by Beverly Bird
“They won’t do that!” she cried. “That’s why I asked you!”
He shot a deadly look back over his shoulder. “Wrong, Mariah. You never asked me, at all. If you had, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.” Then he realized that he was wrong. Because if she had told him all this at the beginning, if she had admitted then that she’d waited five whole weeks to contact him while she decided if she wanted to tell him where his child was, he would have disliked her from the very start.
That was what got to him most of all. Jannel had taken four years and Mariah Fisher had only taken five weeks. But Mariah had done it and then she’d held a hand out to him in friendship, chastising him gently when he got off the beaten path, somehow making him measure up to each sticky challenge...hiding something all along. Pulling his strings. Making him dance.
“Damn you,” he bit out and started outside again.
“Adam, wait!”
This time when he glanced at her, she gasped at the look of loathing in his eyes. Dear God, he hates me.
She could live with that. On some level, in some measure, maybe she even believed she deserved it. But if he went away without helping to find the other children, then it was all for naught And always, forever, she was strong enough to deal with that which she had brought upon herself—as long as she came away with one small morsel of goodness, one thing of light.
He had to help them find the others.
She clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking. “They won’t do that,” she repeated. “The deacons will not go to the authorities or to the FBI or—or to any national center. They say it’s God’s will, that we must not resist, and even the parents—dear God, even the parents—won’t go against them. So I tried to think of a way, some way that I could get help for those little ones...surreptitiously. All I ever wanted was a way to get them back that wasn’t too far beyond the Ordnung, a way the deacons might be able to forgive!” she cried suddenly. “And then I bought that milk. And it was like God was showing me the way. Because no one else—hardly anyone else around here—buys cartons of milk. Why should they? They live on dairy farms!”
She laughed giddily, almost hysterically. “No one else would ever have known that you were looking for Bo, but I did, and I thought about it and thought about it and then I realized that here was the way. I’d get those people—ChildSearch—to come for Noah, and when they got here, I’d ask them to please put those composite pictures on milk cartons for the other babies, as well. Maybe the church wouldn’t even have to know about it! But, then, ChildSearch didn’t just send...people. The woman said you were Noah’s father. And you came here yourself and everything got complicated, because Noah—Bo—didn’t know you, so I decided to wait until you’d resolved your own problems before I asked you about...about the others.”
He was staring at her. His face was expressionless, like stone. “Playing God again, Mariah?”
“No! I—”
“Sure you were. Deciding those other kids could wait a while—God knows where, with God knows who. You decided they could wait until you found the optimum time and way to string me along!”
It was true enough that something cracked inside her. She drew in a breath and it was thick with tears. “It was...wrong,” she whispered, her voice suddenly so quiet he could barely hear her. “Yes, yes, it was. But what you don’t see—” what even she had not admitted herself until this very moment, she realized, blanching “—is that this wasn’t even really about you, at all.”
If she had had only one truly honest thought over the past few weeks, she admitted, then it had been that night when she had been dressing for the first supper at the Lapps. What if I don’t? What if she didn’t ask Adam to help? What if she did as the deacons ordained and let the children remain lost?
Adam watched with a vaguely curious feeling, a detached sort of halfhearted interest, as the color drained from her face. “What?” he prompted flatly.
“It wasn’t even about Bo or Lizzie or Michael,” she went on, her voice tightening. “In the end, it was just about me.”
“You,” he repeated.
“I was thinking of myself. Only myself. And I was a...coward.”
He’d had every intention of leaving. He stood staring at her instead, though God help him, he couldn’t find a voice to ask her what she meant again. He couldn’t find it in his heart to sift through her own pain. There was too much of his own and he couldn’t battle his way through it.
“The deacons are wrong,” she said, her voice a monotone now. “The church is wrong. While we sit back, not resisting this horror, children are being hurt.” She shuddered. “And I started out thinking that I hated the men who would allow that to happen. Men who would not protect the little ones God’s given us. I started out thinking that they were so caught up in their precious Ordnung, in self-righteous pride like my father’s, that somewhere along the line they’d lost their hearts.
“So I determined to do something. I called you. I didn’t do it lightly. Even believing as I did that I was doing the right thing, it tore me up inside. That’s why it took me five weeks. I had to find the courage. But I did it, and then everything...changed. The Lapps included me in dinner. And I thought...what if?”
She sank down in the rocker. She was crying visibly now, her tears streaming, but she made no move to wipe them away. She would no longer even look at him. She stared into the fire in the stove.
“I thought...of going along with the deacons so I could maybe...so I could...have my life back,” she finished wretchedly. “Even though I knew it was wrong. That they were wrong. I forgot for a little while that I didn’t want to be like them, that I didn’t want to be anything like people who would allow children to suffer. I forgot because it was so good, so very, very good, to be included at the Lapps’, to share dinner with others again.”
“The people agree with you,” Adam heard himself say. “About looking for the kids. They came tonight to help.”
