by Beth Wiseman
“It’s her life. Her decision.”
“She’s seventeen and pregnant. She must marry Jacob!”
Annie glanced back and forth between Charlotte and her brother as they both got louder. Her eyes landed back on Daniel. “You sound like Daed.”
“Did Jacob say he wanted to marry you?” Daniel lifted his eyebrows.
“Ya, but I don’t have to say yes.”
“That’s right.” Charlotte gave a taut nod of her head, only to have Daniel cut his eyes at her.
“This is not your business, Charlotte.” Daniel’s voice grew even louder. Annie was surprised her aunt hadn’t come to check things out, but she wasn’t sure her aunt’s hearing was all that good. The music earlier had sounded mighty loud to Annie.
Daniel’s face was bright red as he pointed a finger at Charlotte. “Stop discouraging her from doing the right thing.”
Charlotte glowered at him. “Was sleeping together before marriage the right thing? No. But now there is a baby coming, and if she and Jacob aren’t totally committed to each other, they will all be miserable, and that’s no way for a child to grow up. Believe me, I know.”
Annie stepped sideways until she was right next to her new ally, both of them facing off with her brother.
Charlotte turned to her. “Annie, do you love Jacob? At one point, you must have—you were ready to get married in the fall.”
Annie dipped her chin and stared at the floor before looking back at Charlotte. “I thought I did, but I don’t know how I feel anymore.”
“Well, maybe you just need to sit down with Jacob and talk things through.”
In Annie’s heart, she’d already made up her mind. “Jacob has no idea what he wants.” She raised her palms. “One minute, he doesn’t love me enough. After that, he wants to live in the Englisch world, then he doesn’t. Then he finds out I’m pregnant and wants to marry me.” She shook her head. “I—I don’t know if I want to marry him, but I need . . .” She covered her face with her hands and started to cry. “Maybe Daniel is right, that I must marry my baby’s father.”
“Ya, you should.” Daniel waved his arm toward the door. “Now let’s go.”
Annie swiped at her eyes, her legs trembling. She’d be going back to her parents’ house, and everyone would try to convince her to get married. She needed more time to think. She turned to Charlotte.
“I want to stay with my aunt Faye awhile longer so I can think about things.”
Charlotte opened her mouth to speak but clamped it shut and looked at Daniel.
“Nee, you may not!” Daniel stomped one foot. “Charlotte provided a ride. She is not part of the decision making!”
“Hey, quit yelling,” Charlotte said, then she sighed and turned to Annie. “He’s right. This is a family matter.”
Daniel walked toward them. “Annie, I am not leaving here without you.”
Annie walked to the floral couch, sat down, and raised her chin. “Suit yourself.”
Daniel walked to a chair, sat down, and folded his arms across his chest.
Charlotte stared at them both. “Well, I guess you can both sit here and figure it out. I’ll be outside sitting in that fine truck we arrived in.”
After the door closed behind Charlotte, Annie walked to her brother and knelt on the floor in front of his chair. “Please, Daniel . . . I’m begging you. Let me just stay here for a little while.”
Daniel shook his head.
But then Aunt Faye emerged from her cemetery room, and somehow Annie knew everything would be okay. Maybe it was because she had a baseball bat slung over one shoulder.
Ten
Charlotte ground the truck into gear after Daniel climbed in and slammed the door closed.
He put his hat in his lap and shook his head. “That woman is ab im kopp.” He turned to Charlotte, scowling. “That means ‘crazy.’ ”
“I know what it means.” She grinned, but only a little since he was so red in the face. “I retained a little Pennsylvania Dutch from my last visit.”
“She threatened me with a baseball bat. No wonder we don’t visit her much.”
Charlotte finished shifting gears again, then put a hand to her mouth to cover her amusement. Her eyes veered in Daniel’s direction, and his face was as red as the truck they were in. But she burst out laughing.
He raised both eyebrows, but his expression was flat.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just trying to picture your sweet aunt Faye swinging a baseball bat at you. I thought your people were passive.”
