It was a humid night, clear and warm, and she hoped the sounds of crickets outside the house’s open windows would mask her footfalls as she passed her mother’s room and headed for the stairs. She opened the front door as quietly as she could and stepped out into the moonlit night. There were no lights on in the big house, or in the new house Mahlon was building. A lamp shone out of the window of the guest cottage, but she didn’t know if that meant Connor’s mom was still up or that Connor had left a light on to return to. She ran across the wet grass to the barn. Priscilla had purposely left Shiloh’s halter on him from earlier in the day so that she could just lead him out. She stepped inside to get him and spoke softly so that he wouldn’t nicker or whinny. She had just started to lead him out when Sharon appeared in the doorway.
Priscilla stopped. She hadn’t heard or seen her coming. All of the sudden she was just there, demanding to know what Priscilla was doing with Shiloh at that time of night. Priscilla tried telling her that she was just taking him for a walk because she couldn’t sleep, but Sharon didn’t believe her. She kept asking Priscilla where she was going. Priscilla repeatedly told her nowhere. And then the very thing she didn’t want to have happen next, happened. Connor, who had probably begun to wonder what had become of her, walked back to the barn from where he had been waiting. He stopped just at the entrance when he heard Sharon’s voice and saw that she was in the barn with Priscilla. And then Sharon saw him as well, and she put two and two together. She asked them both what was going on, and Priscilla’s eyes grew wide with feigned innocence. Nothing. She said nothing was going on.
Connor thought up a quick lie and asked if everything was okay. He said he had heard voices in the barn, and he’d come out to see if someone needed help or something. But Sharon didn’t believe him. She knew the two of them had planned to meet up and have Shiloh take them somewhere.
Sharon turned to Connor and thanked him for his concern, but in the most ungracious tone ever. Then she told him he’d best get back to the guest cottage before his mother worried where he was. She said it as if she was two seconds from going to his mother herself and telling her, paying guest or not, that Connor was to stay away from her daughter. Priscilla could tell Connor wanted to say something in her defense, but she pleaded with her eyes in the dusky moonlight spilling into the barn to say nothing. Then Sharon took Shiloh’s lead out of her hands, walked the horse back to his stall, and slammed the stall closed. She grabbed Priscilla’s arm and steered her back to the house, all while Connor stood there and watched.
When they were inside, Sharon sent Priscilla to her room because she said she was too angry to speak to her then, and she needed to think and pray and that Priscilla needed to do the same. Back in her room, Priscilla tried to obey, but she couldn’t pray for anything except for more time with Connor. She only had a few days left with him. Sleep didn’t come for a long time. In the morning, a Thursday, Sharon took Connor and his mother their breakfast, leaving it just outside their door in a covered basket. When she came back inside, she told Priscilla she was not to go out of the house for the next three days. Not until after Connor and his mother left to return to New York on Sunday morning. She said she and Owen would take care of the animals. Priscilla was to spend her time doing household chores and thinking about what it meant to honor those in authority over her. If she so much as set a foot outside, Sharon would tell Uncle Amos, who just might decide to sell Shiloh because of it.
“But why?” Priscilla had yelled. “What did I do that was so wrong?”
Sharon didn’t answer her exactly, she just said nothing good would come from Priscilla seeing that boy at the guest cottage. Only sadness. He was Englisch, Priscilla was Amish. He lived in New York, she lived here. He was leaving, she was staying. Priscilla began to cry then because she was already missing Connor so much. She was already missing his touch, his kisses, his hand on hers, his embrace. She told her mamm she was ruining her life and a few other things she still wished she hadn’t said.
For the rest of that day and the next, Priscilla moped around the house and in her room, sitting by the window, looking for Connor, wanting to catch a glimpse of him. She saw him return from a couple of runs, and from trips into town with his mother. Sometimes he would be looking at his phone when he passed underneath her window, sometimes he would be looking up and he’d wink and blow her a kiss.
