There were some things that a man could regret, but he could never undo. Being the reason his brother died topped that list for Levi. But attempting to abandon his family was equally unforgiveable . . . Levi could understand Jonathan’s plight, even if he deeply disagreed with every choice the man had made.
“Regardless, don’t come back here,” Levi said, meeting his gaze meaningfully. “If you do, I’ll handle you myself. No elders. No bishop. And Rosmanda will never know about it.”
Jonathan’s eyes widened slightly at the threat, and he didn’t answer. Instead, he headed toward the glass door where new passengers were waiting to board the bus. An older Amish couple was waiting with several Englishers, and when the last of the arriving passengers had vacated the bus, the others started to get on board. Jonathan didn’t look back. He stepped up into the bus behind a couple of Englisher girls, his head down, his hat firmly in place.
Levi had meant it—he’d pummel this man if he returned and tried to meddle in Rosmanda’s life again. He’d learned a lot in his drinking days, and a few of those lessons had been in fighting dirty. It wouldn’t be Christianly or Amish, but it would get the job done.
The bus doors closed, and the brakes hissed again as the big vehicle started to move. Good. Job done. He pressed his arm against his aching side. Now Levi would go back to the diner and pick up Rosmanda. He’d take her home. She deserved some rest.
But as for Levi, he had a horse to break, bruises or not. Call it competition with the brother he’d never have the chance to compete with again . . . Call it evening the score with the brother who’d taken everything from him . . . Call it trying to prove himself to a woman who’d never see him as good enough . . . but that horse would pull a plow.
Chapter Fifteen
Rosmanda sat at the table, her newly finished quilt spread out over the tabletop, over the backs of the chairs and hung suspended before her. It was a beautiful quilt, even if she did say it herself. The rich reds, maroons, oranges, and yellows all blended together in a mosaic that truly did resemble the leaves of a tree in the fall.
She ran her fingers over a stray thread and tugged it free. This quilt had been the recipient of so many emotions, so many evenings and quiet moments stolen away from other chores in order to add a few more patches. She’d promised Ketura that she’d bring it by when it was done, and now it was.
Miriam stood at the sink washing breakfast dishes, and she looked over her shoulder.
“It’s a gorgeous quilt. It should sell for a lot, Ketura says.”
“I hope.”
The money would be useful, but the quilt would be very difficult to part with it. Wayne was in these stitches, her daughters, even Levi now. So much of herself had gone into this quilt that simply selling it and banking on the Englisher sentimentality when it came to a story behind a craft felt cheap, somehow.
She turned over an edge, looking at her neat stitches, and when Susanna crawled over from the blanket and grabbed a handful, Rosmanda pried those chubby fingers free.
“Don’t touch, sweetie,” Rosmanda said, scooping her daughter up and planting her on her hip.
“Let me help,” Miriam said, pulling her hands from the water and drying them on a towel. “Come to Mammi, Susanna—”
Rosmanda handed her daughter to Miriam with a smile. “Thank you.”
“You’ll bring it to Ketura today, then?” Miriam asked.
“I suppose I should.” It was what she’d promised, wasn’t it? “Or maybe tomorrow.”
“Are you changing your mind?” Miriam paused.
Tears misted Rosmanda’s eyes. Today, it all seemed so muddled—all the grief rather close to the surface. “I don’t know . . .”
“We have to carry on,” Miriam said. “It’s all we can do. You’ll make another quilt to replace this one. There will be more.”
More husbands. More quilts. More heartbreak. More trials. There was always more waiting around the bend. For some girls who started out right, they could look for more blessings, but Rosmanda feared she’d always be looking over one shoulder, waiting for someone to find out her secrets.
Footsteps sounded on the steps outside, and the side door pushed open, a swirl of chilly air rushing inside. Rosmanda looked up to see Levi come in. His dark gaze met hers and he held up a bundle of mail—some flyers and a white envelope.
“There’s some mail,” he said.
“Would you grab it, Rosmanda?” Miriam asked. “I’ve got to get back to the dishes.”