“Ya, exactly.”
After a little while, Charlotte said, “I’m sorry about getting involved. It’s just . . . a bad marriage can have lasting effects on a child. Jacob and Annie have to really be committed to each other for them to have a good marriage and be good parents. But I should have stayed out of it.”
Daniel stroked his chin. “It’s just not our way. If Jacob and Annie are old enough to do what they did, then they should be old enough to act responsibly and get married.”
“My mom was pregnant with me when she married my dad. And it was a match made in—” She paused. “Let’s just say I would have been better off if they hadn’t gotten married, or if I would have been raised by a crazy, bat-wielding aunt.”
Daniel grinned. “Aunt Faye is the exception to every rule. She’s not Amish anymore either.”
“And another thing. Remember what it was like to be seventeen? If someone tells you not to do something, it’s usually exactly what you’ll fight to do. Hopefully, Jacob and Annie will come to the best decision together. I’ll pray that they do.”
“Ya, I know. But who knows what nonsense Aunt Faye will tell Annie. And even more of a worry is whether or not mei great-aunt is mentally stable. Will Annie be safe there?”
Charlotte grinned. “Well . . . crazy Aunt Faye seemed mighty protective of Annie. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“I hope so.”
Charlotte wrestled the big steering wheel to the left to make a turn, and once they were straightened out, she said, “You really love Annie.”
“Ya. Very much. She acts like a five-year-old sometimes, though.”
“I loved Ethan very much too. Even though we weren’t close toward the end.”
Daniel slapped a hand to his knee. “Your haus. We need to at least get the water mopped up before those floors start to buckle.”
“Uh, I figured you might be too mad at me to help me with that.” She rolled her lips into a pout, then sighed.
“I am mad at you.”
She jerked her head his way. He was grinning.
“But I’ll still fix your plumbing. I said I would, and I don’t lie or break promises.”
Charlotte wasn’t sure if that was a dig at her past lies. She wondered if Daniel knew how hard she worked at not lying. How hard she strived to be a better person each day, even if it was just a little better than the day before. If Charlotte had a worst enemy, it was herself.
Daniel and Charlotte stopped at Walmart on their way home. Charlotte gathered some towels and a mop. Daniel tried to buy the parts to repair the plumbing at Ethan’s house—Charlotte’s house—but she insisted on paying for everything. But while she mopped up water, Daniel stumbled upon a larger problem.
“It’s not just that the fittings have come loose,” he said as he met up with her in the living room. “One of the pipes running underneath the house is cracked, I think.”
Charlotte turned pale.
Daniel wasn’t sure he would have offered to repair her plumbing if he’d known it was going to be such a big problem. But Charlotte looked like she might cry again.
“I—I mean, I can fix it. I just don’t have the right tools with me,” he said as he took a step closer to her. “I need to go let my parents know about Annie. Then I can come back when I have time, with the right tools and parts.”
“No, no.” She sighed. “I can’t let you do that. I’ll get it handled.”
Daniel thought
for a moment. God would surely be disappointed in him if he walked away from an opportunity to help someone. “Hiring a plumber to do the work will be expensive.”
Her eyes widened. “Like, how expensive?”
“The water is turned off. It will take a few days for the floors to dry out, but they should be okay. Call your real estate person and maybe ask her not to show the house right now. And as soon as I can, I will make the repairs.”
She walked to him, and without any warning, she wrapped her arms around his waist. Daniel kept his arms to his sides at first, unsure what to make of this unexpected display of emotion.
“Thank you, thank you,” she said as she squeezed him around his waist.
He patted her on the back, then eased away. “It’s not a problem.”
Charlotte dropped him off at home fifteen minutes later. She was an odd duck, the Englisch woman. Her sense of gratitude over a small thing was touching, if not a little extreme. It was just a house, just a broken pipe. But he supposed that for Charlotte that house must represent a way to fix her life, financially anyway. Daniel wanted to dislike her since he didn’t really trust her—or appreciate her butting into family business. But there was something about Charlotte that he liked. He pushed aside the fact that she was beautiful. Daniel had never been one to size up a person by looks alone. Nee, there was something else about Charlotte that stoked Daniel’s interest.