On Saturday, his last full day there, Connor waited until Sharon went out to the petting barn for morning chores before coming to the mudroom door, opening it and calling for Priscilla in a strained whisper. She was in the kitchen and she came running to him, at once both elated and terrified. He said he and his mom were leaving the next morning, which Priscilla already knew. “Want to go to the grove tonight?”
She shook her head, her heart nearly breaking, and told him her mother wouldn’t let her leave the house. He just crinkled his brows as if to ask what did that have to do with anything. She said he didn’t understand, that her mamm was so suspicious she was even peeking in on Priscilla late at night, long after she’d gone to bed, just to make she was still there.
“So do it earlier, then,” he replied. “I can go for a sunset run. I’ll take a roundabout way and meet you there at the birch grove. No one will see us together.”
“I’d still have to sneak out though,” she said, and he just shrugged and replied, “So sneak out.” And with that he spun away back toward the guest cottage.
As an afterthought, he turned and held up his phone toward her. He mouthed the word “smile,” but Priscilla could barely give him more than a Mona Lisa grin. He snapped the photo and seemed quite pleased with it.
Priscilla was a nervous wreck the rest of the day which, she realized, she could use to her favor. When Sharon picked up on her daughter’s uneasiness, Priscilla told her she didn’t feel well. At three, Sharon decided to pick the first of her acorn squash. She brought a basket of them into the kitchen to roast and can that afternoon. And of course she expected Priscilla to help. Priscilla told her she needed to go lie down because she was feeling worse and had a terrible headache, but Sharon said Priscilla was just pretending to be in pain because she was still mad and didn’t want to help her. Priscilla was still mad—and the more Sharon insisted that Priscilla help her, the madder she got. When Priscilla’s words and tone finally grew too disrespectful to bear, Sharon did what Priscilla had wanted all along: She sent her daughter to her room.
Priscilla knew she could probably get out of the house undetected, but she would have a harder time sneaking Shiloh out of his stall without being spotted or heard. The sun had dropped low in the sky, but it was still light enough to see. Amos and the boys were gone that afternoon, but if Roseanna happened to be looking out her bedroom window, she would notice the girl walking toward the back paddock. Priscilla had to hope that Roseanna wouldn’t. But even if she did, and if she called out her name, Priscilla decided she wasn’t going to stop. She didn’t care at that point. If she got in trouble, then so be it. It would be worth it. Connor was leaving the next day, and she didn’t know how long it would be before she would see him again. Surely he would make arrangements of some kind. Surely he would visit again, especially because he’d told her he was going to get his driver’s license when he got back to New York. Surely he would come see her somehow. Priscilla never stopped to consider that Long Island was almost two hundred miles away.
At fifteen minutes to six, she tiptoed down the stairs. Sharon was at the sink washing the dirt off her squash. The force of the water out of the tap and splashing against the gourds was the perfect sound cover. As soon as Priscilla was out the front door, she ran for the back door to the barn, tossed the halter onto Shiloh, and led him out onto the grass behind the guest cottage so that his hooves would make less noise. Then she and the horse were out onto the last bit of gravel, and past the back paddock. She looked back only once to see if anyone was watching her. But she saw no one, heard no one. She pulled herself onto Shiloh’s back well before th
e little sycamore stump, pressed her heels into his side, and they flew down the path.
Priscilla was the first to arrive at the grove of birch trees. She slid off of Shiloh and led him to the place where he could drink and then she waited. She didn’t know how long she stood there; it seemed like quite a while, at least an hour or more. She could only gauge the time by the diminishing light. The longer she waited, the more she worried that something had happened to Connor, or maybe he’d gotten lost trying to find his way from another direction. She was about to climb back onto Shiloh to look for him before the sun disappeared completely when he came jogging into the grove, one hand on his throat as though he were making sure he still had a pulse and with the other he thumbed the screen of his phone. Priscilla ran to him, asking if he was okay. He looked up, smiled in surprise, and said of course and why was she asking. And Priscilla said, “Because you’re late.” How could he not know how late he was? He replied he had a phone call just before he left the cottage and that put him behind. Connor leaned forward, sweaty and grinning, and kissed her forehead. “Sorry,” he said. His phone made a noise and he looked at it before slipping it into the pocket of his running shorts.
