The Amish Bride (3 page)

The kitchen felt unusually warm, even for a late-August evening, and Ellen ran a finger under the neckline of her dress to ease the tightness against her skin. What could she say? Her parents and the Shetlers were all looking expectantly at her again.

Folding his arms over his chest, Neziah spoke with slow deliberation. “You’re telling Ellen that she should choose between us, but I’ve not heard her say that she’ll have either of us. This is your idea,
Vadder
. Maybe it’s not to Ellen’s liking.”

“Not just
my
idea,” Simeon corrected. “
Nay.
I say plainly that I believe it’s God’s plan. And John’s in agreement with me. Think about it. I don’t know why we didn’t see it before. Here I sit with two unwed sons, one with motherless children he struggles to care for and the other sashaying back and forth across the county from one singing to another in a rigged-out buggy with red-and-blue flashing lights.” His brow furrowed as he stared hard at Micah. “And don’t mention
rumspringa
, because it’s time you put that behind you and came into the church.”

“Listen to your father.” Ellen’s
dat
nodded. “He’s speaking truth, Micah. He wants what’s best for you. He always has.”

“Jah,”
Simeon said. “I’ve held my tongue far too long, waiting for the two of you to stop sitting on the fence and court some young woman. Neziah’s mourned the boys’ mother long enough, and Micah’s near to being thought too flighty for any good family to want him. It’s time.”

Micah toyed with his fork. “I’m not yet thirty,
Vadder
. It’s not as if no girl would have me.”

“I’ll fetch the coffee and apple pie,” Ellen offered. She began clearing away the plates while Simeon wagged a finger at Micah.

“You know I’m but speaking what’s true. Deny it if you can. Neither of you have been putting your minds to finding a good wife. And you must marry. It’s not decent that you don’t. I’ve talked to you until I’m blue in the face, and I’ve prayed on it. What came to me was that we didn’t have to look far to find the answer to at least one of our problems.”

“Jah.”
Ellen’s mother leaned forward on her elbows and pushed back her plate. “And you’ve worried about your sons no more than I’ve lost sleep over our girl. She should have been a wife years ago, should have filled our house with grandchildren. She’s a good daughter, a blessing to us in our old age. But it’s time she found a husband, and none better than one of your boys.”

“I agree,” Ellen’s father said. “I’ve known Neziah and Micah since they were born. I could ask no more for her than she wed such a good man as either of them.” He smiled and nodded his approval. “The pity is, we didn’t think of this solution sooner.”

“No solution if Ellen’s not willing,” Neziah pronounced. His serious gaze met hers and held it. “Are you in favor of this plan or are you just afraid to speak up and turn us out the door with our hats in hand?”

Everyone looked at her again, including the two children, and Ellen felt a familiar sinking feeling. What
did
she want? She didn’t know. She stood in the center of the kitchen feeling foolish and clutching the pie like a drowning woman with a lifeline. “I...Well...”

“Is the thought of marrying one of us distasteful to you?” Neziah asked when she couldn’t answer.

He had none of the showy looks of his brother. Neziah’s face was too planed, his brow too pronounced, and his mouth too thin to be called handsome. Not that he was ugly; he wasn’t that. But there was always something unnerving about his dark, penetrating gaze.

Neziah was only three years older than she was, but he looked closer to ten. Hints of gray were beginning to tint his walnut-brown hair. The sudden loss of his wife and mother in the same accident three years ago had struck him hard. Maybe it was the responsibility of being both father and mother to two young children that stamped him with an air of heaviness.

“We’re all friends here,” Neziah continued. “No one will think less of you if this isn’t something you want to consider.”

Micah relaxed in his chair. “I say we’ve thrown this at her too fast. I wouldn’t blame her for balking.” He met Ellen’s gaze. “Give yourself a few days to think it over, Ellen. What do you say?”

“Jah,”
Ellen’s mother urged, rising to take the pie from her hands. “Say you will think about it, daughter.”

“You know your mother and I wouldn’t even consider the idea if we thought it was wrong for you.” Her father beamed, and Ellen’s resistance melted.