He returned home and faced off with his father the moment he walked in the door. His mother stood at the far end of the living room.
“Where is Annie?”
“She’s not coming back yet.” Daniel hung his hat on the rack by the door, bracing himself for what was sure to come.
Mamm raced toward him. “Why? She must! Jacob wants to marry her.”
Daniel’s father held a palm up. “Eve, shush.” He turned back to Daniel. “You are her bruder, her much older bruder. Why didn’t you make her come back?”
Daniel was angry with his father for being so hard on Annie, but he held his tongue as best he could. “What would you have wanted me to do? Hit her over the head? Drag her kicking and screaming all the way home?” Or get beaten over the head with a baseball bat?
“You watch yourself,” his father said, narrowing his eyes at Daniel.
“She left because of you.” Daniel instinctively took a step backward when his father stepped forward. Lucas Byler had never laid a hand on either of his children. Daniel had taken many trips to the woodshed for whippings, but always at the hand of his mother—a woman who had turned into a shadow all of a sudden.
“Maybe she just needs some time to think, like Jacob did,” his mother said. “Then she’ll come home and do the right thing.”
Daed threw his arms up. “What is it with everyone needing to go away to think? And I can’t imagine a worse place for her to go than to your aunt Faye’s house. That woman is a lunatic.”
Daniel agreed but decided not to anger his father further by mentioning the baseball bat. He shrugged. “Annie wouldn’t come back. I tried.”
Jacob walked across the yard to where Hannah was taking clothes from the line.
“Why are you doing clothes on Wednesday?” Everyone knew Monday was wash day.
“We’ve been worried about you, and everything is off schedule.”
Jacob had just seen Hannah and Isaac chatting outside earlier, so hopefully his sister was in a good mood and could help him sort out the mess in his head. He looped his thumbs beneath his suspenders and waited until she’d folded a pair of slacks and laid them in the basket. When she looked up at him, she shook her head.
“What’s that for, the head shaking?”
“Because I know you.” Hannah turned back to the clothes and unpinned a maroon dress from the line.
“What is it you think you know?”
She looked at him. “You don’t want to marry Annie, but you’re going to anyway because everyone wants you to and because it’s the right thing to do.” She laid the dress in the basket on top of the slacks, then stopped and faced Jacob. “I can’t imagine for one minute my life without Isaac, and I’m counting the days until we get married in the fall. He is everything to me. I want to close my eyes at night knowing that Isaac loves me with all his heart, and wake up with him each morning knowing that I feel exactly the same way.”
Jacob frowned. “What makes you think I don’t want that same thing?”
“I’m not saying you don’t want the same thing. But do you have that with Annie?” Hannah took down another pair of slacks from the line.
He was afraid to voice his true feelings, so he kicked at the grass, trying to decide if being truthful with Hannah would make him feel better or worse. “I love Annie. She’s a gut person, probably the best person for me to marry, especially since she’s pregnant.”
“Um, okay . . .” Hannah sounded doubtful.
“When I’m with Annie, I’m not sure I want to be with her forever. When I’m not with her, I miss her.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. And I’m still not sure that I don’t want to be in the Englisch world. I’m all confused.”
Hannah dropped the pants she was holding, gasped, and then slammed a hand to her mouth.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jacob narrowed his eyebrows, then wiped at his mouth, wondering if something big and green was in his teeth. “What are you looking at?”
Without moving her hand from her mouth, she pointed . . . at his arm.
“What have you done?” Hannah finally edged closer, peeking underneath his short-sleeved shirt, only to jump back so fast you’d have thought the tattoo fired a lightning rod at her.
He rolled his sleeve up so Hannah could see the whole tattoo.
His sister backed up, fell over the laundry basket, and landed in the grass.
“This is my souvenir from Houston,” Jacob crowed.
