She lowered her eyes, unsure if the thought of Jethro watching out for her brought her pleasure or embarrassment. She’d put everyone through so much. “You took all the Styrofoam and plastic out of the package this time. There isn’t much danger of fire now.”
“I didn’t notice the rolling RV until you popped out of your tent and started chasing it.”
“Ach. I would have broken my leg—or worse—if you hadn’t been there.”
He took a step toward her and seemed to come about three miles closer. She held her breath as he stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. “Ach, heartzly, my heart stopped when I saw you fall.”
“I’m wonderful froh you were there to grab me.”
His fingers felt like fine sandpaper against her skin. “You got your toe something wonderful.”
She nodded slowly. “I . . . I wasn’t . . . wearing shoes.”
“Most people don’t when they sleep.”
For five breathless seconds, he traced his thumb along the curve of her jaw, staring down at her lips as if he thought they might taste good.
“Jethro,” she said. She meant it to sound like a warning, but it came out more like a question.
Jethro seemed to come to himself. Frowning, he squared his shoulders and pulled his hand away from her face. He cupped his fingers around the back of his neck and sighed. “Cum. Sit at the table, and I’ll tend to your toe.”
She remembered to breathe before she fell over. “It only needs a Band-Aid.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You left a blood trail all the way down the hall. I might need to amputate. And give you a tetanus shot.”
She sat down at one of the eight kitchen chairs Jethro was so particular about. Or used to be so particular about. These days he was sleeping in a tent just like she was.
At the sink, he filled two bowls with water and retrieved some towels and soap from the cupboard. He set the towels, soap, and a small bowl on the table, and the bigger bowl on the floor at her feet. “Here. Soak in this, and we’ll see how bad it is.”
She did as she was told and gasped as her toe touched the water.
He drew his brows together. “Ach. Do you want some Advil?”
Pulling in deep, measured breaths, she managed to get her entire foot into the bowl. “This is my favorite bowl. I won’t ever be able to use it to cook in again.”
Jethro shrugged and bloomed into a wide grin. “It’s the only one big enough for your whole foot. I’ll soak it with bleach in the morning. I hate to tell you this, but I’ve used that as a throw-up bowl before.”
“Ach,” she squeaked in mock indignation. “I’m throwing it away.”
His smile was infectious, and she couldn’t help but laugh. He was joking about the throw-up bowl. Probably. When they were first married, he could never resist teasing her. Maybe the early hour and his weariness had made him a little punchy.
He chuckled as he disappeared down the hall and came back with the first aid kit from his tackle box. He pulled another chair from the table, turned it to face her, and sat down. “Here, put your foot on my knee.”
“You’ll get wet.”
He reached over and snatched the towel from the table. “I came prepared.” He spread the towel over his leg, and Mary Anne pulled her foot from the water. Without all that blood covering it up, it looked like raw hamburger. Jethro grimaced. “Ouch. You took off at least three layers of skin on the top.”
“How many layers of skin do I have?”
“I don’t know. None to spare.”
She’d skinned the top of her big toe but good, and the toenail had a scrape down the center, but it hadn’t broken or come off. It was a tender mercy for sure and certain. Jethro dipped the corner of a towel in the small bowl and pumped some soap onto it.
He dabbed at her toe with the towel and drew his brows together when she flinched at the pain. “Sorry, but you don’t want an infection.”
“It’s okay. You’re doing a gute job. My toe hasn’t been this clean for weeks.” A few weeks ago, she would have expected him to remind her that it was her own fault her feet were always dirty or that if she hadn’t insisted on living in a tent, none of this would have happened. But these days he was just as likely to keep his mouth shut.
He didn’t keep his mouth shut, but he didn’t say what she’d come to expect from him either. “You overestimate my skills. Hopefully, it will be clean enough that you won’t get gangrene.” He gently patted her toe dry. “Do you remember when I got that fishhook stuck in my thumb? You cleaned it out very well, but my thumb still swelled to twice its size and I had to get an antibiotic and a tetanus shot.”
