“Ya.” Ariana motioned to a chair. “Give it your best shot. Make my day.” She winked at him before turning to Frieda. “What’s your favorite thing about your life in Kentucky of late?”
Abram sat in the theater at Shippensburg University, lights dim as he watched the stage.
The lyrics were about a person’s changing and moving on and yet still depending on who she used to be. He listened to the pleasant voice of the actress, watching her sing and emote while holding the hands of her on-stage father.
Abram, Cilla, Ariana, and Jax had all been told by Skylar that they were going to the play Beauty and the Beast, performed by a local theater group. Skylar had put her hands on her hips. “It’s not a request. You’ve not joined the church yet, and you have to do it.” Apparently this was the musical theater version of one of Skylar’s favorite movies as a child.
Cilla leaned in close. “It’s not our usual date, but this is pretty fun, ya?” she whispered.
Abram nodded and slid his hand into hers. She leaned against his shoulder and squeezed his hand.
Abram squeezed back and bent down to kiss her forehead. “Definitely. We won’t be attending plays if we go through instruction this spring and join the church.”
The unspoken part was their intention to marry, but that wasn’t official. He’d not directly asked, but they’d talked in general terms. Before he asked, he needed to tell her something, and the thought of it caused another rush of nervousness to hit his stomach. How would he word it? Would his conditions be too much for her? They’d been dating for eight months, and he didn’t want to lose her.
“I don’t mind.” Cilla snuggled into his arm.
Ignoring the anxiety of a conversation yet to come, Abram let the pleasant melodies from the singer and the accompanying instruments wash over him, and he fully enjoyed the moment.
He cherished his time with Cilla throughout the rest of the show, although parts of the play seemed rather silly to him. After the musical was over, the audience, including their group, stood up to clap. Skylar had told him that standing and applauding indicated a job well done to the actors, musicians, sound crew, and director.
Following the other theatergoers, they filed out of the row of seats into the loud, echoing lobby.
“Aren’t you glad you all came?” Skylar asked over the dull roar of voices, her face beaming. “Wasn’t it so, so good?”
Jax put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “I’m not sure we can appreciate it as much as you, but, yes, it was a lot of fun. Certainly a lot better than some of the mandatory concerts you’ve dragged me to.” He shuddered.
Skylar laughed. “He’s still sore that I made him go to an atonal twentieth-century art music concert a few weeks back. Even I have to admit that pushed the limits of my ear, but I have to attend at least fifteen recitals or concerts per year for my college.”
“It was the musical equivalent of a kid coloring on the wall with a crayon.” Jax raised an eyebrow at Skylar.
“Come on, if it’s intentionally dissonant, that’s different than playing a wrong note.”
“You catching any of this, Ari?” Abram asked.
She chuckled. “Not very much.” She had her phone in hand, texting. “During intermission I called an Uber driver, and she’s here. So I’m going to head back to Berta’s. I’ve hardly had time to say hello to her all week, and I live there.” She shook her head, looking dismayed by how little time she’d had with Berta the past several days. “Thanks for the invite and the ticket, Skylar. All you lovebirds enjoy the rest of your evening.”
They waved and watched as she exited. Last October Ariana and Skylar were backed into corners, both having to leave the home they grew up in and spend time with biological parents they’d never met. Other than God, who was the same yesterday, today, and forever, Abram couldn’t think of one thing in the Brenneman lives that resembled what life had been like just one year ago.
Skylar was happy, and everything about her life radiated. Ariana seemed to be doing really well, but she wasn’t interested in dating yet. It couldn’t be easy to be the fifth wheel on their double dates, but when asked, she went, and they all had a good time. She and Skylar sharpened their wit on each other, and at least once or twice a month their stepsister, Cameron, joined them, which made for lots of laughs. On the weekends when Cameron stayed over, she would stay with Ariana at Berta’s place or with Skylar in the loft. If there were Amish who disagreed with those arrangements, they were keeping it to themselves.
