by Beverly Bird
“Don’t you want to know what we’ll do after we get there?”
She nodded seriously.
“We’ll lean close to each other.” He put his mouth to her ear. She was stunned when she felt his tongue there, dipping so briefly inside. Then her breath caught and her skin pulled even tighter.
“Okay,” she managed breathlessly.
He laughed. “You’re easy, Katie.”
She scowled. “Is that bad?”
He thought about it. “To some frames of mind.” His had never been one of them. “And not in your case. I just meant...there’s no deception with you.”
“Lying is a sin.”
“Well, yeah, I guess it is.” He felt briefly uncomfortable, then he laughed again, a low rumble. “After we lean close to each other, I’ll whisper sweet nothings in your ear.”
“That’s not possible.”
“What?”
“Jacob, you can’t whisper and say nothing at the same time. Or, at least, what would be the point?”
That foggy feeling came back, just behind his eyes. “Wait and see.”
She smiled slowly, mesmerized. She was really starting to believe he could do anything at all.
He led her the rest of the way to the table. He pulled a chair out for her with a flourish. She laughed again, a light, nervous sound. Then she sat and shrugged out of her coat. And she waited.
When the waitress came, both she and Jake looked at Katya expectantly. “What?” she asked uncertainly.
“Something to drink?” the woman suggested.
She was tongue-tied. She didn’t know what to ask for.
“Two coffees,” Jake said. Then it occurred to him that she probably drank coffee every morning of her life. “No. Wait. How about...I don’t know. Some kind of ice-cream float?” Something special, he thought. Something different.
The waitress blinked. “In February?”
“We’re living dangerously.” And he was, he realized, though danger had heretofore meant a few extra shots of bourbon.
When the waitress brought the concoctions, Katya sipped tentatively, her eyes on Jake’s face. Such strong lines, she thought. And that mouth, always that mouth. It had touched her. She felt a little thrill scoot through her all over again.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well what?” She blinked, not sure what he expected of her.
“The float.”
She scowled. “You haven’t had any.”
“I’m filling up on the sight of you.”
She cocked her head to one side. “That’s silly.”
“It’s one of my best lines.” It wasn’t, actually, but he thought it was one of the few he could use on her without shocking her.
“Perhaps you should work on more,” she suggested honestly.
He stared at her, then he laughed. It came up from deep in his chest. It was sudden, unstoppable. She was the most naive woman he’d ever met in his life, and damned if she hadn’t put him in his place.
“I like you, Katie Yoder,” he managed finally.
She had never heard sweeter words in her life.
He touched his tall, foaming glass to hers and couldn’t believe he was sitting in a café. drinking an ice-cream float, feeling mesmerized. “Here’s to new experiences,” he said, his voice low this time, seductive, “in the most astonishing of places.”
She wasn’t sure she understood what he meant, but then, she understood only a portion of the things he said anyway and she hated asking for clarification all the time. So she pretended, smiled tentatively and drank a little, finally scooping out the ice cream with the long spoon the waitress had brought.
It was sinfully delicious. She laughed in delight.
Jake leaned forward again abruptly. “I think this would be a good place for those sweet nothings I mentioned.”
Her eyes widened. “Okay.”
He shook his head slowly. His eyes were on her face, roving, as though to find some secret there. He touched a finger along her cheekbone, then leaned over and caught her mouth.
He didn’t know what to do with her. He didn’t know how to be with her. Yes, all the old rules had vanished; he’d decided they no longer applied. But he wasn’t sure what he was left with here. He couldn’t laugh things off with a woman who wouldn’t play games. He couldn’t pry off the fingers of a woman who didn’t cling, who asked for nothing. This was, he realized, getting a little too close to the core of him, easy and comfortable and right.
Alarm kicked in. Panic threatened again. But he couldn’t heed it, at least not at the moment, because the lure of her was stronger.
He slanted his mouth over hers. She shuddered again and moaned something that sounded like “Oh my.” No, he didn’t know what to do with her.
If this was sweet nothing, Katya decided, then she wanted all of it she could hold. She had gone beyond being totally shocked that he seemed to want her. She had gone beyond her fear. Both had been impossible to hold on to in the face of his frequent touches. That was his way, she’d come to learn, always using his hands. Each graze of his palm, each capture of her hand in his own, every time his mouth brushed over hers, he was saying that he wanted her, he really did, no matter how preposterous that seemed to her. And if she had stiffened, had yanked back in fear each time, she would be exhausted by now.
So she accepted. And in a part of her heart, she also accepted that sooner or later it would all end. But she was reasonably convinced that for some reason she couldn’t fathom, an angel had come to sit on her shoulder for a little while. A sweet angel, a kind angel, who said that for each attack of Frank’s battering fists, she should also have one touch to cherish.
Jake’s mouth left hers. His tongue skimmed her lower lip.
“Was that nothing?” she whispered.
“What do you think?” His voice seemed to her as dark and smoky as the room. “I’m through handing out lines for a while.”
She thought about it. “It was everything.”