Miriam put Susanna back on the blanket next to her sister, and Rosmanda crossed the room. She took the mail, but Levi didn’t let go right away, and she looked up at him, startled.
“So the quilt is done?” he asked quietly.
“Yah.” She glanced over her shoulder at the quilt that lay over the table.
“It looks good,” he said.
“I think so, too . . .” She sighed, then tried to shake it off. There would be more of everything, as her mother-in-law had said. “I’ll have to bring it to Ketura later.”
“Do you want me to drive you?”
There was something in Levi’s gaze—something warm, soft, and inviting. She knew what he was asking—if they could be alone for a little while on that ride to Josiah and Anna’s house. It was tempting, but she had to stop this. Her in-laws were sheltering her, and she was not only repaying them badly by fooling around with their son, but she was proving some very ugly rumors to be not so unfounded, after all.
Whatever she felt for Levi had no future, and honest or not, it wasn’t right. This had to stop.
“No, I’ll drive myself if your parents can spare the buggy for a couple of hours,” Rosmanda said, and she gave a tight smile.
Levi nodded. He released the mail and she pulled it against her stomach.
“Did I offend you earlier?” he asked softly.
“No,” she said. “I’m just doing my best to behave better.”
Levi nodded, then sighed. “I should probably do that, too.”
“You should. If nothing else, Jonathan is an excellent reality check, wouldn’t you say?”
“Jonathan is an idiot, a liar and a cheat,” Levi retorted. “And he’s also a desperately unhappy man.”
But something in Levi’s gaze has cooled, too. He saw it—the excuses that Jonathan used to defend bad behavior. Feelings didn’t matter half so much as propriety, and everyone thought their emotional turmoil was so much more deserving of bad behavior than anyone else’s.
“Yah . . . Okay, well. I’ll hitch you up if you need,” he said.
“Thank you, Levi.” She wanted to say more—longed to say more—but she wouldn’t. Levi was not the proper, pious husband for her, and she had to stop caving in to her desires.
Levi pressed his lips together and turned and headed back outside, looking over his shoulder only once before she shut the door behind him. What was it about Levi that tugged at her heart like that? He was dangerous—and she’d known that from the start. But the chemistry that sparked between them was almost addictive.
She looked down at the mail in her hand and saw that the only letter in the bundle that lay on top was addressed to her. Rosmanda tossed the flyers onto the table and noted the Indiana return address before she tore open the envelope, but before she could pull out the letter, she spotted Hannah crawling toward the kitchen stove.
“Hannah,” Rosmanda said, hurrying across the kitchen and scooping up her daughter before she got to the stove. “No. Hot.”
Miriam looked back and shook her head. “They’re getting more active, aren’t they? It isn’t too early for a slap on the fingers, you know.”
Rosmanda smiled wanly. It felt too early for that. What these girls needed was a present mother—not a woman rushing about to finish quilts, dashing off to chase away men who wanted too much from her . . .
Susanna crawled in the other direction, stopping at a kitchen chair and pulling herself up to standing next to it. Rosmanda kept Hannah on her hip as s
he shook out the page from inside the envelope, but she walked in Susanna’s direction, just to keep her corralled. The letter was written in her mother’s neat hand:
Dearest Rosie,
Your daet and I have been talking, and we think you should come home.
Rosmanda stilled, her attention sharpening and clatter from the dishes seeming to melt away behind her. The letter went on to outline Mamm’s reasons for this invitation, but as Rosmanda’s gaze flowed over the words, she felt like she could hear her mamm talking next to her again, and a homesickness so strong that it brought tears to her eyes rose up inside of her.
“Are you all right?” Miriam asked, her voice piercing through the fog.
“It’s a letter from my mamm,” Rosmanda said.
“Has something happened at home?” Miriam pulled her hands out of the water and dried them off.
“No, nothing’s happened,” Rosmanda said, shaking her head, and she put a foot out to stop Susanna from reaching for the quilt that hung down from the sides of the table. “But my parents want me to come home again.”
