by Jo Ann Brown
“Bro?”
“You are my brother, aren’t you?”
“You’ve been spending far too much time with Englischers.”
“And you’ve been spending a lot of time with Katie Kay from what I’ve heard. Why are you moping around? Because she’s carrying another man’s boppli? That didn’t keep Joshua from marrying Rebekah.”
Micah wanted to argue their oldest brother’s situation had been very different. Rebekah’s late husband had been Joshua’s best friend, and Joshua had promised to look after her if something happened to Lloyd.
“It’s complicated, Daniel,” he said.
“Love is, but turning away from it is stupid. If you want it, you have to be willing to sacrifice everything to obtain it.” Daniel walked out of the barn, leaving Micah to mull over his words.
* * *
The wedding was everything Micah could have wished for. It celebrated the love shared by Mamm and Reuben. All their kinder and kins-kinder were in attendance. A neighboring bishop listened to their vows to be with one another for the rest of their lives. Around the room, smiles broadened as the bride and groom returned to their seats after they were pronounced man and wife.
During the short wedding ceremony and the three-hour church service surrounding it, he’d been careful not to look in Katie Kay’s direction. Envy wasn’t an appealing emotion, and he didn’t want her to see it on his face. Yet he couldn’t help wishing he’d been the one, instead of Reuben, pledging to love one woman forever.
Don’t be pathetic, he chided himself as he had often in the past week. Even if Katie Kay was ready to stay in their community, she had plenty of choices for a husband. He’d heard whispered comments from other bachelors while they waited to go into the house for the service. Some of the remarks had been unworthy of a God-fearing man because they derided Katie Kay’s jumping the fence and then returning without having to be called to account in front of the Leit for her sins. Those fools needed to remember that that happened when a baptized member left and was put under the bann. The shunning wouldn’t end until that person atoned for breaking his or her covenant with the Lord and with the congregation.
Most of the unmarried men, however, had announced they would willingly overlook Katie Kay’s sojourn among the Englischers if she were to give them the slightest sign she was interested in one of them. None of them, of course, knew how she’d walked out with Micah and the single wunderbaar kiss they’d shared then.
Or the latest one.
With a sigh, he acknowledged nothing had changed. Katie Kay remained the focus of men’s attention wherever she went. She wasn’t ready to settle down, or at least not with him. If the other guys knew she was pregnant, would they change their minds?
You didn’t. The small voice of truth answered him swiftly. But, for once, the little voice was wrong. He had changed his mind about Katie Kay since learning she was going to have a boppli. Not because of the unborn kind, but because he’d learned she was more than the flirt she’d portrayed well.
When the service was over, Micah gave Mamm a kiss on the cheek and shook Reuben’s hand before moving aside to let others do the same. He glanced around the yard, where leaves had fallen to replace the ones they’d raked yesterday. Suddenly he felt more out of place than he had on the few trips he’d made with Sean into the city to meet with vendors.
He walked away from the happy guests, knowing he needed time to get his thoughts under control before he celebrated with friends, including the Donnellys, who’d been invited to the wedding dinner, and family...and Katie Kay.
* * *
The kitchen was busy with a half-dozen women who’d been asked to oversee the final preparation of the food for the wedding meal after the ceremony. Another group would step in and warm the leftovers for the evening meal. It was an honor to help for either meal, and Katie Kay was glad Wanda had picked her to work in the kitchen. It allowed her to keep a low profile.
If the other women had questions, they kept them to themselves as they worked to get food ready in time to serve three hundred guests. A few had been in the Stoltzfus kitchen since before dawn. Others, like Katie Kay, had joined them slicing bread and stirring chicken and stuffing after the exchange of vows.
Katie Kay was unwrapping sticks of butter to put on small plates, which would be placed on the tables by the young men and women acting as servers during the first seating. With so many guests, there would be at least three different servings.
“Let me help you,” said a familiar voice in its usual icy tone.
Looking up, she saw her oldest sibling, Priscilla, carrying several more boxes of stick butter. Katie Kay said nothing as Priscilla set them on the table. They worked together in silence for several minutes.
Then Katie Kay said, “I owe you an apology, Priscilla. I haven’t been fair to you.”
“To me?” Her older sister stared at her in surprise that evolved into suspicion. “You’ve never worried about my feelings before.”
“You’re right. I’ve never worried about anyone’s feelings but my own, because I was too wrapped up in my unhappiness to see beyond it.”
“Why were you unhappy? Every boy in Paradise Springs and beyond wanted to walk out with you. Most of them probably still do. You don’t have any reason to complain.”
Katie Kay almost retorted that she wanted only one man to court her, but that was impossible now. She’d made such a muddle of everything. Micah had been honest with her the night she’d discovered she was pregnant. That night he’d told her he’d never ask her again to marry him. And why should he when she’d turned him down again?
She couldn’t help pondering—for a moment—how different her life might have been if last year, she’d welcomed Micah’s plans for their future instead of worrying about everything she might miss by spending the rest of her days with him.
