by Beverly Bird
“You’re not,” Mariah corrected automatically.
And suddenly, in that moment, Adam knew he was as close to feeling happy as he had ever been in his life. Unfortunately, everything that made him feel that way was at the other end of the table.
He glanced at Sarah, shaking his head in apology. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I just...I can’t do this.”
Joe watched appraisingly. Sarah seemed briefly alarmed, then she nodded, understanding.
“I see her,” Adam went on. She was nearly all he saw. “I’ve never promised my life to anyone other than myself, and I never will. So as near as I can tell, there’s no reason why I can’t eat with her.”
“Nope,” Joe said. “There’s not. Although ‘never’ is a strong word, my friend. I’ve learned it can rear up and bite you on occasion.”
Adam barely heard him. He stood and took his plate. There was a short spell of surprised quiet from the children. He met and held Mariah’s eyes.
“Got room for another down here?”
Her smile was slow. Her lip trembled. And her eyes...ah, God, her eyes, he thought. Wide, nearly as deep and dark as her dress now, and shining. He saw himself in them.
“Guess I ought to go check on that sick calf, anyway,” Nathaniel said, rising. “Here, Mr. Wallace, you can have my place.”
“What sick calf?” Grace demanded.
“We don’t have a sick calf,” Matt objected.
“Reckon I gave it the flu,” Nathaniel muttered, and at the other end of the table, Sugar Joe laughed. And then Adam chuckled, and Nathaniel grinned and even Sarah ducked her head to hide a smile.
“I don’t get it,” Matthew complained.
“’Cause you’re a lamebrain,” Bo charged.
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Do you get it?” Matt demanded.
“’Course I do.”
“Then ’splain it. I dare ya.”
Bo stuttered and blushed.
Then there was shouting and the clinking of glassware. And somewhere, threaded through all of it, Adam was excruciatingly aware of Mariah’s soft laughter.
Chapter 12
The peace and pleasure of the evening lasted until they were back in the buggy and heading for home. Joe had invited them for Sunday supper, as well. It was the settlement’s off-week from church. He and Mariah would go in the afternoon and just enjoy... family. And Mariah had smiled a little tremulously at being included again, and Adam had felt damned good at that, that he was somehow instrumental in giving her pleasure again, especially now that her job seemed in doubt.
That was one worm in the apple, he thought—her job. She’d told him this could happen, and she seemed accepting of the blow. And that left a rancid taste in his mouth.
“Adam, could you get the blankets?”
He looked over at her abruptly. She was shivering a little as the horse clop-clopped along. It was beginning to snow again. tiny, gentle flurries drifting down.
Adam reached to the floor and got one for her, opening it onto her lap. He ignored the urge to tuck it around her legs, even as the idea occurred to him.
“I wonder if he’d remember Jannel,” he said suddenly, looking out his side window.
Mariah’s silence was long. “A young child’s memory is an iffy thing, Adam,” she said finally. “I don’t think there’s any way to know that.”
“Jannel was with him all the time,” he went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “She was a big part of his first three years.”
“So were you.”
“No.”
He fell quiet again, digesting the truth of that as it occurred to him. Then more words burst out of him, anguished and confused. “Would he remember me if I had been there all the time? Every day? Would he remember me if I’d taken the time to tuck him in at night once in a while when I was home?”
“You had to work. You had to make a living.”
“I should have taken him with me more.” There was that, always that.
“He’ll remember, Adam. Sooner or later, he’ll begin to remember. You can almost see it happening already, the way he was watching you, asking you questions.”
“Yeah,” he said shortly, unsure why that made his heart ache. “I’ll do better this time.”
Mariah nodded. She doubted if he had ever been a bad father to begin with.
“He’s going to miss Matt,” Adam went on finally, hoarsely.
“Maybe you could bring him back to visit him.”
“That’s what Sarah said.” What he would probably do was promise to, he thought, then pray to God that Bo never took him up on the offer.
