Wonderful Lonesome (35 page)

“What sort of posting?” She was listening and had not resumed scrubbing.

“A position. An
English
family I know is looking for a woman to be a companion to their young son. I believe he is recovering from some sort of respiratory illness and needs to be kept still, but they want to be sure his education continues.”

“A teacher?”

He shrugged. “Of sorts. You help with Levi’s lessons. This boy is about that age.”

“But I have no formal qualifications.”

“Perhaps that does not worry them right now. The man in the mercantile said they were more concerned to find someone temperamentally suited to being with him for a few hours a day. With the right conversation, the education would take care of itself.”

“I don’t know, Willem. I have never worked for an
English
family.”

“They are nice people, and it’s only for a few months while he recuperates.”

She pressed her lips together, and he wondered if she still tasted him.

“I understand why your father wants to leave,” he said, “but I also understand why you want to stay.”

Rudy nodded to confirm to Abbie that he had heard the Weaver family news. They stood side by side along the fence around his pasture. He could see the sack of bread on the bench of her buggy, but she seemed in no hurry to deliver it to the house.

“The calf is doing well,” she murmured as she folded her arms across the top of the wooden fence and set her chin in the crook of one elbow.

“She is fully weaned, though I find I cannot leave her in the same field with her mother or she tries to suckle still.”

“She’s a beautiful animal.”

“You see beauty where everyone else sees potential for profit.”

“Not everyone, surely.”

“Just about. Even Amish cats have to earn their keep by keeping mice out of the barn.”

“We used to have a dog in Ohio,” Abbie said, “but he had to be able to herd. When he got too old,
Daed
shot him.”

Rudy gazed at her face. Her eyes watched the calf but seemed to see right through the animal and fix on a point on the horizon. He leaned on the fence next to her. The thought that Abbie would leave the settlement sliced through him. She was the one who stopped him from selling his cows and getting on a train months ago. Without her he would have no reason to stay after all.

Wordless, he reached over and folded his fingers around her hand. The reluctance he expected did not come. Instead she turned her palm up and laced her fingers through his. In the end, he was the one to break the grasp without knowing what it meant.

Ruthanna’s pulse quickened more than she had expected it would. She rode between Ananias and Abbie, who held the baby, on the way to Limon to meet her mother’s train. They would be absurdly early, but Ruthanna had not wanted to risk any delay. A neighbor’s wagon blocking the road, a cracked harness, a loose wheel—a dozen small incidents could cause them to be late. Even now Ruthanna prayed silently that an axle would not break or the horse would not step in a hole and go lame, as she mentally checked off the landmarks that meant they were approaching the outskirts of Limon.

When they pulled up to the depot, Ananias nodded toward the clock that hung on the outside wall.

“Thank you for indulging me,” Ruthanna said. “I just couldn’t bear to think of not being here the minute she gets off the train.”

“Will you be all right here, then? Abbie can wait with you.”

“Yes, fine.”

“Do you have to rush off,
Daed
?” Abbie asked.

“We are very early for the train. I figure to see the land agent as long as I am in town,” Ananias said. “I’d like to know what he thinks he can get for the property and how long he thinks it will take to find a buyer.”

Ruthanna saw the droop in Abbie’s face at her father’s unvarnished account of his intent.

“No point in wasting time,” Ananias said.

Ananias lowered himself from the bench and then offered assistance to Ruthanna. She reached for her daughter, but Abbie held the child securely with one arm and with the other braced herself to step down. Ruthanna did not object. Soon enough they would stand on this platform and bid each other farewell. She would not deny Abbie the pleasure of holding the baby now. They walked over to a vacant bench while Ananias took his seat in the buggy and urged the horse forward again.

Abbie adjusted the baby on her lap, and Ruthanna looped an arm through Abbie’s elbow. “Maybe we’ll see each other in Pennsylvania or Ohio someday,” she said.

“Maybe.” Abbie raised her eyes to Pikes Peak in the distance. “I love you, Ruthanna, but it breaks my heart to think of your leaving this place. Being here without you seems unimaginable.”

“What about the job that Willem told you about?”

“Shall I consider it?”

“If it meant you could stay, wouldn’t that be reason enough? No one is suggesting you become
English
.” Ruthanna used the hem of her shawl to wipe her daughter’s drool.

Abbie breathed in deeply and out heavily. “I am not sure how to make my
daed
understand. He would not see how working a few months for an
English
family would solve anything.”

“What would he think if you said you wanted to marry?”

