by Price, Sarah
Geoffrey told her somberly, “Your father had another stroke. Your sister contacted us, and we’ve been trying to find you for an hour. You didn’t answer your phone or your text, and we couldn’t locate Alejandro. Charlotte has arranged a flight for you to leave first thing in the morning. Charlotte will accompany you as far as Zürich. You’ll be taking a private plane from Bern to Zürich so that you can make the flight. And Dali has arranged for a car service to fetch you from the airport.”
Her father?
Amanda felt numb. To leave in the morning when Alejandro would need her the most? Being unsure how long it would take to resolve Alejandro’s situation, Amanda couldn’t bear the thought of having to leave without saying good-bye. She was sure he would be angry with her for having caused him so much trouble and disrupting the end of his tour. But she certainly couldn’t stay. Her family needed her, and she had to see her father, to help nurse him back to health. And then there was Isadora. With so much change in her recent life, Isadora would be frightened and would need comfort.
“Now, Carlos is going to stay here with you while Eddie and I try to figure out what to do about Alejandro.”
Her head felt light and the room seemed to spin. Geoffrey seemed to sense this and gently touched her arm, a gesture intended to reassure her. “You need to try to relax. It’s been a bad night for all of us, and you have a long day ahead of you. You take care of you, Amanda, and let me take care of Alejandro.”
As she leaned back against the pillows, she reached out for his hand. “Promise me you’ll make certain that Alejandro is alright,” she asked.
“Of course.” Geoffrey gave her a small smile that did not erase the worry in his expression. “You just rest and leave Alejandro to me.”
She watched as he walked out of the room, gently closing the door behind him. In the darkness of the room, she turned her head to look out the window, the lights of the city the only thing she could see. Somewhere out there, Alejandro was at a police station, maybe even sitting in a cell with other prisoners.
With her hand resting on her stomach, she thought of the life that grew within her. Despite wanting a baby so desperately, Amanda was confronted with just one more worry: Alejandro’s reaction to the news.
She shut her eyes and began to pray, begging God to forgive her, to protect Alejandro, and to keep her father safe until she could get home to him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Alejandro sat in the chair, staring out the window at the mountain range. He hadn’t slept all night, not since he had returned to the hotel and learned that Amanda had left. For several hours, he paced the floor, hoping against hope that she would return. Each time he walked past the broken table, he cringed at the memory of the previous night when he had walked into the room.
He hadn’t meant to hurt Enrique. But seeing Enrique—his friend and colleague!—touching her body had sent him into a tailspin of blinding rage. How dare anyone touch his wife?
“You in here, V?”
Alejandro looked up as the door to his suite opened and Geoffrey walked in with Charlotte and Eddie. He motioned for them to sit down, but he returned his gaze to the window.
“Eddie, call someone from downstairs to clean this up,” Geoffrey said, his voice sounding irritated.
“What’s the damage?” Alejandro asked, his eyes still scanning the mountains. With the sun setting, there was an orange glow on the snowcapped peaks. He wondered how far away they were, and for just a moment, he wished he could go to them—anything to escape the misery of the past twenty-four hours.
“Besides all the fines to get the case thrown out so you don’t have to fly back here?”
Alejandro glared at him. “Don’t get wise with me, Geoffrey!”
“You have to learn to control your temper.”
Alejandro jumped to his feet and thrust a finger at Geoffrey’s face. “He was hurting Amanda! For once I believe this was justified!”
Geoffrey held up his hands as if calling a truce. “Calm down, Viper. Don’t shoot the messenger.”
The publicist jumped into the conversation. “Social media has picked up the story and it’s gone viral, especially the photos of you and Enrique being led into the police station. There is one video circulating of you leaving the station but not a lot of interest in that.” He shuffled through some papers and glanced at his tablet. “The main focus is on whether or not Enrique and you fought over Amanda, and why. Oh, and there is one story circulating with speculation about who’s the father of her baby.”
Alejandro rolled his eyes. “That’s ridiculous even by tabloid standards! She’s not even pregnant!”
Geoffrey cleared his throat and waited until Alejandro looked up.
“What is it, G?” The dark scowl on his face indicated the blackness of his mood. He lowered his head into his hands and mumbled, “I’m not in the mood for games! Just spit it out!”
“Well, I feel a bit awkward having to tell you this.” Geoffrey shifted his weight, clearly uncomfortable. “Apparently, she is.”
There was a silence in the room, and every pair of eyes was upon him. Alejandro maintained his position, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Only his eyes flickered to Geoffrey’s. “What did you say?”
“I . . . uh . . . I said she’s pregnant. Ten weeks pregnant, apparently. She told me herself at the hospital.”
“Dios mío,” he mumbled and shook his head. Pregnant? “And she left? Alone?”
Geoffrey nodded his head. “You know that her father is ill, Alejandro. He’s taken a turn for the worse. She had to leave.”
He couldn’t imagine Amanda traveling alone to return to Lititz. In his mind, he could see her, sitting on the plane with her mind racing in too many directions. She’d be worrying about her father, worrying about the baby, and, most of all, worrying about Alejandro’s reaction to the news that, once again, he was to be a father.
