by Marta Perry
And what was he doing noticing that about Teacher Leah? Despite his new community’s obvious wish to marry him off, he was not looking for a bride. After what had happened with Ruth, he wasn’t sure he’d ever take that chance again.
And if he did, it wouldn’t be with a woman who seemed to be flirting with the English world in the shape of her former sweetheart.
He made Jonah swoop up and down in imitation of a barn swallow, and then set him down and gave him a tap on the bottom. “Go and tell your brother and sister it’s almost time to go home,” he said.
“So soon?” Leah looked honestly regretful. “Be sure you don’t leave without taking the basket of leftovers that Mamm has for you. It will save you having to cook tomorrow.”
“That’s kind of her. I’m grateful for your hospitality.” He looked into her face, detecting a hint of strain there. “I’m sorry if Jonah interrupted your conversation with your friend.”
“It’s all right. We had finished what we had to say.” She gave him a straightforward, serious look. “I’m sure you can guess what we were talking about.”
He nodded. “How does Kile’s family feel about his coming back?”
“They don’t know yet, other than Rachel.” Her smooth brow furrowed. “She must tell her parents before they hear from someone else.”
“That would be wise.”
“Many Amish have children and grandchildren who have chosen not to join the church.” She seemed to look inward, as if arguing with herself. “They still find ways to have some relationship with them.”
She couldn’t know why the very mention of that thought made him stiffen. And he wasn’t going to tell her.
“We live separate from the world. Accommodating it can only lead to trouble.”
His words came out harshly, but perhaps that was just as well. Teacher Leah may as well know now where he stood on that issue, because where his children were concerned, he would not take any risks at all.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was perfectly normal for her to stop and see Rachel after school, Leah assured herself on Friday. So normal, in fact, that Betty turned her head toward the lane to the Brand farm even before Leah’s hand tightened on the harness lines.
Her errand, however, wasn’t so normal.
Surely Rachel would have talked to her parents about Johnny by now. Leah’s stomach roiled at the memory of her conversation with John on Wednesday when he’d learned she had no answer for him. He’d hated being put off. And she hated being put in the middle of this tangle.
She slowed Betty to a walk as they approached the house. On either side of the lane, the Brand dairy herd munched contentedly on April-green grass, and she spotted Becky and her younger brother, five-year-old Joseph, heading for the barn.
Gut, she’d timed this visit right, then. She’d hoped to get here while Rachel’s husband, Ezra, was still busy, and while the kinder were at their chores. That way she and Rachel could have a private talk.
She stopped at the back door and slid down, a prayer for guidance forming in her heart. She didn’t know what to pray for in this situation, but certainly the Lord knew what was right for Rachel, for her parents, and even for Johnny.
She was fastening Betty to the hitching rail when Rachel appeared at the door, holding it open in welcome as always.
“Leah, wilkom. I hoped to see you.” Her smile was warm, but those lines of strain around her eyes were not normal for easygoing Rachel.
Leah’s heart sank. This situation was hurting her friend, she knew, and there was probably worse to come. No matter what Rachel’s parents had decided, the way wouldn’t be smooth.
“Komm, sit.” Rachel led the way through the mudroom to the kitchen, warm and smelling of supper cooking already. “I have apple kuchen and coffee ready. You’ll have some.”
“Only if you join me.” Leah sat at the well-scrubbed table, taking off her bonnet and cape, and smoothing her hair back under her kapp.
“Ja.” Rachel glanced at the pot on the gas stove. “The chicken is stewing already, so I can sit for a bit.”
Their conversation was natural enough, as if this were just any visit. But the cups clattered as Rachel took them from the tall pine cupboard, and the movement of her hands was stiff and clumsy.
Leah kept silent as Rachel grasped a potholder and poured the coffee. She waited while Rachel put a slice of pastry, thick with apples, on a plate in front of her.
Only when Rachel stopped her nervous fidgeting and sat down did she think it was time to speak.
“I’m sorry. This is hard for you.”
Rachel nodded, her hands clasping the thick white mug that held her coffee. “Not for me only. Ezra is upset, because Johnny was his dear friend. The children, because they sense that something is wrong even though we haven’t told them. And Mamm and Daadi—”
She stopped, her voice choking with tears.
“You’ve told them, then.” However little Rachel had wanted to break the news, she couldn’t risk having her parents hear of John’s return from someone else.
Rachel seemed to struggle for composure. “Ja. Ezra watched the little ones so I could go over alone to talk with them.” She clenched her hands together, the knuckles white. “Leah, I have never seen them look like that. It was worse, I think, than when he went away the first time.”
Probably, that first time, distressed as they’d been, they’d expected Johnny to come home eventually, like so many others did. But he hadn’t, and the years had slipped away, each one making it less likely he’d return.
They wouldn’t have forgotten him. How could they? Her own heart ached with the thought.
But maybe they’d been able to make peace with his leaving. Now, that peace was ripped beyond repair.
“Will they—Do they want to see him?”
“Of course they want to see him!” The words burst from Rachel’s lips on a sob, and she raised tear-drenched eyes to Leah’s. “But they won’t. They can’t.”