“Care for a walk, Cilla?” He hoped she would be receptive to what he needed to tell her.
“Sure, then maybe a piece of cake at the diner?”
“Ooh, traitors,” Skylar teased with a wink.
“You”—Cilla pointed at Skylar—“just think of it as studying the competition.”
Skylar laughed. “Fine. Be that way.”
“Thanks for the outing, Skylar. We’ll call for an Uber driver too when we’re ready to go home. See you tomorrow morning before daylight. See you much later in the day, Jax.” Waving to Skylar and Jax, Abram took Cilla’s hand and walked out the front door. The October evening was mild and smelled delicious. The air held a pleasant briskness that offset the still-warm Indian summer days.
Nervousness skittered through his stomach. “I’m glad we went to the play tonight.”
“Me too.” Cilla put on her sweater. Leaves crackled under their feet as they walked toward downtown Shippensburg. The rest of the crowd either got into cars or fell farther behind, so finally they could talk privately.
“Sometimes life requires parting ways with the things we dreamed would happen when we grew up.”
Cilla nodded. “Like in the play we just watched. Belle had to adjust to living at the castle instead of going on the far-off adventure she thought she would have. But she still ended up having an adventure.”
“Ya.”
“Something’s on your mind, isn’t it, Abram?”
He took a deep breath. “Our conversations have sort of eased into talking about marriage, but we’ve never really discussed what that would need to look like.”
Cilla’s brows knit together. “This sounds a little worrisome.”
“Ya, it is. See, Cilla, I…I have a provision I need you to agree to before we can seriously plan to marry.” He was right to bring this up now, wasn’t he, if they were going to begin instruction this spring?
“Abram, just tell me. We’ll work it out.” She slowed her pace and gazed up at him. “Won’t we?”
“That’s my hope.”
“Enough suspense, okay? Please just say it already.”
“I don’t think we should have children.” He forced the words out quickly, and they sounded wrong as soon as they left his lips. “I…I know we shouldn’t have children.”
Cilla dropped his hand and recoiled. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“No, I phrased that badly. I think we should have as many children as God allows us to, but I don’t think you should carry them.”
“Oh.” She looked at the ground.
He took her hand again and cupped her face with his other hand. “You are my beautiful, kind, compassionate girlfriend. I want us to marry. You’ll be an amazing mother and raise our children in the most loving way possible. But your health is too precious for me to risk. You are too precious for me to risk.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Things have been going so well that sometimes I forget about the CF, even if just for a few hours. And then it’s back to steal the joy other people take for granted.”
“I’m so sorry. I wish I could take away that burden.”
“But plenty of people with CF do have their own children.”
“I know, but”—Abram shook his head, hating to tell her no on this when he would give so much to make things different—“they do so at great risk. Many things can go wrong during pregnancy, especially if the mother has CF. You would be prone to lung infections and could easily develop pregnancy-relat
ed diabetes, which could turn chronic. Maintaining adequate nutrition would be a struggle.”
He’d had Skylar and Ariana help him research this extensively online over the past few months. He had been dreading bringing it up with Cilla, but it was time.
“My doctor said as much too.”
“Fertility can easily be an issue with CF patients, and I don’t want us on that roller coaster either. And if those aren’t enough reasons, I could be a carrier too. The Amish have a much higher rate of carrying a CF gene than the general population. If I’m a carrier, then each child would have a fifty percent chance of being born with CF, and the condition could be a much more severe version than yours.”
“Those are a lot of ifs, Abram.” She pulled away from him. “Having children is a risk, but everything in life is a risk. Think of what we could gain by trying.”
“I know,” he whispered. “I’ve wrestled with this issue and prayed about it for months. I really feel that God is trying to tell us to take another path. That our children are out there, maybe not born yet, but they are out there and waiting for us to find them. Would you love a child any less if he or she wasn’t blood related to us?”
“No.” She turned and started walking again. “Of course I wouldn’t love an adopted child any less.”
