Perfecting For Love - A Standalone Novel (A Doctors Romance Love Story) (Burbank Brothers, Book #3)

by Naomi Niles

  “We will talk in a few days when you have settled into your new life, Katie,” he said. “The community is behind you; you are not alone,” he said in what he must have considered the most comforting voice he could summon. He was not a soft man, but he seemed fair and good-natured. He was the sort of man who could stand up after a disaster such as this and take charge. Katie told me she knew he would one day be a respected elder and this made her blush all the more.

  Anna, Katie, and I watched as Mark’s buggy disappeared down the road. Katie began to clear dishes in the kitchen but Anna urged her to sit down and rest. “Read to me while I tidy the kitchen,” she urged. Katie complied and pulled a copy of one of Laura Ingalls’ books from the shelf. I also listened as she read aloud, lighting the lantern as the darkness crept in through the eastern windows. Katie said it felt good to have someone her own age to talk to and was glad Anna and I were there. She would be too lonely otherwise.

  Over the next two days, we scrubbed every inch of the house and took down all the curtains, washing the windows and hanging the starched curtains back to cover them. It was a rite of spring housecleaning. Once Katie was better able to walk without the crutches, we set about tidying up the yard. The kitchen garden held herbs and blossoming tomatoes, carrots, and squash. Katie explained there was much work to be done as these needed to be later canned and set into the root cellar for winter’s storage.

  Each morning and night, one or more of the men showed up to take care of the cows, horses, pigs, and chickens. We would offer a plate of dinner in thanks, but the volunteers would simply shake their heads and be on their way. Until such time as Katie’s future was decided, it was not proper that the we not be chaperoned and in the company of unmarried men. It was without question that Katie would soon be married to someone in the community and despite her impressive dowry of farm and livestock, her reputation must be unmarked by even a whisper of scandal.

  At night, we sat by the lamplight and worked on a small lap quilt that would be given to one of the older women in the community. Their stitches were perfectly straight and uniform in length. Mine were pitiable and the girls often quietly pulled them out when I wasn’t looking. They both took great pride in their handiwork. Sometimes Katie would read while Anna stitched and the girls laughed at the humorous adventures portrayed in the book. I was totally bored, but charmed.

  “Do you ever wish to have a job?” Katie asked Anna. “Gwyne is a writer, you know.”

  “It is a job to raise a family,” Anna answered sensibly, sounding very much like her mother’s daughter.

  “Oh, yes, but sometimes I am very glad I am a teacher,” mused Katie. “It allows me to step out of my own life and see how it was in other times, with other people,” she explained.

  “Why would I want to be in another life?” asked the easily pleased Anna. “I have God, my family, the community, the land, and the wind. What more could there be that I need to be happy?”

  Katie was quick to clarify. “Oh, I am happy, too, and would not want to live as the English. But I must admit that sometimes I wonder what it would be like. Perhaps we can learn much of that experience from Gwyne?” she looked toward me.

  “Why did you not go on Rumspringa?” Anna asked with curiosity.

  I knew from my reading that Rumspringa was the once in a lifetime opportunity for an Amish who had reached the age of maturity to venture into the outside world to determine whether they wished to remain in the community.

  Katie stopped her stitching and appeared to think about this. “Daddy needed me here,” she said, “and there seemed little point because I truly am happy,” she added. “Perhaps just a little curious.”

  “I am not curious,” commented Anna, reaching up to lower the flame in the lamp. “Mama sees to that,” she smiled. “Come, let us go to bed now and tomorrow there will be people coming. Tomorrow, sweet Katie, your life is to be decided.”

  Katie’s eyebrows rose. She stood gingerly, free of her crutches but her ankle still tender. Anna was staying in Katie’s room upstairs and Katie and I had taken over the downstairs bedroom. We had packed Jacob’s things and they were stored in the barn, to be given over to the elders.

  Anna paused at the bottom of the stairs and turned around. “Do not worry, Katie,” she said. “Mark will see to it that you are well treated.”