She gave a shudder that he thought he could feel even on the other side of the room. “It won’t be enough. And I...failed them. In the end, I failed the children. Because I got you here, then I was too afraid, too selfish to take that second plunge, to see it through. Once I did that, my Meidung really would be hopeless. Irrevocable. Complete. There’d never be any way out of it. I just couldn’t bear to do that to myself. And now you’re leaving.” She finally looked at him. “Aren’t you?” she whispered.
He cleared his throat, couldn’t find his voice. He nodded.
He thought about telling her she was only one woman. That there was a whole community out there that could have done something, as well, that there was no need for her to take this whole thing upon her own shoulders. He still couldn’t find the words.
“I tried to tell you, you know,” she went on softly. “At least twice before today. And then you interrupted me, misunderstood me, and I let it drop.”
“I’ve got to go,” he said hoarsely.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered wretchedly, “so very sorry. For all of it.”
“You lied to me.” The words nearly stuck in his throat.
“No.” She shook her head a little. “I didn’t lie.”
Half truths, then, he thought. Omissions. In the end, they were still the same thing. “You lied,” he repeated. “And I’d thought you were the only good, honest thing I’d ever found.”
He pulled the door shut behind him with a solid crack. Mariah winced. Then she fumbled blindly behind her for the afghan draped over the back of the chair. She pulled it over herself without hope.
This cold was never going to go away. It didn’t matter if Adam Wallace never forgave her, because she was never going to forgive herself.
Chapter 20
Bo sat frozen on the plane. Every muscle was locked in place, as though he expected the aircraft to launch up to the moon instead of leveling out at thirty thousand feet. Bear was clutched so tightly against his chest that Adam was glad t
he thing didn’t actually need to breathe.
He watched his son, feeling vaguely irritated, which shamed him, and more than a little frightened, which made his head hurt with a steady, throbbing pain right behind his eyes. Then again, he’d had an unrelenting headache since he’d left Mariah the night before.
“Want to change places?” he suggested.
Bo looked at him, moving only his eyes. “Why?” he croaked.
“Well, it’s not quite as scary if you don’t look at the ground.”
“Can’t see the ground,” he squeaked. “There’s clouds out there. We’re on top of ’em.”
“You know, you could just look at this as an adventure, like I said last night,” he snapped, and remorse grabbed his throat and squeezed. “Bo, nobody’s telling you that you have to immediately love everything I show you,” he went on more quietly. “And, yeah, some things are going to be scary. But you could at least consider it like a lesson at school.” He didn’t want to think about his school. Adam’s stomach shifted. “What I mean is, it’s all just something new and different. Like going to the zoo. Hell, Just pretend everyone’s in cages. Half of us belong there anyway.”
“You said a bad word again.”
Adam closed his eyes.
“Could we trade seats?” he asked in a small voice. “I think that might be a good idea, after all.”
Adam looked at him again, his heart rolling over. “Sure. Any minute now.”
“Why do we have to wait?”
“Just until the pilot turns off that seat-belt sign. It’s just...it’s a rule.”
“Like the Ordnung?”
Adam winced. He’d known that was coming. “Yeah. Only in this case it’s the FAA.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Federal Aviation Administration. They make the rules of the sky.”
“Well, if it’s okay with them, and all, I guess I’d feel better if I didn’t have to look down on clouds.”
Adam nodded helplessly. And felt angry again. What had they done to his kid? Where was the boy who’d run hell bent for leather down the concourse in Houston?
“You’ve flown before,” he heard himself say.
“I did?”
“Yeah. I took you with me once.” And then he started talking. And like before, the words appeared magically, easily, and Bo finally turned a little bit in his seat to watch him, rapt, as he told him about baseball games and the Houston Astros and about moving sidewalks in airports that could take a kid into eternity before his father could blink.
By the time the stewardess brought lunch, both of them had forgotten to change seats.
Supper at the Lapps’ was a subdued affair. Conversation ebbed and flowed stiltedly. There were no bursts of laughter. Matthew was as good as gold.
Of course, it could well be that the boy was just exhausted. It had taken him until nearly midnight to fix the drainpipe the previous night. At that point, Joe had told him it looked fine, and when the boy had gone to bed, he’d worked off his own tension by finishing it himself.
It had been a long, bad day, and with all the confusion of Bo leaving and Sarah’s heart breaking, the farm chores were only half-done. He had a long night ahead of him to catch things up.
He probably wouldn’t have slept anyway.
“It’s not right,” he said suddenly.
Sarah looked at him, her deep brown eyes widening in alarm. “But we agreed—”
“I’m not talking about Bo,” he went on. Everyone had been inching around his name all afternoon.
“He was never ours,” he pointed out more quietly. “God loaned him to us. We got to make him happy for a little while. But his place is with his pa, with his true family.”
Nathaniel nodded, then Dinah did, too. But the little ones still looked confused and hurting over their loss. Gracie was almost too young to remember a life without Noah, and Matt had been Bo’s sidekick for an eternity.
“What I’m talking about is this other thing,” he went on. He heard his wife suck in her breath. “I”m sorry, honey. I am. I know your own pa is going to bust a gut, but I can’t go along with not looking for those other kids any longer. Last night...all this with Bo...it just drove it home. Losing Matt for that little while did it. Simon and the Millers and the others aren’t likely to get their boys and girls back so easily, if at all. It’s not right, and it’s the first thing I’ve come up against since I came to this Gemeide that I just can’t live with. Not even for you. Not if I hope to maintain any self-respect.”