“Who, who . . .” Hannah sounded like an owl. “Who did that to your arm?”
Jacob stood taller, grinning. “An Englisch man in a tattoo shop. Do you like it?”
Hannah stood up and brushed grass from her apron, keeping her eyes on Jacob’s tattoo. “Mamm and Daed are going to go bonkers when they see that.”
Jacob tugged the sleeve of his shirt down as much as he could, although the tip of the crescent moon still showed. He needed to wear long-sleeved shirts until he was ready to tell his parents about the tattoo. “What do you think I should do?”
She grimaced. “About the tattoo or Annie?”
“I can’t do anything about the tattoo—even if I wanted to, which I don’t—so I guess Annie.”
Hannah put her hands on her hips. “First of all, shame on you and Annie for letting your hormones get the best of you.”
“It only happened once, and—”
“Apparently, that’s all it takes.” Hannah held up a finger when Jacob opened his mouth to speak. “And secondly, where you go from here is a decision you and Annie have to make.”
Jacob exhaled loudly. “She’s saying she doesn’t know if she wants to marry me anymore.”
“Can’t say that I blame her. You left her, came back, and don’t seem to know if you even want to be Amish.” Hannah picked up the laundry basket, and Jacob got in step with her on the way back to the house. “I guess we’ll all find out soon enough when Daniel returns with Annie.”
Jacob didn’t say anything.
Charlotte quietly closed her computer, hoping not to wake up Hannah. She missed having Buddy sleep at the foot of her bed, but her trusted companion had taken to sleeping on Amos and Lena’s bed. Lena often went to bed before her husband, and Buddy spent much of his time curled up in Amos’s lap in the evenings. But when Amos headed to bed, Buddy followed him. If Buddy had chosen anyone else over Charlotte, she might have been upset. But she suspected Buddy felt the same way as Charlotte when it came to Amos. The need to feel his love.
She extinguished the flame on the lantern, surprised by how easily she’d settled back into a life without elec
tricity. As she nestled under the covers, thoughts of the woman and girl from her dream briefly entered her mind, but the recollection no longer caused her head to throb or her chest to ache. Whatever physical response she’d been having seemed to be gone. From there her thoughts turned to Annie. She wondered if Ethan would have reacted so radically if he and Charlotte were in Daniel and Annie’s situation. Rolling onto her side, she decided it wasn’t comparing apples to apples.
She jumped when her cell phone vibrated on the nightstand. As she studied the number, she scurried out of bed to the hallway. It wasn’t a number she recognized, but it was a local area code. She was at the stairs when she answered in a whisper.
“Oops. I woke you. This is Daniel.”
They’d exchanged numbers before Charlotte dropped him off at home, but she was surprised he was calling. “No, I wasn’t asleep,” she said in a whisper. “I’m going downstairs so I don’t wake up Hannah. Hang on a minute.” She tiptoed down the stairs, clutching the handrail, then felt her way around until she found the couch and a small amount of light coming from the solar lamp in the yard. Too close to Lena and Amos’s room. She went to the kitchen, hoping Buddy wouldn’t start barking, and found a flashlight. She eased a kitchen chair out as quietly as she could and sat down. “Okay, I can talk easier now. Is everything okay?” She swirled the flashlight in circles on the ceiling above her head.
“Ya. Well . . . mostly.”
Charlotte stilled the flashlight. “What’s wrong?”
“Ach, nothing really.”
Charlotte waited. Why are you calling me? When the silence became a little awkward, Charlotte asked, “So, um . . . how did it go with your parents when you got home? I’m sure they were upset Annie wasn’t with you.”
“Ya, my homecoming went as I expected.”
Charlotte wondered why Daniel still lived at home. He was a year younger than Charlotte. She recalled Annie saying he was twenty-five. “I think Annie will want to go home after a few days.”
“Mei daed is a gut man. But this situation with Annie has him worked up more than I’ve ever seen him. I know a father worries about his kinner, but he’s going overboard with Annie, and I’m afraid she won’t want to come home because of that.”