Turning off the saw, he paused to look up at her questioningly. In response, she actually met his eyes for the first time in days and managed to give him a small if somewhat melancholy smile.
Something had changed. For the better. There was an apology in that smile, and he wondered what had caused her sudden change of heart. Was she finally starting to understand that he was right in insisting she give up those fancy Englisch things? Perhaps the Lord had managed to convict her where Clayton had not.
Whatever it was, her wordless apology extended to a covered plate he now saw she was holding in her hands. She hadn’t spent the morning away from the shop in order to avoid him, he realized. She’d spent it in the kitchen, baking up something that smelled like heaven. Peeling back the tinfoil, Miriam revealed a batch of blueberry muffins drizzled with lemon icing—his favorite, as she well knew—and then she spoke.
“I guess you could call this an edible apology,” she told him, as if any explanation had been needed.
He took the plate from her with both hands and closed his eyes for just a moment, the kindness of her gesture healing some broken chink deep inside him. When he opened his eyes again, he was about to tell her that he was sorry too, that he loved her and only wanted what was best for her, when he realized she was on the verge of tears.
“What?” he asked, setting the plate aside before rising to stand in front of her. “What’s wrong?” Looking at her now, he realized there was something she needed to tell him.
Blinking away the wetness at her eyes, she shook her head and finally let it out. “I… they’re gone. The things in the trunk. I took care of them. I just wanted you to know that.”
Clayton was stunned. The chore he had been both wanting and dreading to do was done. He was so relieved—and yet he also knew that he should have been the one to complete that task. Suddenly, he felt as though he’d failed her.
“On Sunday afternoon,” she continued, oblivious to his guilt, “when I was coming back from visiting with my parents, I slipped into the barn and went up to the hayloft to see if they were gone yet. I thought you would have removed them already, I really did. I didn’t expect to see them there still.”
“You shouldn’t have had to be the one to take care of that. It should have been me. You shouldn’t have had to climb that ladder again, Miriam. I’m sorry.”
She laughed lightly and wiped another tear away. “You’re too good to be true, Clayton. You really are.”
Again, words failed him.
“Look. I am the one who brought them here. I’m the one who had to get rid of them, not you.”
“Where… how did you… ” Clayton didn’t know how to finish his question without making it sound as if he didn’t trust her that the deed was truly done.
“Remember the covered basket I carried the day I moved in here, the day we were married?”
He nodded. She’d brought it on their final trip over, and it had still been in her arms when he showed her the bedroom they would share.
“I’d been hiding the trinkets in there—at least until I found a better place up in the hayloft.”
Her eyes welled with fresh tears, but she brushed them away in frustration. “So yesterday, when I knew I’d be going to Bird-in-Hand with my mother, I went up to the hayloft with the basket and loaded them all back into it. My mother didn’t think twice when I told her I needed to stop by the thrift store on our way into town to drop off some donations.”
“So now they are gone,” Clayton said.
“So now they are gone,” Miriam replied.
The two of them were quiet for a few moments, each lost in their own thoughts.
“You did the right thing,” he said, hoping she felt the same way and that the awful tension between them would now be history.
Miriam didn’t say anything to that, and suddenly Clayton was assailed with new doubts. If she didn’t think so, then had they really made any progress here at all?
“Are you still angry with me?” Clayton asked, his tone just a little too gruff.
A fresh set of tears glimmered at the corners of her eyes, breaking his heart anew. He never, ever wanted to make her cry.
“I’m sorry, Miriam, I—”
She held up a hand to stop him.
“I was never really angry at you, Clayton. I was just… angry.”
He thought about that and finally gave her a nod. He understood. He forgave her.
“There’s something else I want to tell you,” she added. “I… ” She paused, needing a moment or two to search for the right words to complete her sentence. But then she just shook her head as though they had been impossible to find.
“What? What do you want to tell me?” Clayton leaned forward, desperate to know that it wasn’t that her heart still beat for someone else.
“Miriam?”
When she looked up, he found he could not read what her eyes were communicating. She gestured toward the plate of blueberry muffins. Then she placed a hand on Clayton’s chest, raised up on tiptoe, and gently kissed him on the cheek. A tiny peck. The slightest brush of her lips against his skin.
For several minutes after she turned from him to walk back to the other room, Clayton could only stare at the blueberry muffins, the table, the beech wood, and his empty hands as he replayed that kiss over and over in his mind.
The rest of the day, the two of them were quiet with each other but no longer contentious, as if they just needed to think and heal a little longer before they could get back to who they had been before.
Late that afternoon, about an hour prior to closing, Clayton went into the back room of the shop to find Miriam with her head bent over the desk, writing on lavender-colored stationery. He cleared his throat to let her know he was there, and she startled, quickly placing both hands over the page.
“Yes?” she said, obviously trying not to look as flustered as she felt.
In an instant his stomach lurched. Were there to be more secrets between them already?
“What’s that you’re working on?” he asked in a voice filled not with rancor but disappointment. He might as well learn the truth now and get it over with.
