had. How did a man even ask a girl out, if there were no ground rules already set out? He’d been informed that a man asked a girl to “a coffee,” and they would sit in a little shop and drink a hot beverage together with only a cup to fiddle with instead of the reins of his horses.
“You should go to the hymn sing tonight,” Sadie said quietly.
“Why?” It was like she’d read his mind, and he swallowed, looking away.
“It’s what single men do. They go to the hymn sing and they talk to the girls. Then they offer one a ride home.” She shot him a wry look, as if he needed schooling in the art of courting a girl. And perhaps he did, because now that he was back, he found himself wondering if “a coffee” weren’t just a little less intimidating than full-out courting. It was just a conversation.
Elijah barked out a low laugh. “I’m not baptized. The girls are safe from my courting.”
“You might change your mind if you talked to a few of them.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked pointedly. “For me to stay and find some other girl?”
“What do you want?” she hedged. “It’s not about me, is it?”
He sighed. “I can’t do the drama, Sadie.”
She smoothed down Samuel’s wet hair. “It isn’t drama. It’s life.”
It was the cost of living in a close-knit community, and Elijah recognized that. A man could live lonely and free, or he could bind himself to people and live with some drama. Those were the choices—and he’d opted for freedom.
Samuel started to cry again, and Sadie looked toward the shade, then back at the pump.
“I should take him home,” she said. “I’ll get my sister to drive me back.”
“I can take you,” he said.
“No—” She shook her head, then struggled to get to her feet under the weight of her son. Elijah grabbed her hand and helped her up.
“Why not?” he asked. “You need to go home, and I need to get away.”
“You should try a little harder to fit in, Elijah,” she said. “Have some fun.”
“Sage advice,” he retorted. “When is the last time you had fun?”
“I’m a mother.” She met his gaze evenly. “I’m past that.”
“And I’m just an unmarried boy, beneath you.” He couldn’t help the irritation in his tone.
“Maybe you are!” She shook her head. “I’ve already been married. I can’t go to the hymn sings anymore. I have a child to worry about. It isn’t the same for me—so yes, you should go have some fun while you can.”
He hadn’t expected her to admit it, but it sparked a challenge inside of him. She’d always been the “little sister” to him, and now she was treating him like the little brother. Well, he wasn’t keen on that role—especially not with her. He was most certainly a man—something that the Englishers didn’t quibble about once someone passed the age of twenty-one, but the Amish required a little more proof. And he wanted to provide that for her—in some form, at least.
“Let me drive you back,” he said, his voice low.
She met his gaze, then licked her lips and looked away. “I’m not sure I should.”
“Would being seen with me be so very scandalous?” he asked with a slow smile.
Sadie ran her hand over Samuel’s head once more and the boy began to whimper.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “But I’ll have to leave a message with someone so my family knows where I went.”
Elijah nodded toward an older woman, Miriam Graber, who came out of the barn, heading in the direction of the outhouse. She paused, looking in their direction and no doubt jumping to a few conclusions.
“Your aunt,” he said.
Sadie hoisted her son out of her arms and into Elijah’s.
“Hold him, would you?” she breathed, and then hurried across the grass toward her aunt.
Elijah looked down into Sammie’s flushed face and glassy eyes. He wasn’t very big, and he felt as light as a piglet in Elijah’s arms. Samuel whimpered again, tipped his head against Elijah’s shoulder and let out a shuddering sigh.
“Hey, buddy,” Elijah said quietly. “Feeling sick?”
Samuel nodded against his shoulder. “I want my mamm.”
“She’ll be right back,” he said. “You know if I’m holding you that she won’t be long.”
Samuel lifted his head and regarded Elijah solemnly. He seemed to accept that as truth, because he stopped whimpering.
Elijah watched her as she talked with her aunt, then both women turned and looked toward him. There was a pause, a little more discussion, then Sadie squeezed her aunt’s hand and headed back across the grass.
When Sadie reached his side, slightly out of breath, she held her arms out for her son. Samuel reached back, sliding into his mother’s embrace. Elijah had to admit that having a child had matured Sadie in ways he hadn’t experienced yet. She was a mother—the soft bosom and the final answer for her little boy—but the fact that he hadn’t married yet didn’t make him any less of a man.
One of these days she would look up at him and recognize that fact.
Chapter Nine
Elijah guided the horses into the Grabers’ drive, flicking the reins to keep them moving at a trot. Sadie put a hand on her son’s forehead, then pressed a kiss against his flushed skin. He should drop her off, turn around, and head back to the Yoders’ farm. That would be the wise course of action right now, but he realized he didn’t want to.
It was stupid. He knew why he was back in Morinville, and it wasn’t to get himself emotionally entangled with Sadie again. But he was finding himself more and more drawn to her, despite his better instincts, and he felt a strange surge of protectiveness toward Samuel, too.