  Katie nodded and when Anna turned to go upstairs, she smiled and blushed. She hoped very much that Anna was right.

  Chapter 33

  I spent the spring and summer with Katie, Anna, and as it was later to be determined, Katie’s new husband, Mark. He was stern but welcoming to me. I appreciated their tolerance of a stranger in their home, but knew it was the safest place I could be.

  It had not been long after my arrival when Katie brought up the baby I was carrying.

  “You knew?”

  “Yes, I knew when I first met you. There is a glow in a woman’s face and you were sick in the mornings. We Amish know when God has bestowed new life upon a woman,” she told me gently. She did not ask about the father and I did not offer. She didn’t understand the ways of the English, but seemed, instead, to accept me as a fellow female in a world of sowing and reaping. “Frau Miller will deliver the babe when it is time. She is the woman who does this for our community,” she explained in a matter-of-fact voice.

  I nodded and said my own prayer that the baby would be healthy and not need hospitalization. I mentioned this at one point and Katie reminded me that there was a hospital nearby in Bremen if it was needed.

  If I thought summers were hot in the city, I had no idea what was in store in the Indiana fields. While the men plowed and cared for the hundreds of acres with plows and teams of horses hitched to wagons, we women tended to the kitchen gardens that would maintain the families through the winter months. It was back-breaking work, most of it done while bent forward. With my growing child, I was little help and instead opted to sit on my fanny between the rows and pick beans and berries into woven baskets.

  I learned to can and to cut up sections of hogs and cows. I tasted the sweet innocence of freshly-churned butter for the first time in my life and vowed never to return to margarine again. I gathered eggs from the hens in the morning and baked them into cakes through the afternoons.

  One afternoon as I sat beneath a tree in the shade writing letters to Dad and Sean, Mark came up to me and asked to talk.

  “I know your ways are not ours. You and the babe are welcomed to remain until harvest, but then you must return to your world,” he said gravely. “We wish to have a babe of our own,” he admitted.

  I nodded and said I didn’t mean to be a burden.

  “That’s not it, Gwyne,” he said. “You have more than earned your keep helping with the house and yard chores. No, this is about us, the Amish. Many of the women have heard your stories and it makes them dissatisfied with their lives as they are. We are a simple people with deeply rooted beliefs in God’s way. It is time that Katie accepts who she is and is content with that. I cannot provide her with more and it’s not fair to her to feel as though she is missing out on something that’s not available to her.”

  “I understand, Mark. The same idea had occurred to me. Please know that I am here because your ways have value in the English world. There are many who would like to live your life. You are to be envied.”

  “I think we understand one another,” he said, tipping his hat and walking away. There was a brief flash of anger as he dismissed me so condescendingly, but then I realized that the men must be so in order for the women to feel safe and protected. My outlook on life had changed dramatically during the time I’d been there. Values were so different here. A hefty paycheck and a shopping trip to Macy’s in the city was comparable to a larder filled with food for the winter here. Not so many miles, but worlds apart.

  * * *

  My pains began in mid-September, in the midst of harvest for the local families. Katie broke off from her canning to take me to the bedroom downstairs
and rang the yard bell until Mark responded from the fields and was sent for Frau Miller. She came an hour later and Mark had already returned to the fields. Babies were the business of women.

  I was not prepared for the pain. What began as an ache in my lower back systematically increased, later reaching around to the front of me. Frau Miller examined me with spread legs and nodded. Apparently that meant I was progressing normally. Katie kept the cloth on my forehead cool and damp and the women took turns holding my hand as I tried not to die with each new contraction. There was no spinal block, no television playing in the corner to divert my attention, and certainly no husband to hold my hand. This was just raw, authentic, primal pain.

  I remember screaming and pleading for the women to make it stop. “Just kill me!” I screamed. I could see their faces as they shook their heads, muttering that I was an English. I guessed that these women bore their pain silently and with stoicism. Not me; I wanted drugs, and lots of them.

  “Are you sure I’m okay?” I screamed at Frau Miller. “Don’t you think I should go to a hospital?”