“Me either.” He grabbed her hand. “Look at me, Cilla.” He tried to speak in the gentlest voice he could. She turned her face back to him, and he hated to see more tears in her eyes. “I promise, if we get married, I will always make sure you have the best doctors and the best medicines, and I’ll be the best spouse I possibly can. I will give you the very best life I know how, throughout all the stages, including raising children. But, please, I have to ask you to do this for me. Let me have surgery before we marry so I never have to worry about losing you because you accidentally became pregnant. I couldn’t bear watching your health decline or losing you.”
“All my secret dreams as a child…although I never thought I’d get them. But I dreamed of finding a husband, then having a child that looked like both of us…To permanently give that up is a lot.”
“I know. I wish I could change it for you, but life isn’t made of dreams. It’s made of decisions. Sometimes really hard decisions.” He rubbed her hand with his thumb. “You don’t have to decide right now. You can take some time. I understand.”
“But if I don’t agree, you won’t marry me?”
A small group of people was coming up behind them. “Let’s keep walking and get you that cake.”
She pulled away, folded her arms, and stepped aside. They let the group pass them.
“You’re willing for us not to marry over this?”
“That’s not what I want, Cilla. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I’m not willing to shorten the length of that time for biological babies. If you died, my desire to have you back would equal any feelings you have about this. Look at my wild family. We are proof of great love, no matter how we are connected.”
She was keeping so much distance a bicycler could’ve ridden between them. The walk from the campus to the diner was about half a mile, and he was fairly sure she’d walk the rest of it in silence. He wouldn’t try to convince her further. The decision was hers. There were Amish men who would jump at the chance to marry her and have children with her. It was hard to think about her breaking up with him and finding someone else, but he’d watched Ariana walk that path, and she was surviving just fine. Ariana saw that Rudy would never be at peace with her activist thinking. And Abram would never be at peace with Cilla taking the chance that she’d do serious, long-term damage to her body in order to carry a baby, let alone more than one.
All Abram could do now was give her time to decide.
Quill was on the floor in a bedroom-turned-playroom, enjoying time with his nieces and nephews. Lexi lay nearby, her head on her paws as she dozed. His Mamm’s home smelled and sounded like Christmas Eve—the best Christmas Eve they’d had as a family in nearly two decades. Dan, the eldest, had left home for the Englisch world almost eighteen years ago, and since he couldn’t return for visits, that was the beginning of Christmases starting to feel less full. But today felt like a miracle—Mamm’s five sons, four daughters-in-law, Frieda, and eight grandchildren were here. Boldly. Loudly. Here. Oh, and Mamm had another grandchild due mid-January, a boy, and this time she would be there to hold the newborn on the day of its birth.
Quill passed a truck to his oldest nephew. “You guys continue without me.”
“Noooo.” The moans were pitiful.
“Yeeeees.” He winked at ten-year-old Logan and put his hand on seven-year-old Kylie Peyton’s head. “You can do it.” He fisted his hands, showing enthusiasm as if cheering for them.
Lexi raised her head.
“You stay too.”
She stretched and moaned slightly before she rested her head on the floor again, looking content to stay put. Two-and-a-half-year-old Gavin ran to him. “Picky up. I go. I go.”
“Okay, buddy.” He picked him up and then made a circle with his hand toward the others. “You stay and play. Your parents are busy getting ready for the Christmas Eve feast.”
“Mammi Bertie says we each get to open one gift tonight after dinner.” Eight-year-old Jenna’s eyes radiated excitement, and her younger brother, Ethan, stared at Quill, clearly hoping for confirmation.
“That’s right. One gift each. That’s like a hundred gifts, right?”
The four oldest children laughed at his joke, and the younger ones laughed and squealed because the older ones did. Well, not Gavin. He was tenderhearted and whip smart, but he was the serious child of the group. He watched and listened when the others were rowdy.
Quill turned to him. “You ready?”