He put his arms around her waist and said that she had made bearable what would have been a terrible end to his summer vacation. He said it with such finality, as though he were telling her goodbye for forever. For a second or two she could say nothing, and he took her silence as shock at his tender goodbye. “I hope you don’t mind that I said that,” he told her. Priscilla finally found her voice, but all she could say was “Mind?” and her eyes filled with tears. He pulled her to his chest and said she was the sweetest, kindest girl he had ever met, and he was so glad they had the chance to get to know each other and that he would never forget her. Priscilla didn’t know how to say she didn’t want what they had to end. She couldn’t believe he didn’t see anything in the future for them. So she just said, “Don’t go.” Connor laughed, not in a mean way, but as if he was flattered and maybe a little apprehensive. He was perhaps just starting to get how hard Priscilla had fallen for him. He tried to make light of it. He said he wasn’t good enough for her, and he was jealous of the guy who was. She told him he was wrong. She wasn’t any worse or better than he was. She was just a girl in love, and that’s when she said, “I love you, Connor.”
When Priscilla said this, she stopped, flicked away a falling tear, and exhaled heavily, her breath broken and bumpy. She glanced at me and then laughed lightly, shaking her head.
“I won’t embarrass myself further by telling you exactly what he said after that.” She sighed again, heavily, using her exhale to draw strength. “I don’t think he meant to hurt me. He never meant for anything truly deep and meaningful to happen between us, neither love nor hurt. He kissed me because he had kissed a lot of girls he liked. He thought I was pretty and fun, and he liked that I wasn’t afraid to say what I was thinking. And that I wasn’t a drama queen, whatever that is. I had helped him figure things out, and he was grateful for that. But there was a girlfriend back home, someone who had broken up with him at the end of the school year and who wanted to get back together now that he had his life straightened out. He was going home to this girl. He had called me out to the birch trees to thank me for the great talks, the good advice, the moonlit ride, the kisses, and to say goodbye.”
Priscilla said she couldn’t get onto Shiloh fast enough. She was embarrassed and hurt. Connor kept apologizing and wanting to hold her and make sure she was all right, but Priscilla didn’t want his touch. She didn’t want anything from him. She took off, letting Shiloh carry her away as fast as he wanted to. The sun was gone now, and the twilight sky was just starting to throw everything around her into shadow. She heard Connor calling her name once, but Shiloh loved to run. She only heard it the one time.
Priscilla knew her face was streaked with tears, and she also knew getting back inside the house would prove to be more difficult than it had been sneaking out of it. As she neared the farm, she climbed off of Shiloh and walked him back, cutting through the pasture and the far side of the guest cottage in case her mamm was looking out the living room window, which she didn’t think she would be. If Sharon was still tending the squash, she’d be in the kitchen. If she’d realized Priscilla had snuck out, she’d be standing on the porch watching for her or even inside the barn, waiting to catch her as she came in.
But Sharon wasn’t in either place, so Priscilla assumed she hadn’t been found out after all. She took Shiloh into the barn, brushed him down, gave him food and water, and then just stayed there as the dusky interior grew darker and darker. She heard Connor return to the cottage. She heard him go inside, and then a few minutes later she heard the front door to the cottage open again. Priscilla was afraid he was coming in to the barn to look for her, but then she heard two voices, Connor’s and his mother’s. Two car doors opened and shut. She heard the motor start and the tires crunch on the gravel as the Knights drove away, probably out to have dinner on their last evening in Lancaster County.
After the car left, the darkness in the barn was complete. A bit of the moon was spilling in around the seam of the closed door, but it was nothing more than a thin ribbon, like a kapp string. Priscilla sat there in the straw with Shiloh nosing her now and then, wishing her mamm would come looking for her. She wanted to fall in her arms and tell her she was right. Nothing good had come from loving that Englisch boy. Her mamm had tried to protect Priscilla from what she was feeling at that very moment, and Priscilla had shoved her away.
