A Simple Wish

by Charlotte Hubbard

  “Let’s go,” Drew whispered, his heart racing as Loretta jogged beside him. Once they were behind the windbreak, hidden from the view of anyone on the road or at the Riehl house, he turned and pulled her into his arms. “Kissing you was on my mind all during church, Loretta,” he murmured. “I have no idea what Preacher Ben’s sermon was about.”

  “God was listening to your wicked thoughts, you know.” Giggling, Loretta let go of her basket. She stood on tiptoe to wrap her arms around his neck.

  Drew reveled in the sensation of holding her warm, shapely body against his as he pressed his lips to hers. She responded eagerly, playfully, making him moan with desire. Loretta seemed as needy as he was—and more responsive than usual—and after all the torture he could handle, Drew eased her away. “Whoa,” he said breathlessly. “Let’s come up for some air, sugar. A man can only stand so much.”

  Loretta stepped out of his embrace, a question furrowing her brow as she turned away. Drew immediately regretted the disappointment he’d caused her, but she was unaware of the physical effect she had on him—naive about the ways of men and women.

  “Was Molly really pretty?” she asked wistfully. “If—if you loved her, maybe I’m a poor substitute for—”

  “It’s not that way!” Drew insisted. He stood behind her, loosely holding her shoulders. “She was nothing like you, Loretta. Molly was attractive, jah, but she was also a tease and a heartbreaker. She played me false.”

  “But you . . . knew her, in the biblical sense.”

  Drew closed his eyes against an onslaught of memories. He’d loved Molly with all his being and had given himself to her with every intention of marrying her—only to be rejected and then left in the dark about her pregnancy. “Jah, that’s how Leroy and Louisa came about,” he said softly. “And before you say any more, my answer is no. I’m not going to bed you, and bundling isn’t an accepted practice in Willow Ridge, so—”

  “How do you know that?” Loretta protested, turning to face him. “I have these—these feelings for you, and I want to find out where they lead. Edith looks so happy now that she’s married . . .”

  Drew swallowed hard. Was Loretta asking him to make love to her? “Think about it,” he began hesitantly. “It’s September, and your room upstairs is too hot for one of us to lie under the covers on your bed while we cuddle. And you’ve told me your dat has a way of showing up before you know he’s there. If he found us together that way, he’d put me out—and forbid me to see you anymore.”

  Loretta sighed. “Jah, there’s that. I’m just curious about such things, and Mamm’s not around to answer my questions.”

  Drew considered his options. He doubted that most Amish mothers imparted explicit details about sex, even on the eve of a daughter’s marriage. More likely, if Loretta’s mamm were still alive, she would sketch things out using vague terminology and allow nature to take its course—after the wedding. A daughter’s dabbling in premarital pleasure was a sin, after all.

  “You’re a beautiful young woman, Loretta,” he whispered. “I want you, too, but we’ve got to be responsible. I’m not going to have folks whispering about you—the women, especially—because they think I’ve taken advantage of your innocence.”

  “Innocence is highly overrated!” she blurted out.

  Drew bit back a laugh, because in some ways she was right. Loretta’s cheeks blazed, and her full lips beckoned him. It would be so easy, so satisfying to lie down in the shady seclusion of the evergreens and gently teach her what she wanted to know . . .

  “It’s a matter of honor,” he said in the steadiest voice he could manage. “Everyone knows I was with Molly, but I don’t want you to suffer the same fate—the same dubious reputation she got when they realized—”

  “There are ways to be careful,” Loretta stated uncertainly. “Right?”

  Drew exhaled hard. He’d never expected to be explaining the intimacies a man shared with a woman, much less delving into matters of birth control. “Jah, but you have to anticipate—to be prepared beforehand. I’m not, and we’re not starting down that path, either, Loretta,” he said in the strongest voice he could muster. “Folks—especially your dat—will notice the change in your behavior, the same way you’ve seen a difference in Edith since she and Asa got married.”

  “Jah, I’ll look radiantly happy,” Loretta said with a sigh. “Is that such a bad thing?”

