“It’s not an accusation, Anna,” Fletcher interrupted. His throat burned as he admitted, “It’s... I don’t know. I guess it’s some kind of nagging concern on my part.”
“But I keep telling you there’s no reason for such concern.”
Fletcher hesitated. He knew he was in dangerous territory but if he didn’t voice his complaint now, it would resurface in his thoughts and affect his relationship with Anna until he did. “But you really did seem to cherish recalling your courtship with Aaron tonight.”
Anna threw her hands into the air and then slapped them against her lap. “What I cherished recalling was a happy memory of my daed, not of Aaron!”
Just then one of the boys let out a tremendous shriek. Anna and Fletcher sprang from the boulder and whipped around: the noise had come from behind them.
“He yanked my hand really, really hard!” Evan wailed, purple-faced and sobbing.
“He wouldn’t kumme when I told him to,” Eli tattled.
Anna crouched to examine the mark on the back of Evan’s hand where Eli had grabbed it and then she lifted it to her lips and blew on it before giving his skin a kiss. “I know it hurts,” she said. “But you’ll survive. Why don’t you go search that patch of grass over there to see what kinds of creatures you can find?”
Then she took Eli by the shoulders and looked into his eyes. “What has your mamm taught you about using your voice instead of your hands to express yourself?”
“But he was spying on you and Fletcher and you said you wanted privacy!” Eli blubbered. “Terrible things happen when you spy and I didn’t want you to get hurt again!”
As Anna pulled the sobbing child to her chest and patted his back, she sent Fletcher a quizzical look and he shrugged in return, their own argument momentarily suspended. When Eli was quieted again, Anna took his hands in hers and asked, “What do you mean, you don’t want me to get hurt again?”
Eli shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”
Anna lifted Eli’s hands and gave them a small shake for emphasis. “I promise you, no matter what you say, you won’t be punished for telling the truth. Do you know something about my accident? Is that what you meant about me getting hurt again?”
The boy nodded and a few more tears bounced off his round cheeks.
“Eli, it’s very important you tell me.”
Eli sucked his bottom lip in and out as he confessed, “I was spying on you and Aaron at the creek the night before your accident. People can get hurt when other people eavesdrop or repeat gossip, that’s what Mamm and you always tell me, but I did it anyway and then the next day you got injured. I’m sorry, Anna. I’m really, really sorry.”
Fletcher felt as if he’d been walloped in the abdomen with a fifty-pound sack of feed. The night before Anna’s accident was a Monday; he remembered because he was personally extending wedding invitations to people outside their church, as was the Amish custom in their district. What were Anna and Aaron doing at the creek together?
“Shh, shh, shh,” Anna shushed Eli, enfolding him in her arms. “You were very brave to tell me the truth, but I promise you, Eli, it wasn’t your fault I hurt my head.”
“Neh,” Fletcher confirmed, peeling Eli out of Anna’s grasp. “It wasn’t your fault at all and this one time, it’s okay to repeat what you heard when you were eavesdropping. So I want you to think hard, Eli. What were Anna and Aaron talking about at the creek?”
Anna straightened into a standing position. “Why are you asking him that? He’s a kind. I’m sure he can’t remember what two adults were talking about, much less understand the context—”
“Do you?” Fletcher was squatting on the balls of his feet next to Eli as he stared into the child’s eyes. “Do you remember what Anna and Aaron were talking about?”
“Neh.” Eli shook his head. “I wasn’t close enough to hear. I only saw them kissing and then Mamm called me home from up the hill.”
The boy’s reply staggered Fletcher and he landed on his backside, too stunned to speak or move.
* * *
“It’s getting dark.” Anna felt light-headed and her voice trembled. “Eli and Evan, I’d like you boys to go directly into the house and tell Melinda or Raymond or Roy that Anna said one of them is to draw a bath for you. Fletcher and I will follow you from a distance.”
After the boys scurried into the woods, Anna extended her hand to Fletcher, but he pushed it out of his way. He stood up of his own volition and smacked the dirt from the back of his trousers before striding after the boys.
