Courting Cate (23 page)

“I’ll go tell your parents,” I said through the open window.

“Tell Pete first,” he answered.

I found Pete in the barn at the dairy, repairing a milking machine. He rode with me back to the farm.

“Oh,” was all Esther said when he told her about Jana.

“Do you want to go to the hospital?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she said. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

“Should we tell Jana’s parents?”

“Don’t you think they’ll get word to them? From the hospital.” Esther slipped her hands into the pockets of her apron.

Pete shrugged when I gave him a pleading look. He started for the back door as his mother headed the other way, toward her quilting room.

“Should we go to the hospital?” I asked him.

“How? It’s nearly twenty miles away.”

“We could hire a driver. Or call your Uncle Wes. John might need some support.” Honestly, I thought Jana could use some too. Even though John knew a lot about animal husbandry, he probably didn’t know much about human obstetrics or hospitals or what to ask the doctor. “We could go back to the fire station and use the phone there.”

Pete rubbed his temple for a moment. “John hasn’t been very happy with me.”

My heart raced. “Why?”

Pete shrugged.

“But I hate to think of them by themselves. . . .” I searched Pete’s face. “They’re family,” I finally said, truly meaning it, regardless of the circumstances.

He nodded. “But that doesn’t mean my brother wants me there.” Pain filled Pete’s eyes.

“I can tell you want to go,” I said, compassion filling my heart. “If John doesn’t want us there, we can leave.”

Ten minutes later we were at the fire station. The same
man greeted us. When we told him why we needed to use the phone, he said he’d give us a ride. “I was thinking about driving into town to check on the couple, anyhow.”

A half hour later we were in a tiny ER room, wedged next to the wall beside John, while the doc explained to Jana, who was on the bed, that she most likely had preeclampsia. “We’re waiting for one more test to come back.” His expression was very serious. “There’s more.” He looked from Jana to John. “The reason you’re so big is because you’re having twins.”

John turned beet red, and Jana gasped.

“Our goal is to keep the babies in utero for at least another month, hopefully two.”

She really was seven months along! Pete’s face remained stoic. It was my turn to blush. Jana gave John a “told-you-so” look without uttering a word. It looked as if I hadn’t been the only one harboring a horrible suspicion, but at least I’d only had to live with mine for a couple of hours.

“First we need to get your blood pressure down. Are you particularly stressed right now?” the doctor asked.

Jana glanced at John again. In slow motion, he started to move toward her.

The doctor continued. “Do you need more help around the house? We want you off your feet. You’ll have to be on bed rest until your blood pressure drops.”

John was at Jana’s side now, taking her hand in his. “I’m sorry,” he said, oblivious to the doctor.

Jana began to cry. “I only wondered how he was doing. That was all.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off Jana as she clung to John’s hand. She didn’t love my husband. She loved hers. I glanced at Pete. But that didn’t mean he didn’t love her.

The doctor turned toward us. “Do they have the support they need?”

“Yes,” Pete answered, his voice firm.

I nodded, except I was leaving for Lancaster as soon as possible.

“There’s lots of help,” Pete insisted.

The doctor said he’d be back in about a half hour, after the urine test came back.

John and Jana were both crying, but Pete didn’t seem to notice. “They can move in with Mamm and Dat,” he said.

I must have made a face, because he added, “It will be fine now. John’s Mamm’s favorite. She’ll be thrilled to take care of Jana and the babies. You’ve given her enough of a rest.”

“Are you sure?” I couldn’t imagine it. “Where will we live?”

“We’re going back to Lancaster.”

I gave him a puzzled look. “For good?”

He shrugged. “For now. I saw the invitation, during my dinner break.”

“You came home?”

He nodded.

I was about to ask why, when the man who gave us the ride to the hospital poked his head through the curtain and asked if we were ready to leave.

John turned toward us. “Jana has to spend the night. I’ll stay with her.”