“But you won’t,” Mariah said quietly.
His heart slammed as she read his mind. “I can’t.”
He didn’t know he had spoken aloud, and then he realized that he’d said more than he’d intended to. But maybe it was better to get it all out now. Before she could look at him again the way she had tonight, he thought, with her eyes both luminous and pained as she spoke words to close the gap between him and his son’s memory. Because he had to go, and she had to know it, before either of them could pretend or dream or get in too deeply.
“Pull over,” he said abruptly, but she was already doing it, easing back on the reins. Goliath trudged to a stop on the side of the road. The flurries began to turn to flakes.
“You just don’t get it yet, do you?” he demanded finally.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Adam.” She put the reins down, carefully, he thought. She put her hands together in her lap again, hitching around a little to face him, and he wanted to shout at her not to, because for some reason this was impossible if he had to look at her, if he had to look into those eyes as he spoke.
He closed his own and rubbed his forehead against the head-ache there. The road behind him was blocked and he didn’t want to go right, and he sure as hell didn’t want to go left, so there was nowhere to go at all. He felt trapped.
“Do you know what I was thinking about tonight?” he asked finally.
“Well, Bo, of course.”
He made a deprecating sound in his throat. “When I should have been thinking about Bo, when I wanted to be thinking about Bo, I was thinking about you. I was thinking about how you’d looked that night with your hair down. I was wondering what it might feel like, wondering what you might taste like...and I don’t know what the hell your Amish boys do when they get together with your Amish girls after the lights go out, but I can pretty much guarantee you that my thoughts weren’t running parallel.”
She didn’t answer, but he heard her breath quicken. He dropped his hand to look at her sharply.
“Don’t do that,” he snarled.
“Do what?”
“Breathe like you’d like nothing better in the world.”
“But I wouldn’t.”
One minute he was rational, reasonably so. And then her words echoed around in his head, with promise he didn’t dare entertain. He grabbed her shoulders. He looked into her eyes—damn her eyes. Sometimes it felt as if they could see right through him...and sometimes they missed the most important things of all.
He shook her a little, without meaning to. “Don’t say that. You have no clue what you’re saying.”
She shook her head hard as hope thundered in her chest. “What I didn’t know, didn’t dream, was that you—you never said, never made me believe—”
“Because I don’t play by your rules, damn it!” he shouted. “And I have some honor!”
Mariah flinched. And that was good, he thought, that was great. because maybe she was beginning to understand. He went on, brutally, just to make sure. “I’m not going to marry you. I don’t want to stay here. I’m not going to settle down to a life in the country. Are you catching on? I don’t like your Ordnung. I think it’s ridiculous that people can’t go to college. And I sure as hell don’t want to spend the rest of my life pushing a plow without benefit of so much as a tractor! I like short skirt
s and I like your hair down. And I won’t spend day after day stomping cow manure off my boots and watching you grovel to a lot of holier-than-thou men!”
“You’re that unhappy here?” she whispered.
“No, damn it! I’m fine! I’m fine, because sooner or later I know I can go home. It’s okay for the time being, and falling asleep in front of your wood stove has its merits. But I’ve got no intention of doing it forever and I don’t want my son raised this way. I don’t want him kowtowing to your damned deacons the way you do!”
She recoiled. Her eyes shone. He felt as if he had just taken a new spring flower and crushed it in his hands. But he wouldn’t, couldn’t apologize any more than she could beg the forgiveness of her church.
“I won’t marry you,” he said again, because that seemed like the most important part. His voice lowered dangerously, angrily. “And even I’m not so much of a bastard that I’d touch you anyway.”
“I don’t have to follow the Ordnung.”
“But you still do it. And that says it all, doesn’t it?” He was suddenly weary to the bone. He let go of her.
Mariah opened her mouth, licked her lip, then closed it again. Somehow he made her feel ashamed. And that hurt, with a burning sensation deep inside her, more than his words ever could. She’d always known he felt this way. But hearing him say it, and the way he said it, made everything inside her cringe.
