To Love and to Cherish (10 page)

Carl opened the front door for her, pausing to let her enter first. “It seemed to go well. He asked many questions about where I’d been and what it was like being out there on my own. I answered them as honestly as I could.”

“But you told him it was a mistake, right? You told him that leaving was a mistake.”

Carl’s hand touched her dress sleeve. She pulled her arm away and stopped. His sad face confounded her, touching her in a way she wouldn’t have thought possible. If he had been so sad before he left, she’d never noticed it. Shouldn’t being back make him happy? His smile never reached his eyes. “I never said it was a mistake to leave.”

“But…then why did you come back?”

“Because I realized this is where I want to be.” His jaw worked and his eyes seemed suspiciously bright. “You are the one I want to be with. I had to go out there in order to understand that. Without my time away, I could never settle down and be satisfied with my life here. Maybe the same is true with Josiah.”

Emma couldn’t help herself. His sadness touched her heart. The icy shell around it started to melt. She shook her head and backed away from him. Carl was a grown man. He had to deal with the consequences of his actions. This concerned Josiah. “What did you tell Josiah?”

“I told him the truth: that he has to embrace this life and be satisfied with it. Or leave it. In between, there’s only discontent, bitterness, and the certainty that you’ve missed something. Something big. He should not be baptized until he knows for sure. Once he’s baptized, he’s
committed himself to being Amish for the rest of his life. Life is fleeting, Emma. You of all people should know that.”

Emma’s heart beat in an aching, painful rhythm. How could he do this again? Carl’s face swam in front of her. She brushed away the traitorous tears. “And I, of all people, know that’s why you must hold your family close, closer than anything else in the world. You hang on to them. You don’t fill their heads with fantasies that can only take them far from God and everything that is godly. You’re not helping Josiah.”

Carl blew out air in a mournful sigh. “Yes, I am helping him. He’s seeing the price I still pay for my transgressions. He knows about my feelings for you and how much I miss you. How what I did caused me to lose you. The problem is he hasn’t found a girl here in this community who makes him feel that way. The girl he cares for is out there in the world.”

“There is a girl who cares for him and he knows it. Don’t let him tell you otherwise. He’s hurting her just as you…” Emma backed away. “I have to help with breakfast.”

She whirled and rushed down the hallway to the kitchen. Annie stood at the stove, stirring more gravy to go with the mounds of biscuits piled high in a long row of baskets. Emma poured a glass of water and drank until the lump in her throat washed away. How could she let that man get to her again? Because her heart still held a place for him? Had she been holding it all this time? How could that be?

She slapped the glass on the cabinet and surveyed the scene. Time to work. Work would steady her. A group of young girls giggled as they picked up the baskets and carried them toward the door. Thomas’s daughter gave Emma a shy smile. “I was going to show you how I bake pie, but Daed said you probably already made them so I should carry things.”

Emma returned the smile and patted the girl’s shoulder. She looked so much like her mother, but she also favored Thomas with her maple-colored eyes and dimpled cheeks. “Your father is very wise, but come see me another day and I’ll help you make a pie.”

“Really?” Rebecca danced around the kitchen, nearly endangering the basket of biscuits she clasped to her chest.

“Really. Now go deliver those biscuits. The men will be ready to get to work any second.”

Rebecca skipped away. Emma watched her go, squelching the desire to skip out with her. Thomas had beautiful children. She had a hole the size of Kansas where her own babies should be. Thanks to Carl. Best to remember that. She heaved a deep breath, composed herself, and turned to Annie. “Is everything under control?”

Annie added a dash of salt and pepper to the gravy. She smiled, a blissful look on her face. “Doesn’t it smell good in here? When good food is cooking, it’s almost impossible to be sad, isn’t it?” She stopped stirring. “Do you think Luke would let me work in the kitchen at Louella’s restaurant? I might earn more than I do making pies, and I could cook all kinds of things for people all day long, not just desserts.”

Emma had no idea her sister dreamed of more than making pies, cookies, and cakes. She seemed so content. “I don’t know. If you were in the kitchen, you wouldn’t be exposed to too much of the outside influences he worries about. But they do use all those electrical appliances. And they have the radio on. And a telephone. I don’t know what Luke would say to that. Maybe you should ask him.”

Annie gave her a sideways glance, her lips turned up in a mischievous grin that made her look twelve instead of eighteen. “Maybe you could ask him for me.”