  “It is when we’re not married,” Drew replied in a terser tone than he’d intended. He inhaled deeply, but he needed more than fresh air to settle him. “I’m sorry to be such a killjoy, sweetheart. But I’ve been down that road, and I’m not taking you down it with me. Please try to understand,” he pleaded. “I’m doing this for you.”

  Loretta appeared unconvinced, and his heart went out to her.

  “After we’re married—if we get married—wild horses won’t be able to keep me away from you,” Drew said. He died a little when his choice of words made her turn away from him again.

  “Maybe I should go home now,” Loretta whispered. “If there’s a question about whether you’ll marry me, I’ll only embarrass both of us if I stay, ain’t so?”

  Drew watched sadly as she strode away. How had their enticing flirtation ended on such a sour note? Loretta was on the other side of the evergreens before he realized she’d forgotten her basket, but he thought better of following her to give it back. She was upset, stewing over more questions than he’d been willing to answer, and it seemed best to let her cool down.

  IF we get married? What possessed you to plant such a doubt in her mind ?

  Sighing, Drew started for home. He’d been seeing Loretta for nearly a month, and he was pretty sure she was the woman he wanted for a wife. After the way he’d fallen too quickly for fickle, flirtatious Molly, however, he was wary of committing to marriage so soon—he saw the advantage of a long courtship, even though he’d desired Loretta ever since they’d met. Drew hadn’t popped the question, but Loretta had always seemed hopeful, assuming he wanted to marry her, ever since the afternoon he’d lured her off the front porch away from Will.

  Drew paused across the road from the Riehl house. Rather than return the basket and discover he was unwelcome, he decided to check the answering machine in the phone shanty he and Asa shared with the Riehls. Sometimes customers left messages about pieces of furniture they were having restored—and English folks often called on Sunday afternoon.

  The little white building by the roadside was only large enough for one person to be seated in front of the small phone table, on a hard wooden chair that didn’t inspire folks to chat for very long. If the original owner hadn’t built a window into its back wall, it would be a stiflingly hot place to hold summertime conversations. As Drew approached the shanty, he heard a man talking.

  “Be here by six tomorrow morning, and don’t honk your horn,” he was saying. “I’ll be waiting for you—and jah, we’ll be out all day, as usual.”

  Drew’s eyes widened. The covert tone of Cornelius’s voice made him step to the side of the little white building, where he wouldn’t be visible through the glass of the door.

  “If tomorrow won’t work, then come on Tuesday,” Cornelius continued impatiently. “There are plenty of other drivers I can call if you can’t—won’t—accommodate me.”

  Drew held his breath, sensing he’d better be on his way before Loretta’s dat discovered him eavesdropping. Why did he suspect Cornelius had left the noon meal at the Wagler place so no one would hear him placing this call?

  “Fine. Six o’clock Tuesday morning. There’ll be a nice tip in it for you.”

  When Drew heard the receiver being slammed into its cradle, he dropped the basket beside the shanty and sprinted behind the tall, old lilac bush that grew beside the Riehls’ front porch. He peered through its leafy green branches, waiting for Loretta’s burly dat to come out. Cornelius would demand an explanation if he suspected Drew had overheard his conversation, so before the other man left the shanty, D
rew hurried along the side of the Riehl house.

  The basement windows were open so air could circulate through the screens, and on an impulse he stooped to peer inside. Recalling that Loretta had told him Cornelius’s clock shop was on the front side of the house, Drew located the workshop’s closed door. He also noticed the shelves of jarred vegetables along one wall and the large open area that could accommodate the district’s pew benches when the Riehls hosted a church service.

  He felt sneaky and dishonest, yet something about Cornelius’s terse phone conversation—and the fact that his workshop door was closed in such hot weather—raised red flags in his mind. As Drew quickly made his way across the Riehls’ backyard, heading toward the row of trees at their property line, he wavered about what to do next. Was it really any of his business, how Loretta’s dat operated—how often he left town? Surely Bishop Tom, along with Preachers Ben and Henry, felt confident about Cornelius’s ability to manage the responsibilities he’d assumed when he’d moved here last spring and replaced Reuben Riehl as the district’s deacon. And yet . . .