Mary Anne examined her toe, still oozing blood but clean enough to see the deep layers of pink skin. “I’m froh I’m up-to-date.”
Jethro traced his fingers down her foot until his hand came to rest on top of her ankle. The touch sent a warm sensation radiating up her leg. She shifted in her chair and tried not to think about how nice it felt. It was the middle of the night, she was exhausted, and her nerves were pulled as tight as a rope in a tug-of-war contest. For sure and certain that was why every little brush of Jethro’s fingers and every caress against her skin affected her like a bride on her wedding day. A gute night’s sleep would put everything to rights. Of course, she wasn’t going to get another wink of sleep tonight. She couldn’t have fallen asleep if her life depended on it. She’d be playing the near-accident over in her head for days.
Jethro’s hand lingered on her ankle for a few seconds too long, but she didn’t have the will to pull away. It felt wunderbarr, and she was so weary. He sat breathlessly still, but she couldn’t know what he was thinking because his head was down and his gaze was riveted on her ankle. He slowly worked his fingers around her heel and cupped it in his hand, as if her foot was the most precious thing he had ever held.
She shifted in the chair. “Pine has an extra toe on his left foot.”
He looked up at her as if he hadn’t quite heard what she had said. “Who?”
“Sarah Beachy’s boy. I noticed it when he sat by me at breakfast this morning.”
His lips curled upward, and he casually removed his hand from her foot. “I can see a boy like Pine trying to cut his extra toe off with that ax he likes.”
She smiled back. “Don’t give him any ideas.”
Jethro squeezed a generous glob of antibiotic ointment onto her toe, then covered it with a gauze pad and wrapped it with some stretchy tape to keep the gauze in place. “I’ll change this every morning for you, if you want.”
“I can do it. I usually don’t have a hard time reaching my feet.”
He wadded up the paper package the gauze came in. “While I’ve got the first aid kit out, does it hurt anywhere else?”
Her left hip stung something wonderful. It was likely she had a wide, bright red scrape down the side of her leg, but she wasn’t about to mention it to Jethro. She wasn’t letting him near her hip, even with a Band-Aid. She stood up and took a few steps around the kitchen, trying to walk as normally as possible, even with a sore toe. She couldn’t do it without limping.
“Do you need crutches?”
“Nae, but I might have to wear my slippers to work.”
“You might start a new style with the old folks.”
She grinned. “Josie wears her slippers to the center every day.” She glanced at Jethro’s fish clock. “Ach. Four thirty. It’s hardly worth going back to bed.”
“I won’t be going back to sleep. Seeing that RV almost run you over was enough to scare me awake for a month.”
She felt that warm sensation down her spine again. The way he looked at her left no doubt that he cared about her. It was a pleasant little surprise. Of course, in the last few days he’d told her over and over that he loved her, but words didn’t have nearly the power of the truth in his eyes. She did her best to look anywhere else. “I can’t go back to sleep either. My heart is still pounding, and my arms feel like jelly.”
His eyes lit up like two vanilla-scented candles. “Can I take you to breakfast?”
“Breakfast? What do you mean?”
Jethro pumped his eyebrows up and down. “Betty’s Bakery in Shawano has maple-bacon doughnuts. We could get doughnuts and kaffee and take them to the lake and watch the sun rise.”
She laughed at the expression on his face. He was suddenly so eager. “Shawano? Jethro, the van will be here at seven thirty to pick you up for work. It’s an hour to Shawano and another hour to the lake.”
His expression fell like an undercooked chocolate soufflé. “We could just get doughnuts and skip the lake.”
“Okay, I guess. I don’t want you to miss the van.”
He raised his eyebrows so high, they were halfway up his forehead. “What if we took the RV?”
“The RV? You are tired.”