Emma crossed her arms. “Why? You’re a big girl. Besides, you get along with him better.”

Annie laughed. “Because you like to argue. Like right now.”

“I’m not arguing. I never argue.” Emma snagged a biscuit and slathered it with butter. “What else needs to be done before we start the noon meal?”

Her face thoughtful, Annie surveyed the kitchen. “Breakfast is taken care of unless they ask for more milk or juice. You could find Catherine, though. She went to get some onions from the garden for the roast we’re making for lunch. She never came back.”

Emma took a bite and chewed. The biscuit melted in her mouth. Annie really was meant to cook. “This is so good—”

A shriek cut her words short.

“You know better than that, you naughty little girls.” Leah marched through the door, dragging Lillie and Mary with her. “I’m taking you out to the shed. You’ll have a whipping, both of you.”

Emma laid the biscuit on a napkin. “What happened? What did they do?”

“Nothing, we didn’t do anything!” Lillie cried. She struggled in Leah’s grip. “We just wanted to take the pies outside.”

“We don’t have pie for breakfast. You know that. You’re lying—adding to your transgressions.” Leah dragged them toward the back door. “You were eating the pie and it fell on the floor, didn’t it?”

“No, no! We already had breakfast,” Mary sobbed. “I don’t even like pie.”

Emma brushed crumbs from her hands and stuck them on her hips. “Let them go.”

“What?”

“Let them go. They’ve explained what happened. I’m sure it was an accident. They’ll clean up the mess and spend the rest of the morning scrubbing the floor.”

“They must have a whipping.”

“Only if they deserve it. And then Luke is the one who will deliver their punishment. That’s how it’s done in our house.”

Emma and Leah stood nose to nose. “They’re lying. One is lying for the other. That’s what twins do. I should know—I have twin brothers.”

“Twins or not, my sisters don’t lie. My parents raised us right.”

“Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

“Loving compassion makes kind people. Let go of my sisters.”

“I won’t have them setting a bad example for my boys.”

“Your boys are outside dumping nails on the ground and using them to play pick-up-sticks.”

Leah gave Lillie and Mary a slight shove toward Emma. “Fine. They’ll be your problems.”

“They’re not problems, they’re children.”

Leah whirled and disappeared through the door.

Annie chuckled.

“It’s not funny.”

She grinned. “Playing pick-up sticks with nails. You made that up.”

“I may have embellished a bit, but I did see them with a box of nails. Luke was getting after them.”

Emma turned to Lillie and Mary. “Did you drop a pie?”

Her little chin trembling, Lillie nodded. “We wanted to carry it out to Luke so he could see what we’d made.”

“And now it’s all over the floor. The pie we made!” Mary sniffed. “It’s ruined.”

“Then you will clean it up and scrub the floor.”

“Yes, schweschder.”

“And then you’ll make another pie, an even better one.” Emma smiled at them. “Annie will help you. Won’t you, Annie?”

“Of course.” Annie waved a ladle at the girls. “Go clean it up, quickly, before the ants carry away the pie tin.”

The girls ran.

Annie turned back to the stove. “It probably wasn’t a good idea to question Leah’s authority. She’ll tell Luke, you know.”

“I know.” Emma sighed. “But she isn’t their mother. I can’t stand by and let her treat the girls as if she were.”

“Poor babies. They need a mother.”

“They have us.”

Annie stirred the gravy harder. “Yes, and we have each other.”

“Speaking of which, have you noticed how Catherine has been behaving lately?” If anyone knew what was going on with Catherine, it would be Annie. “She doesn’t seem to be eating. She’s lost weight.”

Annie laid down her ladle and faced Emma. “She won’t tell me what’s wrong. I’ve asked.” She smoothed a tangled curl that had escaped from her kapp. “Haven’t you heard her crying at night? She tries to muffle it with the pillow, but it wakes me up.”

Emma’s own dreams often left her exhausted in the morning, but she rarely awoke from them during the night. “I guess I’m too tired to hear her.”

“And you don’t share a bed so her tossing and turning doesn’t bother you.” Annie didn’t sound as if she were complaining, only trying to figure something out. “When I try to comfort her, she says it’s nothing, to go back to sleep.”

It wasn’t nothing. “I’ll talk to her.”

