Gabriel's Bride (36 page)

“The
doktah
said I’d be able to do everything I could do before with a little practice.”

Gabriel nodded. “He did at that.”

“
Gut
.” A huge smile split Samuel’s face showing the space where his two front teeth had been and new ones would grow back. “’Cause I’m ready to go to school.”

Gabriel looked up and met John Paul’s gaze.

John Paul shrugged.

“Why are you so interested in school all of the sudden?”

Samuel smiled, irresistible and infectious. “Wachel was showing me.”

“Showing you?” Gabriel felt strangely like a magpie repeating everything Samuel said. But he had no idea what his son was talking about. It hit him then, that maybe his own child had a life that he knew nothing about.

“My lettews,” Samuel danced up on his tiptoes in excitement. “Wachel taught me my lettews.”

Gabriel rocked back on his heels. “She did?”

“
Jah
, and how to write my name.”

Gabriel looked back to John Paul, who shrugged again.

“So Mary Ann can’t say I don’t belong at school no more.”

“Any more,” John Paul immediately corrected, a testament to the amount of time that he’d been spending with the child.

Mary Ann Yutzy had taken over teaching when Katie Rose stepped down to be married. He was so far behind other six-year-olds that poor Samuel hadn’t been able to attend, but now, all thanks to Rachel, he might be able to go to school. Just like his brothers.

Gabriel swallowed the lump of emotion in his throat and patted Samuel on the shoulder. “We’ll have to see.” He would hate for the child to get his hopes up only to have them dashed when school resumed in a couple of weeks.

“
Guck
,” Samuel said grabbing a small stick. Despite the bandages still wrapped around his right hand and the missing fingers, he traced his name in the driveway dirt, neat and plain and perfect except for the backward
S
.

He moved back and examined what he’d written. Then he stepped forward again. Tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he erased the first letter and remade it, correctly this time.

Gabriel knew in that moment exactly why the Bible warned against pride. His son had overcome so much. Samuel was a survivor, had been since birth. But where Katie Rose had loved him, raised him, and saw to his every need, it had been Rachel who had drawn him out, pushed him beyond his expected potential.

“We didn’t get to weading though,” Samuel’s voice turned melancholy. “I don’t mind the buwnt cookies so much. I miss hew.”

“Me too,” Gabriel said. He looked up and caught John Paul’s gaze intently studying him. “What?”

His youngest brother shrugged and shot him that crooked smile. “Maybe you should go after her.”

Gabriel shook his head.

“Why not?”

Samuel looked up. “
Jah, Dat
, why not? You didn’t mind the burnt cookies, did you?”

“Samuel, go wait for your
onkel
in the car.”

The youngster peered up at each of them in turn, then skipped off to the car, seemingly unaware of the emotions his words had caused.

Nay
, he didn’t mind the burnt cookies. They weren’t always inedible. Rachel was far from perfect, could hardly be considered a proper Amish wife, but she had brought something into his house that he couldn’t explain. She’d brought a freshness, a joy . . . she’d brought blessings. Now that the freshness was gone, he sorely missed it. “If she wanted to be here then she wouldn’t have left.”

“Perhaps she wants you to follow her.”

Gabriel shook his head. This just proved what he’d known all along: It was better not to get attached to the things of this world for in a heartbeat they could be taken away. “You haven’t read her letters. She loves it in Ohio.” The words sent pain tearing through his heart.

John Paul shrugged. “Or maybe that’s what she wants you to think.”

“I will now ask Katie Rose Fisher and Zane Carson to come forward.”

His sister stood, and Gabriel smiled. She looked beautiful in her crisp blue dress the color of the sky on this fine fall day. Katie Rose made her way to the front of the room where she was met by the fancy
Englisch
reporter who captured her heart.

Gabriel supposed he’d have to find a new way to refer to him now that Zane Carson had joined the church. It had taken two years of studying and living in the community before the bishop finally agreed to it. Rueben Beachy hadn’t been as hard on Annie Hamilton when she asked to join. One could only suspect that the bishop had grown concerned about the influences of the outside world when yet another
Englischer
decided to jump the fence to the other side.

“Katie Rose Fisher, I ask you if you will remain with Zane Carson until death. If you will be loyal to him and care for him during adversity, affliction, sickness, and weakness.”

Katie Rose nodded. “
Jah
.”

He turned to the groom. “Zane Carson, I ask you if you will remain with Katie Rose Fisher until death. If you will be loyal to her and care for her during adversity, affliction, sickness, and weakness.”

Zane nodded. “I will.”

The bishop took their hands in his. “I wish you the blessing and mercy of God. Go forth in the Lord’s name. You are now man and wife.”

A buzz of excitement filled the room. Gabriel stood, and with the rest of the men, flipped the benches into tables for the women to get the feast underway. They were expecting close to six hundred people to come today as the wedding celebration would continue until late in the evening.

The women had prepared the traditional
roasht
, a mixture of bread filling and chicken, along with mashed potatoes, coleslaw, apple sauce, and creamed celery, just to name a few of the dishes available to their guests. There were wedding cakes and pies stacked on top of pies. Puddings, fruits, and sweetbread, enough food to feed their district and the next one over. But such was the way of Amish weddings.