She didn’t know how long it was before she heard Roseanna’s shouts. Her aunt was yelling for help. Priscilla got to her feet and opened the barn door. Roseanna was running toward her, figuring that’s where she was. She didn’t tell Priscilla what was wrong other than her mamm was hurt and needed to go to the hospital.
She told Priscilla to run to the welding shop. Amos and the boys had just returned from a neighboring farm and were putting the buggy away. “Tell your uncle to call 911. Tell him your mother’s fallen down the stars. Then make sure he waits for the ambulance by the road so that they come to the right house,” Roseanna had said. And she told Priscilla to hurry.
Several seconds passed before Priscilla continued her tale. A breeze, as if in consolation, rustled its way through the birch leaves all around us. I found myself in no rush to hear the rest. I already knew what happened next.
“But help came too late,” Priscilla finally said, with a shrug, her voice breaking over the words as if they were made of splintered glass.
Another stretch of seconds went by. I instinctively reached for Priscilla’s hands, folded on top of her bent knees, and covered them. I felt her fingers tremble under mine.
“By the time the ambulance arrived, Mamm was nearly gone. The paramedics worked so fast, I could tell they were worried we were losing her. When they had her ready and on the stretcher, the one EMT named Brad said I could ride up front with the driver as he’d be in the back of the ambulance with Mamm. He told Roseanna which hospital they would be going to. As they were loading Mamm inside the back of the ambulance, I told her I loved her and that I was coming with her. But I don’t think she heard me. She was already unconscious by then.”
Tears were now falling freely down Priscilla’s face. She palmed them away and gathered her composure. “She went into cardiac arrest as we drove, though, and nothing Brad did made any difference. She was gone when we got to the hospital. They let me sit with her while everyone involved did their paperwork. It was busy in the emergency room. Everyone was rushing around Mamm and me. So many other lives were at stake. But our little story was over. Mamm was gone. And I was still there. I stayed with her until Aunt Roseanna and Uncle Amos came in a hired car.”
Neither one of us had words for the next span of minutes. I wondered if Priscilla had ever shared with anyone else all she had just shared with me. I was pretty sure she hadn’t.
When she turned to me, her face was serene despite the
story she had told me and the tear tracks on her cheeks. “Now what do you say, Jake? Am I at fault for what happened to my mother? No. But do I wish I had made different choices? Yes. Every day. I don’t want to ever forget that when you choose the way of self over others, terrible things can happen.”
For a moment her words, reverberating in my head, silenced me. “Is that why you think God guided you back here?” I finally asked. “To make sure you wouldn’t forget?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t need to come back here for that.” She looked away, as if needing to search the horizon for the reason she had returned to Lancaster County. We were silent for a few seconds as she contemplated what had brought her back. I knew if it were me, I wouldn’t have returned. Then she swung her head slowly back around my direction, a very different expression on her face than she had worn seconds earlier. Something had suddenly dawned on her, as defining and obvious as the breaking of a new day.
“I see it now,” she said, almost in a whisper.
“See what?”
Her eyes filled with the look of amazement. “I think the Lord brought me back for a reason that hasn’t much to do with me at all. Oh, I see that now!”
I didn’t follow. “See what?” I pulled my hand away from hers.
“Of course. It all makes sense!” She was nearly breathless.
“What? What makes sense?”
“It’s you. You are the reason.”
TWENTY-NINE
For several seconds I could only stare at Priscilla. How could I have had anything to do with her coming back to Lancaster County? I had barely known her before she left.
“What are you talking about?” I finally sputtered.
She rose to her feet, and in seconds she was at Voyager’s side. She placed her hands on his back, as if to draw warmth and energy from him. He turned his head toward her and nodded, his bit jangling. “I just couldn’t see it before.”
The Amish Blacksmith Page 27