What could be wrong with thinking it over? As Simeon and her
dat
had said, either of the Shetler brothers would make a respectable husband. She would be a wife, a woman with her own home to manage, possibly children. She took a deep breath, feeling as if she were about to take a plunge off the edge of a rock quarry into deep water far below. She actually felt a little lightheaded. “I will,” she said. “I’ll think on the whole idea, and I will pray about it. Surely, if it is the Lord’s plan for me, He’ll ease my mind.” She held up her finger. “But my agreement is to
think
on the whole idea. Nothing more.”

Simeon smacked his hands together. “
Goot.
It is for the best. You will come to realize this. And whichever one you pick, I will consider you the daughter I never had.”

Ellen turned toward Simeon, intent on making it clear to her neighbor that she hadn’t agreed to walk out with either of his sons when the little boys kicked up a commotion.

“Me!” Asa and Joel both reached for the pie in the center of the table. “Me!” they cried in unison.

“Me first!” Joel insisted.

“
Nay!
Me!” Asa bellowed.

“I knew you’d see it our way, Ellen,” Micah said above the voices of his nephews. He rose from his chair. “I was so sure you’d agree that I brought fishing poles. You always used to like fishing. Maybe you and me could wander down to the creek and see if we could catch a fish or two before dark.”

Ellen looked at Micah, then the table of seated guests, flustered. “Go fishing? Now?”

“Oh, go on, Ellen,” her father urged. “We can get our own pie and I’ll help your mother clean up the dishes.” He glanced at Micah. “Smart thinking. Best strike while the iron is hot, boy. Get the jump on Neziah and put your claim in first.”

Mischief gleamed in Micah’s blue eyes. “It’ll get you out of here.” He motioned toward the back door. “Come on, Ellen. You know you want to. I’ll even bait the hook for you.”

She cut her eyes at him. “As if I need the help. If I remember correctly, it was me who taught you how to tickle trout.”

“She did,” Micah conceded to the others, then he returned his attention to her. “But I’ve learned a few things about fishing since then. You don’t stand a chance of catching the first fish or the most.”

“Don’t I?” Ellen retorted. “Talk’s cheap but it never put fish on the table.” Still bantering with him, she took off her
kapp
, tied on her scarf and followed him out of the house.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Micah stepped out on a big willow that had fallen into the creek. The leaves had long since withered, but the trunk was strong. Barring a flood, the willow would provide a sturdy seat for fishermen for years. And the eddy in the curve of the bank was the best place to catch fish.

He turned and offered Ellen his hand. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s safe enough.” He had both fishing poles in his free hand, while Ellen carried the can with the bait.

The rocky stream was wide, the current gentle but steady as the water snaked through a wooded hollow that divided his father’s farm from her
dat
’s. When they were children, he, Neziah and Ellen had come here to fish often. Now, he sometimes brought his nephews, Joel and Asa, but Neziah didn’t have the time. Sometimes the fishing was good, and sometimes he went home with nothing more than an easy heart, but it didn’t matter. Micah thought there was often more of God’s peace to be found here in the quiet of wind and water and swaying trees than in the bishop’s sermons.

“Thanks for asking me to come fishing, Micah,” Ellen said as she followed him cautiously out onto the wide trunk. “I needed to get out of there, and I couldn’t think of a way to make a clean getaway without offending anyone.”

“Jah,”
Micah agreed. “I wanted to get away, too. Not from supper. That was great. But my
dat
. When he takes a crazy notion, he’s hard to rein in.”

“So you think that’s what it is? His idea that you and Neziah should both court me, and that I would choose between you? It’s a
crazy
notion
?”

The hairs on the back of Micah’s neck prickled, warning him that he’d almost made a big misstep, and not the kind that would land him in the creek. “
Nay
, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s a good idea, one I should have come up with a long time ago. Me and you walking out together, I mean, not you picking one of us. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. My
vadder
is right that I’ve been
rumspringa
too long. I didn’t want to discuss it back there, but I’ve been talking to the bishop about getting baptized. I’m ready to settle down, and a good woman is just what I need.”

Ellen sat down on the log and dangled her legs over the edge. She was barefooted, and he couldn’t help noticing her slender, high-arched feet. “I’m nearly four years older than you,” she said.

