Marrying Jake

by Beverly Bird

  “Katie, no—”

  “I can’t have Levi longing for more, quitting school at fourteen because he has to,” she rushed on. “And I can’t have my girls marrying for life to a man they may not love. Jacob, perhaps after what they’ve seen of Frank and me, they won’t want to marry at all. But the ordnung, the settlement, would force them.” She fell quiet a moment, shaking visibly now. “I am a good mother,” she said fervently. “That’s the best thing I do. And it’s one thing to suffer myself, but to let them suffer, as well, because I’m too weak and too scared to save them, would just be terrible!”

  Jake felt amazement shift through him. He was overwhelmed. And so proud, so impressed, that it hurt his heart. “I didn’t do that, Katie.”

  “What?” Her emotion was spent now. She looked pale, confused.

  “You were already saying that the night you clobbered me.” She shook her head fretfully, but he remembered. “You were saying, no, no, no more.”

  Her eyes widened slowly as she remembered, too.

  “You didn’t need me, Katie. You were just looking for a chance to show yourself.”

  He felt himself shaking, somewhere deep, somewhere in the area of his heart. He wondered if Adam knew how very much they had underestimated this woman. And then he heard himself speak, and he knew he was lost.

  “Will you at least let me help?” he asked hoarsely.

  “What?”

  “I know you don’t need it. You’d make it anyway, with or without me. But I want to help. I want to be there.”

  “How?” she asked warily.

  He still heard his own words as though someone else were speaking them. And peace spread through his chest like something red gold and warm. He realized almost distantly that he wasn’t shaking anymore. And when he went down on one knee in the cramped bathroom, he was only moderately surprised at himself. Yeah, he thought, he loved her.

  “Marry me,” he said quietly.

  Katya felt herself reeling. “Jacob, you don’t have to—”

  He interrupted. “Katie, I’m real bad at doing things that I’m expected to. Let me try my hand at something I want to do.” She stared at him. He rushed on. There was so much to tell her, to explain. “Adam wants to give me the company. That’s why he said the things he said. And I’m...”Say it. “I’m afraid to take it. That’s why I said the things I did. None of it really had anything to do with you. Not that part.” He took another breath. “I’m going to do it.”

  Her eyes widened. “You are?”

  His heart kicked. “And my first official move is to give you a job.”

  “A job?” she whispered.

  “If you want one so badly, then you’ve got one. But for God’s sake, not here, Katie. Not in this city.” Not alone. With me. But, above all, he would be honest. “It’s hard work. Long hours. Lousy pay. But I wouldn’t expect you to be—to do what you did with Frank. To turn yourself over to me entirely. To have nothing of your own to fall back on. You could work. You could have money of your own. If you wanted it.”

  “I want it,” she breathed. “A real job?”

  He wanted to shout in frustration. He was asking her to marry him, and all she could think about was the job. But that came first, he realized. With her, it would have to. So he would give it to her. Maybe it was the one thing he would ever give her, had ever given her, that really mattered.

  “There are going to have to be some across-the-board changes from the way Adam was running it,” he said. “No more handouts. Everybody gets charged something. If they can only afford a dime, well, then, damn it, they’ll have to pay the dime. And we’re going to have to cut way back on expenses.”

  “I’ll help,” she whispered. “But I really can’t do anything.”

  He felt a strong urge to laugh. “Baby, I think you can do just about anything you set your mind to. So...are you with me?”

  She looked around the bathroom. “Yes, of course rm here.”

  He laughed raggedly. And closed his eyes. “No, I meant... never mind.” Because, he thought, in the end, it was just that easy for her either way.

  He still didn’t mean to touch her because she had never answered him. Not really. Marry me. The words still hurt in his throat, but it was a sweet kind of pain. But then, suddenly, she was in his arms.

  “Jacob, I’m already married.” she gasped. “But, oh, I do wish it could be different!”