“All the way to Indiana? Why?”
“Because . . . of everything that’s been happening. Jonathan still wasn’t back when Mamm wrote this, and she worried that people would think he was with me and it would ruin my reputation beyond any repair. But if I lived with my parents, there would be no question of where I was, and my father’s word, as the bishop, would end the gossip.”
“But Jonathan’s on his way back now to Morinville—” Miriam said. “He’s probably there already. Levi saw him onto the bus yesterday, didn’t he?”
Rosmanda didn’t answer. Her mother’s invitation, a hopeful, heartbroken one, had wrapped its way around her heart. Rosie, dear girl, come home. I miss you. We all do. We can help you with your baby girls—you’d be home with us. It would be more comfortable with your daet and me, wouldn’t it? I think having some babies in the house would be good for your daet these days. His health hasn’t been good....
And Rosmanda did miss home so much these days that it almost hurt. She missed her daet’s eyes when he smiled. She missed her mamm’s shoofly pie—even Miriam couldn’t match it. She missed her sister Sadie and her nieces and nephews . . . She missed her old bedroom, the dresser that once belonged to her grandmother, the old clock on the mantel in the sitting room that kept stopping and having to be reset by Daet’s wristwatch, and that one broken floorboard in the mudroom . . . It was funny the details that melted together and grew bittersweet with distance.
“They’re afraid for your reputation, then?” Miriam asked.
“A little,” Rosmanda replied, looking up. “But they’re my parents. If I should be a burden on anyone, it should be them.”
“Do they have a potential husband for you there?” Miriam asked.
“Not that they’ve mentioned.”
Miriam shrugged sadly. “You miss your family, don’t you?”
“Desperately.” Rosmanda blinked back tears. “If the rumors have reached me here, staying won’t help me.”
“Sometimes it’s better to face it,” Miriam said. “If you’re away, you’re in their imaginations. If you’re there—they have to look you in the face.”
Perhaps her mother-in-law was right. Maybe enough time had passed, and Rosmanda’s presence could start to heal the rumors and ugliness again. Jonathan had obviously proven himself lacking, and if she could be a good widow—honest, hardworking, and proper—maybe public opinion would start to shift again.
“Is there hope for finding me a marriage here?” Rosmanda asked.
“I don’t know . . .” Miriam shook her head. “People have started to talk . . .”
Rosmanda nodded quickly.
“You are not being chased out of our home, Rosmanda,” Miriam added.
“I don’t think that for a minute,” Rosmanda said quickly. “You’ve been nothing but good to me. And two babies do cost a lot to raise . . . You’ve done more than your duty by me.”
“It isn’t about money, Rosmanda.” Miriam’s voice sounded choked. “You have to think about your own future, and what we can reasonably do for you here.”
She had to think about whose problem she should be if she didn’t marry again, either. She wasn’t Stephen and Miriam’s problem for the long term. They’d done well by her after Wayne’s death, but she wasn’t their daughter, and her mistakes predated her time with them. Hannah squirmed in Rosmanda’s arms, and she looked down at her baby girl.
On the ground, Susanna reached for the quilt and managed to grab a handful, tugging it down on top of herself on the floor before Rosmanda could catch it.
“Oh, Susanna—” Rosmanda said, grabbing the quilt in one hand to lift it off the baby, and Miriam hurried forward to scoop Susanna up, whose little mouth had opened in a wail. They stood there facing each other, a baby in each of their arms. Miriam was jiggling Susanna as her cries subsided, and Hannah reached up to tug at a loose tendril of Rosmanda’s hair.
Was this it, then? Would she leave the Lapp farm and go back to her family with her little girls?
“It’s a beautiful quilt,” Miriam said, reaching out to finger the edge. “You’re very skilled, Rosmanda. You’ll find a way.”
“Yah . . .” Was that a good-bye? Rosmanda wasn’t sure. “I really should bring this quilt to Ketura, though. I can drive myself, if you’d watch the girls.”
