“That’s one of my upgrades,” Lucas explained. “Along with this.” He walked to the sink and turned on the faucet. “This place was piped with only a water pump when I bought it.”
“Wow,” she said, unable to stop herself from joining him at the sink to run a finger under the water. “This must’ve belonged to a Swartzentruber family,” she said. “They live much plainer than we do.”
“I remember,” he said. “Luckily, the man I bought it from had already added indoor plumbing.” He pointed his chin toward a closed door off the kitchen that Esther surmised was the bathroom.
“Luxurious,” she said with a smile. “Do you watch many TV shows?”
“Not really. Especially not now that my schedule’s gotten busier. In fact, hmm, it’s probably been over a week since I’ve turned it on.” What he’d just said seemed to give him the need for a second of inner thought. So Esther didn’t interrupt. A moment later, he reached for the TV’s remote control and pointed it at the screen. It flickered with a bright white light but then went black again.
“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” he said, dropping the remote onto a chair. “You don’t watch TV.”
“No,” Esther said. “But I’m interested in what you enjoy. Do you have a favorite?”
She noticed a little smile brighten his face, which made her curious. This must’ve been an important subject to him.
“I do—or I did,” he said. “It’s a cooking competition. Contestants come on the show and learn how to make a specialty dish from scratch in front of a room full of people and judges and TV cameras, then—”
“Why didn’t their mothers teach them how to cook?”
Lucas’s mouth hung open, no words coming out, until he tipped his head back and laughed. “That…is a very good question,” he said, pointing at her. “Clever girl.”
Esther didn’t think what she’d asked was necessarily clever, but she felt cozy inside knowing she could make him laugh.
“Would you like some water? Or tea, maybe?”
“Tea would be nice.”
He practically flew to the other end of the room, filled a kettle, and adjusted the switch on a shiny silver gas stove. “I wish I could surprise you again, with a closet full of baby ducklings this time, but you said you had some things to ask me.” He looked at her, then away. “Would you like to start?”
Instantly, all those questions and concerns she’d been repressing the last few days bubbled to the surface. She felt her palms go clammy and her throat dry up—not quite ready to begin. But if she didn’t dive in to what she’d been dying to talk about, she might chicken out forever.
“Lucas,” Esther said, nerves making her hesitant. “When I first brought up Jacob, I sensed you didn’t want to talk about it, and I respect that. But you must know how I…” She exhaled. “I need to know what happened when he left to stay with you.”
“You’d like those answers now,” he said.
She nodded.
After a sigh, he switched off the stove and walked to the living room. “We should sit for this.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
As instructed, Esther sat on the blue sofa, while Lucas sank onto the rocker across from her.
“To start with, he was never really a healthy little boy,” Lucas began, as if he’d planned out exactly what to say. “I first thought something might be wrong when he was about thirteen. He couldn’t run as fast as me or the kids his age. He seemed weak.”
“Jacob, you mean?”
“Yes. Some even teased him about it.”
Esther sat very still, not remembering anyone being unkind to him. Then again, she wasn’t with him every hour of every day. An older brother would’ve been the true expert. She leaned forward, listening more carefully.
“I was past the eighth grade, so already done with school, and was working at the mill full time,” he continued. “But I asked my mother if I could go to the library for some books. My last year of school, I’d become obsessed with science and biology—growing up on a farm, it’s inevitable. But it wasn’t a sick cow that made me want to study; it was my brother.”
“You thought Jacob was sick all the way back then?”
Lucas nodded. “I suspected. I was only fifteen and had extremely limited knowledge and experience—basically only farm know-how. There were a few times when Jacob was so weak, he couldn’t get out of bed.”
“Honest?” She sat back, ashamed of herself that she’d never noticed anything like that when they’d been younger.
“I’m not surprised you didn’t know. My parents were good at hiding it. The church says pride is a sin, but even I knew my folks didn’t want anyone to know something was wrong. When I turned sixteen, I could actually do something about it.”
“Is that when…” Esther began but couldn’t finish.
“When what?”
“Is that why you left home? Because of Jacob?”
“Yes.”
She wrapped her arms around her body and leaned farther back, away from him. “You couldn’t bear having a brother who wasn’t perfect?”
When he stared at her, a little notch cut into the skin between his eyes. “I left at sixteen because of Jacob, but not because I was ashamed of him. Of course not. Esther, I left to help him.”
“How? You went to New York for Rumspringa and never came back.”
He dropped his chin, both hands raking through his hair. “I knew you didn’t know,” he muttered under his breath. “No one knew.”
If he’d planned out what he was going to say to her, he’d clearly already gone in a different direction.
“Esther,” he said slowly, “I didn’t come home after Rumspringa because I went back to school. I got my GRE in six months, then applied for college. Somehow my test scores were high enough to get me into NYU at seventeen. I lived with my cousins while taking classes, studying health and biology…human anatomy. My last year of undergrad, I worked with some very understanding professors at the medical school. Because of my…” He paused. “My unique upbringing, many doors were opened, and I was able to study medicine with the best in the country. That’s why I asked Jacob to come to me for his Rumspringa.”