He grinned at her. “That hasn’t mattered since I left school and started doing a man’s work. I’ve always thought you were one of the prettiest girls around, and we’ve always gotten along.” Maybe not the prettiest, he thought, being honest with himself, but Ellen was nearly as tall as he was and very attractive. She’d always been fun to be with, and she was exactly the kind of woman he’d always expected to marry when he settled down. Ellen never made a fellow feel like less than he was, always better. Being with her always made him content...sort of like this creek, he decided.

“And our fathers’ lands run together, of course.” She took the pole he offered and bent over her line, carefully threading a night crawler onto the hook. “Handy for pasturing livestock.”

He studied her to see if she was serious or testing him, but she kept her eyes averted, and he couldn’t tell. He decided to play it safe. “We’ve been friends since we were kids. We share a faith and a community. Maybe that’s a good start for a marriage.”

“Maybe.” She cast her line out, and the current caught her blue-and-white bobber and whisked it merrily along.

“
Dat
says all the best marriages start with friendship,” he added.

“And it doesn’t bother you that I’m thirty-three and not twenty-three?”

“Would I be here if it did?” Now she did raise her head and meet his gaze, and he smiled at her. “It was my
vadder
’s idea, but I wouldn’t have agreed if I didn’t think it was something I wanted to do. You’re a hard worker. I hope you think the same of me. I’ve got a good trade, and I own thirty acres of cleared farmland in my own name. And the two of us have a lot in common.”

“Such as?”

“I like to eat and you’re a good cook.” He laughed.

She smiled.

“Seriously, Ellen. You get my jokes. We both like to laugh and have a good time. You know it’s true. There’s a big difference between me and Neziah.”

“He has always been serious in nature.”

“And more so since the accident. He doesn’t take the joy in life that he should. Bad things happen. I didn’t lose a wife, I know, but I lost my mother in that accident. You have to go on living. Otherwise, we waste what the Lord has given us.”

She nodded, but she didn’t speak, and he remembered that he’d always liked that about her. Ellen was a good listener, someone you could share important thoughts with.

“Sometimes I think my brother’s meant to be a preacher, or maybe a deacon. He’s way too settled for a man his age. Just look at his driving animal. I always thought you could tell a man’s nature by his favorite driving animal.”

“Neziah drives a good mule,” she suggested.

“Exactly. Steady in traffic. Strong and levelheaded, even docile. An old woman’s horse.” It was no secret that he was different than Neziah. He liked spirited horses and was given to racing other buggies on the way to Sunday worship, not something that the elders smiled on.

“Don’t be so hard on your brother,” Ellen defended. “He has his children’s safety to think about. You know how some of these
Englishers
drive. They don’t think about how dangerous it is to pass our buggies on these narrow roads.”

“
Jah
, I know, but I’m careful about when and where I race. I don’t mean to criticize Neziah. He’s a good man, and I’d not stand to hear anyone criticize him. But he’s too staid for you. Remember that time we all went to Hershey Park? You and me, we liked the fast rides. Neziah, he got sick to his stomach. We’re better suited, and if you’ll give me a chance, I’ll prove it to you.”

“I think I—” She sounded excited for a second then sighed. “I had a bite but I think the fish is playing with me.” She reeled in her line and checked the bait. Half of her worm was missing. “Look at that. Now I’ll have to put on fresh bait.”

He steadied himself against a branch and watched her, wondering why it had taken his father’s lecture to stir him into action. For years he’d been going to all the young people’s frolics, flirting with this girl and that, when all the time he’d hardly noticed Ellen. He had seen her, of course, gone to church with her, worked on community projects with her, eaten at her father’s table and welcomed her to his own home. But he hadn’t thought of her in the way he suddenly did now, as a special woman whom he might want to make his wife. The thought warmed him and made him smile. “You don’t think I’m too young for you, do you?” he asked.

“Nay,”
she said, taking her time to answer. “I suppose not. But it’s a new idea for me, that I marry a friend, rather than someone I was in love with.”

Micah felt a rush of pleasure. “How do we know we won’t discover love for each other if we don’t give ourselves the chance?”

Her dark eyes grew luminous. Her bobber jerked and then dove beneath the surface of the creek, but Ellen didn’t seem to notice the tension on her fishing pole. “You think that could happen?”