She looked down at her hands and the words they covered. “Just some paperwork.”
He exhaled slowly. “If it’s just paperwork, then why are you hiding it?”
Miriam hesitated for a long moment, and then her shoulders seemed to droop in surrender. “It’s only a letter, Clayton.”
A letter? His pulse surged. To whom? Someone on the outside?
Miriam looked up at Clayton, and she must have seen his thoughts reflected in his features. “It’s not what you think. I’m writing it… to you.”
“Me?” he replied, at a complete loss as to why she would do that. Unless she was considering leaving him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
His next words were slow in coming and stitched together with fear. “What must you put in a letter that you cannot tell me straight out?”
For a second or two she just stared at him. Then understanding filled her eyes. “Do you really not trust me at all anymore?”
“What does the letter say?” he challenged, barely able to squeeze the words from his throat.
“Look. It’s just… Sometimes when I want to tell somebody something complicated, it’s easier to write it down before I utter the words aloud. So I decided to put it on paper first. I’m not even sure if I’m going to give it to you or not. I just need to spell things out this way, for my own sake. Haven’t you ever done that?”
Clayton peered deeply into his wife’s eyes and prayed she was telling him the truth. She seemed completely sincere, though after having learned she was capable of keeping secrets—or at least one very big secret—from him, he was having trouble believing her now. He considered insisting that she let him read the letter for himself just so he could know for sure. But after all that had passed between them in recent days, he feared doing so would endanger the new peace they
had managed to find.
“No, actually, I haven’t,” he replied softly.
She folded the sheets of stationery in half and rose slowly from the desk, slipping the letter into her bag. She took a step toward him and looked him fully in the face, holding his gaze tight on hers before she spoke.
“Don’t give up on me now, Clayton. Not now. Please? I need you to trust me.”
I am trying to trust you. He was afraid to say the words out loud.
“Please?” she said, her eyes pleading. “Please, Clayton?”
When he still said nothing, she reached toward him and placed a hand on his cheek, her fingers just inches from the old wound on his brow. Then, before he had moment to prepare himself for it, Miriam rose up on tiptoe, leaned forward, and pressed her lips to his in an exquisite kiss that was as soft and gentle as it was demanding.
Time seemed to withdraw to some faraway place as he kissed her in return, and in that frozen moment Clayton was aware only of the warmth of her mouth, the tenderness of her touch, and the beating of his own heart.
“Don’t give up on me,” she whispered as she broke away from him. Then she turned and walked from the room, leaving him stunned and speechless and still.
That evening after supper Miriam seemed pensive. The kiss between them continued to linger on Clayton’s lips, as it surely must have on hers. She was kind and attentive to him, but she would not make eye contact. He sensed her growing apprehension and found that it was fueling his own unease. They were like two strangers meeting for the first time, polite but cautious toward each other. His mother was quick to pick up on the tension. Throughout the evening, as the three of them went about their normal routine of relaxation and reading and devotions and prayer, Mamm kept looking from him to Miriam and back again, an expression of concerned curiosity on her face.
As he brushed his teeth before retiring to the bedroom, Clayton realized he already knew what was weighing on Miriam. After the intensely physical moment they had shared that afternoon, she no doubt feared he had expectations for that night.
But he didn’t. He knew she wasn’t ready to give herself completely to him yet. Their kiss had been wonderful—and it had awakened every nerve ending in his body—but it was a far step from there to the shared intimacy he wanted for the two of them. There was also the matter of the encounter they’d had just last week, when Miriam confided that she was embarrassed for him to see her in her current condition. He’d been thinking a great deal about that conversation, because he was certain that no matter how many times he might try to convince her otherwise, she was never going to believe him when he said she was beautiful.
He knew all too well how debilitating it could be to feel unattractive.
He also knew there was something he could do, a step he could take that might help her in this regard. And though he’d rather do anything than what he was about to do, he knew that it had to happen eventually anyway. He placed his toothbrush in its holder and opened the bathroom door.
When he walked into their room, Miriam was sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap. She looked up at him as he stepped inside, and he could see the mix of sadness and resignation in her eyes. She was not happy about the way she felt, he could see that. But she couldn’t pretend she was ready to be his wife in every sense of the word when she wasn’t. When he moved toward her, she dropped her gaze back to her hands.
“Miriam, please don’t worry,” he said, coming to her side and sitting down next to her. “I’m not… I don’t expect anything to happen tonight just because you kissed me today. I told you from the beginning I would wait until you are ready.”
It seemed she had not heard him. He was on the verge of repeating what he’d said when she whispered two words.
“Thank you.”
For a few moments they just sat there, side by side, in silence.
“I don’t feel pretty,” she continued, her gaze still on her lap and the bulging evidence that she was with child. “I don’t feel like a new bride. I feel… ruined. I love this child, but I look down at where my waist used to be and all I see is the evidence of what I did. I can’t… I’m not… ”
“Shhh,” he whispered, putting an arm around her. “It’s okay. I understand. More than you might think.”
