Gabriel's Bride (3 page)

There was no way to argue with that. “
Jah
, Deacon. I will at that.”

Rachel’s heart pounded in her chest. So many people in the house. She wasn’t used to so many people. The large church services every other Sunday didn’t seem to bother her, but this . . . today was about to be her undoing.

There had to be at least five hundred people milling around, spilling out into the yard, her barn, and all the way to the pasture. She just couldn’t imagine where they had all come from. Her aunt had been something of a recluse, at least by Amish standards. She never attended quilting bees or barn raisings, barely stayed after the worship services to eat, much less socialize. Rachel had no idea that her
aenti
even knew this many people. She had not been prepared for them to show up to bid Katherine Yoder a final farewell.

She wound her way through the crush of bodies. She needed to get out, away. She needed air. She felt trapped.

Thankfully she could see the light shining in from the uncovered front window. Just a few more steps and she could escape, maybe climb up in the barn loft and not come down again until everyone was gone.

“Rachel, there you are.” Warm fingers clasped her arm and halted her progress mere steps from the door.

Her body nearly crumpled with disappointment. She would have loved to relax for a moment, shed a few tears, and pull herself together. Now she would have to do that without the break. She pasted a polite smile on her face and turned back to her captor.

Ellen Byler. She should have known.

“Rachel, these are the men I was telling you about.” She gestured toward the men behind her. One was tall, built like a bull, with a broad chest and small eyes. The other was thin and lanky like the scarecrow her father used to have in the corn field. Neither man was Amish.

“I’m sorry I—” She wanted to shout her protest loud enough to rattle the ceiling, but her voice was more like the squeak of her bicycle chain.

Ellen’s expression hardened, but her polite smile stayed in place. “The men who are interested in buying your property. Well, your aunt’s property.”

Her aunt’s? It was hers now. Wasn’t it? “I’m sorry. I don’t—”

“Rachel, they came all this way to be here today. The least you could do is hear them.”

Rachel nodded numbly. She remembered Ellen mentioning something about some friends of hers who wanted to move into the district and were looking for property. At the time, she hadn’t thought the conversation was any more than idle chitchat to pass the time while they sewed her aunt’s funeral clothes. But now . . .

It couldn’t be these men she had been talking about. They weren’t even Plain, though neither one seemed uncomfortable surrounded as they were by the entire community.

Ellen steered her around and nudged her toward the front corner of the living room. The patch of sunlight glittered like certain treasure and beckoned to Rachel. She longed to excuse herself and run out the door as fast as her shaking legs would carry her. But for now she had to listen to what the men had to say.
Then
she would politely thank them, refuse their offer, and make her blessed escape.

“Frank Dowd,” the bull man said, giving her a nod of greeting instead of reaching for her hand to shake.

“I’m Robert Davies.” At least the scarecrow clasped her hand in both of his. He gave it a small pump before releasing it. “I’m very sorry to hear of your loss.”

Rachel nodded, fighting the tears. Something told her she was about to lose so much more.

“Normally I—” He stopped just short of actually saying it, but Rachel knew what he had been about to say. Normally he didn’t do business with a woman. But he had to this time, because she owned the house. “Normally I don’t come in situations such as these, but this is a unique state of affairs.”

“I appreciate you coming all the way out here,” Rachel started, sucking in a deep breath and pulling up all her courage. “But I’m not selling my house.
Gut
day to you.” She started to push past them and finally make her way into the warm sunshine, but Ellen Byler caught her arm before she could succeed.

“Rachel, dear, you don’t own the house.”

The buzz that started in her head nearly blocked out the loud drone of the crowd surrounding them. “I don’t?” Of course she did. Who else would own the house but her?

“I do,” Frank Dowd said in his rumbling voice. Or maybe the sound was distorted like the waves of her vision. Her head pounded. Her heart ached.

“That is to say,” Robert Davies added, “our bank does.”

Rachel shook her head, strangely aware of the strings of her prayer
kapp
brushing across her shoulders while her fingers tingled like they had no blood in them. “No.”

“I’m afraid so.” Robert Davies, she decided, was a nice man. Almost as kind as the smiling Mr. Evans. “See, your aunt needed some money . . .”

How could that be? She worked so hard to bring in what they needed.

Ellen Byler took one of Rachel’s frozen hands into her own. “There were medical bills, dear.”

Wasn’t it enough that they had laid her aunt to rest this morning? Did they have to talk about such things right now? “But my cheese and milk.” What about all the hours she worked selling her products at the market?

“Apparently that wasn’t enough to control the debt.” This from Frank Dowd. It was a sin to hate someone, even worse to hate them on sight, but she’d pray about it later. Right now she wanted to refute his claim, cross her arms over her chest, and lift her chin in the air.

Ellen squeezed her hand. “Your aunt took out what is known as a reverse mortgage.”

Robert Davies gave a quick nod. “Basically, the house and the land it sits on belong to the bank.” He started talking about equity and loan payoffs and other things she couldn’t understand.

“So I don’t own the house?”

Robert Davies gave her a smile, the same kind she received from Mr. Evans. A smile of pity and remorse mixed in with a small bit of guilt. “I’m sorry.”

She turned to Ellen Byler. “You knew this the whole time?”

“Dear, your aunt had to tell someone.”

She could have told Rachel.

“You’re not entirely broke,” Frank Dowd added. “There are some monies left after the sale. You’ll have a small dowry.”

“Or enough to take you to the nearest relative,” Mr. Davies threw in.

She didn’t have any relatives.