“Sugar Joe says you’re a great teacher,” he went on, talking to the side window now. “But you’re going to waste that, aren’t you?” Ah, yeah, he thought, now they were really getting into what bothered him. It started spewing out of him like poison. “You’re going to let them kick you and you’re just going to crawl away on your belly like you deserve it. And I hate that. You’re going to leave your little schoolhouse and you’re not going to take that skill, that talent to a public school, no matter how much they might need you there. No matter that you can juggle eight grades at once and you’d be a godsend to any second-grade glass.” No matter that you could do that and we could live like normal people so I could touch you. “You’d stop teaching before you’d do that. Because you believe.” He spat the words. He hated her—and himself—because they were true. Because she believed, and he never would.
“I don’t, Mariah,” he went on hoarsely. “I don’t even believe in God anymore, much less in a bunch of trumped-up rules and suffering to honor Him and be more like Him.”
She gasped. “Adam, you don’t mean—”
“Yeah.” He cut her off. “I do.”
He needed to get out of this buggy, he thought, away from the smell of violets. He needed it desperately. But when he made a move to go, she caught his arm.
“Adam, please. Wait! Where are you going?”
“I’m getting the hell out of this pumpkin.” He wrenched away and reached for the door.
“No! Finish this!”
Maybe he stopped because it was the most temper he’d ever heard from her. Maybe he stopped because there was nowhere in particular he wanted to go and it was a long, cold walk back to Abe’s and his car:
“Don’t run now, Adam,” Mariah went on breathlessly. “You’re not that cruel, that unfair. You had your say. Now give me mine.”
“You can’t change my mind,” he said, his voice rough.
“I wouldn’t presume to. Not about the settlement.”
Even the fact that she called it that burned the hell out of him, he realized. As if it was something reverent.
As if it was something a lot more important than anything he could give her.
The thought was sneaky, cold. It wormed its way into his heart and it tightened there, just painfully enough so that he knew it was true. It was why he was so angered by her adherence to rules she didn’t have to adhere to. It was why he hated her faith, her pride in it, her steadfast morality. Because it was all more important than he was. He couldn’t give her anything, couldn’t even make love to her because of a God who broke promises and some men who were more into pious punishment than generosity of spirit.
“I know you’re not going to stay,” she went on, her voice shaking. “But at least leave me some memories to keep when you’re gone.”
“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?” he growled.
“Yes,” she whispered. “And a few you didn’t. You don’t want to hurt me. You’re concerned because you can’t live up to my morals. We shouldn’t run around because you can’t many me.” She took a deep breath. “And I’m saying I don’t care.”
“Don’t.” His voice was ragged, a futile warning. “You care. What about Abe?”
She blinked. “What about him?”
“You said you wouldn’t date him because you couldn’t marry him!”
“No, Adam, you said that! If you had let me finish, I would have told you that it wasn’t worth bucking the rules for him! I would have told you that he’s kind and he’s good, but he never made me want anything!”
“Shut up, Mariah,” he warned harshly. He had to make her stop talking. Now.
“Remember what I told you about going to school?” she rushed on. “That I was going to be miserable one way or the other, so I thought I ought to have something to show for it? That’s how this is, Adam! I’m going to hurt when you’re gone, whether or not you...you do what...what you want to do or not,” she finished lamely, the words tangling.
“Say it,” he snarled, and the panic was wild now. “You can’t even say it!”
“What?” she gasped.
“What I want to do is make love to you.” There, he thought angrily. It was out. The air in the carriage seemed to go still with waiting. She caught his arm again. He felt her fingers begin trembling. He could feel the tremors rock through her from that single connection.
“Yes,” she managed.
“Say it,” he growled again and didn’t know why he was doing this to her, hated himself for it, but in that moment he hated her more. Because she was so good, so perfect, and she was the wrong woman for him. And that was her choice, purely her choice, not his own.