“Fletcher!” Anna called. Her legs felt as if they were made of pudding and she struggled to keep up. “I don’t know what Eli thought he saw, but you can’t possibly take it seriously. He’s a kind. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Fletcher pivoted and marched back toward her, his eyes ablaze. “You’re right, Eli is a kind, so I can’t trust his interpretation of events. And you have amnesia, so I can’t trust yours, either, can I? However, there is one person who knows for certain what happened that Monday night and although I’ve never found him to be entirely reliable, this time I’ll have to take him at his word!”
“Neh!” Anna pleaded, tugging on his arm. “You can’t ask Aaron that.”
“Why not, Anna? Because you don’t want me to find out the truth—is that it?”
“Neh, because it’s so false as to be narrish!” Anna negated the notion, referring to it as crazy. “Besides, you’ll upset the kinner if you go tearing into the house like a rabid dog! Eli has been bearing the guilt of my accident for weeks. That’s probably why he’s had such terrible stomachaches. Do you want to upset him further? You know how that will affect Naomi! And what about Melinda? How will she feel if you accuse her fiancé of kissing me?”
Fletcher shook Anna’s hand from his forearm. “She’ll feel devastated, the same way I feel now—but it’s better if she knows the truth before she marries Aaron.”
Anna charged up ahead of Fletcher so she could angle to face him as he approached. “It doesn’t have to be that way, Fletcher. You don’t have to feel devastated and neither does Melinda. The only reason you feel that way is because you’ve already decided I’m guilty. You’re not giving me the benefit of the doubt!”
“I’ve been giving you the benefit of the doubt since the moment I received the note from you, Anna. I’ve been hoping and praying and believing it didn’t mean what I thought it meant. I convinced myself—you convinced me—that there had to be some kind of logical explanation. It had to be some kind of mistake,” he sputtered.
For a moment Anna thought he was going to cry, but instead he stopped talking. When he spoke again, his volume was subdued. “I want to believe Eli is mistaken more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. But until we talk to Aaron about it, I’ll always have a doubt in my mind.”
“Okay, fine,” she conceded. “We’ll talk to him—but outside, just the three of us. Not where the kinner or Melinda can hear.”
When they got within sight of the house, they noticed Roy heading indoors with the milk pail, so they asked him to send Aaron outside to the barn. While they were waiting, Anna lifted her apron to wipe her face, and then smoothed the fabric back into place, unable to look Fletcher in the eye. A second later, she heard the house door slamming, followed by the patter of footfall.
“I have a direct question for you and I expect the absolute truth,” Fletcher said frankly when Aaron stood before them near the side of the barn. “Did you and Anna kiss the day before her accident?”
Aaron jerked his head backward and then a bemused smirk snaked across his lips. “You remembered?” he asked Anna, and immediately Fletcher kicked the side of the barn so forcefully the cows inside lowed.
Overcome with disbelief, Anna closed her eyes until the spinning sensation stopped. By the time she opened them, Fletcher had left. Her fists clenched, sh
e snarled at Aaron, “Get out of my way.” When he stepped aside, she rushed across the yard to where Fletcher was unhitching his horse from the post.
“Perhaps the kiss didn’t mean what you think it means,” she said. She was nearly on her knees, pleading for him to consider other possibilities. “Things aren’t always as they appear to be—”
“Stop!” Fletcher directed, holding up his hand. “Enough is enough! The kiss means exactly what I think it means and so does your note. I can accept the truth, but now it’s time—it’s past time—for you to admit it.”
“And what truth is that?”
Fletcher glanced toward the back door of the house, waiting until Aaron went inside again. “You still love Aaron,” he hissed.
Anna’s mouth twisted as she cried openly. “But I don’t. I’m telling you, Fletcher, I don’t love him. May the Lord forgive me, but most of the time I don’t even like him.”
“The facts say otherwise.”
“They aren’t facts. They’re perceptions. Erroneous perceptions,” she sobbed. “I don’t know how to explain what happened the day before my accident, but I do know what it feels like to be betrayed and I would never, ever do that to anyone, especially you.”