  If you don’t say something, who will? Loretta and her sisters might not know what he’s up to—and wouldn’t dare speak up, even if they suspected something was amiss.

  Drew jogged across the parking lot behind the Grill N Skillet. Down the road a ways, buggies still lined the Waglers’ lane. Men sat in lawn chairs in the shade while kids laughed and played in the yard. He should probably confer with the bishop or Ben, yet Drew sensed that the other men would see his concerned expression and want to be in on his conversation with the church’s leaders.

  What if your assumptions are all wrong? What if you stir up a hornet’s nest of suspicion when Cornelius is just going about his clock business?

  Drew paused behind Zook’s Market to catch his breath and consider his options. When he saw Nora’s black van parked behind the big white house on the hill, he knew what he should do. A few minutes later he was knocking on the Hooleys’ front door, hoping Luke and Nora could lend some perspective to his doubts about Loretta’s dat.

  * * *

  When Nora heard someone pounding on the door, she lowered the recliner’s footrest and went to answer it. Luke was indulging in a Sunday afternoon nap, stretched out on the couch with his head on a cushion and his bare feet dangling over the other end, so he hadn’t heard the knock. As she padded across the cool hardwood floor, she checked the position of the small, circular kapp that covered her bun, in case someone from the Mennonite church was stopping by for an unexpected visit. It seemed that while she’d been reading the paper, she might’ve nodded off for a bit, too.

  The sight of Drew brought her fully awake. Nora smiled, opening the door. “What’s on your mind, young man?” she teased. “I thought you’d be keeping Loretta company on this fine afternoon.”

  Was that a hint of regret flickering across his lips? As Drew stepped inside, he cleared his throat. “I was with Loretta earlier, jah,” he replied. “But I’ve heard something that bothers me, and I hope you and Luke can help me make sense of it.”

  Nora’s eyes widened. Had Will been giving Loretta a hard time again, even after he’d talked with Luke and visited the counselor Andy Leitner had recommended? “Let me give Luke a nudge,” she said as she preceded Drew into the front room, picking up loose newspapers as she went. “We get a little lazy after we come home from church.”

  With a folded section of the paper, Nora tickled her snoozing husband’s nose. “We’ve got company,” she announced loudly. “I’ll go pour us some iced tea while you finish waking up.”

  Luke’s eyes flew open, and when he saw Drew standing behind her, he swung his feet down and sat up.

  Nora went to the kitchen and quickly arranged some store-bought cookies on a plate before setting glasses and a pitcher of tea on a tray. It seemed awfully soon for Drew to be asking their advice about taking his courtship of Loretta a step further—and Drew’s expression hadn’t suggested that he was on such a happy, hopeful mission, anyway. When she returned to the front room, the men were discussing the work Luke and Will had been doing to prepare for planting the vineyard next spring.

  “Ira and I have decided to raise table grapes,” Luke was saying. He flashed her a smile, completely unaware that his hair was standing on end in the back. “Lots of small, private vineyards and wine labels have sprung up in central Missouri over the past fifteen years, and small-time guys like us can’t compete with them—so we’ll offer a couple of varieties folks can either eat or use to make juice and jelly.”

  “Jah, we wouldn’t want our neighbors to start making wine,” Nora said lightly. “That would be leading them into temptation.” She set her tray on the coffee table and poured a glass of tea for Drew.

  When he accepted the glass, his expression waxed pensive. “I’m really intrigued about your new venture, Luke. You seem to succeed with every project you undertake.” He took a long drink of his tea. “I, um, heard something a few minutes ago that makes me wonder what Cornelius is up to, however, and I’d like you to keep this to yourselves. I may be way off base, and I don’t want folks getting the wrong idea.”

  Nora’s eyes widened. “What did you hear?” she asked as she handed Luke his tea. “I have a few suspicions about him myself. He seems to make a lot of trips to Kansas City to buy clock parts. And frankly, the two clocks he sent over with the girls yesterday aren’t nearly as nice as the ones he was consigning at first. They’re obviously mass-produced and cheap.”