“Wait a second.” She pressed a hand to her forehead. “You’re telling me that you ran away from home to become a doctor?”
“I’m a PA, not a doctor,” he said, holding out both hands. “I couldn’t sit idly by and watch my brother get sicker and sicker. My parents are very traditional; I knew they’d never take him to a certified medical professional, so I had to become one. It was the only way I could help.”
Esther shut her eyes, trying not to sway, trying to take it all in.
“Back then,” Lucas continued, “folks in Honey Brook didn’t have phones in their barns or even business cell phones like they do now, so it took some creativity to reach Jacob. When I did, it was easy to convince him to come to me for his Rumspringa, even though he was already eighteen. He wanted to get better, because he wanted to propose to a girl.”
Esther felt blood rush to her face. “Me?”
“He talked about you nonstop.”
Esther couldn’t dwell on that now; the pain might cause her to burst into tears. “Go on, please.”
“The first two weeks we literally lived at the hospital running tests.” He paused to take in a deep breath. “It wasn’t long before the bone marrow biopsy came back with very clear results. To put it simply, Jacob had cancer.”
Esther easily noticed that his voice shook at the word. She, too, felt a jolt, but of fear and a whole lot of confusion. “Cancer,” she said, the word tasting foul on her tongue. “I…had no idea he was that kind of sick. Did he know?”
There was a pause first; then Lucas nodded. “I told him right then.”
Wait. Wait. He knew he had cancer and didn’t say one word about it? Never mentioned i
t in a single letter. It felt as if she were being poked with a hot branding iron. We began courting when he got home. We were close—told each other everything.
Obviously not everything, she added, now feeling icy cold all over, the betrayal very real.
“He didn’t tell me back then. No one did. Why?” After a split second of thought, she couldn’t help turning to Lucas, looking him dead in the eye. “You could’ve told me.”
“No.” He ran a knuckle over the bridge of his nose. “Jacob made me promise I would never breathe a word about it to anyone. Ever. I couldn’t break that vow. He begged me.”
Esther took time to consider this, breathing through her nose, trying to both process and calm down. “People can get better, jah? Cured. I heard if it’s caught early, it will go away.”
“Not in every case,” Lucas said, sounding regretful. “And we didn’t catch it early.”
“Right,” Esther said with a sigh. “What kind of cancer?”
“Leukemia. It’s in the blood.”
“I know.” She bit her bottom lip. “Go on.”
“Because of Jacob’s background, NYU was very interested in his case. It’s not every day an Amish kid walks in for treatment. In order to treat his kind of leukemia, he basically needed brand-new blood.”
“How…?” Trying to imagine what that meant, Esther felt her gaze drift to the side.
“Let me explain. In order to get new, clean, cancer-free blood, he needed someone else’s clean, cancer-free blood.”
She sat up straight. “Like from a blood bank? That’s simple, right?”
Lucas shook his head. “Unfortunately, this kind of blood donation is more complicated. Instead of whole blood from a bank, it needed to be a bone marrow blood donation—and those are rare. Patients with leukemia put their names on a list and wait for someone to offer to donate their bone marrow. That list is very long. Some people have been on it for years.”
“Did you put Jacob on the list?”
Lucas nodded. “The very first day.”
“So…” She blinked about a dozen times, trying to make sense of it. “No one helped him, and that’s why he died?”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. Bone marrow has to be a perfect match. Going on the national list is one thing, but it’s a long shot. The best matches come from a family member.”
“Oh.” She blinked again. “His family was here.”
“Not everyone.”
Slowly, the dark confusion in her mind brightened to understanding. “You. You matched.”
“We were the perfect match.”
Without thinking, she reached out and took his hand with both of hers. “Lucas, you did that? You donated your own bone marrow?”
He looked up at her, their gazes locking just before his brows pulled together, his lips pressing into a hard line. “He was my brother.”
Esther squeezed his hand, feeling tears in her throat, gratitude in her heart for the selfless action, for this utterly selfless man. She knew it was painful for Lucas to tell her these things—to break a promise to Jacob—while also realizing she would need to know the truth. As she felt his skin against hers, giving his hand another tender squeeze, she realized she’d never felt so understood by another person in all her life.
“What happened next?” she asked.
Lucas swallowed before continuing. “The blood transfer was a success, but he needed further treatment to make sure the cancer was gone. Have you heard of chemotherapy?”
“Yes.” Her voice felt weak. “That’s when the doctor feeds you poison to kill everything in your body.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. But the medicine is very specific—it’s not meant to kill everything, just any traces of the cancer.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Jacob’s body responded well to the weeks of chemo, and he seemed to be getting stronger. We all kept track of him, hoping the cancer would be gone forever. The thing is…” He stopped when his voice began to shake again.
“Lucas, you don’t have to tell me.” Esther squeezed his hand tighter, reading the pain on his face, not wanting to add to it.