He kissed her again. The overriding feeling she got from him was time, Katya decided. He would stretch this out forever. He would nibble and murmur. There was no plundering, no cruel and hurtful rushing through to his own pleasure.
She groaned a little against his mouth.
He felt her trust like a palpable thing, like something she held in her hands and extended to him. And he felt the weight of it, the responsibility. Something he’d always avoided. That brought him back to his senses a little. He sat back again,. away from her.
“Would you...?” she ventured.
“Would I what?”
“Do that again?” The words were hard to get out.
He was doomed. “We’re in a café, Katya.” He tried for sanity.
“I thought that was okay. You said it was a place for sweet nothings.”
Damned by his own lines, he berated himself helplessly, then he found her mouth again.
He smelled like something spicy and rich. It filled her head. Slow, everything was so slow. Then suddenly, his kiss changed to something deeper, almost needy.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he heard himself say, and that shook him, too, because he hadn’t even realized he was thinking of the possibility.
“How could you? How could you possibly?”
Don’t trust me. Don’t you get it? You’ll need me and I won’t be there. But the words wouldn’t come, and that made him angry.
Then her head tilted back a little so that he lost her mouth. A sigh left her.
“No, baby, no.” His voice was raw. “You can’t do that here.”
“What?” She came back to reality and looked at him dazedly.
He hooked an arm around her neck, pulled her closer, but into a kind of hug this time. You can’t throw your head back like I was making love to you and we were the only two people in the world. He realized he was shaking.
“Jacob.”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you stop?”
Because maybe,
he realized, just maybe there was some small shred of decency left inside him after all.
Chapter 12
“Jacob?” she said a few minutes later.
“What?” He surreptitiously shifted his chair a couple inches from hers.
“You’re not talking anymore.”
He’d ordered hamburgers, and the waitress came and set them in front of them, giving him a moment to think of a response. He stared down at the burger fiercely. His appetite was gone.
Talk, he told himself. Okay, she wanted talk. He’d focus it on her. “How come you were so willing to break out today?”
She looked at him, her eyes wide. “Break out?”
He waved a hand. “The jeans. Your hair.”
She smiled a little. “That’s exactly what it’s like,” she answered wistfully. “Breaking out. Being free. I never knew...it’s so glorious.”
He considered Adam’s wife. Made himself consider her. “Mariah cherishes every restrictions of her life,” he returned.
She pondered that. “Almost everyone does. It’s why my people left the church in Europe all those centuries ago, why we came here to Pennsylvania. It happened over an issue of baptism. The old church performed the rite much as many of your faiths do. Shortly after birth. But we felt that people should have the choice. That their faith would be stronger if it was something they chose of their own free will. We don’t feel people should be baptized into it until they’re old enough to know what they’re getting into, until they’re old enough to make a responsible, conscious choice.”
She thought he relaxed a little as she spoke. For a while, he’d seemed very tense. She’d wondered if it was something she’d done or said. But now he seemed to be focusing hard on her words.
“You were baptized,” he said hoarsely.
“Yes.”
“So you made a conscious choice.” Even he realized there was something too rough about his voice. He couldn’t have said why this seemed so damned important.
She shrugged one shoulder and nibbled on a French fry. “The Amish church, the deacons, won’t marry a couple if both partners aren’t baptized.”
“A little coercion there, he snapped. ”So much for free choice.”
“But most people are baptized years before that. Very few embrace the church just so they can get married.”
“Why’d you do it then? Why?” She wasn’t happy. He knew she wasn’t happy. She was trapped and she was miserable.
Katya felt a burning sensation come up in her throat. “Because I had to.”
“To get married?”
“No. I was sixteen. I married at seventeen.”
“Then why?” he persisted, almost shouting. He found he badly needed to know, to understand. Suddenly, knowing was the most important thing he’d ever needed.
“There was nothing else I could do!” she burst out.
“You don’t believe in all this...this ordnung stuff, then?” It was her life, he reminded himself. It had nothing to do with him. But it felt like it did. The whole thing bothered him tremendously.
“Of course I believe,” she answered.
He felt like a horse had kicked him in the chest.
“You see, it wasn’t terrible at first.” She struggled to explain. “I got baptized because I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I was raised in the settlement, Jacob. This is only my second time in the city. I was fine with the decision until I started seeing things that were just...that were just wrong. I believe in almost all the ordnung, Jacob. But some parts are just...senseless.” She dropped her voice, unable to speak the blasphemy above a whisper. “Some parts just hurt people.”
Jake felt each of his muscles tighten, one by one.
“Now I’m in and they’ve closed all the doors,” she went on. And oh, it felt so good to say it. She wondered if she would ever have been able to say it to anyone but him. “They won’t let me out, Jacob. That’s better than being expected to allow Frank to hit me day after day after day. At least the new gemeide threw the meidung on him and allowed me to separate, but this is all there’s ever going to be. Ever. Just me and my children. And sometimes I just... sometimes I just want to dream again. Like you said. There’s nothing specific I want to do and am prohibited from, not right now, but all my dreams, all my possibilities are gone.”
The way she said it hurt him. “So leave,” he said, his voice raw. “Live like the rest of us. Get a divorce. For God’s sake, Katya, there has to be a way out!”