“I need to go to her.”
Alejandro started to stand up, but Geoffrey placed a firm hand on his shoulder. “Not so fast, my friend. You have a concert tonight. You need to get out there and knock it out of the ballpark.”
“And then what?”
“You have Oslo on Thursday and Friday and Stockholm on Saturday and Sunday. The earliest you can get to her is Monday.”
Standing up, Alejandro faced Geoffrey. The previous night had been a long one, and there had been far too many questions. By the time a translator had arrived, two hours had passed. Security wouldn’t let anyone into the room where Alejandro remained, so he had paced the floor, angry at Enrique and angry at himself.
When security finally let in a translator, Alejandro learned that Amanda had gone to the hospital. But with police now involved, they would not release him to go to her. Instead, he spent the better part of the morning and most of the afternoon sitting alone in a room while Geoffrey and the translator negotiated with the hotel management, security, and the police.
All during that time, Amanda had been alone.
No, he thought. He wouldn’t wait until the following week to see Amanda. “That’s just not good enough,” he said. “I need you to help me do the right thing, Geoffrey. For once, I’m going to do the right thing, and you, amigo, are going to help me do it.”
Geoffrey shut his eyes and exhaled. He still hadn’t changed his clothes from the previous evening, and the stress of the day was more than apparent on his face. When he finally looked at Alejandro, he appeared exhausted. “What, exactly, would you have me do?”
Leveling his eyes so that he met Geoffrey’s, Alejandro said the only words that he knew would get him to Lititz in order to support his wife: “Cancel the rest of the tour.”
Amanda arrived at the farm almost one full day after she had left Bern. Between two flights and a long car ride from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Lititz, Pennsylvania, she felt bone weary. She hadn’t slept on the plane, and her nerves felt shattered from the events of her last day in Switzerland. Now, as the car pulle
d into the driveway to her parents’ farm, she did her best to take a deep breath and try to calm herself.
She didn’t know what to expect when she walked into the house. From the looks of the driveway, there were people already there, most likely the bishop and preachers along with several neighbors. If her father’s health was failing, they would certainly be there to pray for him. She counted at least six gray-topped buggies in the driveway, three with the horses unhitched, which meant that the people were staying for a while.
“Thank you,” she said to the driver as he opened her car door to help her out. She waited for him to fetch her luggage and, despite his protests, took it from him and carried it to the porch.
She set down her luggage before she quietly opened the door and stepped inside the house. She wasn’t certain whether the visitors were praying or comforting her mother and sister. However, she didn’t want to disturb whatever was happening.
As she passed through the mudroom and into the kitchen, she saw a circle of folding chairs occupied mostly by men in black suits with black hats on their heads. A few had removed their hats, revealing gray hair or, in some cases, balding heads. But all of the men had long beards that covered the front of their chests. Amanda paused in the doorway, recognizing the men as the bishop, deacon, preachers, and a few of the neighbors. In the midst of the men sat her mother, a white handkerchief in her hand as she dabbed at her eyes while the bishop spoke in a low voice to her.
Jonas spotted Amanda before the others did and nudged Anna.
“Amanda!”
Everyone on the folding chairs turned to look in her direction. But it was Lizzie’s face that Amanda sought.
“Maem,” she said. “I came as fast as I could.”
Lizzie stood up and slowly walked toward her.
Amanda glanced at the men who still stared at her. She caught sight of the bishop and noticed that he looked at her with sympathy. “Maem? Why is everyone here? Why is no one with Daed?”
“Amanda,” Lizzie said.
Just the one word, her name, spoke in such an emotionless tone.
“Where is Daed?” Amanda asked, looking from Lizzie to Anna and then back to her mother. “Is someone sitting with him? He shouldn’t be alone!”
“Amanda,” Lizzie said again. “Your daed’s been called home,” she said in an even voice that did not mirror the drawn expression on her face or the blotchy patches on her cheeks.
It took Amanda a minute to digest what her mother had just said. “I . . . I don’t understand. I just learned that he had another stroke yesterday.” She looked from her mother to her sister. “I’ve been traveling for almost twenty hours to get here . . .”
Anna stepped forward and reached for her sister’s hand. “Schwester,” she whispered. “He passed just after midnight this morning.”
Amanda glanced at the clock and saw the hands frozen on the one and the four. She realized that someone had stopped it, something that only happened if there was a death in a household.
“Oh, Anna!” Amanda cried. “That cannot be!” She turned to look at the gathering of people. It began to make sense. With the church leaders sitting on the chairs, comforting her mother, she should have suspected that her father had died.
“I came as fast as I could,” she said in a soft voice, tears starting to fill her eyes.
Anna reached out for Amanda. “I know, Schwester. God had other plans for him.”
Letting her tears fall freely, not caring that there were people in the room, Amanda clung to her sister. “I . . . I wanted to be here,” she sobbed, holding on to Anna. Despite her sister’s attempts to console her, Amanda felt a hollow pain inside her chest as she realized that, as hard as she had tried, she’d arrived too late to say her final good-bye to her father.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Alejandro heard the voice of his mother calling up the stairs for him, he shut his eyes.