Leah clasped Rachel’s hand in hers, tears filling her eyes, too. “I know.” Her throat was tight. “They feel they’re doing the right thing by refusing.”
“The only thing,” Rachel said. “The meidung is the only thing that might make him return to the community, if that’s possible.”
Leah nodded in sympathy. The outside world probably thought of shunning as a punishment, but it wasn’t that. It was the church’s last, desperate effort to bring the stubborn rebel to his senses, and she had no doubt it hurt the family and the community more than it hurt the one who left.
She took a deep breath, knowing she had to press on with this while she could still say the words without breaking down. “If they were convinced that Johnny would never be Amish again, would they see him then?”
“I don’t know.” Rachel wiped tears away with her fingers. “If he came back to us penitent, ready to confess his sin and be restored to the body, it would be as if his leaving had never been. But if he’s determined to live English . . .”
Her voice died out, as if she didn’t have the strength to consider that possibility.
“There are those in the church who have accepted that in their children,” Leah reminded her. “The Muellers and the Stoltzes both have sons who’ve left, but they’ve maintained ties with them and their families.”
Everyone knew that accommodations could be made. Folks obeyed the letter of the meidung by not eating at the same table as the shunned person, not taking food from their hand, not riding in a car that person was driving. Otherwise, with good will on both sides, life could go on.
“I know they do. It’s hard for them, but they’ve accepted that their children will never come back. I don’t know if Daadi can ever accept that.” She gave Leah a watery smile. “You know how he was about Johnny. His oldest son. His only son.”
Unlike most Amish families, the Kiles only had two children. Something had gone wrong for Ella when the twins were born. Rachel and Johnny were all the more precious for tha
t reason.
Rachel turned her mug, making rings on the scrubbed pine tabletop. “Daadi wouldn’t admit to being proud of him, but they were so close, and Johnny so smart and hardworking. Daadi was glad to have a son to pass the farm to. After Johnny left, the heart just seemed to go out of him.”
“He saw his life’s work being discarded.”
Leah thought fleetingly of Daniel and Matthew. There was another father determined to have a farm to pass on to his son. But Matthew—surely Daniel didn’t fear that Matthew would leave the church.
“Leah, do you think—” Rachel hesitated. She was looking down at the cooling coffee in the mug, and Leah couldn’t read her expression.
“Think what?” She patted Rachel’s hand in encouragement.
“Do you think there’s any chance Johnny could change his mind and come back to us? If there was, I would do anything to make it happen.”
“I guess there’s always a chance.” She said the words slowly, not wanting to dash whatever hope Rachel might still cling to.
Rachel clasped Leah’s hand in a tight grip. “You knew him as well as anyone. You must still be able to tell what he’s thinking, no matter how much he’s changed.” Her voice compelled an answer. “Please, Leah. You must be honest with me.”
She thought of the stranger Johnny had become, with his clean-shaven face, his modern clothes, his fancy car. But those were externals, easily changed.
What of the man himself? Rachel was right. Once, she’d have said she knew Johnny’s heart as well as she knew her own.
The passion in his voice when he’d talked of his work at the clinic, the way his eyes looked for a future she couldn’t imagine. Those were the things that told who John Kile was now.
“I don’t think so.” Her throat tightened at the pain she must be causing. “I can’t be sure, but I don’t think so.”
The muscles of Rachel’s neck worked. She slapped her hands down on the table and pushed herself back, her face twisting.
“He should never have come back, then!” she cried, her voice harsh. “You know as well as I do, Leah. He should never have come back to Pleasant Valley at all.”
Daniel stood looking across a field full of people on Saturday afternoon. The spring Mud Sale to benefit the local fire company was in full swing. True to its name, the sale took place when the ground, still wet from winter’s snow followed by April showers, was rapidly turning into a sea of mud.
That didn’t seem to deter any of the crowd. Amish and English alike, intent on finding a bargain, moved from used Amish buggies to lines strung with quilts to food stands offering everything from warm soft pretzels to cotton candy to funnel cakes.
He could only hope his children weren’t talking Rachel Brand into buying them anything to eat. She had offered to have the younger ones walk around with her and her children, so that he could take a look at the tools that were spread out on several long trestle tables. And Matthew had gone off on his own with Jacob Esch and some other boys from his class.
Their acceptance was a sign that Matthew was settling down here, and he was relieved at that. He’d been worried about the boy, but not sure whether his worries were justified or not. Matthew had changed, and there was no way of ever getting back those lost years.
He glanced up from the harrow he was inspecting, his eye caught by someone coming from behind the small brooder coop next to the henhouse on the host farm. Even at this distance, even after meeting him only once, he had no trouble identifying the man. John Kile.
His eyebrows lifted. That was a surprise, for sure. Anyone could come to the Mud Sale. Plenty of Englischers were here, but Kile couldn’t hope to pass unnoticed, not with the number of Amish in attendance. This was a public announcement of his return.
How would his family take that? They’d no doubt been through plenty of grief already. His stomach twisted. He knew that feeling only too well.