“There isn’t.” She looked at him as though he were crazy. “Oh, Jacob, I could never survive out here.”
That made him angry. Frustrated. Something hurt behind his eyes. “Why not?”
“I’ve just told you. I’m not...smart enough. I’m not educated. I have four babies! And this...the people in the settlement are all I’ve ever known. I need them, Jacob. If I lost them, it would be like walking down the road naked.”
He knew better than to let that image get stuck in his mind.
“Thank you,” she said suddenly, fervently.
“For what?” he growled.
“For opening this one little door. For bringing me here today. I’ll remember this forever.”
She looked at him with her heart in her eyes. Everything inside him stiffened. It was what he had wanted to do for her, to give her, and now, somehow, it hurt.
“Eat,” he snapped. “Just eat your hamburger.”
She took another dutiful bite. Actually, she found, her own cooking was much better. Jacob wolfed down his burger, and she didn’t see how he could taste it. Maybe, she thought, that was the point.
“Ready?” he said abruptly, wiping his mouth with the napkin, tossing it down.
It was over.
She nodded. She’d felt it coming, of course. She looked down sadly at the paper bag sitting beside his chair. “I’ll need to change,” she said quietly. “I guess we should go back to that store.”
But Jake shook his head. “You can do it here in the rest room.”
He threw some money on the table and went to a pay phone against the wall. By the time she came back from changing, he’d hung up. “I called a cab. You stay in here and keep warm. I’ll go out to the curb and keep an eye out for it.” And just like that, he was gone.
She went after him despite what he had said. He didn’t notice her right away, didn’t hear the swishing sound of the door. For a moment, she could watch him without him knowing it.
The expression on his face took her breath away. Inexplicably, tears sprang to her eyes. His face hurt. It was miserable. Hard. She didn’t understand.
She must have made a sound of distress because he looked her way suddenly and sharply. “Hey,” he said neutrally, “what are you doing? I told you to keep warm.”
“I didn’t like it in there without you.”
His face went even harder. “Don’t say things like that.”
“But—”
“Just don’t. Damn it, Katie, don’t.”
She stayed silent. This time she listened to him.
The cab pulled up. Jake held the door for her. She scrambled inside and went to the far window. It was over, she thought again.
Almost.
She watched the lights of the city flash past. She leaned forward, nearly pressing herself against the glass, not wanting to miss one last glimpse of this place. But before she knew it, they were back at the phone booth. She took the bag with her treasured jeans from the floor wordlessly. While he paid the driver, she waited on the road. A tear fell down and plopped wetly on her shawl. It was big enough that she could see it even in the darkness. She dashed her hands over her cheeks angrily. If there was one thing she knew, one thing she had learned long ago, it was to cherish the brief moments of good in her life, then just... release them. Let them go. Mourning them, the loss of them, would only make the bad parts of her life feel worse.
But oh, this time it was so very hard. This time had been almost more good than she could hold.
Jake didn’t want to look at her and he couldn’t quite figure out a way not to. He saw her chin tremble in the moonlight. Damn it. He felt angry. He had never promised her anything. He’d never offered her anything but this one damned afternoon. Why did she have to look at him like that, like he was taking everything good in her world and stomping on it just by bringing her home?
He decided he’d walk her back to the house, then he’d just get the hell out of Dodge. Or paradise, as the case might be, with all its sweet, simplistic values. With this woman who smiled so tremulously, and the others who carted food into a neighbor’s house because a skeleton had been found. He’d go back to the city if he had to walk. He’d spend the night there, burn it off.
He took her elbow a little too roughly. “Come on.”
They trudged through the night. Even the moon went away, ducking behind a cloud. They rounded the first curve in the road, and then they saw it. They both began jogging at the same time. The bag Katya held with her precious jeans and sweater fell from her nerveless fingers. She knew. Somehow she knew.
Adam and Mariah’s house was alive with lights. Lanterns were lit in every room. There were horses and buggies all over the place, lining the street. Something was wrong. Katya began making a keening sound in her throat. Their jogging footsteps turned into a flat-out run.
Jake scarcely heard her. Their shoulders bumped hard together as they tried to get in the front door at the same time. Katya almost fell and she had to grab the porch rail to steady herself. Jake raced inside first, like a madman. She wheeled away from the rail and went in after him, almost in one motion.
“What is it?” he demanded of the people—all women again—crowded into the living room.
“What?” Katya cried as soon as she spotted Mariah. “What’s happened?”
Mariah’s face was as pale as the moon. “Sam,” she whispered. “It’s Sam. Bo says they went to the pond to look for the geese after all when you didn’t come back. And now he’s gone. I’m so sorry. I thought they were playing out back, but they slipped away when I wasn’t looking.”
Katya’s heart stopped. Her blood seem to drain down to her feet and out through her heels. She swayed. No, no, no. But she had known. From the moment she’d seen all the lights, she had known. She looked around wildly for Jacob. He was still standing in the doorway, and his face was parchment white. “Help me,” she said, her voice strangled. “Jacob.”