“Perhaps not willingly, not consciously, but you don’t know your own heart, Joyce.”
The slip of his tongue wasn’t lost on Anna. “I do, too, know my own heart. I know it far better than you do,” she contradicted, “and my name is Anna, not Joyce.”
“Jah, but you’re sure acting a lot like she did.”
Anna shook her head sadly, slowly backing away. She choked out the words, “I can’t marry a man who doesn’t trust me.”
“And I can’t marry a woman I can’t trust,” Fletcher retorted as he climbed into his buggy.
Clasping her hands over her mouth, Anna fled to the house. When she got inside, she sailed past the dirty dishes still on the table, avoided the sitting room where Aaron and the older boys were taking out the cards for a game of Dutch Blitz and ignored Melinda’s request for assistance above the sound of sloshing water in the washroom. As far as Anna was concerned, the entire household could collapse around her. She was tired of helping them: at this moment, she was the one who needed help. In her bedroom, she threw herself to her knees beside her bed, but found she couldn’t say a word to the Lord. Instead, she poured out her heart in the form of rasping sobs, knowing He’d understand.
* * *
It was a good thing the horse often traveled the route between Anna’s house and his, because Fletcher was so angry he couldn’t see straight, and the animal was guided more by habit than by Fletcher’s hand. He hardly recalled stabling the horse and walking into the house, but once inside, he paced from room to room, attempting to make sense of the events that had just unfolded. No matter how desperately he tried to allow for the possibility that all was not lost, he kept circling back to the same conclusion: Anna loved Aaron. Or, at the very least, she felt conflicted enough to kiss him only one day after publicly announcing her engagement to Fletcher. In either case, the wedding was off. Their marriage was off. Their bond was broken.
Asking himself how this situation could possibly be happening again, he reflected on his early days with Anna. After what he’d been through with Joyce Beiler, he could scarcely believe it when God blessed him with the type of relationship he shared with Anna. She had been trusting, open, good-humored and gracious beyond measure. Until he met her, he hadn’t really known what love was—and not just the love he had for her, but the love she reciprocated toward him. The connection they shared grew stronger every day until he was certain it wouldn’t just endure throughout their lifetime; it would flourish. But he’d been wrong.
Raking his hand through his hair, he spotted his wedding suit carefully arranged on a hanger that was hooked to a peg on the wall of the parlor. He’d put it there the day after kissing Anna for the first time since her accident. It was meant to remind him to focus on the future. But now the suit’s form seemed to mock how lifeless he felt internally and he lunged toward it, swiping it from the peg and hurling it to the floor, where it lay in a crumpled heap like the rest of his dreams.
He kicked it aside and smacked the heel of his hand against the outer wall of the alcove. Then he did the same with the opposite hand. The force of his blows left two cracked dents in the plasterboard, but he was so embittered he swung his foot, putting a third hole in the wall before dropping backward onto the sofa. The damaged wall looked like two eyes and a serious mouth staring disapprovingly at him, so he quickly jumped to his feet and stormed out of the house.
Unaware of where he was going, Fletcher only knew he couldn’t sit still. He trekked long into the night, ruminating about what would come next. Unfortunately, he knew from experience that he and Anna would need to meet with the deacon before announcing publicly that they’d called the wedding off. As for the humiliation that would follow, he supposed some might think he’d be better equipped to handle it the second time around, since he knew what to expect. But instead, he felt doubly mortified. Not only would he have to bear the disgrace of his broken engagement in Willow Creek, but word would travel to Green Lake, where he imagined he’d become something of a laughingstock.
Sniggering bitterly, he realized he was running out of places to go to escape the humiliation of being jilted. Nevertheless, he’d have to find somewhere else to live and work. He’d finish up the project they were working on now and give Isaiah and Aaron time to find another crew member to replace him, but then he was going to move on. There was no way he could continue to work for his cousin: it was only by the grace of God he hadn’t verbally unleashed his fury on Aaron back at the barn. He knew what the Bible said about forgiveness and anger, yet he also knew what it said about fleeing temptation. Given the option, Fletcher thought it was wise to make himself scarce as soon as possible.
