“Hmm.”
“Hmm what?”
Somehow, now that Rachel knew about his trouble finding the right words, it was actually easier for Arden to express himself in front of her. “When you told me about becoming a nurse, you described it as a dream, almost an irrepressible one. You pursued that dream at great cost to yourself. That’s a far cry from supposing you want to become a nurse practitioner.”
Rachel chewed on the corner of her lip. There was a faraway look in her eyes but she simply shrugged and said, “Jah, well, maybe I won’t get into the MSN program anyway.”
“If you don’t, you could always kumme back to Serenity Ridge for gut.” Like most of his deepest-felt sentiments, this one sprang from Arden’s lips, taking him by surprise.
Rachel seemed to think he was jesting. “Jah, I could ask Ivan to give me a job as painter in residence.”
Arden attempted to cover the fact he’d been serious by kidding, “Or you could become Serenity Ridge’s nurse in residence. We Amish need someone to lecture us about rotz and ticks and the dangers of cough suppressants.”
“Lecture?” she asked. “You mean the other day? Was I really that bad? The only reason I told Eva not to bring the cough remedy was because she was going to buy honey from the expensive organic market just for that purpose, and I didn’t want it going to waste.”
I’ve really misjudged her, Arden realized again. “Neh, you’re not that bad,” he said, blithely imitating her tone when she said he wasn’t that dull.
“Gee, thanks.” She gently pushed on his bicep, frowning in mock consternation. How he wished he could kiss that fake pout from her lips... Her cell phone rang, and Arden wrenched backward. She pulled it from her purse and glanced at the display screen. “I’d better answer this. Denki for staying with Ivan. I’ll see you in the morning?”
“See you in the morning,” Arden echoed as she lifted the phone to her ear. Rachel had already shut the door behind him when he remembered he’d never told her that Toby had called that afternoon. Maybe that’s him on the phone with her now. Maybe he’s wondering when she’s coming home, Arden conjectured. What if he’s calling because he wants to date her again? He didn’t know what had inspired that idea, but once he got it into his head, it was all he could think about.
* * *
“Guess who’s going to be a nurse practitioner?” Meg taunted in a singsong voice.
“Who?” Rachel’s mind was still on her conversation with Arden. Was he serious about wanting me to stay in Serenity Ridge?
“Do you really have to ask? You are, that’s who. You got into the MSN program!”
“I did?” Rachel had been anticipating the university’s decision for so long she thought she’d be exuberant when she finally heard, but instead she felt hollow.
“Yes, you did!”
“Oh.” Her eyes filled with tears—and they weren’t the happy kind, either.
“Oh? That’s all you have to say? What’s wrong? Aren’t you glad you got in?”
“Yeah, I am,” Rachel said, but Meg could tell she wasn’t being completely honest.
“That answer lacks conviction, Rach. What’s going on? Has Ivan had a relapse?”
“Neh, Ivan’s definitely improving. It’s just that, it’s just...it’s everything,” Rachel cried, releasing a torrent of pent-up emotion. Meg listened to her recount a hodgepodge of anecdotes, from nearly being trampled by the moose to her argument and subsequent reconciliation with Arden to the lovely evening she’d just enjoyed at the deacon’s house. She also lamented Colin and Hadassah’s behavior, the fact her nieces and nephews hadn’t known she existed, and the realization she’d wrongly made assumptions about the Amish community in Serenity Ridge. She ended by saying how conflicted she’d felt lately about becoming a nurse practitioner. “To be honest, I don’t think I want to be a nurse practitioner as much as I wanted to prove I could be one. And I especially wanted to prove it to Toby. It was a matter of pride—what the Amish call hochmut.”
“I’m not entirely surprised—you love nursing so much, I never really could imagine you changing roles. As grueling as the application process was, at least you figured out you don’t want to go through with becoming an NP before you enrolled in the program or quit your job,” Meg consoled her. “For a minute there, I was afraid you were going to tell me you weren’t coming back to Boston...”
Rachel hesitated a spell before assuring her, “No, I’m coming back.”