“Your aunt told me about her cousin in Ohio. All the way to Holmes County.” Ellen Byler sounded falsely upbeat, like her news was the most wonderful in the world. “She felt confident that he would take you in. His wife has been ill lately and what with eleven children still living at home, he could use a bit of help around the house.”

Ohio? She didn’t want to move to Ohio. What would she do with her goats? Eleven children? Her head swam.

“Your aunt left you this letter. Maybe it will explain everything a bit clearer.” She held out a plain white envelope.

Rachel took it and shoved it into her apron pocket. She would look at it later. Much later. She rubbed her fingers across the pain in her forehead. “I don’t have to decide this right now.”

Mr. Davies gave her that same kind look. “It’ll have to be determined soon.”

Somehow she managed to keep herself together until they exchanged the good-byes, the “nice to meet yous” and the “so sorry for your losses.” Once Mr. Dowd’s big form disappeared into the throng of people, Rachel wrapped her arms around herself and ran for the door.

If anyone gave her a second look, she didn’t pause to acknowledge it. She ran, her skirt swishing around her legs, the wind tangling the ties on her
kapp
. She ran past her pen full of silky white-faced goats and on until she reached the big oak tree at the edge of the back yard.

There she collapsed into a heap at its roots and let her tears have control. Gone. Everything was gone. No more
Aenti
Katherine, no more house, no more security.

Ohio.

So far away. But there was no one here that would take her in. No one who would help without needing something in return. For her to care for their children or cook their meals. No one who would understand how important it was for her to keep her goats and make her cheese. To understand how important it was for her to make her own way.

Once again she was adrift. Alone in the world. Except this time she was twenty-six, not ten. This time she was an adult, though she still felt like the frightened child who had come here all the way from Florida to live with a maiden aunt after her parents had died in that awful accident.

Rachel touched the thin scar that cut across her face, just under her eye. It started at her cheek bone and disappeared under the edge of her prayer
kapp
. A constant reminder that while her family had died, she had lived. She had told herself for years that she had been spared for some reason, but she had yet to discover the notion. All she could see was that her family was gone, her mother, father, both of her brothers, all dead in the buggy accident that should have killed her too.

A warm hand settled on her shoulder. Rachel jumped at the touch, her breath hitched on a sob. A little boy stood next to her. He couldn’t have been more than five or six with a slew of freckles across his flattened nose. His emerald green eyes tilted up at the corners behind his wire-rimmed glasses. The spectacles looked too old for the rest of him, like he’d taken them from his
daadi’s
pocket as a lark. The little bit of hair that stuck out from under his worn straw hat was as bright red as a new penny.

“Don’t cry.” His voice was sweet, pure and innocent.

Was he a figment of her imagination? An angel come to help her through the hardest day of her life? Maybe so. She had never seen him before. Maybe he wasn’t really there even now.

He extended one chubby, angelic hand and held it out palm up. A red and white peppermint candy dotted the middle of his palm. “I was saving this for later, but I think you need it more.”

She looked from the candy to his incredible eyes. “Why is that?”

“Because you’re not old. Only old people gots peppermint.”

His words brought a smile to her lips, even as the last of her tears rolled down her cheeks.

He moved his hand closer to her. “Take it.”

She shook her head. “It looks like your last one.”

He shrugged. “I came with the deacon. He always has more.”

“Danki.”
Rachel accepted the candy, unwrapped it, and popped it between her lips as the child watched her every move.

The sweet taste filled her mouth and nearly brought her tears flowing once more. How long had it been since she’d had a peppermint? Too long. Her
daadi
had always kept a pocket full of them to share with his
kinder
. But that had been so long ago.

“What’s your name?” she asked, hoping to keep the tears at bay now that they had subsided.

“Samuel.”

“Nice to meet you, Samuel. I’m Rachel.”

He gave her a solemn nod. “I know.” He plopped down onto the ground next to her and starting plucking the grass from the earth. “I’m sorry that she died. My
mamm
died too.”

Rachel didn’t bother to tell him that Katherine Yoder was her aunt and not her mother. The wrinkles of concentration lining his brow and the downward turn of his mouth were enough to have her hold her tongue. How sad for him to have lost his mother so young, even younger than she had been.

He shrugged again as if it was no matter. Rachel wanted to pull him into her lap and smooth down his shiny hair.

“Samuel.”

He turned as a big, dark-haired man came striding toward them. “The deacon’s ready to go.”

He stood and brushed the grass from the seat of his pants. “
Dat,
this is Rachel.”

She wiped the last of her tears from her cheeks and pushed herself to her feet. She’d had her cry. Now it was time to march back up to the house and deal with this problem head-on.

The big man dipped his chin in her direction, but didn’t smile. “I’m sorry about your
aenti
.”

With him standing over her, she felt like a child, no bigger than Samuel. A shiver ran down her spine at the thought, and she nodded in return to ease the uncomfortable tingling.
“Danki.”

“Let’s go.” He reached out one of his big hands and gathered Samuel close.

She watched them grow smaller as they made their way to the house. She decided that she didn’t like the frowning father of her little angel. He was so big and stern. The man didn’t look like he ever smiled.

“Lord, forgive me,” she whispered. That was two men she had decided she didn’t like just based on their looks and a very short conversation.

That was so unlike her. Given her choice, she would rather go up against the unfeeling Mr. Dowd from the bank rather than the unsmiling dad. At least with the banker she knew what she was up against. She knew what he wanted and why.

It was only then that she realized the fancy
Englisch
bankers had talked about the sale as if it had already occurred.