The Amish Blacksmith (41 page)

Neither one of us had words for the next span of minutes. I wondered if Priscilla had ever shared with anyone else all she had just shared with me. I was pretty sure she hadn't.

When she turned to me, her face was serene despite the story she had told me and the tear tracks on her cheeks. “Now what do you say, Jake? Am I at fault for what happened to my mother? No. But do I wish I had made different choices? Yes. Every day. I don't want to ever forget that when you choose the way of self over others, terrible things can happen.”

For a moment her words, reverberating in my head, silenced me. “Is that why you think God guided you back here?” I finally asked. “To make sure you
wouldn't
forget?”

She shook her head. “I didn't need to come back here for that.” She looked away, as if needing to search the horizon for the reason she had returned to Lancaster County. We were silent for a few seconds as she contemplated what had brought her back. I knew if it were me, I wouldn't have returned. Then
she swung her head slowly back around my direction, a very different expression on her face than she had worn seconds earlier. Something had suddenly dawned on her, as defining and obvious as the breaking of a new day.

“I see it now,” she said, almost in a whisper.

“See what?”

Her eyes filled with the look of amazement. “I think the Lord brought me back for a reason that hasn't much to do with me at all. Oh, I
see
that now!”

I didn't follow. “See what?” I pulled my hand away from hers.

“Of course. It all makes sense!” She was nearly breathless.

“What? What makes sense?”

“It's you. You are the reason.”

T
WENTY
-N
INE

F
or several seconds I could only stare at Priscilla. How could I have had anything to do with her coming back to Lancaster County? I had barely known her before she left.

“What are you talking about?” I finally sputtered.

She rose to her feet, and in seconds she was at Voyager's side. She placed her hands on his back, as if to draw warmth and energy from him. He turned his head toward her and nodded, his bit jangling. “I just couldn't see it before.”

I rose to my feet too and walked over to where she stood. “See what?”

“I'm not the horse,” she said, stroking Voyager. Then she turned to me. “You are.”

I suddenly wanted to get back on our mounts and return to the real world. We'd been down memory lane a little too long, obviously. Priscilla was freaking me out. “What was that?” I said, though I had most definitely heard her.

“You're the horse, Jake. I'm not the one locked up inside. It's you.”

I could only stare at her, dumbfounded. I was no horse.

The look of clarity on her face was again intensifying. It was as if she had struck gold. “All along, since the first day I got here and saw you in the driveway, I had a feeling my coming had something to do with you. But the longer I stayed, the more I told myself it couldn't possibly have anything to do with you, so I thought maybe instead God wanted to assure me I'd finally come to
terms with what happened here, even though I was pretty sure I had. But I finally get it now. It was never about me. It
was
for you that I came back, Jake. Not for me. For you. To help you see this very thing.”

“See
what
very thing? You're not making any sense.”

Priscilla looked into my eyes. “First, you need to understand something.” She took a deep breath as she seemed to be sorting her thoughts. “You already know about the feelings I had for you when I was young, long before I left Lancaster County, long before I met Connor.”

I nodded. We'd talked about her girlhood crush the day we went to the cemetery.

“Anyway, you were older and so handsome and popular, and deep down I knew you would never be interested in me. But I hung onto the dream of you regardless, because it was the one good thing I could think about. At that time in my life, I had only a few possessions that seemed truly mine. I had my father's horse, the birch grove, moonlight, and my imagination. And I guess I decided those few things were enough. Until I met Connor the summer my mother died. He was actually a welcome distraction from my attraction to you. I can see now how my heart was looking for a way out of being in love with a dream.”

“I'm so sorry,” I said, feeling guilty for having underestimated the depth of her feelings for me all those years ago. What I had called a crush was actually a very young but very real kind of love.

“Don't be sorry. I'm not bringing this up now to make you feel bad. I bring it up because I need you to understand that I've been studying you for a long time, Jake. I know you.”

“Um, well, not exactly, Priscilla,” I said, not so eager to switch the focus of the conversation to me. “You've been gone for six years.”

“But that's just it,” she said, reaching out to touch my arm. “I
have
been gone six years. I've changed. Yet you're exactly the same. You still won't let anyone into the deep places in your heart. You won't even let yourself in. You don't drop your guard for anyone.”

I laughed nervously, wanting very much now to be heading back. She truly was making no sense. “We should probably get going.” I started to move past her to get Willow's reins, and she reached out her arm to stop me.

“You see? Even now you won't allow yourself to consider that I might be right. You run away from anything that goes too deep. You want to run away right now.”

I eased my arm out of her grasp. “What I want is to get back home. It's late.”

Priscilla shook her head. “It's not even dark yet. You just want to go back because you don't want to talk about this.”

“Talk about what, Priscilla? I have no idea what you mean!”

She nodded, her eyes tight on mine. “I know you don't.”

A few seconds of tense silence passed between us. She was waiting for me to ask her. “All right,” I sighed. “What are you getting at? How am I a horse?”