“Bob left the keys in case we needed to move it. It’s practically sitting on the road. What will it hurt if we take it into town? It’s a lot faster than a horse and buggy, and we can get doughnuts and make it to the lake and back before the van even drives down our road.”
She was momentarily speechless. The RV? What was he thinking? “You know perfectly well we couldn’t. Neither of us knows how to drive.”
He smiled that mischievous smile she hadn’t seen for years. “Oh, I know how to drive. I don’t have a license, so if a policeman pulls us over, we’ll probably go to jail, but I know how to drive.”
“You do not.”
“I do too. During rumschpringe, Elmer Lee Kanagy bought a car, and five of us learned how to drive it. I got wonderful gute on the back roads.”
Her mouth fell open. “You never told me that.”
“I didn’t want you to know how wicked I’d been. What with the car and breaking Mattie Byler’s ankle, you never would have married me.”
She smiled. “You didn’t break Mattie’s ankle, and of course I would have married you. Your driving skills would only have added to your appeal.” Jethro had been the whole world to her. She would have loved him even if he’d spent time in jail.
His smile widened. “I really want to take you to breakfast.”
She growled, wanting to give in but knowing they absolutely, positively shouldn’t do it. There were too many disasters that could befall them between here and Shawano. “We shouldn’t. It’s Bob’s RV.”
Jethro opened the fridge, pulled a key chain from the vegetable crisper, and jangled it in front of her face. “He left me the keys.”
“Driving that thing would be more like trying to maneuver Noah’s ark.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I’m a fisherman. I know how to steer a boat.” He jangled the keys again, and the look on his face made her laugh. He looked so happy, she didn’t even want to put her foot down.
“We’re going to die,” she said, a giggle tripping from her lips.
“Lord willing, we’ll get to eat our doughnuts first.”
He took her hand and tugged her out the back door to the RV, which was still sitting right where they’d left it half an hour before. Her heart did a somersault as she went around to the passenger side and got in. Jethro might know how to drive, but he hadn’t been behind the wheel for over a decade, and an RV was probably like driving a house. Could he drive a house?
This was a very bad idea, even if she hadn’t been this excited about anything for years. It was an adventure like the ones they used to have, before Jethro had stopped loving her.
“We shouldn’t do this,” she said, without an ounce of conviction in her voice. Maybe Jethro would come to his senses even if she couldn’t.
He shut the door and fumbled with the key before getting it to fit in the little hole where the key went. Grinning in her direction, he turned the key and the motor came to life, like a bear awakened from a long nap. This was definitely not a gute idea, but she pressed her lips together and smiled at Jethro as if she had all the confidence in the world that he would get them there and back in one piece.
In the semidarkness, Jethro studied the handles and sticks and knobs that stuck out every which way from the steering wheel. After a few seconds of examination, he turned a knob that looked like every other knob, and the headlights came on. The panel in front of him lit up like a starry night. Mary Anne didn’t know if he knew what any of those lights or instruments meant, but at least he could see them now.
He turned to Mary Anne with a grin as wide as the motor home. “Do you want to find us a gute radio station?”
“A radio station? Jethro, you have gone crazy.”
“You should always listen to the radio when you’re cruising the back roads. It’s what all the Englischers do.”
She rolled her eyes, but leaned in for a closer look at something that looked like it might be the radio on the dashboard. She’d seen Englischers turn on their radios before when she’d ridden in their cars. Charlene, the woman who ran the senior center, had turned on the radio once or twice when she’d picked up Mary Anne for work.
She eyed the buttons until she found one that said “On/Off.” She turned it, but nothing happened.
“Push it,” Jethro said.
She did as he said, and they both jumped as loud music sung by a very angry man burst from a speaker in the ceiling. “Don’t turn away from me. I won’t be ignored!”
“Do you want to turn it down?” Jethro yelled.
She shook her head. “I want it to make me go deaf. It’s what all the Englischers do.”