“Really?” She looked up at him.
He nodded. “Really.”
Clayton took her hand in his as he sent a quick prayer heavenward, asking the Lord to help Miriam see God’s love for her through what he was about to do.
“Do you remember that time, years ago, when you came out to chat with me at the chicken coop and I told you all about my accident?”
She was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Ya, I do. It was right after we moved here. Your scar made you seem so mysterious and intriguing. I wanted to know where it came from.”
“Do you remember how difficult it was for me to share it with you?”
“Ya. I had to keep pressing you. But you got it out eventually.”
He could hear the smile in her voice, but he couldn’t look at her. Not yet. “It was hard for me because I hadn’t told that story to very many people—not in that much detail. Sharing it with you should have been unpleasant or embarrassing, like it was with everyone else. But instead it was just… natural. I felt I could tell you anything.”
“You can tell me anything,” Miriam replied, and Clayton felt her eyes on him.
He swallowed hard.
“Can I show you anything?” he asked, his voice just above a whisper.
“Of course.” Her tone was tentative but trusting.
With his heart pounding so hard in his chest he felt sure she could hear it, Clayton leaned down and began to roll up the pajama pant on his deformed leg. Even though they had been married for nearly a month, he’d managed to keep his bad leg out of view. Each night before bed, he’d changed his clothes in the bathroom, and despite the heat he’d worn his longest pajamas. Once in the bedroom, he would wait for Miriam to get settled and then he’d twist off the bedside lamp before removing his socks and quickly thrusting his feet under the quilts.
No one had seen his leg in years, not even his parents, as he always kept it covered, kept it hidden, kept it to himself. But now he was exposing the disfigurement to his wife.
He didn’t look at her as he waited for her to respond. She was silent as her eyes took in the crooked bones, the folds of scar tissue, the mangled mess that was his left leg.
“Clayton,” she finally whispered, but he could tell from her tone that she wasn’t really speaking to him. She was speaking to Clayton the little boy, five years old, atop his pretend water tank horse. She whispered his name again and then he felt the warmth of her fingertips at his knees. He turned his head to look at her, and she was gazing at the deformed limb as if it were the most ordinary thing she’d ever seen.
Again, she touched a scar, one lower down this time, then again, gently, the same way she’d touched the scar at his brow so many years ago. She hadn’t been there at the wreck or by his side in the hospital or on the playground at school where the other kids ran and jumped and played and he could only watch from the sidelines. Yet with each scar she touched now the memories, the pain, the losses of the years since ticked away. It was if the clock of his life was being rewound. Her touch was healing his very soul.
Clayton knew she needed the same kind of healing touch on her own life—and that it was not a thing to be rushed.
He lay awake for more than an hour after they finally turned out the light, savoring the remnants of Miriam’s gentle hand on his body, unexpectedly the most intimate and loving encounter he’d ever known.
TWENTY-SIX
The first day of October began cool and crisp, but thanks to September’s lingering temperatures, by noon the clock shop was growing stuffy and Miriam was making her way to the side windows to open them.
On the worktable in front of Clayton was his favorite project of late, the nearly finished cherry mantel c
lock for the Uptons. But he looked up from the clock now and watched his wife slide open the window closest to him. A brisk breeze ruffled her dress and brought with it the scent of fresh-cut hay. Clayton was mesmerized by the sight of her pausing there at the window, one hand on her rounded middle. She was nearly six months into her pregnancy—there was no mistaking it now that she was with child. Miriam stood at the window with her eyes closed as she breathed in the sweet autumn day.
That was when the idea came to him. Ever since their big argument in the hayloft, he had been wondering how to provide her with a place of her own, something more personal than the back room of the clock shop. He hadn’t understood what she’d meant the first time she’d said it, but over the past month he’d come to realize that what she really needed was a private place to go off to be by herself once in a while, away from the demands of daily life. He’d put an end to her visits to the hayloft, and though she still considered the desk area in the back room of the shop to be “hers,” that bit of space was hardly adequate for a personal retreat.
As she relished the gentle breeze wafting in from outside, it had come to him in a flash. A gazebo. He would build her a gazebo.
A place of her own.
It wouldn’t be fancy like the one Brenda Peterson had. There would be no embellishments or curlicues or any other kinds of Englisch-type of adornments. But a small, simple structure with a wood frame and screened walls would allow her to enjoy the outdoors for all but the coldest of months while protected from rain and insects—not to mention people who might otherwise intrude. Best of all, he already owned the piece of land where it would go. Out under the shade tree where the picnic table sat now was the perfect spot to put it.
When his father died, his sisters’ husbands had promised they would be there for Clayton whenever he needed them. While he hadn’t availed himself of that offer to any great degree, this was one time he was going to take them up on it. With six able-bodied men, plus their teenage sons, he knew the project would come together quickly. One afternoon to pour concrete, and one day to build the structure.
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