  “We’ll get you a divorce,” he said hoarsely. Was she saying yes? God, he thought, let her be saying yes.

  She was shaking in his arms. “A divorce,” she whispered. “Yes, yes. I could do that.”

  She was warm, smelling sweet, like wildflowers and green springtime and sunshine. And he held her tightly, as if she was his salvation, when all along he’d been fighting off the responsibility of being hers.

  “We can do it,” he corrected. And he waited.

  “I love you, Jacob.”

  He was dying. Slowly. By degrees. “I love you, Katie Yoder. Now for God’s sake, will you please tell me you’ll marry me?”

  She looked up at him, blinking. “Of course.”

  Just like that, he thought, feeling the room tilt. “Of course,” he repeated.

  “We bundled.”

  “We what?” Then he remembered. And he managed to laugh. “Oh, the quilt. Better pass it on this time to someone who’s already married.”

  Because, he realized, he was starting to believe in magic.

  He took them all to a fast-food joint for breakfast, one in a significantly better part of town. The city was waking up. It was a weekday. People were rushing to work, to responsibilities, harried and preoccupied.

  If he expected Katya or the kids to quail and cling to him at such a crowd of twentieth-century humanity, he was disappointed. Only Delilah clung a little tighter to her mother’s neck as they got out of the car. Levi stuck his nose into the restaurant, then immediately whipped around again to play in the big jungle gym outside.

  And that’s when Jake knew, he suddenly knew, that Katya was right. This wasn’t just about her. And it wasn’t about him. These children had been secretly yearning for this for some time, as well. Maybe the settlement was right for Adam and Mariah. Maybe it was good for Sugar Joe Lapp. But Katya and her children had fallen all too helplessly through the cracks in its protective web, had landed outside its fold, living with all its restrictions and none of the good. No, not helplessly, Jake corrected himself. Never that. And knowing that made him realize anew how right this was.

  They reached the settlement at noon. The sight of a bunch of black-clad boys racing across a field—without an adult—warmed him. The kids were back, safe. As he passed, they stopped to stare at the rental car, but it was with more curiosity—and maybe a little wariness—than fear.

  He tracked Adam down at a half-finished barn off Angels’ Cross Road. He did what he had done a lifetime ago, on the day he had agreed to find the children. He got out of the car and merely stood there after cautioning Katya and the kids to wait inside. Because this was something he had to do himself, without interference.

  Horses looked up from grazing to eye him with vague curiosity, then they apparently decided he didn’t measure up to the grass. A lot of the snow had melted, Jake realized. He thought it might be the first real forage they had seen in months and he couldn’t blame them.

  He scratched Goliath’s ear as he passed him. The gelding snorted. “Same to you,” he muttered.

  Adam looked up sharply at the sound of his voice. He said something to the man working on the roof beside him. It was Sugar Joe. Joe looked up, too, and waved. Moments later, all the men converged on Jacob. Amalie’s father and Lizzie’s father. All of them, slapping him on the back, shaking his hand, clutching their broad-brimmed black hats in work-roughened hands as they thanked him. Adam watched him levelly from behind the crowd.

  “How’s everything going?” he asked when the men dispersed. Jake had sent word ahead, via the police, that he had found Katya,
that she was with him, and they were all heading back to get Sam. He hadn’t mentioned that it would be a quick in-and-out visit.

  Jake shrugged, still deliberately watching the barn. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his new black leather jacket. So much for his savings. He’d be damned if he was going to hang around up north any longer without a warm coat. And he’d be coming back this way once in a while from now on. He cleared his throat. “So where’s Sam?” he finally asked.

  “Home with Mariah.” Adam paused. “You know, someone once told me that Bo was going to miss the hell out of his friends here if I took him back to Texas. Same thing goes for Katya’s kids. Jake, if you’re thinking to take them back to Dallas.”