Gavin pointed at the playroom door. “We go.”
Quill walked down the long hall, thinking of the hundreds of times he’d slipped in through a window and padded down this ghostly quiet, dimly lit passageway. But tonight the hall was lit with kerosene pole lamps at each end. Voices rumbled through the place, a half-dozen conversations taking place at once. The Christmas Eve bustle in his Mamm’s house hadn’t ever been this busy, even when all five boys were living at home.
Quill stopped by the kitchen and spoke with his family.
Regina, Gavin’s mom, reached for him. “I bet you’re hungry, aren’t you?”
Gavin grabbed hold of Quill’s shirt, clinging tightly. “No! Stay Kill. Stay Kill.”
Regina laughed. “Fine. Stay with Quill.”
“Otay. I eat.” He reached for his mom.
Quill gently tousled the boy’s hair. The need to be able to say no began young. Testing the waters of having power over oneself was important. Quill saw that more clearly now than ever before. It was important from the start for little ones to feel a sense of control over their lives and for adults to pick their battles wisely, neither giving in too much nor demanding their way too often. Would he be a dad one day to put into practice the many things he’d learned as the uncle of eight? He hoped so, but it was best not to think about it.
He passed Gavin to his mom, knowing the little boy would return to his lap as soon as he was full. Quill went to the living room. He wasn’t sure where the rest of his brothers were, maybe still fixing the broken shelving in Mamm’s closet, but the room was empty. He drew a deep breath, ready for a few moments of solitude. He sat in an armchair in front of the hearth and watched the fire.
He checked his phone, but it told him what he already knew. He hadn’t received any new messages from Ari since early that morning.
Dan eased into the room. “Can I join you?”
“Sure.” Quill slowly slid his finger down the screen, rereading strings of texts between Ari and him. This is what he did when he wanted to interact with her and it wasn’t possible. Reading her texts was like hearing her voice inside his head.
“Will she stop by tonight?” Dan sat in a matching armchair across from Quill.
Quill
looked up. “Maybe. I hope so. Tomorrow night for sure.”
Mamm walked into the room, carrying two mugs. “Hot chocolate. Ari’s recipe. I think she’s taught me how to get this right.”
“Thanks, Mamm.” Quill lifted a mug from her hands.
Dan took the other. “I was just broaching the subject of Ari. She’s quite the girl. We all love her. I mean, seriously, what’s not to love about her?”
Mamm nodded. “We do. I’m glad she’s relaxed her concerns about the trouble it could cause if she is with us while Quill is here. My favorite times are when everyone comes for a visit and she’s part of our family meals.”
Quill wasn’t fooled. There was a point to this topic. “You two gonna say it or keep dancing around it?”
Dan set his mug on the coffee table and leaned in. “Is there a chance for a future with her?”
Quill had expected this to come up. Actually his family had been very patient. Ariana and he had slowly become closer since Rudy left Summer Grove nine months ago, and now Quill’s family wanted answers.
Quill sipped the drink. “It’s very good, Mamm.”
“Denki. Would you answer your brother?”
He nodded. “We have a definite future together, just probably not one that includes marriage and children.”
They stared at him, and Mamm looked wounded and worried.
“Probably?” she asked.
“Anything is possible. This past year and a half has proven that, but there’s a great divide between us, Mamm. It seems to me that after everything is said and done, she could no more leave the Amish than I could deal with joining them.”
Dan rubbed his hands together, a sign he was thinking hard. “You need a woman you can build a solid relationship and life with.”
The brothers, all of Quill’s sisters-in-law, and Frieda eased into the room and dispersed themselves throughout but focused on this one conversation as if they needed to hear it more than anything else this Christmas Eve.
“Let me get this straight, Dan. You think I can ignore how I feel about Ariana and pursue finding someone I can marry? I’m in love with her. That’s the truth. And I believe she loves me, but I don’t think she’s in love with me. That aside, it’s a wonderful, rock-solid friendship.”
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