As he ambled up the lane to his own yard again, he realized he’d probably have to forfeit the house to Aaron and Melinda. Or worse, to Aaron and Anna. Crossing the grass, Fletcher tried to convince himself that the tears in his eyes were due to spring allergies and he wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. Still too distraught to sleep, he took out his tools and supplies and began repairing the holes he’d made in the wall. By the time he was finished, the sun was just peeking over the horizon and he was finally exhausted. He laid down on his bed fully dressed and was asleep before he had a chance to remove his shoes.
He woke to a loud banging on the door. Although he had no idea what time it was, he guessed from the sunlight flooding the room that it was after ten or eleven o’clock. That better not be Aaron coming to lecture me for being late to work, he thought.
When he tugged open the door, he was surprised to see his uncle. Had Aaron told him about what happened the previous night? Was that why he was here?
“Onkel Isaiah, kumme in,” Fletcher said. “I...I wasn’t feeling my best last night so I decided to sleep in. I’m late for work.”
“Jah, I can see that,” he noted. “I’ll put on a pot of kaffi while you wash up.”
After shaving, Fletcher emerged from the washroom. His uncle was in the alcove, examining the built-in bookshelf and opening and closing the built-in drawers on the interior wall. Extending a mug to Fletcher, Isaiah made a sweeping motion with his hand and said, “This is the finest design and craftsmanship I’ve ever seen from someone your age—your daed trained you well. Anna must be delighted.”
Fletcher swallowed. So, Aaron hadn’t told his father about last evening’s debacle after all. Then why was Isaiah calling on him? “She hasn’t seen it yet,” he replied. “It’s supposed to be a surprise.”
“How is she doing?” Isaiah inquired cordially.
“She’s healing slowly but surely,” Fletcher answered. Until Anna and Fletcher met with the deacon, he decided he’d keep the news of the breakup to himself.
“Tha
t’s gut,” Isaiah continued. “You’ve probably been under a lot of financial pressure, what with her injury and medical bills and the work of preparing the house for her to move into it, including making these renovations?”
Fletcher was puzzled by what his uncle was getting at. “Jah, I was,” he answered without elaborating.
“That must be costly,” Isaiah commented, appearing to read Fletcher’s reaction.
Fletcher wondered if his uncle had come to discuss his wages. “I try to be a gut steward with my resources,” he said. “Gott always provides.”
Isaiah didn’t seem to hear him. His uncle’s posture was so stiff and his skin so ashen, Fletcher wondered if he was ill. But he reasoned Isaiah would have gone directly home from work if he was sick. Besides, how did his uncle even know he could find Fletcher here instead of at the job site? Had Aaron or Roy or Raymond told him?
Isaiah pulled at his beard, finally stating gravely, “There is no easy way to approach this subject, so I will be direct. I have been looking over our accounts and there are some discrepancies.”
“Discrepancies?” Fletcher echoed, confused. “What kind of discrepancies?”
“We have an unexplained deficit of nearly two thousand dollars,” his uncle explained.
Fletcher whistled. “That’s a lot. Could there be a mistake?”
“I have repeatedly tried to reconcile it myself.”
“I see. I’m very sorry to hear that and I’d like to help you, Onkel, but aside from using a measuring tape, math and numbers have never been strengths of mine.”
“Neh, son, I don’t want you to look over the account,” Isaiah said, his ears purpling. “I—I want to know if you know anything about this matter.”
Suddenly the real concern behind Isaiah’s comments about medical bills and the expense of making renovations to the house came clear. Fletcher felt as if his uncle had clocked him over the head with a wrench.
“While it’s true I’ve occasionally signed off on the company account—under Aaron’s direction—or used the bank card to purchase supplies or withdraw cash for our work projects, I’ve always provided him the receipts,” Fletcher declared. “I don’t know anything about this matter.”
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