“Good, because I miss you. The only bad thing about returning is that you’ll still have to work with—oh no!” Meg abruptly exclaimed. “I forgot to tell you. Toby called the other day. Please don’t be mad, but I gave him your number. The one at the workshop, I mean.”
“Meg!” Rachel groaned.
“I’m sorry, Rach, but he left me, like, five messages. When I finally picked up, he told me he and Brianna broke up and he seemed desperate to talk to you. I figured he was going to call and beg you to take him back and I, well, I kind of wanted you to have the satisfaction of telling him no way... And, hey, now that you’ve found out you got into the MSN program, you can rub his nose in that, too, even if you aren’t going to enroll.”
Rachel sighed. Two weeks ago she would have derived a certain satisfaction in spurning Toby or telling him she’d been accepted into a top-notch MSN program, but now she had no desire to do something so vengeful and vain. “I’ll talk to him if he calls, but I’m not going to tell him about getting into the program.”
“I know, I know,” Meg muttered. “The Amish would consider that to be hallich maage.”
“Hallich maage?” Rachel repeated.
“Yeah. Pride.”
“You mean hochmut.”
“What did I say?”
“It sounded like hallich maage, which loosely translated means happy stomach.” Rachel giggled.
“Don’t poke fun at me or I’ll remind you of the time you called a phlebotomist a lobotomist.”
The two roommates cracked up as they reminisced about other humorous things Rachel had said or done while she was acclimating to the Englisch lifestyle. Before they bade each other goodbye, Rachel told Meg to give Toby her temporary cell phone number if he called again—she didn’t want him using the business phone.
She got ready for bed, but long after midnight, Rachel lay awake, mulling over Arden’s suggestion that she might return to Serenity Ridge for good. It wasn’t as if the idea hadn’t occurred to her already, but as Meg had accurately pointed out, Rachel loved being a nurse. And as Arden had reminded her, she’d sacrificed so much to become one. But if I love nursing so much, why do I feel so discontent when I imagine returning to my job in Boston?
* * *
On Friday morning, Arden kept watching the door. Rachel hadn’t been coming in as early as she did before Ivan was discharged, and he was eager to tell her about the phone call from Toby, which had been weighing heavily on his mind. Besides, he liked being in Rachel’s company as often as he could.
She eventually ambled in at nine thirty, whistling. When Arden relayed the message, she didn’t seem surprised. “Sorry about that. Meg gave him the business phone number,” she said, which made Arden even surer Toby had been in touch with Rachel already. Was he also right in guessing what they’d spoken about?
It’s none of my business, he reminded himself. “I’ve got two customers arriving shortly to discuss modifications to this shed,” he informed Rachel, pointing at the structure. “If you’d listen to the rest of the voice-mail messages, I’d appreciate it. We had several I didn’t attend to yesterday.”
“Of course,” she agreed and lifted the business phone from the desk. Her smile was especially winsome this morning, and Arden could no longer keep himself from fishing to find out why.
“Your eyes are gleaming. Have you got a secret?” he hinted.
She stopped tapping on the cell
phone to squint at him, her head cocked. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Do you want to share what it is?”
“Jah...” she stalled, looking at the phone again. “But not now. You’ll find out at Ivan’s birthday party.”
Clearly she was being coy, and while Arden might ordinarily have enjoyed this kind of badinage, today it felt like torment. He shamelessly pleaded with her. “I’m really gut at keeping secrets if you want to tell me now.”
“Well, I could but then—”
The couple Arden was expecting entered the workshop, enthusiastically greeting Arden before Rachel could complete her sentence. She gave him a one-shouldered shrug and a puckish smile, as if to say, Oh, well. Resigned to bearing the suspense until the couple left, Arden led them to the shed, where he listened to their proposed design modifications.
As they spoke, Arden glanced over at Rachel, who was frantically flipping through the ledger with one hand and holding the phone to her ear with the other. She must have slipped out the door a few minutes later, because the next time he looked up, she was gone. After the couple departed, he found a note on the desk reading, Arden, I had to run an errand. I won’t be back this afternoon since Ivan has his MD appointment. I took the phone in case a customer calls. I’ll see you tonight at six. She’d signed her name, and next to it she’d sketched a moose’s head. The moose was winking, and beneath him she’d scrawled, You moose not try to guess my secret—it will spoil the surprise! And despite his impatience to find out her news, Arden had to laugh.