“Dios mío,” he mumbled. How had Alecia known that he was in Miami? He could only imagine who her sources were. He had thought that he could get away without having to deal with his mother. After all, he had only stopped at the condominium in between his flights so that he could freshen up.
“¡Un momento!” he called out as he tossed the last of his clothing into the suitcase. He wore white linen pants and a black button-down silk shirt. His white jacket hung on a padded hanger by the closet for when he left. In the meantime, he walked across the white carpet in bare feet and headed into the hallway. “I didn’t know you were visiting,” he said casually as he started to descend the staircase. “To what do I owe this honor?”
She glared at him from the bottom of the stairs. “I don’t want your sarcasm, Alejandro!”
“I’m sorry.”
For a long moment, she stared at him, studying his reaction as if to assess whether he was being sincere. Enough time passed that she must have decided he was, so she moved onto a new topic. The stern expression on her face told him that this was not a social visit. It never was. There was always something behind her visits.
“Alejandro,” she said at last. “I am here to tell you that enough is enough of this business with your wife. It is time for you to be a man and go to her!”
“Mami . . .”
She held up her hand. “¡Basta! You will hear me out!”
He folded his arms across his chest and leaned his hip against the banister.
“Amanda is your wife, Alejandro. She is a treasure to be taken care of, not discarded because of a misunderstanding. I stood by and watched you ruin relationship after relationship in the past, fathering a child that you never met, splashing the cover of magazines with woman after woman. And not one of them worthy of more than a short stint in your bed.”
He cringed at that comment.
“But when you brought home Amanda, I knew.” She shook her finger at him. “And I warned you not to mess up with this one. And right now? You are messing up.”
“Mami . . . ,” he said, trying to interrupt her again.
“I do not know what happened in South America. I do not know what happened in Pennsylvania. And I do not know what happened in Europe. But I do know that your wife needs you. She lost her father and needs her husband to give her support and love during a difficult time! Not to mention that your own daughter is there! It is time for you to go to your family”—she stopped, just for a second, to give dramatic effect to her words—“the family you chose, mi hijo. You chose to marry Amanda, and you chose to make that child. It is time for you to be a man and go to your family.”
She paused, and for a second he thought about speaking, but then he saw that look in her eyes, a fierce determination to finish her thoughts.
“You don’t know what it was like to raise a child without a father. You don’t remember how much I worked just to be able to feed you! Some days I worked three jobs!”
He took a deep breath. “I remember.”
“You cannot know what Amanda is feeling, her father passing away and her husband deserting her.”
“I did not desert her!”
“She is not with you,” his mother said. “You are stronger than her in the ways of the world. You, of all people, could have insisted that she stay with you.”
He raised his hand to his head and mumbled under his breath in Spanish. Then he turned to face his mother. “I don’t believe this, Mami! You don’t know what has gone on.”
“I know enough, Alejandro, and I know that you are quick to judge and even quicker to act. But it takes a real man to own up to his mistakes and fix them.”
Alejandro shook his head, and after taking the final two steps, he stood before his mother. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he looked her in the face and said, “Stop, Mami! I am going to her.”
For once, his mother stopped, speechless.
“I am going to my wife, and then I am bringing both her and Isadora home.” He glanced over his shoulder at the top of the staircase where Rodriego was already bringing down hi
s suitcase and jacket. “See? I was upstairs packing when you arrived. My plane is waiting to take me to Philadelphia.”
He smiled at her, a soft and understanding smile.
“I am owning up to my mistakes, Mami, and I am fixing them,” he said. “I know what a treasure I have in Amanda, and I need her by my side.”
“You will have to change, Alejandro.”
Change. Yes, he would have to change in more ways than he had since meeting Amanda. That was a realization he had made long before he was willing to admit it. He nodded his head. “Sí, sí. I understand that, too. I am willing to make the sacrifices to be more of a husband and father.” He noticed the harsh look in his mother’s face slowly soften as she listened to him. “I am going to her, Mami, to support her, and when I return, both Isadora and Amanda will accompany me.”
The visitors seemed to never end. Since eight o’clock in the morning until well after sunset, horses and buggies lined the driveway, young boys tending to them as their owners visited with the Beiler family.
Elias’s body, dressed in his Sunday suit, was laid out in a simple pine coffin at the front of the large gathering room. The visitors paid their last respects to him, standing by the coffin and gazing down at the physical remains of a man who now walked with God. Amanda watched as the people prayed over her father. She couldn’t help but wonder what they thought. Certainly they felt for his sacrifices: losing his son, losing his daughter, losing his mobility. Amanda wondered if anyone realized that the death of her younger brother, Aaron, had certainly led up to the other two major losses in her father’s life.
Not for the first time, Amanda felt guilt that she had not insisted on helping Aaron with the horse on that tragic day of his fatal accident. Perhaps, she thought, if I had helped Aaron, none of this would have happened. But, as usual, she immediately reminded herself that without Aaron’s accident, she would have never met and married Alejandro, would not have adopted Isadora, and certainly would not be carrying Alejandro’s baby. From tragedy came bittersweet bliss, she told herself.