“I’ll do your work,” Pete said.

“I’ll help,” I added.

John thanked us, and as we started to leave, Jana’s soft voice called out, “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too,” I said, with as much sincerity as I’d ever felt in my entire life.

For a brief moment as we left the room, I felt Pete’s hand on the small of my back, but then, just as quickly, it was gone.

That night Pete came to our bedroom soon after I did. I felt as if I’d had too much coffee that day, although I hadn’t had a drop, of course.

“You awake?” He’d just settled into his sleeping bag.

“Uh-huh,” I answered.

“Anything you want to ask me?”

I thought for a moment, wondering what to ask first. I’d read enough novels to figure out what John’s reaction had been about. He had feared, just as I had, the Bobli was Pete’s not his, and that Jana had lied to him about the due date. But now that he knew Jana was having twins and was only seven months along, he knew the babies were his. I didn’t need to make Pete tell me that.

What I really wanted to ask him was if there was a chance he would ever love me, but I figured the answer to that was pretty much a lose-lose situation—for me anyway. I didn’t need to have it reiterated, again, how unlovable I was.

“Cate?”

I wiggled my leg closest to the wall out from under the quilt, trying to cool down a little. “I’m thinking,” I answered.

“I figured.”

No, I didn’t want to ask him anything that had to do with me. This was about him. So that took me back to Jana. Did Pete still love her? That was probably a lose-lose question too. If he said yes, I’d be mad. If he said no, I wouldn’t believe him.

Still . . . Finally I came up with my question.

“Okay . . .” I paused. He didn’t answer.

“Pete?” I looked over the side of the bed. His arm was under his head, his eyes closed. “Pete?”

He stirred.

“I thought of a question.”

He opened one eye.

“Did you love Jana?”

“Jah. We courted for years,” he said, opening his other eye.

“And you thought you would marry.”

“Of course.”

“What happened?”

He didn’t answer for quite a while, but his eyes remained open, and finally he said, “Things became tense between us.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t have enough money. I didn’t have any land. I was full of crazy ideas. She was afraid I couldn’t support a family, and honestly, I shared that concern. We went back and forth, trying to work it all out.” He fell silent.

“And?”

“One night I overheard Mamm and John at the kitchen table. I was in the living room reading, but they must have thought I’d gone upstairs.”

He turned toward me but didn’t make eye contact. “Mamm . . .” He tugged on his beard. “She . . .”

I held my breath.

“First you need a little background.” He met my eyes, for just a moment. “Jana’s grandparents own the land adjacent to this place.”

I nodded. “Livy told me.”

“Oh.” He responded as if he wondered what else Livy had said. “Anyway they’d promised it to Jana when she married. But I never felt like I could make it as a farmer—especially
on a small section of land. I’d seen how it had gone for my parents.”

That made sense.

He exhaled. “So, that night, Mamm told John
he
should court Jana.”

I gasped.

“Jah.” Pete slipped his other hand under his head. “John said Jana loved me, and Mamm answered, ‘She only thinks she does.’” Pete did a good job imitating his mother and continued. “‘She’s frustrated with him. Pete’s never going to amount to anything, and Jana knows it.’”

“Oh, Pete,” I whispered, in horror.

I’d told him something similar that day in the kitchen, back home . . . It came back to me, word for word.
“You will amount to nothing—absolutely nothing—without my Dat’s money.”
Even when I’d chided him about burning books, I’d implied he’d never amount to anything if he didn’t change.

A deep coldness, even in the August heat, chilled me to the core. “I’m sorry,” I stuttered.

“Jah, it really hurt. . . .”

I opened my mouth again, wanting to apologize for the things I’d said, but no words came out.

“And then,” he continued, “the next thing I knew, John and Jana were courting.”

He turned away from me.

I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I . . .”

He rolled farther away, curling into a sleep position. “It’s in the past now,” he said. “Don’t worry. . . .”