  It wasn’t a question. How the hell did Adam know? Panic kicked in briefly, then Jake was calm again. “Yeah, I am,” he answered. “But they’ll be fine. Bo wanted to stay here. Katya’s kids don’t.”

  Adam digested this with careful neutrality. “This place hasn’t been all that kind to them.”

  “No,” Jake said simply.

  “Okay. Then what?”

  Jake glanced at his brother out of the corner of his eye. Damned if he was going to make this easy on him after the way Adam kept poking his nose in where it wasn’t wanted. “Are you waiting for me to tell you I’ll do the honorable thing by her?” he asked.

  Adam’s jaw jutted. “Yeah.”

  So he’d wait a little longer, Jake thought, grinning to himself. “I’ll take over the company,” he answered.

  It was enough of a surprise that Adam momentarily forgot about Katya. “What changed your mind?”

  “A tiny little bit of a woman who’s barely been out of this settlement in her whole life had the courage to traipse across two states to save it.”

  “You’re doing it for her, then.”

  “Nope. I’m doing it because of her. There’s a difference.”

  Adam took a deep breath. “You don’t have to keep denying yourself the things you love, Jake. It serves no purpose.”

  “I hope to hell you’re right.” His grin twisted. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  Adam stiffened. “That’s not fair to her. If you’re going to take her and her kids back to Texas, they deserve more than ‘I hope’ and ‘I guess.”’

  Jake smiled. Really smiled. “It’s all she asks of me.”

  She’d said she’d marry him. But in the car, on the way back to the settlement, she’d told him she wouldn’t do it until ChildSearch was on its feet. She had her share of convoluted reasons, most of which he saw the wisdom in. She wanted—finally—the chance to stand on her own two feet first, without anyone else being responsible for her. And she wanted him to be absolutely sure it was what he wanted. Given everything marriage had done to her, he was overwhelmed and deeply touched that she loved him enough to do it at all.

  “I’ll marry her, Adam,” he said quietly. “But given that she gets a little testy when anybody tries to make her decisions for her, I’ll do it on her terms.” He turned away, then looked back at Adam’s stunned face. “Six months, right?”

  “Huh?”

  “You’ll fund the company for six months?”

  Adam nodded bemusedly. “Uh, yeah. Then I’ll sign it over to you.”

  “Good enough. You’ll need to transfer three thousand dollars into the business account by Monday.”

  “Three? That’s not going to be enough, Jake. Expenses always run four to five.”

  Jake grinned and turned away again. “They won’t this month. I’m not a bleeding heart.”

  Adam watched him go back to the car. “Wanna bet?” he asked softly.

  Epilogue

  It turned out to be the longest six months in Jake’s life. And the time passed in a blur.

  It was exactly noon on a Sunday when Jake realized that ChildSearch was going to make it without Adam’s input. The first month he had indeed run over his three-thousand-dollar estimate—but not quite by the two thousand that Adam had predicted. The second month he had run over by a thousand. The third month it was by nine hundred, the fourth by five hundred, and in the fifth month he had broken even.

  This month—and it wasn’t even quite over yet—he was sixty dollars in the black.

  He sat at his desk in the back room and grinned like a fool. Then he heard an unmistakable scraping sound from the front room—the door, despite several sandings, didn’t quite fit the jamb. Jake got to his feet and poked his head into the lobby, and, as always, his heart kicked. “How goes it?” he asked Katya.

  Katya looked up from herding the children inside with a smile as wide as Texas. “Wonderful. You should come with us next time, Jacob.”

  His heart did something strange again. She had never asked him to accompany them to the small Baptist church she had found shortly after arriving here. But then, a lot of things would change now. He hoped. He glanced down at the ledger again with its sixty-dollar balance.

  Levi scattered his thoughts. “I’m gonna play football!” he announced.

  “Good for you,” Jake managed.

  “Apparently, there’s a city league, um...” Katya’s voice trailed off.

  “Peewee,” Jake supplied.

