A Love Undone (29 page)

Yoder blustered, “You need me.”

“Not that bad. And if I’d known you were treating anyone like this, especially Ray, I’d have fired you immediately.” Calvin looked to Jolene. “This incident tells me a lot about Josiah I didn’t know.
He’s got honor, and the only reason he’s not been promoted is that when Ray was here, Josiah needed to be his shadow. Do you think Ray would like to return?”

“Denki, Uncle, but nee. He doesn’t like cabinetry work, and he has some skills working with horses.”

“Good for him.” Calvin scratched his forehead. “I think it’s time Josiah received the promotion of a lifetime.”

Jolene squeezed Preacher Glen’s hand. They would get their money back, and Josiah would be promoted—all without breaking the oath Ray and Van had made. She felt sorry for Yoder and hated that he was now without a job. But as Calvin said, he’d been given numerous second chances. If allowed to stay, Yoder would curtail his behavior for a while and then prey on someone else.

A noise echoed and Calvin rose. “Excuse me for a minute.”

When the room became quiet, Jolene realized she and Glen were holding hands. He turned to her, glanced at their hands, and winked.

How had it been so natural to simply let her hand remain in his?

The back door slammed shut, and everyone’s voices faded along with the creaking of horse-drawn cutters and a wagon. Jolene stood in Lester’s old farmhouse shrouded by silence.

The house was eerily still—a first in two and a half months. The mid-July air was sticky, despite that it was barely past breakfast. There were dishes to do and laundry, but the attic whispered her name. She’d been forced to ignore her quiet space since the second week of May. No wonder it was calling to her. Before the horses arrived, she’d spent at least a few hours here every week for the last decade.

Sweat trickled down her back as she pulled the key to the attic out of her apron pocket and headed that way. Lester had rounded up everyone except her to help mow a hayfield. It was her job to tend to the house and fix a small lunch for the workers. Lester had invited guests for tomorrow night, including Levi, Sadie, and Glen, to name a few. Glen was a regular.

If having Ray and Glen between her and Andy was supposed to keep her from growing fonder of him, it hadn’t worked. A hundred people could be between them, and she would still see him for who he was and be drawn to him. Whether they were working with the horses or she was setting a cold drink on the table in front of him, sparks flew inside her.

But she was careful not to say anything else on the matter while
aiming to be as dutifully void of daydreams as she knew how. She carried out her responsibilities while treating Andy as the married man he was. Did Glen have a clue that, despite her best efforts, her feelings for Andy had yet to obey her will? Did Andy?

She slid the key into the brass padlock on the door that led to the attic. As the cool metal lock in her hand opened, her skin tingled with excitement. Although she trusted Andy above all others, she hadn’t told him about this secret. Their goal was to avoid anything that gave them freedom to get emotionally attached, and for her this topic was too personal and private to share with him.

Slowly tiptoeing up the stairs as if it were hallowed ground, she breathed deep, smelling the delicious scent of old wood in a hot attic … and the faint aroma of canvases and oil paints. The stairs moaned and creaked, and the air carried a hint of an unfamiliar smell. Did years of memories have their own smell?

She and Andy had done all the right things to break the bond between them. Despite that, she had stored away a dozen memories from every day she’d seen him. Was he experiencing a similar reaction by unintentionally doing the same thing? They would never talk about it—in part because it would be wrong and in part because they’d fashioned their days so that it was a fluke for them to be alone with each other.

Topping the stairs, she paused and surveyed the room: five easels each with a canvas on it, tubes of paint sealed and waiting, and stained but clean paintbrushes. A large red windup clock sat on a long table filled with paint cleaners, thinners, and rags.

Painting had once been vital for her sanity. Then it slowly became like her comfortable old nightgown and favorite house shoes—things
she cherished in a world of strict rules held together with straight pins and tightly tied aprons. This attic world now felt like a hobby, one she enjoyed but didn’t need for her sanity. Were those days behind her forever?

She went to the tray holding the paintbrushes her Daed had given her. She lifted the largest one, remembering how pleased he’d been to give her this gift. Looking through the small window Lester had installed just for her, Jolene’s eyes misted. “Denki, Daed.” The view from the attic wasn’t much, just a rutty pasture that was seldom used but now had horses in it. She could also see the phone shanty and the dogwood she’d planted. But much like life itself, she felt the scenery wasn’t about its beauty; it was about how it stirred her faith.

A desire to paint tugged at her, and she got out a pallet. Surely if she took only a few minutes, she wouldn’t need to set the clock this time, and she could still get everything done and have the sandwiches for the crew as needed.

Her thoughts turned to Andy again. Without knowing it, he influenced her thinking. She watched him from afar, seeing the same steady integrity for humanity and beasts. She had a phone and Ray was learning that he liked training horses—because of Andy. When they took the horses for a walk to the creek, they were accompanied by Tobias and Hope and usually Ray or Glen as well. But despite Andy’s patience, she’d had little success going down the bank of the creek or sitting on the log above it. Panic stole her breath every time. Ray or Glen would try to get her to ease toward the water as Andy stood by. But each time she returned to the lawn chairs, feeling panicked. She would sit there, eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the
creatures and smelling the aroma of the woods until her breathing became normal. During those times with her eyes shut, she could sense Andy’s presence, could almost hear his heart pounding, despite his chatting casually with the group around her. His inner man was pulling for her to get past her panic, and they didn’t need words for her to know it. That didn’t mean he felt for her all she did for him. It meant he cared about her successes or failures. She used to think love and romance were magnificent goals to attain. Now … she’d grown to hate the very idea. Why Andy? Why did she have to care for a married man? It was like a cruel joke.