Abbie rolled her eyes. “I’ve told you about Willem. You know how he feels about Jake and the new church.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Willem.”

“Then who?”

“Are you so blind that you do not see how Rudy feels about you? Now more than ever.”

“Rudy is very sweet,” Abbie said. “A tender soul.”

“And he would jump at the chance to be your faithful, loving husband.”

“But how could I encourage him when he knows how I feel about Willem?”

“Centuries of strong Amish marriages have been built on something other than those kinds of feelings.”

Abbie twisted her neck and looked at Ruthanna with furrowed brow. “I know you married Eber because you loved him.”

“He was the desire of my heart. I was blessed that God gave him to me.”

“Don’t I deserve that?” Abbie said hoarsely.

Ruthanna stroked her friend’s arm. “I know you thought you would marry Willem, but if his choice takes him away, perhaps Rudy is God’s way to give you the desire of your heart in the settlement.”

A whistle blew, and a train barreled toward them.

Words formed in Abbie’s mind the next morning but tangled themselves up between her tongue and her lips. She held Ruthanna’s daughter and watched Willem load Ruthanna’s trunk and the small bag her mother had traveled with. Ruthanna had come to Colorado with few possessions and left with fewer. She had packed only the few baby clothes she had stitched, the quilt she had made before her wedding to Eber, his Bible, and a change of clothes in case the baby spit up on her on the train. In a separate crate, packed in straw, was the cradle Eber made.

“Are they almost ready?” Willem asked as he checked the harness that strapped Ruthanna’s buggy to the horse.

A nod was all Abbie could manage. She checked the knot of ribbon at the baby’s neck.

“She’ll write,” Willem said.

Abbie nodded again and failed to resist the shiver that traveled up her spine.

“And you’ll write,” Willem said. “You’ll still be friends.”

It took three attempts before Abbie could push air through her throat. “I don’t understand what the hurry is. Her mother could stay a while and see what Ruthanna’s life was like out here.”

“It’s not that kind of a visit. Ruthanna may as well go and get settled.”

“Get on with her life. That’s what you mean.”

“Yes. I suppose that is what I mean. Eber is gone. She can’t save the farm. Raising a child alone must be frightening. Her parents want to help.”

Abbie grazed one hand over the fuzz on the baby’s head. It looked like it would grow in to yellow blond hair like her mother’s, but it was impossible to be sure.

“I can’t imagine not being able to ride over and see her. We didn’t meet each other until we came here, but she is the closest thing I’ve known to a sister.”

Willem lifted his chin toward the opening door of the Weaver house. Ruthanna and her mother, arm in arm, walked toward the buggy.

“Let me help you up with the baby.”

Willem offered his hand, and Abbie took it.

“It was nice of you to buy her rig.” She settled into the rear bench of Ruthanna’s buggy.

“I’ll send her what it’s really worth when I can, but at least she has a bit of traveling money. Something to get situated with.”

The buggy rocked as Ruthanna climbed in and sat next to Abbie. Her mother took the seat beside Willem.

Abbie forced a smile. Speech had evaporated once again.

At the train station, Willem and Ruthanna’s mother hung back. Ruthanna clung to Abbie, who clung to the baby. She pulled a slip of paper out of the sleeve of her dress and tucked it into Abbie’s.

“My address,” Ruthanna said. “I want you to write to me as soon as you’ve made up your mind what to do.”

Abbie’s head bobbed.

Not once had Ruthanna doubted that she was making the right decision for her child. If she had been on her own, even without Eber, she might have borrowed Abbie’s persistence. She had thought she would, in those final weeks when she had to admit that life was ebbing out of her husband. But the babe in her arms, rather than her womb, changed everything.

“You are the truest friend I have ever known,” Ruthanna whispered.

She felt the soundless sob in her friend’s chest.

“I pray you will not feel abandoned for long,” Ruthanna said.“Don’t be so stubborn that you end up alone.”

Abbie dipped her head to kiss the baby one last time before transferring the tight bundle into Ruthanna’s arms. “Wherever I end up, I want you to write to me about everything she does. When she smiles for the first time, when she cuts her first tooth, when she starts to crawl. Everything.”

“I promise.” Ruthanna put the baby upright over her shoulder and the child burped.

Abbie giggled. “I guess she wanted to say good-bye, too.”

Willem and Ruthanna’s mother approached.

“I suppose we should get on the train,” Ruthanna said. “Thank you, Willem. For everything.”

“I counted Eber a good friend,” he said.