The Amish Groom ~ Men of Lancaster County Book 1 (36 page)

“Yes?”

“Did he mention me at all? Did he say where I was or what had happened to me?”

Her eyes narrowed, and I knew she was wondering why I wanted to know.

Why
did
I want to know? To find out how he’d said it, if he’d been embarrassed or remorseful about leaving me behind? To find out if the situation really had been “crazy”?

“He told me you were living with your Amish grandparents until his next tour was over.”

“How did you respond to that?”

She thought for a long moment. “I suppose I should have thought to ask why he hadn’t brought you with him. But at the time the only thing that came to mind was, well, at least Sadie’s son made it back, even if she never did.”

T
WENTY
-S
IX

I
awoke Friday morning before dawn, wondering if snow was falling on Lancaster County as predicted. I wanted to be able to picture where Rachel was, what she was doing. I crept downstairs to my dad’s study, turned on his computer, and opened an Internet browser so that I could check the Weather Channel’s website.

Indeed, it said they had already received several inches and more was to come. A travel advisory had been issued for practically all of Eastern Pennsylvania. It was difficult to imagine that I wasn’t on another planet. The forecast for Orange County was sunny skies and a high of seventy-three degrees.

I turned the computer off and closed my eyes, picturing Rachel in her wool cape and heavier bonnet, walking from her house to the dairy barns in the blue-white of morning snow. The cows would raise their big heads when she walked inside the milking parlor and slowly blink their long-lashed eyes. The breath coming out of their nostrils would look like wisps of gauze. They would be anxious to be milked, ready for breakfast, waiting for the human contact that would bring both. But Rachel would walk past the milking stanchions into the nursery to feed the new calves, change their bedding, and rub the little nubs of growing horns before they were removed. She might be humming a song as she did these chores. Was she thinking of me? Was she missing me?

This was the hardest part of my ponderings. Imagining the flip side of those musings: a morning without Rachel in it.

It was wrong to join the church solely for the love of a girl. I wouldn’t do it. But Rachel was a part of the equation, just as my dad had been a part of my mother’s equation when she was seeking peace for her situation.

“Rachel deserves to be happy,” I said aloud to God. “I want her to be happy.”

When she and I talked tomorrow, I would assure her I wanted this more than anything else, even more than my own happiness.

After lunch, I borrowed Liz’s car and headed to my next photography lesson. Before I was halfway there, however, Lark called to see if we could postpone for an hour. One of her professors had offered a special study session after class and it was running a little long.

I assured her that was no problem, though after I hung up, I pulled over into the nearest gas station while I tried to figure out what to do with myself between now and then. I could always turn around and go back to the house, but I didn’t want to. An hour to kill, the car at my disposal, nobody else aware of where I was or what I was doing…

What I really wanted was to go to my father’s storage unit and dig around inside until I found the box of my mother’s photographs, the ones I hadn’t stopped thinking about since the moment he’d first mentioned them.

I had the key on my key ring. I had the security code on a piece of paper in my wallet. I could easily find my way there, get inside, and more than likely dig up those photos. Of course, that would mean rooting around through my father’s private things without his permission, but was that really such a big deal?

For that matter, would he even have to know about it? After all, they weren’t really his pictures to give. They were hers. And she was my mother. Maybe that really did give me the right to seek them out on my own.

A sensation of unease swept over me.

More than unease. Guilt. Shame.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go over there and rifle through my dad’s possessions, much less do so and then keep it a secret afterward. Before he left, he said I could have the pictures; they were practically mine already. But they weren’t mine yet. Not until he handed them to me himself.

Outside the car, movement at a nearby dumpster caught my eye, and I turned to see a trio of seagulls fighting over a discarded sandwich. Their presence reminded me of the ocean not too far away and of God’s magnificent handiwork on display there.

The moment my thoughts turned to Him, I could hear His words to me from earlier in the week. Like notes on a breeze, they came floating back now.

Honor others before yourself.

This would not be honoring my dad, jumping into his privacy to find something he had already said he would give me when he returned. This was just me jumping ahead and doing what pleased me without concern for how he would feel.

I made my decision. I would honor my father and wait to be given the pictures in his time, not mine.

Feeling frustrated but resolute, I knew what I needed most in that moment was a place to think and pray, somewhere quiet that I could disengage from everything that pulled at my affections and concentrate solely on God. I put the car in gear and pulled back onto the road to go in search of just that. The beach would have been a good choice, but traffic was so heavy that I knew an hour wasn’t enough time.

Needing somewhere closer, I continued down the road, eyes open for other possibilities. When I was nearly to Lark’s house and still hadn’t found any place to retreat, I turned into a shopping center I’d noticed before, one that had a coffee shop with a large outdoor patio landscaped with trees, flowers, and a bubbling fountain. It wasn’t secluded, but at least it looked peacefully busy. People were scattered about the tables, most talking quietly or tapping away at laptops.

