Loving Mariah

by Beverly Bird

  Mariah’s breath snagged. My Bo. There was something about the way he said it. She hesitated, then compromised with her caution. “It’s me.”

  He looked at her vacantly. “I’m sorry?”

  She took a deep, careful breath. “It’s me. I’m the one without a name.”

  Adam was confused. She had just said she wasn’t...and if she was, then why didn’t she know Bo? Something hard and hot lodged in his throat and he crossed back to her quickly.

  “Do you know something?” he growled. “Are you playing with me?”

  “No.” No, she definitely wasn’t playing. Mariah felt her pulse scurry. Anger and frustration came off him in waves now. And they had another effect on her, too, one she was not quite willing to name. He was big, strong and in spite of all she had learned to deny over the years, he was so male. She had learned not to appreciate that which she could not have.

  Even his scent was masculine and strong, she thought, and it hit her now because he was standing close to her. She had to look away from his eyes—as cold and gray as metal, though she had thought earlier that they were blue. She dropped her gaze to his hands, and they were big, too. They were fisted now.

  She realized she was flustered. She had not bargained on this man, on this particular man.

  “I didn’t say that,” she went on a little breathlessly. “I didn’t say I know where your son is. I just said that I’m the woman without a name.”

  “And a minute ago, you told me you did have one.”

  She smiled thinly. “You don’t understand.”

  “So enlighten me.”

  He was quick. She liked that. It made her want to smile. “I was born Mariah Fisher.”

  “Okay,” he answered, and his voice held a measure of waiting.

  “They no longer call me that,” she went on.

  “So what do they call you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why?”

  “They don’t see me anymore.”

  “They don’t see you? What are you, a ghost?” He remembered thinking earlier that she seemed otherworldly, and though he was a practical man with a good many worldly concerns, a man who didn’t believe in such things, it shook him up a little.

  “In a manner of speaking,” she said quietly, with that pained small smile again. “It’s called the Meidung.”

  “Meidung,” he repeated, echoing the German accent her voice had suddenly taken on.

  “Yes.”

  “In English?” he prompted.

  “I’m...I’m been...shunned.”

  Adam cleared his throat carefully. “Shunned.”

  She came off the desk and drew herself up, turning her back to him. “Our people have a certain way of doing things a code of good and acceptable behavior. I acted differently. I...sinned. Now they don’t see me anymore.”

  He was flabbergasted. “That’s archaic.”

  “Not really.” She finally looked at him. “Sin is a common Christian theme.”

  “Yeah, and God accepts apologies,” he snapped.

  Her fleeting smile came back. “So He does. As do the Amish. I, however, will not apologize.”

  His head was spinning. For the first time, there was a bit of a bite to her voice. “So they just shut you out?” he asked. “Pretend you’re not there?”

  “More or less.”

  “But you teach their children.”

  “There is that.” She went to a coat hook on the wall and plucked off a plain black jacket and a shawl. “There are several reasons for that, actually,” she went on, shrugging into the short coat, pulling the shawl on over it. “The first is that they have a somewhat limited choice. They needed a teacher for this house, and no one else volunteered. It’s difficult for a woman to do this job if she has a family to care for, and most of the women in this Gemeide are married with little ones.” She caught his look. “This district,” she clarified. “A Gemeide is a church district. And the church is the utmost authority. It runs the schools.”

  “So they’re stuck with you, whether they like it or not.”

  A short, quick sound escaped her, almost like laughter. “Something like that. For the time being, anyway. Someone else will come along eventually, and then I’ll be gone.”

  “What are the other reasons? You said there were several.”

  “Ah, well, I’ve vowed to teach nothing beyond what is acceptable to them. That was their biggest concern.”

  Adam thought about it, frowned, then shrugged. “That’s a pretty common situation between employers and employees all over. You’ve got to do the job the way your boss wants it done.”

  “Have you been all over?” she asked suddenly, and she seemed intent on his answer.

  “I’ve seen a lot.”

  Looking for his Bo, no doubt. She realized suddenly that she was almost certain she would help him now. It was too soon to be absolutely sure, but she had a feeling she could trust his heart. She was sure there was one in there, underneath that gruff hustleand-hurry exterior. And if she could just trust his heart, then perhaps he would help her.

  It was what she had bargained on.

  “Come back tomorrow,” she said, moving toward the door. “A little earlier than this, though. I’m usually gone by now. You got lucky today.” She wondered if, subconsciously, she had been waiting for him.

  Anger hardened in Adam’s gut again as he watched her go. How had he allowed himself to get sidetracked by her pained smile and her deep violet eyes and strange stories? His gut clenched as he realized that that was exactly what he had done.

  “Where is he. Mariah?” he demanded, following her. His voice grated. “You’re transparent as glass. Damn it, you know something.”

  “I’m going to look into it for you.”

  He grabbed her arm. She spun back to him fast, gasping a little. Her mouth stayed open in a silent cry, though he couldn’t be sure if it would have been one of outrage or fright, because she wouldn’t let it out.