This was what it would be like to have a family, he realized, to have a wife and a child under his care. Absolom had a little family of his own . . . was it terrible to want this for himself, too?
“Do you want a hand in there for a few minutes?” Elijah asked.
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind.” She shot him a grateful smile.
And that was that. He’d offered now. They were alone—the whole family was at the Sunday service. There was no one to walk in and interrupt in silent disapproval. It was both freeing and unnerving.
Sadie gathered Samuel into her arms, and Elijah helped her down from the buggy. She cast him a smile as she eased past him, and he caught the scent of honey in her wake. His heart sped up, and he forced himself to take a step back. She still awoke the man in him—that much hadn’t changed.
Elijah brought the horses into the buggy barn and set them up with some oats, then as he angled his steps toward the house, he found his stomach flipping in anticipation. It was an old feeling that he wished was connected to his adolescence, but it wasn’t the case. She still made him feel like this at the prospect of being alone with her. Except he wasn’t seventeen anymore, and it couldn’t be about sneaking a kiss or holding her hand. He’d have to cut that out.
Elijah tapped on the side door before he let himself in, and when he came through the mudroom into the
kitchen, he saw Sadie clutching a whimpering Samuel on her hip as she attempted to work one-handed at getting another wet cloth.
“Let me help,” Elijah said.
Sadie looked between the cloth and her son, and then eased the boy into Elijah’s arms. It was strangely gratifying that she trusted her little boy to him, even for a little while. He looked down at his flushed cheeks and teary eyes.
“Hey, buddy,” he murmured.
“You can just sit and hold him,” she said. “I know where everything is. Just take his shirt off, would you? He’s so hot.”
Elijah sank into a kitchen chair, balancing the boy in his arms somewhat awkwardly. He unbuttoned the little shirt and took it off, then took the wet cloth she held out to him and wiped down Samuel’s face and arms. The Amish Budget lay on the table, and Elijah used it to fan Sammie as the boy leaned back against Elijah’s broad chest.
“Here, Sammie.” Sadie crouched down next to him and held a glass of water to his lips. “Have a drink.”
Samuel drank half the glass, then held out his arms for his mother, and she picked him up again. “Let’s move to the sitting room. It’s cooler in there.”
Sadie was definitely deeper, stronger, more intriguing now, which only made his feelings for her more complicated. He was supposed to be finding a way to purge himself of her, not getting more attached, but Elijah followed her through to the sitting room. She sank down onto the sofa, and he was struck with a memory of her from years ago when he’d be visiting Absolom, sitting in that exact spot, and how he’d felt looking at her—like his heart would burst out of his chest.
“I should probably head out,” Elijah said, jutting his chin toward the hallway. “Now that you’re settled.”
It was inappropriate for them to be alone together. People would talk.
“You don’t have to.” She smiled faintly. “I don’t mind the company.”
“You sure?”
She nodded toward the couch next to her. “It’s a good breeze from here.”
Either appearances mattered less to Sadie now, or Elijah wasn’t much of a threat to her reputation. Elijah sank into the sofa next to her, and he looked over at Samuel, whose eyes were shut, his breath starting to slow. She was right about the breeze, and Elijah let out a long breath. It was strange to be sitting here with her like this, when both of them were supposed to be in church. Normally, a man and a woman did this on the day their wedding banns were read in the church—sitting in her parents’ home together as a couple and unchaperoned for the first time. Except he and Sadie weren’t a couple.
Still, she’d invited him to stay.
“There’s something I’ve been wondering,” Sadie said quietly, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb her slumbering child.
“Yah?”
“What did my daet say to you, exactly? When you left, I mean. Back then?”
Elijah sucked in a breath, then let it out slowly. “First of all, I was seventeen,” he said. “And that makes everything a little more dramatic, I suppose. But your father told me straight that I’d never be enough for you, or for the family. He said that you were above me, and from that moment on, I was no longer welcome on this farm. I was to stay away from you, or my father would pay.”
“Pay how?” She frowned.
“I don’t know. It was a broad threat, but I took him seriously.”
“So that’s what pushed you away?”
Elijah’s mind went back to that fateful day when he’d stood there in front of the bishop, his palms sweaty and his heart pounding. He’d been scared, angry, resentful. And the bishop’s tone had been dripping with disdain.
“He said I should know my place.” Elijah shook his head slowly. “I know that sounds like nothing, but it pounded everything home for me. There was a place for me here in Morinville, but there was no flexibility, no choice on my part. I would work with my daet at a business I found deathly boring, and I would marry some girl I didn’t love. I don’t think your father understood how much I loved you. Watching you marry another man, being forced into finding some appropriate plain girl to drive home from singing.... It was too much . . .”
Sadie was silent.
“Does that make sense?” he asked, turning toward her.
“So leaving was your only option?” she said. “Going English.”