“What do you want to do?” she breathed.
“What would the church do if the whole settlement rose up against their decision?” Nathaniel asked suddenly.
Sarah and Joe looked down the table at him. Sarah let out her breath. Joe nodded.
“Good point,” Joe said slowly.
“It’s impossible for them to throw the Meidung on a whole group of us, isn’t it?” Nathaniel went on hurriedly. “I mean, what would be the point? Those of us who were shunned could still see each other, so there couldn’t be a Meidung among us.”
“It’s happened before,” Joe agreed.
“It has?” Dinah was fascinated.
“That’s how your grandparents—my family—ended up in Berks. Something happened here that they felt strongly against, so a whole group of people broke off and migrated.”
“Joe, please!” Sarah cried. “My parents!”
Joe looked at her. “Can you honestly, in your heart, inflict upon other mothers what you went through last night?” He didn’t have to wait for an answer. He knew her too well. She would not. He looked down the table at his son again. “The last of the chores can wait, I think. We’ll do double work tomorrow, skip lunch. What do you say?” Nathaniel nodded hard. “Tonight we’ll pay a few visits around the Gemeide. Let’s find out how many other people really agree with us.”
Nathaniel pushed his. plate away without hesitation. “I’ll hitch up the buggy.”
“If the church gets wind of what you’re doing, they’ll shun you,” Sarah gasped. “They’ll turn you out for trying to organize a...a rebellion.”
Sugar Joe met his wife’s eyes and nodded.
“Wow.” It was scarcely a breath. Bo’s eyes were the size of saucers as he inspected Jake’s car. “Matt should see this.”
Hope soared in Adam. And then, in a heartbeat, it died again. Color seized Bo’s cheeks. He looked quickly away from the Thunderbird, grabbed his bear from its seat atop Adam’s suitcase and clamped it to his chest again.
“I can...uh...put the top down,” Jake suggested, at a loss over Bo’s change of mood.
“No,” Adam snapped. “It won’t do a damned bit of good. Look, Bo, you can tell Matt all about this in a couple of weeks. It’s not like you’re never going to see him again.”
“Forever,” Bo mumbled. “That’s forever.”
“Half that long,” Adam corrected, then he gave a gusty sigh.
Whatever rapport they’d reached on the plane had shattered into a million pieces when Bo had been confronted with the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. The fear and panic in his eyes had been intense. Jake had met them at the gate and rushed them through to his car, but things still weren’t right.
It had only been one day—a long, aggravating day full of traveling—but Adam was already beginning to wonder if the situation would ever improve.
“Come on. Load up,” he went on, gripping the suitcase, tossing it in his brother’s direction. Jake caught it and stashed it in the trunk.
Bo looked tom. Adam guessed that half of him wanted desperately to ride in the yellow car. The other half of him probably thought a lightning bolt was going to come down from the sky and zap him. Damn those people.
“Bo,” he said tightly, holding back on his temper when the boy refused to budge. “I happen to know for a fact that riding in an automobile isn’t against the Ordnung.”
“The what?” Jake asked.
Adam waved a hand at him to shut him up and
waited.
“Yeah?” Bo said belligerently. “So?”
“I also happen to know that as a seven-year-old kid, you’re not affected by the Ordnung, anyway. You don’t have to follow it.”
“I can if I wanna.”
Adam took a deep breath. “Yeah. If you want to.” And I don’t want you to. “But there’s no Ordnung here other than the rules I make as your father. Sorry.”
Bo’s eyes filled. “I bet not! I bet you’re not sorry! Matt said you hated us, that you think we’re stupid the way we do things!” He turned on his heel and began running, legs pumping. Hell, he was flying. Straight for the nearest concourse.
“What a picnic,” Jake muttered. “Now what?”
“I’m going to catch him. And if I ever see Matthew Lapp again, I’m going to strangle him.” Adam began jogging, then broke into a run when Bo neared the moving sidewalk. Depending upon how stymied and shook up he was by all this technology, he might or might not jump on it.
At least, Adam thought, this was something he had a little experience with.
Mariah muddled through.
It was the only word she could think of to describe her days during the week after Adam and Bo left. She taught. She baked. She read. And she did it all as though watching her own actions from behind a drab, filmy curtain. Often she set about accomplishing some chore only to discover she’d already done it, though she didn’t remember.
She wished desperately that the ache inside her was only that of loss. But it was worse than that, a bitter, choking guilt at how far out of control things had spun—even her own treacherous heart.
She knew what she ought to do now. There was only one course of action that would set things right. Not with Adam. He was gone to her, and each time she admitted that to herself her heart twisted hard enough to make her gasp aloud. But the other issue still dangled. She had to finish what she had started.
She had to call those people—what had Adam called them? Something about missing and exploited children. She could find out with a few calls from the pay phone in the village. In any event, it was the only thing she could do, if she was going to be able to continue living within her own skin.