  “Yes, that’s it. One of the boys in his Sunday school class recruited him.”

  “Can you coach?” Levi asked.

  Jake hesitated only a moment. Once, before he’d given up his dreams, he’d been a hell of a quarterback. “Sure.”

  Levi beamed. “Cool.” And he raced up the stairs.

  “You go, too,” Katya said, “all the rest of you. Rachel, take Sam. He needs a nap. Play quietly and I’ll be up at five o’clock.”

  Jake watched them go. This was odd, too. Different. She always went upstairs after church to settle the children herself. What was she up to?

  Katya smiled privately as the children left. Jake had given them Adam’s old apartment upstairs. He said it was just sitting empty. It was small and cramped, and it was the most wonderful place she had ever seen. It was hers. She insisted upon paying him two hundred dollars a month for it. In addition to ChildSearch, she had gotten a job helping out at a nursing home. It appalled her the way the anner Satt Leit sent their old ones away. No grossdawdy houses here, she thought ruefully.

  In the beginning, she had been painfully uncomfortable in Jake’s world, in spite of her desperation to start over, in spite of her resolve. After the first few weeks, she had come to actually hate Dallas with all its distractions, all the many things about it that tried to pull a family apart. It had been a constant headache for her to keep her children in line with so much temptation.

  Then she had found the Baptist church. She had turned her back on her people mostly because they would not let her leave Frank, because they would not let her take care of herself, because they would not give her children options, dreams, a chance. But she loved them. She missed them, and she had known right away that whether she left them or not, she still needed the comfort of God in her world.

  She’d found the church’s loud, joyous style of singing, a little odd at first, but she’d gradually come to enjoy it and now she sang with the best of them. And within the congregation, there were sick people she could visit, Sunday school classes she could teach, values she could impress upon her own youngsters. The pastor had even gotten her the job at the nursing home. And she was going to school. Sort of. For now she was studying at home to get something called a GED.

  A high school diploma! From there, she thought, anything was possible. She could even go to nursing school. But for now, first, she wanted to marry Jacob.

  After Katya watched the children pound their way upstairs, she moved to one of the two desks in the front room.

  Jake watched her scowl at the computer monitor there. Diploma or not, he thought, she’d learned to make that thing hum. She was wearing an old-fashioned dress that she had gotten at a secondhand store, and he knew it was one of her favorites. Actually, he liked it, too. He thought it was probably vintage fortie
s, narrow and slim with pale pink flowers and a flounce at the hem. It had a modest V neckline and a little bow there, lest any cleavage appear.

  He loved her.

  “I, uh...” he began.

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “Yes, Jacob?”

  “Katie, we need to...” Why was this so hard the second time around? he wondered. But he knew. Of course he knew.

  She had been right in making them wait. The first time he had asked her, it had been torn from his heart amid all the hell of thinking he had lost her. This time it was something that he had worked long and hard toward for six months. This time it meant so much to him that he couldn’t even get the question out for the terrible fear that she might have changed her mind.

  She’d turned back to the monitor, to a list of all the kids they were currently looking for and the method they were using—milk cartons, the Web site—to find them. The list was seventy-two names long now, despite the fact that Jake charged every single parent.

  She interrupted without looking up. “Oh, there’s a new one here since yesterday. No, wait...” He waited. “She’s twentyseven years old!” A pause. She turned slowly to look at him. “It’s your sister,” she said softly.

  He tried to look away. Her eyes held him. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, Jacob, that’s good.”

  “I’ve got to say I’m sorry. You know, for that day I tried to save her and my father knocked me out.”

  “Oh, Jacob.”

  He finally managed to turn away from her. He went to look out the front windows at the sultry street where no one moved too fast or too busily. It was Sunday, this was a business district, and it got hot in Texas in the summer.

  Katya looked at the list again, then back at him. “Perhaps she won’t want to hear it. Your apology, I mean.”

  “That’s a chance I’ve got to take.”