“I saw a future with the Englishers, a chance at more. I still do. Besides, you were right.” Emotion hollowed out his voice. “Absolom wouldn’t have left if it weren’t for me.”
“I thought you said he was angry with my father.”
“He was. He was furious. But leaving? That was my idea, and he didn’t want to go. I said I’d go without him, and I knew that would allow me to get my way. Absolom and I were best friends, and he figured he could talk me into coming back.”
“So what changed?” Sadie shifted Samuel in her arms. He was sleeping now, his pale lips parted.
“It’s different out there, Sadie . . .” How to explain this to a woman who knew nothing but the sheltered life in Morinville? “There’s freedom like you’ve never experienced it. I was tired of being told who I was and where I fit. I wanted to define that for myself.”
“But Absolom wanted to come home?”
“Until he didn’t . . .” Elijah searched her face, looking for some understanding. “He had girlfriends, freedom. There comes a point when you know that the stain is too dark. If you go back, you’ll always be the one who left. Besides, we’d both changed. Do you remember the place in the Bible that says it’s better to cut off your hand than to go with both hands into hell?”
“Coming home wouldn’t be like that—”
“It would be,” he interjected. “You grow as the years pass, and in order to fit back in here in Morinville, you’d have to cut all that growth away.”
She winced at the imagery, and he shook his head. “Sadie, I know what I did, and I know how much is my fault. I was an angry teenager who loved a girl he’d never have. I was stupid, stubborn, and if I’d just left by myself . . .”
He sighed. If he’d left by himself, maybe he could have made the adjustment to come home again. Maybe he could have cut off that pound of flesh. But this wasn’t about him anymore . . . at least not him alone. He’d dragged his best friend with him. Elijah had been the one with no future. Absolom had been an angry teen, but he’d have been able to marry any girl he liked. He would have had a future.
“You feel obliged to stand by my brother,” she concluded.
“Yah. Among other things. I owe him. He stood by me for all these years. We’ve helped each other get jobs, we’ve navigated the Englisher ways together.... We’ve been there for each other through all the hard stuff. I owe him more than walking out on him now.”
“If you came back, he might, too,” Sadie countered.
“If I came back without him, he’d probably never come back at all,” Elijah replied. “Besides, our business needs both of us. He can’t do it without me.”
“It isn’t like you have a wife and children out there—” Sadie shook her head.
Elijah reached out and caught her hand, annoyance simmering deep under the surface of his conflicted feelings.
“Are you going to call me a boy again?” His voice came out in a growl, and her eyes widened, but she didn’t answer. “I may not have married yet, Sadie, but I’m no boy. I’ve taken care of myself since I was seventeen, and I’ve seen more in the last nine years than any of the men living here. I’m every inch a man.”
Outside, the clop of horse hooves and the rattle of a buggy pulled both of their attention away, and they looked out the window to see the Graber buggy coming down the drive.
“You can’t come back without him,” Sadie said hollowly. “And you won’t leave him alone out there, either.”
“I won’t. A man has responsibilities, debts, obligations. Englishers are no different in that respect.”
Outside, Elijah heard the bishop’s voice. “Whoa, now.”
&nbs
p; Their time alone was over. Elijah suspected the news that he’d brought Sadie home was more alarming than Sadie intended. He was a bigger threat to their daughter’s future than Elijah liked to think.
“So I’ll have to say good-bye to you again,” she said, looking away.
“We knew that,” he countered.
“Did we?”
Maybe she’d expected something different, but he’d been up front from the start. He wasn’t the kind of man who would mislead her . . . not again. There were footsteps on the stairs outside, and Elijah’s heart jammed in his chest. There was so much more to say.
“Whatever we’re feeling for each other,” he said quietly, “we’ll just have to keep it under control. We know how this ends.”
“We aren’t feeling anything,” she snapped.
That was a lie. Their kisses, their moments alone . . . they were all charged with some undeniable energy. They weren’t the same teenagers they’d been nine years ago, but whatever they’d started back then hadn’t been snuffed out.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Elijah murmured.
The door opened, and Rosmanda’s voice filtered through the walls, her words muffled. Footsteps sounded from the mudroom, and then the kitchen.
“Nothing.” Sadie smoothed a hand over her sleeping son’s forehead, and her chin trembled ever so little. “I don’t want anything from you, Elijah.”
And even though he knew that he was in no position to offer her any of the things he longed to, that “nothing” gouged deeper than being called “boy.”
“There you are.” Sarah appeared in the doorway, and her sharp gaze moved between them, evaluating the situation silently. “Come, Sadie. Let me help you with Samuel. Elijah, my husband will need you for the chores. He says that you can finish early and then go home.”
There was a slight emphasis on the words “go home,” and he smiled wanly. Apparently, he was still very much a threat.
* * *
Sadie watched as Elijah tramped out the side door with her father.
“Your daet isn’t feeling as bad as before,” Mamm assured her. “And Elijah won’t let him work too hard.”
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