“Pete?”

His bicep, the one I could see, bulged against the thin cotton fabric of his T-shirt, and the outline of his hip and leg were obvious under the sheet.

I scooted to the very edge of the mattress, my arm dangling over the edge. I did want to ask if he thought he could ever love me. “I have another question.”

“Ach, Cate,” he responded, his voice raggedy. “I’m asleep.”

I reached out my hand toward him and silently cried. I knew just how Pete felt about Jana. It was exactly how I felt about him.

I poured out my despair to God until I finally fell asleep.

I went through the motions for the next few days, doing the housework, tending the garden, cooking meals, and doing my best to try not to think too far into my bleak future. I fought a growing sadness that, regardless of what Pete had conspired with Mervin and Martin, I had lashed out in anger, wounding him the same way his mother had, reinforcing all his fears.

I asked God to get me through the next fifty years. Or sixty. Or seventy. Amish marriages lasted a long time.

Jana ended up being in the hospital for a whole week. Among the many tests was an ultrasound, which showed the twins were identical girls. That information inspired Esther. She finished the quilt for the Englisch woman’s daughter and then started helping around the house more.

Pete quit at the dairy and took full responsibility for the farm so John could be with Jana. Livy, Bert, and their grown sons came to move the couple to the farm, and once that happened we got ready to leave for Lancaster, nearly two weeks after the invitation arrived.

I felt genuine pity for Pete, knowing he still loved a woman who had married another—his brother, to make things worse—and admired how he kept it to himself and strove
to serve them, regardless. Jana, now that she needed the help, seemed okay about living with Esther. It turned out her mother still had a houseful of kids and wasn’t in a position to do much.

I was thankful to witness the Tregers coming together as a family, but then it dawned on me—regardless of their problems, they’d always been a family, long before I arrived. They just didn’t look like my family. Sure, they weren’t warm and fuzzy, demonstrative, or even expressive. But they cared for each other, in their own way.

The truth was, if we settled in Lancaster County for good, I’d miss the Treger farm. Life was much different there than back home, but their simpler way of life had its benefits. They were resourceful and wasted nothing. Plus their dependence on the land, and therefore on God, was even stronger than what I saw in Lancaster, where so many families’ incomes were boosted by the tourism trade and a larger market for carpentry and other skills.

I could say, without a doubt, that both Esther and Walter depended on the Lord for their needs. And they didn’t need me sharing my knowledge, or opinions, with them. They had been doing just fine without them all these years.

It was late afternoon on the day of our departure by the time Pete had readied everything for John. When I carried my bag down the stairs, Jana was in Walter’s chair, her feet propped up on a stool, and Esther was draping a cool rag over her forehead.

“There you are,” Esther said to me. “I have something for you.”

She started toward the hall. I gave Jana a questioning look, and she shrugged. I put down my bag and followed my mother-in-law.

When she reached the door to her quilting room, she opened it wide and let me go in first. It was huge, as big as two bedrooms. I realized that’s exactly what it was. The wall between the rooms had been torn down, although there were still two doors off the hallway. Crates filled with remnants of all sorts of fabric had been turned on end to make shelves along the perimeter. A frame stood against the far wall under the windows. The big surprise was the comfy recliner in the middle of the room and the person who sat in it.

Walter grinned.

Next to him was an empty rocking chair.

I wrinkled my nose at my own assumptions. Since my arrival I’d assumed Walter had been escaping to his room to nap when he’d actually been hanging out with Esther in her quilting room.

“I have something for you,” she said, picking up a black trash bag. I nearly laughed. Esther’s parting gift to me was garbage? Funny, because the family didn’t really produce any. Everything was composted or burned. The few plastic containers that came through the home were reused to store dry goods or leftovers.

I stopped myself from laughing. “Well, thank you,” I said as pleasantly as I could, holding out my hands.

As soon as she put the bundle in my arms I knew it wasn’t garbage. It was a quilt.