Kile moved quickly, almost like he was running away. Shoulders stiff and hands clenched, he headed for the nearest cluster of people gathered around a stand selling sausage sandwiches. He disappeared into the crowd.
Someone else came from behind the brooder coop. Black cape, black bonnet hiding her face. But as soon as she moved, Daniel knew it was Leah. Teacher Leah meeting with her old sweetheart in a not-so-secret place.
He stood, irresolute, for a moment. It was not his place to confront her. But if he had seen, others might have as well.
Even as he hesitated, she turned slightly and saw him. She stopped, her body stiff. Then she came toward him across the stubble of grass.
He waited. If she wanted to talk to him, he wouldn’t avoid it, although he didn’t think she’d want to hear anything he was likely to say.
Leah stopped a few feet from him. A couple of men who’d been looking at the tools moved off, leaving them alone.
“I suppose you saw.” Her mouth was firm, but her face was pale with strain.
“Ja.” He hesitated. She’d be angry if he told her what he thought, but—
“I met John Kile to give him his family’s answer to seeing him.”
For some reason, that gave him a sense of relief. She hadn’t been with Kile on her own accord, then, but had been trying to do the right thing for her friend.
“I take it the answer was no.”
She nodded. “How did you know?”
“He didn’t look like someone who’d just had gut news when he went off.” He searched her face, understanding the strain he saw there. “It was not easy for you.”
“He was very hurt.”
And she’d had to be the one to deliver that hurt. Given their history, it was probably more painful for her than for him.
“I’m sorry for him,” he said gravely, praying that he honestly meant it. “And for you, having to be the one to tell him. But I understand why they decided that.”
Her face was still troubled. “If he had come back sorry, they’d have forgiven him in a moment. The prodigal son, home where he belongs.”
“That would only be right.”
But he thought of his wife and his hands tightened, pressing against his legs. If Ruth had returned, wanting to be accepted into the church again, wanting to resume their marriage, he’d have forgiven her.
But would things ever have been the same between them? He didn’t think so.
Still, the relationship between a man and his wife was different from that of a parent to a child.
“They’re in so much pain.” She turned to start walking back toward the crowd, seeming to assume they’d walk together.
“They love him and want him back. It’s hard that the only way they have to push him to return is to stay separate from him.” He fell into step with her.
The brim of her bonnet moved as she nodded. “I know that’s what they’re thinking, and they could be right. But what if you’re dealing with a person who will never come back, no matter what?”
Leah couldn’t know that she was causing him pain with every word. If she knew about his wife, she would never have spoken to him about this.
But this was what he’d wanted when he’d come here, wasn’t it? The chance to start fresh, where everyone didn’t look at him, at his children, with pity for what had happened to them?
They’d reached a wide muddy patch, and he touched her sleeve lightly to guide her around the edge of it. “It’s not so bad over here where the cars are parked.”
She nodded, moving with him. It had been a long time since he’d walked anywhere, even through a muddy field, with a woman. It felt odd, but somehow natural, too.
She glanced up at him, and it seemed the strain had eased from her face a little. “Do you have no answer to the problem, then, Daniel?”
“I don’t.” He managed a smile. “I know that surprises you, Teacher Leah.”
“It does. But you’d best be careful of expressing too much wisdom, anyway. Someone might think you’d make a gut minister.”
He shook his head. “Like most,
I pray the lot never falls on me. My father is the bishop of our church district back in Lancaster County, and I know how heavy a burden it can be.”
Her steps slowed, and she smiled. “Now I’ve learned something more about you.”
“Is that gut?” He could get used to that smile, to the way it made her green eyes fill with light.
“It satisfies my regrettable curiosity, I’m afraid. Yours is the first new family in our church district in quite a few years. You’ve given us something to talk about besides who’s courting whom and whether the price of milk will go up.”
That sort of curiosity was the last thing he wanted, but it was inevitable. “Both of those things are more important than anything you might learn about me.”
“People are always more interesting to me than cows,” she said lightly.
He found himself wondering what she had been like at eighteen, before John Kile had left her behind. More like her pert sister than he’d have originally guessed, perhaps, before grief and disappointment had taken that liveliness away.
“Not more important to a dairy farmer,” he said.
They rounded a row of cars. At the end of the next row, two motorcycles were parked.
Three Amish boys surrounded one of them, gawking at the boy who’d been brave enough, or foolish enough, to climb onto the motorcycle. Daniel stopped, taking in what he saw. The boy was Matthew.
For a moment Daniel froze, feeling as if he’d taken a pitchfork in the stomach. Then he surged forward, grabbed his son, and pulled him off the contraption.
“What are you doing?” It was all he could do to keep from shaking the boy. “Is this how you behave when I let you go with your friends? Is it?”
He was vaguely aware of Leah drawing the other boys away.
“Jacob and Thomas Esch and Gabriel Stoltzfus.” It was very much her teacher voice. “You go back to your parents right now, before you find yourselves in trouble.”
Murmurs of agreement, and the other boys ran off, leaving them alone. Daniel looked at his son, and Matthew stared back at him.