He laughed—or at least she thought he did. It was impossible to hear much of anything over that music. “Okay, then.”
Jethro pulled down on the stick to the right of the steering wheel and the motor home lurched forward. Mary Anne quickly buckled her seat belt and grabbed onto the handle that hung directly over the passenger-side window. Whoever built this thing must have known that a nervous wife would need something to hold on to while her husband drove them off a cliff.
Jethro gripped the steering wheel like a lifeline and turned the RV onto the road that ran in front of their house. Without speeding up, he let the RV roll slowly down the pavement, just like they were being carried downstream by a gentle current. The good news was that their house was on a back road and never saw much traffic anyway. At 4:30 in the morning, there wasn’t a soul in sight.
The RV got going a little faster, and he slammed on the brakes, sending Mary Anne flying forward until her seat belt caught her. It hadn’t been a violent forward motion because they weren’t going that fast, but it was enough to take Mary Anne’s breath away and make her rethink this whole adventure. Were they going too fast for her to open the door and jump out? Probably not, but with the way things had gone so far this morning, Jethro would run over her as soon as she hit the ground.
She reached out and figured out how to turn down the volume on the radio until they could barely hear it. Jethro needed all his wits about him, and the loud music was a huge distraction.
He slammed on the brakes four times before they got to the end of the road, smiling sheepishly at her every time he did it. The squealing tires and the pitch and roll of the motor home didn’t seem to discourage him. He managed a relatively smooth stop at the stop sign and, with reckless abandon, turned onto the main road. Well, it wasn’t exactly a main road. This was Bonduel. There weren’t really any main roads, but it was wider and longer than the road they’d just been on. Mary Anne’s heartbeat increased with the speed of the RV.
Jethro threw caution to the wind, stepped on the gas, and got the motor home going twenty-five miles an hour. He made an impressively smooth stop at the next stop sign and glanced at Mary Anne, as if hoping for acknowledgment of his achievement. Even though she was near to hyperventilating, she gave him what she hoped passed for a smile. “You’re getting the hang of it.”
He turned onto the road that went the back way into Shawano. “I don’t think we should try the highway just yet.”
She nodded and relaxed her grip on the handle above her head. “Gute
idea.”
With one long, loud blast on its horn, a small car came from behind and passed them on the left. Jethro instinctively slammed on the brakes, and the seat belt tightened across Mary Anne’s chest again.
Jethro grunted his disapproval. “So I’m going slow. I’m a motor home. You don’t need to get so huffy about it.” He pressed on his horn and held it down, sending a roar of sound into the night. He flinched in surprise and snatched his hand off the horn. “Ach. I just woke the whole county.”
A giggle burst from Mary Anne’s lips. “For sure and certain.”
He took his eyes off the road long enough to smile at her, then started laughing himself. “Next to getting caught in the buggy by the policeman, this is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.”
“We’re not there yet. Things are bound to get more exciting, especially when we hit a tree or someone’s mailbox.”
He winked at her. “I won’t hit a tree, but I can’t guarantee I won’t hit a mailbox. They never look both ways when they cross the road.”
They didn’t see another car until they got to Shawano, where a few stray automobiles were crawling along the roads in the half light of morning.
Jethro made three expert turns in a row, then maneuvered the motor home down an alley between two narrow buildings. The RV pitched and rolled, as if it would tip over at any moment.
Mary Anne tightened her grip on her trusty handle and tried to breathe normally. “Where exactly is Betty’s Bakery?”
“Just down this way. They have a drive-through,” he said, looking very pleased with himself. He veered right around what looked like a very tight corner, then turned left between two more buildings that seemed even closer together than the first two.
“The mirrors aren’t going to fit!” Mary Anne said.
They both rolled down their windows and pulled their mirrors in so they didn’t stick out. Thank the gute Lord the mirrors were bendable. He smiled at her. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Uh, Jethro, the arrow on the ground is pointing in the opposite direction.”
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