“Don’t look until you’re in Lancaster.”

I promised I wouldn’t and thanked her, checking my emotions. All those weeks, when she could have been working to make money, she’d been making a quilt for me, with Walter at her side.

She brushed her hands together. “Now I need to get going on the quilts for the babies.” She smiled, just a little.

I nodded, happy for her, and a little sad I wouldn’t be around to see the newborns.

“You know,” Esther said, “I wanted you and Pete to stay, but I should’ve known better. I always knew Pete wouldn’t settle around here—Walter’s helped me accept that.”

“Oh, I don’t know what he’s decided for sure,” I said. “We may be back.”

Esther shot me a condescending look, as if I were just trying to be nice. The truth was, I had no idea what we were doing. As far as I knew, Wes hadn’t talked with Pete again. If he had, Pete hadn’t told me.

“Pete’s always been destined for something different—not better, mind you. Just different. Kind of like Wes, although I’m happy Pete will be staying in the church. Jah?”

“Jah,” I answered with conviction.

She seemed relieved and then sighed. “I want you to know I appreciate the work you’ve done here. I didn’t think you had it in you when you first came. You pulled through, though. I needed the rest. And having me doing better has been good for Walter too.”

The old man smiled again.

I simply nodded at both of them and stepped toward the door, aware of how I’d misjudged them.

Esther continued. “I think you and Pete can be happy together, if you let him sleep in your bed.” She chuckled and then actually winked at me. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but obviously Pete hadn’t told them about the farce our marriage was. “We all have spats,” she said. “Don’t we, Walter?” She turned back toward her husband.

“Now, Esther, don’t be sharing our business.” He gave me another smile and stood, wrapping his arm around his wife and squeezing her tightly. She harrumphed and slapped at his chest.

He winked at me and said, “I’ll walk you out.”

I was dumbfounded by the two of them. “Denki,” was all I could manage to say. “To both of you.” And I followed Walter down the hall, telling Jana good-bye when I reached the living room and then picking up my bag with my free hand.

Pete had hired a driver. I wasn’t sure if he would take us only as far as a major highway to get a better start at hitchhiking or all the way home. I figured we’d get there one way or another.

The driver had already arrived in a big old black SUV when Walter and I came out the back door.

“I better go in to Mamm, huh?” Pete said.

Walter shook his head. “No, she’s coming.”

Pete must have known about the quilt, because he simply took the black garbage bag from me without any questions and put it in the back, along with my bag, as Esther came down the steps.

Pete shook his father’s hand and then hugged his mother and held on extra long until she laughed and then chirped.

“Come visit soon,” she said.

“Who says we’re not coming back for good?” Pete let go of her.

She just shook her head a little and then said, “Get going. You’re late as it is.”

As we left the farm, I acknowledged to myself that Esther wasn’t the bitter old lady I thought she was. Still, I wanted to be a whole lot kinder and gentler and more patient than she when I was old, even if Pete didn’t love me.

The driver slowed when we reached the Randolph city limits and then turned on Main Street, parking in front of the library. Pete hustled around to the back of the SUV and retrieved the library books, running them up to the return
slot. I sat back against the seat and smiled, impressed that he’d remembered.

An hour later, I was confident the driver was taking us the entire way. As he and Pete chatted, I dozed a little but mostly watched out the window at the passing scenery, thinking about Betsy’s wedding. I wondered if Mervin and Martin would stand up with Levi or if Martin would be too hurt with Betsy marrying someone else, although he was surely resigned to it by now. I also wondered if Addie and Mervin were courting—Betsy hadn’t said anything in her letters.

M&M’s family would surely be at the wedding, though, and Seth too, with his wife and Bobli. I realized I didn’t feel as miffed with him as I had for the last two years. Maybe getting away from Lancaster had been good for me.

Pete asked the driver how far he “hauled” Amish.

“New Orleans has been the farthest.”