  “No, no, it is okay. Some of the women have their child while they pick the beans. For some, it is easier to bend at the knees and lower yourself to the ground.”

  “Then let me squat!” I cried out, rolling my bountiful tummy to the side and landing flat-footed on the floor. My water had broken long before but the women scrambled to put a white cloth beneath me, muttering all the while. It was clear that I did not hold their admiration.

  Kaci Lynne O’Reilly was born at roughly eight o’clock on a September night. She had my strawberry-blonde hair and Sean’s vivid, blue eyes. She looked like a tiny angel, particularly when Frau Miller swaddled her in white, cotton blankets the women had donated. They held her to my breast when her tiny cries began and showed me how to change her diapers and burp her. She slept in a basket next to my bed and there was no one but me to tend to her in the night. Having children was a woman’s job, and it was clear that one didn’t hire nannies in this community.

  Many women visited, albeit briefly due to the harvesting. They brought small gifts of baby clothing and blankets, hand-sewn dolls and teething toys made from thickly-wrapped rope. Kaci prospered and as I looked over my tanned and matured body, I felt as though I, too, had grown into a new woman.

  Thus, it was that in mid-October, when Frau Miller announced it time, that Kaci and I packed our few belongings and said goodbye to the Miller family. Katie hugged me, tears on her cheeks, and I promised to write.

  We climbed onto a Greyhound bus at the crossroads and then boarded a plane in Ft. Wayne bound for New York City.

  Neither Dad nor Sean were expecting me, so we took a taxi home. I flipped on the lights in the firehouse and was shocked to see that both apartments had been completed. Apparently Sean had spent most of the summer there. They were beautiful.

  I trudged up the stairs to my own apartment and saw he’d also put closet shelves up for me and had replaced the countertop with one of granite. It gleamed beneath the newly-painted cupboards that were underlit with tiny, LED lights. I emptied a drawer, as I’d seen done in the old movies, and put Kaci in it to sleep until I could order in proper baby furniture. For the time being, I told no one I was home. I needed to rest… and to think.

  Chapter 34

  I took a week to get acclimated. I ordered baby things and new clothes for myself. My post-birth body was fuller and my milk-filled breasts poured out of my old bras. It was a wholly natural and wonderful transition. I also took the time to file my stories and investigative data for the board, so no one at the office bothered me for a while. I suspected Martha was behind this vacation.

  Kaci was a real doll baby. When clothed in more conventional outfits of our region, she did, indeed, look like a tiny angel. Her facial features were tiny and well-proportioned. Every time I looked at her, I saw Sean’s eyes.

  The day came when I was finally ready to introduce her to her grandfather. I knew Dad had returned to work part-time but that weekends were spent at home. I chose Sunday afternoon for our debut.

  I rang Dad’s doorbell and Carla answered. “Gwyne! Oh, honey, you’re back! Warren! Warren! Come see who is here!”

  Dad appeared behind her and reached out to touch my arm and pull me inside. I gently shook his hand loose and bent to pick up the baby carrier where Kaci slept.

  Dad and Carla froze. “Who is that?” Dad asked in a raw voice.

  “This is your granddaughter, Kaci, Dad.” I took a step toward them, the carrier in my hand. He and Carla automatically stood aside as we entered. I sat the carrier down and picked Kaci up out of it. I held her in the crook of my arm, swaddled in a lilac blanket with tiny rows of ruffles.

  “She’s yours?” Dad’s voice was filled with emotion.

  “Yes, and yours,” I said, holding Kaci toward him. Dad stood there for long moments, looking at her.

  “Well, take her, Warren! For heaven’s sake!” Carla burst and took Kaci from me and put her into Dad’s arms.

  There was a look of wonderment on his face. I could see he was pale and completely out of his element. “It’s okay, Dad. She won’t break. Sit down and hold her on your lap.”