Her sister didn’t need to know how he’d planned a future with Katie Kay twice. Two very different futures but ones where they would have been together. As much as Katie Kay ached to heal the wounds between her and her far-too-perfect sister, there were embarrassing matters she had to keep to herself. She wanted to believe the best of Priscilla, but her sister enjoyed gossiping. Katie Kay wasn’t going to give Priscilla more fodder by telling her about the biggest mistake of her life.
No. Not one mistake.
The two biggest mistakes of her life.
“I was unhappy,” Katie Kay said in the same near-whisper, “because I knew I couldn’t ever be you.”
Priscilla opened her mouth to retort, but no sound came out as she stared at Katie Kay in disbelief. Swallowing hard, she managed to say, “I don’t understand.”
“I think you do. You made everything look easy, and you were never satisfied until whatever you were doing was perfect. How could I hope to emulate that after Mamm got sick and died? I can’t cook as well as you. I can’t sew as well as you, and I can’t keep house as well as you.”
“I thought you weren’t interested in doing anything but having fun.”
“I wanted to help Daed and the rest of the family.” She heard the stove timer go off. She opened the oven door and lifted out a tray of rolls and tilted it so the rolls fell into one of the baskets beside the plates of butter. Setting another tray in the oven to warm, she added, “But I knew everyone was comparing me to you, and I was well aware how far I fell short of being the bishop’s model daughter.”
“Just as I did.” Priscilla’s voice lost its hard edge.
“You? You were perfect.”
“Far from it. I know how everyone expects the bishop’s kinder to be shining examples for their own families. Do you know why I tried hard to be perfect?”
“No.” She’d never heard her older sister talk like this. “You made it look simple.”
“It wasn’t simple, but I learned how to prete
nd it was because I got tired of making mistakes and having everyone know. Maybe I’ve got too much hochmut, but I didn’t want Daed to be disappointed in me like others were.”
“I can’t imagine anyone being disappointed in you.”
“Do you think you’re the only one who has gotten disappointed looks and tsk-tsks from people who think, no matter how hard you’ve tried, you can’t measure up?”
Katie Kay stared at her sister. “Why didn’t you say so after Mamm died and the responsibility for the house fell on my shoulders?”
“Because I was jealous of you,” her sister answered as she opened another box of butter sticks.
“Of me? Why? I wasn’t much more than a kid.”
“You were filled with so much light and life you drew people to you like a moth to a flame. I used to be Daed’s precious little girl. That changed when you were born.”
Katie Kay shook her head. “You’re wrong. Daed doesn’t have a favorite among us. If he did, it wouldn’t be me because I’ve caused him many sleepless nights and heartache.”
“You’re asking me to explain something I don’t understand myself.” Priscilla stopped working, one of the few times Katie Kay had ever seen her hands idle. “Maybe I got lazy and didn’t try to change a bad habit. Maybe I was resentful I had to leave behind my childhood when Mamm passed away, and everyone expected me to do the same again when your mamm died, though I was a new bride with a household of my own.” Priscilla sighed before giving her an ironic smile. “I’ve been praying, Katie Kay, to discover why I reacted as I did after your mamm died. I wasn’t ready to repeat those unhappy years in my life. I was sure there must be more—”
“Out there to experience,” Katie Kay finished, hardly believing the words as she spoke of them.
“Ja. How did you know?”
“Maybe we were more alike than either of us has ever wanted to admit. I tried to be perfect...like you. And you wanted to find out about a life beyond the one you’d known as the bishop’s daughter...like I did when I jumped the fence.”
“Have you jumped back?”
“Ja.” She put her fingers over her burgeoning abdomen. “I’ve got to think of someone else besides myself.”
“Do you realize our bopplin will be born within weeks of each other?”
“You’re pregnant?”
Priscilla nodded, her face brightening. “I found out yesterday. I plan to tell Daed and Wanda tomorrow. Today is for them. But our little ones will be cousins and can grow up together if you stay here.”
“That would be wunderbaar.” Katie Kay hugged her sister and meant it for the first time in longer than she could remember. Maybe her whole life. It was sad to think of the times they might have had together if they had talked years ago as they were now.
* * *
As the day unfolded, Katie Kay couldn’t help looking for Micah. She spoke with his brothers and his sisters and their spouses and kinder, but each time she saw him at a distance, he was gone before she could reach the spot. Was he avoiding her? She couldn’t blame him, but she’d thought he would give her the chance to apologize. At least one more time.
She found him among the young people gathering to be matched to eat supper together. It was a tradition those who were walking out together loved and everyone else endured. She wondered what Micah was feeling when he was instructed to stand by her side.
He said nothing, so she struggled to find a way to break the silence between them. Anything she could think of to say sounded insipid in her mind. Taking his hands in hers and pleading with him to let her explain her poor choice of words was impossible when other people milled around them.
By the time they were seated at one of the tables, she still hadn’t found the right words. She was relieved when Micah asked without looking at her, “It was a nice wedding, ain’t so?”
“A wedding where two people are in love with each other is a reason for celebration.” She fought not to frown at her words, which were as trite as his. Not wanting to let the silence smother them again, she asked, “Did the Donnellys enjoy themselves?”