Celery leaves in glass jars decorated tables covered with white cloth. It was a sight to see everyone gathered, enjoying the fellowship and the new union that had been formed. Gabriel couldn’t help but wonder—if he had done all this for Rachel, would she still be here?

The thought was ridiculous at best. Rachel was a level-headed woman. She knew what she was doing when she married him. She had no illusions of love.

Or had she?

He looked at his sister who sat in the
eck
with her groom. It was tradition for the bride and groom to sit in the special corner formed by two tables with their attendants on either side of them. However, due to Katie’s age and the fact that Zane Carson had not been a member of their community until very recently, friends and family sat beside them.

They could have been surrounded by mules and they wouldn’t have noticed. It seemed they had eyes for no one but each other.

The thought fluttered back in. Would it have been different if he had done this for Rachel? If he had insisted on the large wedding, the overabundance of food and company?
Nay
, he thought. It had been more of a mistake than that. Maybe if he could have loved her like Zane Carson loved Katie Rose, like Gideon loved Annie Hamilton.

He looked over at his brother and sister-in-law. Annie held Baby Michelle in her arms, cuddling her close. She looked like any Amish woman there. So much different from when she had arrived on that snowy spring night almost three years ago.
Jah
, she looked like any of the other women in attendance, but she sat a little closer to her husband than most, her love for him and her
Englisch
upbringing pulling her to his side like a magnet.

The same pull he’d felt toward Rachel at the hotel when he kissed her . . . and the night that Mary Elizabeth had returned.

He felt an arm slip through his. “It’s a
gut
day for a wedding,
jah
?”

He patted his
mamm’s
hand where it rested near his elbow. “
Jah
.” Was that rusty sound his voice?

“Then why do you look so sad,
sohn
?”

Why indeed.

His
mudder
stood beside him, cancer free. His
bruder
and sister were both happily married, something no one in the district thought would ever happen. Samuel had survived the venom of a rattlesnake, and Mary Elizabeth had returned.

“I’m not sad.” He said the words, but his heart gave a kick. He had nothing to be sad about. It was all just part of God’s plan.

“May be part of God’s plan was for you to go after her.” He hadn’t realized that he’d uttered the words aloud until his
mamm
responded.

“Maybe it was God’s plan for her to leave.”

His mother laid her hand on his cheek. “You are as stubborn as your
vatter
, Gabriel Fisher. But once you get over that, you’ll see.”

She turned to go, but not before he asked, “I’ll see what?”

“The power of love.”

He frowned as she walked away. Whatever was she talking about? It wasn’t like he loved Rachel or anything. How could the power of love be involved in a marriage of convenience?

As custom, the wedding continued on through the afternoon. Friends and neighbors came and went, ate and sang, and wished the couple well. The young people gathered in the barn for a singing. Katie Rose had taught most of them at one time or another, and they turned out in droves to show their love and appreciation to their one-time teacher.

Yet Gabriel couldn’t get past his mother’s words. Love? When had love become involved?

Nay
. He shook his head. This had nothing to do with love.

“Keep that up,
brudder
, and they’ll strip you of your position for sure.”

Gabriel turned as his brother approached. “Gideon.”

“They’ll think you’re
ab im kopp
if you keep talking to yourself when no one’s around.”

“If no one’s around who will be there to tell them?”

Gideon laughed. “It is almost time for cake.”

Gabriel patted his stomach. “I had two pieces of the one they cut after
middawk
.”

“Annie says there’s always room for more cake.”

“I’ll not be able to fit into my pants come Sunday morning. I’d do no good for my standing with the district if’n I turn up at church without britches.”

“That is certain.”

They stood for a moment and shared the air, then Gideon spoke. “What’s troubling you,
bruder
?”

“
Nix
,” Gabriel said, looking out over his parents’ land. His property started just beyond the crop of trees, the wooded area between the houses saved for hunting.

“You say nothing, and yet you stand there, looking as forlorn as a lost
kinder
.”

Gabriel shrugged. How could he voice what was bothering him when he wasn’t quite sure what it was? “It seems that Rachel has left a legacy.”

“Go on.”

“She taught Samuel how to make his letters and write his name.”

“Sounds like she was busy.”

Gabriel nodded. “
Jah
, at that. He can still manage even with his hand.”

“That’s
gut
.”

“
Jah
.” Gabriel picked up a stick and flung it toward the trees. He wished he could throw his thoughts away just as easily.

“You miss her.”

He shook his head then shrugged, thinking he must look like he was having some sort of fit as he tried to figure out his feelings for Rachel. “
Jah
,” he finally admitted. “I miss her.”

“Then go after her.”

“What?” He met Gideon’s gaze, wondering how his brother could say the words so easily when they seemed to stick in his craw.

“Go to Ohio and bring her back.”

“If she wanted to be here, then she would not have left.” She wouldn’t write page after page of how much she enjoyed the children she cared for, the coolness of Ohio, the changes the move had brought to her.

“That’s where you are wrong, Gabriel Fisher. I almost lost Annie forever. If she hadn’t been strong enough to come back to me and fight for our love, I hate to think what would have happened. It had nothing to do with me wanting her here or not. It was about stubbornness.”