  Drew nodded. “After I walked Loretta home, I was going to check my phone messages,” he began. “The shanty window was open, and Cornelius was talking to a driver, pretty much demanding that he show up at six tomorrow morning—and not honk his horn. When all was said and done, he agreed to go on Tuesday morning instead, but—well, it just seemed odd.”

  “How was it odd?” Luke asked. He stirred sugar into his tea, noisily clinking the sides of his glass with his spoon. “I may have a few details to add as we go along.”

  Drew shook his head slowly. “He sounded extremely pushy with the guy he was talking to—not that his tone was any different from the way he talks to Loretta and Rosalyn,” he added with a sigh. “I don’t know. I can recall seeing him from my apartment really early in the morning at least a couple of times over the past month. He’s been waiting in front of the house with a big case of some sort. An English guy in an old green van picks him up, and he’s gone all day.”

  “We could assume that the case is where he puts the clock parts he buys,” Luke said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  “Or we can assume that Cornelius is doing something totally unrelated to his clock business,” Nora put in, thinking back. “A few months ago I found an old invoice in a clock he consigned. When I called the elderly lady whose name was on it, she told me that after Cornelius had seen her husband’s obituary, he’d tried the pass the clock off as a surprise gift her husband had ordered right before he’d died. And of course he’d expected the lady to pay for it—but she’d realized it was a scam and sent him packing.”

  Drew frowned. “Why would a clockmaker take advantage of a widow that way? He’s the only fellow for miles around who works on clocks, so he’s surely making a gut income without cheating people.”

  “Just between you, us, and the coffee table,” Luke said as he knocked on the wood, “I once overheard a conversation between Bishop Tom and Ben about the way Cornelius has placed his workbench against the doorway where . . . well, it’s where the district’s emergency funds are kept,” he added cautiously. “They were concerned about how to access that money if Cornelius was out of town when they needed some of it. But they were giving him the benefit of the doubt, as far as his being the district’s deacon—the keeper of their funds.”

  Nora’s thoughts spun faster. The more she heard, the more she suspected an unsavory situation. “I grew up as a preacher’s kid here—my dat, Gabe Glick, was a church leader before he retired,” she added for Drew’s benefit. �
�I didn’t know where the church money was kept—very few folks do, because it’s considered a secret bank. Over the years, catching bits of conversation when Bishop Hiram Knepp and Preacher Jesse Lantz and my dat were in charge, I came to the conclusion that the collected offerings and special contributions had added up to a phenomenal amount of money.”

  “I grew up in Lancaster County,” Luke remarked, nodding at Drew, “and now that I’m a businessman, I remain amazed—appalled—that so many Amish folks still have a distrust of English banks. When somebody’s house burns down or a family has sky-high medical bills, the district’s emergency fund covers it—like an unwritten insurance policy for folks who don’t believe in English insurance. And all that money is kept at a church member’s home.”

  “Jah, that’s the way it works where we Detweilers come from, too,” Drew said. “We grew up with the understanding that the district’s money was kept someplace secret that only the church leaders knew about, so the other members wouldn’t be tempted—or able—to dip into it.”

  Luke drained his glass and set it on the table with an emphatic clunk. “I have reason to believe that some districts have hundreds of thousands of dollars—or more—squirreled away to cover unexpected needs. Why would Willow Ridge be any different?”

  Nora bit her lip, uncomfortable with the ideas that were forming in her mind. “So if we believe this district’s money is in the basement of the Riehl home, where Cornelius has his shop—and he’s put his workbench in front of the door where it’s stored—”

  “Then we might have gut reason to be suspicious about all these trips he’s making to Kansas City,” Luke finished her sentence. “I’m not a member of the Amish church, but I don’t like the sound of this. Truth be told, I don’t trust Cornelius any farther than I could throw him. He talks loud, and intimidates his daughters, and I’ve always wondered if he’s hiding something. Now I believe he is.”