* * *
I’ve gone over the ledger so many times I was sure it was correct, Rachel thought as she drove to the bank. But obviously it wasn’t, otherwise the bank manager wouldn’t have left so many voice-mail messages the past couple days. The first were simply requests to return his calls, but in this morning’s message he informed her there were insufficient funds in the business account to cover the check Ivan had written to the hospital. Because Blank’s Sheds was a longtime customer in good standing, the manager was contacting Ivan as a courtesy, allowing him until noon today to reconcile the deficit in order to avoid bouncing the check and incurring a fee. Even more worrisome was the possibility the hospital might rescind the discount on Ivan’s bill if it wasn’t paid in full immediately, as agreed.
As she stopped at a traffic light, Rachel remembered Arden mixing up right and left, and it occurred to her he might have been the one who made an error in their records. Everything was balanced perfectly when my brother relinquished the accounting responsibilities to Arden, so it couldn’t have been Ivan’s doing. Aware that sometimes people with dyslexia also had dyscalculia, Rachel wondered if that was the case with Arden. She dreaded telling him about the error, anticipating how self-conscious he might feel.
And the timing was terrible—tonight she’d planned to confide in him, Ivan and Grace that she’d been accepted into the MSN program but wouldn’t be enrolling. She had stayed up praying about it throughout the night, and she knew it was the right decision, but she was less certain about her other unshakable idea: Maybe I should stay in Serenity Ridge permanently. Tonight she wanted to test the waters, to hear if her brother and her new friends thought that was a plausible option.
For now, her sole objective was to prevent Ivan’s check from bouncing. By speaking to the manager in person, she hoped to buy more time. Although he’d said the account was several thousand dollars short, Rachel prayed there might be a check from a customer in today’s mail that would cover the deficit. Then, right before turning into the bank parking lot, she was struck by another solution: she could transfer the funds from her own account. Now that she wouldn’t have to pay tuition fees, she couldn’t think of a better use for her savings. She was thrilled when the manager accepted her proposal, not merely because it resolved Ivan’s business problem, but also because it seemed like further affirmation that she’d made the right decision about the MSN program.
After contacting her bank and arranging for the transaction, she barely had enough time to get home and take Ivan to his appointment. The doctor said he’d made remarkable progress; his oxygen saturation level had come up, and his lung X-rays looked better, too. “You must be very committed to practicing your breathing exercises, aren’t you?” the doctor asked.
“Not half as committed as my schweschder is to making me practice them.” Ivan’s comment made the doctor chuckle.
“I wish all my patients had someone like your sister to take care of them. You’re very fortunate.”
“That’s true. I don’t know what I would have done without Rachel,” Ivan said, beaming at her.
It was such a relief to hear about Ivan’s improved health and she was so eager to share her decision not to become a nurse practitioner that Rachel decided she’d wait until the following day to discuss the insufficient funds issue with Arden.
As it turned out, that evening Rachel discovered she’d have to wait to tell everyone about her career decision, too, because every time she tried to bring up the subject, she was delayed. First, Grace was upset because she overcooked the roast. It was so tough they ended up having soup—again. Rachel chose not to tell everyone immediately after supper because she wanted the focus on her brother as he opened his gifts. Then, as they were eating cake, Ivan suffered a coughing fit that was so extreme Rachel suggested he’d benefit from a steaming bath. Ivan reluctantly agreed, and Grace began stacking the dessert dishes, but it was Arden who dragged his feet about leaving. He had seemed so agitated all evening—squirming in his seat and picking at his food—Rachel was surprised he wanted to linger.
“I, uh, know Ivan needs his rest, but first don’t you have news to share, Rachel?” he asked.