  “You know,” he said again, angrily. “Something. This is my kid we’re talking about, and I want answers.”

  “And I would like very much to be able to give them to you,” she said evenly, her eyes huge, “assuming you stop manhandling me. ”

  He felt shame, even as his fury burned. “I’m sorry,” he bit out, dropping her elbow, stepping deliberately away from her again. Then he heard his own apology and wondered what in the hell this woman was doing to him. Sorry? For doing whatever it took to get answers about Bo?

  “You should be,” she chastised.

  “Don’t push it. What the hell do you want from me?”

  “It might be a start if you’d stop swearing.”

  “What difference does it make? You’re not...you’re not devout. You just stood here and told me that you were Mei—” He couldn’t quite remember the word she’d used. “Whatever.”

  “I committed one specific sin that I will not confess guilt over,” she said, and he realized that her voice was hot now. Hot yet soft. Velvet and fire. It was, he realized, like the warning growl of a cat.

  “I came back here in spite of that,” she went on, “even though I knew what awaited me. And I did that because outside of my one transgression, the one area in which I strongly disagree with the church, I believe in the way in which I was raised.” Her eyes narrowed. “That Amish way does not advocate coercion, physical or otherwise. There’s no need to drag me about, and there’s certainly no reason to swear at me.”

  “Yeah, well, old Frank seemed to drag Katya a bit,” he muttered, at a loss.

  “And I told you they’re not the norm.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  Her expression softened. “I’m going to try to help you, but I won’t promise anything. You must give me time. Come back here tomorrow.”

  And he knew, instinctively, that he was going to get nothing more out of her than that.

  His impatience tried to goad him into shaking her, that drive—obsession, came Jake’s voice—that
he’d lived with for so long now. She knew something. He was sure of it. He was close, and he needed to do something about it right now.

  Maybe Jake’s lecture had been prophetic. There wasn’t anything he could do, he realized. Not here, not now, not with Mariah Fisher. He could shake her until her teeth rattled out of her head, and he knew that she would not reveal one single thought until she was ready.

  He had known her less than half an hour, and he already knew he had never met a woman like her.

  “Okay,” he said gruffly.

  She nodded slowly. “Good. Now, please, if you’ll step out of the way? I need to lock up here.”

  He did so as obediently as if he were one of her schoolboys, and listened to the snick and jangle of her keys in the lock. He looked up and down the road, and around the fenced yard of the school.

  There was no buggy.

  “Where do you live?”

  “In the village.” She stepped around him and went down the single step into the snow, picking her way prettily.

  “Divinity?” It was the closest one.

  “Yes.”

  “How do you get there?”

  “I walk. It’s difficult to keep a horse in the village. Very little forage. And of course we’ve not allowed automobiles.”

  She was being sarcastic again, he thought, in that quiet, soft way that almost made you miss it. “That’s got to be five miles,” he called out in the direction of her back, finally following her.

  “Seven,” she corrected. She hit the road and turned down it. “But I don’t stay on the roads. As soon as I’m able, I’ll cut across the fields.”

  “Wait!”

  She stopped and turned back to him. “I told you we’d finish this tomorrow.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of Bo.” And it stunned him to realize that, if only for the moment, that was true. “Uh...can I give you a lift? Or would that get you Meidunged or whatever, too?”

  She gave him a full smile. “No, it will not get me Meidunged I was hoping you’d ask.”

  Adam was startled. “Well, then...hop in.”

  “Thank you.”

  She went back to Adam’s rental car and opened the passenger door, sliding inside. By the time he got behind the wheel, she’d crossed her ankles neatly and sat with her hands folded in her lap in that quiet way she had. He looked across at her, frowning.

  “So if cars aren’t taboo, why all the horses and buggies?” he asked.

  “Oh, we can ride in them. We mustn’t own or drive them.”

  “That makes no sense.” He’d been about to say “no damned sense,” and stopped himself.

  She opened her mouth, nearly calling him by name, and caught herself.

  “What’s the difference?” he demanded.

  “Owning cars, driving them ourselves, might encourage us to leave the settlement. We’d become like you people, competing with each other, buying bigger and better and fancier ones to outdo our neighbors.” She smiled again, looking directly at him this time, and it took his breath away. He forgot to turn the key in the ignition.

  “But?” he prompted.

  “But we’re hardly stupid. Any number of things—emergencies, for instance, or visiting in other counties—might necessitate traveling quickly or far. So in those cases we hire someone to drive us. It’s a compromise.” She gave him that intent look again. “We’re basically a people of compromise—at least that was the original idea. Some settlements get carried away. But most of us compromise with life. That’s important. That’s what you must remember.”

  He was struck again by her words, by her intimation that he would need to understand. And he knew again that it would be useless to ask her why.

  He finally drove.

  They reached the village, and she directed him down a narrow side street to a small white house with a neat window on either side of the door. There was an iron gate between hedges and a path to the street that was neatly and narrowly shoveled free of snow. In the spring, the small porch would be flanked by gardens.