“Not
a
horse, Jake.
The
horse. You told Aunt Roseanna I was like one of those horses that you try to coax into trusting you so that they will mentally move past whatever they're afraid of. You told her I was all locked up inside, chained to the past and unable to forgive myself and move on. That I was
that
kind of horse.”

I felt heat rise to my cheeks. I had not known Priscilla had heard what I'd said to Roseanna the last day I'd been working with Patch. “I hadn't meant for you to hear that,” I murmured.

“I know you didn't. But I'm glad I did, so that I can tell you this.
You're
the one locked up inside, Jake. It's you, not me.”

I laughed, but I was starting to get perturbed. “Right. And how do you figure?”

“I've already told you. You refuse to listen.”

“Told me what?” I said, sensing anger in my voice.

“You run away from anything truly deep and meaningful and powerful. You don't have lingering regrets or achingly beautiful memories because you don't want to hold on to anything that cuts you to the heart, good or bad. You work with these horses to get them to move past their fears and hang-ups, but you never stop to consider
why
they are afraid or sad or angry. You only want them to stop feeling anything at all so that they'll simply eat, sleep, and pull a buggy.”

“That's not true,” I began, but she cut me off.

“It is true. You didn't care what had happened to January to upset her; you just wanted that horse to forget it. Forget it all. That's why you flashed bags at her and made noises and all that other nonsense. You told me yourself that the horse needed to learn to ignore all external stimuli in order to behave. The reason why she was afraid didn't matter to you, only that it cease to matter. You want to be numb to everything that the heart might hold dear so that you won't be hurt when you suddenly find yourself without it.”

“That's enough.”

But she wasn't finished.

“You're very fond of Amanda, but you don't love her with your entire soul and being and you don't want to. You don't want to feel that strongly about anything.”

“Oh, yeah? You think it was easy to pull back from you last night? To keep from kissing you when every fiber in my being wanted that more than anything?”

“I—”

“What do you think made me stop, Priscilla? It was the thought of Amanda, my feelings for her. I couldn't do that to her.”

Priscilla sat back for a moment, regarding me. “I doubt it. Don't you see? I think your pulling away from me last night had a lot less to do with your feelings for Amanda and a lot more to do with your own fears. You pulled away because you couldn't bear to consider what a kiss like that would really mean. You don't love her, Jake. Not the way you should.”

Priscilla had stepped over the line. “And what would you know about loving someone?” I shot back. “You call what you had with that New York boy love? That's what you call deep and ardent love? That's the kind of miserable longing you want to hang on to and protect at all costs?”

I expected her to lash out at me, even storm off perhaps. But she just stood there, absorbing my cutting words like a sponge taking on water. “That is
not
what I call love,” she answered. “I was infatuated with Connor. It was all about me and what I wanted from him. Deep and abiding love is never like that. I have not thought about Connor in a long time.”

“You expect me to believe
that
after that story you just told? Come on, Priscilla. I am not that stupid. We've been out here an hour.”

She grinned slightly, a pitying smile. “Yes, you are that stupid. You think this last hour was so that I could tell you how much I loved Connor and how deeply he hurt me? This wasn't a story about Connor or even me. Or you. It's a story about the love my
mamm
had for me. That I had for my
daed
. That they had for each other.
Mamm
's love for me was sometimes hard because she didn't want to lose me.
Mamm
would have laid down her life for me in a heartbeat.
Daed
, the same. And lest you think I am only speaking of the love parents have for their children, my
daed
and
mamm
would have walked through flames to save each other. That is how much they loved each other, even though she lost her soul mate when
Daed
died, and she missed him with
a sorrow that some criticized. I don't want to feel anything less for the person I marry. You shouldn't want to, either. Christ loved the church with ardor and an aching longing to see her redeemed. You are to have that same love for your beloved. You must have it, Jake, and not just for her, but for every other person and virtue that truly matters to you. Live your life insulated from passion, and you will have lived a life of pretense and shallowness.”

Words failed me. From somewhere deep inside, a wall I didn't even know existed seemed to shudder as if the earth beneath my feet was trembling.

“I keep feeling as though something must have happened to you, Jake, something that made you afraid to give your heart fully to anything. Something happened to you that makes you think marrying Amanda is safe, and easy. Something makes you think that when you feel worry or fear or fervor or even anger, the best thing is to just brush it off or push it away. If so, then you have to figure out what that was.”

“Nothing happened,” I said, practically tripping over the words in my anxiousness to get them out. I'd had a happy childhood. Great parents. Good friends. A job I loved. Dreams for the future that made a lot of sense. I had no wounds, and I said as much to her.

“You sound awfully sure. But how do you know?”

“Because I know!” I exclaimed. “I may not be emotional like you, but that doesn't mean I have wreckage somewhere inside me I've buried.”

She studied my face, looking for a chink in my armor, or so it seemed to me. “I told you once before that horses were emotional beings, and you laughed at me.”