But they kept to their schedule, involving every available person to work beside them. Although others were around them, every conversation she had with Andy imprinted words on her soul. The group, which often included Glen in the evenings and on the weekends, talked freely while working or eating dinner, sharing serious things as well as hilarity and laughter. Despite all they’d done to put space and people between them, she’d fallen in love with him.

She had no choice but to put effort toward falling out of love with him. There was nothing that could clear the path for her connection to him to be more than a private matter of her heart. But Andy seemed completely satisfied to allow Glen to try to win her heart, and she wished Glen would. It had yet to happen. Before meeting Andy, she’d wanted to marry at some point, but now she could barely imagine actually doing so. It seemed impossible. As she ran her hands down her flat stomach, an odd yet peaceful melancholy stirred within her. Wasn’t it better not to bear a child than to marry someone she could never fully give herself to?

It seemed she’d barely begun painting when the echoes of
someone coming up the porch stairs caught her attention. Any noise on the wooden porch echoed into the quiet attic.

She laid the pallet aside and opened a jar of paint cleaner and put her brushes in it. The warning bell Lester had installed rang, meaning someone had entered the house. Trying to tiptoe and hurry at the same time, she glided down the stairs, closed the door behind her, and squeezed the padlock until it clicked. She rushed along the back wall as Lester had showed her, stole down the second stairway to the main floor, and went out a little-used side door to the clothesline. But it was empty.

She and Lester had a plan for unexpected visits. But after all these years of putting out at least a string of towels before each visit to the attic, she’d completely forgotten to do that this time. So she had no way to explain where she’d been.

“Jo?” Andy called.

The sense of panic eased. It wasn’t the bishop who’d entered the house. He was the man most likely to cause her issues and one who let himself in whenever he visited Lester. The two men were about the same age and had grown up together, so the bishop thought nothing of welcoming himself into Lester’s home. He wouldn’t think anything of shunning Lester either, because no one came above God’s Word, and that’s what the bishop thought he was doing by denying art—keeping God’s Word.

“Jo?” Andy called again.

“Coming.” She went back through the side door and eased out of the tiny storage room. “Hi.”

“Hey.” His eyes searched hers, and her knees became weak. “You okay?”

She looked beyond him and saw no one else. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to return this soon.”

His eyes narrowed, focusing with concern. “We’ve been gone more than four hours.”

“What?” She went into the kitchen and looked at the clock.
Oh, my
. “I’m so sorry. You all must be famished.”

“We’re fine, and Lester assured me you were too, saying it isn’t unusual for you to lose track of time if no one is around. I didn’t know that about you, and it seemed to come as a surprise to Ray and Hope too. But he convinced them of it and took everyone into town to eat.”

“But you needed to check on me.” She liked that.

Did she really want to know how he felt about her? His eyes moved across the sink and countertops. It was apparent she hadn’t washed a single dish in those hours. “Whatever is going on, I find it unsettling. Are you sure you’re okay? Because you look pale and shaken.”

It was time to tell him. “I have a secret, and I get lost in it if I don’t set a clock, but I neglected to set one this time.” She longed to hold out her hand for his, but she grasped handfuls of apron to occupy her wanton fingers. “Kumm.”

He followed her up the first flight of stairs to the second story of the house. She fidgeted to find the key in her hidden pocket.

“I’ve wondered why he keeps this locked.”

She didn’t answer. Every sound seemed magnified. The echo of the padlock scraping against the wood, the key clicking inside the bolt, and their footfalls against the wooden treads as they climbed the stairs.

Once the paintings came into view, Andy seemed unable to budge. Slowly he edged into her sanctuary. “Jolene …”

“They aren’t much, but I—”

He studied one, his reverence unmistakable. “Don’t belittle it,” he whispered. As he quietly moved from one painting to the next, she went to the jar that contained her paintbrushes and began cleaning them.

He went to the stacks of paintings that stood along the walls, looking at each canvas. He held up one of her earliest paintings. It had ominous clouds and rain pouring into a river that disappeared into the horizon. “It’s your soul.” He went to one she’d painted years later—a picture of sunlight from heaven filtering into a home as benches of faceless Amish women sat at a church meeting. “Everyone has a secret, Jolene. Few have one that carries such beauty and depth.”

“If the wrong person finds out, Lester will be in as much trouble as I will, and my siblings will be humiliated when I’m shunned for it.”

“This would be allowed in Apple Ridge.” He sounded distracted, as if his conversation were an afterthought while the rest of him was lost inside her paintings. “If you were allowed to do this art, my cousin Beth and her husband would be thrilled to sell these in their store. Actually, Beth and her husband met because he carves items out of wood, completely allowable in his district in Steubenville, Ohio, and she wanted to carry his work in her store. Bishop Omar is a kind and loving man, but it took some effort for him to see the work as art and not as an idol. He eventually did. Maybe that will happen here one day.”

“It’s a nice thought.”

“It’s as if I could crawl right into this art and live there.” He patted his chest, then picked up another canvas. “This has to be one of the best secrets I’ve ever been privileged to know about.” He held up a canvas painting, letting the afternoon light fall across it.

“Everyone has secrets?”

“Sure they do.”

“Even you?” Her imagination ran wild. Did he know where his wife was and he’d refused to go after her? Had Eva been expecting his child when she ran off, and he had a daughter or another son somewhere? She wouldn’t ask.

“My secret … is you.” His low tone rumbled through her like the roar of rain against a tin roof.

She knew it would continue to do so forever, and she knew something else—they could no longer be on the same property. They’d done all they could to squelch their feelings.