A moment later, he squeezed her hand back. “I want to. I want you to know everything—someone should. You should.” He bowed his head and took in another deep breath. “Jacob’s leukemia had a mutation. That means we couldn’t be sure it was all gone because the treatment wasn’t as specific as he needed. All we could do was wait and hope.”
“When he came back home,” Esther said, recalling a specific memory, “he told us you’d gone to the beach.”
“We went to Florida for a few weeks. He needed sun and relaxation and to get as strong as possible. I fed him as much as he could stand.” He paused to chuckle quietly, perhaps reliving a private memory. “I made sure he ate the healthiest foods on the planet. But we also had a lot of fun. We went to Disney World and down to the Keys. He swam in the ocean and started building real muscles. Then one morning, after almost a year, he began vomiting and couldn’t stop. I rushed him to the hospital, but…”
Esther let go of his hand. “The cancer was back.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Because of the mutation.”
He nodded. “I begged him to do another round of chemo and some radiation this time, but…”
“He refused.” Just thinking the words made hot tears fill her eyes, helplessly flowing down her cheeks. “He wanted to go home.”
She tried to blink away the tears, tears for sweet Jacob, but also for the man sitting across from her. The man who’d done all he could—even given of his own body—to save his brother’s life.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Yes, he wanted to go home,” Lucas said. “How did you know?” While waiting for her answer, he laced his fingers together and squeezed, feeling raw and exhausted from sharing the painful story. Even with Esther. Because he knew she deserved to know, even though by telling her, he’d broken the only promise Jacob had ever asked of him.
His soul felt black with guilt for so many things. Didn’t matter that he knew he’d done the right thing.
“He seemed different when he came back,” Esther replied. “I don’t know, more open and yet private, like he wanted to be alone more often. He seemed stronger—but maybe just spiritually. He was more devoted to Gott than ever. Honestly, that was what made me fall for him most when he returned.”
Lucas couldn’t help flinching. Of course she’d been in love with his brother. “How else was he different?” he asked, needing to speak.
“He was pious, more reflective. Everyone assumed he would work with your pa at the farm, but he took a position as a bookkeeper at the Roths’ egg farm. Most days, he sat in an office instead of working outside. He was quieter and simpler, maybe even overly reverent.”
Lucas recrossed his legs. “You liked that about him.”
“I wanted stability. Someone strong in the church. Maybe I wanted someone who would never be in danger of getting injured in a tractor accident. So when he proposed, I agreed. I loved him, too, of course, but now I’m so…”
He waited, not wanting to interrupt if her emotions were making it difficult to speak.
“I’m just so…furious!”
The word made him balk. “Furious?” At Jacob?
“Yes!” She rose to her feet, fists clenched, her face flushing red. “He knew he was sick, and he still proposed—without telling me.” She looked him right in the eyes, hands on hips. “He asked me to marry him knowing he was going to die.”
Lucas slammed his eyes shut. Everything she was saying was true, but the way she’d put it made his brother’s intentions seem so diabolical.
“It’s understandable that you’re upset,” he began, wanting to defuse her anger if he could.
Esther actually blew out a sarcastic huff. “Upset
?”
“Just…slow down and think for a second, okay?” he asked, holding up his hands in surrender.
She huffed again but then crossed her arms and shrugged.
“My brother was a good guy—he was private; we know that. Maybe he wanted to keep you from worrying over him, if he could help it.”
“Okay, but—”
“Esther,” he said, feeling tightness in his own chest. “You knew his heart. Do you honestly think he set out to hurt you?”
“Does it matter?”
“I think so. He loved you, you can’t doubt that. He must’ve had his reasons for not wanting you to know.”
Esther was chewing on a thumbnail, swaying back and forth as if mulling over the idea. She didn’t speak for a while but walked to the window, gazing outside. Her back was to him, but Lucas noticed when she swiped at her cheeks.
He didn’t know how to help her any further. He’d known the truth would change her life forever, which was one of the reasons he’d been putting it off since the day she’d first asked.
And now, just as he’d feared, she probably blamed him for not telling her, for not saving Jacob. For failing everyone.
Suddenly, Esther turned around to him, her face no longer red.
“I might not have known all his secrets, but I did know his heart, and he was pure. Thank you for reminding me of that.” She blew out a breath, looking heavenward. “Whatever his reasons were, they weren’t malicious.” She dipped her head and pressed a hand over her chest. “I forgive him.”
Though he’d hoped her angry attitude toward his brother would soften, Lucas was surprised by how quickly her forgiveness came. Would she forgive him for his part in the secret, too?
Would his own heart be as forgiving toward someone he felt had done him wrong?
He pictured his father. Would he have stopped him at sixteen if he knew Lucas was not coming back? Did he care back then? Did he care now?
For the moment, however, Lucas had to put aside his emotions. He couldn’t worry about the burden he still carried for not being truthful from the beginning or wondering how much she held him responsible for the secret.
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