“After Katrina?” Pete asked.

The driver nodded.

“I was down there for a while,” Pete said.

“Helping with the cleanup?”

Pete shook his head. “Building houses.”

They talked some more. I wondered if that was one of his crazy ideas that had annoyed Jana—but it made me love him even more.

By the time we reached the outskirts of Paradise, it was pitch-dark. Pete directed the driver until we’d turned down our lane. When we reached our place Dat bounded out of the house, hurrying toward us before the driver stopped the SUV.

“Cate!” he called out.

I jumped out the door, and he swept me up into his arms. Tears filled my eyes.

Pete got our bags from the back, and then came around to shake Dat’s hand. Dat tried to pay the driver, but Pete said he’d already taken care of it. I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d used the money from Martin and Mervin. If so, it had been put to good use.

“Come on,” Dat said, taking my bag from Pete. “I have something to show the two of you.”

“Where’s Betsy?” I asked.

“With Levi,” Dat answered. It was late on a Tuesday night, nearly eleven. The morning would be coming soon, which meant chores and work for both of them.

The moon was nothing more than a sliver, but the stars shone brightly enough for us to find our way along the brick path between the house and the vegetable garden and then along the roses. Even in the dark I could see the plate-size blossoms. I breathed in deeply. The sweet scent of the flowers filled the night. It appeared Levi had come through with his promise to teach Betsy how to tend the flowers.

As we rounded the corner, I froze. In the corner of our large backyard was a little house. A Dawdi Haus.

“Dat!”

“Do you like it?” he said, taking my hand. “I built it for me, eventually, but I want you two to stay in it for the next few weeks.”

He pulled me along, Pete behind us. It was only one step onto the porch and then another into the house. Dat quickly lit a propane lamp. The living room, dining room, and kitchen were all one room with bookcases lining one wall, a sofa and recliner grouped together, and then a table and four chairs. The kitchen had a tiny fridge and stove and Dat’s top-of-the-line cabinets.

“How did you build it so quickly?” I stammered.

“I’ve been working on the plans for years—and had them finalized a few months ago.” He started down a hall, past a bathroom. “It has two bedrooms, in case I want one as an office someday.” The first was completely bare but the next one was the master suite, with a built-in closet, a dresser, a bathroom, and a double bed.

Pete placed the black garbage bag at the end of it.

Dat put my bag on the floor and stepped from the room. “It’s wonderful to have you back—both of you.”

Pete thanked him and told him good night.

I walked Dat to the door. “See you in the morning,” I said. “At breakfast.”

“Unless you two want to eat here. I stocked the fridge.”

I winced at his enthusiasm for us. “We’ll eat with you and Betsy.” I waved as he stepped onto the porch, and then shut the door securely.

By the time I reached the hall, Pete was already in the empty room, spreading out his sleeping bag. I stopped in the doorway.

He looked up, a pained expression on his face. “What?”

I turned abruptly, hiding my emotions as best I could. “Good night,” I managed to say and fled the few steps down the hall, closing the door behind me.

With a heavy heart, I pulled Esther’s quilt from the bag. It was a shadow design made from light blue, dark blue, and black fabric. It was beautiful, but still it added to my sadness. That was where I was—in the shadows, still waiting for my life to begin. I folded it neatly and placed it at the end of the bed, stepping back to look at it again, realizing the light blue fabric was the same color as the shirt Pete wore on our wedding day and the darker blue the same as my dress. It was thoughtful of her—but another reminder of my failure.

Regardless, I was thankful for Esther’s work on my behalf and for her words that afternoon.

An hour later, I stirred at the sound of Betsy’s laughter. For a moment I feared she might come bursting into the Dawdi Haus and find Pete and me in separate rooms, but then her voice faded.

Moments later I heard the clopping of horse’s hooves and then the bang of the back door to the big house. I’d see my Schwester in the morning—not tonight in humiliation.