  Adam realized the place suited her. It was exactly what he had anticipated. And then he realized, too, that they had never finished their discussion about why she was permitted to teach the children of people who had shunned her.

  “What else?” he asked suddenly. “Why else do they let you run the school?”

  She had just reached for the door handle. She looked over at him again, surprised; then she gave that quick smile, the one that didn’t quite find her eyes. “They’re hoping that as long as I live among them, I might eventually come to my senses, confess and come back into the fold. They think that if I stay here long enough, the Meidung will become too hard on me. They think that deep down I want to embrace the church again, because I came back here.” She looked away. “One out of three is a start, I suppose. They’re marginally right.”

  Though he didn’t know her, he had a strong feeling anyway that no Meidung could break her. If the others were right, it was in that she wanted to come back but couldn’t find her way without compromising herself.

  “They?” he asked carefully. “When you say they, do you mean the church?”

  “And all the people.”

  “Your family, too? Are they here?”

  She got out of the car and bent to look back in at him before closing the door. “Oh, yes.”

  “And your own parents don’t have anything to do with you?”

  “Parents and seven brothers and sisters. No, they really don’t.”

  “Dear God.” How could any parents harbor a belief so strong that it would make them willingly turn away from their own child? It seemed especially twisted and cruel to him because he wasn’t so lucky as to have the option. He could not even fathom turning away from Bo. He could not understand a God who would want him to.

  “What did you do, Mariah?” he asked finally, imagining the worst sort of horrors.

  She gave that sad smile again and straightened. “I broke a life rule. I went to college. Thank you for the ride. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Chapter 3

  I went to college.

  Adam kept hearing her voice, that soft almost-sarcastic, not-quite-bitter tone, as he tried to run Jake to ground in Dallas. He ate another frozen dinner—or rather, he heated it. The beans tasted like wax and the beef had the texture of rubber, and he finally pushed the plastic tray away to rub his eyes tiredly.

  She’d be eating alone as well, he thought. She’d be sitting in a plain but somehow pretty kitchen. He imagined rose-colored curtains there. A hooked rug would cover the floor. She’d eat neatly, her eyes on her plate, shutting out the silence. A silence borne because she had dared to educate herself.

  He was out of his mind to be dwelling on it. She wasn’t his problem, not beyond digging out of her whatever it was that she knew about Bo.

  He picked the phone up again. This time he tried a bar halfway out of Dallas called the Roadhouse. When Jake was between women, he could get down and dirty with the best of the bad guys he chased. And Jake was between women often enough.

  The bartender called for him. His brother’s hello came over the line simultaneously with a crashing sound in the background.

  “Slumming again?” Adam asked.

  “Hell, yeah. What’s up?”

  “I think I’ve got something this time.” There was an incomplete silence filled with shouts, laughter and more crashing from the bar. “What’s going on there?” Adam demanded.

  “Huh? Oh. Dispute over a woman. Not mine. I don’t care. The badge is at home. Now you want to give me that again? You’ve got something?”

  “Could be.”

  Jake’s silence was stunned.

  Adam told him about Katya, who had sent him to Mariah Fisher. “I’ve got a gut feeling this woman knows something.”

  “You’ve had feelings before,” Jake said cautiously.

  “Turns out she’s the woman with no name,” he pointed out.

  “So?”

  “So s
he said she’d try to help me. That I should come back tomorrow.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In a house in a village called Divinity. During the day, she’s at the school.”

  “She’s Amish?”

  “Well, yeah. Sort of. She lives that way, but she’s not with the church anymore.” He didn’t bother to go into the whole Meidung thing. He felt oddly protective of her pain, anyway.

  “She has a phone? They didn’t used to. Allow phones, that is.”

  “I have no idea if she has one or not.” Adam frowned, impatient now. “What’s your point, Jake?”

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “My motel room.”

  This time the silence was total.

  “Let me get this straight,” Jake said finally. “There’s a woman named Mariah Fisher. You have reason to think she knows where Bo is. She’s at home. You’re in your room. You’re going to wait until tomorrow to talk to her again. What in the name of God is going on up there?”

  Adam didn’t answer.

  There were three possibilities, Jake decided. Adam was out of his mind. Or Jake was actually speaking to an impostor; this wasn’t his brother at all. Or this woman was something else again. “She asked you to wait and you’re waiting? You?”

  “Knock it off,” Adam finally growled. “I don’t have any choice. She’s the hottest lead I’ve had in a while, and I don’t want to scare her off.”

  “Right.” Adam had never done anything less than barge in like a bull in a china shop, Jake thought, and the damage be damned. Especially if he had a hot lead. “I’ll see if I can get a flight out of here tonight.”

  “I don’t need you yet. Stay put Let me run this Mariah thing out, and if I fall short, then come on up. Then I’ll need to do the public schools.”

  Jake scowled. “I think I’d better—”

  “Don’t waste the money. I’ll call you when I need you. I just wanted to give you an update tonight.”