Miriam nodded. “I’m always happy to watch my granddaughters. We’ll be fine together. You go ahead and take the buggy. And give Ketura our love.”
It was like everything had gone back to normal again, but it hadn’t. A watershed moment had happened in this kitchen . . . something had changed. Whatever Rosmanda chose, her past regrets were going to haunt her. Was it even possible to go back to Morinville again as her parents hoped? Was it possible to find a good, sober man now that the rumors had reached her here in Abundance? She had no idea. All she knew was that she no longer felt safe. Her cautious new beginning hadn’t protected her, after all.
* * *
Levi adjusted the bridle on Donkey—he’d had to extend some of the straps to fit the large horse, but it was worth the extra work. Donkey, for the first time in his life, was hitched to a hay wagon. Not a plow yet. He only meant to get the horse used to some rigging. Levi stood back, surveying his work in satisfaction.
“You did good, Donkey,” Levi said, running a hand down the horse’s huge shoulder.
Hitched up! Levi wasn’t sure that he’d attempt to drive him today, but hitching up was a huge feat, considering that no one had been able to get near this beast in the past.
The stallion was too big to work as a pair—none of the other horses could match him for size and strength. But he didn’t need the help. He could pull this wagon alone—even piled high with hay. He was all muscle, sinew, and bad attitude. He could do a whole lot more than he thought. Sometimes a horse just had to be shown what he was capable of.
Levi heard a rustle behind him, and he turned. Rosmanda stood in empty space next to the sliding barn door. A shawl was pulled around her shoulders, a plastic-covered bundle in her arms, but her gaze was fixed on Donkey in open shock. Her mouth opened slightly, and she blinked.
“Hi,” Levi said, turning back to Donkey again. At least she’d come in quietly this time.
“He’s hitched,” she breathed.
“Yah. I think he felt bad for kicking me.” At least it seemed that way to him. Donkey had been gentle and accommodating this time. Not so much as a nip.
“I don’t believe it . . .” She shook her head. “That horse was impossible.”
Obviously not, though, if Levi had managed to get him hitched, and he sensed the compliment in her tone. Wayne hadn’t been able to break this horse. Neither had the previous owners. Maybe it took a fellow rogue to gain this beast’s trust. And maybe it took being kicked in the ribs to bond with the stallion. There were stranger ways to go about things.
“I said I could do it,” Levi said.
“Are you heading out to see Ketura?” Levi asked.
She nodded. “I can hitch up the horses myself—”
“Just let me get Donkey unhitched and give him a treat,” Levi said. “Then I’ll take care of you.”
“You aren’t going to drive him a little bit?” Rosmanda asked.
“Nope. One step at a time. It’s about trust. He’s got to know I’m as good as my word.”
“Hey, buddy . . .” Levi murmured as he reached for the buckles and began loosening the straps. “You did really good today. I appreciate it. I’ve got carrots for you, too.”
It didn’t take him too long to get the horse unhitched, and he left the wagon where it was—he’d deal with it after he finished hitching up the buggy for Rosmanda. She was standing by the open door again, but the plastic-covered package was gone now. In the buggy already, probably. He gave Donkey a few carrots, praised him a bit more, and then headed back into the buggy barn, feeling satisfied with himself.
“Wayne tried with him,” Rosmanda said.
“Yah. I know. He gave up, too.”
His brother had told him about this horse—his hopes for it, and then his disappointment in it. This horse—the one creature his brother hadn’t managed to charm.
“So . . . what was this, then? Competition?”
Levi met her gaze for a moment, then shrugged. “It might have started out that way, but it turned into something more.”
“Like what?”
“Like proving to myself that I was more than the loser everyone thought I was.”
She dropped her gaze.
“Proving it to you . . .” he added after a beat of silence.
“I wasn’t being fair to you, though,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t quite so simple.”
“Nothing ever is,” he agreed, and he took the bridles down from their hooks on the wall, then headed toward the stalls where two quarter horses waited, munching on oats.
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