I bought a large cup of black coffee and settled into a chair by the fountain, hoping that the sound of water rushing over stone would help me be still. Sprinklings of conversations and the songs of the birds that never had to fly south for the winter filled the air. Across from me, a woman and her two young children sat next to a playpen of puppies they were hoping to give away. On the other side of the fountain was a frozen yogurt shop, and every time someone opened the door, a few bars of reggae music floated onto the patio.

I found it difficult to pray there, so finally I turned my intentions to thinking instead. Sitting there among the busyness, I thought about my father first. Then Liz. Brady. Rachel. My mother. I thought about this
thing
, whatever it was, that pulled at me from the outside when I was home—yet pulled me home when I was out. I wondered, yet again, which man I was and in which place I truly belonged. If only God would show me soon!

I sipped my coffee and watched people stop to pat, hold, and cuddle the frolicking puppies. When I was done, I tossed out my empty cup and walked over to see them for myself, nodding at the older of the two children.

“Want to hold one?” he asked.

I held out my hands and the boy gave me a wriggling, spotted dog.

The pup smelled of wood shavings, energy, and confident trust. It had been a while since Timber had been a puppy, and longer still since we’d had much livestock. These days our attention was almost solely on the buggy shop. But holding that little dog reminded me of younger years when I was given a piglet to raise, or chickens to care for, or when one of our horses foaled. New life always reminded me of God’s purposes being renewed in the most basic of ways.

I held the dog close to my face and he licked my cheek with his tiny pick tongue.

“You want him?” the boy asked.

“I’m just visiting,” I said, shaking my head as I handed the puppy back. It wasn’t until I turned to go that I realized what I’d just said.

It was true. I felt like a visitor. No matter where I was, I felt like a visitor.

It was as if when I turned six, that’s what I became. A visitor.

I made it to Lark’s house at two o’clock sharp. She thanked me again for being flexible with the time and then led me to the dining room, where she had spread out on the table prints of the pictures I’d taken with both the digital and the film camera. We looked over the digitals first, reviewing my composition, and then she made me go through the film shots one by one, comparing each against the notes I’d taken while shooting them.

Overall, I decided, a few were rather nice, most were okay, and a number were just plain terrible. We studied them together for a while, but finally I sat back in my chair, defeated.

“Well, I think one thing has been made very clear,” I said, taking in the pictures in their entirety. “I do not have an eye for photography.”

“Why would you say that?”

“These are just ho-hum. They’re nowhere near as good as anything you’ve taken. Even your early stuff.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. They’re not that bad.”

“Don’t be so easy on me. They’re not that good.”

Lark picked up a photo I had taken of a Corvette that had been parked at the beach lot. I’d thought my dad might like it. “This one’s pretty good.” She handed it to me.

“It’s okay.”

She picked up another, of a gull walking the fine line between wet sand and dry. “I like this one.”

“It’s not bad. I just don’t see a story in any of these the way I saw in yours.”

“Well, it’s only your second try at it, Ty. You’ll get better. It’s like anything that requires practice. The more you do it, the easier it will become and the better your results will be. I’m sure the first buggy you made had its problems.”

I laughed and tossed the photo of the Corvette onto the table. “Not this many problems.”

Sitting back in my chair, I met the eyes of my tutor and friend and told her, reluctantly, that I had a feeling we were about done.

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, the point wasn’t to become some expert photographer. It was to learn enough about how it’s done to get inside the mind of my mother, to figure out what the draw was for her.”

“And?”

“And I’m realizing now that I’m never going to figure that out. Not from this.”

Lark just stared at me, waiting, so I continued, understanding flowing into me even as the words came out of my mouth.

“Photography is too singular of an experience, I think. The way I feel when I’m taking pictures is completely different from the way you feel—and from the way my mother would have felt. It’s not one size fits all, even though I had hoped it could be.”

Lark pulled in a breath through pursed lips, held it, and then blew it out again before she spoke. “I hear what you’re saying, but just because that’s why you got into this in the first place doesn’t mean you should stop. Whether it helps you understand your mother or not, you should be doing photography for your own sake.”

I shook my head. “Yeah,
if
I enjoyed it. But I don’t.”

Her eyes filled with surprise and then hurt.

“I’ve enjoyed spending time with you, of course,” I added quickly, “but the picture-taking itself really hasn’t done anything for me. Mostly, it’s felt tedious, you know?”

Lark sat back, the hurt in her eyes lingering. “So all of this was for nothing.”

I felt bad for her, and I realized I should have reminded her along the way of my motivation. Somehow, she had managed to forget the one reason I was doing this at all. “Seriously, Lark, I’m really grateful for everything you showed me. More grateful than you know. It wasn’t a waste of your time. Okay? I learned a lot.”

“But we’re done. You don’t want me to show you anything else.” She met my eyes. “Do you?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I have a lot of other things on my mind.”

“I see.”

She grew silent, hurt clearly evident on her face, so finally I leaned toward her, searching for the words that would make her feel better.

“That first night over sushi,” I said softly, “I told you why I wanted to learn photography, so I could understand what my mother saw in it, what she liked about it. Do you remember that?”