Mariah’s heart was pounding so hard she thought it would jump out of her chest. It wasn’t the words, she knew. She could say them. It was the thought of stepping over the line.
And with that realization, she, too, grew furious. Not with him, no, never with him. With herself and, God help her, with her church. Because she had done everything right and she had been so good, and now they would take her school away from her and Adam would go, too. And she would be left with...nothing.
Adam was right. She would allow it because she had really never learned how to resist But there was that small burning ember inside her. It wasn’t hurt, she realized now. It was fury. She would not, would not go quietly and meekly, without taking something for herself along the way.
There was no other route to happiness but the one right here in front of her. No other man in her limited world would dare dishonor her, would ever have the courage to cross the Meidung. And there was no other man she wanted, had ever wanted.
Adam tried to think about Bo. He needed to think about Bo now, about everything that had happened tonight, everything that had been said. It would put a mental barrier up between them, break off this treacherous conversation before it got any worse.
Then she spoke. “Make love to me, Adam,” she whispered fiercely. “Please, please give me something to show for it all.”
It stunned him. He hadn’t expected it, and when she spoke the words something came undone inside him. A dam broke. “Oh, God,” he said, strangled. “Oh, damn it.”
He had expected a flood, but there was only an immense vibrating stillness inside him. It thrummed, waiting, poised. Not peace. It was something more tense and troubling than that He thought it was like standing on a precipice, where the drop was so sheer you couldn’t see the bottom of it.
He didn’t leap. He inched over and let gravity take him.
She’d moved, somehow she’d moved while he’d been all caught up in
his own turmoil. One leg was tucked beneath her now, and her palms were flush on the seat between them. She leaned toward him a little. And he moved toward her, as well, too slowly, too carefully, as though he knew he would need to damn himself later for not backing off when he had had all the opportunity in the world.
He touched his mouth to hers, their lips just meeting. A feeling almost like amazement hit him, that this was finally happening. In spite of his beliefs or the lack of them, he thought there was almost something reverent about this ultimate melding of their lips.
He didn’t know how to be gentle, but somehow he was. He wanted to appreciate every nuance, because he didn’t think he would dare do it again. He wasn’t going to take her up on her offer—he really wasn’t that much of a bastard. And he didn’t think he could walk away if he sank all the way in over his head. But just one taste, he thought, just a moment, to say goodbye to all that could never be.
Her mouth was soft. He opened his. She opened hers. Her breath was a whisper. He touched her lips again, then again with his own, playing over them.
Her eyes stayed open, as though she wondered if there was more, as though she was watching him for some kind of clue. And then he saw a shiver course through her. It was visible and she sighed with. it, as if she enjoyed every tremor.
That was when the flood finally came. Something exploded inside him. He felt control fall away from him in jagged pieces. He caught her head in his hands, and this time he slanted his own. He caught her lips with hard intent and swallowed her gasp. Mariah. He felt her hands move from the seat to his chest, felt her fingers tangling in his jacket in that way she had, as though she would hold on. But he was the one who was drowning.
Again. More. He used his tongue, and after a quick jolt she didn’t seem surprised. For a wild moment, he could almost make himself believe that she was every woman, any woman, even when she was so different, so special it terrified him. He did it again, sweeping his tongue through her mouth, tasting her, hoping that maybe she’d meet its touch. Maybe she would, if he made this kiss good enough. Maybe if he made it sweet enough, she wouldn’t regret it.
He didn’t kiss like a man who would never come up for air, she thought, losing herself in swimming sensation. He didn’t kiss as Asher had—the only man she had ever kissed. Asher had claimed her mouth sloppily and greedily, until she thought her chest would surely burst if she didn’t breathe. Adam was relentless in his own way, as he was in everything. But his mouth claimed hers for only a brief moment, his tongue teasing before he eased back, nipping her lip, covering her own again. And again. And some more. Drawing back each time, as though to make her want more, as though he was nibbling some delicious delicacy and he wanted the experience to last, the taste to stay with him always.