She smiled. “Jah, I’m glad you asked about that. I—” As she was speaking, the business cell phone vibrated on the coffee table where Rachel had left it so Arden would remember to take it home since he was expecting an early-morning call the next day. Rachel leaned forward to check the number. “I don’t need to get that. What I was going to say is that I’ve decided to—”
Immediately after the business phone stopped vibrating, Rachel’s phone began ringing from atop of the desk in the corner. Rachel crossed the room and picked it up. “It’s Toby. He’s going to keep calling until I answer, so give me one sec,” she said before ducking into the kitchen.
* * *
“Ivan, you look miserable,” Grace cooed. “I wanted our gathering to be special, but I’m afraid this party might have set your recovery back three weeks!”
“Don’t be lappich. I’m sorry my coughing cut our celebration short. The party was so thoughtful—and I was genuinely surprised.”
Arden shifted in the chair, feeling like a third wheel as Ivan and Grace unabashedly exchanged sentiments of affection. From where he sat he could hear bits of Rachel’s phone conversation with Toby. He caught phrases like “I’ve already forgiven you,” and “what I want more than anything.” I knew it, he thought, his suspicions confirmed. Rachel had reconciled with Toby.
“Can’t you, Arden?” Grace questioned, jolting him back to their conversation.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“I said, can you take Ivan to kurrich and back home on Sunday? He shouldn’t be on his own, and I’ll be going with Mamm to visit Aquilla King.” Aquilla was a childless widow who had recently had hip surgery, and as was customary, the female members of the Amish community were either taking turns staying with her or bringing meals to her home.
“Jah, of course,” Arden agreed, adding that since Rachel might be a while, he and Grace should leave so Ivan could take his bath. Since they were traveling in separate buggies, Arden said goodbye before Grace did. He retrieved the business phone from the coffee table and tried to creep past Rachel in the kitchen, but she excused herself from Toby and covered the phone with her hand.
“I’m sorry about this,” she said, indicating the phone.
“I’ll tell you my news tomorrow.”
“No hurry.” Arden wasn’t in a rush to hear her announce she was getting back together with Toby. It doesn’t make a whit of difference to me either way, he thought bitterly, even though he’d been consumed by the possibility all day long...and even though the reality kept him rolling from one side to the other throughout the night, too.
In the morning he was surprised when his mother told Grace that Tuesday was their turn to spend a day and night with Aquilla.
“Tuesday? That’s when you have your appointment with the rheumatologist,” Arden reminded her.
“You were supposed to cancel that for me.”
“I didn’t because... Didn’t Rachel talk to you about it?”
“Neh. Why would she? If the dokder doesn’t receive forty-eight business hours’ notice for cancellations, they charge a fee. Now I have to keep the appointment. I hope I can find someone to switch days with me at Aquilla’s haus,” his mother fretted. “I wish you would have kept your word, Arden.”
“I’m sorry, Mamm,” Arden apologized, begrudgingly wondering why Rachel hadn’t kept her word to speak to his mother. Then he remembered: the two women had probably been too busy discussing his so-called dyslexia. Oh well, that’s water over the dam now, he conceded. At least Mamm’s still going to the doctor.
When he got to the workshop, Arden received the call he’d been expecting. Before disconnecting, the customer informed him he’d tried to leave a message the evening before, but the voice-mail box was full. So Arden listened to the old messages to determine which ones he could safely delete. That’s when he heard it: an urgent warning from the bank manager indicating they had until noon on Friday to avoid bouncing the check Ivan had written to the hospital. How could we be short that much? Arden was stumped, and his hairline and upper lip beaded with sweat. Rachel assured me we were in the black.
He opened the ledger and did his best to review the entries, but there were so many abbreviations and acronyms his vision blurred. Whatever had happened, it had to be his fault, since Rachel was fastidious about her calculations. But how could anything he’d done cause such a big discrepancy? Since Ivan had been sick, Arden had only written a handful of checks, and those were never for more than a couple hundred dollars—with the exception of the check he wrote to Knight’s for the cedar two-by-sixes. But he’d told her about that and surely she’d recorded it, hadn’t she?
The Amish Nurse's Suitor (Amish 0f Serenity Ridge Book 2) Page 16