  He nodded and for the first time, I saw my dad was speechless. He moved gently and slowly toward the sofa and sat down, holding Kaci against his chest as if she were a stick of dynamite. He didn’t say anything for a long while, but played with her hands and touched her nose. Then, in a moment I shall never forget for my entire life, he lifted her up and kissed her on the cheek.

  Carla sat on the sofa next to him, relishing the change in the man she had come to know so well. She gingerly petting Kaci’s arm. “She’s beautiful, Gwyne,” she said.

  Warren handed Kaci to Carla. “Here, you hold her,” he said and stood up. “Gwyne, I’d like to talk to you out on the patio,” he said, and his voice was not amused.

  I followed him, knowing what was coming. I’d decided to be pre-emptive. “Dad, before you start, I’m not going to tell you who the father is. There is a reason for this and I’m asking you to respect my decision on this. Kaci is my daughter and your granddaughter. I will raise her myself. I’m going to find a nanny to live on the premises in return for an apartment. I will work from home as much as possible and no longer take any assignments out of town. I’ll be fine, she will be fine, and I won’t be asking you for financial help.” I sat down on a lawn chair, convinced that I’d headed off any possible objections.

  “Is it my turn, now?” he asked me, standing before me with his feet widely spaced and his hands on his hips.

  “Sure, go ahead and chew me out.”

  “Does she belong to Bob?”

  “Dad, I won’t budge on this. I have my reasons.”

  “Were you raped?”

  “No.”

  “Did you do this on purpose?”

  “No.”

  “Do you need money?”

  “No.”

  “Will you give your old man a hug?”

  At these words, I stood and the tears streamed down my face as I buried it in his shoulder. “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you, too, daughter,” he echoed, and the world was right again.

  We went back inside and Carla handed me a crying Kaci. “I believe she’s hungry,” she said. “She was sucking on my little finger.”

  I nodded and went back to my old room to nurse her. I imagined the discussion that was going on in the next room. It was okay; I understood there was going to be some resistance, some confusion.

  I looked around my room as Kaci nursed. It was still painted pink from when I’d been a little girl. Over the years, the bedspreads and throw pillows had changed; the pink had remained. I remember buying fan magazines and wallpapering my headboard with various bands. They came and went and now were middle-aged men who no longer held any attraction for me.

  My thoughts turned to Sean – the man who did hold an attraction for me. I knew if I told him about Kaci, he’d drop e
verything and we’d leave New York City. While I had settled considerably over my summer with the Amish, I still wasn’t ready to be that far away from the home where I’d grown up. I didn’t want to leave Dad. His health would never be reliable again and it wouldn’t be fair to give him a granddaughter and then immediately turn around and take her away from him. I knew it would break his big, crusty heart.

  At the same time, was I being fair to Sean?

  Kaci had fallen asleep at the breast and I laid her on the bed, surrounding her with pillows. I laid down next to her to hold her tiny fingers, and then I fell asleep.

  I was awakened by mens’ voices in the living room. Startled, I checked Kaci and she was still sound asleep. She wouldn’t roll anywhere, so I let her sleep, appreciating the break in the mommy routine.

  I walked into the living room and was shocked to see Bob standing there. “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  Dad held up his hand. “Sit down here and we’re going to talk.” I knew that tone of voice; it was the one that I heard when I was three hours late on prom night and when I’d stolen Dad’s car to go joy riding at seventeen. He meant business. I held up my finger to indicate he should wait a moment and took one last look at Kaci before I went into sit on the sofa.

  Bob sat at the other end and Dad sat in his chair. Carla was brewing coffee, giving us the option of privacy.

  “Now then. I called Bob here because he’s been here several times looking for you and I had his number. Now, Bob, there’s a little something we need to discuss.”

  “Yes, sir?” Bob was agreeable, even if completely confused as to why he was there.

  “My daughter came home today. She did not come alone, however. She brought with her a daughter; a tiny baby whose name is Kaci.”

  Bob’s mouth dropped open and he turned to look at me. I became furious. I wasn’t going to allow Dad to railroad me like this. “Bob? I’d like to talk to you outside on the patio, please?”