“As much as they could when most of the people around them were speaking Deitsch. I arranged for them to be part of the first seating, because the kids aren’t used to waiting to eat as ours are.”
“I had barely enough time to say hi to them. Olivia looks better, don’t you think?”
“Sean says she’s tired of not being able to run around with her brothers. If she does too much, the cough returns. The doktor wants her to take it easy for another week.” At last a smile pulled at his lips. “Gemma says she doesn’t know if she can put up with Olivia’s complaining that long.”
“I let Gemma know she can ask me to babysit whenever she needs a break.”
“That’s generous of you, Katie Kay.”
“It’s nothing compared to what they did for me.”
He rested his elbow on the table and leaned toward her. “Does this mean you’re staying in Paradise Springs?”
Before she could answer, the roar of a car without a muffler exploded through the evening. The black car sped up the farm lane and squealed to a stop behind the rearmost buggy. Katie Kay’s sharp intake of breath sounded like a shout in her ears, but only Micah seemed to notice. He put his hand over hers beneath the table as everyone stared at the car and the brown-haired man getting out of it.
Her whisper was as loud as a shout in the shocked silence. “Austin!”
Chapter Sixteen
Katie Kay gripped the table. She continued to stare at Austin, whom she’d hoped never to see again. If she’d imagined talking to him another time, it certainly wouldn’t have been in the midst of Daed’s and Wanda’s wedding supper.
He was dressed in casual Englisch style. Well-worn blue jeans, his favorite cowboy boots he wore though she doubted he’d ever been on a horse, and a dark blue T-shirt beneath his gray hoodie. His brown eyes scanned the crowd as he paused in the barn’s doorway, and he began to smile when his gaze found hers. Strolling toward her as if he were the master of everything around him, he preened beneath the stares.
Her heart contracted in dismay and fear at what he might say and do. Why did he have to come and chance ruining Daed’s wedding? Was his arrival a horrible coincidence, or had Cherokee mentioned something to Vinnie, who then blabbed to Austin?
She wouldn’t put such grandstanding past him, but she shouldn’t paint him with misdeeds he hadn’t done...yet. She needed to keep him from having the opportunity to make one of the scenes he loved. Could she convince him to talk to her privately? That way, he wouldn’t intrude further on the wedding.
“You know him?” her daed asked as he came to stand next to her chair.
“Ja.” She wanted to look at Micah to see his reaction, but she didn’t dare to pull her eyes from Austin’s broadening smile. Instantly she knew he was hoping to cause as much trouble as possible.
“You don’t look happy to see him.”
“It’s all right, Daed,” she said. “I’ll handle it.”
“You know him?” asked Ina Sue from the other side of the table. She put her hand over her mouth as comprehension bloomed in her eyes and the eyes of everyone else who knew about the boppli.
Wanda reached over and took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze as she whispered, “God is with us always, my dear daughter. Don’t forget that. You are never alone.”
“I know.” A strength that came from the depths of her heart, the part she’d kept closed, startled her, but she was grateful for how it allowed her to straighten her shoulders and raise her chin. Not in pride, but in knowing she was loved by the Lord and her family and her community. All of them were holding her up as she crossed the barn toward Austin.
“Hey, baby,” he said as she came closer. “You’re looking pretty good for—”
&n
bsp; Putting her hand on his arm, she didn’t let him finish because she was sure he’d use one of his crude terms. He considered plain folk backward and too stupid to become part of the twenty-first century.
Suddenly she was ashamed. Not for herself, but for Austin, who believed, in order for people to notice him, he had to create trouble wherever he went. No wonder she’d been drawn into his life after they first met. She’d enjoyed attention as he still did. They were an imperfect match, the Englisch slacker who felt the world owed him a living and the Amish girl who’d believed the wider world owed her a whirl of excitement.
“Let’s talk somewhere private,” she said.
“I don’t want to—”
Her fingers curled around his arm. “Either komm with me or leave.”
“Hey, you’re sounding Amish again. Did you forget how to talk good English?”
Before he could say more to insult her family and their friends, she tugged him away from the tables and out of the barn so what they said wouldn’t be heard by others. Even if he threw a tantrum as he’d done more than once.
Austin made a pretense of protesting and then went along. Why wouldn’t he when he was getting what he wanted? He had her full attention.
Leaning against the stone foundation of the tall barn, he chuckled. “Honey, I know you want to get me alone. Out behind the barn?” He gave her a wink.
“What are you doing here?”
“Cherokee told Vinnie you hadn’t decided yet to get rid of the kid after it’s born, so I figured I’d come out and see your glow of impending motherhood. And I thought I’d make sure you remembered you need to give me my share of whatever money the adoptive parents give you.” With a coarse laugh, he said, “I hear you country girls like to entertain in the hayloft. Want to show me?”
She ignored the coarse words he obviously thought were seductive. It was impossible not to compare him to Micah, who was always solicitous of her. Micah treated everyone with kindness and respect. He’d been as concerned about Gemma’s health while Olivia was in the hospital as Sean was.