Annie nodded and went back to the gravy.

Emma headed for the back door. Catherine had taken on two more houses to clean since Mudder and Daed’s death. She had dark circles around her eyes and her round face had become increasingly angular. Her intentions were good, but she worked too hard.

No one occupied the garden except for a small brown rabbit that took off when Emma startled it from its hiding place in the carrots. “Catherine? Catherine!”

She listened for a reply. Nothing. She stooped and plucked some tomatoes that were plump and ripe. Any longer and they’d be overripe. The wrenching sound of a sob brought her upright.

More muffled sobbing followed. The sound wafted from behind the chicken coop, mingling with the squawk of the chickens. She wanted to run. Emma forced herself to move toward it. The sobs plucked at the ends of her nerves and caused pinpoints of pain from her fingertips down to her toes. “Catherine?” She whispered the name. “Is that you?”

She rounded the corner. Catherine sat hunched against the wall. Her head hung between her arms. Her shoulders rose and fell with each shuddering sob. Emma sank to her knees. “What is it? Please tell me what’s wrong.”

Catherine shrank away from her touch. “It’s nothing. Go away.”

Emma threw an arm around her. “I’m not leaving. Tell me why you’re crying.”

Catherine stiffened, then sank against Emma’s shoulder. “It’s so awful.”

Emma rubbed her back in the same circular motion Mudder used to use to calm her after a night terror as a child. “It’ll help to talk about it, I promise.”

Catherine raised a tear-soaked face. “Every time I close my eyes, I see it.”

Emma tightened her grip on her sister. “You see it.” She knew now what was coming. She should’ve known the trauma wouldn’t fade so quickly. “You see the accident.”

“Yes.” The sob that shook Catherine made Emma’s body tremble with the same awful anguish. “I see the buggy topple over. I see their bodies fly through the air. I hear the screeching brakes. I hear the horse screaming. I see their blood soaking into the ground. Over and over again. If I do manage to sleep, I dream about it. It’s horrible, horrible.”

Emma hugged Catherine and rocked her shaking body. “Shhh, shhh. It’ll be all right. I promise it’ll be all right.”

Somehow, it had to be all right.

E
mma tried to relax, but Doctor Miller’s stern expression didn’t help. She glanced at Luke, wanting his support. He didn’t look back. He sat stiffly in the straight-back chair, a look on his face like a piece of clothing must be chafing him. Only Catherine appeared more relaxed, lighter, than she had when they’d first arrived. Doctor Miller spoke with her privately for almost thirty minutes before they returned to the outer office. Emma could only imagine how that conversation had gone.

After Catherine’s crying bout in the garden, Emma had been forced to wait until the barn-raising ended to speak to Luke. His face radish-red, his words halting, he beat around the bush for a full five minutes before Emma figured out his response. He thought it was a womanly problem. Her brother was such a man.

Doctor Miller leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped in front of him. “You’ve all been through a traumatic experience. Luke and Catherine, you saw it happen. There couldn’t be anything more traumatic, short of war itself.” His faded blue eyes were kind behind silver-rimmed glasses. “I suspect Catherine’s not the only one having trouble sleeping. What about you, Luke? Any bad dreams? Loss of appetite? Depression?”

Luke crossed his arms. “I’m blessed with a large family and a farm to operate. I don’t have time to be depressed, nor reason to be.”

“What about you, Emma?”

Emma followed Luke’s lead. She would be as brave as he. “I’m fine.”

“What about Josiah? And the little ones—Mark, Lillie, and Mary?”

Doctor Miller had provided medical care for all the Shiracks. Daed had been of the opinion that Plain people should be good stewards of their physical bodies—gifts from God, he said—as well as their spiritual life. Doctor Miller knew each child, so he knew how different each of them was. Emma struggled for a response that reflected both the truth and their faith. “They’re doing the best they can, all things considered. They miss their parents, but they know they’re in heaven with God.”

Rubbing a hand over his bald head, Doctor Miller leaned back in his leather chair. “Look, I have great respect for your Amish ways. You take it on the chin, and you keep on going. You’re made of tough material that doesn’t rip or tear. But I also know your hearts are tender. You don’t build up those thick layers of scar tissue that make the rest of us so cynical and distrusting. When something like this happens, you lean on your faith and you keep putting one foot in front of the other, believing it’s God’s will. I respect that.”